The Unseen (31 page)

‘I truly hope not. Perhaps, for a while at least. He means to go up to London with them, to the headquarters of the Society. But afterwards … I pray he will return to us. To the elementals of our meadows.’

‘You wish him to return?’ she asks, already knowing the answer.

‘Yes, of course. He is teaching me so much … I feel that my mind has been opened, in these weeks since he came to me. The world is quite a different place.’

‘Yes, he has been full of … instruction,’ she says.

‘I don’t know what I would do if he didn’t come back again. I don’t know … how I would continue,’ Albert whispers, in a distracted way, as though to himself.

‘Come now, Bertie – you will always have me, even if house guests come and go,’ she says robustly, putting out her hand to stroke his arm reassuringly. ‘Won’t you?’

‘Yes, of course, Hetty,’ Albert says, not sounding in the least bit comforted.

‘He can’t stay with us for ever, after all. For one thing, we couldn’t afford to keep him,’ she says, pointedly.

‘But can’t you see, Hetty? He’s
right
. Everything he’s told us, since he arrived – and I saw you take some of it with a pinch of salt
– no, don’t deny it. I know you too well, dear Hetty – all of it was
true
. And now he has the means to prove it to the world … do you understand
how important
this is, Hester? How important what has occurred here this summer is?’

‘Yes,’ Hester whispers, and feels close to tears because she does not feel it in her heart. She cannot feel the truth of it, nor share her husband’s conviction. The pictures show her a pretty figure, a thin figure, a barefooted dancer in a water meadow. Try as she might, she cannot see a fairy. And she does not want Robin Durrant back. She wants Albert back – wants him to belong to her again, if not in body then in spirit. She watches him for as long as she can, but while her own eyes grow heavy and her eyelids droop, his stay wide open, gleaming with the light of the heavens in them.

For the first time since she mastered the bicycle, Cat walks the distance to Thatcham. After days without George, she is so eager to see him that it feels almost like fear, makes the tips of her fingers shake and her thoughts buzz inside her skull like trapped insects. It is a mauve and indigo night, the landscape quite visible and full of noisy life – scrabbling movement in the bulrushes, the whirr and clatter of cricket wings, the harsh cries of startled river birds. Fatigue makes her head feel light. She has not slept for a day and a night and a day; has eaten little; has thought of Tess and George and Robin Durrant so much and so intensely that they have blurred in her mind’s eye, spiralling queasily into one another. Her dance in the water meadow could have happened a week ago, or a year, or ten years. Time is behaving oddly. Mrs Bell caught her earlier, up to her elbows in the scrub bucket, clutching a chemise when the water had long since gone cold. When she took her hands out the skin was puffy and wrinkled. Her steps along the towpath are a clock ticking, a metronome. One follows the other, left then right, and by this means alone, she finds her way.

His boat is moored in its usual place, and the cabin light is on. Cat stops beside it, feels puzzled and delighted and relieved. She
walks the gangplank, slowly, carefully, unsure of her own body, her balance. All of the power she felt as she danced has gone now. When George hears her and climbs out of the cabin, she falls into him.

‘Cat! What’s happened? Are you well?’ He has caught even more sun, the skin of his face dark brown but for little pale lines around his eyes, where during the day he squints.

‘No, no, I’m not ill. Just tired. I have not slept,’ she says, smiling drunkenly up at him. He searches her face for a moment; runs his hands the length of her as if to check all is in place; brushes back the short wisps of her hair; plants a kiss on her mouth.

‘Sit down, Black Cat. You look done in, girl.’ He smiles. ‘Look – I bought some beer while I was away. Will you have some?’

‘Ginger beer?’

‘Yes, though I bought plain ale as well if you’d rather.’

‘No, I like the ginger,’ she says.

‘What happened while I was away?’

‘Need anything have happened?’

‘I can see it in your eyes, Cat. Is it bad news?’ George takes two cups from hooks, pours their drinks.

