‘Yes, I see! Quiet, Cat! Here – take this.’ She holds out the skeleton key to Cat, who stares at it incredulously. ‘Take it. You can unlock the door once Mrs Bell has locked it and gone. She takes the key from the lock when she goes, I have checked.’ Cat snatches the key, holds it tightly in her fist as if Hester might try to take it back again. A cold, iron lifeline, a talisman even more powerful than her Holloway medal. ‘But you must swear, Cat, you must promise me you will not go out of your room at night. Please – swear it! If you do, if Albert finds out that I have given you this key… Please, swear to me,’ Hester begs, crouching down in front of Cat and forcing her to meet her eyes.
‘I swear it.’ The words drag themselves from Cat, reluctantly. ‘But, I must get word to… to George. To my man. We were arguing, before. He might think I keep away because, because I don’t want him any more.’ To Cat’s bewilderment, Hester’s eyes fill up with tears; her lips tremble slightly and she presses them together.
‘Do you love him?’ Hester asks. So alien, it seems to Cat, to speak so freely with the vicar’s wife. But the night is dark and the room is a cell, and Hester Canning has offered her reprieve.
‘With body and soul, madam. With all of me,’ she answers; and Hester drops her head, a tear falling with a minute splash onto her clasped hands. For a long time Hester is quiet, breathing shallowly, and seems to fight for control of herself. Then she looks up again.
‘I will send you on some errand, tomorrow afternoon. Some errand in Thatcham. You may seek him then. But promise me – not in the night time. Not when your freedom might be noticed.’
‘I promise you,’ Cat says, and is surprised to find that she means it.
‘Well then. Hide the key, and keep it carefully! Turn the lock again in the morning before Mrs Bell comes to let you out. It wasn’t right to lock you in, Cat. I never thought it was right. But lately I seem to be mistress of this house no longer. There are two masters instead,’ Hester says forlornly, getting to her feet and picking up her candle once more. In the warmth of its glow, with her hair tumbling over her shoulders, eyes wide and glistening, the vicar’s wife is quite lovely.
‘Only one master, as I see it,’ Cat says darkly. ‘Can’t you be rid of him?’ Since they are speaking openly, Cat will have her say.
Hester blinks, startled. ‘I have tried to suggest that it’s time he went home…’
‘As far as I can tell, and as Mrs Bell’s gossip informs me, the man has no other home. And not much money to his name, either. His father keeps him on a very tight stipend. He is expected to make his own fortune,’ Cat says carefully. She watches Hester Canning, sees her digest this unwelcome information.
‘No home? He doesn’t even keep rooms somewhere?’
‘No, madam. It will be hard to shift him, I think, while the vicar makes him so very welcome.’
Hester nods her head, resignedly. ‘You understand a great deal, Cat Morley.’
‘Nobody knows a household and its occupants like its servants, madam. It’s inevitable.’
‘And what else do you know about Mr Durrant?’
‘Only this: do not trust him. He is a liar. If you can find some way to move him on, then do it,’ Cat says, gravely.
Hester stares at her, alarmed, then nods once and turns to go. ‘In the morning,’ she says, from the threshold of the room, ‘it must be as though none of this has passed between us.’ Her face betrays some discomfort.
‘Of course,’ Cat says, quite unperturbed. With Hester gone and the door open, she lies down on the bed and sleeps for the first time since it was locked.
The following day is one of simmering heat. In the kitchen, Cat and Mrs Bell make jam from the overflowing baskets of raspberries and loganberries that the gardener, Blighe, keeps bringing to the kitchen. The fat housekeeper is at the stove, stirring and stirring, making sure all the sugar in the vast copper pan has dissolved. Cat scalds the glass jars, boiling kettle after kettle of water to sterilise them before filling. Both work with sweat running down their faces and backs, between their breasts, into the folds of their clothes. Their cheeks are as red as the bubbling fruit pulp, their eyes flat with a kind of dull, resigned anger; ill-defined, aimed half at the heat of the day, half at the blameless raspberries. The room is sweet and heady with the scented steam. It clings to their hair and their faces and hands. Cat burns herself for a third time, hisses at the pain and plunges her hand into the bucket of cold water where the milk is kept. Mrs Bell hasn’t the energy left to reprimand her, or urge more care.
Once the jam has been left to sit for a quarter hour so the fruit will settle evenly, there are more burns as it’s poured. Splashes, piping hot flecks find bare wrists; dribbling overflows must be wiped away, the hot jars braced with wincing fingertips.
‘Dear God, if only that was the end of it! In a week the blackcurrants will start coming in,’ Mrs Bell sighs, putting her hand to her mouth and sucking where a blister is forming.
‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ Cat says, leaning her elbows on the sticky table top and bending forwards to stretch her back. ‘It’s suffocating me.’
‘It’s hotter than hell, I’ll grant you,’ Mrs Bell agrees. All day Cat has looked to the doorway, looked to the stairs, looked to Hester as she put the lunch dishes on the sideboard; waiting to have her errand, her means of escaping to find George. All day it has not come, and the wait has chafed her more as each minute ticked past. She takes the tea tray up at four, with a bowl of the fresh jam and a plate of scones. Her legs feel like lead as she climbs the stairs; her movements are wooden. No amount of water she drinks seems to quench her thirst. In the drawing room, the vicar and his wife sit with Robin Durrant, listening as he reads from a letter. Hester Canning’s face is flat and shiny, her hair a frizzy mess around her forehead. She seems lost in thought, and does not notice Cat, however hard Cat tries to catch the woman’s eye. The vicar can’t seem to keep his eyes still. They flit from Robin’s face to his hands to the letter he holds, and when Cat draws near he shuts his eyes and turns his head away, shuddering slightly, as though the smell of her offends him.
Gritting her teeth in fury, Cat puts the tray down with exaggerated care, and transfers the tea things to the table as slowly as she may without it appearing deliberate.
‘It is a source of tremendous satisfaction to us both that you have at l- that you have begun to make such a name for yourself as an authority in your chosen field. You are to be congratulated in the advances you have made of late. I look forward to our next meeting, and to a further discussion of both the nature and implications of your discoveries, since the newspapers’ reporting of it, which we follow most keenly, has been somewhat stingy with the facts of it all, and over-exuberant with either excitement or derision. I am sure that your continued diligence and endeavour in the field will only bring you greater prospects and wider renown. Yours etc…’ Robin Durrant lets the letter drop into his lap and smiles widely at the Cannings. ‘There! What a wonderful letter to receive from one’s father!’ he exclaims. ‘I know for a fact that the old man can’t for the life of him grasp the esoteric theories of theosophy, and yet he offers me his support and, I think, begins to respect the fact that in this field at least, my understanding outstrips his. And that of my brothers,’ the theosophist says, his voice vibrant with excitement, smiling with achievement. When neither of the Cannings replies to him, it clearly annoys him. He prods them as one would a listless pet, Cat thinks, requiring it to play. ‘What say you, Albert? Hester? Don’t you think it wonderful that a man as staid and traditional in his beliefs as my father can be persuaded to open his mind to this new reality?’