Later, they took her back to Broughton Street, and then The Gentleman took her straight to see his own doctor. The first and only time she rode with him in his motor car. Dazed and exhausted as she was, still the novelty of riding in a self-propelled carriage was not lost on her. But it was only afterwards, when Tess was still serving her sentence and Cat was told a new position had been found for her in the countryside, that Cat realised she might not see her friend again, might have no chance to make amends. On the day she left London she was taken by bus to Paddington. Mrs Heddingly rode with her to be sure she caught the train, and tears streamed from Cat’s eyes to drip unheeded from her chin.
‘This Sunday? I am sorry, Cat, but it’s quite out of the question,’ says the vicar’s wife, when Cat asks her. Hester Canning is sitting at the desk in the morning room arranging violets, yellow and indigo pansies and pink phlox into a suitable pattern in her pressing book. She works quickly since the heat of the day is making the petals wilt already. Several torn violets lie discarded to one side.
‘But the place only lets in visitors the third Sunday of each month. That’s this Sunday. If I can’t go then I can’t go for another month, madam…’
‘But on such short notice, Cat, and with my sister arriving tomorrow with her family… you are very much needed here. I am sorry, but I cannot allow you to go. I promise you may next month. How about that? The third Sunday of August will be entirely yours, to make up for the afternoon you will lose this week. There’s an early train which will get you to town in plenty of time to visit your friend.’ Hester smiles brightly, as if the outing will be a fun one. She shuts the wooden cover of the pressing book and begins to tighten the screws, forcing the boards together with the hapless flowers caught between, flattened, stifled. Cat tries to breathe calmly but feels like her chest is pressed, as though Hester tightens screws upon her at the same time. How can she explain the way London workhouses are? The words will not form sentences, tangled in her desperate thoughts. By next month Tess might have faded and gone. Not dead, necessarily, but the light inside her extinguished, her innocence snuffed out, the spirit of her crushed like flower petals, and no pretty image of it preserved anywhere. Cat has seen people bought out of the workhouse. Empty shells, they seemed. Nothing behind their eyes but echoing space; shadows of loss and despair.
‘Please,’ she tries once more, her voice little more than a croak. ‘It is of the utmost importance. Teresa is a very great friend of mine and it is only because of me that she finds herself put out of her job… I am to blame. I must visit her. I must take her some things to ease the hardship she is left facing…’ she implores.
‘Cat, please. Enough of this. I am sure the girl is being well looked after. The poorhouses are designed for such as her, after all – to give them shelter and food, and a way to earn these comforts. And she will still be there for you to visit next month, and every bit as pleased to see you then as she would be now, I am sure. It is only fair that I have more notice than this of you taking time off. Surely you can see that?’ Hester smiles vaguely, quite unconcerned. Comforts? Cat stares at her, bewildered. Can the woman really think that there is comfort in such places? She stands in front of her, quite still, unable to move; not quite believing what she has heard. Hester continues about her hobby for a while, then looks up with an expression of mild discomfort. ‘That will be all, Cat.’
For the rest of the stifling day, Cat works hard and fast, scrubbing angrily at the flagstones of the hallway until sweat marks a dark trail down her spine; pulling the sheets from the beds with enough force to tear them; chopping vegetables with sharp, agitated carelessness. She cuts her thumb this way but does not notice until Sophie Bell peers over her shoulder, curses in dismay at the sticky red smears all over the runner beans.
‘What in heaven’s name has got into you today?’ the housekeeper asks.
‘I want to leave!’ is all Cat can answer, frustration making her voice tremble and holding her tongue half-paralysed.
‘Well, by Christ, girl, there’s the door!’ Sophie Bell mutters. ‘Hold still!’ She binds Cat’s thumb with a length of clean rag, ties it tightly with string. Almost at once, the blood blooms out through the fabric, unfurling like a rose. ‘You cut yourself deep. Foolish girl,’ Mrs Bell observes, and the words sound profound to Cat – a judgement on more things than Sophie Bell can know.
In the early evening, the rain finally comes. Thick blankets of cloud had lain warm and damp over the house all afternoon, growing steadily darker and heavier. At half past five the first drops fall, warm as bathwater, soft as melted butter. Cat serves the dinner, disgusted by the luxury, the excess; the way the theosophist turns down the meat, his expression blasé, sanctimonious. How many others in the world have need of that meat, Cat wonders? When now it will go back to the kitchen and spoil, and be thrown away and wasted because the cold store is full of this thoughtless young man’s toys. She snatches up their plates with her lips pursed and her face in a frown. And afterwards, when all her work is done, she slips out into the pounding rain and is soaked to the skin in an instant. She takes the vicar’s bicycle from the shed and wheels it clanking along the side of the house, the rain hiding any sounds she might make. By the gate she pauses, swings her leg over the saddle and tips back her head, lets the rain wash away the day and all it brought. Her anger is like a scent on her skin, a clinging stink that she can’t get rid of. The rain almost hurts on her face, it falls so fast. Lightning makes her see red – the inside of her eyelids, glowing. She can feel the thunder in her chest like another heartbeat, irregular and uncomfortable, making her blood run faster. If lightning were to strike her, she thinks, she would not mind. She would not feel it. A hand on her arm makes her gasp.
‘Off out again? In this inclement weather?’ Robin Durrant asks, his voice raised against the onslaught of the rain.
‘What are you doing out here?’ Cat demands, bewildered by his sudden appearance. He holds his jacket above his head but it is soaked, water dripping through it, running down his arms, drenching his shirt.
‘Well, I went to your room but you weren’t there. I guessed you must be leaving for one of your assignations. He must be a very fine lover, to tempt you out in this storm.’ Robin smiles.
‘That he is!’ Cat snaps back at him, but Robin only smiles wider. Splinters of a new worry work their way into her mind. He went to her room? Who knew if he could move softly, if he was careful. ‘Now let me go.’
‘In a second, in a second. I have a job for you. Meet me at the stile along the lane at first light on Sunday.’ Robin runs his tongue along his bottom lip, licking the rainwater there.
‘I will not!’
‘You will. Or I will have to let slip to the Cannings about these evening jaunts of yours. The vicar is very much concerned with the purity and moral probity of his flock. I dare say he would have something to say about it within his own household.’ This he says in a light tone, conversational, even slightly bored. Cat glares at him, tries to see if he would indeed betray her this way, and to guess why he might. ‘First light on Sunday,’ he says again, and grins at her like an excited child, without malice; as if he is not threatening her, not controlling her. Cat snatches her arm away, strains against the pedals to be away from him. She can hardly see in the rain and the dark, she can hardly breathe through the rage in her heart. George is not there for her, but still she pedals as fast as she can, the bicycle careening wildly through puddles, along the little stony lanes. Just to be away from The Rectory; just for the illusion of liberty.