The Unseen

6

In the sunshine late on Monday morning, Cat scrubs Hester’s undergarments in a wooden butt of warm soapy water. She has come out into the courtyard to do this, where she can splash with impunity, and feel the sun on her face. These items are considered too fragile to be sent out to the laundress, and cleaning them is a painstaking process. Cat removes the stays from the corsets and washes them one by one; then she uses a soft scrubbing brush to gently sweep the satin fabric lengthways until all stains and marks and odours are gone. Each one must be rinsed under the pump, pulled and stretched back into shape along its whalebone pins, and laid flat to dry where the sun will help to restore its whiteness. She must check them every half an hour until they are dry, tweaking and coaxing and teasing them back into their proper shapes.

Hester’s drawers are stained this week. Dark, bloody scuffs on the gussets and legs that turn brown in the water, and give off the smell of rusting iron. Cat wrinkles her nose as she scrubs, squeezes, rinses, repeats, her hands aching and puffy in the water. She is glad George can’t see her in this labour.

‘Haven’t you finished that yet?’ Mrs Bell remarks, leaning her head out of the scullery door. Cat angrily waves a stained garment at her.

‘A twelve-year-old child could manage her courses better than the vicar’s wife!’ she exclaims.

‘Hush your mouth!’ Mrs Bell glances around, scandalised.

‘I heartily wish the vicar would get his leg over and do his duty by her, so I would have fewer bloodstains to scrub for a term. Or don’t men of the cloth do that?’

‘It is hard to picture it, the two of them…’ Mrs Bell chuckles, before remembering herself. ‘Just you… show some respect,’ she reminds Cat, hastily.

‘I’ve never heard them at it, though. Have you?’ Cat smiles, impishly.

‘For shame! I’ve never listened out for it!’ Mrs Bell replies, her eyes merry for once.

‘One would have to listen closely, I suspect. More like the snufflings of a pair of bunny rabbits than the mighty roaring of a stag, I should think,’ she says, and Mrs Bell laughs out loud, unable to stop herself.

‘Cat, you are a devil!’ she wheezes, and then coughs hastily and falls silent as Hester enters the courtyard from the far side gate, and walks towards them.

Hester has spent the morning teaching the smudged and bony children of the Bluecoat School, a small charitable school run for the poor families of the parish. The school house was once a chapel. A small and ancient stone building with a steeply pitched roof and low, narrow doorways, it huddles all alone, and rather forlornly, Hester always thinks, on the London Road at the edge of Thatcham. But on school days it lights up with the voices of twenty little girls, all chattering and laughing, their words skittering to and fro, rising up to bounce amidst the gnarled beams of the roof. When Hester arrives, the ragged girls quickly seat themselves at their desks, fall quiet and watch her with their big eyes shining like glass beads. Hester loves that moment. She stands with her hands clasped in front of her, feeling her heart bubble up in her chest.

She teaches the girls cookery and needlework, flower pressing, composition, deportment and grammar. Whatever she can think of that might benefit them, she tries to fit in some tuition upon it. And even though most of them are poor, and will end up married young and mothers themselves, ruining their bodies in the fields or going into service at one of the big estates nearby, Hester still likes to think that knowing a poem is never a wasted thing, and can bring comfort to the roughest of souls. She normally comes away from the lessons with a renewed energy for life, her mood elevated and spirits high. But not this time. Some vague sense of worry dogs her steps, as though she has mislaid something important. Her mind replays the recent weeks, retracing its steps, trying without success to find where exactly this crucial thing has been lost.

An unusual noise makes Hester look up, and she realises that Sophie Bell, standing over Cat at the wash tub, is laughing. Hester pauses, and realises that this is the first time she has ever heard her housekeeper laugh out loud. She smiles a little as she approaches the pair of them, but when they see her, the laughter stops abruptly. Cat continues to scrub and Sophie Bell looks away in such a guilty manner that Hester is left with the distinct impression that she has been the butt of the joke. To her dismay, unexpected tears fill her eyes, and she blinks hurriedly, smiling to conceal them.

‘Good morning, ladies. I trust you’re both well?’ she says. Both Cat and Mrs Bell nod and murmur their assent. ‘I called in on Mrs Trigg on my way back from school, Mrs Bell. She asked after you.’

‘Oh, well. And how is she? Any better?’ Sophie asks.

‘Not a great deal, I fear. She’s still keeping to her bed. I know she would dearly love to have more visitors,’ Hester says.

Mrs Bell nods sharply, her chins rippling. ‘I’ll make sure I drop by to see her soon, madam,’ she says. Hester glances down at the wash tub and sees the stains Cat is working on, the soap suds drying into a scummy ring around her elbows. Perhaps this is why they’d been laughing at her? Again, Hester feels her eyes stinging, and she looks away, ready to walk past them towards the front of the house.

