‘That’s very kind of you, Agnes,’ he said. ‘Dora has already laundered it in preparation for the day, so you can collect it from her on your way out.’
‘Our way out,’ she muttered, and then, ‘Of course – Nell we can have no more of your chatter. All this is exhausting poor Iris and we need her to recover quickly!’ She grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the dressing table.
‘Thank you, Nell,’ said Iris quietly, although I was not sure what she was thanking me for.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if the pills will make you worse for a bit, we should probably leave you in peace.’
She nodded, but when I glanced at her reflection, I thought that her eyes were slightly watery.
‘We will find Dora and collect the dress on our way out,’ said my mother, echoing Sir Howard’s command, then she pulled me from the room.
* * *
My mother did not stop talking as we walked down the driveway. She spoke of the style of Iris’s pinafore and the straightness of her hair, of the way she had received us like a true lady of a grand house, and of the courage it must have taken her to agree to be the May Queen – a role she was much too delicate for. As she spoke, she held the nightgown that Dora had fetched. It was draped tenderly over the crook of her arm as if it were a newborn baby.
Then she stopped and grabbed my hand, glancing at me excitedly. ‘Do you see, Nell?’ she said. ‘They received us despite Iris’s illness. Do you know what that means?’
I stared at her blankly.
‘We move in their circles now,’ she replied to her own question, and then with a excited little chuckle in her throat, she added, ‘We are becoming like family to them!’
I did not bother to respond because what my mother had seen at Haughten Hall was very different to what I had seen that day. I thought of the little bottle of pills that Iris’s father had pushed towards her and his insistence that she be May Queen, of the sight of his hand squeezing her collarbone and the marks beneath her shoulders where the corset dug into her flesh. I thought again that there was something not right with the Caldwells, but it was a thought that did not linger long enough. I wish it had, but it did not.
I did not think about what I had seen, but what I had not heard – Iris was to be May Queen but nothing had been said about me. Sir Howard had not mentioned me, even as I sat in front of him tending to his daughter. My name had not even crossed my mother’s lips as she spoke of the other girls she considered so fair. But there was one person who I had longed to hear speak my name more than any other, yet she too had been silent. I thought that if Iris had chosen me as an attendant – if I had just heard the words from her lips – then that would have made everything alright.
I remembered the closeness I had felt to her when we had shared a saddle on the common and the little jump I had felt inside me when we had sat together on the window seat in the library and she had declared that we would be friends. I had thought that she had meant it, but today when the talk had turned to the May Queen and her attendants, Iris Caldwell had not said a word, and in that brief moment of silence, I had found myself alone once more.
14
It was not until one foggy morning at the end of March that I first started to see the foxes. I had become used to hearing them at night. They would often wake me and my heart would race until I realised that their screams were no more than wild creatures scavenging in the streets. Yet on that morning, as I sat in my chair by the window and gazed out across the village green, I saw a fox passing under the oak tree in the full light of day. It was tall and upright like a dog, quite different from the little country foxes I was used to seeing as they scurried off in the twilight. As it saw me it stopped, its front paw raised, and we watched each other for a while before it hung its head and trotted away, its nose to the ground. I did not think much of it at the time but, looking back I now see that fox as some kind of omen, for this was just the morning of a day that had so much in store.
‘I think you should call round,’ said my mother suddenly. She sat on her old basket chair, Iris’s long white nightgown on her lap and her sewing box open on the floor in front of her.
I looked away from the window. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said. ‘Call round where?’ But I knew exactly where she meant. Over the past fortnight we had heard nothing from the Caldwells but brief letters, which told us not to visit on account of Iris’s worsening illness. Iris and her father had been all my mother had spoken of for the last few days and the lack of news was more than she could bear.
She stopped pulling at her thread and stared at me over the top of her spectacles.
‘I can’t exactly pop round when we have been told to stay away!’ I said. ‘Anyway, my boot leather has hardened in the rain, the backs are starting to rub my ankles.’
My mother drew her lips into a tight little knot and looked back down at her work, her eyebrows lowered. She had been stitching Iris’s nightgown day in, day out and her fingers had become quite calloused. She had not only taken in the waist but had also altered the hem and was now embroidering the neckline with little yellow flowers, which she said were wild flag irises.
I could not help but think of how Iris might look in the nightgown. She would be a May Queen, just as her mother was, her hair loose and flowers all around her. I thought of how the nightgown would flow around her as she walked, the fabric gaping on her shoulders, the little yellow irises resting on the jut of her collarbone. But Iris Caldwell was a girl who had made a promise of friendship to me, only to take it away when she did not consider me as her attendant. I could not bear to think about her anymore, so I turned my head towards the window again.
The fox had disappeared into the haze, but I could see the sheen of the mist on the oak tree and the damp timbers of the bench. In the distance the blue lamp of the police station glowed dimly through the fog and I could just make out the maypole, which now stood on the village green, its ribbons fixed so tightly that it seemed no more than a dead tree.
‘Here!’ My mother reached under her chair and took out a brown paper bag, handing it to me. ‘You can take this round to Haughten Hall and drop it off for Iris, and if she is recovered then it will be difficult for them to refuse you a visit.’
I took the bag from her and peered inside. ‘Liver salts!’ I cried, recognising the green stripes of the tin. ‘I can’t claim to be just passing by if I only have liver salts. The Caldwells have a housekeeper they could send out for liver salts!’
I did not expect an answer from her and I did not get one. My mother would do anything to please those that she thought her betters and I knew this was something I could not argue against.
‘Well,’ she said returning to her embroidery, ‘I can’t go myself, Nell, because, as you can see, I am busy, and all you seem to do with your time at the moment is sit in that chair and gaze out the window. You make no effort to find work or to mix with the right sort of people, you wear your hair as if you were a boy and…’
It was a speech I had heard from her before, many times over, and, as she spoke I went to the door to get my jacket and the boots that rubbed my ankles, trying not to look at her slowly shaking head and her lips that spoke only of her disapproval.