For the rest of the stifling day, Cat works hard and fast, scrubbing angrily at the flagstones of the hallway until sweat marks a dark trail down her spine; pulling the sheets from the beds with enough force to tear them; chopping vegetables with sharp, agitated carelessness. She cuts her thumb this way but does not notice until Sophie Bell peers over her shoulder, curses in dismay at the sticky red smears all over the runner beans.
‘What in heaven’s name has got into you today?’ the housekeeper asks.
‘I want to leave!’ is all Cat can answer, frustration making her voice tremble and holding her tongue half-paralysed.
‘Well, by Christ, girl, there’s the door!’ Sophie Bell mutters. ‘Hold still!’ She binds Cat’s thumb with a length of clean rag, ties it tightly with string. Almost at once, the blood blooms out through the fabric, unfurling like a rose. ‘You cut yourself deep. Foolish girl,’ Mrs Bell observes, and the words sound profound to Cat – a judgement on more things than Sophie Bell can know.
In the early evening, the rain finally comes. Thick blankets of cloud had lain warm and damp over the house all afternoon, growing steadily darker and heavier. At half past five the first drops fall, warm as bathwater, soft as melted butter. Cat serves the dinner, disgusted by the luxury, the excess; the way the theosophist turns down the meat, his expression blasé, sanctimonious. How many others in the world have need of that meat, Cat wonders? When now it will go back to the kitchen and spoil, and be thrown away and wasted because the cold store is full of this thoughtless young man’s toys. She snatches up their plates with her lips pursed and her face in a frown. And afterwards, when all her work is done, she slips out into the pounding rain and is soaked to the skin in an instant. She takes the vicar’s bicycle from the shed and wheels it clanking along the side of the house, the rain hiding any sounds she might make. By the gate she pauses, swings her leg over the saddle and tips back her head, lets the rain wash away the day and all it brought. Her anger is like a scent on her skin, a clinging stink that she can’t get rid of. The rain almost hurts on her face, it falls so fast. Lightning makes her see red – the inside of her eyelids, glowing. She can feel the thunder in her chest like another heartbeat, irregular and uncomfortable, making her blood run faster. If lightning were to strike her, she thinks, she would not mind. She would not feel it. A hand on her arm makes her gasp.
‘Off out again? In this inclement weather?’ Robin Durrant asks, his voice raised against the onslaught of the rain.
‘What are you doing out here?’ Cat demands, bewildered by his sudden appearance. He holds his jacket above his head but it is soaked, water dripping through it, running down his arms, drenching his shirt.
‘Well, I went to your room but you weren’t there. I guessed you must be leaving for one of your assignations. He must be a very fine lover, to tempt you out in this storm.’ Robin smiles.
‘That he is!’ Cat snaps back at him, but Robin only smiles wider. Splinters of a new worry work their way into her mind. He went to her room? Who knew if he could move softly, if he was careful. ‘Now let me go.’
‘In a second, in a second. I have a job for you. Meet me at the stile along the lane at first light on Sunday.’ Robin runs his tongue along his bottom lip, licking the rainwater there.
‘I will not!’
‘You will. Or I will have to let slip to the Cannings about these evening jaunts of yours. The vicar is very much concerned with the purity and moral probity of his flock. I dare say he would have something to say about it within his own household.’ This he says in a light tone, conversational, even slightly bored. Cat glares at him, tries to see if he would indeed betray her this way, and to guess why he might. ‘First light on Sunday,’ he says again, and grins at her like an excited child, without malice; as if he is not threatening her, not controlling her. Cat snatches her arm away, strains against the pedals to be away from him. She can hardly see in the rain and the dark, she can hardly breathe through the rage in her heart. George is not there for her, but still she pedals as fast as she can, the bicycle careening wildly through puddles, along the little stony lanes. Just to be away from The Rectory; just for the illusion of liberty.
7
Hester hears the sound of the pony and trap on the driveway and her stomach gives a childish little lurch of joy, mixed with something almost like relief. She hurries to the front door and waves as her sister, her niece and her nephew climb down from the cart, and Mr Barker undoes the straps around their luggage and begins to pile it on the ground.