‘We must be quite quick now,’ Robin says, dropping to one knee in the wet turf and opening the leather satchel. ‘I don’t want the sun to come up. And it wouldn’t do for the vicar to get impatient and come looking for us.’ Over the river, a haze of pale mist hangs in the air, to shoulder height, shimmering and shifting as the sun’s light grows brighter in the eastern sky.
‘What is this, for God’s sake? What game are you playing?’
‘No game, Cat Morley. I simply want to take your picture,’ he replies, now pulling paper-wrapped items from the bag.
‘My picture? With the camera? What on earth for?’
‘Yes, with the camera. I haven’t time to draw your portrait myself. And besides, a drawing would not give the same… proof. But the camera… the camera cannot lie.’ He glances up at her and smiles, then stands and hands her the packages.
‘What is this?’
‘Open them.’
Cat does as she is told. One package contains a garment of the finest white gauze, swathes of it like clouds of fleece. Cat fingers the fabric, confused; puts it over her shoulder to open the second parcel. She nearly drops it in shock. Human hair, masses of it. Long, slippery, white-blond tresses, coiled like satin ropes in her hands.
‘Is this real hair? I don’t understand.’
‘Put them on – the dress and the wig,’ Robin Durrant says, impatience creeping into his voice. He is readying the camera, unscrewing the lens cover. ‘But take your dress off first. I don’t want it to show through.’ Cat thinks for a minute, then tips back her head and laughs. ‘Quiet!’ Robin hisses.
‘It’s a costume? You mean to dress me up, take my picture and tell the world I’m an elemental?’ She laughs again, incredulously. Robin’s face flushes angrily.
‘Just do it. Put them on!’ he snaps.
‘You are a fraud! A phoney! You no more believe in fairies than I do!’ Cat scoffs.
‘I am no phoney!’ Robin Durrant shouts, lurching to his feet and towering over Cat, anger swelling his chest and darkening his face. His declaration bounds off into the mist, and is swallowed up at once. Cat gazes up at him, unafraid.
‘At last, I can see inside you,’ she says, quietly.
Robin takes a deep breath. ‘I am not a fraud. The elementals are real. My belief is real – in truth it is knowledge, not belief. Intuition, not faith. They are real. It is all real.’
‘Then why must you pose a maid in a wig to catch a photo of one?’
‘I… I don’t know. Why I have failed. Why they will not be captured with the camera, as other beings not of the flesh have done in the past…’
‘You truly believe in them? In fairies?’ Cat eyes him intently. Robin nods. Cat studies him closely, then shakes her head. ‘Astounding.’
‘They will be the making of me. This… this revelation will be the making of me. It must be so,’ he declares.
‘I have never met somebody who really believed their own lies before.’
‘It’s not lies. And what of the vicar? You say his God is a lie, and yet he believes it.’
‘That’s true,’ Cat concedes. ‘Very well then, you are every bit as deceived as the vicar, if that makes you happy.’
‘Cat, Cat.’ Robin smiles. ‘I am not deceived. The world, blindly going about its petty business, unaware of the grand order of things… it is the world who is deceived. And this picture I will take of you may well be a falsehood, of a kind, but the most pressing demand of theosophy is that its followers strive to bring it to a wider audience. Strive to convince and enlighten people who would otherwise go through their lives unaware of the great truths our adepts have learned. And I have learned that people cleave to their ignorance as if it comforts them. They will not see reason unless they are made to. I will make them see reason. I will give them no recourse to back away,’ he says, with quiet zeal.
‘You have lost your mind,’ Cat tells him, blandly.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I have found it. Put them on. Or I will tell them what you do, and where you go; and that will be the end to it,’ he snaps, the words short and hard. ‘Do it – quickly. I could ruin you, if I chose to. And don’t think for a moment that I would hesitate.’
Cat falls still, her eyes hardening. ‘What grace there is, in this theosophy with which you hope to enlighten me.’ Her voice is bitter. Turning her back on the theosophist, she strips off her work dress and puts the gauze gown on over her shift. It is long and loose, but so light that when she moves it clings closely to her body. She leans forward as she has seen ladies in London do, and positions the wig over her own hairline. Upside down she sees a damsel fly, not an inch from her nose, clinging to the underside of a pale iris leaf – electric blue body, glittering rainbow wings vibrating, warming up for flight. So many hidden things, such hidden beauty, she thinks. Such lovely things truly do exist, and yet they are never enough for us. We must always search beyond. The wig is heavy, and threatens to pull itself off with its own weight. Only the bobby pins Cat happened to be wearing keep it in place. She straightens it, then turns to Robin Durrant. He stares.
‘Well?’ she demands. The long tresses hang around her face. She can feel the unfamiliar weight of them bumping against her back. Not long ago, her hair was long – although perhaps not as long as this. How quickly she has got used to it being gone, when at the time it was shorn she felt as though she had been stripped naked in a public place.
‘You look quite lovely, Cat,’ Robin says, softly. ‘Yes. You will do very well indeed.’
‘Then let’s get this charade over with,’ she replies. Robin watches her for a moment, and then chuckles.
‘It won’t work if you just stand there scowling with your arms folded, my dear girl.’
‘I am not your dear girl. And how should I stand, then?’
‘Do not stand at all. Dance. Over there – down by the water’s edge where the mist is thickest. And take off your shoes.’
‘Dance?’
‘Dance,’ Robin says, quite firmly.
Cat walks away from him, the grass cold and wet on the bare soles of her feet. The soft fabric of the dress brushes the skin of her legs lightly, makes her shiver. She has never danced. Not properly. Occasionally, The Gentleman had musical evenings, not big enough to be called balls, but with a quartet of musicians to play waltzes and quicksteps for twenty or thirty glamorous pairs; and the staff would sneak to the bottom of the stairs, or even to the doorway of the grand salon, to listen, to grab each other and make a parody of the steps that set them all to laughing. This is her sole experience of dance, and this will not do now, she knows. An elemental would not waltz with an invisible partner. She thinks of the way she felt the first time she managed to ride the vicar’s bicycle all the way to George’s barge. The push of the wind in her face, the way her blood ran faster through her veins; the thrill of speed and movement. She thinks of Tess, in the workhouse; of The Gentleman who did not save her. Cat draws in a shaky breath, anger making her burn.
She throws out her arms and leaps, as high as she can; arching her body and tipping back her head. She lands heavily, coarse grass stems jabbing into her feet. She pauses, takes a deep breath and then runs forward, gaining more momentum and leaping again. And even though she feels ridiculous at first, feels as though the world is laughing at her, capering like an idiot, she soon forgets this. Her heart beats hard and she breathes fast, running and jumping like this, lifting up her front knee, pointing her toe behind her, holding her arms out wide or pulled back or high above her head. She kicks and storms and spins, and there is freedom in this, in the abandonment of propriety; the burn of her muscles and the rush of air into her nose and mouth. She pounds them all beneath her feet – Robin Durrant, The Gentleman, Mrs Heddingly, Hester Canning. She dances until she is out of breath, and leans against the old tree to rest, Robin Durrant and his camera all but forgotten; and then she dances some more, the same exhilaration in movement coming back to her – the possibility of life and freedom. When she falls still at last, the damsel fly circles her curiously, wings humming, flashing blue as the first rays of the sun creep into the sky. She catches her breath, and realises that she is not coughing. Does not need to cough. She smiles, until in the corner of her eye Robin Durrant stands up, slowly screwing the lens cap back onto his camera.