Hilda Hulme & Walter Bill Perry

The truth was, everyone was being far from frightfully decent about everything. While Hilda Hulme's affair may not have been the final nail in the coffin of her marriage, it certainly accelerated its decline. At about the same time, tensions between Professor Hulme and the university directors' reached their nadir and the Hulme was dismissed from his post.

chapter continues

advertisement

There was little question that the dissolution of the marriage would mean that Juliet and Pauline would be separated. The plan was that Professor Hulme would leave for England on July 3rd, taking Juliet with him. She would not, according to the plan, travel all the way to England, however. She was to be dropped off in South Africa at the home of a relative, a decision the Hulme family insisted was taken because the South African climate would be more conducive to Juliet's health.

The way prosecutors would later describe the situation, the girls both saw Professor Hulme as a kind of tragic, noble character, a man who had been wronged, and they concocted a fantasy in which they would both accompany him on his sojourn from new Zealand and that in the end, they would all live happily ever after.

But there were impediments. The most pressing, in their minds was Honora Parker. Pauline's mother, the young woman had maintained, had long been an obstacle to her relationship with Juliet, often setting what Pauline saw as unreasonable conditions, sometimes involving the girl's health or behavior, before allowing her to visit Juliet. As early as February, 1954, she had privately wished in her diary that her mother would die. "There seemed to be no possibility of mother relenting and allowing me to go out to Ilam. This afternoon mother told me I could not go out to Ilam again until I was eight stone and more cheerful. As I am now seven stone there is little hope...she is so unreasonable. Why could mother not die? Dozens of people are dying, thousands are dying every day. So why not mother and father too?" Pauline wrote in an oft-quoted passage of her diary dated Feb. 13, 1954.

email print