‘Hattie loves me. Doesn’t that matter to you?’
‘I don’t believe it. Childish habits are soon lost. She will have worthier objects of interest.’
‘I have nothing, nothing, and she — ’
‘No doubt that is what your family feelings amount to. You have always envied Harriet and wanted to pull her down.’
‘No, no, I just mean that she has been my world.’
‘You will find other worlds, you already seem to be at home in some rather unsavoury ones. Could we end this conversation? You will receive your money by post.’
‘When can I see Harriet again?’
‘Never. You are not to come near her. You are not to see her again. That is final.’
‘But where are you taking her, are you going to be together in that little house in Hare Lane?’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘You know why not.’
John Robert lost his quiet tired look and stared keenly at Pearl for a moment. He said, but in the same soft tone, ‘You are a corrupt person. I only hope you have not corrupted Harriet.’
‘I haven’t told her that!’
‘You brought that man to Harriet.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I have no more to say to you.’
‘And you asked her if she was still a virgin!’
‘Enough. Do not bring your foul person near to us. We are going to America. You will not see her or me again.’ He moved to the door.
‘Wait, John Robert, wait, I beg you,’ said Pearl.
The utterance of the name startled them both, and for a second they stood absolutely still staring at each other. Then Pearl took hold of the sleeve of John Robert’s overcoat. ‘Please think, please understand. Hattie does need me. But I wanted to say something else. You are a miracle in my life. You saw me and knew me and chose me and you were right. You trusted me and you were right to trust me. I am not a corrupt person, forgive what I said just now, it was nonsense, it’s just that I care so much for you and Hattie, and I’ve watched you both so carefully, I’ve watched over you as if you were holy things - and I’m so upset and frightened now - I have done everything that you wanted and I have served you and Hattie in absolute loyalty and truth. And so much more than that. Oh can’t you see!, I love Hattie and I love you, I love you, like family, like a person in love, I am a person in love. You and Hattie are my life, you are my life, my occupation and my aim - my love has worked so long, it has waited so long, can’t it speak, can’t it be seen at last? Can’t I tell the truth at last to you, who care so much about truth? Don’t you know what love is like and how it longs to speak, it has to speak? I’ve been so quiet and so patient and so invisible, and I’ve been happy being patient and just serving you and doing exactly what you said and doing it well. Just wait, don’t be hasty, don’t send me away. I have value. Let me still be with you and Hattie, let me work for you still, I can be so useful, I can do so many things, I can learn to be whatever you want, don’t throw my love and service away - I am empty, I am poured out, all I have is you, all I am is you, don’t abandon me, don’t leave me, John Robert, let me still be in your life, oh believe me, believe in my love, look on me with kindness, with just a little kindness, please, I haven’t done anything wrong, I swear — ’
Rozanov stared at her with a gathering frown and his big soft mouth puckered up into an ugly pout of loathing. He said, almost in a whisper ‘You disgust me.’ He wrenched his sleeve away and went out of the door.
Pearl followed him across the grass to where the path between the trees began. She heard the back gate slam and the taxi start. She stood still a while. Then she returned to the house. When she looked in through the doorway and saw the hall all pretty and tidy and bright she uttered the second scream which Alex heard that evening; only it was not a scream, it was more like an animal’s long howl. She went into the house and shut the door with such violence that a piece of the cracked glass in the landing window fell out on to the lawn. She felt a pain which ran all the way down the front of her body as if she had been ripped open with a knife. She went upstairs to her bedroom and fell like a dead thing face downwards on the bed.
Tom rang the bell at Diane’s address. There was only one bell. (He had discovered her address in an old telephone directory. Later directories did not list her.)
Diane, on the entry phone, said, ‘Who is it?’
Tom, on the spur of the moment, said, ‘George’.
Diane knew it was not George, who always entered with his own key, but she pressed the entry button all the same; she had been doing some solitary drinking and for once didn’t care who it was.
Westwold is a quiet little suburb, agreed to be ‘dull’ (even the Three Blind Mice is usually empty after 9 p.m.) and Tom met very few people on his walk. As he huddled into the narrow doorway beside the Irish Linen shop he looked quickly up and down the street, but there was no one in sight.
He opened the door and, as he went up the dark stairs immediately inside, a light went on above. He arrived on a landing face to face with Diane, who was standing at the door of her flat.
She peered. When she recognized Tom she moved quickly back into the flat. Tom promptly put his foot in the closing door.
‘Please, Diane, let me talk to you just a moment, it’s important, it’s about George.’
Tom now introduced his body after his foot into the aperture and began to push the door open against Diane’s pressure. He felt suddenly excited, not happily, rather unpleasantly.
Diane gave way, let him enter, quickly closed the door behind him, and said, ‘You mustn’t stay, you mustn’t be here. I shouldn’t have let you in.’ She moved back out of the tiny hall into the little lighted room beyond, where a radio was playing pop music. There was a strong stuffy smell of cigarettes and wine.
Diane was now quickly darting about, stooping and picking up what appeared to be underwear from the floor. She opened another door and hurled a pale frilly armful through and then shut it again. She turned the radio off. She emptied an overflowing ashtray into a vase, and kicked a jangling suspender-belt in under a chair. There was now also a sweaty smell of unwashed clothes. Tom, blinking, took in the room which seemed to him so full of things that he and Diane would have to stand there with their hands stiffly at their sides. He could not at first see a chair or discern the chaise tongue, which was also covered with clothes and with a Paisley shawl which had crumpled itself up into mounds and hummocks. A wine bottle and a whisky bottle and two glasses stood on a dirty little ebony table. The velour curtains were drawn and two fringed lamps gave a dim pink light and a tiny narrow gas fire glowed pinkly. Tom, moving slightly, found his leg stoutly impeded by a leather hippopotamus and, stepping back, crunched his foot into a basket full of magazines.
Diane, in the soft sweetish light of her crammed little room, looked quite different from the shy trim person Tom had been used to seeing at the Institute. She looked, here, older, more painted, more animal. Her hair, which looked as though it had been lacquered, was sleeked down over her little dark head and came forward in two pointed curves over her cheeks. Her face looked yellowish and seemed without make-up except for the moistly scarlet lips. Her eyes were sunken and shadowed, both her small hands were brown with nicotine. She was wearing one of the black dresses which George liked, an old-fashioned cocktail dress which she had bought in a second-hand shop with a V-neck and black shiny beads sewn on to the bodice, and a long fringed hem beneath which were visible shiny black high-heeled boots with pointed toes. Her feet were also very small. Around her thin neck she wore a circlet of polished steel teeth which, not fitting well, poked her flesh, making red marks. She looked to Tom, as he gazed down on her, so little and so touching. He had often seen her in a bathing costume, but with her ‘daring’ black attire and awkward collar she seemed far more undressed. For a moment he forgot why he had come.