‘I had no idea you were waiting for me. I’m so sorry to have taken such a long time to come down! I thought you would be out with Mr Durrant for some time yet,’ she tells him.
‘That’s quite all right. It gave me a chance to read the papers before the day began and more important things presented themselves.’
‘How is it that you didn’t go out with Mr Durrant this morning?’
‘Well, now. We are trying out a theory of his. Yes, a theory. But I’ve been reading some troubling things in the paper this morning,’
‘Oh? Nothing too dire, I hope?’
‘The police arrested seven men for gambling just the other evening. They have appeared today before the magistrates for it. Gambling – on a cock fight, of all things! Not two miles away in Thatcham – can you believe it? Of all the bloody and brutal ways in which a man can chance his luck, they choose to pit two poor dumb beasts against each other.’
‘Oh, that is really too cruel! What a vile thing to do,’ Hester exclaims.
‘One of the men was Derek Hitchcock, from Mile End Farm. A Cold Ash Holt man, a member of my very own flock,’ Albert reports, his voice tinged with anxiety, face pinched with worry.
‘Darling! You can’t expect to be able to keep every last soul of the parish permanently on the straight path! Don’t be so hard on yourself. Men will err – it’s in their nature. You do an admirable job in bringing them closer to the word of God—’
‘But this is just the smallest part of the impurity surrounding us, Hetty! It lies everywhere, in the hearts of all men, and women! Just the other day I called unexpectedly upon the Smith household, only to find the reason for their oldest girl’s absence from church all too apparent – she is with child, Hetty! Heavy with child and only seventeen herself, and unwed.’ Albert shakes his head, casting a look of desperation up at his wife. Hester sinks onto the arm of his chair and grips his hands tightly.
‘Albert! Many a young girl has been led astray by the sweet whisperings of her beau … it’s to be lamented, of course, and is a tragedy for her, but she may yet atone – she may yet return to God’s favour, if she repents. And by far the majority of people here are good and kind and honest folk. Dear Albert, what’s brought on this dismay?’ Hester presses her hands tenderly to the sides of his face. Albert pulls away slightly, as if unwilling to meet her gaze, but Hester does not relinquish her hold.
‘It was something Robin said to me, yesterday morning,’ he confesses, wearily.
‘What did he say?’ Hester demands, more sharply than she intends. Albert glances at her, startled, and she smiles. ‘What did he say, dearest?’
‘He asked me not to go out to the meadow with him in the mornings any more. He suggested that he might have more success with his photographs if I were not there with him. In case my untuned and impure vibrations are off-putting to the elementals.’ Albert’s voice is laced with unhappiness.
‘Your impure vibrations? But this is nonsense! There is nobody purer of spirit than you, Albert …’
‘He means more that I am untrained, theosophically speaking. I am not able to tune my inner self to … harmonise with them. It may be why we have not yet managed to capture them on film, and I have not managed to see them again. Because of my lack of initiation.’
‘But … it was you who found them in the first place, Bertie! How can you be the reason that they stay away?’ Hester asks.
‘They granted me a glimpse of themselves, it’s true. Perhaps I had indeed stumbled unaware into some trance-like state that I cannot recapture …’Albert speaks as if to himself. ‘Perhaps that was it. Perhaps since seeing them my mind has been too unquiet, and I too caught up in the selfish desire to see them again, and to learn more. I must be a rough, clanging cymbal to them, so great has been my desire! Yes, I see it now – I have been foolish, and unworthy!’
‘Albert, stop that at once! You have never been foolish in all the years I have known you – since we were children, Bertie! And never once unworthy. Only ever good and kind and generous. And if this theosophy is teaching you anything other than this, then it is plain wrong, and perhaps it would be better to learn no more!’ Hester cries.
‘Hetty!’ Albert snaps, sharp with sudden anger. ‘Don’t say such things!’ Hester recoils, stung.
‘I do hope I’m not interrupting,’ says Robin Durrant, appearing in the doorway as if he’s been there all the while, one hand in his pocket, the other curled around his Frena camera. Hester jumps up from the arm of the chair and turns away, startled. Her skin prickles beneath her collar, and she feels breathless.