The Unseen (45 page)
‘Go to bed, Hetty. Albert will have to take care of himself tonight,’ he says, impatiently. Hester swallows. Her throat is parched, ragged. Slowly, with limbs that do not wish to obey her, she pulls her dressing gown closed, and fumbles for the belt. Staring at him all the while, her eyes wide in her face, mind racing now. Robin sees this expression of hers – of incomprehension, of shock. He rolls his eyes a little, scornfully, and then comes to her, puts his hand to her face again. ‘It’s all right, Hester. Nobody need ever know. It’s quite natural – it’s not a crime, you know! Go to bed and sleep. I shan’t ever tell a soul, I swear.’ He speaks in a bored tone, as if to a child. That is all she is to him, Hester sees. A weakling, a fool to be used to his own ends. Now Hester snatches her face
away from him. Now she can move, on numb legs, clumsy and slow. But she can’t lay all the blame on him, she knows. She walks from the room, eyes fixed and flat like a somnambulist’s. She takes the stairs steadily, quietly, and the burden of her guilt grows heavier with every step.
Now that she has made up her mind, has settled things with George, Cat itches with impatience. She longs to be gone, to be away with him, and heading for the coast on a train. Not for half a day, which is all the time off she has in a week; not for one precious full day, which she is granted for each two months she works. But for two days, three, four. However long they want, with the silver-grey sea stretching to the far horizon, and the tang of salt water clinging to their skin. She thought for a while that she should give notice to Hester, give some kind of warning. But then she remembers Hester’s broken promise, to send her out to see George, and the motto she embroidered, which hangs on Cat’s wall: ‘Humility is a servant’s true dignity.’
Then I have neither
, she thinks with grim satisfaction. The words repeat themselves in her thoughts, giving her face an expression of disgust, and she hardens her heart against the vicar’s wife. Let her find her breakfast table unset one morning; let her be obliged to lift a finger for once. But she finds it hard to stay angry with the woman, as she takes their dinner up to them in the evening. Hester has dark circles under her eyes, red rims around the lids. Her face is drawn, her expression stunned. She looks wholly miserable, and Cat must repress a flicker of unease, the unexpected urge to seek her out, to find out the cause of her dismay.
In the end, she tells herself that she could do nothing to help Hester, even if she knew what troubled her. She is a servant, a nonentity. Not a person, not a friend. The night is sultry again, warm and balmy, and the breeze that blows is so soft it feels like a lover’s fingertips, brushing her arms as she stands, and she smokes, and she waits for Robin Durrant to appear. She does not have to wait long. All she need do now, when she wishes to speak to him, is catch
his eye at the dinner table. She kicks off her shoes as he walks towards her, feels the warm bricks of the courtyard on the soles of her feet, and the springy tufts of moss between them, like strips of fine carpet. Everything feels more real, now she knows she will be free. Everything is more alive, and brighter.
‘Well? How goes it with you, my costly model and muse?’ Robin asks, as he lights his own cigarette, pushes back the flap of his jacket and stands with his hand in his pocket, like a schoolboy.
‘I’m leaving, Robin. If you want more pictures, it must be soon. Tomorrow, or the day after.’
‘What do you mean tomorrow or the day after? The Theosophical Society hasn’t decided what to do yet, who to send down … it can’t be so soon! We’ll have to wait a bit longer …’ He frowns.
‘No, I won’t wait. I mean it, theosophist. I have plans, and I shan’t change them for you, much as I would like to collect my next wage from you. Tomorrow, or the day after,’ she insists.
‘What do you mean “leaving”, anyway? Going where? How do you plan to go anywhere when you’re watched all day long, and locked in at night?’ he says, petulantly.
‘I have my means,’ she says, and smiles. In her pocket the skeleton key sits, its weight a constant reassurance.
‘You can’t go until I’m ready! I thought we had an agreement … I thought I told you—’
‘Well, I’m tired of being told! What can you do to stop me? Come after me, when my George can knock down any man in a fifty-mile radius? If you try it, I will start talking about these pictures of yours. To anybody who will listen – and I’m sure I could find people who’d be interested to hear.’ She leans towards him, takes a slow drag of her cigarette, fixes him with a baleful stare. ‘I’m
tired
of being told. By you, by everybody. So now I’m telling you. For the agreed sum of money, I will let you take my picture tomorrow or the next day; and I will keep my mouth shut for ever after. That’s the last offer I’ll make to you. I’m tired of it
all
.’ As she speaks, Cat feels her resolve like a solid shape inside her. She will let
nothing
stand in her way.
