The Philosopher's Pupil (65 page)

‘You mean,' said Pearl, ‘that my employment is at an end.'

‘I told you at the start that it was to cease when Harriet was grown up.'

‘Did you?'

‘I will give you six months' wages and a generous honorarium.' John Robert spoke softly now in a low voice, and his face looked quiet and puzzled and tired as if he had done some hard work and was now resting and reflecting in a rather abstract way about other matters.

‘She isn't grown up,' said Pearl. ‘Besides, she needs me, she loves me, she has no one else — '

John Robert said in his cruel abstracted soft voice, ‘She has been made too precious, she has lived too much out of the world, you have encouraged her in habits of dependence — '

‘I only did what you wanted.'

‘She has become too dependent, too easily led, too weak, and it is time — '

‘She isn't easily led or weak! Anyway it isn't my fault, you always insisted — '

‘It doesn't matter now whose fault it is. It is time to make a brisk change. I have formed the view, on I think sufficient evidence, that you are not a fit person — '

‘Because you thought I was kissing a girl?'

‘You have unfortunate connections. I no longer trust you. I'm sorry.'

‘But I haven't
done
anything, you don't
understand,
you wouldn't let us
explain,
it was just unlucky — '

‘I am tired of being told lies, and I don't want unlucky people in my employ.'

‘You can't do this suddenly after so many years — '

‘Better suddenly, better for Harriet.'

‘No, it's unfair — '

‘I can imagine that you are sorry to lose a well-paid job. But you can hardly complain that you have not had enough money out of us! And when I think what my money has bought — '

‘It isn't to do with money,' said Pearl. ‘You made me, you invented me, you and, you can't just say it's at an end — '

‘I don't see why not. It is in the nature of such a post to end. Your family feelings are unilateral, they are your affair.'

‘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.

‘You mustn't stay,' she repeated, ‘you mustn't be here.'

‘Are you expecting George?'

‘No, but he always might.'

‘May I stay a minute, please?'

Diane sat down rather unsteadily on the
chaise tongue
and poured herself out another glass of wine. ‘Would you like some whisky?'

Diane poured a little wine into the second glass, spilling some. Tom took off Greg's coat and hat and picked up the wine. He found a chair with a plant on it, put the plant on the floor and sat down. He felt suddenly at home in Diane's room, and his natural habitual cheerfulness was about to assert itself when he remembered all the horrors of recent days. He said to Diane, ‘William Eastcote has died, did you know? Well, you couldn't know, he's only just died.'

‘Lucky man, wish I had,' said Diane. She took a gin bottle from under the table and poured some into her wine.

‘Diane, I wanted to ask you something, do you mind, that evening at the Slipper House, last Saturday — '

‘Was it only last Saturday? I lose count of time. What's today?'

‘Thursday.'

Diane had not seen George since the Slipper House evening, when, from her hiding-place behind the shrubs, she had heard the singing and seen George run away through the garden and had followed him. She knew nothing of the incident with Hattie until she read the
Ennistone Gazette
article. She read
The Swimmer
article next day. These effusions had been troubling and confusing her mind ever since. She had not forgotten George's jokes about Hattie. Now she did not know what to believe. She ate little, drank a lot, checked on the bottle where she kept enough sleeping-pills to finish it all, and waited. The only thing which cheered her up a little was that the article had referred to her as ‘our own Madame Diane'. George had once given her a humorous lecture about ‘whores in literature' and she remembered there had been a Madame Diane. She and George sometimes referred to these literary ladies in private jokes, and this helped Diane to feel that she had identity in George's mind. The scurrilous and untrue way in which the
Gazette
spoke of her did not trouble Diane at all, indeed it pleased her slightly.

‘Did you read that horrible article in the
Gazette?
'

‘Yes.'

‘Forgive me - I must know - did you bring George there, and did you - bring him and - Miss Meynell together?'

‘Miss Meynell?' said Diane. ‘Oh yes, of course, I must be drunk.'

When she said no more, Tom said, ‘Did you bring George to the Slipper House?'

‘No, he brought himself. As for what Miss Meynell did, don't
you
know?' She was becoming rather dazed with drink, but her senses seemed to have become more vivid. She had lost her urgent terror at the idea of George finding Tom with her. She was looking at Tom and thinking, how tall he is, and what beautiful long curly hair he has, and his long legs in his grey trousers, and his blue eyes like his mother's, he's so young. And Diane thought, oh if only life was ordinary for me and I could look at people and be with them, and a tear came into each eye.

Tom said, in answer to her question, ‘No, I don't!' He discerned the tears and said, ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Aren't you going to marry Miss Meynell?'

‘No.'

‘It's off - because of that?'

‘No! It was never on!'

‘Oh well, I don't know what happened. I don't know anything. I'm just sitting here drinking myself to death.'

Tom thought, I'm crazy, I can't discuss Hattie like this, it's awful, how foul my mind is, I oughtn't to be here at all. And how tiny she is, almost a dwarf, and so unhappy. He said, ‘May I have some whisky after all?' Inspired by her example he tilted it into his wine and swallowed a little and began to feel rather strange. He said, ‘How did all this happen to you?'