The Unseen (11 page)

‘So why do you usually win? That man had longer arms than you, and he was taller. But you beat him easily.’

‘Not that easily.’ George dabs at the cut on his brow, the muslin staining red. ‘What these other fellows don’t seem to know, you see, is that it’s not how hard you can hit that’ll win you the fight, it’s how hard you can
be
hit.’

‘And you can be hit hard, can you?’

‘My father saw to it. He trained me from an early age,’ George says, still smiling but the gleam fading from his eyes.

‘Well, my father was always kind to me, and somehow that was worse,’ Cat says, folding her arms.

‘I heard something said about your father,’ George admits.

‘Whatever it was, it was wrong, I promise you that.’ She stands in front of him, only a fraction taller even though he is sitting down. ‘So, will you buy me a drink with your winnings, or won’t you?’

‘I will, Cat Morley. I will,’ George tells her.

‘You might put your shirt back on,’ she suggests, archly.

With the fight over the pub begins to empty, men straggling off to their homes and their unforgiving spouses. Cat and George walk along to the bridge. The night has darkened to black, and Cat stares blindly along the towpath when they reach it, suddenly loath to set out along it, to return to her cramped attic room and Mrs Bell’s noisy sleep.

‘Let me walk you. Have you not brought a light with you?’ George asks, mistaking her reluctance for a fear of the dark.

‘No. You needn’t, I’ll be fine. The path is simple enough,’ Cat says. They stop walking, turn towards each other, faces blurred by the darkness.

‘Aren’t you afraid, Cat?’ he asks, puzzled.

‘Afraid of what?’

‘To be walking out with me, when you hardly know me. To be seen with me.’

‘I don’t think you mean me harm, but if I’m wrong it’s my own fault. And as for being seen with you – surely if you’ve asked about me you’ll have been told that I’m a sullied outcast, and a criminal, and quite possibly a killer. These are some of the whispers I’ve heard. My reputation can’t be made worse than it is. So, aren’t
you
afraid to be seen with me, instead?’ She smiles, mischievously. George laughs softly, and she likes the sound. A low, bouncing chuckle.

‘I mean you no harm, you have that right. As for the rest of it, I scarce gave it any credit until you came marching into the fight tonight. Now I think, a girl who’ll do that, unescorted and unafraid, might just have done some of the things I heard about!’

‘I did … I did do something. And I have been in prison for it – that part is true. And what was done to me and others like me was far worse than we deserved, far worse than our crime, if crime it was. And after it, I find I’m not afraid. Not of gossip and rumours, or the wretched, petty hags who put them about either,’ Cat says, angrily. ‘And now you will ask me what I did, and what happened thereafter,’ she sighs. Such questions seem to dog her, hanging from her neck like dead weights.

‘No, I won’t. If you want to tell it, I’ll listen; but it’s not my business,’ George says, hurriedly. Cat stares along the water again to where it is swallowed whole by the night. There is a nip in the air now, and she shivers. ‘I’ll walk you back. Not all the way to the door, if you’re worried about being seen. I’ll bet you can move with the stealth of a ghost, when you need to,’ George says.

‘Black Cat, they used to call me – in London. For that very reason.’ She smiles. ‘It’s two miles to the village, that’s four for you to walk, and after you’ve fought tonight. Stay here on your boat, and rest. Don’t feel obliged to play the gentleman this evening,’ she argues. George clears his throat, folds his arms to mirror her.

‘I would walk those four miles to keep talking to you, Cat Morley. How’s that for a reason?’

Cat studies him for a moment, and thinks about insisting. But then she relents. ‘Very well, then.’

A small, high moon sits in the sky like a farthing, and casts a weak light onto the towpath. In places the path is overhung by branches, made narrow by thick borders of yellow flag and willow herb. George insists on taking the lead, although he is tall enough to catch every branch, and send them swinging back for Cat to dodge. He mutters and curses beneath his breath.

‘Perhaps I should lead? I can see quite well,’ Cat says.

George pauses in a patch of open moonlight, and turns to her. ‘Truly like a cat, then?’ he says. In the colourless night he is grey and black, his eyes empty hollows, his expression lost. For a second he seems not-human, some creature made of stone and shadow rather than flesh. But then he puts out one hand and touches her chin, and his skin is warm and dry. ‘You look more like a gypsy by this light,’ he says quietly.