Just then, there’s a crash from inside the house; scraping sounds and a loud thump. All three women look quickly at one another. Hester edges past Sophie Bell, who needs more time to turn, and is the first one through the back door. Leading off the corridor, before it opens into the kitchen, is the door to the cold store. This is a small room built with three outside walls. It is dug a little deeper into the ground, with three steps leading down into it, and is stone floored, with shelves of solid slate slab that stay cooler for longer, even in hot weather. The only light comes from a tiny window, not six inches square, set high in the far wall opposite the door. There is no glass in the window, just wire mesh to keep out insects and vermin. It has the feel of a compact cave, which is the aim of its design. All meats and cheese, milk, cream and fruit – anything that will spoil in a warm room – finds a longer life on the cool slate shelves, or hanging from savage-looking hooks in the ceiling. Robin Durrant is leaning against the wall outside the cold store as Hester hurries towards it.

The source of the crash is immediately apparent. Smashed shards of a china basin sit in a puddle of white mess on the floor of the corridor.

‘What has happened? That was the batter for the sausage puddings!’ exclaims Mrs Bell, who has waddled along behind her mistress. Hester glances at Robin Durrant, who looks serious for once, and then into the little room, where Albert is filling his arms with foodstuffs.

‘Albert? What on earth is going on?’ she asks him.

‘All of this stuff must be cleared out, Hetty. Robin has need of this room,’ Albert says, quite cheerfully.

‘But… this is the cold store, Mr Durrant. What possible use could it be to you?’ Hester asks.

‘Very considerable use, my dear Mrs Canning. I have decided to develop my own photographs, you see. My equipment was delivered to me this morning… The local laboratories have insufficient skill for work of such a precise nature as I am undertaking; and anyway they take far too long to return my prints to me,’ Robin says. He stands up from the wall and links his hands behind his back, making no move to assist Albert in his labours. ‘I do apologise about the batter, Mrs Bell.’ The theosophist smiles at the simmering housekeeper.

‘But… I don’t understand,’ Hester says. ‘This is where we keep fresh food cold… what has it to do with your photographs?’ she asks.

‘Excuse me, dear,’ Albert says, squeezing past them and towards the kitchen with arms laden with bacon and cheese.

‘I need a dark room, Mrs Canning. A room where absolutely all light can be excluded, so that I may safely develop my prints. This room, with only a tiny window and such a good solid door, is perfect.’

‘It’s quite impossible, Reverend. In this weather! Nothing will last from one hour till the next, if I haven’t a cold store for it! Perhaps we might do without it in winter, or even spring… but now? No, no – it will not do…’ Mrs Bell protests.

‘Nevertheless, Mrs Bell, this is the perfect – nay, the only – place that will do for it. Mr Durrant’s needs are quite specific,’ says the vicar, his voice steady and his expression adamant.

‘And can he be specific about how I should manage without it?’ the housekeeper snaps, much to Robin Durrant’s apparent delight.

‘That’s enough, thank you, Mrs Bell,’ Hester says, as soothingly as she can. With a black look on her face, the housekeeper disappears into the kitchen. Hester finds her pulse racing, and an odd rushing sound fills her ears. ‘Albert,’ she says, trying to get her husband’s attention as he returns to the store and begins to pile up bowls of fruit and vegetables. ‘Albert!’ She lowers her voice, aiming to speak only to him. ‘There must be some other place we can install Mr Durrant’s equipment! This is hardly appropriate – for one thing, it is below stairs, and Mrs Bell is quite right to resent the intrusion into her domain. And for another, in this hot weather it is madness to lose the use of this room for food! I do wish you had consulted with me about this beforehand… I could have pointed out earlier that this is really not the answer-’

‘But it is, Hetty. Robin has searched all over the house, and this is the only place one might sensibly set up a dark room,’ Albert insists.

‘Well… what about one of the outbuildings? The old woodshed has no windows at all – surely we could arrange some worktops of some kind in there for him?’

‘The old woodshed? It’s full of dust and spiders, Hester! Don’t be so ridiculous! How can Robin be expected to produce something as fragile and important as a photograph of an elemental when he is surrounded by crumbling plaster and sawdust? Really – you must desist with this obstruction!’

‘But… but you shouldn’t even be down here!’ Hester whispers, unhappily. Two firsts in the space of five minutes, she thinks – Sophie Bell laughing, and Albert below stairs, within the female realm of the kitchen and utility areas.

‘Excuse me,’ Albert says again, passing her with the load of fruit and vegetables. Hester turns to watch him go, and catches the eye of the theosophist, still dallying in the corridor. She can’t hold his gaze, and drops her eyes, filling with ill-defined outrage.