Robin glares right back at her for a minute, and then breaks into a wide grin. He laughs softly, pirouettes on his heel with his head thrown back, appealing to the sky at such treatment.
‘God! I’m going to miss you, Cat!’ he says. Cat blinks, bewildered. ‘You truly are a breath of fresh air. It’s a shame we’ve met under such odd circumstances, and you a servant. I think we could have been friends,’ he says, still smiling at her.
Cat thinks about this for a moment. ‘I very much doubt it,’ she says at last. ‘You’re a liar and a hypocrite.’
‘Very well then, Black Cat. You truly are as stubborn as a cat, and as difficult to govern. The day after tomorrow, then. Dawn, at the same place. We shall capture the elemental again, and I shall have to perform some magic when they send down their witness – if they insist on supplying their own film for the camera. Some switching of frames in the dark room –
voilà
!’ he cries suddenly, throwing his hands wide like a magician. ‘I shall win them over yet, just you watch.’ Cat slips her shoes back on, grinds her cigarette out with her toe.
‘I won’t watch. But you carry on.’ She pauses. ‘What’s wrong with Mrs Canning? What’s happened?’ she asks, in spite of herself. Robin’s smile fades, and an expression flits over his face that Cat can’t decipher. Anger? Or guilt?
‘Oh, don’t worry about Hetty. She’ll be fine. A little marital strife, I believe,’ he says, in a stilted voice. Cat thinks to press him harder, but thinks again.
‘Don’t forget to bring the money,’ she says, and leaves him there.
Later, once Sophie Bell is safely out of earshot, Cat turns back the lock in her door. She opens it a few inches and waits for her pulse to return to normal, her breathing to grow deeper, more even. Still feeling sick, and with her head aching, she sits on the edge of the bed, uses the night stand for a table, and writes two letters.
Dear Tessy – well, I have come up with a plan, just as I promised. Soon, I will have left this place and gone away with my sweetheart, whose name is George Hobson. If you ask around, someone will know how to find us. I say this because I will write to the mistress here, before I make my escape, and beg her to send for you to replace me. I think she will do as I suggest. I have told her a little of your situation, and how we came to be arrested, and I know she will do the right thing. So expect to hear from her soon, because not this morning but the next, I am leaving with George. I can’t tell you the joy and anticipation I feel, Tess! To be making my own way from now on, and not governed by anybody. I feel as though a new life is about to begin, and one in which at last I can be happy. I’m so excited I can barely keep a straight face as I go about the chores! I hope that you will be more content here than I have been. You always were better than me. The vicar’s wife is a good woman, and always tries to be kind. But there are alternatives if you can’t settle, Tess! I met a woman at the butcher’s shop just the other day who had worked for fifteen years at Cowley Park, which is a huge house near to here. Now she works at the telephone exchange. She is a professional! And out of service. Things are changing, Tess, and only for the better I believe. However you find it here, it will be better by far than Frosham House. I will be in touch, I promise. We will see each other again soon. Look after yourself, and please be strong enough to come here, and take my post
.
With my love, your friend, Cat
Mrs Canning – if you are reading this it is because you have sought me out and found me gone. I apologise that I did not give notice, but sometimes a person must follow their heart and their impulses, and strike a blow for what they believe. I can no longer live as a servant, and as a free person I leave this house without a by your leave. One thing I beg of you – please send for Teresa Kemp to be my replacement. She is in the workhouse, as I told you. It is called Frosham House, on Sidall Road in London. She is a good, sweet girl; not at all like me. Her current misfortune is all my doing and none of her own, and she will be a good girl for you, and work hard. Tell Mrs Bell to be kind to her. I know Sophie has a soft heart behind that sharp tongue of hers, and Tess will have much need of the former when she comes down. She is little more than a child, still
.
