The Unseen

5

Cat hears the crunching of the dairy cart horse on the driveway, and goes out with the milk jugs to greet him. It’s before seven in the morning, and the sky is as clear and colourless as glass. Barrett Anders, the dairy man, is thin and silent. His overalls stink of cattle, but his hands are scrubbed pink and clean. His mouth is lost beneath drooping moustaches, the same greasy grey as his hair.

‘The usual please, Barrett,’ Cat says, stifling a yawn. For the first hour after waking from her restless sleep she is chilled, shivery and stupid. She sets the heavy jugs on the ground as the dairy man measures out two pints of buttermilk, one of blue milk and one of cream; dipping into the churns with a long-handled tin measure. The horse, a sturdy cob with a massive rump, lifts its tail, farts loudly and expels a pile of manure onto the driveway. Cat rolls her eyes. ‘It’s me that’ll have to pick that up, thank you very much,’ she mutters. Barrett’s mouth twists beneath the whiskers.

‘Tha’ll please the mistress, tha’ll. Summat extra for ’er roses, free o’ charge,’ he drawls.

‘Too kind of you, old nag,’ Cat thanks the horse. After Barrett is back aboard the cart and rolling slowly away along the lane into the village, Cat lingers for a moment with the jug of cream in her hands. She likes the still and quiet, the cool dampness of the air. So sweet, it seems different stuff to the baked, heavy fug of the afternoon. Overhead, a phalanx of swifts goes screaming past, wings cranked back, bodies taut. Into the west, where the sky is a deeper colour. Cat stares after them, and longs to follow.

Just then she hears the door open behind her, and voices talking softly. She turns to see the vicar and the theosophist emerging from the house, all kitted out with their binoculars and bags. The vicar strides along smartly, tapping a polished walnut walking stick into the gravel as he goes, talking earnestly all the while. Mr Durrant wears a smart linen coat, one hand thrust casually into his pocket, the other carrying a boxy camera covered in soft brown pigskin and gilt decorations. As they pass her, Cat can make out the vicar’s hushed words.

‘… I do believe that the very reason I have always felt so deep a love for the countryside and the wild places of this earth, the very reason I have always been drawn to it and taken comfort from it, is that I have, all the while and unbeknownst to me, been in the presence of these elemental beings; beings higher and closer to God than the whole of mankind,’ he says. His face is quite rapt as he speaks, so much so that he doesn’t even see his maid, standing in the dawn light with milk jugs at her feet.

‘It may indeed be so, Albert. You must possess at least some small measure of inner sight to have seen the elementals in the first place, and that is where we all begin. Tell me, were you in any kind of a trance state when you saw them first?’ the theosophist asks.

Cat frowns at them as they pass her by, at a distance of thirty feet. Her moment of peace is quite ruined. At the gate into the lane the theosophist looks back, unseen by the vicar, and gives her a smile too knowing, too familiar for her liking. She turns away, and picks up another jug before making for the kitchen.

They will be gone for at least an hour, Cat knows. The theosophist has fast adopted the vicar’s habit of rising early, and joins him in his walks through the meadows before breakfast. No longer just walks, however. Summonings, she heard the theosophist call them, as she served him yet another cheese omelette the other evening. With curiosity, or something like it, gnawing at her, Cat goes upstairs on soft feet, and along the corridor to the guest bedroom that has become Mr Durrant’s. She closes the door quietly behind her, in case Hester is awake and might hear, opens the curtains then stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the scene. The room is in disarray. Every morning she sets it straight, and every night she turns back the bed and shuts the curtains again; and yet in the short intervening space of time the theosophist manages to create more mess than a nursery full of toddlers. Clothes and shoes lie discarded on the chair and ottoman and floor; a plate covered in cheese rinds and grape stems is in the middle of the silk eiderdown, surrounded by greasy fingerprints; a high pile of books by the bed has toppled over; the sheets are a tangled mess, spilling off the bed. One pillow is entirely out of its case. ‘For heaven’s sake, was he pitching a fit?’ Cat mutters, as she begins to pick up his clothes, shaking them out and hanging them neatly in the wardrobe. She makes the bed and matches up his shoes, putting one muddy pair by the door to take down and polish. She restacks the books, and as she does so an envelope falls out of the pile.

Cat picks it up, and the address catches her eye. Mr R. Durrant, The Queen’s Hotel, Newbury. Was he living in a hotel then, before he came to the vicarage? Without hesitation, Cat opens the envelope and pulls out the letter, pinching it carefully in her fingertips. The paper is smooth and expensive, the ink profoundly black; the date is two weeks previously.

