The Unseen(75)

‘We must be quite quick now,’ Robin says, dropping to one knee in the wet turf and opening the leather satchel. ‘I don’t want the sun to come up. And it wouldn’t do for the vicar to get impatient and come looking for us.’ Over the river, a haze of pale mist hangs in the air, to shoulder height, shimmering and shifting as the sun’s light grows brighter in the eastern sky.

‘What is this, for God’s sake? What game are you playing?’

‘No game, Cat Morley. I simply want to take your picture,’ he replies, now pulling paper-wrapped items from the bag.

‘My picture? With the camera? What on earth for?’

‘Yes, with the camera. I haven’t time to draw your portrait myself. And besides, a drawing would not give the same … proof. But the camera … the camera cannot lie.’ He glances up at her and smiles, then stands and hands her the packages.

‘What is this?’

‘Open them.’

Cat does as she is told. One package contains a garment of the finest white gauze, swathes of it like clouds of fleece. Cat fingers the fabric, confused; puts it over her shoulder to open the second parcel. She nearly drops it in shock. Human hair, masses of it. Long, slippery, white-blond tresses, coiled like satin ropes in her hands.

‘Is this real hair? I don’t understand.’

‘Put them on – the dress and the wig,’ Robin Durrant says, impatience creeping into his voice. He is readying the camera, unscrewing the lens cover. ‘But take your dress off first. I don’t want it to show through.’ Cat thinks for a minute, then tips back her head and laughs. ‘Quiet!’ Robin hisses.

‘It’s a costume? You mean to dress me up, take my picture and tell the world I’m an elemental?’ She laughs again, incredulously. Robin’s face flushes angrily.

‘Just do it. Put them on!’ he snaps.

‘You are a fraud! A phoney! You no more believe in fairies than I do!’ Cat scoffs.

‘I am no phoney!’ Robin Durrant shouts, lurching to his feet and towering over Cat, anger swelling his chest and darkening his face. His declaration bounds off into the mist, and is swallowed up at once. Cat gazes up at him, unafraid.

‘At last, I can see inside you,’ she says, quietly.

Robin takes a deep breath. ‘I am not a fraud. The elementals are real. My belief is real – in truth it is knowledge, not belief. Intuition, not faith. They are real. It is all real.’

‘Then why must you pose a maid in a wig to catch a photo of one?’

‘I … I don’t know. Why I have failed. Why they will not be captured with the camera, as other beings not of the flesh have done in the past …’

‘You truly believe in them? In fairies?’ Cat eyes him intently. Robin nods. Cat studies him closely, then shakes her head. ‘Astounding.’

‘They will be the making of me. This … this revelation will be the making of me. It must be so,’ he declares.

‘I have never met somebody who really believed their own lies before.’

‘It’s not lies. And what of the vicar? You say his God is a lie, and yet he believes it.’

‘That’s true,’ Cat concedes. ‘Very well then, you are every bit as deceived as the vicar, if that makes you happy.’

‘Cat, Cat.’ Robin smiles. ‘I am not deceived. The world, blindly going about its petty business, unaware of the grand order of things … it is the world who is deceived. And this picture I will take of you may well be a falsehood, of a kind, but the most pressing demand of theosophy is that its followers strive to bring it to a wider audience. Strive to convince and enlighten people who would otherwise go through their lives unaware of the great truths our adepts have learned. And I have learned that people cleave to their ignorance as if it comforts them. They will not see reason unless they are made to. I will make them see reason. I will give them no recourse to back away,’ he says, with quiet zeal.

‘You have lost your mind,’ Cat tells him, blandly.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I have found it. Put them on. Or I will tell them what you do, and where you go; and that will be the end to it,’ he snaps, the words short and hard. ‘Do it – quickly. I could ruin you, if I chose to. And don’t think for a moment that I would hesitate.’

Cat falls still, her eyes hardening. ‘What grace there is, in this theosophy with which you hope to enlighten me.’ Her voice is bitter. Turning her back on the theosophist, she strips off her work dress and puts the gauze gown on over her shift. It is long and loose, but so light that when she moves it clings closely to her body. She leans forward as she has seen ladies in London do, and positions the wig over her own hairline. Upside down she sees a damsel fly, not an inch from her nose, clinging to the underside of a pale iris leaf – electric blue body, glittering rainbow wings vibrating, warming up for flight. So many hidden things, such hidden beauty, she thinks. Such lovely things truly do exist, and yet they are never enough for us. We must always search beyond. The wig is heavy, and threatens to pull itself off with its own weight. Only the bobby pins Cat happened to be wearing keep it in place. She straightens it, then turns to Robin Durrant. He stares.