The Unseen

7

Hester hears the sound of the pony and trap on the driveway and her stomach gives a childish little lurch of joy, mixed with something almost like relief. She hurries to the front door and waves as her sister, her niece and her nephew climb down from the cart, and Mr Barker undoes the straps around their luggage and begins to pile it on the ground.

‘Oh, careful with that one, please! It’s rather fragile,’ Amelia cries. Mr Barker clamps his jaw into his moustaches and nods in a surly manner.

‘Darling Amelia! It’s so wonderful to see you! Come here, children, let me look at you,’ Hester calls. She holds the two children at arm’s length: eleven-year-old John, who has sandy hair and a rather pinched-looking face, and is all skin and bone; and eight-year-old Ellie, who is plump and cheerful, with pale grey eyes and a tucked-in chin like a china doll. Her little blue and white sailor dress is tight across a round tummy, and creased from the journey. Just as I would have looked at that age, Hester thinks, with a tug of affection that is almost painful. ‘Goodness me, how you’ve grown! I can scarcely tell it’s you! You’re enormous!’ she exclaims. Ellie smiles but John rolls his eyes a little and looks down, scuffing his feet in embarrassment.

‘John! Don’t make that face! Give your aunt a kiss,’ Amelia instructs him sharply.

‘Oh, there, there.’ Hester crouches down and smiles at them. ‘I’ve never liked forced kisses, only freely given ones. What do you say, John?’ Hester’s nephew leans forwards and kisses her cheek quickly, and Ellie puts out her arms for a hug, which Hester gladly gives her. ‘Run around the garden and stretch your legs, children. Off you go! Come and have some lemonade when you get too hot!’ she calls after them, as they gratefully trot away and are lost amidst the high flower borders and sun-beleaguered shrubs.

‘Oh, thank goodness!’ Amelia sighs, putting down her vanity case and hugging her sister. ‘John has been vile all the way here! It’s not his fault – he’s so disappointed that their father hasn’t come with us…’

‘Yes, where is Archie? Didn’t he mean to come?’

‘He did, until the very last minute. I’m so sorry, Hetty! Typical of him – he had a prior engagement at his club that he hadn’t told me about, and had forgotten about himself. But I am here, and so are the children, and we shall have a wonderful time without him, I’m sure.’ Amelia smiles. She is five years older than Hester, and has a grace and elegance that her younger sister has always envied. Feline cheekbones and a delicate jaw, and the most perfectly blue, almond-shaped eyes. As a débutante, her beauty was the talk of the season, but now there are slight hollows in her cheeks and under her eyes, and her skin has lost the first vibrant glow of her youth.

‘Amy, you look a little tired. Are you quite well?’ Hester asks, solicitously. Amelia’s smile shrinks a little, and to Hester’s shock tears appear in her eyes, sparkling in the sun. ‘Amy! What is it? Whatever’s the matter?’ she demands, grasping her sister’s long-fingered hands.

‘Let’s not talk out here,’ Amelia says, lowering her voice as Cat appears in the hallway behind them. ‘Are we in our usual rooms?’

‘Ah, well… Mr Durrant has taken the room that the children would normally have, I fear… I thought it impolite to uproot him, since he has been with us so many weeks and got so well bedded in…’

‘Yes, so you mentioned,’ Amelia replies, wryly.

‘But Cat has made up the west end bedroom for them – I’m sure they’ll be comfortable in there.’

‘But there must be somebody to help the girl take our luggage up, surely?’ says Amelia, eyeing Cat’s thin arms and shoulders as she hefts one of the trunks, her whole body arching backwards to take the weight of it.

‘I’m quite able to manage, thank you, madam,’ Cat grinds out tersely, scarce able to breathe.

‘Here – let me take that from you,’ Robin Durrant says, appearing in the doorway. He takes the case from Cat, lifting it easily out of her hands and carrying it into the hallway.

‘Oh! Mr Durrant… how kind of you. May I introduce you to my sister, Mrs Amelia Entwhistle? Amy, this is our resident theosophist, Mr Robin Durrant,’ Hester says, trying to keep her tone from betraying her. She isn’t sure what it is she is trying to hide, but lately there is something. There is definitely something. Robin gives Amelia’s hand a gentle shake.

‘Very pleased to meet you, Mrs Entwhistle,’ he says, smiling his widest, most disarming smile; and Amelia can’t help but return the expression.

‘Likewise, I’m sure,’ she says.

‘Well, I’m off to the station, and thence into Reading. I have a few things I must attend to… but I do hope to meet you properly at dinner, Mrs Entwhistle. Is there anything you’d like me to fetch for you while I’m in town, Mrs Canning?’ He turns his smiling eyes on Hester, who finds it hard to meet his gaze.

‘No, thank you, Mr Durrant.’ Her voice is clipped in spite of herself.

‘Then I’ll bid you fine ladies a good day.’ He makes them an ironic little bow and saunters away towards the gate. When he passes out of sight, Amelia turns to her sister and gives her an appraising look.

‘We have much to talk about,’ she says, as they walk into the house. Inside the hall, Cat bends down again, and sets her back to the heavy case for the second time.

The two sisters settle themselves in the shade of a cherry tree on the terrace to the rear of the house, where the slightest of breezes stirs the torpid air. They sit on iron filigree chairs, which are so hot that they glow through their skirts onto the backs of their legs. Amelia wafts air gently over her face with a beautiful silk fan, her gaze instinctively following her children as they weave and skip around the garden, playing with an almost grim determination, their eyes screwed up, brows furrowed.