Dear Robin,

I fear you will not be pleased by the contents of this letter, but your mother and I, after much discussion, have agreed that what I propose is quite the best thing for you. You are of course dear to us, perhaps too dear to your mother – she does dote on you so, and would deny you nothing. I wonder sometimes quite how aware of this you are, and whether you tend to use her affection to your own advantage. Perhaps it would be only natural for you to do so, perhaps we have been remiss in our raising of you. However, the time has come for you to stand by your own strength. This theosophy of yours will get you nowhere in the world, Robin. I do not suggest that you give it up; by all means continue with it as a hobby, if you wish. As a career, it is quite unsuitable. You must settle upon something with prospects, something by which you may build a name and a fortune for yourself. Look at your brothers – in medicine, and the military. They are carving fine niches for themselves. I do not suggest you should have taken up medicine – you haven’t John’s studious mind, after all. But I beg you again to consider the army. I – we – strongly believe that the discipline and order would help to settle you. And you would be following in my own footsteps, after all. But even if you insist that the army is not the path for you, I insist that you find some path – some worthwhile path. And so, though it pains me to write it, I do decline your latest request for funds. I cannot, with clear conscience, forward you any more money whilst I know it permits you to delay the pursuit of a proper occupation. I know you have it in you to do extremely well, just like your brothers, and I mean to assist you towards this end. I know you will not disappoint us, but will make us proud yet. Trusting that you are well.

With fond regards,

W. E. Durrant

Cat finishes the letter and folds it carefully back into the envelope. She slips it between two books and carefully stacks them so that nothing of the envelope is showing. She thinks about Robin Durrant’s new linen coat, the expensive leather case of his camera. She tidies away his fine shoes, and she smiles.

After dark, Cat makes her way to meet George by the bridge at the edge of Thatcham town. Against the silhouettes of the wharf buildings he is one more shape, given away only by the movement of his arm, the orange flare of his cigarette. Up close she sees the pale shine of his teeth as he smiles, and as he lights a match for her his expression is at once possessive and shy. It makes something inside Cat reach out for him, pushes her inexorably towards him; he a magnet, and the very iron in her blood yearning for him.

‘Into town, then?’ she says, standing close to him; close enough to feel his warmth, to pick up the slight smell of sawdust and horses on his clothes. He reaches out and takes her hand.

‘I would dearly love to see you by sunlight, one day,’ he says. ‘Always we’re in darkness, like a romance between ghosts.’

‘A romance? Is that what this is?’ she says, archly. ‘Well, by daylight I vanish in a cloud of mist.’

‘I half believe it, Black Cat. I half do!’ he says seriously.

‘I could meet you on Sunday afternoon. Or will you be coming to the Coronation fête, in Cold Ash Holt? I could see you there,’ she says; but George shakes his head.

‘I go off with a shipment tomorrow morning. I’ll be several days away.’

‘Oh,’ Cat says, her heart sinking. ‘Well, we’d better make the most of tonight then, I suppose.’

‘That we had.’ George smiles. ‘Come on. I want to show you something.’

He leads her on, not towards town but away from the canal, into a tangle of deserted warehouses and ramshackle workshops that cluster around a small square, the depleted centre of the once lively canal trade.

‘Where are we going?’ Cat asks.

‘We’re here. Come on – up this ladder,’ George says, pointing to a thin metal ladder bolted to the side of the biggest building.

‘What’s up there? Are we allowed to?’

‘Since when has being allowed to ever bothered you, Cat?’ he asks.

Cat shrugs ones shoulder, and starts to climb. ‘You’re quite right,’ she says.

The ladder is long, the rungs too far apart for Cat, not having the reach of most men. When she finally reaches the top, and steps out onto a clay-tiled roof, she is breathing hard. She bends double, the air needling into her chest like a thousand glass splinters. She has time to draw in one more breath before the coughing starts, racking her body, robbing her of air. The pain is excruciating; is like knives. George can do nothing until it passes. He tries to hold her but the pressure on her ribs is unbearable and she bats him away feebly, with a hand that shakes. When it recedes, the coughing fit leaves her sitting on the roof, her knees pulled up and her face pressed into them. Her throat feels raw, but the iron bands around her chest loosen with each tentative breath.

‘Are you better now?’ George asks, anxiously. He takes her hand, rubs his thumb over her knuckles. Cat nods.

