‘So you didn’t like it! Sorry, I know once before you wouldn’t talk about it — ’
‘I didn’t like the men, those particular ones - I was a fool.’
‘I don’t think I shall ever like any men,’ said Hattie. She began slowly to unplait her hair. Pearl got up to help her.
‘Pearl dear — ’
‘Yes.’
‘About my grandfather.’
‘Yes.’
‘You do like him?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Pearl’s quick ringers undid the thick cold pale rope of hair at the nape of the warm neck.
‘Do you think he thinks much about us?’
‘Not much. But enough.’
‘Pearl - oh how I wish - no matter - I was thinking about my father.’
‘Yes.’
‘He was such a good dear man, so quiet and sort of - lost — ’
‘Yes.’
‘Pearl, you won’t ever leave me, will you? I couldn’t be parted from you now, we’ve grown together, like - not like sisters exactly, just like us. You’re my only person, and I don’t want anyone else ever. I’m so all right with you.’
‘I’ll be around,’ said Pearl.
She hated this conversation, which stirred up her own fear with an exact and accurate touch, like a finger far outstretched to disturb a wound.
‘I don’t think I’ll ever grow up. I’ll crawl into a crack and go to sleep forever.’
‘Hattie, stop, don’t be so feeble, think how lucky you are, you’re going to the university — ’
‘Am I?’
‘And you’ll meet lots of nice men there, gentlemen, not like the ones I knew.’
‘Gentlemen!’ Hattie began to laugh, a sort of wild groaning laugh, tossing her silky hair all round her face.
There was a sudden screeching sound down below, then another. The telephone. The girls looked at each other in amazement and alarm.
‘Who can it be, so late? You go, Pearlie.’
Pearl darted down the stairs on her slippered feet. Hattie followed barefoot, her warm feet leaving sticky prints on the gleaming parquet which Ruby had polished so carefully.
Pearl in the hall was saying, ‘Yes. Yes.’ Then, ‘Hattie, it’s for you.’
‘Who —?’
‘I don’t know, a man.’
Hattie took the telephone. ‘Hello.’
‘Miss Meynell? This is Father Bernard Jacoby.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m the - did your grandfather tell you —?’
‘No.’
‘I’m the - the clergyman - your grandfather asked me to - to — ’
‘Yes?’
I should have worked this out beforehand, thought Father Bernard at the other end, and I ought not to have had that last glass of port, and dear me, it’s so late, and I do think he might have told the girl.
‘He asked me to have a talk with you about your work.’
‘My work - you mean - like a tutor?’
‘Sort of, not quite - don’t worry, we’ll invent something. I mean we’ll work something out - just a talk really. Could I come round tomorrow morning, about eleven say?’
‘Yes. Do you know where —?’
‘Oh yes, I know the Slipper House, we all know the Slipper House!’
‘Oh - yes - thank you.’
‘Goodnight, my child.’
Good heavens, what a bungler I am, thought Father Bernard. He had even managed to chuckle in a suggestive way when talking about the Slipper House. The girl had sounded quiet and civil, but you never knew with Americans. He poured out another glass of port.
‘He said he was a tutor, a clergyman,’ said Hattie. ‘He’s coming round tomorrow.’
‘Well, never mind tomorrow, let’s go to bed.’
‘Oh, Pearl, what’s that noise?’
‘That’s the fox barking. It lives here in the garden.’
Pearl opened the front door. A wave of silent moist warm fragrant spring air came with a great slow stride into the house. Pearl turned off the hall light and they looked out into the darkness.
‘Foxie,’ said Hattie softly, ‘dear foxie - he lives right here in our garden — ’
‘Would you like to go out, dear? I’ll get your coat and shoes. We could walk on the lawn.’
‘Oh no, no, no. Foxie, oh foxie — ’ Tears began to stream down Hattie’s face and she gave a little sob.
‘Hattie, stop. You’re not ten years old now! Go to bed, you silly idiotic baby.’
‘Yes, I will. Don’t come. I’m going to turn out my light. Stay here a little. I’d like to think you were outside - only don’t go far - and don’t forget to lock the door.’
Hattie fled up the stairs.
Pearl walked out on to the grass. The shutters were closed upstairs, only a little light came dimly through the stained-glass landing window. A lighted upstairs window at Belmont could be seen through the trees.
Pearl breathed the soft fuzzy moist surprising spring air with its message of new life and pain and change. She stroked her hand down her straight brow and her thin nose. She thought, I have got everything wrong, I have played every card wrong, I’ve had luck, oh such luck, but I didn’t understand, I didn’t think well enough of myself - I had such mean small expectations, I wanted too little, and now it’s too late.
She looked at the Belmont lights. A curtain was blowing out below a sash window, frighteningly, like a ghost leaning out. Ruby was going to bed, watching television perhaps. Of course she was not going to be like Ruby. Hattie was a girl from the past. Ruby too belonged to the past. A life like Ruby’s could not be lived now. Ruby was an anachronism, an old brown dinosaur. But had not Pearl made a similar mistake, missed a turning, taken a road that led not higher up, but into a low mean small life? It was the money, thought Pearl, I spent those precious years just being pleased that I had money! And even the other day I got pleasure out of going to see that poor old wreck my foster-mother and showing off in front of her! As if I had anything to show off really! I’ve just been lucky, and I enjoyed the luck in a stupid selfish way and didn’t use it. I’m like someone in a story who is given a fairy wish, and wastes it asking for a pretty dress or a cake. I didn’t use my luck when I could to get up, to get out. I could have learnt the things Hattie was learning, or some of them. I could have learnt French at any rate, or something. I let her do all the talking and the looking while I just packed the cases and mended her clothes. Well, I did look, but I didn’t know enough and now I can’t remember. It isn’t that I’m lazy, but I have the soul of a servant and it didn’t occur to me. I was so glad just to be travelling and using money and feeling like someone in an advertisement. I didn’t see that the door was open. Why didn’t I feel more resentment? That might have helped me. If only I had hated Hattie, as I thought I might. But loving Hattie - that’s terrible - and now -
Pearl thought how in a very little while Hattie would change. Hattie was at the precious crystalline end point of her childhood, of her innocence. The sense of this was in Hattie’s own confused pain, her tears, her cry of ‘Foxie - oh foxie’. And her wish that she and Pearl might stay forever in the never-never land of her own arrested youth, which time was sweeping on toward the rapids of absolute change. Hattie would remember with blushes the sweet silly words she had uttered tonight. She would show Pearl how much she had changed, she would have to.
But she won’t show me, thought Pearl, because I won’t be here. I shall be far away. We shall be separated. He told me to come, to be what I am, and for years I have obeyed him. Now, soon, he will simply tell me to go and be no more seen.
Loving Hattie. Ah, that was bad enough. But Pearl’s predicament was even worse than that. She loved John Robert.