A little earlier, Tom McCaffrey had been making his way through the livid rainy evening in the direction of the Slipper House, holding an umbrella carefully up over his head and a bunch of yellow tulips which he was carrying. He felt singularly ridiculous and quite venomously angry with himself. He had yesterday sent a picture postcard (representing the Botanic Garden) to Miss Harriet Meynell which read as follows:
I shall be at Belmont tomorrow evening and I wonder if I could drop in for a moment to introduce myself? I believe you know my stepmother, and your grandfather wants us to be acquainted since you are a newcomer to Ennistone. I will telephone later to see if a time shortly before nine would be suitable. With best wishes,
Tom McCaffrey
A telephone call in the morning (Pearl answered) had established that that hour would be convenient. Now he was going along, as he put it to himself, to get the thing over with. He had decided against inviting Hattie to Travancore Avenue because of Emma, and also because of the awful possibility that the young lady, once there, would not soon depart. Besides, how could he ‘entertain’ her? It was only natural in a way for him (pretending to visit Belmont) to ‘pass by’ the Slipper House, where, after making a token appearance, he could inform Rozanov that he had tried and given up. The glimpse of Hattie at the Baths which had set Emma laughing had been enough for Tom also. He had seen a bedraggled red-nosed rat-child, a child about whom, with the best will in the world, no romantic fantasy could weave.
When the lights went out, Tom had entered the garden by the back gate from Forum Way. One moment he could see the street lights revealing the young green branches of trees, the lights of the Slipper House, and beyond the lights of Belmont. The next moment all was dark against the dim rainy twilight of the sky. In the sudden obscurity Tom laid his open umbrella down on the grass and tried to work out the outline of the Slipper House roof. As he peered and blinked, the wind took the umbrella hopping lightly away across the lawn. He dropped the flowers and pursued the umbrella, then could not find the flowers and stepped on them. Suddenly a light flared in the murk ahead. He stood and watched as dim flickering lights appeared in several windows of the house where the girls had not yet closed the shutters. Figures moved carrying candles. He waited a while, watching the pale rectangles of the windows emerging; and as he watched he revived in his heart an old fantasy, that he had been conceived in the Slipper House, when Fiona and Alan lay together on that first night. Then he went forward and knocked.
Pearl opened the door. She had not put on her maidservant rig for Tom. She was dressed in jeans and an old jersey. This evening her part was to look shaggy, sluttish and of uncertain age. She did not regard Tom, bearer of John Robert’s bright idea, as a happy portent. If John Robert wanted to marry Hattie off so soon, what was to become of Pearl? Also, Pearl had imbibed, perhaps from Ruby, on her odd visits to Ennistone, the notion of Tom as a little local star, and she felt a very private kind of annoyance at seeing this special young man being offered to Hattie on a plate. Of course Hattie, who declined to regard the introduction as a serious matter, would not take him. But Pearl had divined, as Hattie had not, John Robert’s weird seriousness: a curious, in respect to Hattie, intensity which Pearl now felt she was not observing for the first time and which troubled her much. She felt alarmed and apprehensive and jealous. And now there were to be handsome young men to whom she would open the door and for whom she would be invisible and old. That was why she dressed, on that evening, invisible and old. In America she had never felt like a servant.
‘Let me take your umbrella. Miss Meynell is in the sitting-room.’
Tom, who had no overcoat, handed over his dripping umbrella. A candle on the window ledge showed half their faces and cast their swaying shadows as Pearl closed the front door.
Tom went into the sitting-room carrying the tulips. Pearl, outside, said, ‘I’ll bring more light.’ Two candles, one on the mantelpiece and one on the glass-topped bamboo table, made a soft dim dome of illumination in the room.
Hattie had aggressively refused to put her hair up. She wore it strained back from her face and hanging in a single thick heavy pigtail down her back. She was wearing a scrappy tee shirt and tight jeans which showed how long and skinny her legs were. Her skin looked little-girlish, not youthful. Her collar-bones but not her breasts were prominent under the shirt. She looked almost as childish to Tom as in his first glimpse of her, though less bedraggled.
‘I’ve brought you some flowers,’ said Tom. He held them out and Hattie took them. ‘Oh dear, they’re all muddy!’ The yellow tulips were dabbled with mud. ‘I’m afraid I dropped them.’
Pearl came in with two more candles. ‘Where shall I put these?’
‘Oh anywhere. Could you wash the flowers?’ said Hattie. (These were the first words Tom heard her utter.) She gave the tulips to Pearl who had put the candles down on the window seat. ‘Would you like a drink? Is Coke OK?’
‘Lovely,’ said Tom, who hated Coke. Tom drew his fingers back through his long, now rather damp, curly hair, combing it. Pearl returned with the drinks and with the scrubbed and now rather battered tulips in a mauve vase.
‘How beautiful candlelight is,’ said Tom.
‘We said we’d have the fire,’ said Hattie to Pearl, ‘and could you close the shutters?’
Hattie and Tom watched Pearl light the gas fire, and close the shutters, revealing Ned Larkin’s picture.
Hattie handed Tom a glass of Coca-Cola, taking one herself, and said, ‘Oh please sit down.’ They sat down on slightly swaying bamboo chairs with fitted cushions.
‘Have you any oil-lamps?’ said Tom. ‘They’re useful for these occasions.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Hattie, and then, after a pause, ‘I think you know my grandfather?’
‘Yes, I met him once.’
‘Once?’
‘Well, yes — ’
‘I supposed that he knew you quite well.’
‘I hadn’t met him before last week, when he asked me to come and see him.’
‘Oh,’ said Hattie. ‘What about?’
‘About you.’
‘About me?’
‘Yes, but - he must have told you — ’
‘Told me what?’
‘His idea.’
‘What idea?’
‘About us.’
‘Us?’
‘You and me. Sorry, I’m not putting it very well — ’
‘So it was his idea that you should come and see me?’ said Hattie.
‘In a way, yes. I mean, yes.’
‘But why?’
‘He wants us to know each other.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, why not!’ said Tom. He was aware of having made a number of blunders already and was acutely conscious of the perfectly horrid falsity of his position, but he was exasperated too by Hattie’s hard aggressive tone, as if it was all his fault. He thought, has she no sense of humour, no sense of fun? Why is she so cross with me? ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘you’re a newcomer here — ’
‘And so —?’
‘I could show you round and introduce you and - that’s strictly all, I - there’s no need to think — ’
‘Oh I don’t!’ said Hattie. She seemed to be stiff with anger.
‘I wasn’t suggesting — ’
‘Naturally not,’ said Hattie with extreme coldness. ‘We haven’t met anywhere, have we, that I can recall?’
‘No, I saw you for about three seconds at the Baths on that awfully cold day when it snowed. Two seconds actually. I can’t say that I — ’