‘It does knock me sideways, when it comes on like that,’ she apologises. ‘I don’t think it’s as bad as it sounds. The doctor said it’s the body’s way of being rid of whatever blocks it.’ She looks up, sees worried lines on George’s face lit softly by the stars, and feels a stab of guilt. Plenty of women left Holloway in worse shape than she did. Some may not have been able to leave at all – she has no way of knowing. She sees Tess with sudden, awful clarity – crumpled in the corner of her cell like a broken doll. ‘Don’t look so scared – at least it didn’t start while I was on the ladder,’ she says, her voice shaking slightly.

‘I shouldn’t have made you climb. I forgot… I’m sorry, Cat.’

‘You don’t need to be sorry, really. If a little more of the infection goes each time I cough like that, then you’ve helped me. So, what are we doing on a roof?’

‘Look around. I love it up here. After a hot day, the tiles stay warm for hours, and you can just lie and bask, and watch the world. Look,’ George says, and Cat obeys him.

They are as high as the tops of the chestnut trees; below them all around are deep shadows and the outlines of rooftops. To the east, the lights of Thatcham soak the air with a pale yellow glow; and further still the lights of Newbury are just visible on the horizon, glimmering faintly. Above their heads the sky is lilac and inky blue, pinpricked by cold white stars. Cat takes a deep, cautious breath, smells the hot tar of the roads, the parched wood of the warehouses.

‘It all looks so peaceful, doesn’t it? You can see none of the arguing or the lying or the fighting from up here. None of the hardship. It all stays on the ground, like muck. It’s almost like being far, far out at sea. Don’t you think?’ she murmurs.

‘I’ve never been out to sea.’ George puts his arm around her shoulders, his hand up into her hair.

‘Neither have I. But I’ve read about it.’

‘There’s nobody around for miles. Apart from old Clement, who sleeps under the bridge,’ George tells her softly.

‘Then I am quite at your mercy.’ Cat smiles. Their hushed voices are loud in the quiet night. There’s a rustling beat of feathered wings in the tree next to them, as roosting birds are roused; the slightest touch of a breeze to cool their skin.

‘No, Cat; I am quite at yours,’ George replies. Their kisses are urgent, hurried. Cat pulls the shirt from George’s body, runs her mouth the length of his torso, tasting salt. At first George is tentative and handles her gently, in spite of the need that lights his eyes, until Cat says:

‘I’m no invalid, George Hobson.’ He puts his hands through her cropped hair, pulls back her head to kiss her throat, and in one easy motion swings her up to sit astride him, tight to him; to make love with the quiet night air coaxing goose flesh along their arms.

The day of the fête to mark the coronation of King George V dawns without a cloud in the sky, and by mid-morning the ground shimmers with heat. The beech tree leaves are curling, twisting slightly as they scorch to show their silvery undersides; and the brass band plays with streaming red faces, suffering in their smart uniforms. On the church field an array of tents and awnings have been set up, their sides rolled up and tied back in an effort to allow air to circulate. Brightly coloured cotton bunting is strung all around the village green and along the lane to the church; and Claire Higgins, who is in charge of the flower arrangements, darts anxiously from spray to spray, fretting as the blooms shrivel in the heat.

‘Claire, dear, alas but I fear there’s nothing you can do. Come and have a glass of lemonade before you fall down,’ Hester calls to her.

‘If I can just get the sweet peas into the shade of the tree, they might last another hour or so…’ Claire says, shrilly, and won’t be led away.

‘At least carry your parasol!’ Hester calls after her, and retreats into a white tent. The sun burns as soon as it touches. ‘Cat! How is the tea coming along?’ Hester smiles. Cat has been sweltering inside the tea tent all morning, keeping a small stove alight to boil kettle after kettle of water to fill the urn. The back of her dress is soaked and her hair is plastered to her head, but she may not take off her cap. On her neck is a mark where George kissed her too hard, and bruised the skin. Her hair is almost long enough now to cover it, and she tucks it hurriedly behind her ear to this end.

‘It’s ready, madam. But everybody wants lemonade. It’s too hot for tea,’ Cat says, flatly.

‘Nonsense! I find tea most refreshing on a hot day. In fact I’ll take a cup now, if I may.’

All day, Cat makes and serves tea to the people of Cold Ash Holt. Hester and the other women arrange pastries and scones on pretty tiered cake stands, and give out bowls of strawberries and cream. Children with water ices lick them with desperate haste as they melt in seconds, dribbling down their arms to the elbow. Thus sugared, the children are pursued around the field by frenzied wasps. Robin Durrant proceeds from stall to stall with his hands clasped behind his back like a visiting dignitary, the vicar and a small knot of men and women following in his wake. Cat watches him, nonplussed, and wonders that he has made such an impression, in so short a time.