‘It’s all bad news. I am bad news,’ she says, and he waits for an explanation. ‘My good friend Tess, who was arrested and gaoled with me – on account of me, if truth be told – has found herself in the workhouse, with nowhere else to go. She’s only a child! Not yet eighteen, even. And I would have gone to see her today, since today is the only visiting day, but the vicar’s wife would not allow it. And it is all my fault! And The Gentleman … he could have kept her out of it. He could have let her have her old job back … he knows she was no trouble, not really. Not like me. Or sent her here, that’s what he should have done! Sent her here in my stead. I deserved the poorhouse, perhaps, but she did not. She did not.’ The words tumble over one another, and before she knows it, tears are sliding down her cheeks and she can’t keep her throat from closing.

‘Hush now, stop that! It won’t help her to tear yourself up over it,’ George says softly, holding her face in his hard hands, catching the tears with his thumbs.

‘I must help her, though … I must. Perhaps I spoke the truth just now … perhaps that’s it!’ she cries, her eyes widening.

‘Cat, love, you’re not making sense …’

‘She should come here, and take this job. I hate it … I can’t stand it. It’s all lies and … and captivity! But Tess doesn’t fight things like I do. She would be a good maid to them, and grateful as people would say she should be. They must hire her!’

‘And where will you go, if they do? They’ll not keep you both on, I’ll warrant,’ George asks, frowning slightly and catching Cat’s hands as she gesticulates wildly.

‘I’ll leave. I don’t care. I’ll just go … I don’t care where,’ she says, then falls still as she considers her words. ‘I can’t stay there for ever. I can’t be like Sophie Bell. I will turn mad,’ she murmurs.

‘I have an answer to this, perhaps,’ George says quietly. He lets go of her hands, crosses to the far side of the cabin where his kitbag is stowed beneath the narrow bed. He pulls it out, rummages inside for something. ‘I had meant to ask you another way, and perhaps not this evening. But still.’

‘I could find some other job, perhaps. Not as a servant. I could learn to type … Or I could work in a factory somewhere …’

‘That’s just another kind of servitude. Cat, listen to me.’ He kneels in front of her, so that their eyes are level. ‘I have the answer, I’m telling you.’ Cat frowns, struggles to focus her eyes on him, her thoughts on him. There’s a flash of silver in the palm of his hand. ‘This ring was my grandmother’s. I called in on my folk, while I was away. They’ve kept it in case I ever had need of it, which now I do.’

‘You mean to sell it? The money … would not be enough to support …’ Cat shakes her head, gazing at the thin white band.

‘No, I don’t mean to sell it, you dunce. I mean to wed you with it!’ George exclaims. Cat stares at him. ‘I mean to wed you with it,
Cat. I love you, truly. I would have you with me always. And you can leave your post, if that’s what you wish. We can take rooms in Hungerford, until I can save enough for the boat … Find other work if it pleases you, or I’ll keep you, as a man should …’ In the face of Cat’s silence, George’s words stumble to a halt. He looks hard into her eyes, which are inscrutable. ‘Have you no answer for me, then?’ he says, anxiously. Cat puts her hands through his hair, runs them the length of his thick arms. She kisses his neck, his eyes, all over his face, and puts her arms around him. He is more real and alive than anything else she knows, and though she is asleep within seconds, she wonders, at the last, how she will explain her refusal.

Cat wakes, by chance alone, as the sky is turning pale silver. For a while she lies still and wonders why her back aches, and why her feet are cold, and where she is. For a while, she revels in the glorious sensation of having rested. Her stomach rumbles hotly. Then she lifts her head and sees George. No room for two people side by side on the narrow bed. He has lain all night on his back, with Cat on his stomach as though he were a mattress. He snores softly, shifts his spine when she moves, and a spike of fierce love for him startles her. Panic soon replaces it. Dawn is on its way, and she has passed the whole night fast asleep in his arms. In less than an hour she must be washed and dressed and ready to open the house and make breakfast and start the day, yet she is miles away, and has slept in her clothes which are creased and stale. And she hasn’t even got the vicar’s bicycle with her to speed the return journey. She slides to her feet as softly as she can, but George opens his eyes.

‘Where are you going?’

‘It’s morning!’ she snaps, anxiety making her curt. ‘I can’t believe I slept so long … I have to get back! They’ll notice … and I look like a vagrant!’

‘Don’t fret so … the sun’s not yet up, you’ve time.’ George sits
up, twists his shoulders to free up the muscles. ‘Tell you what, for a slip of a thing you aren’t half heavy after a while.’ He smiles.

