The Unseen (25 page)

Robin Durrant arrives back from Reading in time to stride through to the dinner table, face glowing, hair tousled and untidy.

‘Forgive me. I do hope you haven’t been waiting for me?’ he snaps, looking briefly at Albert, Hester and Amelia in turn; and for once his eyes are too quick, his smile a little strained. There is agitation in his whole expression, Hester notes.

‘Not at all, Robin. Not at all. I trust you were able to find what you needed in town?’ Albert asks. The vicar is as neat and tidy as ever, his soft hair set back, his whiskers neatly combed and trimmed. Hester glances at him, since they had indeed been waiting for Robin, and the hour is gone nine; but Albert’s face is open and unconcerned.

‘Indeed I did. And I called in on my parents while I was there, as it’s been some weeks since I last saw them. My younger brother is visiting, so I was able to see all three at once,’ he says, sitting almost before the ladies have settled, dropping his napkin into his lap with a flick of the wrist, and reaching for his glass before realising that Cat has yet to fill it. Albert notices the gesture, and gets up himself to fetch the wine from the sideboard. Hester can feel Amelia’s questioning gaze across the table, as the theosophist’s glass is filled before hers, the female guest’s.

‘And how were your family? In good health, I trust?’ Hester asks.

‘Oh yes, very well.
Very
well, thank you …’ Robin says, with odd emphasis.

‘This is your brother the doctor, is it not?’

‘Surgeon, actually – and there is a difference, quite an
important
one, as he would no doubt be quick to tell you,’ Robin says, acidly. The room, even though the windows were left open all afternoon, is close and warm. Robin runs a finger around the inside of his collar; a film of sweat is making his face shine.

‘It
is
too warm in here, isn’t it?’ Albert says. ‘When the maid comes up I shall have her open the windows again.’ But moments after Cat does as she is bidden, the first moths and other insects begin to invade the room, cannoning headlong towards the lights and making Amelia emit little screams of horror. Cat closes the windows again, and gazes with an expression of mild amusement at the array of winged life circling the room. ‘That will be all!’ Albert snaps at Cat, whose face hardens as she turns to go. Hester happens to look at Robin, and is sure she sees the merest of winks narrow his right eye as he watches Cat go; but when she looks at Cat the girl’s face is averted, her shoulders set.

‘I recently asked my class at the Bluecoat School what they thought fairies looked like, and what they thought they did. All of them had an opinion, and they drew me some lovely pictures,’ Hester says in the strained pause that follows. Robin nods, a frown still ghosting the skin of his brow.

‘Pretty little girls with butterfly wings, I would guess?’ he suggests, curtly.

‘Yes, variations along those lines, certainly,’ Hester agrees.

‘I think a great many children are in fact clairvoyant, until the onset of puberty causes the mind to close off, and earthly distractions to mar the inner vision,’ Robin says. ‘That’s why they’re all so familiar with the elementals – and why stories of fairies abound in children’s fables. I should very much like to come along
and talk to the children in your class about what they’ve seen, Mrs Canning.’

‘Oh, well, of course you might have, Mr Durrant, but I’m afraid the school is closed now, for the rest of the summer. I shan’t be teaching again until after the harvest.’

‘Oh. Pity.’ Robin shrugs.

‘But why should these nature spirits take on human form? Why should they assume the forms of girls at all, albeit with wings and other non-human attributes? If they are the guardians of the plants and trees – the souls of these plants, as Hester put it earlier – then surely they should look like the plants?’ Amelia asks, in a tone of open scepticism. Hester feels her heart beat faster, and a prickle of unease makes her shift in her seat. She sends a silent plea to her sister for peace. Robin smiles tightly into his soup for a moment before answering.

‘Why, because the elementals are able to reach into our thoughts, of course – into our very minds, and take on the forms that they find there; forms in which they can present themselves to us and be understood. Forms that they find beautiful, and which we do too.’

‘They can read our minds?’ Albert asks, sounding slightly appalled by the idea.

‘Certainly – perhaps not in a lucid or coherent way, but to draw upon images and feelings, certainly. To pick up emotions and the vibrations of a person’s inner energy, most definitely,’ Robin says, gazing so intently at Amelia that she is forced to look away.

