The Unseen (38 page)

His footsteps drift idly away, back down the stairs, and Hester breathes again, and tries to be relieved that Cat is not to go. But even this makes her uneasy, because it is his doing and he proclaims it to be on her behalf. Her head is aching, a tight band of pain around her skull. Slowly, she rises, and lies down on the bed. She had meant to think, to plan, but her mind is both full and empty, and she can make no sense of her thoughts, nor find anything in her experience or education to inform her how to act in this alien situation. And neither can she sleep. So she merely lies, in dread of the dinner hour.

Before dinner, and at a crucial point in its preparation, Mrs Bell is summoned under protest to go upstairs and be addressed by the vicar and his wife.

‘Watch those pies, Cat – another five minutes to brown the crusts is all they want,’ she says as she waddles from the room. Cat stares steadily at the doorway once the fat housekeeper has gone through it, and tries to guess what it might mean. The whole house is loaded with tension, paused in anticipation like a clock wound too tight. Perhaps it is only the heat, but perhaps not. Cat watches the pies, and finishes scrubbing the carrots in a bucket of water, and fetches the cream for dessert from the well; and on her return to the kitchen Mrs Bell is back, and will not look her in the eye, and snaps:

‘Never you mind!’ when Cat asks what the summons was about. A while later, she speaks again. ‘You’re to put their food on the dresser when you take it up. Don’t take it to the table – they’ll serve themselves. The vicar … the vicar don’t want you too close to him,’ she says heavily, her voice laden with disapproval as she passes on this injunction.

‘What does he think – that I’ll infect him with something?’ Cat asks, incredulously.

‘How should I know what the man thinks? Just mind what he says and be thankful you’re still here!’ says Mrs Bell.

So Cat serves dinner with a feeling of angry suspicion to make her hands clumsy. She glares at them as she puts each dish on the dresser, but only Robin Durrant will look at her, and he smiles and thanks her with ostentatious ease. Hester’s eyes are fixed with a kind of desperation at the precise centre of the white tablecloth, and the vicar gazes around him with a serenity that seems wholly out of place, wholly disconnected from the room. Afterwards, when all is cleared away and she has been out for a cigarette, keeping close to the eaves of the house as a few bloated raindrops begin to fall, Cat returns to the kitchen to find Mrs Bell standing with her hands in the pockets of her apron and a look on her face that Cat has never seen before. She pulls up short. Something in that look tells her to run, but she ignores it.

‘What is it?’ she asks, warily. Mrs Bell is breathing hard, her nostrils flaring whitely. She almost looks afraid.

‘I’m to accompany you to your room. To make sure you go into it,’ she says at last, the words clipped.

‘Ah, so you’re to be my warden now? They have pitted us against each other.’ Cat smiles resignedly.

‘I may not like it, but that is what I am instructed to do. To see to it you go to bed at the end of the day, and not out to any
dens of iniquity
…’

‘The vicar’s words?’

‘The very same.’

‘And I suppose nobody will take my word on this any more?’

‘I think you’ve done that to yourself, Cat,’ Mrs Bell replies; and Cat smiles again, just fleetingly.

‘Very well then. Let us go up.’

Walking ahead of the housekeeper on angry feet, Cat is up both
flights of stairs and outside her room, arms folded defiantly, by the time Mrs Bells puffs her way laboriously along behind her.

‘Well then, here I am. All ready to be tucked in,’ Cat says.

‘I’m to see you inside your room, and ready for bed.’ Cat steps over the threshold, walks to the bed and sits upon it.

‘Will this do? Or must I strip off and get beneath the sheet?’

‘I don’t like it much, Cat. But you’ve brung it on yourself,’ Mrs Bell replies. She reaches out, takes the door handle and begins to close the door.

‘Wait! I never close it all the way … I can’t stand it. Leave it ajar, if you please,’ Cat says. Mrs Bell hesitates, her face falling even more, a troubled frown making deep folds between her brows. Her spare hand fiddles with something in her pocket, and then she reaches for the door handle again, and her other hand emerges from her apron, and Cat sees a glint of metal in it, a warning flash of reflected light that she has no time to react to.

‘I’m sorry about it, girl,’ Mrs Bell mutters; and then the door is shut and there is a telltale click in the lock.

