The Unseen (20 page)

*

Friday morning is hot as soon as the sun clears the horizon. Hester sits at her dressing table and starts to pin up her hair, feeling how damp it is close to her scalp. Albert is long gone from the room. She isn’t even sure, looking at the smooth rise of his pillow, that he came to bed at all. But she herself has been so restless in the night, and made such a knot of the sheets, it is hard to tell. She gazes at the pristine pillow, so bright where the sun lights it that it’s almost painful to look at. Her thoughts turn to the theosophist’s words, the many, many words he has spoken since his arrival; most of them to Albert. Words like drops of rain, falling from his lips. Albert seems to absorb them all like dry ground. She sees it on his face – that little frown of distraction, the way his eyes sink out of focus. Lately it seems that she doesn’t see Albert unless she sees Robin Durrant as well. The theosophist is always right beside him. Or perhaps it is Albert who is always right beside Robin. Hester sighs.

As she pats cold cream into the corners of her eyes, she begins to compose a letter to Amelia in her head.
I wouldn’t mind as much if I had some idea of how long he might intend to stay
… she drafted.
Bertie’s stipend is as modest as ever it was. Modest enough to prohibit the telephone I would love to install. And yet we can apparently support this young man for as many months as it will take him to finish his project!
How she would love to hear her sister’s voice. But even if they’d had the funds, Albert would probably still refuse her a telephone – his mistrust of modernity growing ever stronger.
I think if he could he would ban motor cars, dismantle all the trains and roll up the track! Thank heavens he can see the merits of electric lights, at least
. But now it sounds like she is criticising Albert as well as their house guest, and, suddenly feeling like a sulky wife and a graceless hostess, Hester discards the imagined letter. The bedroom is suddenly too quiet, too still. Hester feels desperate to talk to somebody.

Down in the parlour, she finds Albert sitting behind the morning paper, a dejected expression on his face. The theosophist, for once, is nowhere in sight. Hester stoops to kiss Albert’s cheek.

‘Good morning, my love. How are you?’ she says.

‘I am quite well, Hetty. Quite well,’ Albert replies, distractedly. Hester’s smile fades.

‘I had no idea you were waiting for me. I’m so sorry to have taken such a long time to come down! I thought you would be out with Mr Durrant for some time yet,’ she tells him.

‘That’s quite all right. It gave me a chance to read the papers before the day began and more important things presented themselves.’

‘How is it that you didn’t go out with Mr Durrant this morning?’

‘Well, now. We are trying out a theory of his. Yes, a theory. But I’ve been reading some troubling things in the paper this morning,’

‘Oh? Nothing too dire, I hope?’

‘The police arrested seven men for gambling just the other evening. They have appeared today before the magistrates for it. Gambling – on a cock fight, of all things! Not two miles away in Thatcham – can you believe it? Of all the bloody and brutal ways in which a man can chance his luck, they choose to pit two poor dumb beasts against each other.’

‘Oh, that is really too cruel! What a vile thing to do,’ Hester exclaims.

‘One of the men was Derek Hitchcock, from Mile End Farm. A Cold Ash Holt man, a member of my very own flock,’ Albert reports, his voice tinged with anxiety, face pinched with worry.

‘Darling! You can’t expect to be able to keep every last soul of the parish permanently on the straight path! Don’t be so hard on yourself. Men will err – it’s in their nature. You do an admirable job in bringing them closer to the word of God—’

‘But this is just the smallest part of the impurity surrounding us, Hetty! It lies everywhere, in the hearts of all men, and women! Just the other day I called unexpectedly upon the Smith household, only to find the reason for their oldest girl’s absence from church all too apparent – she is with child, Hetty! Heavy with child and only
seventeen herself, and unwed.’ Albert shakes his head, casting a look of desperation up at his wife. Hester sinks onto the arm of his chair and grips his hands tightly.