‘But their behaviour is purely … functional, is it not?’ Albert asks, as if keen to clarify things to the women.

‘Indeed. They act solely within the bounds of their purpose, that is, to distribute energy to their charges. They are carrying out abstract orders from their superiors, the
devas
– a race akin to a lower order of angels.’

‘A lower order of angels? Indeed?’ Amelia asks, not hiding the doubt in her voice. ‘And what do
they
look like?’

‘I have never seen one myself. It would take a higher degree of initiation than I currently possess, though one day I hope to progress to such a level. Those who have seen them describe their enormous size, and the tremendous power of them. They have been much associated with ley lines, and the earth’s own massive energy flows. I believe that it is the
devas
who lie at the core of our folkloric traditions of dragons and giants.’

‘Dragons?
Indeed?’ Amelia casts an amused glace at her sister.

‘I can assure you there is nobody more knowledgeable about these beings than Mr Durrant, Mrs Entwhistle.’ Albert speaks up, defensively. Thoughts chase visibly across his face and cast troubled shadows over his eyes. Hester wishes she could reach out and take his hand, but it would not do at the table.

‘Oh, I’m sure of that,’ Amelia says, with an ironic tilt of her brows. Robin smiles, a narrow, thoughtful smile, as though at a private joke. Hester searches desperately for a way to lead the conversation in a different direction, but Robin speaks again before she can.

‘There is plenty of evidence, in spite of the basic nature of these elementals, that they are leading lives of greater freedom and joy than all of mankind. The purpose of theosophy is to redress this imbalance; to allow mankind, in the full knowledge of his position and condition, to live more freely, less caught up with the mundane and the material,’ he says, putting down his spoon and lacing his hands before him on the table. ‘Geoffrey Hodson, a very great clairvoyant, has witnessed undines – water elementals – in Lancashire, sporting in the waterfalls of a fast-flowing stream. The creatures, some twelve inches in height, were hovering in the rainbows cast by the spray, absorbing the vital energy from the sun and water until it grew too great for them to contain. He saw the effort and concentration with which they gathered and held the stored energy until they were fit to burst. Then they released it in a powerful moment of climactic euphoria, their colours flaring to great vibrancy, their eyes shining with expressions of extreme joy and rapture, after which they fell into
a dreamy state of relaxed bliss.’ Hester stares at her soup, at her spoon frozen above it in her hand. She doen’t dare look up at anybody at the table. A scorching blush floods her cheeks.

‘And what are we to make of this event?’ Amelia asks, frostily.

‘That perhaps by the constraint of our own … natural rhythms … with social rules and conventions, we remove ourselves yet further from the elemental plane, and the divine processes of nature,’ Robin says, his voice entirely innocent of any impropriety. ‘The ecstasy of the undines visibly nourished the water and the plants surrounding the stream. They absorbed this gathered life force upon its release.’

‘Are you suggesting that … humans might achieve something similar to this?’ Amelia asks, though Hester inwardly implores her to desist. Robin glances from Amelia, to Albert, to Hester, who feels his gaze upon her and can’t help but look up.

‘I’m suggesting … it couldn’t hurt to try,’ he says. In the silence, the moths and flies buzz and bump against the glass chandelier, making the little drops twist, sending small sparks of light to bounce from the walls. Albert clears his throat.

‘Another slice of bread, Mrs Entwhistle?’ he says softly.

Cat does not sleep on Saturday night. She thinks of the moths in the dining room, which will be sleepy and dazed or dead by the morning, clinging to the folds of the curtains and the corners of the casements. For some reason it bothers her, that they’ve been lured in and imprisoned on the whim of the vicar. The sister is very beautiful, with the same blue eyes as The Gentleman. Cat was taken aback when they first swept over her, first locked onto her own eyes. She expected to be scolded, or instructed. She expected to be recognised, but the blue eyes carried on, brushing lightly, carelessly over her features in the way the rich always look at servants; and she was pointlessly affronted. Long after midnight there is a loud bump from the floor below. Cat winces, her pulse speeding up. It could be one of the children, out of bed; it could
be Robin Durrant, sneaking about for whatever reason. Beautiful, careless, treacherous Robin Durrant.
What does he want?
She had wanted to sleep a little. George is due back the following day, by noon. In the evening she will see him, and she had not wanted to look haggard; to look grey or flat. But sleep will not come. She is waiting, listening too intently.

