‘Yes,’ I agreed.
‘The thing is that Sir Howard had known his wife for barely two years when she died.’
‘Two years!’ I cried.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Only two years. After all, she died so young.’
I suppose it was something that I had known all along if only I had cared to calculate it. Two years might seem a long time to someone in their youth but when one reached my grand age and could look back on life, two years was barely any time at all. It was a time that must have included introductions, courtship, marriage and pregnancy, and all in two years – about the time that it had taken Thomas and me to venture into the bedroom together, and even that was after our honeymoon.
‘I do not mean to be unfeeling,’ she continued, ‘but the marriage was not always a happy one. They were both so young and they had so little time to really get to know each other, but despite this, Sir Howard worshipped his wife, maybe more so after her death. You see, he blames himself for what happened.’
‘What are you trying to say?’ I said for I still found it difficult to talk of Howard in a way that seemed so personal.
‘Well, it is not so much that he mourns her at all,’ she said. ‘It is the way that he does it. You see, she was still very young when she died. Sir Howard never got to see her age or even know her well enough to see her flaws.’
I thought of the portraits that hung in the study again, but now I realised that the artist’s brush had recorded things as Sir Howard had wanted to see them. His wife would be remembered as a young and perfect woman forever, long after the real memories had faded.
‘Sir Howard sees the paintings in the study every day,’ I said quietly. ‘He must want to surround himself with her memory.’
‘Lady Caldwell only ever sat for a few sketches and watercolours,’ she said. ‘Sir Howard commissioned most of the larger portraits after her death. It was how she started to become perfect in his eyes and would always remain so.’
And no one else would ever compare, I thought.
But she answered as if I had spoken aloud. ‘You are a lady in your sixties and—’
‘I know,’ I cut in. ‘You do not need to remind me of it. I know that I am hardly the svelte young thing in those pictures. I could not compare myself to that. I…’ I looked down but saw only the roll of stomach at the top of my skirt and the slack skin of my hands. I could not continue but I did not need to – she could see for herself.
She reached forward and took my hand and I found that I did not resent it. ‘Men expect everything from us,’ she said. ‘They expect us to raise their children and run their houses yet they still expect us to have the thin waists and soft hands that we did in our twenties.’
I nodded, although I had little experience of what she spoke of. I had not reached forty when Thomas died and I wondered what he would make of me if he could see me now in this shabby little room with my fat belly, grey hair and funny ways. Maybe he would find me repulsive, just as Howard did.
‘For what it’s worth,’ she said, ‘I have never seen Sir Howard with any woman since his wife died – even those society ladies.’
I nodded for at last I realised that maybe I did not have the same standing as Sir Howard. I had been a vicar’s wife once, but that was so long ago now.
‘You said he blames himself for what happened,’ I said. ‘I thought she died in childbirth.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Sir Howard wanted an heir as soon as possible.’ She hesitated as if trying to think of the right words and then at last she said, ‘Well, I think Lady Caldwell would rather have waited but he was so keen. He blames himself for forcing it upon her.’
I nodded. She did not speak of the Howard I knew, yet somehow I could imagine him as a young man moving in social circles that had certain rules and expectations. It was just the way things were done back then.
‘Was he there?’ I said. ‘When she died?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Through all of it. They knew that it would not be easy for Lady Caldwell to give birth so they had planned to cut the baby from her but she went into labour much earlier than expected.’
‘But Sir Howard has always been a rich man,’ I said. ‘There was surely a doctor to hand!’
‘There was,’ she said, ‘but it all happened too quickly. They were forced to operate in an emergency and they did it on a table in the drawing room, but there was not enough time to have the room cleaned and prepared properly. She died of blood poisoning. Sir Howard has not been into the drawing room since that day.’
The drawing room at Haughten Hall was a room that I had never been received in and now I knew why. I had always thought that the portraits of Lady Caldwell that hung in the study must once have hung in a much grander room, where there would have been proper space and light to see them by – the drawing room that I had never seen.
‘He only told me that she died in childbirth,’ I said. ‘I suppose I never thought of what might have happened.’
‘I think that the fact that she lingered was the worst of it,’ she continued. ‘Poor Lady Caldwell did not succumb until two weeks after Iris’s birth.’
‘But why did they plan to cut the baby out?’ I asked. ‘Would it not have been safer to let her labour continue given the circumstances?’
‘Her hips were too small,’ she said. ‘They knew about the problem early in the pregnancy for my mother overheard Sir Howard discussing it with old Doctor Clark, so the plans were made. They were sure that a baby could not have passed through those hips.’
I thought about one of the photographs that Sir Howard kept on his desk. The one of Lady Caldwell in a short summer dress kneeling next to a bucket and spade. The style of the dress and the way the fabric clung to her slender hips had led me to believe that the photograph was taken in childhood, but now I realised that I had been looking at a portrait of a grown woman.
‘Lady Caldwell’s own mother also died in childbirth,’ Dora continued. ‘They knew less about these things back then but Doctor Clark thought that it might be a condition passed down among the women in that family. Things like that are so often the way with these inbred aristocrats.’
I was shocked at such words coming from a servant but there was no malice or mockery in Dora’s voice and she spoke the words with genuine sadness.
‘I don’t know if the condition affected Iris,’ she continued, ‘but from the way Sir Howard treated her, I am sure that he feared her dying in the same way. It was always thought that a female heir would marry the Elliot-Palmer boy and bring the two houses together but, watching his little girl grow into a young woman made Sir Howard uneasy and he called the whole thing off. He feared that Iris would be expected to produce an heir and would die the way her mother did. She could not go near Francis Elliot-Palmer nor any other man. He kept her as a child with ponies, short dresses, May Queen outfits and hand-chosen companions.’
I thought of Nell; she had been the companion that Sir Howard had chosen for Iris. In Nell, Sir Howard must have seen a naïve vicar’s daughter with a childish bonnet, an uneducated village girl. He had never seen Nell as Iris’s equal.