‘I am sorry to be such a nuisance,’ Robin says, not sounding sorry at all. Hester squeezes her teeth together and manages the briefest of smiles before walking past him after her husband. She cannot find it in her to accept his apology.

‘I’m quite sure you will manage, Mrs Bell. You are a woman of great resource,’ Albert says to the housekeeper, uncomfortably, as Hester catches up with him.

‘Just the milk, then, Reverend? It can’t hurt to let me keep the milk in there – it won’t take up much room…’

‘No, I’m afraid that’s quite out of the question. The risk of contamination is too great. There. I apologise if you are inconvenienced, Mrs Bell, but the needs of our guest must take precedence in this instance. Our work is of the utmost importance. I would be grateful if you could bring out the rest of the food, and let us hear no more about it,’ the vicar says, and walks away up the stairs.

‘Madam, can’t you talk to him? Everything will spoil!’ Sophie appeals to Hester once Albert is out of earshot.

Oddly short of breath, Hester can only shake her head helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, Sophie. Please just… do the best you can,’ she says. She glances back along the corridor but Robin Durrant has gone out into the courtyard, leaving the cold store half empty and the spilt batter on the floor, attracting flies. Seconds later, Cat appears, drying her hands on her apron with a look of outrage on her face.

‘The theosophist just sent me in to clear up his bloody mess, if you please,’ she snaps, recoiling slightly when she sees that Hester is still in the room. ‘Begging your pardon, madam,’ she mutters.

‘No, that’s quite all right, Cat. If you wouldn’t mind, please do see to it,’ Hester says meekly, and flees the anger of the two women. At the top of the stairs she pauses, suddenly quite at a loss as to where to go or what to do next. It seems as though the house has changed somehow, as though somebody has been in during her absence and shifted all the furniture slightly, so that nothing is quite in its right place. Our work is of the utmost importance. Albert’s words echo in her head. Is this where that important thing has been lost, then? Did it start the day Albert rushed indoors and told her he’d seen elemental beings? She’d hardly believed him serious, at the time. Feeling unsettled and almost afraid, Hester goes into the parlour and sits on the edge of a chair, quite alone.

Mrs Bell waits until Hester’s footsteps have receded, then turns to Cat with her face pinched up in anger.

‘What’s all this?’ Cat asks.

‘Well, the young guest needs a dark room. To make photographs in, apparently, although what pictures he can take in a room with no light, I haven’t a clue. And my cold store is to be the place! No other room in the house will do for him – it has to be this one! And all the food will have to come out of it so as he can do his thing in it, whatever it might be. We’ll have nothing by the end of the day but rancid butter and green curds!’

‘All right – calm down. He’ll be developing the pictures in the dark room, not taking them,’ Cat says.

‘Developing pictures? What do you mean?’

‘The plates are very sensitive to light until they are developed – that is how an image comes to be imprinted upon them in the first place, of course. No other light must reach them until the right chemicals can be applied to set the image – even the faintest gleam would spoil it,’ she explains.

‘How in God’s name do you know all this? No, don’t tell me. You learned it in London,’ Mrs Bell mutters.

‘That I did. The Gentleman had photography as a particular hobby of his.’

‘Of course he did. Well, perhaps with all the vast knowledge you gathered there you can think of a way to keep that milk from spoiling by lunch time?’ she asks, acidly.

Cat thinks for a while. ‘I might have the answer, you know,’ she says, lightly. ‘Does the vicar’s wife have any mackintosh squares, for sitting herself on damp ground and the like?’

‘I believe so, in one or other of the trunks. What on earth will you do with them?’

‘Let’s find them first, then I’ll show you,’ Cat says. She peers back along the corridor before she goes upstairs, and sees the outline of the theosophist, still standing out in the courtyard. She does not like to think that he will be down in the cellars from now on; that he might be around to overhear her speak, or watch her work. Without being able to say quite why, she would prefer to keep him at a greater distance – the safe privacy of the kitchens feels violated.

Cat finds what she is looking for in the chest of drawers in the hallway: two large squares of waterproof oilcloth. She fetches a ball of strong jute garden twine from the greenhouse, then she and the housekeeper pack all the meat and dairy foods into a hamper. With one of them at each handle, they go out into the back garden and make their way to the far corner of the lawn, where the ground is shaded by a stand of ancient apple trees that have mistletoe crouching on them here and there. Protected from the worst of the sun’s onslaught, the grass here is longer and greener. It’s a cool and calming corner.

‘What are you thinking, girl?’ Mrs Bell demands, when Cat puts her side of the hamper down with a bump. Cat points to a pile of crumbling stonework, topped with a rotting wooden lid.