‘I have never known such heat as this summer!’ she exclaims at last. ‘On my way here just now, we passed a group of children playing in the street, and do you know what they were doing? They were collecting bubbles of melted tar from the road on twigs of straw, and using it as glue to stick the pieces onto the side of a barn, to make letters and pictures! Melted tar, at not ten in the morning!’

‘It is extraordinary. I find it most draining, don’t you?’ Hester agrees.

‘Truly. You didn’t mention in your letters that Mr Durrant was quite so very…’

‘Very what?’

‘So very young and handsome,’ Amelia says, watching her sister closely.

‘I must have said he was young? As for handsome… I hadn’t really noticed, to be perfectly honest. Is he?’ Hester replies, evasively. She feels suddenly self-conscious, as if caught out in a lie.

‘You know he is – don’t play the innocent with me. You have eyes, haven’t you? Or do you only have eyes for Albert?’

‘Perhaps that’s it… Anyway, he’s our guest. Of course I don’t think of him that way. And besides…’ She trails off awkwardly, not quite sure what she had been about to say.

‘Yes?’

‘No, nothing. But tell me, Amy, please – what’s troubling you?’ Hester asks, keen to change the subject. Cat comes over to the table with a tray of iced tea and lemonade, freshly cut oranges and slices of Madeira cake. Cloudy droplets of sweat scatter her brow. Amelia waits until the servant has gone back indoors before she sighs.

‘You must never speak of it to a soul, not even to Albert. Do you promise? Well… the trouble that you have with Albert, dearest… the trouble that you write to me about? I fear I have just the opposite trouble with Archie.’ She touches her fan to her lips as if reluctant to let the words out.

‘I… don’t quite understand you, Amy,’ Hester whispers, as the children run close by, faces flushed and hair damped down with sweat.

‘I found him… making… making a fool of himself the other day. With the upstairs maid, Danielle.’

‘No! Oh, my darling… that is dreadful! Are you sure?’

‘Very sure indeed, I fear. Oh, I’ve got rid of the girl, of course. This all happened just this week, and truth be told it’s why he’s not come away with us on this visit. And it has happened before, though I never told you, Hetty. I was so ashamed… But he promised, he promised me it would never happen again. Now he says that he has drives he must satisfy, and that he cannot help himself,’ she says, with an angry little catch in her voice. ‘Do you think that can be true? Do you think a man may be made a slave to his desires?’ Hester thinks carefully before answering. She takes her sister’s hand, but their skin is hot and soon grows clammy where it touches.

‘I think… I think any person can be a slave to their desire, if they allow themselves to be. Surely the measure of any person alive is in their behaviour – in what they choose to do, in spite of what other options are available to them?’

‘You’re right,’ Amelia says, bleakly. ‘There is no excusing what he has done. It is despicable.’

‘Now, Amelia, you of all people know that I can’t be counted as any kind of authority on the wants and desires of men,’ Hester says, smiling a little. ‘Archie has committed a great sin, both against you and against God. But perhaps… forgiveness is the Christian thing to do? Once the guilty party has repented, of course…’

‘But that’s just it, Hetty! This time… this time he didn’t even seem repentant. He seemed… angry with me, if anything – for interrupting him at his sport! Oh, it was dreadful! Intolerable!’ She sinks her face into her fingertips and begins to cry quietly.

‘Darling Amy, please don’t cry! The children must not see… Please, dearest, take heart. Archie loves you, and the children. I know he does, and you know it too. Perhaps men are indeed governed by stronger forces than we women… I can scarce credit a good man such as Archie behaving in such a manner if this weren’t the case. Can any of us see into the heart of another? Truly? Please don’t cry.’ Gradually, Amelia lifts her face and blots her eyes on her handkerchief.

‘Well, I have told him the contents of my heart. He is killing my love for him with his infidelity. Perhaps only one more incident, I told him, would be enough to wipe it away completely,’ she sniffs. Hester is too shocked to say anything to this. ‘And what of your marriage, Hetty? Do you fare any better of late?’ Amelia asks. Hester looks down, at her fingers nestled in the cotton folds of her dress. Such plump, smooth fingers; the nails buffed and clean. For some reason, she can hardly stand the sight of them, feels such a spasm of dislike for herself that she curls them into fists and squeezes until her nails bite into the heels of her hands.

‘I married for love, Amelia. As you know… as our parents lamented, albeit in their soft way. And I thought that, though I chose a humble man of limited means, I would have love, and be loved, and raise children surrounded by love…’ She looks across the scorched lawn to where John is teasing his sister, holding a ribbon he’d pulled from her hair above her head and snatching it away when she makes a grab for it. The little girl jumps and reaches quite amiably, always smiling, never losing her patience, and again Hester feels a violent pull of sympathy for her, of fellow feeling for their shared path in life.

‘And… are you not loved?’

‘Oh, I am loved. As a sister, as a friend. Not as I love him, I feel. Not as a wife. Not as a… lover.’ She takes a deep breath and sighs slowly, feeling the weight of her own words settling ever more heavily on her spirits. ‘And now he has a new friend, a new confidant, and I fear I am slipping further from his thoughts every day.’

‘Surely not, Hetty? Albert has always been so devoted to you,’ Amelia says.

