The Unseen (24 page)

‘You must never speak of it to a soul, not even to Albert. Do you promise? Well … the trouble that you have with Albert, dearest … the trouble that you write to me about? I fear I have just the
opposite
trouble with Archie.’ She touches her fan to her lips as if reluctant to let the words out.

‘I … don’t quite understand you, Amy,’ Hester whispers, as the children run close by, faces flushed and hair damped down with sweat.

‘I found him … making … making a fool of himself the other day. With the upstairs maid, Danielle.’

‘No!
Oh, my darling … that is
dreadful
! Are you
sure
?’

‘Very sure indeed, I fear. Oh, I’ve got rid of the girl, of course. This all happened just this week, and truth be told it’s why he’s not come away with us on this visit. And it has happened before, though I never told you, Hetty. I was so ashamed … But he promised, he
promised
me it would never happen again. Now he says that he has drives he must satisfy, and that he cannot help himself,’ she says, with an angry little catch in her voice. ‘Do you think that can be true? Do you think a man may be made a slave to his desires?’ Hester thinks carefully before answering. She takes her sister’s hand, but their skin is hot and soon grows clammy where it touches.

‘I think … I think any person
can
be a slave to their desire, if they allow themselves to be. Surely the measure of any person alive is in their behaviour – in what they
choose
to do, in spite of what other options are available to them?’

‘You’re right,’ Amelia says, bleakly. ‘There is no excusing what he has done. It is despicable.’

‘Now, Amelia, you of all people know that I can’t be counted as any kind of authority on the wants and desires of men,’ Hester says, smiling a little. ‘Archie has committed a great sin, both against you and against God. But perhaps … forgiveness is the Christian thing to do? Once the guilty party has repented, of course …’

‘But that’s just it, Hetty! This time … this time he didn’t even
seem repentant. He seemed … angry with me, if anything – for interrupting him at his sport! Oh, it was dreadful! Intolerable!’ She sinks her face into her fingertips and begins to cry quietly.

‘Darling Amy, please don’t cry! The children must not see … Please, dearest, take heart. Archie loves you, and the children. I
know
he does, and you know it too. Perhaps men are indeed governed by stronger forces than we women … I can scarce credit a good man such as Archie behaving in such a manner if this weren’t the case. Can any of us see into the heart of another? Truly? Please don’t cry.’ Gradually, Amelia lifts her face and blots her eyes on her handkerchief.

‘Well, I have told him the contents of my heart. He is killing my love for him with his infidelity. Perhaps only one more incident, I told him, would be enough to wipe it away completely,’ she sniffs. Hester is too shocked to say anything to this. ‘And what of your marriage, Hetty? Do you fare any better of late?’ Amelia asks. Hester looks down, at her fingers nestled in the cotton folds of her dress. Such plump, smooth fingers; the nails buffed and clean. For some reason, she can hardly stand the sight of them, feels such a spasm of dislike for herself that she curls them into fists and squeezes until her nails bite into the heels of her hands.

‘I married for love, Amelia. As you know … as our parents lamented, albeit in their soft way. And I thought that, though I chose a humble man of limited means, I would have love, and be loved, and raise children surrounded by love …’ She looks across the scorched lawn to where John is teasing his sister, holding a ribbon he’d pulled from her hair above her head and snatching it away when she makes a grab for it. The little girl jumps and reaches quite amiably, always smiling, never losing her patience, and again Hester feels a violent pull of sympathy for her, of fellow feeling for their shared path in life.

‘And … are you not loved?’

‘Oh, I am loved. As a sister, as a friend. Not as I love him, I feel. Not as a wife. Not as a … lover.’ She takes a deep breath and
sighs slowly, feeling the weight of her own words settling ever more heavily on her spirits. ‘And now he has a new friend, a new confidant, and I fear I am slipping further from his thoughts every day.’

‘Surely not, Hetty? Albert has always been so devoted to you,’ Amelia says.

‘Perhaps he was, once. But now, everything has changed. Even his parish is suffering the effects of his diversion by Mr Durrant.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well … For example, the other day, Pamela Urquhart called in to see if the vicar was unwell, since he hadn’t been to visit them for two weeks or more. Let me explain – Mrs Urquhart’s father is very old and infirm, and has been awaiting death for some time now. He suffers a great deal, poor man, and finds his faith tested daily, and he hasn’t been able to come to church for many months. Albert made a habit of calling on him to offer comfort and prayer, at least two times a week, but his visits, since the theosophist arrived, have ceased. I just don’t know what to make of it, Amy. It’s so unlike Albert to neglect his duties, but this new interest seems to be taking precedence over all other concerns.’

