The Unseen (35 page)

‘You’re a brazen villain, Cat, to threaten me like this—’

‘You threatened me first, remember? More fool you if you thought I would take it lying down.’

‘Ten pounds, and not a shilling more. I mean it, Cat. Don’t push me,’ he says, standing so close that she must tip back her head to look at him. She can almost hear his heart beating, loud with outrage.

‘Up front. Soon. Before we take any more pictures.’

‘Half now. You’ll have it when I’ve been to the bank tomorrow. Half when we take the next set of pictures.’

‘When will that be?’

‘I can’t say. They will dither some more and take their time to find the right kind of expert to send down to me, I’m sure, once I have suggested the plan. Two weeks, perhaps three.’

‘Agreed.’ Cat smiles. ‘I look forward to receiving my back pay, for services already rendered.’ She turns to go but Robin’s hand strikes out, fast as a snake, and grips her arm to prevent her.

‘If you run off with your fancy man before I have taken more pictures then I warn you, Cat Morley, I will find you and make you pay for it,’ he says, so calmly and assuredly that Cat goes cold. She holds her breath to hide a shiver, and refuses to flinch even though
his fingernails are gouging into her skin. After a silent struggle she pulls her arm free, and glares at him.

‘Be careful, theosophist. Karma might catch
you
up if you did. And my betrothed has twice your weight and reach.’ She fights to keep her voice even when she wants to shriek at him. Her legs feel weak and unreliable. As she turns to go inside, she sees Hester at the window on the stairs overlooking the courtyard. She has seen them talking, stands watching with her face close to the glass to cut out the reflection of the bright lights behind her. Talking is no crime, nor smoking; and yet Cat shivers again, and pretends not to see her, turning her face to her feet as she walks quickly through the door. Again the breeze comes, and lifts the black lengths of her hair, running curious fingers over her scalp, examining, questioning, making her conspicuous.

The next night, Cat knows where to find George. He has a bet to make, though he has a shipment to take west, early the next day – gravel to be moved to Bedwyn for the building of new houses. A few fine spots of rain are falling, hitting her face as she pedals hard, the bicycle clattering along the towpath, skidding here and there on loose stones. Cat squints into the darkness. With the heavy cloud, with no moon or stars, she can hardly see the way. She is upon the bridge before she knows it, the sudden hunched black shape of it looming in front of her, and behind it the weak glow of Thatcham’s street lights. Braking hard, Cat slides to a halt. She dismounts, carefully stashes the bicycle in the bushes at the foot of the bridge, where nobody would see it without first stepping on it; and runs steadily the rest of the way to The Ploughman.

The doorman and the publican know her now, and instead of barring her way they nod, mutter a good evening. A few people inside turn to look at her, to gawk at the girl with the shorn-off hair, who wears no corsets and is rumoured to have slit the throat of her lover, her employer, her father; to have set fire to a church in London; to have robbed a shop, a bank, the mail train; to have done
things so awful that the vicar’s wife is too scared to mention them. Cat’s blouse is damp, and sticking to the skin of her back. Catching her breath, she goes straight through to the back room, into the familiar, claustrophobic stink and roaring din, where bodies cram and press all around and her nostrils fill at once with the pervasive reek of liquor and humankind. It is familiar now, almost dear to her; so far removed from the quiet sounds and cooking smells of The Rectory, from the soapy aroma of clean laundry, the gentle souring of milk in the kitchen, the hot fusty smell of the hallway rugs where the long ticking clock marks the passing of life with the slow swing of its pendulum.

It’s no boxing match tonight, but a fight of another kind. Behind the curses and shouts of the audience, shrill shrieks and cackles can be heard, ugly and enraged. Cat crouches slightly, her face at the height of the men’s hips, and through their jostling bodies she can see the cocks, their feathers fluffed, combs bright red and droplets of blood flying from the spurs on their legs. Bright eyes, flat with hate; their beaks open and panting. They thrust and parry and crane their necks, dancing and stabbing at one another. Across the ring, Cat sees George watching the fight, his face serious. She makes her way around to him, touches his arm to greet him.

‘Why do they fight?’ she asks, curiously.

‘Why do dogs bark? It’s what they do. Two males cannot abide to be near each other.’ George shrugs. ‘Come here to me.’ He puts his arms around her waist, tightens them. ‘You choose, then.’