Cat is on her feet in an instant, and flies to the door.

‘No, no,
no!’
she shouts, twisting and heaving at the handle, which creaks in protest but does not yield. Behind it, Mrs Bell’s weighty footsteps recede as hastily as they may along the corridor. With sudden violence Cat doubles up, her stomach lurches, and a thin string of bitter mucus drips from her mouth to the floor. When the spasm passes she finds the walls pressing in around her, her heart squeezing as if it will burst, and black shadows of panic swelling up inside her head. The floor seems to lurch beneath her feet, rolling like deep water. She throws her arms out for balance, such a buzzing in her ears that she can’t even hear her own voice as she shouts for Sophie to come back. She hurls herself at the door, scrabbling at the wood, heedless of the splinters that drive themselves beneath her fingernails. She pounds her fists against it, feels the shock of each blow rattle her bones. But the door does not yield.

*

Hester, on the floor below, lies sleepless and alone in her bed. Albert retired to his study after dinner, and shows no sign of emerging. So Hester lies and listens to Cat’s shouts, her sobbing and swearing and the way she begs, until she can hardly bear it a second longer. The girl calls for Sophie for a long time, then she pauses, and Hester pictures her catching her breath.

‘Mrs
Canning! Mrs Canning! Please let me out! I can’t be locked in! I can’t!
’ Cat’s ragged voice comes clearly through the ceiling. Hester goes cold. She holds her breath, prays she will hear no more.
‘Please … I won’t run off! I won’t! Please, let me out!’
On and on it goes. Hester shuts her eyes and puts the pillow over her head, but she can’t block out the girl’s distress completely. She has no choice but to hear it, and finds in it, as the night progresses, an echo of feelings deep inside her own heart.

2011

Leah stormed back to her car, climbed in and slammed the door. In the sudden quiet she caught her breath, and the wind whipped a scattering of damp yellow tree blossoms onto the windscreen. Her scarf was too tight around her neck, her gloves were making her clumsy. The car was stuffy, the air stale, and Leah felt a huge irritation boiling up inside her. She groped in her bag for her mobile, and dialled Mark’s number.

‘Yes?’ he answered with a bark; his default setting of suspicion and barely contained hostility.

‘It’s me,’ she replied, just as shortly.

‘Oh, hello … how did you get on?’

‘I’m at the library now – well, I’m in the car park. Apparently you have to book an appointment to use the microfiche machines, and the local papers from 1911 aren’t online yet, and the machines are booked up all day. The earliest I could get one was tomorrow. How ridiculous is that?’

‘Steady on, Leah – it’s not long to wait. You’re not in London any more,’ Mark said, sounding amused.

‘I know. It’s just really frustrating to get held up like this … perhaps I should go back up to London for the day, and look in the national press?’

‘What’s the rush? The guy’s not going to get any less dead. Or any deader, for that matter. Are you always this impatient?’ he asked, slightly too quickly.

‘Yes! Probably. With a story, anyway.’ She took a deep breath and let it go. ‘How did you get on with the schools?’

‘Stroke of luck there, actually. I rang most of the schools in the area and was getting nowhere – several of them weren’t even founded until the fifties and sixties – but then the headmaster of the last one, a primary school, by some miracle wasn’t too busy to talk to me, and happened to be a local history buff. I told him what Hester said in the letters, and he thought it pretty unlikely that a vicar’s wife would have worked full-time as a teacher – it just wasn’t really the done thing once a woman was married. He says it’s more likely she was volunteering a little time each week – perhaps for Sunday school classes, or cookery – and he suggested we check out The Bluecoat School.’

‘The Bluecoat School? Where’s that?’

‘It’s in Thatcham. It’s not a school any more, but it’s still known by that name. I’m standing right outside the building now, as it happens,’ Mark said.

‘You’re there? Without me? Where exactly?’ Leah demanded, starting the car.

‘Relax – it’s not going anywhere. Come along the A
₄
into Thatcham and you’ll see me.’

As Leah drove the sun began to break through widening cracks in the clouds – dazzling shards of light that hurt her eyes. She waited impatiently at traffic lights, fingers drumming on the wheel, and was almost out the other side of Thatcham before she saw Mark, hunched into his raincoat. He pulled one hand from a pocket and waved to her, and she swerved into the kerb, the car behind giving her a loud blast of its horn. She waved vaguely in apology as it sped past, and wound down the window.

