The Unseen(133)

I also must tell you another thing. Perhaps you have wondered at my lack of propriety, and my unwillingness to accept a life of servitude. I place the blame for this at my own door, with my own temperament, but the blame also lies with my father. He gave me an education far above my station, and taught me that there was a wide and mysterious world that I would never see. This was a grave injustice on his part. It has caused me always to question my station in life, and when I was told that my blood was to blame – my breeding that is – again he was the sticking point. My father is your uncle – the very Gentleman who sent me to you. My mother worked in his household at Broughton Street when she was younger, and they – at his behest – were lovers, and she became pregnant with me. She was forced to leave her job, of course, but my father looked after her and made sure she was provided for; and when she died I was taken into his household. My mother told me this on her deathbed, and she was a woman who never lied. Perhaps this summer you have come to learn a little more about the nature and behaviour of men, and will not find this too hard to believe. We are cousins, Mrs Canning; and if my mother thought it best that I know the truth about my parentage, nevertheless that knowledge has only ever caused me anguish. I was born neither one thing nor the other, neither gentlewoman nor servant, and so I intend to be neither, from this day onwards. I intend to make my own path.

Robin Durrant is treacherous, and not to be trusted. I think you know this already, but I say again – if you can remove him from your household, do so at once. Perhaps I have no right to offer you advice, but since we are not to meet again, I shall offer it anyway. I know something of your troubles with the vicar. A servant will learn these things, whether they would want to or no. In London there was a gentleman, a friend of my father’s, who came to visit from time to time. He only ever brought with him, as his companions, young and beautiful men, whom he kept and spoilt like pets. He found women inferior to men in all regards, and shunned their company, from his life and from his bed. If you come to suspect that your husband may feel this same way, then you will never be happy until you have left him, or accepted him as he is and sought companionship for yourself elsewhere.

Goodbye, and please mind what I have written about Teresa Kemp. You have in her an opportunity to do tremendous good. I have written a letter to her, which I will post myself, telling her to expect to hear from you. This is presumptuous of me, I know, but I trust you to do the right and charitable thing. I wish you well, and I hope you can find it in your heart to wish me the same.

Your cousin, Catherine Morley

Cat finishes these letters with cramps in her hand, the muscles more used to scrubbing than writing. She seals them into their envelopes, addresses each one, and puts Hester Canning’s on the night stand, propped up to be easily visible. She slips Tess’s into her bag, which she has packed with her few possessions, and what money she has saved. Outside the window the moon is mottled and full, as pale as fresh milk. It shines onto a landscape of graphite grey shadows and silvery outlines, and in the perfect quiet and calm, Cat sleeps.





The Rev. Albert Canning – from his journal


TUESDAY, AUGUST 8TH, 1911


This is the time. He has told me to stay away, he feels the time is right and I feel it too. He goes with his camera so I know, I know. He will summon them again, he means to take more pictures. I will go, and I will be there, and I will show that I am worthy since I will not announce myself, I will let him go about his great work all undisturbed, and when the images are captured I will reveal that I was there with him, and this will prove that I am ready, and I am pure, and that the elementals can look into the heart of me and will find that I am all I should be. This night has been long but I have waited it out. And all my nights in the meadows were not wasted. Without the sun’s energy the ethereals stay hidden – just as the daisy curls its petals, and shuts its eyes to the darkness, so they sleep. But I have spent long hours, alone and cloaked in darkness, and I have studied my soul and my heart, and I have looked inwards and I have rooted out all lust and material desire, and all the wrong feelings that the devil has sent to torment me of late, and I have scoured myself of it all, and left nothing but the light and pure energy of my astral and ethereal core. I am ready, I know this. I know this. Never at prayer alone have I experienced such vivid dreams and feelings. How dead and cold the stones of my church seem now, when all along the real church was all around me, and I could not see it. Until now! The church of the living light and the living breath and the living spirit of all that is holy and good, lying all around us in its green and golden splendour, and I at last have come to see it and to belong to it. And those of impure heart and those whose minds cannot encompass these mighty truths will be left where they are, lower down, further back, below us on the journey, on the ladder to enlightenment. They have many lives left, many turns of the cycle, to atone for whatever sins and misdeeds have rendered them incapable, in this life, of advancement. Even my wife must atone. Like all women, her heart is full of lust and wanting. Now is the time – this very dawn. I am ready and I will go, and I will see, and all will be complete. Dawn is breaking and the sky is clear, and the sun’s holy light begins to touch, to awaken. Soon the dance will begin and I will dance it too, and I will leave this shell of crystallised spirit, and find my true form. I am ready.