‘Albert! Many a young girl has been led astray by the sweet whisperings of her beau … it’s to be lamented, of course, and is a tragedy for her, but she may yet atone – she may yet return to God’s favour, if she repents. And by far the majority of people here are good and kind and honest folk. Dear Albert, what’s brought on this dismay?’ Hester presses her hands tenderly to the sides of his face. Albert pulls away slightly, as if unwilling to meet her gaze, but Hester does not relinquish her hold.

‘It was something Robin said to me, yesterday morning,’ he confesses, wearily.

‘What did he say?’ Hester demands, more sharply than she intends. Albert glances at her, startled, and she smiles. ‘What did he say, dearest?’

‘He asked me not to go out to the meadow with him in the mornings any more. He suggested that he might have more success with his photographs if I were not there with him. In case my untuned and impure vibrations are off-putting to the elementals.’ Albert’s voice is laced with unhappiness.

‘Your impure vibrations? But this is nonsense! There is nobody purer of spirit than you, Albert …’

‘He means more that I am untrained, theosophically speaking. I am not able to tune my inner self to … harmonise with them. It may be why we have not yet managed to capture them on film, and I have not managed to see them again. Because of my lack of initiation.’

‘But … it was you who found them in the first place, Bertie! How can you be the reason that they stay away?’ Hester asks.

‘They granted me a glimpse of themselves, it’s true. Perhaps I had indeed stumbled unaware into some trance-like state that I cannot recapture …’Albert speaks as if to himself. ‘Perhaps that was it. Perhaps since seeing them my mind has been too unquiet,
and I too caught up in the selfish desire to see them again, and to learn more. I must be a rough, clanging cymbal to them, so great has been my desire! Yes, I see it now – I have been foolish, and unworthy!’

‘Albert, stop that at once! You have never been foolish in all the years I have known you – since we were children, Bertie! And never
once
unworthy. Only ever good and kind and generous. And if this
theosophy
is teaching you anything other than this, then it is plain wrong, and perhaps it would be better to learn no more!’ Hester cries.

‘Hetty!’ Albert snaps, sharp with sudden anger. ‘Don’t say such things!’ Hester recoils, stung.

‘I do hope I’m not interrupting,’ says Robin Durrant, appearing in the doorway as if he’s been there all the while, one hand in his pocket, the other curled around his Frena camera. Hester jumps up from the arm of the chair and turns away, startled. Her skin prickles beneath her collar, and she feels breathless.

‘Ah, Robin! No, of course not. Of course not,’ Albert says, his cheeks colouring. In the uneasy silence, Hester takes a steadying breath.

‘Good morning, Mr Durrant. I trust you slept well?’ she says at last, her voice tight, higher than it should be. Robin Durrant smiles at her, in the languid way that he does, the curling shape moving slowly outwards from the centre to the far corners of his lips. For an instant his gaze seems to look right through her. She feels her face glowing hotly, and longs to look away, to put her hands over her eyes like a child. But that will not do. Her pulse beats hard in her temples, blood thronging to her cheeks in a blush she knows he can see. He holds her this way for a second longer, and then blinks, letting his eyes roam the room, quite at ease.

‘I did, thank you. I always do here – the quiet of the countryside is such a tonic for body and mind. Don’t you think?’

‘Oh yes, quite so,’ Hester manages. She clears her throat, knots her fingers together in front of her skirts. ‘I’ve always found it very
peaceful,’ she adds, but Robin Durrant is looking at the vicar, and that same slow smile has quite a different effect. Albert seems to catch his breath, and a tentative smile of his own rises up to his eyes.

‘Well?’ he asks, and Robin Durrant smiles wider.

‘Yes, Albert.
Yes
. I have seen them!’ he says. Albert claps his hands together in speechless joy, holding the tips of his fingers to his mouth as if in prayer, his earlier anxiety evaporating. A sour worm of something fearful coils itself around in Hester’s gut, but she cannot for the life of her either define it nor think what she should do about it.

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.