‘My mother told me once that her grandmother was a Spaniard. She was dark like me, my mother, and people always said that I take after her.’ His touch feels strange, unsettling; like an intrusion, but one she finds she does not mind. She reaches up for his hand and keeps hold of it, and even in the dark she can see how avidly he watches her, how rapt his expression.

The house is so quiet when Cat returns to her room that she thinks she is discovered. It feels as though all is poised, tensed and ready to spring shut around her like a steel trap. Even Mrs Bell’s snoring is absent. Cat strips off her clothes and hangs them by the open window to air, to rid them of the telltale smell of beer and cigarettes. Then she lies still on the bed and hardly breathes, and though her heart hammers she feels ready to fight, to spring up and lay about her with her fists, if needs be. If they put hands on her, hold her down, force her. She will not let them again. But these are memories, half brought on by the beer she drank and the sleep she hasn’t had, and slowly she grows calm, and shuts her eyes, and
wonders if George is still out in the meadow where she left him, waiting with his cut and bruised face turned up to the attic windows, in case she were to look out and wave. The thought soothes her, lets her breathing slow and deepen; lets her sleep.

In the morning, Hester, her stomach hot and empty, waits impatiently for Albert to return from his early walk so that they can sit down to breakfast. She abandons the book she’s been reading and drifts into the dining room where the table is set for two. Empty plates waiting, the cutlery laid beautifully straight. In the quiet room, her stomach growls audibly. It is not like Albert to be so late.
How long can a person spend communing with nature?
she wonders, hunger making her anxious.

Suddenly Hester hears the rattle of Albert’s bicycle, and leaps up with unseemly haste to greet him. The front door is ajar, where Cat is polishing the brass letter plate with a piece of soft leather. The vicar bowls through the door at such speed that he runs right into her, grasping her by the upper arms to steady himself.

‘My word, it was extraordinary!’ he bursts out, as if continuing a discussion they’d been having all morning. To Hester’s surprise, Cat lets out a shriek of protest, and fights her way free of Albert’s grasp, scuttling backwards until she hits the wall, and glaring at him with livid eyes. Albert blinks and stares at her as though she’s turned into a snake.

‘Cat! Really, child! Calm yourself,’ Hester exclaims, shocked by the girl’s excessive reaction, the way she seems unable to tolerate his touch. The touch of an ordained man. ‘It’s only Mr Canning! There’s no need to …take fright,’ she admonishes, uneasily. Cat relaxes, and looks at Hester with that odd blankness. It falls like a mask over her actual expression, Hester sees; hiding the girl’s thoughts, leaving her true nature unseen. Hester recoils a little from the baleful stare.

‘Sorry, madam. He startled me, that’s all,’ Cat says, quietly.

‘We’ll have breakfast now, thank you, Cat,’ Hester says, stiffly, hurrying the girl away with little shooing motions of her fingers.

‘Breakfast! Oh, no – I couldn’t eat anything! Oh, Hester! I have had the most marvellous experience! The most wonderful thing has happened!’ Albert exclaims, hurrying forward again and taking her hands, squeezing them tightly. His face is flushed pink with pleasure, his eyes glistening with excitement; even his hair seems affected, standing out from his head at rakish angles.

‘What is it, my darling? What’s happened?’ she asks, her voice high with anxiety.

‘I … I hardly know where to start … how to explain …’ Albert’s gaze slips past her face, falling out of focus into the middle distance. ‘Suddenly words seem … inadequate …’ he says, softly. Hester waits for a moment, then squeezes his fingers to rouse him.

‘Come and sit down, Bertie dear, and tell me everything.’

Albert allows himself to be led into the dining room, and to be manoeuvred into a chair just as Cat comes in with the first plate of eggs and chops, and a basket of bread. Hester takes her seat opposite Albert, helps herself to some bread with what she hopes is not over-eagerness, and begins to spread it with butter.

‘I’m all ears, my dear,’ she says, when Albert does not speak. He looks up at her as she begins to eat, then bursts up from his chair again and paces to the window. Bewildered, Hester chews slowly.