‘This new interest – do you mean in theosophy, or in Mr Durrant?’ Amy asks, pointedly.

‘Theosophy … or rather, both, I suppose,’ Hester says, looking up at her sister and trying to read her expression.

‘This is a troubling evolution, indeed. I wonder … I wonder quite what it is about the man that draws Albert so?’

‘You think it’s the man, then, and not the ideas he’s brought with him?’

‘Well, don’t you, dearest? After all, I expect Albert has known about fairies and theosophy for quite some time. How is it that only when Mr Durrant appears does it become all-consuming?’

‘Amy – I don’t understand,’ Hester says, desperately.

‘Perhaps I am wrong. I must meet the young man again, and get to know him a little better,’ Amelia replies, leaning back in her
chair and letting her gaze fall into the distance. Her tears, already dried by the sun, have left faint pink streaks in her face powder.

‘Well, of course you shall,’ Hester says, still trying to make out her sister’s meaning.

In the kitchen, Cat slides the empty tray onto the table top and crosses to the sink. She thrusts her hands into the basin of water where the milk jugs are standing, supposedly keeping cold, but the water is blood temperature. She splashes some onto her wrists and wipes her wet hands over the back of her neck nonetheless, hoping to feel it cool her.

‘This milk will have gone by the evening,’ she warns Mrs Bell, who sits wedged into her chair, the newspaper spread open on the table in front of her.

‘It’ll turn all the quicker if you keep dipping your hot hands into the basin,’ the housekeeper observes.

‘I can’t help it. As soon as I move in this heat, I swelter. And
somebody
about this place had better keep moving,’ she mutters, but with little feeling. Sophie Bell’s face is puce, her cheeks mottled with cracked red blood vessels; and when she moves about too much her top lip turns white, and her eyes slip out of focus. Cat does not want the woman to faint. Lord knows, nobody would be able to pick her up, and they’d be forced to step over her carcass all day until the temperature dropped and she roused herself.

‘Over there,’ Mrs Bell sighs. ‘I kept some of the iced tea back for us. And pour me a glass while you’re at it.’ Cat whisks the linen cloth from a jug on the sideboard, scattering a handful of parched flies that had been waiting in vain to drink. The chunks of ice in it, collected that morning in a block from Thatcham, have melted clean away, but the drink is still cool and tangy with fresh mint and lemons. Cat gulps hers down like a child, shutting her eyes at the chill shiver it gives her. ‘At least with the men out all day there’ll be a bit less work,’ Sophie Bell says. ‘Where’s the fairy man gone off to, did you hear?’

‘Reading, he said,’ Cat says, wiping her mouth on the hem of her apron. ‘Some “things I must to attend to” was all he said.’

‘Huh. Well, I bumped into Dolores Mickel in the week, whose sister works at a big house in Reading, and she says the family her sister works for knows the Durrant family of old. Mr Robin wasn’t always a theosophist, she told me,’ says Sophie Bell, her eyes glinting slyly as they always do when she gossips.

‘No?’ Cat asks. She finds herself keen to know more about the man.
Know thy enemy
– the words jump into her head.
My enemy?

‘No indeed. He was off at his studies for a long time, and then for a while once he was back, there was a different story from his parents each time they came to dinner. First he was a poet; then he was writing for the papers. Then he was going into the clergy – a Methodist minister, if you please. He went to Greece and was there for quite some months, though nobody seemed to know what he did there. Then when he came back he ran for parliament, just like that! The Liberal Party, but he didn’t get hisself elected. Next thing you know, he’s a theosopher, or whatever he is now, and insisting that it was his true course all along.’ Mrs Bell dismisses the man with a small flap of her hand that sets the meat of her arm swinging.

‘Theosophist. Well. Sounds like he doesn’t know who he is or what to believe in, doesn’t it?’ Cat smiles, unkindly. ‘Interesting.’

Mrs Bell glances up at her, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. ‘Now, don’t you go bandying it about – least of all to him. I’ve heard you talking to him, out in the courtyard. Don’t be getting careless with yourself, will you, Cat?’

‘No, Sophie Bell. There’s no danger of that.’