‘So this is the Cannings’ new maid. Catherine, isn’t it?’ Mrs Avery intones, on passing by the tea table with some companions. She raises her spectacles to the bridge of her bony nose, and peers down through them at Cat.

‘I’m known as Cat, madam,’ Cat replies, not liking Mrs Avery’s manner.

‘Well, I wasn’t talking to you, girl. Pert, isn’t she? Only recently down from London, and for reasons best left unmentioned, as I understand it,’ Mrs Avery remarks to her friend. Irritation flares through Cat. She holds the teapot high in front of her, puts an empty smile on her face and affects a broad cockney accent.

‘Tea, madam? A drop of the empire’s finest?’ she chirps.

‘No, thank you,’ Mrs Avery snaps, and saunters away with her nose wrinkled in distaste.

‘Haughty old cow,’ Cat mutters under her breath.

‘Smile now, ladies! Look this way!’ a man in a brown linen suit and bowler hat calls to them. He has a camera on a tripod, all set up pointing at the tea tent.

‘Oh, it’s the newspaper man!’ Hester says. Cat walks to the front of the tent, still holding the silver-plated teapot with which she accosted Mrs Avery. She peers out from beneath the pungent canvas as the vicar’s wife and the other gentlewomen of the village straighten their backs and tip their parasols prettily. The camera gives a loud clunk.

‘And another one, if you please!’ the photographer calls. ‘Stay right as you are, big smiles now!’ Cat stares into the lens of the camera, glowering in the bright light. She stares right down it, and seeks to corrupt the picture somehow. The ladies in front of her are a mass of white lace and frills, and gauzy muslin veils; they simper and smile for the photograph. It amuses Cat to know that she will be in the background, small and dark and bad tempered. She fights the urge to put out her tongue.

Her bad mood isn’t only due to having the hottest, dullest job to do. There’s also the fact that she won’t have a moment free to enjoy the fête herself; and that when it’s over and the clearing up and packing away done, she’ll still have all her work at The Rectory to try to get done somehow. In Votes for Women that week, there had been glorious pictures of the Women’s Coronation Procession, which had taken place in London the week before, on the seventeenth of June. Horse-drawn floats adorned with the colours, magnificent with swags and ribbons and garlands of flowers. Suffragettes from all over London wearing wonderful costumes; dressed as Liberty and Justice, and as the four corners of the British Empire. Cat wishes she’d been there with them. Walking alongside the white ponies with a garland of red English roses, or carrying an eagle-topped staff. She wishes she’d been part of something so glorious and beautiful and above all meaningful. She gazes out of the tea tent as the village men begin a tug o’ war, and the women gossip and fill their faces with cake. Then the man who has just taken her photograph ducks into the tent in front of her.

‘Afternoon, miss. Is there some tea on the go?’ he asks, unloading his camera onto a table and pulling out a handkerchief to mop his face.

‘Plenty of it, and I’ll give you the fresh, not the stewed, since you’ve got to spend the day working as well,’ Cat says wearily.

‘Hotter than Satan’s toenails, isn’t it?’ the little man grins. He has a sharp face, boyish but beady, somehow feral; his cheeks and jaw sport a fur of auburn whiskers.

‘That it is, and no cooler standing next to this tea urn, I’ll tell you.’

‘Will I still get the fresh brew if I tell you that I’m about done with work for the day?’ he asks. Cat makes a show of pausing as she pours his cup, and the man grins again.

‘Which paper will the pictures be in?’ she asks.

‘The Thatcham Bulletin. I’d hoped to pick up some gossip for the society pages while I was here, but everybody is being terribly polite and patriotic. In other words, dull.’ He takes the cup of tea from her and slumps into a wooden chair with it.

‘Haven’t you met Cold Ash Holt’s newest pet? The theosophist?’ Cat asks.

‘I met him briefly. He was quite keen to have his picture taken.’

‘That sounds about right.’

‘He and the vicar are working together on some academic paper or something. I couldn’t really find out much about it. Sounded very dry, I have to say. You never could rely upon a vicar to give you a scandal.’ He sips his tea, then looks up and catches Cat’s thoughtful expression. ‘Why do you ask, miss? Do you know something more?’ She flicks her eyes at him, and considers.