‘The old well,’ she says, heaving the heavy lid to one side. Mould and cobwebs fur the underside of it; the dark entrance to the shaft breathes out a damp smell like fungus. Cat brushes the cobwebs aside, calmly flicking away a spider when it clambers along her wrist.

‘Ugh, how can you bear to!’ Mrs Bell shudders. Cat glances up at her.

‘There are far worse things in life than spiders, Sophie Bell,’ she says.

‘That’s Mrs Bell to you,’ says Mrs Bell, but she speaks distractedly, as if from habit, and there is little feeling behind the words.

‘So. We tie the stuff into bundles, good and tight, then we lower them a way down into the well, and tie them to the top somehow… to a cross bar – this’ll do,’ Cat explains, picking up a broken wooden slat from the grass and laying it across the round hole.

‘I suppose it will be cool in there. Cooler than the kitchen, at least,’ Mrs Bell concedes.

‘Very much so.’ Cat swings the lid of the hamper open, begins to unpack onto the lush grass.

‘It won’t do for the milk jugs. We’ll have to stand them in basins of cold water back indoors.’

‘And if it starts to turn by afternoon, we can scald whatever’s left. It should at least keep until the morning if we do that,’ Cat adds.

A soft breeze eases through the parchment leaves above them. Mrs Bell stands wide, catches her breath. She eyes the mouth of the well with dark mistrust, as if almost frightened by it.

‘How did you even know this was here?’ the housekeeper asks.

‘Oh, you know. Just… getting my bearings,’ Cat says.

‘I’ll bet. Snooping about is more like it.’ Mrs Bell stands still and watches the well; she does not begin to unpack. Cat is drawing breath to demand help when Sophie Bell speaks again. ‘I shan’t be able to go too close to it, I think. No, I shan’t. Not too close, and not to look into it.’ She shudders a little, clamping her hands defensively into the enveloping flesh of her armpits.

‘Why on earth not? What’s to be scared of? There’s no way a woman of your girth could fall in there, after all,’ Cat says, still unpacking. But when she looks up, she sees that the housekeeper’s face is pale, almost yellowish white, like the butter she herself is holding. ‘Are you all right?’ she asks, more gently.

‘I lost my Walter in a well. I tend to put it out of my mind, as a person might. Something like that. But now and then, you can’t help but think of it,’ says Sophie Bell, and her voice is different, much smaller than usual; deadened and defeated.

‘Walter? I never heard you mention him before. Who’s Walter?’

‘My little boy, of course! Just five years old he was, when I lost him.’ Sophie Bell presses her lips into a tight purse that puckers her chin.

‘Down a well?’ Cat asks quietly.

‘The bigger boys dared him. Little buggers. They never meant no harm, I know, but at the time, of course, I wanted their hides. They dared him that he’d never climb down the rope far enough to touch the water. Silly boy, he went and did it – he wasn’t to know any better. Nearly made it back up, they said, but then he slipped his grip on the rope and fell back again. Hit his head on the side and that was that.’ In the quiet after Mrs Bell speaks, a robin comes to spy on them. Cat crumbles a tiny corner of the cheese and throws it into the grass for him.

‘That’s terrible, Sophie,’ she says quietly, her throat gone tight with dismay. ‘I’m so sorry to hear it.’

‘Going on twenty years ago, but I still miss him. His birthday would have been next week. He’d not have been much older than you.’

‘Were you married, then?’

‘Of course I was bloody married! We don’t all of us love scandal like you, Cat Morley. And you’ll ask me next what became of my husband. Well, he up and died of a tumour. Not two years after Walter went down the well. No great loss to me nor mankind, but he gave me my Walter, so I had him to thank for that. He was a lovely bairn, he was – so kind, and so sunny.’

‘I had no idea you’d suffered such loss,’ Cat says, softly. She wishes she could put out her hand and take Sophie’s, but the housekeeper’s arms remain tightly folded. ‘It must have been very hard for you, to go on with life after that. No wonder it soured your temper.’

‘Hearing your pert remarks all day long does nothing to ease my sourness, young lady. You’ve a bad habit for speaking whatever comes straight into your head, do you know that?’ Sophie remarks, and Cat smiles slightly.

‘Yes, I’ve been told that before. But you could have married again, and had another child, couldn’t you?’ she asks. Mrs Bell shakes her head sadly.

‘Only a lass who’s never had a babe could think one so easily replaced. It takes the heart out of you, when they go. And besides, willing men were hardly queuing around the corner for the likes of me. It was probably too late to have another by then, anyway; even if I could have found somebody I liked.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. You could have cooked your way into somebody’s good graces.’ Cat smiles.

