‘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.
Robin Durrant arrives back from Reading in time to stride through to the dinner table, face glowing, hair tousled and untidy.
‘Forgive me. I do hope you haven’t been waiting for me?’ he snaps, looking briefly at Albert, Hester and Amelia in turn; and for once his eyes are too quick, his smile a little strained. There is agitation in his whole expression, Hester notes.
‘Not at all, Robin. Not at all. I trust you were able to find what you needed in town?’ Albert asks. The vicar is as neat and tidy as ever, his soft hair set back, his whiskers neatly combed and trimmed. Hester glances at him, since they had indeed been waiting for Robin, and the hour is gone nine; but Albert’s face is open and unconcerned.
‘Indeed I did. And I called in on my parents while I was there, as it’s been some weeks since I last saw them. My younger brother is visiting, so I was able to see all three at once,’ he says, sitting almost before the ladies have settled, dropping his napkin into his lap with a flick of the wrist, and reaching for his glass before realising that Cat has yet to fill it. Albert notices the gesture, and gets up himself to fetch the wine from the sideboard. Hester can feel Amelia’s questioning gaze across the table, as the theosophist’s glass is filled before hers, the female guest’s.