‘I was out walking in the meadows, up by the river, just on one of my usual jaunts. There is a place to the east of here, I don’t know if you have ever seen it, where the river is shallow and shaded from the north bank by willow and elder trees, and the bulrushes are as high as my eyes in places, and the whole of it is sprinkled with wild flowers like a carpet of jewels … The ground forms a hollow there; a wide, shallow hollow where in times of rain a swampy puddle forms, but now in summer it is lush with long meadow grasses and horsetails and buttercups and figwort … The mist seems to linger slightly longer in that hollow. I was watching
it clear, watching its slow rising, and the way it glowed where the sun touched it and I saw … I saw …’

‘What, Albert?’ Hester asks, almost alarmed by the way her husband is talking. Albert turns to her, his face breaking into an incredulous smile of joy.

‘Spirits, Hester! Nature spirits! The very elemental beings that God sends to tend the wildlife and the flowers, to drive all the many workings of his natural world! I saw them at play, as clearly as I see you now!’ Albert cries, his voice dense with emotion. Cat pauses in the act of placing a pot of coffee on the table, glancing from Albert to Hester and back again with an incredulous look on her face.

‘Thank you, Cat,’ Hester says, pointedly. ‘Albert, that’s … quite astonishing! Are you sure?’

‘Sure? Of course I’m sure! I saw them with my own eyes, as clear as day! As exquisite as wild orchids … each of them …’

‘But, what did they look like, Albert? What were they doing?’

‘They were the colour of wild rose petals – white, if you did not look closely enough, but touched with gold and pink and pearly silver if you did, and each of them slender like a willow branch, dressed in some kind of robes … I could not clearly make out the fabric, but that it was pale and floated about them as if it weighed less than the very air; and they were dancing, Hetty! Dancing slowly and gracefully, the way the frond of a plant moves under water – easily and with never a sudden change, their arms first rising and then falling … Oh, Hester! I feel as though I have borne witness to a miracle! I feel like I have been favoured by God with this glimpse at what is usually hidden from man!’

‘Albert … this is remarkable. I mean …’ Hester flounders. Albert is beaming at her, clearly intoxicated by his experience. She frowns at the thought, looking at him closely, and finds herself leaning slightly towards him, inhaling as subtly as she can. But there is no hint of brandy or wine, or anything of the sort. Hester
smiles uncertainly. ‘Quite … unprecedented,’ she says, lamely. ‘And you truly believe that these creatures—’

‘No, no – do not call them creatures, dear heart! They are not of the same ilk as the rabbits and the birds … these are
Godly
things, sacred beings much higher than us. Compared to them we are but cloddish clay figures!’ he says, triumphantly. Hester can’t think what else to say. Albert seems so strange and passionate – she hardly knows him at all.

‘But … don’t you understand what this means?’ Albert demands, turning to Hester and seeming suddenly to notice her hesitancy. Hester smiles as best she can, and opens her eyes brightly to show that she is ready to hear what it means, ready to accept what she is told; but this empty anticipation seems to disappoint Albert, and he slumps a little, his face falling. In the steady pause that follows, Hester fingers her cutlery, longing to cut open the chop on her plate but sensing that to do so would spoil the impression of avid attention. ‘I must write at once to Robin Durrant, the theosophist,’ Albert declares, collapsing back into his chair.

Cat goes back to the kitchen and slaps the empty breakfast tray onto the table top.

‘The vicar’s seeing fairies,’ she announces blandly. Mrs Bell’s head comes up from the bread oven, sweaty and red.

‘What’s that now?’ she asks. Cat throws her hands up, at a loss.

2011

Leah went to meet her best friend, Sam, in a café not far from where she worked. She chose a table in a far corner, away from the window, and sat down to wait. It was mid-morning on a grey Tuesday in early March; Leah had been back from Belgium for a week and she still felt shaken, oddly seasick, after the trip; after seeing Ryan, and the body of the dead soldier. Both of them unsettling, compelling, frightening. Leah ordered coffee and sipped it scalding hot when it arrived. It steadied her a little, and moments later Sam burst in through the door, moving with her customary haste, all elbows and knees, and shaking her head in pre-emptive apology when she saw Leah.

‘I’m so sorry I’m late! I couldn’t get away – Abigail is being a prize bitch this week and really putting the boot in … everyone knows the real reason but we can hardly say so. She’s pretending it’s because she’s seen our interim figures for this quarter, and they’re not good enough. Sorry. Sorry!’ she said breathlessly, kissing Leah on the cheek and squeezing her into a quick hug.

‘Stop apologising!’ said Leah. ‘I expect nothing less. And you know I’ve never minded sitting and people-watching.’ She had known Sam since the first year of school, and Sam had never once made it to an appointment on time.