But still she did not make a sound.
I put the chest on the dressing table and took out the fabric that was folded inside. The cotton was so cold against my hands that it felt almost damp, my fingertips running over hard knots of embroidery – tiny yellow flowers stitched around the curve of a neckline. I grasped the fabric and reached up high, letting the garment unravel to the floor. It was a long cotton nightgown, just as I had remembered, but the thin fabric that had once been white was now faded. There was a dark brown stain, which ran from the chest and continued to the bottom hem, covering almost half the gown in the seep of dried blood.
It was the dress of the May Queen. It was what Iris Caldwell had worn on May Day. It told me that Iris was dead, that Sam could be innocent and that Nell had been somehow involved in what happened. Yet it told me nothing of what had become of my daughter after that or whether she too had perished.
‘Oh, Nell, why?’ I whispered. ‘If only you could tell me why!’
From the stool by the dressing table, Nell just watched and smiled.
Nell
1912
8
It was on the first of March 1912 that I met Iris Caldwell – the first day of spring. Of course, I was just a young girl in 1912 and I could not foresee how what would happen over the next few weeks would lead me to do what I did. We did not know it back then, but Iris and I would not see another spring in Missensham.
I knew Iris by reputation first. In fact, everybody did. She was the daughter of the grand Member of Parliament who lived in the big house, the girl with the golden hair and slight figure, the one who the boys would stare at when she passed but never have the nerve to whistle at. She was the girl whom I would only ever glimpse in the back of her father’s motorcar as she was driven to church, and in her family’s pew, her face shaded by her smart hat; but this was only ever at Christmas and Easter and the rare times that God deserved her presence.
She was a girl who was the same age as me but had never attended the village school so I thought her like some exotic creature, one who lived in a world I could never be part of. She was the girl who my mother talked about constantly – her manners, her elocution, her posture, her handwriting – always with a downward glance at me as if she was wishing me away. I was not Iris and I was sure that my mother hated me for that.
It was through my mother’s work at Haughten Hall that Sir Howard heard about me. He cannot have known much about me – only my age and the fact that I lived in the village – because if he had known any more, he would not have thought me a suitable companion for his daughter. My mother would have also reminded him, several times, that I was the daughter of the dead vicar.
I will always remember how my mother stood in the hallway waiting for me that morning, my best coat laid out and my boots clean and polished, a frilly white bonnet in her hand as she tapped her foot impatiently.
‘I can’t wear that!’ I said as I came down the stairs. ‘It’s a child’s bonnet.’
But she said nothing and held it out to me as if she was telling not asking.
I had done something to my hair, you see, restyled it in a way that she said was ‘quite unacceptable’. I had cut it short at the back of my neck and around my ears, but when it was smoothed back, it could pass for long hair that had been scraped back into a bun. I remember when she had first seen it – how her eyes had seemed to fill the thick lenses of her spectacles and she had brought her hands up to her mouth as if she had seen a ghost. My mother’s own hair had such a curl to it that it would never reach past her shoulders so I did not see her problem with what I had done. In fact, I thought I looked quite like Vesta Tilley from the music halls, but Mother thought that music halls were vulgar.
I did not know why my mother wanted me to wear the bonnet that morning, only that, whatever her plans were, she must have been determined that I would not disgrace her.
‘You are to come with me to Haughten Hall,’ she said. ‘You are to provide companionship to Sir Howard’s daughter this morning, while he and I discuss Iris’s progress with her religious studies.’
‘Companionship?’ I said. ‘You make me sound like some kind of Victorian lady’s maid!’
‘Of course you won’t be a maid!’ she said. ‘You are the daughter of the late vicar, so you have a certain standing in this village. Sir Howard knows that. It will just be companionship.’
‘I won’t come,’ I said. ‘I don’t know this girl, I—’
‘You need a work reference,’ she said firmly, ‘and you will do it for that. You cannot be a teacher now that you will not get a reference from Miss Potter and I cannot even pass you off as a governess. There is nobody left in this village who has not heard of your exploits.’
I did not bother to respond for I knew that she had more to say and that I would not get a word in edgeways. It was a rant that I had heard from her so many times about how I had become drunk on wine with Sam Denman and ended up in a police cell. There was no more to it than that but, despite having had a year to get over it, Mother still wallowed in the shame, and my silence did nothing to deter her as she continued to grumble about wagging tongues in the village, wringing her hands and spitting out the words as if they were poison. I pushed past her and took up my coat, forcing my feet into my boots.
‘…and what would your poor father have made of what became of you and Sam?’ she said, at last drawing breath but it was no more than a dramatic pause as she did not wait for an answer. ‘He would be turning in his grave!’
‘What became of me and Sam?’ I repeated. ‘Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? Sam has been able to get a job because some rich old woman took pity on him, and he likes working at the stables. Maybe if I can’t be a teacher, I should see if I can get a job in service after all. Maybe someone in one of the big houses will take pity on me too.’
‘That level of work is fine for the likes of Sam,’ she said, ‘but as the family of the late vicar we have a certain standing in this village. You must remember we may be related to Sam but we are not of his class.’
‘Of course we are!’ I cried. ‘What exactly do you see through those spectacles?’ I waved my hand around the hallway, hoping that she would actually take note of the worn rug, peeling varnish on the skirting board and the yellowed paint behind the gas mantles. We had fallen low since my father had died, although she did not care to admit it. The payments we received from the church barely stretched to food and rent and were not enough to buy back our respectability.
Mother blinked through her thick spectacles. At the age of forty, she already had the sight of an old woman. ‘Well, we will soon be returned to our rightful status,’ she said nodding earnestly and I noticed that she was wearing her best coat and hat. ‘I have been tutoring Iris for over a year now and I know that Sir Howard has come to treat me as an equal. If word got out in the village that we were both regular visitors to Haughten Hall then that would look very good for us, and maybe go some way to make up the damage you have caused to our reputation.’
‘I’m not going to Haughten Hall just so that you can cause some gossip!’ I said.