‘You’re just full of wise suggestions today, aren’t you? Come on, let’s get this done and get on with lunch. The mistress’ll be wandering around with her belly rumbling before long. Not to mention this learned young man, whose work is so very bloody important.’

‘Yes, who would have guessed how important? The vicar treats him like royalty,’ Cat observes.

‘Doesn’t he just? Well, he must know something we don’t, I suppose.’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Cat murmurs. Mrs Bell gives her a quizzical look, and Cat shrugs. ‘The vicar should be careful. Apparently, Robin Durrant has no household of his own. It seems to me he’s quite ready to take over this one instead.’

‘In what way, take over?’ The housekeeper frowns. Cat shrugs again.

‘We’ll see,’ she says.

When the dinner plates are scrubbed, dried and put away, the dining table swept, and the napkins either refolded and pressed or put into the hamper to be laundered, Cat slips out through the back door, saunters into the courtyard and puts a cigarette between her lips. George is away on the barge for a few more days yet, taking a load of timber up the canal to Surrey. Square fence posts with sharpened points at one end, the newly hewn wood pale and moist. Cat saw the men loading them when she went into Thatcham to post letters for Hester. George’s barge, and two others that had appeared to join it. The horses led from their ramshackle stables, snatching at the long green weeds as they were harnessed to the tow ropes, tossing their heads and flicking their tails at the crowding flies. The men wore thick canvas gloves, and had their trousers tied off with lengths of string just below the knee, to keep out the panicked rats that fled as the piles of timber were dismantled, reassembled on the barges. George, with his shirt plastered to his back, frowned in the sharp sunlight. She did not call out; felt wrong interrupting him at work. She likes the fact that she saw him, this time, but he did not see her. Like she owns a little bit more of his life than he meant to give. Now she wishes him back already. She could walk alone in the dark but there seems little point, with nowhere to go.

She fumbles in her pocket for a match but one blooms in the dark beside her, makes her jump. Robin Durrant leans from behind the orange flare, smiles a little as he proffers it to her. For some reason Cat can’t define, her first instinct is to refuse it. But she accepts, takes a long pull on her cigarette and coughs a little.

‘Thank you,’ she says, guardedly.

‘You’re welcome, Cat,’ he says, and his use of her name sounds too familiar. Cat measures him up in the weak light from the doorway. He moves away slightly, leans against the wall; his body curved into an elegant slouch, hips pushed forwards, head tipped back.

‘What are you doing out here? You’re not even smoking,’ she points out. The yard has come to feel like her place; this afterdinner moment as her time.

‘I was; I was. I finished it just before you came out. Sorry if I scared you,’ he says, turning his head towards her. The contours of his face are softly lit. Clean, smooth brow, eyes lost in shadow. The long sweep of his jaw. His face is beautiful, Cat realises. Quite perfectly beautiful, like a painting of a saint or a representation of love. But also opaque, unreadable. His affability looks like a mask.

‘You didn’t scare me.’

‘No. I bet it would take something to scare you,’ he says. Cat ignores him, takes another long drag. The tip of her cigarette glows fiercely. ‘I hear you’ve been through it a bit. A bit of a firebrand, I hear,’ he says, companionably enough.

‘Who told you that? I thought the vicar’s wife was sworn off gossip.’

‘Oh, it wasn’t dear Hester. But word gets around in small places like this. I should know – I heard myself called “the fairy man” just the other day, by a passing child no more than six years old. Explain to me how she knew to call me that, I beg of you.’

Cat smiles briefly. ‘A little girl with dark brown curls and a turned-up nose, I’ll wager?’ she asks.

‘Oh, indeed – you know the culprit?’

‘Tilly. Daughter of Mrs Lynchcombe who takes in our laundry. I expect Sophie Bell has been filling her in on all your comings and goings, and the child is as sharp as a tack.’

Quite possibly. And yet, it is you I see, loitering behind doors when I am in discussion with the vicar or his wife. Listening hard, to all appearances,’ he says, archly. Cat bridles, turns away from him and does not reply. Above her head, moths dive and flutter at the light in the corridor, bashing the soft dust from their velvet wings. ‘Come now, Cat – you can’t pretend to be shy. You’re not the type.’

‘What do you know of my type? What do you know of me at all?’

‘I rest my case.’ He smiles.

‘You smile too much. People must guess that you’re mocking them,’ she says, blandly.

‘A surprising few,’ Robin concedes. ‘You’re unusual, for a servant, Cat Morley.’

‘How should a servant be? I thought your Society made no distinction between class or race?’

‘Indeed, it does not. But although such distinctions should not exist, perhaps they do nonetheless. Theosophy also teaches that if a person is made to toil or suffer in this life, it is to atone for wrongdoing in a previous life. The universal law and justice of karma.’