‘Perhaps he was, once. But now, everything has changed. Even his parish is suffering the effects of his diversion by Mr Durrant.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well… For example, the other day, Pamela Urquhart called in to see if the vicar was unwell, since he hadn’t been to visit them for two weeks or more. Let me explain – Mrs Urquhart’s father is very old and infirm, and has been awaiting death for some time now. He suffers a great deal, poor man, and finds his faith tested daily, and he hasn’t been able to come to church for many months. Albert made a habit of calling on him to offer comfort and prayer, at least two times a week, but his visits, since the theosophist arrived, have ceased. I just don’t know what to make of it, Amy. It’s so unlike Albert to neglect his duties, but this new interest seems to be taking precedence over all other concerns.’

‘This new interest – do you mean in theosophy, or in Mr Durrant?’ Amy asks, pointedly.

‘Theosophy… or rather, both, I suppose,’ Hester says, looking up at her sister and trying to read her expression.

‘This is a troubling evolution, indeed. I wonder… I wonder quite what it is about the man that draws Albert so?’

‘You think it’s the man, then, and not the ideas he’s brought with him?’

‘Well, don’t you, dearest? After all, I expect Albert has known about fairies and theosophy for quite some time. How is it that only when Mr Durrant appears does it become all-consuming?’

‘Amy – I don’t understand,’ Hester says, desperately.

‘Perhaps I am wrong. I must meet the young man again, and get to know him a little better,’ Amelia replies, leaning back in her chair and letting her gaze fall into the distance. Her tears, already dried by the sun, have left faint pink streaks in her face powder.

‘Well, of course you shall,’ Hester says, still trying to make out her sister’s meaning.

In the kitchen, Cat slides the empty tray onto the table top and crosses to the sink. She thrusts her hands into the basin of water where the milk jugs are standing, supposedly keeping cold, but the water is blood temperature. She splashes some onto her wrists and wipes her wet hands over the back of her neck nonetheless, hoping to feel it cool her.

‘This milk will have gone by the evening,’ she warns Mrs Bell, who sits wedged into her chair, the newspaper spread open on the table in front of her.

‘It’ll turn all the quicker if you keep dipping your hot hands into the basin,’ the housekeeper observes.

‘I can’t help it. As soon as I move in this heat, I swelter. And somebody about this place had better keep moving,’ she mutters, but with little feeling. Sophie Bell’s face is puce, her cheeks mottled with cracked red blood vessels; and when she moves about too much her top lip turns white, and her eyes slip out of focus. Cat does not want the woman to faint. Lord knows, nobody would be able to pick her up, and they’d be forced to step over her carcass all day until the temperature dropped and she roused herself.

‘Over there,’ Mrs Bell sighs. ‘I kept some of the iced tea back for us. And pour me a glass while you’re at it.’ Cat whisks the linen cloth from a jug on the sideboard, scattering a handful of parched flies that had been waiting in vain to drink. The chunks of ice in it, collected that morning in a block from Thatcham, have melted clean away, but the drink is still cool and tangy with fresh mint and lemons. Cat gulps hers down like a child, shutting her eyes at the chill shiver it gives her. ‘At least with the men out all day there’ll be a bit less work,’ Sophie Bell says. ‘Where’s the fairy man gone off to, did you hear?’

‘Reading, he said,’ Cat says, wiping her mouth on the hem of her apron. ‘Some “things I must to attend to” was all he said.’

‘Huh. Well, I bumped into Dolores Mickel in the week, whose sister works at a big house in Reading, and she says the family her sister works for knows the Durrant family of old. Mr Robin wasn’t always a theosophist, she told me,’ says Sophie Bell, her eyes glinting slyly as they always do when she gossips.

‘No?’ Cat asks. She finds herself keen to know more about the man. Know thy enemy – the words jump into her head. My enemy?

‘No indeed. He was off at his studies for a long time, and then for a while once he was back, there was a different story from his parents each time they came to dinner. First he was a poet; then he was writing for the papers. Then he was going into the clergy – a Methodist minister, if you please. He went to Greece and was there for quite some months, though nobody seemed to know what he did there. Then when he came back he ran for parliament, just like that! The Liberal Party, but he didn’t get hisself elected. Next thing you know, he’s a theosopher, or whatever he is now, and insisting that it was his true course all along.’ Mrs Bell dismisses the man with a small flap of her hand that sets the meat of her arm swinging.

‘Theosophist. Well. Sounds like he doesn’t know who he is or what to believe in, doesn’t it?’ Cat smiles, unkindly. ‘Interesting.’

Mrs Bell glances up at her, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. ‘Now, don’t you go bandying it about – least of all to him. I’ve heard you talking to him, out in the courtyard. Don’t be getting careless with yourself, will you, Cat?’

‘No, Sophie Bell. There’s no danger of that.’

In the afternoon, when she has an hour to rest, Cat keeps to her room, and holds her breath when she thinks she hears a footstep out in the corridor. But it’s only the house, groaning in the heat as its beams and boards expand. Outside her open window the sky is simmering blue. She can hear the vicar’s wife and her sister, talking in low voices that spiral, on and on; the children complaining breathlessly to one another, their voices drawing near and then receding, like a small flock of birds on the wing. She cannot wipe from her mind that Robin Durrant came to her room in the night; that he knows about her sleepless life. It’s like a nagging itch, or a buzzing insect that she can’t shake off. And that he means to use the knowledge against her somehow. If it’s for him to take out his lust, she thinks grimly, he is in for a disappointment. She will claw his eyes out before she lets him touch her. But she will meet him, as he told her to. If for no other reason than that, beneath her anger, she is curious. Dwelling on such thoughts, precious time slips away. Cat shakes her head, grips the pencil tighter and writes. Another letter to Tess, this time addressed to Frosham House. Guilt makes her stomach churn, washes through her like acid, makes it hard to think. I can’t bear to think of you there. I will find some scheme to get you out, I swear it, she writes. But what scheme? What can she do? She bites her lower lip hard between her teeth, writes I swear it again, so that she will have to think of something. Please be strong, Tessy. Hold on until I can think of a way.

