He nodded firmly, as if to answer a question in his own mind, and then turned his body so that he was leaning over the back of his seat. There was something on the back seat of the motorcar that I had not noticed during the excitement of our journey. It was a lump covered by a tartan blanket and he reached across to it, pulling the blanket free.
‘Do you know what that is, Nell?’ he said.
I knelt on my seat and looked into the back of the car, at four colourful metal cans that sat on the leather. ‘Motor spirit,’ I said quietly.
‘Of course there is nothing suspicious about the owner of a motorcar owning motor spirit,’ he said, turning to look at me once more. ‘Is there?’
‘No,’ I said, wire starting to coil in my stomach.
‘We need a brave soul,’ he continued. ‘Someone with youth and vigour. Will you help us?’
‘Me?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you do it?’
‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I would be taken seriously as a representative of the movement if I was caught.’
‘I won’t harm anyone!’ I cried.
‘Iris won’t be harmed,’ he said.
‘Iris?’ I gasped.
He started to talk about Sir Howard’s opposition to things called Conciliation Bills and about the hateful speeches he had given in parliament, about how Sir Howard would be an obvious target and about the headlines there would be in the newspapers, but I barely took in his words.
‘I won’t do it,’ I said. ‘Iris has enough to deal with at the moment without something like this.’
He glared at me. ‘You can at least tell me when she will be away from the house.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want no part in this!’
‘I know that you do not want her harmed, Nell, so at least tell me when she will be away from the house to make sure that she is not.’
‘May Day,’ I said, ‘for she will be gone then. Make sure you do not do anything before May Day.’
‘May Day,’ he repeated.
‘Promise me nobody will be hurt,’ I said.
But he no longer looked at me, just nodded and settled back into the seat beside me, staring through the windscreen at the view that was not there, as he chewed his lip.
‘I want to go home,’ I said. ‘Take me home now.’
‘But the dress!’ he said. ‘You were to deliver the May Day dress to Haughten Hall.’
‘You take it,’ I spat, for I really did not care what he thought of me anymore. ‘You take it after you drop me back home. For now you at last have a reason to call on your precious Iris.’
‘I will do that,’ he said shortly. ‘For I’m sure that Iris would rather receive a real man than a sapphist.’
It was the word again, the one I had heard on Iris’s lips when we had spoken of Vesta Tilley, but now I understood more of what the word meant and how he would use it to shame me.
‘Take me home now!’ I screamed into the silence.
* * *
He dropped me outside the door to Oak Cottage but did not see me inside. The excitement of my first journey in a motorcar did not return to me on the way home and my joy was dulled by the words that Francis and I had exchanged. In my eagerness to leave the house that morning I had forgotten to take a coat and my dress was spattered with mud and grease, but it was nothing compared to how dirty I felt inside.
I had been taken in by the Elliot-Palmers and I had believed that they thought me capable of influencing an important family. Now I realised that they had chosen me because they had heard of my drunken arrest. They had wanted someone who they could pressure to carry out their deeds – that person was me, Nell Ryland, someone who was no more than a delinquent, a lunatic, and a sapphist.
27
It was the sound of a motor vehicle that lured me to the window the next morning, but when I looked out and saw that it was just the butcher’s van I drew my face back from the glass and sat down heavily on my chair.
I had expected Francis to call again but not wanted it. Over the past few weeks I had come to understand a little more about the people who lived in the world behind the glass – what I had seen of them was not good, and I was starting to understand why my mother wanted to protect me from them.
I took my shawl off and flattened it over the back of the chair – it was a place that I had become used to sitting as I watched the life that went on through the window. The constant thud of the dolly peg drifted from the kitchen, the sound dampened by the folds of fabric that my mother had stuffed into the washtub. She was washing her best dress for May Day – an outfit that she usually saved for Christmas and Easter but, for the first time, I was not sure whether she would be dressing up for the benefit of God or man.
May Day was close now, just a day away, and posters advertising the dancing and festivities were tied to lamp posts and nailed on to the oak tree. The maypole stood lonely and waiting, its ribbons woven tightly round the wood as if it was a gift waiting to be unwrapped. Groups of smartly dressed women stood together, waving their hands towards the empty grass, their fingers tracing the shapes of the tables and marquees that they imagined. An old woman with a bag of shopping sat down wearily on the bench and a group of schoolboys ran along the road towards the high street.
But she was not there.
I had never seen Iris from the window, but I watched for her now – for the flash of her white mare through the distant hedgerows, or the swish of her girlish dress among the groups of women who stood on the green, even for the passing of her father’s motorcar, or for Dora as she headed to the chemist for more white pills. Anything to tell me that she was still alright.
Then the chime of the church bell seemed to remind the people outside that they had to be home for lunch, and by the time the last bell had sounded, I was left watching only the stillness.
It was the nurse that I saw first. She came from the track that led to the cottage hospital, walking with such speed that her cape billowed about her waist. From the stockiness of her build and the way she walked I knew that it was the same woman who had spoken to me outside the church hall – the one who had told me of Iris’s secret. It was not until she got closer, and drew level with the oak tree that I noticed a man – the broad-shouldered figure of Sir Howard – running behind her. When he caught up, he grabbed her arm and tried to take something from her hand.
She spun round and pulled herself free from him. Then she raised her arm, her fist clenched high above her head and brought it down hard towards the ground. There was a faint tinkle of glass and he jumped back from her in such a way that I fancied I could see the splintered glass on his shoes and little white pills scattered through the grass.
He drew his hand above his head just as he had done all those weeks ago to warn off the excitable dog, but she did not cower at the sight of his threat – she swung her head forward with such force that I was sure that I could actually see the spit fly from her lips.
He jumped back, shaking his arms out as if they were dripping wet.
She shouted, just one word – a curse, I thought, although I could not hear what – and then she turned and walked briskly across the grass, back in the direction of the cottage hospital.
I watched her as she went, her cape flapping at her sides and her white cap bobbing in time with her hurried steps. Sir Howard did not move, just stood and watched after her, his body rigid and his finger raised in the air as if he was about to scold her, if only she had waited.