‘Yes, I heard you speak of it the other night. I am a servant because I was a murderess in another lifetime, is that it?’ Cat asks, drily.

‘Perhaps,’ Robin grins, pleased to have nettled her.

Cat thinks on this for a moment. ‘Perhaps. ‘Perhaps I was a starving pauper in a past life, but an exceptionally good one, and this is my reward. Perhaps you were a king, but a vile and corrupt one. And this is your punishment.’ She gestures at him – his rumpled hair, his slightly creased clothes. Robin Durrant laughs softly. ‘Karmic justice, you call it? It’s no justice at all,’ she says.

‘Is the Christian way of thinking more just? That a deity should create a human soul and give it just one lifetime to exist, and in that lifetime he may bestow pain and suffering and misfortunes galore, and all of this is meted out for no reason at all? Or only to test that person? What a cruel God that would be!’

‘But how may a soul, in a new body, learn from its past mistakes if it may not be allowed to remember them?’ Cat asks.

‘Well…’ Robin Durrant falters. ‘Well. By following the teachings of theosophy towards a greater understanding of their condition.’

‘That is no answer. You say that to acquire knowledge they must first be in possession of that knowledge? How may a pauper living in the dust of darkest Africa even begin to guess at this grand scheme? There is no more justice in your theory of karma than there is in an arbitrary and unthinking universe.’

‘Is that what you believe in? A great nothingness? You are an atheist?’ Robin asks. Cat winces at the word, in case the vicar or his wife should hear it. She finishes her cigarette, grinds it into the bricks beneath her heel. The night is close and sticky. Sleep will be hard to find. In the distance, thunder rumbles ominously. The western horizon is an indigo smear, and all the usual night sounds are stifled, muted. Cat’s body yearns for George, and his heavy, sure hands.

‘I have been to the very edge of death. And I looked hard. And there was nothing there,’ she says eventually, her voice clipped.

‘You are very strange, for a servant,’ Robin repeats.

‘You eat no meat but you drink wine, and brandy, and you smoke tobacco. I should say you are strange, for a theosophist.’

‘Ah, but the Society is not peopled with saints, Cat. Only with sinners who are trying to do better.’ Cat rolls her eyes a little at this, standing up from the wall and folding her arms as she moves towards the door. ‘Not bed, surely? Aren’t you off out to see your sweetheart tonight?’ Robin asks, quite pleasantly. At this Cat hesitates, shoots him a worried, angry glance. There is a hard edge to his smile now, a glint of knowing in his eye that makes her uneasy. Robin shrugs, too casually. ‘Word gets about. But fear not. Your secret is safe with me.’ His tone is nonchalant; makes a lie of the statement. Cat frowns, steps inside. ‘Wait – won’t you stay out and talk to me a bit longer?’ he asks. That slow, lazy, gorgeous smile.

‘Why on earth would I want to?’ Cat snaps, and then remembers herself, checks her tongue a little. ‘Goodnight, sir,’ she amends, and leaves him in the darkness.

In the morning, Cat takes the small stack of letters from the postman and is arranging them on a silver-plated tray to take up to the breakfast table when her own name catches her eye. A small grey envelope, with her name and the address written on it in a round, childish hand that she does not recognise. The postmark is London. Cat’s heart squeezes painfully. Tess, she thinks, slipping the letter into the pocket of her apron and hurriedly taking the tray up to the table. She dumps it rather abruptly in front of the vicar and retreats, not noticing Hester’s polite smile of thanks, or the way Robin Durrant’s eyes follow her. Ducking out into the courtyard she tears the letter open, squinting at the pale paper. The sky overhead is white with cloud so dense and uniform that is seems less like cloud and more as though the sky is too weary to be blue that day. But the letter is not from Tess.

Dear Cat,

I am writing to you because I no that Mrs Heddingly opened the letter what you rote to our Tess, who is not here any more. I did not think she should of opened it for she could of sent it on but she did not. We all saw Tesses name on the front of it and later on I stole a look at it in her room. This was not the proper thing to do neither but it was her that did the first wrong thing by opening it. I did not read it I swear it I only looked to see who it was from and I rote your new place out so I could rite this to you. Tess is in the workhouse now. Frosham House it is called and it is on Sidall Road near Soho. I hear it is not as bad a place as some but it is still not a good place and those what go there do come out thin and week if they come out at all. None of us could do nothing to help her having no money ourselves to give to her and her having no people of her own. I must also say that while Mrs Heddingly did wrong in not giving your letter on to her she did speak up for Tess after what happened but the Master would have none of it. Frosham House lets in visitors in the afternoon on the third Sunday of the month and no other day. Me and Ellen went to see Tess last month but she would not come out to talk to us. I hope you are in a better way Cat. It is not the same place here without you and Tess.