Tess grew weary of the suffragette cause as time passed, even as Cat grew more and more committed to it. Tess had only been interested in it as a way to get out of the house where they spent so much of their lives, as a way to escape; never really for the politics themselves. She joked, giggling in hushed tones, that she wouldn’t know who to vote for even if she were enfranchised. It was an exciting diversion from work, which stopped being exciting after several weeks of handing out leaflets and selling ribbons, hawking copies of Votes for Women and shouting slogans and being scowled at by respectable men and women.

‘I don’t see why they should disapprove of us so,’ Tess said one day, hurt by the cold treatment they got from rich women. ‘It’s them that’ll benefit, after all.’ She stuck out her lower lip like a child, tucked her hair behind her ears and straightened her cuffs self-consciously; twitching just like she did when Mrs Heddingly or anybody senior came to inspect her work.

‘Because the rich will ever disapprove of the poor doing anything but catering to them,’ Cat told her, keenly. ‘Cheer up. Another half an hour and I’ll buy you a cup of hot chocolate,’ she said, giving Tess’s shoulders a squeeze. Soon it became clear that these little treats were the only thing keeping Tess active in the WSPU, and Cat knew she oughtn’t to pressure her friend into going with her. But truth be told she wanted the company, wanted to share the adventure. Tess had introduced her to the movement, and it wouldn’t have felt right going out on a Sunday without her, or sneaking to evening meetings when they were able to, listening to the great and good ladies of the society speak about rights and laws and votes and justice. She would not have felt half so brave or daring without Tess there, always less sure, always needing to be encouraged. Cat pauses in her letter writing, shuts her eyes tight with anguish. She had used her friend. Used Tess to show her a reflection of herself that she liked seeing; to afford herself some scrap of power over another person for the first time in her life.

Two months after they had paid their shilling each and joined the society, Cat let the secretary of their local branch know that they would be willing to take on more active duties. She said it quietly, as if they might be overheard, but the lady in the office looked up sharply.

‘Window breaking? Invasion of political meetings?’ she said, abruptly. Taken aback, Cat nodded, and her heart thumped loudly in her ears. The older woman smiled briskly, looking up over the top of half-moon spectacles with piercing dark eyes. ‘Excellent, comrade. Good girl. I shall keep you in mind.’ Cat smiled a tight little smile, nodded, and went back out into the main room of the office, with its piles of leaflets, its walls laden with banners and slogans, and framed photographs of suffragette martyrs. There was a glorious portrait of Saint Joan of Arc, patron saint of the WSPU, gazing down fiercely from behind a row of volunteers as they folded leaflets into envelopes. The room was stuffy with the smell of paper and typewriter ink, the air thick and warm with a constant buzz of busy voices and footsteps and machinery. It was the hub of a war campaign, where battles were planned and losses accounted. Cat loved it. Industry that had nothing to do with cleaning or cosseting, with making life easy for those too idle to do it themselves. Tess was not there when Cat volunteered them both for militant action. Tess was waiting outside, watching the hurdy-gurdy man with his little monkey in a tiny top hat and red waistcoat, and laughing quite delightedly at its tricks.

Robin Durrant arrives back from Reading in time to stride through to the dinner table, face glowing, hair tousled and untidy.

‘Forgive me. I do hope you haven’t been waiting for me?’ he snaps, looking briefly at Albert, Hester and Amelia in turn; and for once his eyes are too quick, his smile a little strained. There is agitation in his whole expression, Hester notes.

‘Not at all, Robin. Not at all. I trust you were able to find what you needed in town?’ Albert asks. The vicar is as neat and tidy as ever, his soft hair set back, his whiskers neatly combed and trimmed. Hester glances at him, since they had indeed been waiting for Robin, and the hour is gone nine; but Albert’s face is open and unconcerned.

‘Indeed I did. And I called in on my parents while I was there, as it’s been some weeks since I last saw them. My younger brother is visiting, so I was able to see all three at once,’ he says, sitting almost before the ladies have settled, dropping his napkin into his lap with a flick of the wrist, and reaching for his glass before realising that Cat has yet to fill it. Albert notices the gesture, and gets up himself to fetch the wine from the sideboard. Hester can feel Amelia’s questioning gaze across the table, as the theosophist’s glass is filled before hers, the female guest’s.

‘And how were your family? In good health, I trust?’ Hester asks.

‘Oh yes, very well. Very well, thank you…’ Robin says, with odd emphasis.

‘This is your brother the doctor, is it not?’

‘Surgeon, actually – and there is a difference, quite an important one, as he would no doubt be quick to tell you,’ Robin says, acidly. The room, even though the windows were left open all afternoon, is close and warm. Robin runs a finger around the inside of his collar; a film of sweat is making his face shine.