Death comes to stalk her room, to offer cold company. Cat slides into an exhausted trance, and returns to her mother’s deathbed: gloomy and dark behind drawn curtains, the iron smell of blood in every corner and the lurking reek of death behind that, not improved or hidden by the flowers she bought and set about the bed, or the herbs she threw on the fire. Her mother’s pillow was encrusted with crimson. Each time she coughed, more bright red sputum came up. She turned her head weakly to the side, let it soak into the cotton sham. They had given up trying to blot it with handkerchiefs. They did not own enough of them. She could no longer lift her head to spit into a bowl, and Cat could not lift her to do so, not every time. So many times. Consumption, the doctors pronounced, months before, with no hope or promise or hint of comfort in their voices. And it did consume her – she was a wraith by the end, sunken in on herself, robbed of speech, of strength. Her eyes dulled to grey, like her hair and her skin. One more shadow in the room. So unlike herself, so lifeless already that Cat only knew she had died because the scraping of her lungs quietened, and then stopped. There was no change in her appearance. Cat stood and watched her for a while, and was not sure what to do. That ragged wet rattle of air, as regular as her own heartbeat, had been her company for so long that the silence unnerved her. She stood, and she trembled, and she listened until the silence hurt her head. She had been twelve years old at the time.

At the first lightening of the sky, Cat is up, shaking off the impression insomnia gives of years having passed, of ages of man dawning and dying whilst the night has ticked slowly by. There are
kinks in her spine, knots in her muscles from working all day and then lying too long in one position. When she stretches, joints pop. She arches her back like a dancer, feels the sinews burning back to life. Cat washes her face, the trickle of water into the basin as loud as thunder cracks; combs the raven feathers of her hair; dresses in silence and slips down the back stairs on the softest feet. The house is silent now, no movement of person or structure, of trapped moth or sleepless child. The air is as still and smooth as a silk blanket, softly grey. Cat lifts the latch on the back door as carefully as she can, skirts the edge of the garden until she can escape through the side gate, into the lane. The sky glows palely, a non-colour somewhere between grey and yellow and blue; the sun is not yet near the eastern horizon. With her stomach hot and empty, Cat thinks back, tries to remember when she last ate. She picks a handful of wild strawberries from the hedge, and bites each one deliberately, liking the sharp burst of juice between her teeth.

Robin Durrant has beaten her to the stile that crosses into the meadows. Cat pauses when she sees him, surprised. She had half thought he would not come, half thought nobody but she existed at this hour. But of course this is an illusion, brought on by loneliness. From the far side of the village a cow bellows, its plaintive cry echoing through the still air from where milking has already begun. Robin Durrant looks up when he hears her coming, his face indistinct in the near dark. Cat pauses, keeping her distance, and she sees the pale flash of his teeth.

‘You can come closer, I won’t bite you,’ he says, softly.

‘I have scant idea what you will or won’t do. And I’ll stay right here until you tell me what this is about,’ Cat replies.

‘Come on. Let’s get away from the road a bit. I don’t want anybody seeing you.’

‘What does that mean? Where are we going?’

‘Into the meadows. I’ve found the perfect spot.’ He holds up his hand to help her over the stile, but Cat does not move. She sets her jaw, stares hard at him. Robin shakes his head, lowers his hand.
‘Look, I swear to you that I have no intention of laying a finger on you. I give you my word.’ Cat considers this a moment longer and then relents, vaulting over the stile and still ignoring his proffered hand.

‘What use is the word of a charlatan?’ she mutters, walking to one side where she can keep her eye upon him. He has a broad leather bag over one shoulder and his Frena camera in the other hand; he swings it nonchalantly as they go.

‘A charlatan, am I? That’s a strong word, Cat Morley, and not a fair one at that. What makes you call me it?’

‘I know what I see. Who but a charlatan would charm the vicar, befuddle his wife, and blackmail the maid all in the same day? You’re like a snake that dazzles with its beauty and grace, before it strikes,’ Cat tells him.