From Suzanne

The workhouse. Tess. Cat reads the letter again, heart sinking, feeling like lead in her chest. She shuts her eyes, and bunches her hand into a fist, the paper creasing and cutting into her. How could he do it? The Gentleman, with all his bluff good humour and progressive ideas. He must have known that without Cat there Tess would have kept herself quiet and well behaved. He must have known that put out of her job with no reference, there were only two places that the orphaned girl would end up. Either earning money on her back, or in the poorhouse. The injustice of it burns in the back of Cat’s throat like bile. At that moment, in spite of anything else, she hates him. Tess, just a baby still, given a choice like that. She would never have turned harlot. She was scared of men; still thought one day a handsome prince with gentle hands and a love of poetry would take a shine to her and marry her for her golden curls and her soft white body. And who knows – it might have happened one day. A tradesman or professional caller of some kind, rather than a prince; but still. Not now. Nothing for her now but endless toil and rat-eaten bread, and the stink of the old and infirm kept in damp rooms with nobody to help them. How she hates him!

Cat didn’t realise, when she was released early from gaol, that it meant she wouldn’t see Tess again. Cat was released ten days before her two months were up, with her chest consumed by infection, her skin drawn tight over her bones, her hair shorn away and her lips cracked, weeping blood whenever she spoke. The WSPU sent a welcoming committee to collect her and two other girls released that day, freed before their time because they were fading fast and the government did not want to create martyrs. They were taken in a cab to a meeting hall, where a reception breakfast was laid out for them, and speeches made in praise of their bravery. It was only these speeches that kept Cat from sobbing with relief, and with pain, the whole time. She kept a check on herself by saying nothing – keeping her ruined lips tight together other than to murmur thanks when her Holloway medal was pinned to her collar.

She could not touch the food they had prepared. The other girls did – one picking politely at the sandwiches and slices of pie and fruit, the other tearing into it, so quick and frantic that she made herself choke. The women urged Cat to eat, to start rebuilding her strength. They even brought out a mug of broth after she’d turned down everything else. Cat tried a sip but could not swallow it, and in the end she spat it back into the cup, as carefully as she could. In an extravagant gilt mirror hanging at one end of the room, she caught sight of herself. A pale, ragged spectre, with scabs around her mouth, bruises on her neck and wrists. Her clothes hung from her bony frame, her scalp was an ugly grey where it was visible around her hat. As they bustled around her, the women of the welcoming committee looked like round, glossy birds; plump partridges or doves with their billowing chests and bright, cheerful eyes. Cat stared at her reflection, and hardly knew herself.

Later, they took her back to Broughton Street, and then The Gentleman took her straight to see his own doctor. The first and only time she rode with him in his motor car. Dazed and exhausted as she was, still the novelty of riding in a self-propelled carriage was not lost on her. But it was only afterwards, when Tess was still serving her sentence and Cat was told a new position had been found for her in the countryside, that Cat realised she might not see her friend again, might have no chance to make amends. On the day she left London she was taken by bus to Paddington. Mrs Heddingly rode with her to be sure she caught the train, and tears streamed from Cat’s eyes to drip unheeded from her chin.

‘This Sunday? I am sorry, Cat, but it’s quite out of the question,’ says the vicar’s wife, when Cat asks her. Hester Canning is sitting at the desk in the morning room arranging violets, yellow and indigo pansies and pink phlox into a suitable pattern in her pressing book. She works quickly since the heat of the day is making the petals wilt already. Several torn violets lie discarded to one side.

‘But the place only lets in visitors the third Sunday of each month. That’s this Sunday. If I can’t go then I can’t go for another month, madam…’

‘But on such short notice, Cat, and with my sister arriving tomorrow with her family… you are very much needed here. I am sorry, but I cannot allow you to go. I promise you may next month. How about that? The third Sunday of August will be entirely yours, to make up for the afternoon you will lose this week. There’s an early train which will get you to town in plenty of time to visit your friend.’ Hester smiles brightly, as if the outing will be a fun one. She shuts the wooden cover of the pressing book and begins to tighten the screws, forcing the boards together with the hapless flowers caught between, flattened, stifled. Cat tries to breathe calmly but feels like her chest is pressed, as though Hester tightens screws upon her at the same time. How can she explain the way London workhouses are? The words will not form sentences, tangled in her desperate thoughts. By next month Tess might have faded and gone. Not dead, necessarily, but the light inside her extinguished, her innocence snuffed out, the spirit of her crushed like flower petals, and no pretty image of it preserved anywhere. Cat has seen people bought out of the workhouse. Empty shells, they seemed. Nothing behind their eyes but echoing space; shadows of loss and despair.