‘It is too warm in here, isn’t it?’ Albert says. ‘When the maid comes up I shall have her open the windows again.’ But moments after Cat does as she is bidden, the first moths and other insects begin to invade the room, cannoning headlong towards the lights and making Amelia emit little screams of horror. Cat closes the windows again, and gazes with an expression of mild amusement at the array of winged life circling the room. ‘That will be all!’ Albert snaps at Cat, whose face hardens as she turns to go. Hester happens to look at Robin, and is sure she sees the merest of winks narrow his right eye as he watches Cat go; but when she looks at Cat the girl’s face is averted, her shoulders set.

‘I recently asked my class at the Bluecoat School what they thought fairies looked like, and what they thought they did. All of them had an opinion, and they drew me some lovely pictures,’ Hester says in the strained pause that follows. Robin nods, a frown still ghosting the skin of his brow.

‘Pretty little girls with butterfly wings, I would guess?’ he suggests, curtly.

‘Yes, variations along those lines, certainly,’ Hester agrees.

‘I think a great many children are in fact clairvoyant, until the onset of puberty causes the mind to close off, and earthly distractions to mar the inner vision,’ Robin says. ‘That’s why they’re all so familiar with the elementals – and why stories of fairies abound in children’s fables. I should very much like to come along and talk to the children in your class about what they’ve seen, Mrs Canning.’

‘Oh, well, of course you might have, Mr Durrant, but I’m afraid the school is closed now, for the rest of the summer. I shan’t be teaching again until after the harvest.’

‘Oh. Pity.’ Robin shrugs.

‘But why should these nature spirits take on human form? Why should they assume the forms of girls at all, albeit with wings and other non-human attributes? If they are the guardians of the plants and trees – the souls of these plants, as Hester put it earlier – then surely they should look like the plants?’ Amelia asks, in a tone of open scepticism. Hester feels her heart beat faster, and a prickle of unease makes her shift in her seat. She sends a silent plea to her sister for peace. Robin smiles tightly into his soup for a moment before answering.

‘Why, because the elementals are able to reach into our thoughts, of course – into our very minds, and take on the forms that they find there; forms in which they can present themselves to us and be understood. Forms that they find beautiful, and which we do too.’

‘They can read our minds?’ Albert asks, sounding slightly appalled by the idea.

‘Certainly – perhaps not in a lucid or coherent way, but to draw upon images and feelings, certainly. To pick up emotions and the vibrations of a person’s inner energy, most definitely,’ Robin says, gazing so intently at Amelia that she is forced to look away.

‘But their behaviour is purely… functional, is it not?’ Albert asks, as if keen to clarify things to the women.

‘Indeed. They act solely within the bounds of their purpose, that is, to distribute energy to their charges. They are carrying out abstract orders from their superiors, the devas – a race akin to a lower order of angels.’

‘A lower order of angels? Indeed?’ Amelia asks, not hiding the doubt in her voice. ‘And what do they look like?’

‘I have never seen one myself. It would take a higher degree of initiation than I currently possess, though one day I hope to progress to such a level. Those who have seen them describe their enormous size, and the tremendous power of them. They have been much associated with ley lines, and the earth’s own massive energy flows. I believe that it is the devas who lie at the core of our folkloric traditions of dragons and giants.’

‘Dragons? Indeed?’ Amelia casts an amused glace at her sister.

‘I can assure you there is nobody more knowledgeable about these beings than Mr Durrant, Mrs Entwhistle.’ Albert speaks up, defensively. Thoughts chase visibly across his face and cast troubled shadows over his eyes. Hester wishes she could reach out and take his hand, but it would not do at the table.

‘Oh, I’m sure of that,’ Amelia says, with an ironic tilt of her brows. Robin smiles, a narrow, thoughtful smile, as though at a private joke. Hester searches desperately for a way to lead the conversation in a different direction, but Robin speaks again before she can.

‘There is plenty of evidence, in spite of the basic nature of these elementals, that they are leading lives of greater freedom and joy than all of mankind. The purpose of theosophy is to redress this imbalance; to allow mankind, in the full knowledge of his position and condition, to live more freely, less caught up with the mundane and the material,’ he says, putting down his spoon and lacing his hands before him on the table. ‘Geoffrey Hodson, a very great clairvoyant, has witnessed undines – water elementals – in Lancashire, sporting in the waterfalls of a fast-flowing stream. The creatures, some twelve inches in height, were hovering in the rainbows cast by the spray, absorbing the vital energy from the sun and water until it grew too great for them to contain. He saw the effort and concentration with which they gathered and held the stored energy until they were fit to burst. Then they released it in a powerful moment of climactic euphoria, their colours flaring to great vibrancy, their eyes shining with expressions of extreme joy and rapture, after which they fell into a dreamy state of relaxed bliss.’ Hester stares at her soup, at her spoon frozen above it in her hand. She doen’t dare look up at anybody at the table. A scorching blush floods her cheeks.

‘And what are we to make of this event?’ Amelia asks, frostily.

‘That perhaps by the constraint of our own… natural rhythms… with social rules and conventions, we remove ourselves yet further from the elemental plane, and the divine processes of nature,’ Robin says, his voice entirely innocent of any impropriety. ‘The ecstasy of the undines visibly nourished the water and the plants surrounding the stream. They absorbed this gathered life force upon its release.’

‘Are you suggesting that… humans might achieve something similar to this?’ Amelia asks, though Hester inwardly implores her to desist. Robin glances from Amelia, to Albert, to Hester, who feels his gaze upon her and can’t help but look up.