‘Choose?’

‘Say which bird will win and I’ll bet a penny on it,’ George says. ‘I can’t decide on a winner.’ The heat in the room has put a mottling of dark flecks on the shirt over his chest. Cat puts her hand on the fabric, feels the damp heat of his skin. George leans into her touch, a look of wanting in his eyes. Smiling sharply at him, Cat turns back to the ring. She watches the birds fight for a moment, their bronze and gold feathers shaking, flying; black claws at the ends of grey, scaly legs. Cat has never seen two animals
so set upon each other’s destruction. There is none of George’s measured grace in the way they fight. Only the urge to maim and kill.

‘That one,’ she says in the end, pointing to the slightly smaller bird, whose wings are greenish-black.

‘Are you sure? It looks to be coming off worst.’

‘But look how furious it is about that,’ Cat points out. George calls out to a fat man who has stripped himself of his shirt, and stands upon a chair sweating and wobbling in his stained vest. The coin is passed, the bet acknowledged with a scrap of blue paper. ‘Watch him now,’ Cat says, her eyes fixed on the cut and bleeding birds.

For a while, the smaller bird continues to do badly, falling back from the repeated charges of its opponent, screeching in outrage when spurs rake its body, when its face is pecked and cut. But it never loses the mad look in its eye, and it never backs down or gives up. ‘He’s a fighter. He’ll not let himself lose, even if he dies for it,’ Cat murmurs, her words lost and unheard in the din. With a final surge of strength, the smaller bird launches itself into the air, comes down with its talons aimed at the other’s face. One spur takes out an eye, the other shears a chunk of flesh from the unlucky bird’s face, which bleeds into its remaining eye, blinding it. The wounded bird squats in defeat, shakes its head helplessly. It is soon finished off, pecked to death by the smaller bird, which then stands, wings loose, tongue poking out in exhaustion.

Cat stands mesmerised. She had not known that violence could still shock her. Mistaking her sudden silence, George looks troubled.

‘He’s better off out of it, that dead bird. With only one eye he’d have been no use. Turner would have wrung his neck, had he lived,’ he says. ‘Perhaps he would not have wanted to survive it, knowing he’d lost to a smaller bird,’ he adds.

Cat shakes her head. ‘All creatures want to live,’ she says.
Frowning, George collects their winnings from the fat man, and gives half to Cat.

‘I shouldn’t have half – it was your penny.’

‘But you chose the winner. I would have picked the stronger bird for sure, and lost out.’

‘Keep the money. What would I buy with it? I can’t buy myself out of my bonds. Keep it and put it towards your boat – towards what I owe you,’ she insists, pressing the coins back into George’s broad hand. He gives her a puzzled look. ‘And here,’ she says. ‘Here’s more as well.’ She smiles, pulling her purse from her pocket and holding it out to him.

‘What’s this?’

‘I have more money for you – though I don’t know what you paid that policeman. I have some now, and I will have more later; and it’s best you don’t ask where I got it from.’

‘What money? How much, and where did you get it from?’ George asks, leading her out of the crowd towards the edge of the room, where the din is less.

‘Money for your boat. I have five pounds now, and the same again before a month is up, most likely …’ She weighs the purse in her hand. George closes his own around it, pushes it hastily into the folds of her skirt.

‘
How much?
And you brought the whole of it here to be picked from your pocket!’

‘Nobody has stolen it, see. It’s all there, and all for you.’

‘This is far more than I paid for you. I will not take it.’ He sets his jaw stubbornly.

‘But you will take it. And whatever you did not pay to free me, you can keep and put towards the boat. Our boat. Our future, and our freedom,’ she says, seriously. George looks hard at her, thinks for a while.

‘Then … you will marry me?’

Cat looks away, fingers the strings of the purse for a while. ‘No, George. I stick by what I said. But I will come away with you, if
you, if you’ll let me. Will it be enough? When I have the other five pounds – will that be enough to take rooms, to buy the pleasure boat and begin again with it?’ she asks, eagerly.

‘It will be enough. More than enough. But—’

‘No, don’t say but! Say I can come with you! Say I can leave off this life that I hate, and that you will give me a different one.’

‘As my
wife
, Cat, you would have all of that and more,’ he pleads. Pressing the purse into his hand, Cat draws breath to answer but is cut off.

