The Unseen (10 page)

We spoke again on the subject of a family, and at her insistence we fell into an embrace to this end, which eventually culminated in my withdrawal. Her tears, which I am certain are not designed to persuade me, nevertheless compel me into these situations. But she is right, and it is the duty of a husband to lie with his wife in a discreet manner, for the begetting of children. I cannot explain my reluctance to her. I cannot sufficiently explain it to myself. But something stops me; something forces me to retreat from the act. I can only think that God has some other plan for me – for us – that He has not yet chosen to reveal. I dare not say such a thing to Hester, who has her heart quite set upon children of her own, and who also seems to need these physical expressions of emotion in a way I do not. But we are made and designed by God, and He guides our hand, if we let Him; so I must heed to my instincts. I pray that Hetty may come to accept this. I hate to think that she may be unhappy
.

1911

On Monday evening Hester comes downstairs from an afternoon nap, drifting through the house on steady feet in search of her husband. She follows the soft sounds of his fingers upon ivory keys to the library, where the upright piano that was a wedding present from her uncle stands amidst piles of papers and hymn books and musical scores. She leans against the door jamb and watches him for a moment, listening to the light notes he plays – odd little phrases, over and over with tiny variations here and there. His head is studiously bowed, exposing the back of his neck, the little hairs there lit golden in the afternoon light. She is suddenly nervous about interrupting him, displeasing him. Since the night of the thunderstorm there has been some unspoken awkwardness between them which makes her hesitate. A moment later, he seems to sense her presence and straightens up, glancing over his shoulder. Hester smiles.

‘I’m sorry, my darling. I didn’t mean to wake you,’ he says, as she crosses to sit beside him.

‘You didn’t,’ Hester assures him, relieved that he seems quite relaxed. ‘I was awake anyway, and ready to rise. Are you writing another hymn?’

‘Alas, I am still writing the same hymn,’ Albert sighs. ‘The same one as for the last three weeks! I can’t seem to get the tune to fit the words … it’s vexing me terribly.’

‘You need a rest, my love,’ she suggests.

‘I can’t. Not until I’ve unknotted it some.’

‘Play it for me. Perhaps I can help.’ Hester sits on the stool beside him, facing the keys.

‘Very well, but it’s nowhere near ready for an audience,’ Albert warns her sheepishly.

‘I’m not an audience. I’m your wife.’ Hester smiles, gently looping her arm through his, loosely so as not to hamper his movements. Albert plays an opening chord to find the key.

‘Oh! Lord God, our father, all around us we see; the fruits of Thy bounty, Thy gifts heavenly! In the crash of the waves and the singing of the birds, we hear Thy true voice and harken to Thy words …’ Albert sings softly, his voice jolting up and down between notes like a child at hopscotch. ‘There!’ He breaks off in frustration. ‘I can’t make that line lie happily within the melody!’ Hester reaches out her hand and plays the last few notes. She hums along a little, letting the tune move to its own rhythm.

‘How about this.’ She clears her throat. ‘In the crash of the waves and the bright song of birds, we hear Thy true voice and harken to Thy words,’ she sings.

Albert smiles fondly at her. ‘Darling, you have a gift for music that I envy, I truly do. You should be composing hymns, not I! Thank you.’ He kisses her forehead, his face bright and open. Hester’s breath gets hitched in her chest, and she does not trust herself to speak, so she smiles, and plays the simple tune again; and there they sit in the hazy sunlight, arm in arm, humming and singing and softly playing.

The household is all darkness and silence by eleven o’clock. The night is still and balmy mild – unseasonably so, perhaps. On soft feet, Cat leaves her room, goes along the corridor and down the back stairs. Already, her feet know which boards to avoid, how to tread so as not to make a sound. Not that much could wake a household grown accustomed to sleeping through the cavernous snoring of Sophie Bell, she thinks. Outside in the courtyard Cat smokes a cigarette, leaning her back against the warm brick wall,
watching the bright red flare each time she inhales. When it fades, it draws patterns in front of her eyes against the darkness. To either side of the house, owls are calling, talking in childlike whistles and squeaks. The sky is an inky velvet blue, and she watches the little bats against it, wheeling and diving, mesmerised by the silence of their flight. Suddenly, there is no thought of her going back inside, of going to bed, lying down in this new, genteel prison she has been sent to. There is too much life, humming in the night air like a static charge. Cat sets off across the meadow, with dew from the feathered grasses soaking into her shoes.