I also must tell you another thing. Perhaps you have wondered at my lack of propriety, and my unwillingness to accept a life of servitude. I place the blame for this at my own door, with my own temperament, but the blame also lies with my father. He gave me an education far above my station, and taught me that there was a wide and mysterious world that I would never see. This was a grave injustice on his part. It has caused me always to question my station in life, and when I was told that my blood was to blame – my breeding that is – again he was the sticking point. My father is your uncle – the very Gentleman who sent me to you. My mother worked in his household at Broughton Street when she was younger, and they – at his behest – were lovers, and she became pregnant with me. She was forced to leave her job, of course, but my father looked after her and made sure she was provided for; and when she died I was taken into his household. My mother told me this on her deathbed, and she was a woman who
never
lied. Perhaps this summer you have come to learn a little more about the nature and behaviour of men, and will not find this too hard to believe. We are cousins, Mrs Canning; and if my mother thought it best that I know the truth about my parentage, nevertheless that knowledge has only ever caused me anguish. I was born neither one thing nor the other, neither gentlewoman nor servant, and so I intend to be neither, from this day onwards. I intend to make my own path
.
Robin Durrant is treacherous, and not to be trusted. I think you know this already, but I say again – if you can remove him from your household, do so at once. Perhaps I have no right to offer you advice, but since we are not to meet again, I shall offer it anyway. I know something of your troubles with the vicar. A servant will learn these things, whether they would want to or no. In London there was a gentleman, a friend of my father’s, who came to visit from time to time. He only ever brought with him, as his companions, young and beautiful men, whom he kept and spoilt like pets. He found women inferior to men in all regards, and shunned their company, from his life and from his bed. If you come to suspect that your husband may feel this same way, then you will never be happy until you have left him, or accepted him as he is and sought companionship for yourself elsewhere
.
Goodbye, and please mind what I have written about Teresa Kemp. You have in her an opportunity to do tremendous good. I have written a letter to her, which I will post myself, telling her to expect to hear from you. This is presumptuous of me, I know, but I trust you to do the right and charitable thing. I wish you well, and I hope you can find it in your heart to wish me the same
.
Your cousin, Catherine Morley
Cat finishes these letters with cramps in her hand, the muscles more used to scrubbing than writing. She seals them into their envelopes, addresses each one, and puts Hester Canning’s on the night stand, propped up to be easily visible. She slips Tess’s into her bag, which she has packed with her few possessions, and what money she has saved. Outside the window the moon is mottled and full, as pale as fresh milk. It shines onto a landscape of graphite grey shadows and silvery outlines, and in the perfect quiet and calm, Cat sleeps.
The Rev. Albert Canning – from his journal
TUESDAY, AUGUST
8
TH
, 1911
This is the time. He has told me to stay away, he feels the time is right and I feel it too. He goes with his camera so I know, I know. He will summon them again, he means to take more pictures. I will go, and I will be there, and I will show that I am worthy since I will not announce myself, I will let him go about his great work all undisturbed, and when the images are captured I will reveal that I was there with him, and this will prove that I am ready, and I am pure, and that the elementals can look into the heart of me and will find that I am all I should be. This night has been long but I have waited it out. And all my nights in the meadows were not wasted. Without the sun’s energy the ethereals stay hidden – just as the daisy curls its petals, and shuts its eyes to the darkness, so they sleep. But I have spent long hours, alone and cloaked in darkness, and I have studied my soul and my heart, and I have looked inwards and I have rooted out all lust and material desire, and all the wrong feelings that the devil has sent to torment me of late, and I have scoured myself of it all, and left nothing but the light and pure energy of my astral and ethereal core. I am ready, I know this.
I know this
. Never at prayer alone have I experienced such vivid dreams and feelings. How dead and cold the stones of my church seem now, when all along the real church was all around me, and I could not see it. Until now! The church of the living light and the living breath and the living spirit of all that is holy and good, lying all around us in its green and golden splendour, and I at last have come to see it and to belong to it. And those of impure heart and those whose minds cannot encompass these mighty truths will be left where they are, lower down, further back, below us on the journey, on the ladder to enlightenment. They have many lives left, many turns of the cycle, to atone for whatever sins and misdeeds have rendered them incapable, in this life, of advancement. Even my wife must atone. Like all women, her heart is full of lust and wanting. Now is the time – this very dawn. I am ready and I will go, and I will see, and all will be complete. Dawn is breaking and the sky is clear, and the sun’s holy light begins to touch, to awaken. Soon the dance will begin and I will dance it too, and I will leave this shell of crystallised spirit, and find my true form. I am ready
.