by Peter Graham
On Sunday Pauline went to church and then with her family and Nana Parker visited Rosemary at Templeton. Rosemary was “very happy and amusing”; Nana gave Pauline her old typewriter.
The girls’ behaviour was becoming increasingly strange. Pauline dreamt that she and Juliet were imprisoned for committing a murder. After watching Hans Christian Andersen with Danny Kaye and Farley Granger, she said to Juliet in a very English voice, “Absolutely smashing show wasn’t it?” to which Juliet replied, “Simply spiffing old girl.” The effect on the people around them was “most amusing”. On the way home on the bus the girls talked with thick German accents.
The following week they went to see Mogambo, a heady romantic drama set in Kenya. Although they loathed the hero, Clark Gable, they greatly admired his love interest, Ava Gardner. They decided they needed both Ava Gardner and Marilyn Monroe as close friends to keep them looking their best: they had been “slipping on appearances” and needed to smarten up. Inspired by Monroe, Juliet bought a bottle of hair colouring called Golden Rinse. This was quite outré: in conservative Christchurch nice girls didn’t dye their hair.
On Friday, May 21, they found a new amusement. After sleeping the night together, they got out of bed on the wrong side—presumably for luck—then set out for the centre of town, where, after buying ribbons for the Saints and fawn velvet for Juliet, they began stealing from Woolworths and other shops. “It was great fun,” Pauline enthused, “and we were really expert by the time we had finished.” They had managed to shoplift £11 worth of goods, most of it cheap jewellery. They had nearly been caught once but had bluffed their way out of it.
On Sunday Pauline handed her mother some socks and slippers she had stolen for Rosemary. She concluded she had no conscience whatsoever. “Mother kept saying how pleased Rosemary was with the slippers and how good it was of me to buy them for her … each time I glowed with pride and resolved to do some more shoplifting in the near future.”
The following Sunday Juliet rang to say Mr Perry had suddenly taken ill. “I do hope he does not die,” Pauline wrote calmly in her diary. “It would spoil everything.”
Meanwhile Henry Hulme was having second thoughts about his future plans. On May 24 he wrote to the Canterbury University College council asking that his resignation be brought forward to July 31. With leave entitlements he would be free to leave New Zealand in early July.
Juliet’s fate was now settled: she would be staying with her Aunt Ina in Johannesburg. What was the price of an airfare from New Zealand to South Africa, she asked Bill Perry. He thought about £150. “Good,” she said. “We have only £50 or so to get. We already have nearly £100.”
Pauline was determined to get her hands on the £50. On May 26, her sixteenth birthday, her parents went to Folies Bergère, a revue attracting full houses to the Theatre Royal, but she stayed home typing The Donkey’s Serenade and drinking a large glass of apple wine to give herself courage: she was going to commit a burglary and felt “rather queer and jumpy”.
Before going to bed she helped herself to her father’s shop keys. At twelve-thirty she got up and headed towards Colombo Street, intent on opening Dennis Brothers’ safe. Unfortunately a policeman was watching: there had been a spate of burglaries in central Christchurch and the police were being particularly vigilant. “At first I thought I had met a fellow criminal and that he was also intending to break in. … I was about to go up to him … when I realised that I hadn’t and he wasn’t so I didn’t. I [waited] around for a while but he did not shift so I came home and spent a very restless night.”
Next day she learned that “something ghastly” had happened to Juliet. Her father had been going through his mail. When she had asked him if there was anything interesting he had said, “Yes, this” and handed her an anonymous letter. The writer had seen Juliet shoplifting. Luckily Juliet had managed to convince her father it was a spiteful lie.
Despite Juliet’s narrow squeak, both girls were feeling very happy about prospects for the future. Clearly Henry Hulme had assured them he would do everything he could to ensure they were not separated. “Dr Hulme really is to be relied upon,” Pauline wrote in her diary. A few days later a photograph of Rudi Gopas’s portrait of Hulme appeared in The Press. Pauline cut it out and pinned it to the wall of her bedroom.