‘I can’t believe you let me sleep on like that.’

‘You needed it. I was going to wake you when it got late, but you looked so peaceful. So I shut my eyes for five minutes, and must have drifted off as well.’

Cat rakes her fingers through her hair and brushes roughly, pointlessly, at her skirt and blouse. Pulling on her shoes, she turns to climb the steps. George catches her hand.

‘Wait! Wait a second, Cat. You never did answer me. My proposal.’

‘There’s no time now, George,’ Cat says, trying to pull away and be gone.

‘Yes or no – both very short words, and quick to say,’ he counters, and his tone is guarded now. ‘I would be good to you, Cat Morley,’ he adds when she hesitates, won’t meet his eye.

‘I know it. I know you would. But I can’t marry you, George.’

‘Why not?’ he asks, his face falling. Cat hugs her arms tight around herself, suddenly cold and queasy. ‘Why not? Do you love another?’ he presses, sounding both angry and afraid.

‘No!’

‘Am I not good enough for you?’

‘You would be good enough for any woman, George, and that’s the truth,’ she says, sadly.

‘Then why won’t you marry me?’

‘Because you would own me! I won’t be owned, George! By you or anybody … bad enough that I am slave to the vicar and his wife. I would not swap that one kind of slavery for another.’

‘I’m talking of marriage, not slavery …’

‘But it’s the same thing! If you’d only heard some of the accounts I have, from women in London – how marriage has served them, how they have been treated. If I wed you it would be your right to beat me! To take my money, my children, everything I own, though God knows I own precious little … It would be your right to take
your pleasure with me, whether I wanted it or not! To shut me indoors and never let me see the light of day … It would be your right to …’ She runs out of breath, and coughs; finds her hands shaking in fear at her own words.

‘I would do none of those things! Is that what you think of me?’ he asks, stricken.

‘No! I don’t think you would do any of them, George; I speak only of the
state
of marriage, and why I will not enter into it. With you or any man!’ she cries. ‘I
will not
be owned!’

From outside the boat, in the wake of her words, comes silence. George turns away from her, sits back down on the bed and does not look at her. Cat swallows, her throat parched and painful. She hesitates a moment, then climbs out of the cabin and makes her way back towards Cold Ash Holt.

The Rev. Albert Canning – from his journal

TUESDAY, JULY
18
TH
, 1911

Today Robin has gone up to London. He sent a telegraph ahead to propose a meeting with the upper echelons of The Society, and although he had not had a response before he left, I am sure they will be most thrilled to see the evidence he has procured here, and to think and plan in which way best to use it, to further the teaching and enlightenment of the people. It is like walking in God’s very shadow, to know such things are so close at hand. It is a constant distraction, and a glorious one. I can think of little else. I yearn to be in the meadows at dawn, with Robin at my side; to be suffused with the overwhelming sense of
rightness
which overcomes me at such times. Yes, I yearn for it. Afterwards, the human race, in the full light of day, seems a paltry and unworthy thing indeed. I find my parishioners almost disgust me, with their sicknesses and their impiety and their material obsessions and their
lasciviousness
.
Bringing them to the truth would be a task indeed, and I confess, to my shame, that some selfish part of me would rather not try, and would rather keep this exquisite discovery between myself and Robin. But this is not the way of theosophy, and I must work to oppress such thoughts
.

I have not been able to sleep of late. I lie awake until the birds begin to sing, captivated by thoughts of the wonders of the earth, and how close I am coming to communing with them. For
knowledge
is the first step to
enlightenment
,
and from enlightenment the path to a clearer inner vision and higher consciousness unfurls. I think that I cannot sleep because my inner sight is awakening. When I do sleep, in the first hour or so after dawn, I am beset by dreams, most troubling dreams. My own human doubts and fears return to mock me, and to test my resolve. Robin Durrant’s face comes to me often in such dreams, as though he has reached out, and wishes to guide me. Even when I wake, his face remains. He is in all my thoughts, and I feel his benign influence in my every action. The days will be long indeed, and empty while he is away. I wish he had asked me to go with him, so that I could remain at his side and help him in this time of great change
.