‘I’m suggesting… it couldn’t hurt to try,’ he says. In the silence, the moths and flies buzz and bump against the glass chandelier, making the little drops twist, sending small sparks of light to bounce from the walls. Albert clears his throat.

‘Another slice of bread, Mrs Entwhistle?’ he says softly.

Cat does not sleep on Saturday night. She thinks of the moths in the dining room, which will be sleepy and dazed or dead by the morning, clinging to the folds of the curtains and the corners of the casements. For some reason it bothers her, that they’ve been lured in and imprisoned on the whim of the vicar. The sister is very beautiful, with the same blue eyes as The Gentleman. Cat was taken aback when they first swept over her, first locked onto her own eyes. She expected to be scolded, or instructed. She expected to be recognised, but the blue eyes carried on, brushing lightly, carelessly over her features in the way the rich always look at servants; and she was pointlessly affronted. Long after midnight there is a loud bump from the floor below. Cat winces, her pulse speeding up. It could be one of the children, out of bed; it could be Robin Durrant, sneaking about for whatever reason. Beautiful, careless, treacherous Robin Durrant. What does he want? She had wanted to sleep a little. George is due back the following day, by noon. In the evening she will see him, and she had not wanted to look haggard; to look grey or flat. But sleep will not come. She is waiting, listening too intently.

Death comes to stalk her room, to offer cold company. Cat slides into an exhausted trance, and returns to her mother’s deathbed: gloomy and dark behind drawn curtains, the iron smell of blood in every corner and the lurking reek of death behind that, not improved or hidden by the flowers she bought and set about the bed, or the herbs she threw on the fire. Her mother’s pillow was encrusted with crimson. Each time she coughed, more bright red sputum came up. She turned her head weakly to the side, let it soak into the cotton sham. They had given up trying to blot it with handkerchiefs. They did not own enough of them. She could no longer lift her head to spit into a bowl, and Cat could not lift her to do so, not every time. So many times. Consumption, the doctors pronounced, months before, with no hope or promise or hint of comfort in their voices. And it did consume her – she was a wraith by the end, sunken in on herself, robbed of speech, of strength. Her eyes dulled to grey, like her hair and her skin. One more shadow in the room. So unlike herself, so lifeless already that Cat only knew she had died because the scraping of her lungs quietened, and then stopped. There was no change in her appearance. Cat stood and watched her for a while, and was not sure what to do. That ragged wet rattle of air, as regular as her own heartbeat, had been her company for so long that the silence unnerved her. She stood, and she trembled, and she listened until the silence hurt her head. She had been twelve years old at the time.

At the first lightening of the sky, Cat is up, shaking off the impression insomnia gives of years having passed, of ages of man dawning and dying whilst the night has ticked slowly by. There are kinks in her spine, knots in her muscles from working all day and then lying too long in one position. When she stretches, joints pop. She arches her back like a dancer, feels the sinews burning back to life. Cat washes her face, the trickle of water into the basin as loud as thunder cracks; combs the raven feathers of her hair; dresses in silence and slips down the back stairs on the softest feet. The house is silent now, no movement of person or structure, of trapped moth or sleepless child. The air is as still and smooth as a silk blanket, softly grey. Cat lifts the latch on the back door as carefully as she can, skirts the edge of the garden until she can escape through the side gate, into the lane. The sky glows palely, a non-colour somewhere between grey and yellow and blue; the sun is not yet near the eastern horizon. With her stomach hot and empty, Cat thinks back, tries to remember when she last ate. She picks a handful of wild strawberries from the hedge, and bites each one deliberately, liking the sharp burst of juice between her teeth.

Robin Durrant has beaten her to the stile that crosses into the meadows. Cat pauses when she sees him, surprised. She had half thought he would not come, half thought nobody but she existed at this hour. But of course this is an illusion, brought on by loneliness. From the far side of the village a cow bellows, its plaintive cry echoing through the still air from where milking has already begun. Robin Durrant looks up when he hears her coming, his face indistinct in the near dark. Cat pauses, keeping her distance, and she sees the pale flash of his teeth.

‘You can come closer, I won’t bite you,’ he says, softly.

‘I have scant idea what you will or won’t do. And I’ll stay right here until you tell me what this is about,’ Cat replies.

‘Come on. Let’s get away from the road a bit. I don’t want anybody seeing you.’

‘What does that mean? Where are we going?’

‘Into the meadows. I’ve found the perfect spot.’ He holds up his hand to help her over the stile, but Cat does not move. She sets her jaw, stares hard at him. Robin shakes his head, lowers his hand. ‘Look, I swear to you that I have no intention of laying a finger on you. I give you my word.’ Cat considers this a moment longer and then relents, vaulting over the stile and still ignoring his proffered hand.

‘What use is the word of a charlatan?’ she mutters, walking to one side where she can keep her eye upon him. He has a broad leather bag over one shoulder and his Frena camera in the other hand; he swings it nonchalantly as they go.

‘A charlatan, am I? That’s a strong word, Cat Morley, and not a fair one at that. What makes you call me it?’

‘I know what I see. Who but a charlatan would charm the vicar, befuddle his wife, and blackmail the maid all in the same day? You’re like a snake that dazzles with its beauty and grace, before it strikes,’ Cat tells him.

‘A snake, now, am I?’ He laughs quietly.

‘I know what I see,’ Cat says again.