Shrill whistles pierce the air, and the door from the front room is pulled open with the squeal and crunch of splintering wood. Policemen rush in, blowing their whistles and holding lanterns aloft to light the winners collecting their pay, and the losers tearing up their tickets. They fan out to catch as many as they can, scurrying like beetles in their dark uniforms and helmets. In an instant, every man tries to be far from the bloodied birds, tries to be rid of his ticket if it is worthless, or to be gone with it if it will later be redeemed. There is a surge of bodies towards the back doors, which are hastily thrown open, and the crowd knocks Cat off her feet, carrying her away like a piece of driftwood.

‘Oi!’ George bellows, wading after her.

‘Stop there! Everybody, stop there!’ one of the policemen shouts. With her ribs crushed and bruised, Cat fights to regain her feet. The air is suddenly sweet and clear, and she realises she’s been carried clean out through the doors. Eyes searching, she can see no sign of George amidst the struggling bodies. More whistles are blowing, and the sound of running feet in heavy police boots echoes towards her.

The police have pushed from the front of the building, and cast a net at the back to catch the fleeing gamblers. Cat fights her way to the edge of the mêlée, dodging officers left and right. Suddenly she is barrelled from behind, by a man fleeing with his hat pulled so far over his eyes to avoid recognition that he doesn’t even see her, and cannons her to the ground. The wind is knocked from her lungs,
and she stays down for a second, fighting to breathe. Then a voice rises high above the police whistles and the grunts of captured men, loud and incongruous. Cat looks up and sees Albert Canning, approaching through the darkness with a fire in his eyes that seems to light his way. He steps into the pool of light spilling from the pub and there is so little thought, yet so much conviction, suffusing his expression that Cat is chilled by it. In spite of her contempt, and the many weeks she has lived with the vicar, scarcely noticing him, she is suddenly afraid. He wears a smile quite sickly and deranged.

‘Repent! Examine you all the error of your ways! The gravity of your sins! Cast aside these foolish and perilous ways, for they are the path to your downfall, to your destruction, and to the destruction of all that is clean and pure and good in the world!’ the vicar shouts, his voice high and excited, face lit with a zeal so bright that it outshines the electric back room lights. Cat’s heart plunges into her gut, which twists in protest. She coughs, fighting for air, flinching as booted feet thunder past her, near her head and hands and legs. He must not see her. She tries to get up but too soon, and a wave of dizziness forces her back onto the dusty ground. The vicar is walking forwards slowly, one childlike step at a time. He holds aloft a gilt cross fully twelve inches high, which gleams like his eyes. Brandishing it, he inches slowly towards a pair of officers who are wrestling a man to the ground, a man who fights tooth and nail not to be taken down.

‘Leave off me, you filth! I only came down here for a pint!’ the man cries, raggedly.

‘Then what’s this betting slip in your pocket, Keith Berringer, and how come you’ve two weeks’ wages in your purse?’ one of the officers asks. ‘Been saving up for a rainy day, have you?’ he says, and his colleague laughs as rain begins to fall steadily, turning the dust to mud.

‘Repent, my son! Cast off your corrupted ways like an old skin! Be born anew in the love and fear of God!’ the vicar implores, standing as close to the struggling man as is prudent.

‘Christ! You needn’t have brought the bloody church along with you! Haven’t I enough to deal with?’ Keith Berringer complains bitterly.

‘Well, that weren’t our idea,’ one of the officers mutters in distaste, as Albert stands before them, beaming, breathing hard. Still coughing, Cat gets to her knees. She knows it would be better to turn her face away in case his gaze shifts, but she can’t take her eyes from the vicar. If he were to look down, if he were to look to his right, he would see her. Her heartbeat bangs in her temples. She is on all fours like an animal, her fingers sinking into the gritty earth as the rain wets it, her clothes filthy with it. She clenches her teeth but can’t keep another fit of coughing at bay. The spasms in her chest are agonising, and she lets her head droop down, close to the ground. For a second the noises all around recede – the whistles and shouts and stamping feet, the slamming doors and the vicar’s thrumming voice and the laughter of the police – all are lost behind a wall of muffled thumping that storms her ears. Shadows crowd her vision, sparkling with bright motes of light.
Do not faint!
she commands herself. She can’t be arrested, can’t be seen. Can’t be found lying helpless in the mud.