‘I almost drove right by you! This is the main road – are you sure this is the right place?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. It’s probably best if you pull off here – there’s parking just a little way up that street,’ Mark said as a lorry squeezed past, narrowly missing her rear bumper.

‘OK, hang on a second.’ She pulled back out into the traffic, got more angry gestures and honks, and followed Mark’s instructions.

As she walked back to where he was waiting, she studied the building that had been The Bluecoat School. Now she came to look at it closely, it stuck out like a sore thumb. It was clearly ancient. A tiny, ancient building with ochre plastered walls and a steeply pitched roof, its shape echoed by the porch over the main door. The stone mullion windows were boarded up, the glass blank; a door in the side wall was barely five feet high, and there were several vacant niches around the walls.

‘But – this must be a chapel, surely?’ Leah asked, as she came to stand next to Mark.

‘Correct. A very old one – almost certainly the oldest building in Thatcham, possibly one of the oldest in Berkshire. Originally the chapel of St Thomas, it was used as an auxiliary school building for years, and then as an antiques shop. Now the council own it, have fixed it up and are wondering what to do with it,’ he said. Leah glanced at him and smiled.

‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

‘That headmaster pointed me to the website,’ Mark admitted.

‘And he thought this was where she would have taught?’

‘He said it was the most likely candidate. It was used as a kind of overflow classroom for the local charitable school, which would have been the most likely to need volunteers like the vicar’s wife to fill in teaching gaps.’

‘But … what about the main school buildings? Couldn’t she just as easily have taught there?’

‘Yes. But this place has one crucial advantage.’

‘Which is?’

‘It’s still standing. The rest of the old school buildings were pulled down to make way for new housing between the wars.’

‘Bugger.’

‘Quite. But at least there’s a chance that this is the place she was talking about – where she hid whatever incriminating evidence it was she’d found.’ He shrugged.

‘I suppose so. Can we go inside?’

‘It’s locked,’ Mark said, with a shake of his head. ‘The caretaker should be here any minute – he’s agreed to show us around. I told him we’re researching a book on ancient chapels, so make sure you act like a scholar.’

‘What did you tell him that for? You could have just told the truth.’

‘I thought this would sound better. And I didn’t want to say we might want to pull up the floorboards and look underneath them. Besides … it’s more fun this way,’ Mark grinned.

‘You really have been living quietly lately, haven’t you?’ Leah said, wryly. Mark shrugged amiably. ‘Pulling up the floor might be a tricky one. We’ll have to think of a way to see if there are any loose boards … perhaps I could ask for a tour of the outside and leave you inside to check it out, or something?’ she suggested.

‘Excellent! It’s like we’re going undercover,’ Mark said.

‘I think you might be getting a bit carried away.’

‘Possibly. This is probably him now – the caretaker. Don’t forget, you’re a scholar and an expert on ancient chapels.’

‘Got it.’

As she spoke, a thin man in a dark blue cagoule appeared, walking briskly around the corner, slumped into a kind of apologetic cringe. He came towards them with his hand extended in front of him like a white flag on a pole. The caretaker’s name was Kevin Knoll; younger than Leah had expected, and blinking like a mole in the spring sunshine. His light brown eyes watered behind thick pebble glasses. His mouth was small, his nose pointed. His whole face and body appeared gripped by some terrible anxiety, but he smiled readily enough as they introduced themselves.

‘Well, I’m sure you’re itching to get inside. It’s such a joy to meet people who still care about these places,’ he said, glancing rapidly to and fro between them. ‘Chapels like this are so quint-essentially English, to me. They represent so much of our history.’

‘Oh, I … couldn’t agree more,’ Leah said, as she followed Kevin to the front door of the building and waited impatiently as he
fumbled with the keys. ‘So, I imagine you know a great deal about the history of this building? Its uses over the years?’ she asked. The key clunked in the lock, and the door swung open.

‘In we go. Yes, I suppose I know as much as anybody. Not that I’m an architectural historian like yourselves, of course,’ he said, in modest qualification. Leah shot Mark a quick look, and he winked.

‘Our, uh, research tells us that the building was used as part of a school, about a hundred years ago – is that right?’