In the afternoon, when she has an hour to rest, Cat keeps to her room, and holds her breath when she thinks she hears a footstep out in the corridor. But it’s only the house, groaning in the heat as its beams and boards expand. Outside her open window the sky is simmering blue. She can hear the vicar’s wife and her sister,
talking in low voices that spiral, on and on; the children complaining breathlessly to one another, their voices drawing near and then receding, like a small flock of birds on the wing. She cannot wipe from her mind that Robin Durrant came to her room in the night; that he knows about her sleepless life. It’s like a nagging itch, or a buzzing insect that she can’t shake off. And that he means to use the knowledge against her somehow. If it’s for him to take out his lust, she thinks grimly, he is in for a disappointment. She will claw his eyes out before she lets him touch her. But she will meet him, as he told her to. If for no other reason than that, beneath her anger, she is curious. Dwelling on such thoughts, precious time slips away. Cat shakes her head, grips the pencil tighter and writes. Another letter to Tess, this time addressed to Frosham House. Guilt makes her stomach churn, washes through her like acid, makes it hard to think.
I can’t bear to think of you there. I will find some scheme to get you out, I swear it
, she writes. But what scheme? What can she do? She bites her lower lip hard between her teeth, writes
I swear it
again, so that she will have to think of something.
Please be strong, Tessy. Hold on until I can think of a way
.

Tess grew weary of the suffragette cause as time passed, even as Cat grew more and more committed to it. Tess had only been interested in it as a way to get out of the house where they spent so much of their lives, as a way to escape; never really for the politics themselves. She joked, giggling in hushed tones, that she wouldn’t know who to vote for even if she were enfranchised. It was an exciting diversion from work, which stopped being exciting after several weeks of handing out leaflets and selling ribbons, hawking copies of
Votes for Women
and shouting slogans and being scowled at by respectable men and women.

‘I don’t see why they should disapprove of us so,’ Tess said one day, hurt by the cold treatment they got from rich women. ‘It’s them that’ll benefit, after all.’ She stuck out her lower lip like a
child, tucked her hair behind her ears and straightened her cuffs self-consciously; twitching just like she did when Mrs Heddingly or anybody senior came to inspect her work.

‘Because the rich will ever disapprove of the poor doing anything but catering to them,’ Cat told her, keenly. ‘Cheer up. Another half an hour and I’ll buy you a cup of hot chocolate,’ she said, giving Tess’s shoulders a squeeze. Soon it became clear that these little treats were the only thing keeping Tess active in the WSPU, and Cat knew she oughtn’t to pressure her friend into going with her. But truth be told she wanted the company, wanted to share the adventure. Tess had introduced her to the movement, and it wouldn’t have felt right going out on a Sunday without her, or sneaking to evening meetings when they were able to, listening to the great and good ladies of the society speak about rights and laws and votes and justice. She would not have felt half so brave or daring without Tess there, always less sure, always needing to be encouraged. Cat pauses in her letter writing, shuts her eyes tight with anguish. She had used her friend. Used Tess to show her a reflection of herself that she liked seeing; to afford herself some scrap of power over another person for the first time in her life.

Two months after they had paid their shilling each and joined the society, Cat let the secretary of their local branch know that they would be willing to take on more active duties. She said it quietly, as if they might be overheard, but the lady in the office looked up sharply.

‘Window breaking? Invasion of political meetings?’ she said, abruptly. Taken aback, Cat nodded, and her heart thumped loudly in her ears. The older woman smiled briskly, looking up over the top of half-moon spectacles with piercing dark eyes. ‘Excellent, comrade. Good girl. I shall keep you in mind.’ Cat smiled a tight little smile, nodded, and went back out into the main room of the office, with its piles of leaflets, its walls laden with banners and slogans, and framed photographs of suffragette martyrs. There was a glorious portrait of Saint Joan of Arc, patron saint of the WSPU,
gazing down fiercely from behind a row of volunteers as they folded leaflets into envelopes. The room was stuffy with the smell of paper and typewriter ink, the air thick and warm with a constant buzz of busy voices and footsteps and machinery. It was the hub of a war campaign, where battles were planned and losses accounted. Cat loved it. Industry that had nothing to do with cleaning or cosseting, with making life easy for those too idle to do it themselves. Tess was not there when Cat volunteered them both for militant action. Tess was waiting outside, watching the hurdy-gurdy man with his little monkey in a tiny top hat and red waistcoat, and laughing quite delightedly at its tricks.