‘Go on then,’ I said, my voice shaking, ‘but don’t pull her too fast.’
‘I’m not going to pull her,’ she replied.
‘I can’t ride alone!’ I said. ‘You heard your father – he says this horse is skittish!’
‘You won’t be alone,’ she said, laughing, and I saw that she was standing on a branch that had grown low over the earth, her hand on the saddle behind me.
‘No!’ I cried.
But she took a little jump at the flank and I felt her wriggle against me as she swung her leg over the other side.
‘Budge forward!’ she said. ‘We both need to fit.’ She pressed her body into mine, circling her arms round me so that she could take the reins.
The horse moved again and I grabbed the saddle with both hands, clumps of coarse mane tangling in my fingers.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It is perfectly safe. This is what the large saddle is for. It was how I was taught to ride. I was too scared to learn the usual way.’ She clicked her tongue and I felt her legs clench around mine as she kicked her heels into the horse’s belly. ‘Walk on!’
Every step seemed to lurch towards the ground. The dust of the cart track and tussocks of grass spun beneath me and I dared not raise my head until we reached the higher ground where there was a little bend in the track. Only then did I look up and see the view over Missensham – the tightly packed houses of Drover’s Hill nestled on the slope beneath us and the busy high street, the Oxworth Road winding through the bottom of the valley and out to the crossroads and the farms beyond. I sensed a dull emptiness inside me where my fear had been, and I took a deep breath, no longer feeling the pound of my heart in my chest.
‘I can see the village green,’ I said, recognising the spire of St Cuthbert’s. ‘My cottage looks like a doll’s house from here. Although, coming from Haughten Hall you would probably think it that small anyway.’
She laughed, or I think she did, for what I felt was the movement of her body against mine – the soft press of her breasts against my back and the clench of her thighs around my hips. I thought of the curve of her thighs in the riding britches that were little more than pantaloons and realised what she must have seen of me when I mounted – the flash of stockings up to my thigh and the frill of my drawers. Suddenly the heat of the morning seemed unbearable, and I said no more.
Some way ahead of us, the twisted chimneys of Waldley Court rose from the shimmer of heat and dust, and I realised that the common was deserted on such a fine day, with only the occasional call of a crow and distant bark of a dog rising over the plod of hooves.
‘I can never go anywhere on my own,’ said Iris suddenly. ‘My father makes sure that I am always chaperoned, and it tires me.’
‘My mother is the same,’ I said, ‘but I think she wants to protect other people from me. She thinks I am evil.’
She laughed but I had not meant it as a joke.
‘My father is just overprotective,’ she said.
‘Maybe that is the reason he does not want you to marry,’ I said.
‘Maybe,’ she said, and I thought she might tell me more, but in the end she just said, ‘I don’t really know.’ I recalled that she had spoken of that man, Francis Elliot-Palmer, and thought it sad that she would never be with him.
Then she gave a little chuckle. ‘Anyway, Francis is hardly the kind of man one needs protection from. Perhaps he would suit you better, Nell, although your mother would not approve of him.’
‘Then I think he would suit me fine,’ I replied, laughing, although I was glad that she could not see me blushing at the thought of this boy I had never met.
‘Francis is a religious bookworm just like your mother,’ she said. ‘He is reading Theology at Oxford, but it is not just the Bible and God that he studies. He has special leave to stay at his family’s house past the start of the Trinity Term so that he can record the May Day celebrations on one of those cine camera things.’ She spoke as if Francis excited her and that I should be excited by him too, but she was describing a world that held little meaning for me as I knew it was one I could never be a part of.
I nodded silently.
‘On May Day morning Francis will start filming the festivities here in Missensham,’ she continued. ‘Then he will drive to some more villages on the way back to Oxford and record their celebrations too. He is not so interested in the blessings and church services – he says most of what happens on May Day is pagan.’
She seemed to relish the last word, as if it was something bold and daring, and I couldn’t help but feel shocked, for my mother had taught me that paganism was something so evil that one should never even speak of it.
‘Do you like the sound of him?’ she asked, a little excitement in her voice.
‘I think he would suit me just fine,’ I repeated, although this time my words seemed to falter.
‘You don’t already have a sweetheart, do you?’ she asked.
I thought of Sam. I would sometimes go to meet him at the stables of Waldley Court and I would hide in the old tack room where he lodged and talk to him as he worked. Last time he had come in as I lay on his mattress and he had said that he liked the look of me there. He’d said that I should return.
‘Nell?’
‘No,’ I said quickly, ‘I don’t have a sweetheart.’ Iris had already called my sweetheart ‘Samuel’ as if he were a servant and I felt ashamed again.
But she did not question me further, just jerked the reins towards her, pulling hard on one side so that the horse turned in the road. ‘Oh, Nell, look!’
We were now facing back down the track towards the clump of elms. There were two figures in the distance, a large man bobbing up and down as if he were running and a dumpy woman trying to keep up with him, her skirt billowing about her as she moved – Sir Howard and my mother – and only then I realised how long we had been out of their sight.
There was something about them that made me laugh – the way they seemed to jiggle about frantically, elbows out and feet stumbling, tufts of loose hair flapping in the breeze.
Then Iris laughed too and we laughed together at these ridiculous people, each of their stumbles refuelling our giggles. Iris still held the reins tightly, her chin resting on my shoulder and her arms circling my waist, and as she laughed, I realised that I could feel her breasts press against my back once more, but this time I realised that I did not mind.
‘It looks as if your mother is chasing my father,’ she said. ‘Although she has been doing that for many months now, with even less dignity.’
I felt a little drop in my stomach and remembered how my mother had been talking of Sir Howard constantly for the last few months. Sir Howard was a man that my father would not have approved of and I felt sick that my mother would betray his memory like this. I did not laugh any more.
Then everything seemed to shift beneath me and I lurched forwards, grabbing handfuls of white mane to steady myself as the horse turned suddenly.
A small brown dog was running hard across the common towards us, its head low to the grass and its legs flailing out behind it. It barked as it ran and I realised that the barking I had heard earlier had never stopped.
Iris let go of the reins and slid off the saddle. ‘Quick, get off!’