‘Please,’ she tries once more, her voice little more than a croak. ‘It is of the utmost importance. Teresa is a very great friend of mine and it is only because of me that she finds herself put out of her job… I am to blame. I must visit her. I must take her some things to ease the hardship she is left facing…’ she implores.

‘Cat, please. Enough of this. I am sure the girl is being well looked after. The poorhouses are designed for such as her, after all – to give them shelter and food, and a way to earn these comforts. And she will still be there for you to visit next month, and every bit as pleased to see you then as she would be now, I am sure. It is only fair that I have more notice than this of you taking time off. Surely you can see that?’ Hester smiles vaguely, quite unconcerned. Comforts? Cat stares at her, bewildered. Can the woman really think that there is comfort in such places? She stands in front of her, quite still, unable to move; not quite believing what she has heard. Hester continues about her hobby for a while, then looks up with an expression of mild discomfort. ‘That will be all, Cat.’

For the rest of the stifling day, Cat works hard and fast, scrubbing angrily at the flagstones of the hallway until sweat marks a dark trail down her spine; pulling the sheets from the beds with enough force to tear them; chopping vegetables with sharp, agitated carelessness. She cuts her thumb this way but does not notice until Sophie Bell peers over her shoulder, curses in dismay at the sticky red smears all over the runner beans.

‘What in heaven’s name has got into you today?’ the housekeeper asks.

‘I want to leave!’ is all Cat can answer, frustration making her voice tremble and holding her tongue half-paralysed.

‘Well, by Christ, girl, there’s the door!’ Sophie Bell mutters. ‘Hold still!’ She binds Cat’s thumb with a length of clean rag, ties it tightly with string. Almost at once, the blood blooms out through the fabric, unfurling like a rose. ‘You cut yourself deep. Foolish girl,’ Mrs Bell observes, and the words sound profound to Cat – a judgement on more things than Sophie Bell can know.

In the early evening, the rain finally comes. Thick blankets of cloud had lain warm and damp over the house all afternoon, growing steadily darker and heavier. At half past five the first drops fall, warm as bathwater, soft as melted butter. Cat serves the dinner, disgusted by the luxury, the excess; the way the theosophist turns down the meat, his expression blasé, sanctimonious. How many others in the world have need of that meat, Cat wonders? When now it will go back to the kitchen and spoil, and be thrown away and wasted because the cold store is full of this thoughtless young man’s toys. She snatches up their plates with her lips pursed and her face in a frown. And afterwards, when all her work is done, she slips out into the pounding rain and is soaked to the skin in an instant. She takes the vicar’s bicycle from the shed and wheels it clanking along the side of the house, the rain hiding any sounds she might make. By the gate she pauses, swings her leg over the saddle and tips back her head, lets the rain wash away the day and all it brought. Her anger is like a scent on her skin, a clinging stink that she can’t get rid of. The rain almost hurts on her face, it falls so fast. Lightning makes her see red – the inside of her eyelids, glowing. She can feel the thunder in her chest like another heartbeat, irregular and uncomfortable, making her blood run faster. If lightning were to strike her, she thinks, she would not mind. She would not feel it. A hand on her arm makes her gasp.

‘Off out again? In this inclement weather?’ Robin Durrant asks, his voice raised against the onslaught of the rain.

‘What are you doing out here?’ Cat demands, bewildered by his sudden appearance. He holds his jacket above his head but it is soaked, water dripping through it, running down his arms, drenching his shirt.

‘Well, I went to your room but you weren’t there. I guessed you must be leaving for one of your assignations. He must be a very fine lover, to tempt you out in this storm.’ Robin smiles.

‘That he is!’ Cat snaps back at him, but Robin only smiles wider. Splinters of a new worry work their way into her mind. He went to her room? Who knew if he could move softly, if he was careful. ‘Now let me go.’

‘In a second, in a second. I have a job for you. Meet me at the stile along the lane at first light on Sunday.’ Robin runs his tongue along his bottom lip, licking the rainwater there.

‘I will not!’

‘You will. Or I will have to let slip to the Cannings about these evening jaunts of yours. The vicar is very much concerned with the purity and moral probity of his flock. I dare say he would have something to say about it within his own household.’ This he says in a light tone, conversational, even slightly bored. Cat glares at him, tries to see if he would indeed betray her this way, and to guess why he might. ‘First light on Sunday,’ he says again, and grins at her like an excited child, without malice; as if he is not threatening her, not controlling her. Cat snatches her arm away, strains against the pedals to be away from him. She can hardly see in the rain and the dark, she can hardly breathe through the rage in her heart. George is not there for her, but still she pedals as fast as she can, the bicycle careening wildly through puddles, along the little stony lanes. Just to be away from The Rectory; just for the illusion of liberty.