‘It wouldn’t do for me to be found out, discussing their business. Let alone in the press,’ she says, carefully.

‘But, I don’t know who you are – and I promise not to find out,’ the man says, laying one hand earnestly on his heart.

‘Well, then,’ she says at last. ‘Let me tell you a little bit more about Mr Robin Durrant.’

At the end of the week Cat collects the newspaper when it’s delivered, and ducks through the narrow doorway to the cellar stairs. She perches on a step halfway down to the kitchen, and leafs through the pages until she finds the photographs of the fête. She smiles when she sees herself there, haunting the shade at the edge of the tent while Hester and the other ladies light up the foreground. In the bottom left-hand corner of the page is a poor, grainy photo of the vicar, Robin Durrant at his side, smiling smugly into the camera. Chin lifted, chest puffed out. Cat wonders what exactly has made the vicar burst out with pride like this. She turns over to the society pages – thinly veiled gossip compiled anonymously by someone called Snitch. Cat skims her eyes over the text until the name she’s looking for stands out.

Mr Robin Durrant graced the Cold Ash Holt fête with his presence, to the obvious delight of several ladies of the village. Mr Durrant, of Reading, claims to be able to see fairies, hobgoblins and other imaginary folk; and is here to hunt for the very same in our own water meadows, aided by Cold Ash Holt’s worthy curate, the Rev. Albert Canning. The hunt has been going on for three weeks already, but alas, has so far proved fruitless. By what means Mr Durrant might capture a fairy, Snitch was not able to determine; nor what he would do with one if he caught it. It seems that Mr Durrant’s father, the esteemed Wilberforce Edgar Durrant, one-time Governor of India, is less than enthusiastic about his son’s unusual mission. Perhaps if young Mr Durrant is successful in his fairy hunt, he’ll also find a pot of gold to raise his father’s spirits?

‘Cat! Where are you, girl? Come along down here and get these breakfast things taken up!’ Mrs Bell’s voice comes echoing up the stairs. Cat refolds the paper and trots into the kitchen on light feet. ‘What’s put that smile on your face then?’ the housekeeper asks, suspiciously. Cat cocks an eyebrow, but says nothing. Mrs Bell grunts. ‘Well, if it ain’t proper, you better hope I don’t find out, that’s all,’ she says. Cat takes up the breakfast plates, lays the newspaper neatly on the sideboard, and waits.

Before lunch, she dusts the pictures all along the hallway and up the stairs. She uses a tightly twisted corner of her cloth to get into the curls and small gaps in the fancy moulded frames. Heavy oil paintings of Cannings gone before, ancestors of the vicar whose dignified likenesses have been trapped for ever on the canvas. This is how the rich buy immortality, Cat thinks as she studies each one, staring into their dead eyes. By discovering some new place, or inventing some new thing; by writing a book or a play. And for those not bright enough for that, not daring or talented enough, there was always a portrait, or these days a photograph. To make sure their names lived on, their faces didn’t vanish into dust. As I shall vanish, she thinks. One day. The poor were too busy working, staying alive, to worry about preserving themselves after death. They vanished in their thousands every day, forever invisible to the generations of the future. Nobody will ever know I existed. Cat tries not to mind this, since it is all vanity; but it is not a comforting thought, after all.

Suddenly, Albert drifts across the corridor from the parlour to the library, and Cat gasps. The vicar is oddly absent from the house, not in body, but in spirit. He flits from room to room so quietly, so distractedly, that half the time Cat has no idea where he is. This is disconcerting, for a servant. A servant always knows, from the noises in a house, where the upstairs folk are to be found. A servant needs to know, so he or she can dodge around them, slip from place to place, clean and create order and never be seen. So he or she can catch the smallest break, to lean for a second against a warm hearth, or study their reflection in a gilt mirror, or peer from the window at the vast world outside, a world with which they have no business. Time and time again, Cat has risen from blacking a hearthstone, or turned from dusting a bookshelf, to find the vicar sitting in a chair behind her, reading or writing in his journal, quite oblivious to her. He is like a cat, found sleeping in odd places and almost stepped upon. She can’t quite settle in the house when she knows he is in it.

Cat hears the door at the far end of the library squeak open and thump shut, and she pauses.

‘Have you seen this?’ Robin Durrant’s voice is loud and abrupt as it breaks the silence. She hears the slap of the newspaper being thrown down hard.

