‘The bigger boys dared him. Little buggers. They never meant no harm, I know, but at the time, of course, I wanted their hides. They dared him that he’d never climb down the rope far enough to touch the water. Silly boy, he went and did it – he wasn’t to know any better. Nearly made it back up, they said, but then he slipped his grip on the rope and fell back again. Hit his head on the side and that was that.’ In the quiet after Mrs Bell speaks, a robin comes to spy on them. Cat crumbles a tiny corner of the cheese and throws it into the grass for him.
‘That’s terrible, Sophie,’ she says quietly, her throat gone tight with dismay. ‘I’m so sorry to hear it.’
‘Going on twenty years ago, but I still miss him. His birthday would have been next week. He’d not have been much older than you.’
‘Were you married, then?’
‘Of course I was bloody married! We don’t all of us love scandal like you, Cat Morley. And you’ll ask me next what became of my husband. Well, he up and died of a tumour. Not two years after Walter went down the well. No great loss to me nor mankind, but he gave me my Walter, so I had him to thank for that. He was a lovely bairn, he was – so kind, and so sunny.’
‘I had no idea you’d suffered such loss,’ Cat says, softly. She wishes she could put out her hand and take Sophie’s, but the housekeeper’s arms remain tightly folded. ‘It must have been very hard for you, to go on with life after that. No wonder it soured your temper.’
‘Hearing your pert remarks all day long does nothing to ease my sourness, young lady. You’ve a bad habit for speaking whatever comes straight into your head, do you know that?’ Sophie remarks, and Cat smiles slightly.
‘Yes, I’ve been told that before. But you could have married again, and had another child, couldn’t you?’ she asks. Mrs Bell shakes her head sadly.
‘Only a lass who’s never had a babe could think one so easily replaced. It takes the heart out of you, when they go. And besides, willing men were hardly queuing around the corner for the likes of me. It was probably too late to have another by then, anyway; even if I could have found somebody I liked.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. You could have cooked your way into somebody’s good graces.’ Cat smiles.
‘You’re just full of wise suggestions today, aren’t you? Come on, let’s get this done and get on with lunch. The mistress’ll be wandering around with her belly rumbling before long. Not to mention this learned young man, whose work is so very bloody important.’
‘Yes, who would have guessed how important? The vicar treats him like royalty,’ Cat observes.
‘Doesn’t he just? Well, he must know something we don’t, I suppose.’
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Cat murmurs. Mrs Bell gives her a quizzical look, and Cat shrugs. ‘The vicar should be careful. Apparently, Robin Durrant has no household of his own. It seems to me he’s quite ready to take over this one instead.’
‘In what way, take over?’ The housekeeper frowns. Cat shrugs again.
‘We’ll see,’ she says.
When the dinner plates are scrubbed, dried and put away, the dining table swept, and the napkins either refolded and pressed or put into the hamper to be laundered, Cat slips out through the back door, saunters into the courtyard and puts a cigarette between her lips. George is away on the barge for a few more days yet, taking a load of timber up the canal to Surrey. Square fence posts with sharpened points at one end, the newly hewn wood pale and moist. Cat saw the men loading them when she went into Thatcham to post letters for Hester. George’s barge, and two others that had appeared to join it. The horses led from their ramshackle stables, snatching at the long green weeds as they were harnessed to the tow ropes, tossing their heads and flicking their tails at the crowding flies. The men wore thick canvas gloves, and had their trousers tied off with lengths of string just below the knee, to keep out the panicked rats that fled as the piles of timber were dismantled, reassembled on the barges. George, with his shirt plastered to his back, frowned in the sharp sunlight. She did not call out; felt wrong interrupting him at work. She likes the fact that she saw him, this time, but he did not see her. Like she owns a little bit more of his life than he meant to give. Now she wishes him back already. She could walk alone in the dark but there seems little point, with nowhere to go.
She fumbles in her pocket for a match but one blooms in the dark beside her, makes her jump. Robin Durrant leans from behind the orange flare, smiles a little as he proffers it to her. For some reason Cat can’t define, her first instinct is to refuse it. But she accepts, takes a long pull on her cigarette and coughs a little.
‘Thank you,’ she says, guardedly.
‘You’re welcome, Cat,’ he says, and his use of her name sounds too familiar. Cat measures him up in the weak light from the doorway. He moves away slightly, leans against the wall; his body curved into an elegant slouch, hips pushed forwards, head tipped back.
‘What are you doing out here? You’re not even smoking,’ she points out. The yard has come to feel like her place; this afterdinner moment as her time.
‘I was; I was. I finished it just before you came out. Sorry if I scared you,’ he says, turning his head towards her. The contours of his face are softly lit. Clean, smooth brow, eyes lost in shadow. The long sweep of his jaw. His face is beautiful, Cat realises. Quite perfectly beautiful, like a painting of a saint or a representation of love. But also opaque, unreadable. His affability looks like a mask.
‘You didn’t scare me.’
‘No. I bet it would take something to scare you,’ he says. Cat ignores him, takes another long drag. The tip of her cigarette glows fiercely. ‘I hear you’ve been through it a bit. A bit of a firebrand, I hear,’ he says, companionably enough.
‘Who told you that? I thought the vicar’s wife was sworn off gossip.’
‘Oh, it wasn’t dear Hester. But word gets around in small places like this. I should know – I heard myself called “the fairy man” just the other day, by a passing child no more than six years old. Explain to me how she knew to call me that, I beg of you.’
Cat smiles briefly. ‘A little girl with dark brown curls and a turned-up nose, I’ll wager?’ she asks.
‘Oh, indeed – you know the culprit?’
‘Tilly. Daughter of Mrs Lynchcombe who takes in our laundry. I expect Sophie Bell has been filling her in on all your comings and goings, and the child is as sharp as a tack.’
Quite possibly. And yet, it is you I see, loitering behind doors when I am in discussion with the vicar or his wife. Listening hard, to all appearances,’ he says, archly. Cat bridles, turns away from him and does not reply. Above her head, moths dive and flutter at the light in the corridor, bashing the soft dust from their velvet wings. ‘Come now, Cat – you can’t pretend to be shy. You’re not the type.’
‘What do you know of my type? What do you know of me at all?’
‘I rest my case.’ He smiles.
‘You smile too much. People must guess that you’re mocking them,’ she says, blandly.
‘A surprising few,’ Robin concedes. ‘You’re unusual, for a servant, Cat Morley.’
‘How should a servant be? I thought your Society made no distinction between class or race?’
‘Indeed, it does not. But although such distinctions should not exist, perhaps they do nonetheless. Theosophy also teaches that if a person is made to toil or suffer in this life, it is to atone for wrongdoing in a previous life. The universal law and justice of karma.’
‘Yes, I heard you speak of it the other night. I am a servant because I was a murderess in another lifetime, is that it?’ Cat asks, drily.
‘Perhaps,’ Robin grins, pleased to have nettled her.
Cat thinks on this for a moment. ‘Perhaps. ‘Perhaps I was a starving pauper in a past life, but an exceptionally good one, and this is my reward. Perhaps you were a king, but a vile and corrupt one. And this is your punishment.’ She gestures at him – his rumpled hair, his slightly creased clothes. Robin Durrant laughs softly. ‘Karmic justice, you call it? It’s no justice at all,’ she says.