‘The doctor says that my hips are the problem,’ she said. ‘My hips are too small and they are misshapen.’
She loosened her grasp on my hand but I no longer wanted to pull it away. I flexed my fingers and flattened my palm, pressing my hand against her body. I could feel the jut of her hipbone under my wrist and felt the other at the tip of my fingers. The space seemed tiny to me but I had never touched myself in such a way and had nothing to compare it to.
I took my hand away. ‘I don’t know, Iris,’ I said. ‘I had always thought you small but maybe you would have a small baby. My mother made sure that we learnt nothing about the human body while I was at the village school. She even got the biology textbooks confiscated because she thought them wicked.’
‘The doctor says that if I give birth to this baby then I will die,’ she said.
‘Oh,’ I said, but there was nothing more I could say, and she did not seem upset by her words.
‘They say that my mother died because she had small hips,’ she continued. ‘I became stuck on the way out. They cut me out of her but they had not had time to clean the room and she died of blood poisoning. Doctor Crawford told my father that I am made the same way – that I cannot bear a child – but my father would not allow a baby to be cut from me as he fears that I would die in the same way as my mother. The way that my father sees it, that leaves only one choice.’
‘Oh, Iris, I’m sorry,’ I said, but they were the same words I would have said if she had told me that it had rained on her birthday or if she had stubbed her toe, and I knew they had little meaning. I looked her up and down. I had always thought myself ungainly when I was with her, but now I realised that this was only because she was so much smaller than me – smaller than any other girl of our age. Under her housecoat, I saw the white trim of the navy blue dress that she had worn so often before – the one that her mother had worn in the photograph where she had posed with buckets and spades. There had been so much passed down from mother to daughter – the fair hair and the delicate features – but also this body, the body of a child-woman.
‘Maybe you should stop thinking about your father,’ I said, ‘and decide what it is that you want. What would you want if you could have anything at all?’
She smiled a little at first but then her face darkened as she gathered her thoughts. She sat up on the bed and straightened out the nightgown that lay beside her. ‘I want to have a family and live far away from here,’ she said, as she smoothed the sleeves. ‘Maybe in Brighton, or a little cottage by the sea.’
‘Do you want to have this baby?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course, but if I do not leave, my father will do all he can to stop me having it.’
‘He can’t!’ I said. ‘He can’t do that!’ but then I thought of the pills that her father was urging her to take and the corset wounds that dug deep into her back, and I realised that he could.
I looked at the nightgown that lay on the bed, and I saw that she had folded the sleeves so that the arms were crossed over the chest once more – as if it was lying in readiness for what was to come.
25
‘I think that my daughter is playing a game with you.’
The words came from behind me and I turned to see Sir Howard standing at the foot of the grand staircase, although I had not heard his footsteps on the boards.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said, taking a few steps away from him towards the front door. I had left Iris only moments before, her body curled on the bed next to the corpse-like nightgown. She had not moved when I had said goodbye, the touch of my hand on her shoulder doing nothing to soothe her.
‘After all,’ Sir Howard said, ‘Iris is just a child, and children will play games.’ He spoke in the same way that he always had – a slight curl to his lips, and creases round his eyes that made his whole face smile – but after what I had heard from Iris, his words seemed to take on a new meaning, although I was not sure what.
‘Well, I have to go now,’ I said, hoping to end the conversation.
‘Just be careful of her,’ he said, his voice deepening a little. ‘She tends to use others to get what she wants.’ Then he paused, his smile broadening. ‘She would not trick you in such a way, would she?’
‘No,’ I said but I heard a catch in my voice and knew that I should not say any more. I was not sure where he had been when Iris and I had talked in her bedroom, and I wondered if he had somehow overheard what we had said. I thought then that maybe he knew of his daughter’s plans to escape on the omnibus and of her dreams for a new life with Sam and the baby her father would not allow her to bear. I wondered also if he knew that I had felt the softness of his daughter’s flesh between the juts of her tiny hipbones and felt the warmth of her body through the thin fabric of her dress.
‘I expect you want to get home now,’ he said.
‘Thank you for receiving me.’ I nodded, then reached for the door but the large knob would only rattle when I turned it.
He put his hand in his pocket and took out a long key, waving it in front of me like a magic wand.
‘Thank you,’ I said awkwardly, ‘but I didn’t mean to trouble you. I would have been happy to wait for Dora.’
‘Dora has gone to the scullery,’ he said, pointing the key towards the door, ‘for the moment at least.’
I barely had time to move aside as he approached the door and, as his shoulder brushed past mine, I felt the gust of warmth from his body, the tang of his sweat catching in the back of my throat. But then he stepped back again and I realised that I had not heard the snap of the lock and saw that the key was still in his hand.
‘I think that my daughter may have given you something,’ he said, but it was not a question.
I felt a little flicker of warmth in my blood and the burn of guilt in my cheeks. ‘No!’ I replied but when he said nothing more, I added, ‘Nothing but a small Bible.’
‘Oh,’ he said flatly. ‘I expect that is the one that Iris uses for her studies. I think she must have forgotten that she will need it this evening. You will have plenty at home that you can use, I don’t doubt.’
‘No,’ I said weakly. ‘I don’t. Not like this one.’ But my hand went to my pocket all the same.
‘I thought you would have known better than to listen to her,’ he said, frowning. ‘As I have told you, my daughter likes to play games with people.’
‘But I promised her that I would take care of this one for her,’ I persisted, my fingers fumbling desperately with the pages hidden in my pocket. I could feel the omnibus timetable poking out from the pages of the Bible but the folds of paper were wedged firmly in the binding.
He said nothing, just held his hand out flat in front of me.
I took the Bible from my pocket and gave it to him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled, turning to the door again, but still he made no move to unlock it, just opened the front cover of the Bible and started to read.
‘“To my love,”’ his words were slow and mocking. ‘“One day we will be together”.’ He did not look up, just stared at the page, his eyebrows pulled low and his face reddening as if he hated the ink and paper itself.