‘No!’ she said firmly, but then her voice seemed to falter. ‘It is just that I do not want to take them while you are here, for I fear that they shall make me worse.’
‘But your father—’
‘Don’t listen to my father,’ she said. ‘His only concern is that I am recovered by May Day.’
‘May Day?’ I echoed.
She nodded. ‘I am to be the May Queen.’
The May Queen! The words caused a sudden wrench deep inside me. I had never once thought about Missensham’s May Queen, nor even realised that May Day was so close. I watched Iris’s lips in the mirror as she spoke, but a weight was forming in my stomach. She spoke of how her father put a lot of money into the May Day festivities because the local manor house, Missensham Grange, was in decay and he felt obliged to support the community he represented in parliament, but they were words that meant nothing to me. I had never had the looks to be May Queen, and my mother would constantly remind me that I had a reputation as a delinquent, but now that I was reminded of something I could not have, I realised that a little part of me had wanted it after all. My chance had come and gone before I had even realised it. I had neither been considered nor consulted – I had not even been recognised as a girl.
‘…So,’ Iris concluded, ‘I do not really have a choice.’
So Iris would be the May Queen, but despite all her excuses about her father’s wishes, I could not believe that she did not want to wear flowers in her hair and be crowned the most beautiful girl in the village. I was sure that being May Queen was something that she wanted, even if she could not admit it to herself.
Then I realised that she had stopped talking, her head on one side as she looked into the mirror at my reflection, and I looked away embarrassed.
‘You seem surprised,’ she said, a little of her usual spark returning.
‘Aren’t you too old to be May Queen?’ I said bitterly. When she did not answer, I added, ‘I thought it a thing just for little girls.’
‘Not at all!’ I jumped when I heard Sir Howard’s voice in the doorway and began brushing Iris’s hair again even though every strand lay flat. ‘I think Iris is the obvious choice,’ he said, striding into the room.
I blushed, pulling Iris’s nightgown back over her shoulders.
He put a little bottle on the dressing table, little white pills tinkling inside the glass. ‘You know, Iris, I think that you are not up to receiving company today after all,’ he said, placing a Bible next to the bottle and putting a tumbler of water on top.
‘The May Queen?’ My mother scurried in after Sir Howard, but the congratulations I had expected from her did not come.
‘You object, Agnes?’ said Sir Howard, raising his eyebrows.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘Iris is such a delicate child and I always thought such a thing more suited to one of the village girls, who is more used to outdoor work. The procession sets off so soon after sunrise and Iris would only be in a little white dress; she could easily catch a chill at that time of the morning.’ She spoke quite earnestly, her curls bouncing as she nodded her head and clasped her hands together. I suddenly saw a motherly side to her – a protectiveness that I had not seen for a long time, but I was not the one who received it.
‘We would make sure that Iris does not freeze,’ said Sir Howard. ‘She can wear a white nightgown of her mother’s, which will serve just as well as a white dress, as it has full-length sleeves that will keep the chill out and is of suitable length for a girl her age.’
‘Does she not have a white lace tea dress?’ said my mother. ‘I would have thought a girl of Iris’s standing would have such a thing for entertaining in the summer months.’
‘I always thought those dresses more suited to grown women,’ said Sir Howard bluntly.
My mother opened her mouth. I knew that she had seen such dresses on the little girls of the Sunday school and I thought her about to say so, but then she thought better of it. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I agree that they do look quite indecent. I would not allow Nell to own such a thing because they look more suited to a boudoir.’ She spat out the last word, but I fancied that the real reason I did not own a tea dress was because she could never have afforded one.
‘A winter nightgown is surely of a thicker material,’ Sir Howard added.
‘But don’t forget that Iris would be walking all that way in no more than little white slippers,’ my mother persisted. ‘They would soon soak up the dew, and she would need all her strength to carry the willow arch, for it is heavier than it seems.’
‘She would not carry the arch alone—’ Sir Howard began.
But my mother wasn’t finished: ‘Well, perhaps we should arrange an understudy,’ she said, ‘just in case Iris is feeling delicate on the day. After all there are girls in the village school who would be suitable queens – Emma Flanagan and Rosalie Harris are perhaps a more suitable age and are both so fair. Iris does not even attend the village school and never did.’
‘I know the girls who you speak of,’ he replied. ‘They are indeed fair but I fear Emma Flanagan’s Irish ancestry makes her undesirable and she would have little time to prepare as she works hard outside school hours as a seamstress. Rosalie Harris is of low birth and has quite coarse manners, having only recently moved from some slum in Oxworth.’
‘The May Queen need not open her mouth,’ said my mother, ‘so I think there is little risk of an Irish brogue or common cursing – they only have to sit and smile and walk in the white slippers. Spare poor Iris the trek, especially if she does not recover from this quickly!’
‘Iris will recover quickly—’ he pushed the little bottle of pills across the dressing table towards Iris ‘—if she wants to. The girls that you mention will make suitable attendants, and Iris will be Missensham’s May Queen just as her mother was.’
I looked to the photograph on the desk. I had thought it posed in the same romantic style as the portraits in the study, as if it were an illustration to the Lady of Shalott, but now as I looked at it, I thought the lace neckline to be the gown of a May Queen and the flowers in the bouquet the blooms of spring. Iris’s mother had been May Queen, so of course she too would be.
‘Well, I suppose the whole of May Day is ungodly anyway,’ my mother said.
Her voice had weakened along with her conviction, and as she spoke about celebrating God’s creations and the joys of spring, I saw that Sir Howard had put his hand on Iris’s shoulder, his fingers gripping her collarbone. I looked to Iris but she seemed to be staring at her father’s reflection in the mirror, and him at her, their eyes connecting through the glass.
At last my mother seemed to talk herself round. ‘I am sorry, Howard,’ she said. ‘I do tend to take things so seriously, maybe I should just see this as a bit of fun like everyone else. After all, it is a special time for you to show off your daughter, for we see so little of her in the village.’
‘Thank you, Agnes,’ he said. He did not remove his hand from Iris’s shoulder, but my mother did not seem to notice.
‘If this nightgown you speak of is anything like the one Iris is wearing at the moment, the poor girl will look like a balloon,’ she said, stepping forward and tugging at Iris’s sleeve. ‘Will you let me alter it a little, so that she at least has a waist?’