The Unseen(54)

‘Haven’t you met Cold Ash Holt’s newest pet? The theosophist?’ Cat asks.

‘I met him briefly. He was quite keen to have his picture taken.’

‘That sounds about right.’

‘He and the vicar are working together on some academic paper or something. I couldn’t really find out much about it. Sounded very dry, I have to say. You never could rely upon a vicar to give you a scandal.’ He sips his tea, then looks up and catches Cat’s thoughtful expression. ‘Why do you ask, miss? Do you know something more?’ She flicks her eyes at him, and considers.

‘It wouldn’t do for me to be found out, discussing their business. Let alone in the press,’ she says, carefully.

‘But, I don’t know who you are – and I promise not to find out,’ the man says, laying one hand earnestly on his heart.

‘Well, then,’ she says at last. ‘Let me tell you a little bit more about Mr Robin Durrant.’


At the end of the week Cat collects the newspaper when it’s delivered, and ducks through the narrow doorway to the cellar stairs. She perches on a step halfway down to the kitchen, and leafs through the pages until she finds the photographs of the fête. She smiles when she sees herself there, haunting the shade at the edge of the tent while Hester and the other ladies light up the foreground. In the bottom left-hand corner of the page is a poor, grainy photo of the vicar, Robin Durrant at his side, smiling smugly into the camera. Chin lifted, chest puffed out. Cat wonders what exactly has made the vicar burst out with pride like this. She turns over to the society pages – thinly veiled gossip compiled anonymously by someone called Snitch. Cat skims her eyes over the text until the name she’s looking for stands out.


Mr Robin Durrant graced the Cold Ash Holt fête with his presence, to the obvious delight of several ladies of the village. Mr Durrant, of Reading, claims to be able to see fairies, hobgoblins and other imaginary folk; and is here to hunt for the very same in our own water meadows, aided by Cold Ash Holt’s worthy curate, the Rev. Albert Canning. The hunt has been going on for three weeks already, but alas, has so far proved fruitless. By what means Mr Durrant might capture a fairy, Snitch was not able to determine; nor what he would do with one if he caught it. It seems that Mr Durrant’s father, the esteemed Wilberforce Edgar Durrant, one-time Governor of India, is less than enthusiastic about his son’s unusual mission. Perhaps if young Mr Durrant is successful in his fairy hunt, he’ll also find a pot of gold to raise his father’s spirits?



‘Cat! Where are you, girl? Come along down here and get these breakfast things taken up!’ Mrs Bell’s voice comes echoing up the stairs. Cat refolds the paper and trots into the kitchen on light feet. ‘What’s put that smile on your face then?’ the housekeeper asks, suspiciously. Cat cocks an eyebrow, but says nothing. Mrs Bell grunts. ‘Well, if it ain’t proper, you better hope I don’t find out, that’s all,’ she says. Cat takes up the breakfast plates, lays the newspaper neatly on the sideboard, and waits.


Before lunch, she dusts the pictures all along the hallway and up the stairs. She uses a tightly twisted corner of her cloth to get into the curls and small gaps in the fancy moulded frames. Heavy oil paintings of Cannings gone before, ancestors of the vicar whose dignified likenesses have been trapped for ever on the canvas. This is how the rich buy immortality, Cat thinks as she studies each one, staring into their dead eyes. By discovering some new place, or inventing some new thing; by writing a book or a play. And for those not bright enough for that, not daring or talented enough, there was always a portrait, or these days a photograph. To make sure their names lived on, their faces didn’t vanish into dust. As I shall vanish, she thinks. One day. The poor were too busy working, staying alive, to worry about preserving themselves after death. They vanished in their thousands every day, forever invisible to the generations of the future. Nobody will ever know I existed. Cat tries not to mind this, since it is all vanity; but it is not a comforting thought, after all.

Suddenly, Albert drifts across the corridor from the parlour to the library, and Cat gasps. The vicar is oddly absent from the house, not in body, but in spirit. He flits from room to room so quietly, so distractedly, that half the time Cat has no idea where he is. This is disconcerting, for a servant. A servant always knows, from the noises in a house, where the upstairs folk are to be found. A servant needs to know, so he or she can dodge around them, slip from place to place, clean and create order and never be seen. So he or she can catch the smallest break, to lean for a second against a warm hearth, or study their reflection in a gilt mirror, or peer from the window at the vast world outside, a world with which they have no business. Time and time again, Cat has risen from blacking a hearthstone, or turned from dusting a bookshelf, to find the vicar sitting in a chair behind her, reading or writing in his journal, quite oblivious to her. He is like a cat, found sleeping in odd places and almost stepped upon. She can’t quite settle in the house when she knows he is in it.