1911
Cat is so completely mesmerised by the rushing blur of the world outside the window that the journey passes quickly – all too quickly. With her head tipped against the glass, staring into the chalky sky with the green blur of fields pouring beneath it like a river, she fancies to herself that she is running faster than anyone ever has before, or perhaps even flying like a bird. The train carries on, she knows, all the way into the west, further west than she has ever been. It will carry on without her to Devon, and Cornwall, and the sea. She longs to see the sea again. The thought makes her ache with need. She’s seen it only once before, when she was eight years old and her mother was still alive, and the whole household upped sticks for the day and went to Whitstable. It had been a blousy summer day; all diaphanous clouds, with a curling breeze that had caught the donkeys’ tails, made them stream out behind them, and made the empty deckchairs billow. The Gentleman had bought her an oyster in its shell to eat, and a strawberry ice cream cone, and she had been sick all down her best dress. Stringy little gobbets of oyster flesh in a clinging pink sauce. But it had still been the happiest day of her life. She kept the oyster shell; had it for years in a cardboard box of everyday treasures.
As the train slows, the notion of flying evaporates, and Cat feels herself grow into flesh again, feet tied to the earth. The temptation to not alight is powerful. She could sink down in the clammy seat and keep on, keep on, until she saw the sea through the dusty window. But the train squeals to a halt, and she curls her fingers tightly, squeezes until her nails bite the palms of her hands. She’d hoped to draw strength from the gesture, but can’t quite manage it. The station at Thatcham is small and simple. She and one other person, a thin man scowling above his moustache, alight; and there is a busy scene at a freight car where several huge wooden crates are manoeuvred onto a trolley. Tall banks of young nettles and buddleia lean over the wooden fence, whispering softly. Cat draws in a steady breath. She would rather be anywhere else in the world, but at the same time she feels numb, devoid of all feeling as though it has been shaken out of her in the pain and violence of the past few months. At the far end of the platform stands a vastly fat woman. Cat pauses, seeks an alternative, and then walks slowly towards her.
The woman is quite as wide as she is high. Her cheeks crowd her eyes, narrowing them to creases. Her chins crowd her chest, so that the line from jaw to bosom flows quite uninterrupted. A skirt of flesh hangs down from her middle, swinging slightly beneath the light cotton of her dress, bumping her thighs. Cat feels sharp grey eyes sweep her up and down. She stares back, and does not flinch.
‘Are you Sophie Bell?’ she asks the woman. Sophie Bell. Such a pretty, tinkling name. Cat had envisaged a tall, soft woman with cornflower eyes and amber freckles.
‘That’s Mrs Bell, to you. And you’ll be Cat Morley, I take it?’ the woman replies, curtly.
‘I am.’
‘God help me then, for you’ll be no use whatsoever,’ says Sophie Bell. ‘Six months I’ve been asking for help in the house and now I get this wraith, who looks fit to drop dead by Friday,’ she mutters, turning from Cat and walking away with surprising speed. Her legs swing in wide arcs, her feet strike the ground flat. Cat blinks once, grips the handles of her carry-all, and then follows her.
Outside the station, a pony and trap is waiting. The little cart leans wildly to one side as Sophie Bell heaves herself onto the seat alongside the driver. Cat looks up at him, half thinking to proffer her bag, but the man gives her the briefest of glances before turning his attention back to a motor car, all glossy and black, that has pulled up on the other side of the road.
‘Well, don’t just stand there like a dolt! Get in. I haven’t got all day,’ Mrs Bell tells her, exasperated. Awkwardly, Cat throws her bag onto the back seat and climbs up after it. Barely settled, the driver flicks the reins and the pony throws itself into the harness, pulling them away with a jolt. So it is facing backwards, with a view of the road just travelled, that Cat is towed into her new role, her new life. Something in her rejects this so strongly that her throat knots up and makes it hard to breathe.
The village of Cold Ash Holt lies about two miles outside Thatcham, the lane winding south and east through a tangle of lakes and reed beds, water meadows so bright with spring growth they hardly look real. Young leaves flash silver where the breeze turns them, and even the air seems to carry a green scent; one of moisture and the headiness of flowers. They startle a heron, which erupts up through the rushes and seems too slow, too weighty for flight. The sun gets caught up in its greasy grey feathers, glints on the beads of water falling from its feet. Cat stares. She does not know its name. She has never seen a bird as big before, has barely ever seen birds, other than sparrows and the uniform London pigeons that scratch a living from the dirt. She thinks of The Gentleman’s canary, on its little gilded swing; the way he whistled at it, crooning, coaxing it to sing. She had watched, paused with duster in hand, and admired it for refusing. Mrs Bell chats to the driver all the while, a low commentary that barely lets up, leaving the shortest of pauses from time to time in which the man grunts. Most of what she says is lost beneath the clatter of the pony’s hooves, but Cat catches odd words and phrases. ‘She’ll be back again before the summer’s out, just you mark my words’… ‘had the nerve to suggest it wasn’t done proper’… ‘her son’s gone off again, and with little more than a child’… ‘short shrift for those that show criminal urges’. Cat glances over her shoulder, catches Mrs Bell’s narrow eye upon her.
The vicarage is built of faded red brick, three storeys high and almost square in shape. Symmetrical rows of windows with bright white frames gaze out onto the world, the glass reflecting the bright sky. The surrounding gardens overflow with early flowers, sprays of colour rising from tidy beds that curve through stretches of short, neat lawn. Budding wisteria and honeysuckle scale the walls and window sills, and tall tulips march the path to the wide front door, painted bright blue and sporting a gleaming brass knocker. The house sits on the outskirts of the small village, its gardens adjoining the water meadows. In the distance a stream carves a winding path, like a silver ribbon. The driver pulls up at the far side of the house, across the gravel driveway, where mossy steps lead down to a more modest door.
‘You use this door, none other,’ Mrs Bell tells her curtly, as they make their way inside.
‘Of course,’ Cat replies, nettled. Did the woman think she had never worked before?
‘Now, pay attention while I show you around. I’ve not got time to keep repeating myself, and I need to get on with the tea. The mistress, Mrs Canning, wants to see you as soon as you’ve had a chance to tidy yourself up and get changed-’
‘Get changed?’
‘Yes, get changed! Or did you plan to meet her in that tatty skirt, with dirty cuffs on your blouse and your bootlaces frayed?’ Mrs Bell’s grey eyes are sharp indeed.
‘I’ve a spare blouse, my best, and I can put it on, but this skirt is the only one I have,’ Cat says.
‘I’ll not believe they let you about the place looking like that in London!’
‘I had a uniform. I… had to give it back when I left.’
Mrs Bell puts her hands where her hips might have been. Cat gazes steadily at her, refusing to be cowed. The older woman’s knuckles are cracked and red. They sink into her flesh, wedge themselves there. Her feet rock inwards, the arches long ago surrendered to the weight they carry. Her ankles look like suet dough, dimpled beneath her stockings. Cat grips her own two hands together in front of her, feeling the reassuring hardness of her bones.