Perhaps the poor neglected misunderstood Slipper House had stored up a lot of vague sweet innocent ownerless happiness from its past, the past when Alex and her brother Desmond were young, and when Geoffrey and Rosemary Stillowen invented games and parties for scores of beautiful young people, Quakers and Methodists, for whom sex was a future mystery and a present romance, and whose lives were still unshadowed in a world where nobody believed that there would ever be another war.
That may have been so. But also of course the two girls, at a moment when both of them were anxiously and silently feeling the cold turning band of time entering a new phase, had received a curious reprieve. Suddenly everything was fun, everything flowered into a kind of dotty youthfulness together which they had never really had before. Now suddenly Hattie was older and suddenly Pearl was younger. The strict old-fashioned upbringing which John Robert had distantly decreed for Hattie had not at all prepared her for this shock of gleeful joy. She and Pearl were ‘gay young things’, imprisoned perhaps and perhaps doomed (there were ideas which they sometimes glimpsed, as it were, over their shoulders) but for the moment compelled to have no other occupation but to inhabit the present, and carry on, in that exquisitely artificial little house, what felt like a delightful charade.
Pearl had arrived first with suitcases. The taxi had deposited her in the twilit evening at the back gate where she had found Ruby waiting. Before that, letters had been flying to and fro, letters which were more like army instructions than works of epistolary art. John Robert had written to Pearl to say that he wanted her and Hattie to ‘abide’ (his use of the word ‘abide’ was the only point of stylistic interest in his letter) during the summer at the Garden House (‘Slipper House’ was a nickname of course), Belmont, Tasker Road, Ennistone, by courtesy of Mrs McCaffrey, whom they were not to bother, but to use the back gate in Forum Way. He wrote in similar terms to Hattie. His letter to Pearl began ‘Dear Pearl!’ and ended ‘Yours sincerely, J. R. Rozanov.’ His letter to Hattie began ‘My dear Hattie’ and ended ‘Yours J R R’ (scrawled). He had never established himself as ‘granddad’ or ‘grandpapa’ or any such. Hattie had no name for him and called him by no name. Alex had written to John Robert with marked coldness that she ‘noted his arrangement’. He had not replied. Pearl had written to Ruby saying when she would arrive. (Ruby did not show the letter to Alex but took it to the gipsies to be read.) Neither Pearl nor Hattie had written to Alex since Pearl did not feel it was their place to do so. Alex did not write to Hattie because she did not know her address and felt affronted. Ruby casually informed Alex of Pearl’s arrival date.
Ruby, strong as a horse, had helped Pearl carry the numerous suitcases to the house. These contained Pearl’s own clothes and Hattie’s English summer clothes which were stored at Pearl’s flat. Hattie’s school trunk and book box was to come by rail. Pearl and Ruby got the stuff inside and closed the door. They went into the sitting-room and turned on the light and sat down.
Pearl closed her eyes and said, ‘Oh!’ Some extraordinary painful excitement caught hold of her like a sudden cramp, mixed with very private fear. She wished Ruby would go away. She wanted to explore the house by herself.
‘It’s all nice here, we did it,’ said Ruby, wide-legged, staring at Pearl with her brooding predatory stare.
‘We —?’
‘Me and her.’
‘Good - thanks — ’
‘I’m to clean.’
‘No-don’t- I can.’
‘You don’t want me here.’
‘It’s not that.’
‘You don’t. Will you come up to the house and see her?’
‘I don’t see that I need to. Do I?’
‘Please yourself. Well, there you are. When’s Missie coming?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Everyone here’s mad to see her.’
‘How do they know?’
‘They know. They’re mad to see his grand-daughter. They want a good laugh.’
‘Why should they laugh?’
‘People always laugh. What’ll you do with your two selves?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Pearl. ‘Enjoy them, I hope!’
Ruby said, ‘It’s well for some. She’s not pleased.’
‘Mrs McCaffrey?’
‘You’d better see her and curtsey, tomorrow.’
‘Oh all right. Only I won’t curtsey. I suppose that’s a joke.’
‘Please yourself.’
‘Ruby, dear, don’t be cross.’
‘I’m not cross.’
‘What’s that strange noise?’
‘The horrible fox animal. It lives here, in this garden.’
Pearl heard the strange noise again later that night as she went up to bed alone. Next morning she went to Belmont and showed herself to Mrs McCaffrey who was aloof and gracious and vague. That evening Hattie arrived.
‘What fun this is.’
‘But it won’t last.’
‘Don’t keep saying that, Pearl darling. Aren’t you happy?’
‘Yes. That doesn’t stop me from being happy.’
‘I’m happy.’
‘I’ve never heard you say that before.’
‘Don’t sound sad about it, it isn’t your fault.’
‘I know.’
‘Our life is so odd.’
‘Yes. How you’ve grown up.’
‘You mean because I say our life is odd?’
‘It is. But a year ago you wouldn’t have said so.’
‘There are many things we say now which we wouldn’t have said a year ago.’
‘How awfully far off Denver seems.’
‘Like a dream.’
‘Does this seem real?’
‘No, but it’s so present. In Denver we were always looking up.’
‘You mean up at the snow?’
‘And sort of far away.’
‘Perhaps into the future.’
‘Oh, the future —! This is all so much more hereness and nowness.’
‘That’s what you mean by happy.’
‘The snow was like the sea and yet it wasn’t. I do wish we lived by the sea. I wish this house would fly away to the sea. I can imagine this house flying, I’m sure it can.’
‘I wish it would fly away somewhere.’
‘Away from here? Away from what?’
Pearl was silent. It was ten o’clock at night and they had been talking since their picnic supper. Everything had been, since Hattie’s arrival two days ago, a picnic. Continual rain had served as an excuse for staying in the house. They had gone out to shop and Pearl had taken Hattie on a rainy walk round the centre of Ennistone. Not only had Hattie of course never visited Ennistone, where John Robert had never resided during her lifetime so far, she had scarcely until lately heard of the place. John Robert never talked about his past, and Pearl’s life history made no reference to the now so momentous town. Moreover the girls had previously, in their of course fairly frequent talk about Hattie’s grandfather, avoided any deep or searching discussion of him. The mystery of John Robert remained unplumbed and indeed unreferred to. Pearl had felt, when Hattie was younger, that it would be improper to discuss the great man in any way which was in danger of bordering on the disrespectful. Pearl had, also, thoughts of her own about John Robert which she would not have risked revealing. Hattie, in a curious childish way which was peculiar to her own situation, simply did not think much about him at all. He had figured, when she was younger, in the light of a rather burdensome duty. The occasions of ‘having tea’ and answering perfunctory questions about her welfare had been ordeals to be got through without making mistakes. The atmosphere of these meetings was, in Hattie’s memory, heavy, soggy, airless, infinitely depressing, and faintly menacing. She was always a bit, though not exceedingly, frightened of John Robert. Pearl was also, and more, frightened of him. Now, for the first time, they were both, it appeared, settled in a place where he too, for the moment at any rate, was living. It so ‘appeared’ simply from the fact that the address given on his letters was 16 Hare Lane, Ennistone. No doubt John Robert would manifest himself. Both the girls tried not to worry about that.