I wondered what he really saw through his shiny coppery lens, or even through those pale eyes that always lingered just a moment too long. I wondered if he saw the truth, or just a dull flicker of light.
It was a time when my life seemed no more than one of his grainy recordings, yet there was one embrace, one memory, that lived in bright colour. I thought of that moment often – the tears on my cheek, the clatter of the silver hairbrush as it fell from my hand, and the warmth of her body against mine.
But the moment had not lasted and I had not even had the chance to return the embrace before Iris had run off at her father’s call and I had been left alone, looking at the nightgowns on the bed and straightening their arms to be sure that they were not touching.
It was a hug and no more than that, but something about it had felt wrong. I worried that Francis had been standing outside the window with his cine camera, and that the machine could somehow see us through curtains and walls and had captured my racing heart. I worried that he would see the truth – that the pain I had felt over the last month had been for Iris and not Sam – but I did not know that there was a bigger secret that was not mine, and I was to hear it later that week from the lips of another.
* * *
I did not see the woman until she stepped out of the shadows by the village hall and stopped me in my tracks. I had been to the high street, to the little bookstand at Partridge’s, a novel wrapped in striped paper tucked in my basket and I had hoped to go home and lose myself in a world that was not my own. I had thought to cross the road when I heard the echo of Mrs Elliot-Palmer’s voice from inside the hall and saw the flicker of the projector through the gaps in the curtains, but just as I was about to step off the kerb there was a shift in the shadows and the woman stepped in front of me.
She was a woman who I had seen before around the village. Although she must have been twice my age, she was no taller than me and wore a long, dark cape that made her look quite stocky. Her hair was pulled back from her rounded forehead and pinned behind the angular cap of a nurse. She hesitated when she saw me, holding her glowing cigarette in mid-air.
I nodded briefly and lowered my head, but she recognised me. ‘Nell! Nell Ryland!’ I stopped dead in fear that the whole hall would hear her through the walls.
‘Hello,’ I said, trying but failing to sound cheery.
‘Sadie,’ she said. ‘My name is Sadie. We have never met but I recognise you as the late Father Ryland’s daughter.’
‘Hello,’ I said again but she did not seem to notice my awkwardness.
She tossed her head back in the direction of the hall. ‘Did you hear her in there?’
‘I’m afraid I missed it,’ I said quietly.
‘It’s not really what I signed up for anymore,’ she said, as if she had to explain why she had been caught outside smoking. She sat down on the bench under the window, leaving enough space for me, as if it was a signal for the start of a conversation.
I sat down reluctantly.
‘I joined up because I’ve seen too much suffering among women,’ she began. ‘Laws that control their bodies, wages that impoverish them, restrictions on what they can do and what they own.’ She took a long drag on the cigarette and I felt that she wanted to make her opinions known to someone – anyone who would not counter her.
I feared I was that person, but I nodded and sat quietly.
‘I’ve seen sores on the mouth of a mother who turned to gin because her husband had taken her children from her,’ she said. ‘I’ve bandaged the hands of a laundress who had to work day and night to feed hungry mouths. I’ve seen women committed to asylums by their husbands when they become inconvenient. I’ve stemmed the bleeding of women who had cut their own bodies to rid themselves of a child. I’ve dressed the sores of syphilis passed on by an unfaithful husband, and stitched the slashed wrists of a woman whose husband forced himself on her night after night.’
I felt that I should say something but I could not, for what she said shocked me and there was nothing I could possibly add. I could hear Mrs Elliot-Palmer’s voice through the window again and the words that I had heard before – representation, freedom, action – words that now seemed as fantastical as those of any preacher. I thought of the leaflet that my mother had torn up, of the words that she said were high-minded, and of the angel – no more than a mythical being – when the words this woman spoke were so real.
‘But it is not these women that she cares about,’ she continued. ‘She does not even care about ladies who work, like you and me. She cares more about her own vanity than the problems women face – that, and the destruction of her enemy.’
‘I’m not sure what you—’
But she gripped my arm firmly. ‘I know that the Elliot-Palmers have tried to use you to influence the Caldwells,’ she said, ‘and I am sorry about it. You are practically a servant at Haughten Hall and Mrs Elliot-Palmer should not expect you to risk your position and your wages. She means to set a young lady against an arrogant man who is already set in his ways.’
‘If you mean that they asked me to talk to Iris,’ I said, ‘I could not do it anyway. I tried but I soon realised that Iris has no influence over her father.’
‘Well, Mrs Elliot-Palmer talks of asking you again,’ she said. ‘She does not give up easily.’
‘I can’t!’ I cried. ‘You must tell her that I can’t.’
She shook her head slowly as if her words would do no good.
‘Iris is ill,’ I said, ‘and it would not be right to push her.’
‘Alright,’ she said, ‘I will tell Mrs Elliot-Palmer that, and if what you say is true, I wish Iris a swift recovery as there are some bad things going round at the moment, tuberculosis and pneumonia and the like.’
I nodded and at last she fell silent, but there was something about what she had said that caused me to worry.
‘I don’t know if it is serious,’ I said, ‘but there are things…’
There must have been something that she heard in my voice because she took the cigarette from her lips and turned to me.
‘You wear the uniform of a nurse,’ I said, ‘and you have spoken of tuberculosis and of women you have tended…’
‘You are right,’ she said, when I could not finish the thought. ‘I am a nurse. I am based at the cottage hospital, but I have also seen the pitiful state of the patients in the London infirmaries, and tended soldiers returning from the Boer War.’
‘Iris’s father fears that she might die,’ I said. ‘At least, that is what she told me. She said it in a way that made it sound as if he was fussing over nothing, but I can’t help but think—’
‘I cannot say what is wrong with her,’ Sadie said quickly. ‘I am not a doctor and I cannot help her unless she comes to me. I cannot really talk about—’
‘But she is pale sometimes,’ I cut in. ‘She is often queasy, and her father says he fears her dying the way her mother did.’
‘The way her mother did?’ she repeated. I noticed that her eyes had widened a little, but she said nothing more and just stared at the glowing tip of her cigarette.
‘She says the illness comes and goes,’ I added, ‘but it seems to have lasted for weeks now. Do you think it serious?’ When she did not answer, I felt a pit start to hollow in my stomach.