Henry Hulme’s request to bring forward the date of his resignation was accepted. He was to be given a retiring allowance of £1,126.4.0, plus a grant of £900 to meet the homeward fares of himself and his family and £150 reimbursement for money he had spent on maintenance of the rectory. Having forced him to resign, the professorial board passed a resolution expressing its appreciation of the friendly and tolerant way in which Dr Hulme had presided over it for the past five and a half years, and for his advocacy of “many forward-looking proposals, in particular those concerned with the welfare of students”.
On June 3 lectures were cancelled between 10.45 and twelve noon to enable students and staff to attend an official farewell in the Great Hall. The air was ripe with hypocrisy. It was announced thatDr Hulme had accepted another appointment in England, although this was not true: he had only renewed his fellowship at Gonville and Caius. Bill Cartwright, chair of the council, spoke of Hulme’s “inestimable contribution” not only to Canterbury College but to the University of New Zealand. Mrs Hulme, too, had provided excellent support with “assistance and sympathy with the individual in trouble or difficulty, in the reception of visitors to the college, in her leadership in college social activities, and in her participation in many forms of social and community life outside the college”. Dr Parton, the professorial board’s deputy chairman, observed that the burden on the rector was heavy, “perhaps too heavy”, and that the university would remember him as a man of friendly informality. The subtext was not lost on those in the know.
In reply, Dr Hulme said Christchurch was one of the friendliest cities he knew, and he could truly say he and his wife had more friends in Canterbury than in England. Quite likely that was true.
On June 4 Pauline and Juliet saw James Mason’s new film Prince Valiant, a rollicking fantasy in which a young Viking prince tries to become a knight in King Arthur’s Court so he can restore his exiled father to his throne. The picture was dreadful, Pauline thought, but “Him was wonderful”. They were thrilled to see him wearing a beard. Pauline became even more excited with the thought that the Saints were all “greasy” and This (Mel Ferrer) “the most repulsive-looking man alive … even worse than It [Orson Welles] in revoltingness”. She had discovered a new erotic stimulus.
By now the girls had become convinced they were telepathic. When Juliet phoned to tell Pauline about the anonymous letter, Pauline said she already knew. Two days later they made another momentous discovery. “We realised why … Deborah and I have such extraordinary telepathy and why people look at us the way they do and why we behave as we do,” Pauline wrote in her diary. It is because we are MAD. We are both stark raving MAD. There is no doubt about it and we are thrilled by the thought.”
And they were in good company. “All the cast of the Saints except Nino are mad too. This is not strange as it is probably why we love them. We have discussed it fully. Dr Hulme is MAD as MAD as a March hare.”
CHAPTER 18
Hectic Nights
For Pauline and Juliet, life had taken an exciting new turn.
“We felt very strange knowing how mad we are,” Pauline
wrote. “We realise now that we cannot be revolted. We can discuss the most unsavoury subjects (such as whether the Saints’ sanitary habits are prevented by sex) during a meal.” It was a licence to behave any way they liked. “I was feeling particularly mad today,” Pauline boasted. “I raved quite a lot at Digby’s and terrified the girl next to me.”
On June 9 she and her mother had another barney. “I wished to see Trent’s Last Case and the bloody bitch would not let me.” Next day the girls had an engrossing conversation about sex. “Mrs Hulme has told Deborah a great
deal about the old subject,” Pauline reported. “We have discussed it fully. We know a great deal more now … I am feeling particularly close to Deborah.”
While the girls were revelling in their new-found madness and sexual knowledge and Hilda was enjoying stolen hours in the arms of Bill Perry, Henry Hulme had in mind a romance of his own. Vivien Dixon was a beautiful young English violinist with the New Zealand National Orchestra who had given violin lessons to Nancy Sutherland’s daughter Jan. Whenever Vivien was in Christchurch she stayed with Nancy at Ashgrove Terrace. One evening Henry met her there and was immediately smitten. When he learnt the orchestra was playing next day in Timaru, a town ninety miles to the south, he offered to drive her. It was quite unnecessary, Vivien told him: the orchestra had a bus arranged. However, he persisted and eventually she accepted. Next day, to her embarrassment, he sent her a large bunch of flowers. She thought him a strange, colourless, rather buttoned-up man and had no romantic interest in him whatsoever.