‘Robin!’ The vicar’s pleasure makes his voice ring. ‘Our picture? Yes, I saw it. I think it’s come out rather well, although-’

‘I’m not talking about the picture, I’m talking about the gossip that’s been printed about me by this… this Snitch character!’ Robin snaps. His voice is rich with outrage; Cat can hear the angry sneer on his face. She bites her lip to stifle a sudden bubble of laughter, and takes a few tiny steps nearer to the library, peering through the crack between the double doors. Robin stands over Albert with his jaw working into tight, furious knots, while the vicar reads the short piece. Touched a nerve, did it? Cat thinks.

‘Really, Robin, this Snitch person is the lowest kind of journalist, and everybody knows not to heed a single thing he writes. Please don’t let it trouble you…’ Albert clears his throat diffidently, and speaks soothingly.

‘Imaginary folk, he calls them. Imaginary! Does he take me for a complete fool? How dare he assume he knows more about such things than I do? How dare he?’

‘Really, Robin, there’s no need to take it so much to heart… nobody will pay it any mind,’ Albert says, his voice now laden with growing anxiety.

‘And that quip about finding a pot of gold for my father… what is that supposed to mean? Have they been to Reading, then, and pestered my father? Have they been asking the servants there what my father thinks about theosophy?’ Robin demands. Cat holds her breath, waits in the agonising pause for him to put two and two together, and guess the source of the gossip. Her heart pounds in her ears.

The vicar murmurs something that Cat cannot hear, his voice meek and unhappy.

‘They have no idea what they’re talking about – these small-minded idiots, smirking at me through their moustaches… no idea whatsoever. And no idea who I am, or who I will become!’

‘Robin, please… there really is no need to be so upset-’

‘Oh, but there is! For years I’ve been surrounded by doubters and naysayers and people who like to ridicule what they cannot understand. I’m sick of it! I will revel in their contrition when my name is known around the world! When I am at the right hand of Madame Blavatsky herself! Then they will eat their words!’

‘Indeed they will, Robin,’ Albert says, uncertainly. Through the narrow gap Cat can see his stunned expression, the way he stands, face and body turned to the pacing theosophist like a flower turned to the sun. As Robin draws near he raises his hand, as if he would lay it on the other man’s arm; but the theosophist turns away again, stalks angrily to the window. There is a long pause in which the vicar is frozen in shock and the theosophist squeezes his hands into angry fists. Cat daren’t move in the silence. She can’t trust her feet to go completely unheard.

‘Our progress has been too slow. Far too slow,’ Robin snaps at last. ‘Almost a month I’ve been here, and we have seen nothing. I have felt their presence, yes… but they will not coalesce. That bungling photographic studio you sent me to returns blank, overexposed frames, again and again. It will not do, Albert!’

‘No, of course, I’m so sorry… Well, what must we do?’ Albert asks, and Cat almost feels sorry for him, so complete is his supplication. ‘How might we progress?’

‘A theosophist must strive to live cleanly, ethically, and to benefit his fellow man with everything he does. Kindness, and generosity, and understanding.’ Robin speaks as if to a child, biting off the words. ‘Purity is of the essence. But above all, one must strive to bring the teachings of the Divine Truth to as wide an audience as possible. It is in this last respect that I must increase my own endeavours.’

‘But how?’ Albert presses. As they speak, Cat edges away along the corridor, so she can still hear them, but can dart away if need be.

‘I mean to provide the world with incontrovertible proof that theosophy is the truth,’ Robin says. ‘A photograph. I will show mankind the reality of the elemental world; I will be the architect of an international acceptance of theosophy, and in doing so I will silence these fools who are so quick to ridicule!’

‘I’ll help you, of course. Whatever you need me to do. I am learning so much, all the time. I hope in the future to become wiser, more adept…’ Albert says, eagerly.

‘But you’re holding me back!’ Robin cuts him off. There’s a startled pause, the sound of more pacing feet. ‘Albert… I can only think that you are the reason I haven’t been able to see the elementals yet. You are not adept, and your inner vibrations are discordant to them! Without the ability to tune yourself to their energetic frequency, you make yourself intolerable to them!’

‘But… but… it was I who first saw the elementals, Robin… It was I who saw them first!’

‘They chose to reveal themselves to you, it’s true… And you are not without potential, I’ve told you. But there simply isn’t time to wait while you reach a fine enough level of attunement. I must continue without you for now, my friend,’ the theosophist says. There is a long, uneasy pause and when he speaks again, Robin’s voice is low. ‘Have you considered that perhaps they reached into your thoughts that morning and found me there – your memories of me from my lecture? Have you wondered whether, by revealing themselves to you, they were in fact calling out to me?’ Robin demands, and much of the fury has burnt out of his voice, leaving something stony and cold in its ashes. The vicar is silent for a long time.