Her eyes grow ever more accustomed to the dark, and she makes her way to the canal, turning left to follow the towpath towards Thatcham. Her heart is beating faster now, with that same excitement as when she and Tess walked to their first public meeting. Only eighteen months ago. It seems like a lifetime. It seems like another world. There is such a thrill of emotion, something she can’t name – almost fearful, something she almost wants to turn away from, but at the same time can’t resist. It causes a rushing in her bloodstream, causes the tips of her fingers to tingle. Where the warehouses and buildings coalesce into the town, a group of men are sitting on the bridge, smoking and talking and laughing. Another girl might see danger, but Cat is not afraid of them.

‘Well, what have we here?’ says one of them, as she walks right up to them, climbs up onto the bridge from the canal side and stands with her arms folded across her chest. She can’t see their faces, just shadows and outlines. The smell of them is in the air all around – sweat, the rank odour of working men at the end of a long, hot day. Beer, smoke, rough canvas clothes.

‘Are you lost, little girl?’ another asks her.

‘I’m neither – lost, nor a little girl. I’m looking for George Hobson,’ she says, the name coming easily into her mouth, although she hadn’t known it was waiting there.

‘Good grief, he’s a lucky bugger then – secret assignation is it?’ the first man asks, with a leer that makes the others laugh.

‘It’s none of your business. Do you know where I can find him, or not?’

‘Oh, she’s a feisty one! That’s a quick tongue you’ve got, miss. I’m not sure how lucky George is after all!’

‘He’ll be along at The Ploughman – in the back room, most likely,’ one of the younger men tells her, speaking for the first time. ‘Do you know where that is? Go on a bit further, and at the next bridge turn right, up to the London road. You’ll find it soon enough.’

‘Thank you.’ Cat walks away to a variety of good-natured catcalls and hisses.

Only at the entrance to The Ploughman does she hesitate, because the doorway is low and the room inside dark and crowded, even though it’s after hours. For a moment, she feels that clawing inside when she is shut in, when there is a chance she could be trapped. But she steels herself, slipping through the crowd in a way a larger person couldn’t. There are a few other women in the pub, but only a few; their blouses tight, the top buttons undone, beer in their hands and red on their cheeks and kisses all over their mouths.
In the back room
, the young man had said. There is a rough wooden door, shut and latched at the far end of the room. Cat makes for it. When her fingers touch the latch, she jumps. A huge roar goes up from the other side, of a hundred deep male voices booming as one. Unease slows Cat’s progress, makes her pause. It sounds like a large and violent crowd is waiting behind the door, and she knows enough of such things to fear them. A hand clasps her wrist and pulls it firmly from the latch.

‘Now, where might you be going, young lady?’ asks a whiskery old man. His skin on her wrist is like a leathery bark, and she twists herself free.

‘Take your hands off me!’ she snaps, her heart lurching.

‘All right, all right, nobody’s trying to interfere with you! I
asked a question, that’s all.’ He slurs his words slightly but his eyes are bright and if he wanted to stop her, Cat sees, he could.

‘I’m here to see George. George Hobson,’ she says, tipping her chin defiantly. ‘He’s in there, isn’t he?’

‘What are you? His woman? Daughter? I thought he had none,’ the man asks curiously.

‘What I am to him is my business. Are you going to let me through or not?’ The man studies her for a moment, chewing thoughtfully on the bedraggled remnants of a cigarette.

‘You know what this is, do you?’ He eyes her dubiously and hooks his thumb at the door. Another roar goes up from beyond it. Cat’s heart beats faster. She clamps her mouth shut, nods briskly though she can’t think what she will find in this restricted room. ‘Go on then, but you’ll not make a scene or I’ll have you out on your ear, got that?’ He leans over, lifts the latch and presses the door open, just wide enough for Cat to squeeze through. Biting her lip, her hands in fists, she does so.