At Henry Hulme’s invitation Vivien Dixon gave several lunch-
time recitals at Canterbury College. After each one he invited her
back to the house at Ilam. She wondered what he had in mind and thought he might pounce; to her relief he never did. On each occasion Hilda was absent. Henry told her he and his wife were going to divorce. It was Hilda who wanted the divorce, he said, but he seemed quite happy about it, and relaxed about Hilda’s affair with Perry, perhaps grateful to Perry for taking his wife off his hands. He asked Vivien to go back to England with him. She refused. It was a ridiculous proposition.
On Friday Pauline completed her shorthand-typing course at Digby’s and immediately headed to Ilam. That evening, their heads full of Hilda’s stimulating sex talk, she and Juliet went to see Trent’s Last Case. In the film a journalist suspects the death of a tycoon is a murder; Orson Welles plays the tycoon in a series of flashbacks. Although the actor had long been an anointed Saint, Pauline had never before seen him on the screen.
Welles’ appearance ignited in the girls a craving different from their passion for such personifications of evil as Count Rupert of Hentzau, Field Marshal Rommel and the traitorous valet in 5 Fingers. “Deborah had always told me how hideous he was and I had believed her, though from his photos he did not look too bad. It [Welles] is appalling. He is dreadful. I have never in my life seen anything in the same category of hideousness but I adore him …. We returned home and talked for some time about It, getting ourselves more and more excited. Eventually we enacted how each Saint would make love in bed, only doing the first seven as it was 7.30 a.m. by then. We felt exhausted and very satisfied then slept for about an hour.”
In the morning Juliet rose to sit for Rudi Gopas, who was painting her portrait. That evening she and Pauline went to bed early and spent the night “very hectically”, almost “getting through” all the Saints. “We definitely are mad,” Pauline wrote happily, “but very pleasingly so.”
On Sunday morning two new Saints of unknown origin, “Onward Heel” and “Buster”, entered the canon and the girls enjoyed “an amusing discussion about God, Christ and the Holy Ghost”. Pauline phoned her mother, falsely claiming she had found a job and would be starting the following week. Delighted to hear this, Nora agreed to let her stay at Ilam until the following Sunday. The girls were ecstatic. That night, by Pauline’s account, they went to bed very excited and spent a hectic night going through the Saints. “It was Wonderful! Heavenly! Beautiful! and Ours! We felt very satisfied indeed. We have now learned the peace of the thing called Bliss, the joy of the thing called Sin.”
On Monday they woke at ten, exhausted. There was more discussion of Saints; Robert Wagner, the hero of Prince Valiant, and Johnny Weissmuller, better known as Tarzan, were added to the list. And there was some good news. To indulge Juliet, Dr Hulme was taking Omar Khayyám off Pauline’s hands for £15. He had proved himself a better man by far than Mr bloody Perry, who had promised to find a buyer at £20 and then reneged.
That night they slept like tops and next day, after helping Hilda, went to see All The Brothers Were Valiant (“The Turmoil of the South Seas!”) with Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger and Ann Blythe at the Majestic in Manchester Street. In the evening they attended a recital at the Civic Theatre by Jan Smeterlin, a Polish-born maestro considered the greatest living interpreter of Chopin.
Tuesday was another hectic night. “We only did ten Saints altogether but we did them thoroughly … I prefer doing longer ones … We enjoyed ourselves greatly and intend to do so again. We did not get to sleep until 5.30 a.m.”
The girls were becoming increasingly manic. On Wednesday they threw out eight Saints and had “several brilliant ideas”. They would each write an opera—these could easily be staged at Covent Garden when they were living in England—and then produce their own films. They discussed how they would “moider all the odd wives who get in our way”.