‘You no longer want my help?’ he asks at last, and Cat frowns. His tone is like a child’s, near heartbroken.

‘No. Not on my summonings out in the meadows.’

‘Perhaps, as with any wild thing, there is a trust to be built up before communion may take place…’ Albert ventures.

‘If I am to have a chance of capturing an elemental in a photograph, it will take all of my inner faculties, and I can’t have you upsetting the balance… But continue with your studies, Albert. Ask me whatever you like, and I will teach you what I can,’ Robin says, more gently now. ‘You are only at the beginning of the long road to enlightenment, but you have taken your first steps – the first and most vital steps! Don’t lose heart. Soon, when I have proof, you will be a part of the greatest revolution in civilised thought for a generation!’

‘You’re sure you will succeed, then? Where none have before?’ Albert asks.

‘I will succeed,’ Robin replies, and his conviction is like steel in his voice. Suddenly uneasy, Cat slips from the corridor down to the kitchen, where she can be sure they will not follow.

Friday morning is hot as soon as the sun clears the horizon. Hester sits at her dressing table and starts to pin up her hair, feeling how damp it is close to her scalp. Albert is long gone from the room. She isn’t even sure, looking at the smooth rise of his pillow, that he came to bed at all. But she herself has been so restless in the night, and made such a knot of the sheets, it is hard to tell. She gazes at the pristine pillow, so bright where the sun lights it that it’s almost painful to look at. Her thoughts turn to the theosophist’s words, the many, many words he has spoken since his arrival; most of them to Albert. Words like drops of rain, falling from his lips. Albert seems to absorb them all like dry ground. She sees it on his face – that little frown of distraction, the way his eyes sink out of focus. Lately it seems that she doesn’t see Albert unless she sees Robin Durrant as well. The theosophist is always right beside him. Or perhaps it is Albert who is always right beside Robin. Hester sighs.

As she pats cold cream into the corners of her eyes, she begins to compose a letter to Amelia in her head. I wouldn’t mind as much if I had some idea of how long he might intend to stay… she drafted. Bertie’s stipend is as modest as ever it was. Modest enough to prohibit the telephone I would love to install. And yet we can apparently support this young man for as many months as it will take him to finish his project! How she would love to hear her sister’s voice. But even if they’d had the funds, Albert would probably still refuse her a telephone – his mistrust of modernity growing ever stronger. I think if he could he would ban motor cars, dismantle all the trains and roll up the track! Thank heavens he can see the merits of electric lights, at least. But now it sounds like she is criticising Albert as well as their house guest, and, suddenly feeling like a sulky wife and a graceless hostess, Hester discards the imagined letter. The bedroom is suddenly too quiet, too still. Hester feels desperate to talk to somebody.

Down in the parlour, she finds Albert sitting behind the morning paper, a dejected expression on his face. The theosophist, for once, is nowhere in sight. Hester stoops to kiss Albert’s cheek.

‘Good morning, my love. How are you?’ she says.

‘I am quite well, Hetty. Quite well,’ Albert replies, distractedly. Hester’s smile fades.

‘I had no idea you were waiting for me. I’m so sorry to have taken such a long time to come down! I thought you would be out with Mr Durrant for some time yet,’ she tells him.

‘That’s quite all right. It gave me a chance to read the papers before the day began and more important things presented themselves.’

‘How is it that you didn’t go out with Mr Durrant this morning?’

‘Well, now. We are trying out a theory of his. Yes, a theory. But I’ve been reading some troubling things in the paper this morning,’

‘Oh? Nothing too dire, I hope?’

‘The police arrested seven men for gambling just the other evening. They have appeared today before the magistrates for it. Gambling – on a cock fight, of all things! Not two miles away in Thatcham – can you believe it? Of all the bloody and brutal ways in which a man can chance his luck, they choose to pit two poor dumb beasts against each other.’

‘Oh, that is really too cruel! What a vile thing to do,’ Hester exclaims.

‘One of the men was Derek Hitchcock, from Mile End Farm. A Cold Ash Holt man, a member of my very own flock,’ Albert reports, his voice tinged with anxiety, face pinched with worry.