They make their way through the tall, tussocky grass, soaking their shoes with the fresh dew and kicking up insects which bumble away groggily. The dawn chorus grows louder as each second passes, flooding out across the grassland like a rising tide. In spite of everything, Cat feels herself grow calm. Impossible not to be calm, when the world seems so still, so at peace.

‘I love this time of day,’ Robin Durrant says, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. At once, Cat is on edge again.

‘Where are we going?’ she demands. It is cool, more so than she had expected. Goose pimples stand out on her skin, and she folds her arms tightly.

‘It’s not much further. There’s a wonderful old willow tree by a kink in the river…’

‘Yes, I know it. What of it?’

‘You know it? How do you know it?’

‘Can’t a person go for a walk, and use their eyes? Even a servant?’ Cat asks, tightly.

‘Why do you fight your status so? The Cannings are an easy pair. Why aren’t you happy with your lot?’ Robin seems genuinely curious. Cat glares at him suspiciously.

‘I hear you were a poet, for a while. A minister, a politician?’ she says. Robin looks at her, frowning, and Cat smiles. ‘As you told me, Mr Durrant, word gets about in a small place like this.’

‘Well, what of it?’

‘Would you have been content if you had been told, when you were still a child: you shan’t be a poet, or a minister, or a politician. You shall be a clerk in a bank. Would you have been content, never to have been allowed to try other things? Never allowed to find out what you wanted to do, what you wanted to be?’

‘A clerk in a bank? Why-’

‘For the sake of argument!’ Cat snaps.

‘But you are working class, Cat. Such things are immutable…’

‘Oh?’ She pounces. ‘And what makes them so? What makes me working class?’

‘Your… lack of breeding and education… your birth, Cat. Surely you can see that?’

‘Ah, there we have it. My birth. Something in my blood. A servant is born, as Mrs Bell says. You agree?’ she asks. Robin looks at her, puzzled, and thinks before nodding.

‘I suppose so, yes.’

Cat smiles bleakly. ‘Well, there is your answer, then,’ she says.

They reach the willow tree after walking for ten minutes, with the village entirely out of sight behind them apart from the church spire, pointing up grey and fragile into the marbled sky. The land falls gently into a bowl, sloping down to the edge of the river, where the old tree hangs its branches, motionless; its supple twigs trail forlornly in the water, carving furrows in the glassy surface.

‘We must be quite quick now,’ Robin says, dropping to one knee in the wet turf and opening the leather satchel. ‘I don’t want the sun to come up. And it wouldn’t do for the vicar to get impatient and come looking for us.’ Over the river, a haze of pale mist hangs in the air, to shoulder height, shimmering and shifting as the sun’s light grows brighter in the eastern sky.

‘What is this, for God’s sake? What game are you playing?’

‘No game, Cat Morley. I simply want to take your picture,’ he replies, now pulling paper-wrapped items from the bag.

‘My picture? With the camera? What on earth for?’

‘Yes, with the camera. I haven’t time to draw your portrait myself. And besides, a drawing would not give the same… proof. But the camera… the camera cannot lie.’ He glances up at her and smiles, then stands and hands her the packages.

‘What is this?’

‘Open them.’

Cat does as she is told. One package contains a garment of the finest white gauze, swathes of it like clouds of fleece. Cat fingers the fabric, confused; puts it over her shoulder to open the second parcel. She nearly drops it in shock. Human hair, masses of it. Long, slippery, white-blond tresses, coiled like satin ropes in her hands.

‘Is this real hair? I don’t understand.’

‘Put them on – the dress and the wig,’ Robin Durrant says, impatience creeping into his voice. He is readying the camera, unscrewing the lens cover. ‘But take your dress off first. I don’t want it to show through.’ Cat thinks for a minute, then tips back her head and laughs. ‘Quiet!’ Robin hisses.

‘It’s a costume? You mean to dress me up, take my picture and tell the world I’m an elemental?’ She laughs again, incredulously. Robin’s face flushes angrily.

‘Just do it. Put them on!’ he snaps.

‘You are a fraud! A phoney! You no more believe in fairies than I do!’ Cat scoffs.

‘I am no phoney!’ Robin Durrant shouts, lurching to his feet and towering over Cat, anger swelling his chest and darkening his face. His declaration bounds off into the mist, and is swallowed up at once. Cat gazes up at him, unafraid.

‘At last, I can see inside you,’ she says, quietly.

Robin takes a deep breath. ‘I am not a fraud. The elementals are real. My belief is real – in truth it is knowledge, not belief. Intuition, not faith. They are real. It is all real.’

‘Then why must you pose a maid in a wig to catch a photo of one?’

‘I… I don’t know. Why I have failed. Why they will not be captured with the camera, as other beings not of the flesh have done in the past…’

‘You truly believe in them? In fairies?’ Cat eyes him intently. Robin nods. Cat studies him closely, then shakes her head. ‘Astounding.’

‘They will be the making of me. This… this revelation will be the making of me. It must be so,’ he declares.

‘I have never met somebody who really believed their own lies before.’

‘It’s not lies. And what of the vicar? You say his God is a lie, and yet he believes it.’

‘That’s true,’ Cat concedes. ‘Very well then, you are every bit as deceived as the vicar, if that makes you happy.’