This seems to have been in jest: “We planned our various moiders,” Pauline wrote in her diary, “and talked seriously as well.” But by Saturday the talk was deadly serious. “Our main idea for the day was to moider Mother,” Pauline recorded. “This notion is not a new one but this time it is a definite plan which we intend to carry out. We have worked it out carefully and are both thrilled by the idea. Naturally we feel a trifle nervous but the pleasure of anticipation is great. I shall not write this plan down as I shall write it up when we carry it out (I hope).”
That night they burnt most of their film books. Next morning, after Juliet had again sat for Rudi Gopas, they discussed the plan further. “Peculiarly enough,” Pauline wrote, “I have no conscience (or is it peculiar, we are so mad).”
On Sunday afternoon, after Pauline had been at Ilam for over a week, Bert, Nora and Wendy collected her and the family drove to Templeton to visit Rosemary. Later that evening, Bert Rieper would recall, Pauline sat in front of the fire writing a novel; actually it was the libretto of her new opera. “She seemed much brighter in the house than she had been before she left for Ilam,” he said. “She was much nicer to us than she had been for a long time.”
CHAPTER 19
To Be Together Forever
Pauline wished her mother dead. She had wanted to kill the bloody bitch for ages. Her mother had it coming to her for her ill humour, her nagging, her stupidity, her small-mindedness. Pauline would never forget the unhappiness of her childhood, everything that had happened to her. The way she had been double-crossed over Nicholas was unforgivable: her mother had promised she could see him again if she were good, but when she was good she had backtracked. And there was the way she repeatedly threatened her with not being able to see Deborah again if she didn’t put on weight, or didn’t do this or didn’t do that. She had not forgotten, either, the time in February, the insulting remarks she had made about Deborah’s mother.
From the start of the girls’ friendship Juliet had been the source of almost all their peculiar ideas and Pauline her handmaiden, but after Juliet came home from the sanatorium and the relationship became more sexualised this had changed: Juliet had come to need Pauline every bit as much as Pauline needed her, perhaps more. Hilda Hulme would say Pauline was one of the few people Juliet ever treated as an equal. Bill Perry noticed that whenever Pauline left Ilam to return home Juliet would become ill and stay in bed for a day or two. When she recovered she would demand Hilda’s constant attention. This was why Pauline’s presence at Ilam was so willingly tolerated: it was a welcome diversion.
Now it was Pauline who had come up with the plan to kill Nora Rieper. When she revealed it, Juliet had had some reservations but soon agreed. If Gina were prepared to commit murder, how could she, Deborah, be so ignoble and weak-kneed as to stand aside and not take part? What was it anyway to extinguish the life of an unhappy woman whose existence was displeasing to Gina? By what right did such a woman continue to live? Diello wouldn’t hesitate to do what was necessary. Nor would Field Marshal Rommel, Rupert of Hentzau, Prince John, or anyone el
se of true worth. Their deed would prove they were alive—not, like the rest of humanity, ruled by a cowardly voice that always put caution first.
Juliet’s acquiescence with the murder plan came at the time Hilda Hulme made her “lovely remark”, encouraging Pauline to think she might accompany Juliet to South Africa and afterwards to England (“Do you think you will like England, Gina?”). Next day Henry Hulme went a step further. As he told Vivien Dixon, he offered to pay Pauline’s fare to South Africa.
Dr Bennett would attest that on May 8 Hulme again consulted him about the girls’ relationship. May 8 was a Saturday, the day of Colin Bennett’s birthday dance. Hulme, who attended the dance, had clearly seized the opportunity to chat with the doctor, seeking reassurance that the girls would grow out of the homosexual phase. Next day he told Pauline he would write to her mother and ask permission for her to go overseas with them.
It is highly unlikely Henry did write to Nora Rieper. His game was to mollify Juliet by appearing to do everything possible to keep the two together while knowing it was not going to happen. Playing both ends against the middle, stringing people along with false promises and hopes—that was Hulme’s style, as his colleagues at Canterbury University College would attest. He knew Nora would never agree to her daughter leaving the country. He had already told her he and Juliet were leaving New Zealand in three weeks. He knew how delighted she was that the friendship would soon be coming to an end. She and Bert were counting the days until he and Juliet sailed for South Africa.