The Unseen(65)

Cat didn’t realise, when she was released early from gaol, that it meant she wouldn’t see Tess again. Cat was released ten days before her two months were up, with her chest consumed by infection, her skin drawn tight over her bones, her hair shorn away and her lips cracked, weeping blood whenever she spoke. The WSPU sent a welcoming committee to collect her and two other girls released that day, freed before their time because they were fading fast and the government did not want to create martyrs. They were taken in a cab to a meeting hall, where a reception breakfast was laid out for them, and speeches made in praise of their bravery. It was only these speeches that kept Cat from sobbing with relief, and with pain, the whole time. She kept a check on herself by saying nothing – keeping her ruined lips tight together other than to murmur thanks when her Holloway medal was pinned to her collar.

She could not touch the food they had prepared. The other girls did – one picking politely at the sandwiches and slices of pie and fruit, the other tearing into it, so quick and frantic that she made herself choke. The women urged Cat to eat, to start rebuilding her strength. They even brought out a mug of broth after she’d turned down everything else. Cat tried a sip but could not swallow it, and in the end she spat it back into the cup, as carefully as she could. In an extravagant gilt mirror hanging at one end of the room, she caught sight of herself. A pale, ragged spectre, with scabs around her mouth, bruises on her neck and wrists. Her clothes hung from her bony frame, her scalp was an ugly grey where it was visible around her hat. As they bustled around her, the women of the welcoming committee looked like round, glossy birds; plump partridges or doves with their billowing chests and bright, cheerful eyes. Cat stared at her reflection, and hardly knew herself.

Later, they took her back to Broughton Street, and then The Gentleman took her straight to see his own doctor. The first and only time she rode with him in his motor car. Dazed and exhausted as she was, still the novelty of riding in a self-propelled carriage was not lost on her. But it was only afterwards, when Tess was still serving her sentence and Cat was told a new position had been found for her in the countryside, that Cat realised she might not see her friend again, might have no chance to make amends. On the day she left London she was taken by bus to Paddington. Mrs Heddingly rode with her to be sure she caught the train, and tears streamed from Cat’s eyes to drip unheeded from her chin.


‘This Sunday? I am sorry, Cat, but it’s quite out of the question,’ says the vicar’s wife, when Cat asks her. Hester Canning is sitting at the desk in the morning room arranging violets, yellow and indigo pansies and pink phlox into a suitable pattern in her pressing book. She works quickly since the heat of the day is making the petals wilt already. Several torn violets lie discarded to one side.

‘But the place only lets in visitors the third Sunday of each month. That’s this Sunday. If I can’t go then I can’t go for another month, madam …’

‘But on such short notice, Cat, and with my sister arriving tomorrow with her family … you are very much needed here. I am sorry, but I cannot allow you to go. I promise you may next month. How about that? The third Sunday of August will be entirely yours, to make up for the afternoon you will lose this week. There’s an early train which will get you to town in plenty of time to visit your friend.’ Hester smiles brightly, as if the outing will be a fun one. She shuts the wooden cover of the pressing book and begins to tighten the screws, forcing the boards together with the hapless flowers caught between, flattened, stifled. Cat tries to breathe calmly but feels like her chest is pressed, as though Hester tightens screws upon her at the same time. How can she explain the way London workhouses are? The words will not form sentences, tangled in her desperate thoughts. By next month Tess might have faded and gone. Not dead, necessarily, but the light inside her extinguished, her innocence snuffed out, the spirit of her crushed like flower petals, and no pretty image of it preserved anywhere. Cat has seen people bought out of the workhouse. Empty shells, they seemed. Nothing behind their eyes but echoing space; shadows of loss and despair.

‘Please,’ she tries once more, her voice little more than a croak. ‘It is of the utmost importance. Teresa is a very great friend of mine and it is only because of me that she finds herself put out of her job … I am to blame. I must visit her. I must take her some things to ease the hardship she is left facing …’ she implores.

‘Cat, please. Enough of this. I am sure the girl is being well looked after. The poorhouses are designed for such as her, after all – to give them shelter and food, and a way to earn these comforts. And she will still be there for you to visit next month, and every bit as pleased to see you then as she would be now, I am sure. It is only fair that I have more notice than this of you taking time off. Surely you can see that?’ Hester smiles vaguely, quite unconcerned. Comforts? Cat stares at her, bewildered. Can the woman really think that there is comfort in such places? She stands in front of her, quite still, unable to move; not quite believing what she has heard. Hester continues about her hobby for a while, then looks up with an expression of mild discomfort. ‘That will be all, Cat.’