She seemed to stumble a little, but then righted herself and he put his hand on her back once more so firmly that she staggered forward to brace herself and he pulled hard on the laces, her body flinching with the movement. Then he wound the laces round his hand again, but this time I shut my eyes tight.
I could no longer watch, but my mind could still see. I saw the reddish stains on the fabric of her slip and the sores beneath her shoulder blades once more, but now I felt them inflicted – the rawness of the hard boning against her skin, the rub of coarse lace and the pinch of the hard shell as it clamped round her ribs.
I thought of the girl that I had met back in March, the one who had joked with me and calmed the rearing horse. Then of the girl she had become, the one with the pale skin and the breathless laugh.
And it was this girl that I saw when I opened my eyes, for Iris did not raise a hand or turn to leave him; she did not even open her mouth. When he finally left her, she just straightened her back and brushed the creases from her skirts, her moves echoed by the ghost in the mirror.
When she came back to the window, she raised her hand back to her brow to look out into the darkness once more and, for a moment, I thought that she was looking at me, but then she took up the lamp from her dressing table and was gone, leaving me watching only the dark window. I fancied that she had faded away just like the end of one of Francis’s photoplays, when the grainy people who moved across the screen dimmed to nothing.
I did not hear the drum of hooves until they were close by, almost deafening. Then a flash of white from the shadows, and a streak of mane as the horse swerved in panic, galloped across the lawn and jumped the ditch.
I tried to calm my breath as she fled past me and into the gloom of the common, nostrils flared and eyes bulging, and then she was gone, as if she had melted into the darkness.
An orange glow rose from the stables, sparks circling the air and flames spiralling upwards, black smoke billowing against the first light of the morning. The heat warmed the side of my face, the scour of motor spirit in my nose.
‘Who’s there! Who’s there!’ Sir Howard ran across the yard, towards the pump and water buckets.
I thought of the ‘direct action’ that Francis had spoken of and of what he had asked me to do that day as he showed me the motor spirit in the back of his motorcar and questioned me about when Iris would be home.
I ran through the garden gate and across the lawn but when I reached the back door, I found it already open. Iris stood on the doorstep, her stockinged feet shuffling across the flagstones as if she dared not go any further.
‘Nell?’ she cried, her eyes searching the space behind me. ‘What are you doing here? Where is…’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, fumbling in the little bag. ‘He left a note and a shilling and a rabbit’s foot for luck.’
‘A rabbit’s foot!’ she repeated the words as if they didn’t make sense. ‘Is he on the common? He said he would wait outside. I could not see him from the window.’
‘No,’ I said. I thrust the little scrap of paper out to her.
She took it and started to read but I knew that really it made little sense, so I snatched it back from her and stuffed it back into my bag.
‘He is coming,’ she said, her face crumpling. ‘Isn’t he?’ She looked at me as she had done when I had shown her the leaflet that the nurse had given me, as if I could fix things for her when no one else would, and I could not bear to disappoint her.
‘Yes,’ I said my voice trembling. ‘Of course. He will just be a little later than planned.’
‘I can’t stay here,’ she said, ‘for my father has risen so much earlier than I thought he would.’
‘You should come with me then,’ I said. ‘I can take you to Sam and you can wait at Waldley Court with him until the omnibus comes. You will need to get your bag, your jacket and you will need to find some boots to wear for—’
‘There is no time!’ she said.
‘Of course there is,’ I persisted.
She glanced in the direction of the stables – the halo of orange light from the rooftops, the billow of grey smoke and the spirals of sparks – but her eyes sought only her father.
I looked down at her stockinged feet on the doorstep, but she did not waver any longer and stepped out into the cold of the morning.
30
She laid her head on my shoulder and I felt the softness of her hair on my neck and the warmth of her breath. It was what I had wanted for such a long time but not the way I had wanted it, for as we walked together, she clutched my arm and stumbled against me, her elbow digging into my ribs.
We walked this way for several minutes, arm in arm, across the common, the fir trees and twisted chimneys of Waldley Court slowly emerging from the morning haze. My hurried footsteps were the only sound in the stillness, and whenever I quickened my pace, she would grip my arm tightly as if she could not bear the weight of her steps.
She was weakened, I thought, just as the nurse had said she would be, so I paid little attention to it as I thought her suffering from the morning sickness she had endured for the past few weeks and the pain of her stockinged feet on the rough cart track.
The tang of burning hay caught in the air, the dark clouds of morning edged with the glow of the fire, but I could not give them a passing thought, for my only concern was getting Iris to Waldley Court so that she could see Sam. It was a cruel plan but I had no better. Deep down I knew that Sam would barely be able to speak to her let alone accompany her on an omnibus and, with every step, I felt as if it was I, not Sam, who was betraying her.
‘We should stop for a minute,’ I said as we approached the thicket of wych elms.
‘No!’ she protested, but there was so little fight left in her that she let me guide her between the low branches, her head lolling against my shoulder, and I wondered if she even knew where she was.
I sat down on a low branch and she slumped next to me. I thought it must be the same branch that she had used to jump up on to the saddle behind me a whole two months ago. But the Iris who sat with me now was nothing like that memory – her breaths were short as if she was sucking in little pinches of air, and I thought that the nurse had been right and that she would not be able to walk in the procession after all.
‘It was a mistake to bring you out here,’ I said. ‘You should rest a while and then we should think about turning back.’
‘Why?’ She turned to me, the whites of her eyes bright in the early glow of the morning.
‘Sam may not be able to catch the early omnibus with you…’ I began but I could not find the right words to form an explanation.
‘Oh!’ she said, a little catch to her voice but then said nothing more.
‘Well,’ I said briskly, ‘you should at least know that the fire in your stable was not Sam’s doing, and that Edelweiss is loosed and will probably be heading for Waldley Court already. I’m sure that Sam will take care of her and when he is ready you both can…’ But then I realised that I was babbling and sounded like my mother. I wondered why I was still making excuses for Sam but I feared Iris’s silence, and her heartache even more.
She seemed not to notice that I had not finished my thought, nor that I had been talking at all and she sat silently, staring into the darkness, at things she could not possibly see.