The room is blue with smoke, airlessly hot, and the ceiling even lower and all of wood, like the walls. Cat’s view is barred by ranks of men, their backs turned to her, all jostling and cheering and stamping and wincing, waving their arms, their fists, their pocket-books. Cat skirts the edge of this crowd until she spots an opening, worming her way, unnoticed, to the front. She does not recognise him at first, the smiling man who blushed when she discovered that he couldn’t read. Now he is stripped to the waist, his thick torso slick with sweat and blood. Light shines from the curves and contours of his body. His hair is plastered to his head, and blood comes freely from a cut above his left eye, drawing a bright line down to his chin. But his opponent looks in worse shape. This other man is taller than George, but does not have his solid build. His long arms are thinner, though the muscles stand out along them like knots in rope. Both of them have made their knuckles bloody red and ragged.

When his opponent lands a punch, George absorbs it with an
outward rush of breath, and does not falter. He moves smoothly, weaving like a cat, ducking his head like a bird, more graceful than a man of his size should be. Cat watches him, quite mesmerised. She has never seen anybody look so alive. She breathes deeply, catching the salt of sweat on her tongue; hears the smack of bone on flesh, of knuckles sinking deep somewhere giving, and a collective groan from the crowd in sympathetic pain. Cat presses up against the ropes of the makeshift ring, grasping the rough hemp tightly in her hands as she yells out her support. How different, how powerfully real he seems, compared to the fat policemen in London; the cherubic vicar; her own thin and bony self.

Another punch and George begins to bleed from one nostril, sweat flying as his head snaps to the side. His shoulders slump and blood vessels stand proud along the muscles of his arms. Ugly pink bruises are blossoming around his ribs. But his expression is calm, one of steady deliberation. He knows, Cat senses, exactly what he is doing. What he should do next, what he has doubtless done before; all oblivious to the strain of it and the fatigue and the pain he must feel. His opponent’s face is fixed into a grimace of effort and aggression. George is waiting, she sees. Using the other man’s aggression against him. Making him feel frustrated and eager to wade in, to get the job done. Letting him land a few big punches, letting him see the path to victory, making him impatient for it, making him careless. George waits, he weaves; he blocks a blow that would have closed his right eye – just in time, letting it glance from his face as if next time he might not be fast enough. It works. The other man steps in, drops his guard, pulls back a swing that he means to be the final punch of the night. He takes a fraction of a second to wind up, to twist his whole body behind the blow. When George strikes, his arm moves so fast it’s hard for the eye to follow; an upper cut that hits the taller man under the chin with a force that snaps his head back on his neck. The man drops abruptly, stunned, and lies propped upon his elbows, all bewildered.

George stands poised, but his opponent sinks slowly onto his
back, and out of consciousness. The roar goes up again, deafening, shutting out thought; and without realising it, Cat adds her voice to it, a triumphant yell for George’s victory. Money changes hands, men shake their heads, George is passed a mug of beer, is clapped on the back; somebody throws a blanket over his shoulders which he shrugs off at once, accepting instead a stool to sit down on and a tatty piece of muslin with which to wipe his face. Cat makes her way towards him, wide eyed and inexorable.

‘And I thought you such a gentle soul, when I first met you,’ she tells him, without preamble. George frowns at her for a second, then smiles, recognition flooding his face.

‘Cat Morley, who speaks so well and cusses even better,’ he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Though he is tired and bruised, there’s a gleam in his eye, and Cat recognises it. The same gleam that sent her sneaking out of The Rectory in the dark. ‘I didn’t think to see you here.’

‘There’s precious little entertainment in this town, it seems,’ she says, wryly.

‘True enough. I’d have thought you’d be kept in of an evening though, saying your prayers with the vicar and his wife?’

‘Have you been asking about me?’ Cat demands.

‘Maybe I have, and what of it? It’s you that’s come and sought me out, after all.’ George smiles.

‘True enough.’ Cat echoes him. She smiles, a quick flash of her small, white teeth. ‘Do you always win?’

‘Not always. Most of the time, though I say it myself. There’s few around here who would bet against it, but every few weeks a fellow comes along who thinks he can knock me down.’ George gestures at the loser of the fight, still lying where he went down, and apparently forgotten.

‘Won’t somebody take care of him?’

‘His people are somewhere hereabouts. They’ll pick him up by and by, if they’ve not fallen down themselves,’ George assures her.