The Unseen(131)

When she opens her eyes Robin Durrant is pulling up his trousers, buttoning the fly, catching his breath. There is sweat gleaming on his chest now, and on his brow. Hester is on her feet again, still by the window, her heart slowing down, and a cold touch of horror to make her sick just beginning to grow. Between her thighs she is stinging, burning, and something begins to trickle. She touches her fingers to it, finds smears of blood amidst something else, some other stuff she does not know. Robin looks up at her as he tucks his shirt in roughly.

‘Go to bed, Hetty. Albert will have to take care of himself tonight,’ he says, impatiently. Hester swallows. Her throat is parched, ragged. Slowly, with limbs that do not wish to obey her, she pulls her dressing gown closed, and fumbles for the belt. Staring at him all the while, her eyes wide in her face, mind racing now. Robin sees this expression of hers – of incomprehension, of shock. He rolls his eyes a little, scornfully, and then comes to her, puts his hand to her face again. ‘It’s all right, Hester. Nobody need ever know. It’s quite natural – it’s not a crime, you know! Go to bed and sleep. I shan’t ever tell a soul, I swear.’ He speaks in a bored tone, as if to a child. That is all she is to him, Hester sees. A weakling, a fool to be used to his own ends. Now Hester snatches her face away from him. Now she can move, on numb legs, clumsy and slow. But she can’t lay all the blame on him, she knows. She walks from the room, eyes fixed and flat like a somnambulist’s. She takes the stairs steadily, quietly, and the burden of her guilt grows heavier with every step.





12


Now that she has made up her mind, has settled things with George, Cat itches with impatience. She longs to be gone, to be away with him, and heading for the coast on a train. Not for half a day, which is all the time off she has in a week; not for one precious full day, which she is granted for each two months she works. But for two days, three, four. However long they want, with the silver-grey sea stretching to the far horizon, and the tang of salt water clinging to their skin. She thought for a while that she should give notice to Hester, give some kind of warning. But then she remembers Hester’s broken promise, to send her out to see George, and the motto she embroidered, which hangs on Cat’s wall: ‘Humility is a servant’s true dignity.’ Then I have neither, she thinks with grim satisfaction. The words repeat themselves in her thoughts, giving her face an expression of disgust, and she hardens her heart against the vicar’s wife. Let her find her breakfast table unset one morning; let her be obliged to lift a finger for once. But she finds it hard to stay angry with the woman, as she takes their dinner up to them in the evening. Hester has dark circles under her eyes, red rims around the lids. Her face is drawn, her expression stunned. She looks wholly miserable, and Cat must repress a flicker of unease, the unexpected urge to seek her out, to find out the cause of her dismay.

In the end, she tells herself that she could do nothing to help Hester, even if she knew what troubled her. She is a servant, a nonentity. Not a person, not a friend. The night is sultry again, warm and balmy, and the breeze that blows is so soft it feels like a lover’s fingertips, brushing her arms as she stands, and she smokes, and she waits for Robin Durrant to appear. She does not have to wait long. All she need do now, when she wishes to speak to him, is catch his eye at the dinner table. She kicks off her shoes as he walks towards her, feels the warm bricks of the courtyard on the soles of her feet, and the springy tufts of moss between them, like strips of fine carpet. Everything feels more real, now she knows she will be free. Everything is more alive, and brighter.

‘Well? How goes it with you, my costly model and muse?’ Robin asks, as he lights his own cigarette, pushes back the flap of his jacket and stands with his hand in his pocket, like a schoolboy.

‘I’m leaving, Robin. If you want more pictures, it must be soon. Tomorrow, or the day after.’

‘What do you mean tomorrow or the day after? The Theosophical Society hasn’t decided what to do yet, who to send down … it can’t be so soon! We’ll have to wait a bit longer …’ He frowns.

‘No, I won’t wait. I mean it, theosophist. I have plans, and I shan’t change them for you, much as I would like to collect my next wage from you. Tomorrow, or the day after,’ she insists.

‘What do you mean “leaving”, anyway? Going where? How do you plan to go anywhere when you’re watched all day long, and locked in at night?’ he says, petulantly.

‘I have my means,’ she says, and smiles. In her pocket the skeleton key sits, its weight a constant reassurance.