The Unseen(107)

‘Albert!’ he calls, as he strides along the hallway. In he crashes, Hester thinks, like a tidal wave, like a blowing wind. His head and shoulders appear around the doorway, grass-stained fingers leaving smears on the cream paint of the panelling. ‘Hester! You’re very quiet in here.’ He smiles warmly.

‘Should a person not sit quietly in their own home?’ she replies, unable to meet his eye. Robin pauses, seems to think, to slow down.

‘Is everything all right? Are you upset?’ He comes into the room and stands with his hands clasped behind his back, arranging himself more formally all of a sudden.

‘I’m not upset,’ she says, but to her chagrin her voice breaks as she says it. Wanting to hide it from Robin Durrant only seems to make the weeping harder to hold.

‘Hester! You poor creature … tell me what the matter is,’ Robin commands. He puts out his hands and moves towards her, as if to offer an embrace, but Hester rises hastily from her chair.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she cries. ‘It’s your doing!’ Her pulse races, makes her fingers shake; but the words are out now, and she cannot take them back.

‘Then you must immediately tell me how I have troubled you, so that I can apologise and be sure never to do so again,’ Robin replies carefully. His words are smooth and unhurried. As seamless as the rest of him.

‘My husband … saw our maid Cat at a tavern last night. It seems she has been keeping late-night trysts with a sweetheart, and now he says she is to go and he will not hear another word on the matter. Such notions of purity he has now, you see.’ She shoots the theosophist an angry glance. ‘Such notions that he has half lost his … sense of proportion, and will brook no argument.’ As Hester speaks she looks up, just briefly, and is shocked by Robin’s expression. It veers here and there between shock and anger and consternation for some seconds before he manages to wrestle it back into his control. Hester catches her breath. ‘Did you know something of this before, Mr Durrant?’

‘I … no, of course not,’ he says, but without conviction. Hester stares at him, her eyes widening. ‘That is, I had seen her, once or twice. Going off in the evening. Just for walks, I assumed.’

‘I see. And you did not think to mention this to Albert or myself?’

‘My apologies, Mrs Canning. I had thought no harm could come of it,’ Robin replies smoothly, and all expression in face and voice is gone, masked behind a careful neutrality.

‘Well, harm has come of it, Mr Durrant. I wonder if that was all you knew about it. I wonder if you might not have some inkling as to the identity of her gentleman friend?’ Hester says quietly, her voice shaking with nerves. Robin Durrant watches her, a new expression forming on his face. One of slight surprise and amusement. One of new understanding. Hester looks away, down at her hands. His eyes are too familiar, suddenly; they seem to laugh at her.

‘Hester, how has your opinion of me changed so much of late that you no longer trust me to speak the truth?’ he asks; a touch of soft menace in the words.

Hester fidgets, twisting her handkerchief tightly one way, then the other. ‘I have seen the two of you … speaking together. In the evenings,’ she stammers.

‘What of it? You don’t mean that I am her mystery man, surely? A few polite words exchanged between guest and maid, over a cigarette, and you have construed an affair from this?’

‘That’s not what I saw. It was not … polite,’ Hester whispers. Robin Durrant crosses the room towards her with a slow, deliberate step, and she fights the urge to back away.

‘You must have been mistaken, I assure you. There is nothing whatsoever between me and your maid,’ he says, standing so close to her that she can feel the warmth of his body, the moist touch of his breath as he speaks. She turns her face away, heart racing in her chest, and endures the silence for a long moment, until she thinks she might scream. ‘Still, if you’d like me to speak to your husband on behalf of the girl, I would be happy to do so. Perhaps I can persuade him to let her stay on, if that is what you wish?’ Robin murmurs, so close now that she can hear his every breath as it rushes gently in, between his parted lips, over teeth and tongue. Her eyes well again, tears splashing messily onto her cheeks. Without hesitation, the theosophist puts out his fingers and brushes them away. Hester is rooted to the spot, too shocked to move.

‘I don’t understand what power you have over my husband,’ she says, her voice so constricted she hardly knows it.

‘Don’t you? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Unbesmirched as you are. Virgo intacta, a lily whiter than white; so kind and clean and innocent,’ he says, his mouth twisting to one side in cruel amusement. Hester’s jaw falls open in shock.