‘You lied to me and my mother today,’ I said shakily. When he did not respond, I added, ‘Sir Howard would not have suggested that you drive us here. He would not even have spoken to you. You are not welcome at Haughten Hall and you only speak to Iris at the society balls where you can avoid Sir Howard.’
He shook his head slowly, but still did not look at me.
The way he had mentioned that day at the stables had unsettled me, so I continued in the vain hope that he would realise he had also been seen somewhere he should not have been. ‘Why were you filming Haughten Hall that day?’ I said. ‘I thought you were carrying a rifle but you said it was the tripod for your cine camera. You said that you were filming the foxes but they never come that close to Haughten Hall. Maybe you hoped that Iris would come to the window so that you could film her.’
He continued to stare into the thicket, and I wondered if he had ever been challenged by a girl before, for he would not expect it from the ladies that he usually mixed with – those of a finer class. Then he said, ‘That is none of your business, Nell. I don’t need to tell you anything because you said yourself that you are no more than Iris’s servant.’
‘That’s all changed,’ I snapped. ‘I am much more to Iris now.’ They were words that came quicker than my thoughts and only then did I realise that I was insulted by the idea that my relationship with Iris was no more than that of mistress and servant.
‘And how’s that?’ he said.
‘We have a connection,’ I began, but then realised that although I believed what I had said, I could not explain it. The things that made it obvious to me – the way Iris had circled her arms around me in the saddle, the way she had placed the sleeves of the nightgowns as they lay on the bed, and the way we had embraced after she had told me of her mother – suddenly seemed ridiculous and I could not even start to form an explanation in my head. ‘I don’t know what it is exactly,’ I said after a while. ‘I just know that we do.’
But he raised his eyebrows and I felt I had to say more.
‘There is something about her face that keeps drawing me back to it.’ I said. ‘As if she is somehow familiar. I don’t know what it is exactly but it is as if we had known each other in another life or are related in some strange way,’ and as I spoke the words, I realised that this was what I had imagined and wished for all along. I told him of how I had felt this when I had first met Iris and that how, even now, I would catch myself staring at her, as if there was something some part of me was still trying to figure out. My face warmed as I spoke, because now, when I heard my thoughts out loud, they seemed far-fetched even to me, as if they were a plot from one of Mrs Corelli’s novels.
‘You mean that she is beautiful,’ he said shortly.
‘No!’ I cried. ‘That is not what I am trying to say!’
He laughed. ‘I saw the way you looked at her when we met on the common. There is no mystery to it and you would not be the first to think it.’
‘No,’ I persisted. ‘It can’t be that.’ For I was sure that what I saw in Iris could not just be the same thing that everyone else saw. But then I realised that it was – Iris was the girl who the village boys would stare at when she passed but never have the nerve to whistle at. She was the girl who my mother would praise for her golden hair and delicate features, the girl who fascinated Francis and the girl who had won Sam from me. She was the girl who had been chosen to be May Queen. Any connection I had imagined to her was no more than wishful.
‘You know that Iris was intended for me?’ said Francis. ‘If things had been different it would still be that way. I know now that she has a sweetheart but we still cherish the time that we can have together when we can escape from her father at the balls.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ I said weakly.
We sat in silence for a while. I realised there had been no sadness in his voice and he had spoken the words with some force. I watched his face as he stared into the shadows of the thicket, his eyebrows lowered, the muscle at the side of his jaw pulsing as he ground his teeth. He was a rich man, used to getting all that he wanted in life, yet Iris was something that he had been denied.
‘She tells me things,’ he said suddenly. ‘Personal things. You?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Things are not what they seem at Haughten Hall,’ he said quietly. ‘Iris has plans.’
I had let myself be flattered that Iris had confided in me, but now I knew that I had not been the only one, and I felt again that another little bit of the special relationship I had imagined was taken from me. ‘I know of her plans too,’ I said, bitterly. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘She will not let me help her,’ he said, ‘but ladies often share a closeness with their servants, so you, she might.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘She has just told me not to speak of it, to anyone.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose that puts us in the same position. We cannot help, but we can choose whether to tell or stand in her way.’
‘I don’t think that things are right at Haughten Hall,’ I said. I wanted to tell him more. I wanted to speak of the corset marks I had seen under Iris’s shoulder blades and the little white pills that her father was urging her to take. I wanted to tell him of how I had felt Sir Howard’s cruelty myself. I wanted to talk to somebody, but I knew that Francis was not that person. ‘I won’t stand in her way,’ I said instead. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’
‘Neither will I.’ He nodded his head slowly.
‘I thought you were interested in Iris,’ I said. ‘I thought that you would not want to see her with another.’
‘I found out that I could not have her some time ago,’ he said. ‘Long before any of this.’
‘Then why did you bring me here to ask me about a girl you cannot have?’
He shuffled in his seat and would not look at me again. The common seemed quieter now, without even birdsong, and the shadows of the elms were starting to stretch across the road, the mustiness of the foxholes rising from the twisted roots.
He muttered something about the water covering the plank bridge at Haughten Hall – the excuse that he had used on my mother to get me into the car, but he still did not look at me as he spoke and I began to feel uneasy.
‘You must have known that my mother would not come in a motorcar,’ I said, ‘and I really doubt that you calling on us was Sir Howard’s suggestion – he hates you and your mother, and you said yourself that Iris has to escape him just to meet you.’
‘Getting you here was my mother’s idea,’ he said at last.
‘Your mother?’ I echoed.
‘She wanted to hear your thoughts on the Caldwells, and how to make them listen to reason.’
‘I gave Iris the leaflet with the angel on,’ I said, ‘but she has no influence over her father.’
‘You are probably right,’ he said, ‘but it is a shame as my mother now speaks of taking direct action. She wants to know if you can help again. She said you seemed so keen.’
I thought of what I had read in the newspapers – of smashed windows and politicians attacked with whips, acids and missiles – and then I remembered what Sadie had said about how she wanted no part in it anymore, and I became uneasy about what he would ask of me.