‘Darling! You can’t expect to be able to keep every last soul of the parish permanently on the straight path! Don’t be so hard on yourself. Men will err – it’s in their nature. You do an admirable job in bringing them closer to the word of God-’

‘But this is just the smallest part of the impurity surrounding us, Hetty! It lies everywhere, in the hearts of all men, and women! Just the other day I called unexpectedly upon the Smith household, only to find the reason for their oldest girl’s absence from church all too apparent – she is with child, Hetty! Heavy with child and only seventeen herself, and unwed.’ Albert shakes his head, casting a look of desperation up at his wife. Hester sinks onto the arm of his chair and grips his hands tightly.

‘Albert! Many a young girl has been led astray by the sweet whisperings of her beau… it’s to be lamented, of course, and is a tragedy for her, but she may yet atone – she may yet return to God’s favour, if she repents. And by far the majority of people here are good and kind and honest folk. Dear Albert, what’s brought on this dismay?’ Hester presses her hands tenderly to the sides of his face. Albert pulls away slightly, as if unwilling to meet her gaze, but Hester does not relinquish her hold.

‘It was something Robin said to me, yesterday morning,’ he confesses, wearily.

‘What did he say?’ Hester demands, more sharply than she intends. Albert glances at her, startled, and she smiles. ‘What did he say, dearest?’

‘He asked me not to go out to the meadow with him in the mornings any more. He suggested that he might have more success with his photographs if I were not there with him. In case my untuned and impure vibrations are off-putting to the elementals.’ Albert’s voice is laced with unhappiness.

‘Your impure vibrations? But this is nonsense! There is nobody purer of spirit than you, Albert…’

‘He means more that I am untrained, theosophically speaking. I am not able to tune my inner self to… harmonise with them. It may be why we have not yet managed to capture them on film, and I have not managed to see them again. Because of my lack of initiation.’

‘But… it was you who found them in the first place, Bertie! How can you be the reason that they stay away?’ Hester asks.

‘They granted me a glimpse of themselves, it’s true. Perhaps I had indeed stumbled unaware into some trance-like state that I cannot recapture…’Albert speaks as if to himself. ‘Perhaps that was it. Perhaps since seeing them my mind has been too unquiet, and I too caught up in the selfish desire to see them again, and to learn more. I must be a rough, clanging cymbal to them, so great has been my desire! Yes, I see it now – I have been foolish, and unworthy!’

‘Albert, stop that at once! You have never been foolish in all the years I have known you – since we were children, Bertie! And never once unworthy. Only ever good and kind and generous. And if this theosophy is teaching you anything other than this, then it is plain wrong, and perhaps it would be better to learn no more!’ Hester cries.

‘Hetty!’ Albert snaps, sharp with sudden anger. ‘Don’t say such things!’ Hester recoils, stung.

‘I do hope I’m not interrupting,’ says Robin Durrant, appearing in the doorway as if he’s been there all the while, one hand in his pocket, the other curled around his Frena camera. Hester jumps up from the arm of the chair and turns away, startled. Her skin prickles beneath her collar, and she feels breathless.

‘Ah, Robin! No, of course not. Of course not,’ Albert says, his cheeks colouring. In the uneasy silence, Hester takes a steadying breath.

‘Good morning, Mr Durrant. I trust you slept well?’ she says at last, her voice tight, higher than it should be. Robin Durrant smiles at her, in the languid way that he does, the curling shape moving slowly outwards from the centre to the far corners of his lips. For an instant his gaze seems to look right through her. She feels her face glowing hotly, and longs to look away, to put her hands over her eyes like a child. But that will not do. Her pulse beats hard in her temples, blood thronging to her cheeks in a blush she knows he can see. He holds her this way for a second longer, and then blinks, letting his eyes roam the room, quite at ease.

‘I did, thank you. I always do here – the quiet of the countryside is such a tonic for body and mind. Don’t you think?’

‘Oh yes, quite so,’ Hester manages. She clears her throat, knots her fingers together in front of her skirts. ‘I’ve always found it very peaceful,’ she adds, but Robin Durrant is looking at the vicar, and that same slow smile has quite a different effect. Albert seems to catch his breath, and a tentative smile of his own rises up to his eyes.

‘Well?’ he asks, and Robin Durrant smiles wider.

‘Yes, Albert. Yes. I have seen them!’ he says. Albert claps his hands together in speechless joy, holding the tips of his fingers to his mouth as if in prayer, his earlier anxiety evaporating. A sour worm of something fearful coils itself around in Hester’s gut, but she cannot for the life of her either define it nor think what she should do about it.