‘Cat, Cat.’ Robin smiles. ‘I am not deceived. The world, blindly going about its petty business, unaware of the grand order of things… it is the world who is deceived. And this picture I will take of you may well be a falsehood, of a kind, but the most pressing demand of theosophy is that its followers strive to bring it to a wider audience. Strive to convince and enlighten people who would otherwise go through their lives unaware of the great truths our adepts have learned. And I have learned that people cleave to their ignorance as if it comforts them. They will not see reason unless they are made to. I will make them see reason. I will give them no recourse to back away,’ he says, with quiet zeal.

‘You have lost your mind,’ Cat tells him, blandly.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I have found it. Put them on. Or I will tell them what you do, and where you go; and that will be the end to it,’ he snaps, the words short and hard. ‘Do it – quickly. I could ruin you, if I chose to. And don’t think for a moment that I would hesitate.’

Cat falls still, her eyes hardening. ‘What grace there is, in this theosophy with which you hope to enlighten me.’ Her voice is bitter. Turning her back on the theosophist, she strips off her work dress and puts the gauze gown on over her shift. It is long and loose, but so light that when she moves it clings closely to her body. She leans forward as she has seen ladies in London do, and positions the wig over her own hairline. Upside down she sees a damsel fly, not an inch from her nose, clinging to the underside of a pale iris leaf – electric blue body, glittering rainbow wings vibrating, warming up for flight. So many hidden things, such hidden beauty, she thinks. Such lovely things truly do exist, and yet they are never enough for us. We must always search beyond. The wig is heavy, and threatens to pull itself off with its own weight. Only the bobby pins Cat happened to be wearing keep it in place. She straightens it, then turns to Robin Durrant. He stares.

‘Well?’ she demands. The long tresses hang around her face. She can feel the unfamiliar weight of them bumping against her back. Not long ago, her hair was long – although perhaps not as long as this. How quickly she has got used to it being gone, when at the time it was shorn she felt as though she had been stripped naked in a public place.

‘You look quite lovely, Cat,’ Robin says, softly. ‘Yes. You will do very well indeed.’

‘Then let’s get this charade over with,’ she replies. Robin watches her for a moment, and then chuckles.

‘It won’t work if you just stand there scowling with your arms folded, my dear girl.’

‘I am not your dear girl. And how should I stand, then?’

‘Do not stand at all. Dance. Over there – down by the water’s edge where the mist is thickest. And take off your shoes.’

‘Dance?’

‘Dance,’ Robin says, quite firmly.

Cat walks away from him, the grass cold and wet on the bare soles of her feet. The soft fabric of the dress brushes the skin of her legs lightly, makes her shiver. She has never danced. Not properly. Occasionally, The Gentleman had musical evenings, not big enough to be called balls, but with a quartet of musicians to play waltzes and quicksteps for twenty or thirty glamorous pairs; and the staff would sneak to the bottom of the stairs, or even to the doorway of the grand salon, to listen, to grab each other and make a parody of the steps that set them all to laughing. This is her sole experience of dance, and this will not do now, she knows. An elemental would not waltz with an invisible partner. She thinks of the way she felt the first time she managed to ride the vicar’s bicycle all the way to George’s barge. The push of the wind in her face, the way her blood ran faster through her veins; the thrill of speed and movement. She thinks of Tess, in the workhouse; of The Gentleman who did not save her. Cat draws in a shaky breath, anger making her burn.

She throws out her arms and leaps, as high as she can; arching her body and tipping back her head. She lands heavily, coarse grass stems jabbing into her feet. She pauses, takes a deep breath and then runs forward, gaining more momentum and leaping again. And even though she feels ridiculous at first, feels as though the world is laughing at her, capering like an idiot, she soon forgets this. Her heart beats hard and she breathes fast, running and jumping like this, lifting up her front knee, pointing her toe behind her, holding her arms out wide or pulled back or high above her head. She kicks and storms and spins, and there is freedom in this, in the abandonment of propriety; the burn of her muscles and the rush of air into her nose and mouth. She pounds them all beneath her feet – Robin Durrant, The Gentleman, Mrs Heddingly, Hester Canning. She dances until she is out of breath, and leans against the old tree to rest, Robin Durrant and his camera all but forgotten; and then she dances some more, the same exhilaration in movement coming back to her – the possibility of life and freedom. When she falls still at last, the damsel fly circles her curiously, wings humming, flashing blue as the first rays of the sun creep into the sky. She catches her breath, and realises that she is not coughing. Does not need to cough. She smiles, until in the corner of her eye Robin Durrant stands up, slowly screwing the lens cap back onto his camera.

With a sinking feeling, Cat lets her arms fall to her sides, and the damsel fly darts away, vanishing into the widening day. She tugs the wig from her head, runs her fingers through the sweaty hair at her brow and walks towards him.

‘That was simply wonderful. You looked… amazing. Beautiful, Cat,’ Robin tells her; his voice quite different, almost deferential. Cat looks away, holding out the wig for him to take.

‘There’s no beauty in a lie,’ she says, coldly. ‘Can I go now?’

‘Yes,’ he says, meekly. ‘Yes, we should get back before you’re missed.’

‘You have important work to do,’ Cat says sarcastically, nodding at the camera.

‘You must never speak of this to anyone, Cat. Not even to the man who can tempt you out in a thunderstorm. We must keep each other’s secrets from now on,’ he says, his tone peculiarly companionable. Cat glances at him in disgust, and walks a few steps ahead, to keep her back to him. An odd, desperate feeling gathers in her gut. She feels suddenly powerless, vulnerable. She feels that she will never quite be free of what they have just done.