The Lost Girls

by Jennifer Wells

  ‘Of course we are!’ I cried. ‘What exactly do you see through those spectacles?’ I waved my hand around the hallway, hoping that she would actually take note of the worn rug, peeling varnish on the skirting board and the yellowed paint behind the gas mantles. We had fallen low since my father had died, although she did not care to admit it. The payments we received from the church barely stretched to food and rent and were not enough to buy back our respectability.

  Mother blinked through her thick spectacles. At the age of forty, she already had the sight of an old woman. ‘Well, we will soon be returned to our rightful status,’ she said nodding earnestly and I noticed that she was wearing her best coat and hat. ‘I have been tutoring Iris for over a year now and I know that Sir Howard has come to treat me as an equal. If word got out in the village that we were both regular visitors to Haughten Hall then that would look very good for us, and maybe go some way to make up the damage you have caused to our reputation.’

  ‘I’m not going to Haughten Hall just so that you can cause some gossip!’ I said.

  ‘You will do it for money then,’ she said. ‘Sir Howard will give me another shilling for you to entertain his daughter.’

  ‘Working for our betters will not make us like them,’ I said, ‘and it won’t earn us respectability.’ But they were protests that I muttered to myself because she was right – I would do it for the money. I even took the bonnet from her and put it on, tying the strings under my chin.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We are late.’

  We left the house, my mother taking care to push the key under the thatch on top of the porch, and set out on to the road that edged the village green. We passed St Cuthbert’s and took the road that headed past the Sunningdale Farm and the old orchards and followed it until we turned on to a smaller track that split from the main road and followed the edge of a small stream. After a while the stream became wider and shallower, the muddy banks speared with green shoots, and I looked across the ford to see the grand house up on the slope.

  Haughten Hall was the kind of square red brick house with long windows that you would usually see in larger towns but in a place like this, it could be the centre of attention and rose high above the common as if it owned it. The name of the place was unfortunate because the local schoolchildren called it ‘Haughty Hall’, and would pretend to bow as they passed it, giggling as they ran by, their noses high in the air.

  I had passed Haughten Hall many times before when I had taken the cart track up on to the common, but I had never crossed the ford and been to the house itself and, as I followed my mother up the long sloping driveway and marble steps, I felt that it was a place that I didn’t belong. I feared that I was about to have dogs set on me.

  A woman a bit younger than my mother let us in. She was in the ‘family way’ as my mother liked to say, her belly so swollen that I could not help but stare, the swelling itself looking almost painful, and I fancied that she must have been expecting twins or a whole litter of piglets.

  ‘Thank you, Dora,’ said my mother, but her words sounded like formality rather than gratitude and I gathered that the woman must have been some kind of housekeeper or maid although her dress had been let out so much I could not tell whether it was a uniform or tent.

  ‘That’s alright, Mrs Ryland,’ she answered, ‘but as you are now so well acquainted with Sir Howard, the back entrance might be better next time.’

  ‘Of course,’ my mother said quickly. Then she added, ‘It must be so hard for you coming all the way to the front door in your condition.’ But as Dora walked ahead of us, my mother grabbed my arm and pulled me close to her. ‘That is your fault!’ she hissed. ‘If you will make yourself look like a tinker, we will be treated that way!’

  We followed Dora as she panted up the stairs, and waited on the landing as she knocked lightly on one of the doors, opening it before she got a response.

  ‘Smile!’ whispered my mother although she herself only managed to bare her teeth.

  ‘Good morning, Agnes.’ A large man stood up from the desk. He was the one that I had seen before with his daughter in the motorcar or the Caldwell church pew but now he was closer, I saw he was a little older than my mother, although his hair was still fair rather than grey and he had the strong shoulders of those who take to walking in the country. He wore a faded tweed suit and I fancied that he had not dressed up for our visit the way my mother had, and I liked him the better for it.

  ‘Good morning, Sir Howard,’ my mother said, elbowing me in the ribs. When I did not say anything, she added: ‘And may I present my daughter, Nell.’

  Sir Howard left the desk and came over to us. ‘So glad you could make it,’ he said and I saw that his words seemed to send a shiver of warmth through my mother as if she believed he actually meant them. Sir Howard looked me up and down, his eyes lingering a little on the bonnet, but he did not mention it and just gave a little nod of approval. ‘Hello, young lady,’ he said, with a kind of bounce to his voice, and I felt my face warm because he must have thought me much younger than my fifteen years.

  My mother and Sir Howard began to talk the way that adults do, about little things that do not matter – the flowers that were coming out in the garden and the level of the stream – but I lost track of their conversation and started to look round the room. It was a large room with a high ceiling and a long window with a view that stretched across the common, but these were things that I barely noticed because every space on every wall was hung with a grand oil painting. There was one in a golden frame over the fireplace – a girl with long flowing hair leading a white horse, the scene painted in a sort of romantic style, the kind of thing that would usually belong in a gallery or museum. Then another painting on the far wall – the same girl peering into the stream, the reflections of the yellow irises mottling the water. The other paintings were smaller, but there were many, mostly portraits with the girl holding flowers, hand mirrors or doves in her silk-covered lap. Each and every painting was of one subject alone, the girl I had glimpsed so often but never met: Iris Caldwell.

  On the desk there were a couple of photographs in silver frames – a portrait of Iris in a short dress kneeling next to a bucket and spade, a roughly painted scene of a pier and beach huts behind her, and another portrait of no more than her head and shoulders, her hair loose and a bouquet of irises clutched beneath her chin, her eyes cast down as if she were admiring them. This romantic pose with the bouquet reminded me of a picture I had seen before, although I could not think where.

  ‘Do you like them?’ I jumped for it was not the voice of my mother or Sir Howard, and I felt as if the pictures themselves had spoken.

  I turned and I saw Iris herself sitting on a chaise longue in the corner of the room. My face warmed because I knew she must have seen me marvelling at the paintings. She stood up and I saw that she was smaller than I had thought, her limbs thin and willowy. She wore a dark blue dress of quite a childish fashion, the hem swishing around her shins as she moved, and I thought it the type of thing that my mother would have thrown out a few years back when she realised that I was becoming a woman and my ankles should be covered.

  ‘Do you like them?’ Iris repeated as she came to stand next to me. ‘I saw you looking.’ She spoke in the same way as her father – every sound drawn out and every letter sounded, but there was a little twist in her words as if she was joking with me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, for I did not know what else to say.

  She smiled and I noticed that she had to raise her head to meet my eyes and I suddenly felt big and clumsy next to her.

  ‘My mother wouldn’t even let me have my portrait sketched at the village fete,’ I said, suddenly conscious of a laziness in the way I spoke.

  She laughed, and I realised that there was something about her face that made me want to look at it, as if there was something familiar about it that I could not place, but I put it down to the times that I had seen her across the church pews and the portraits
that I had gazed at just moments before.

  ‘I am Iris,’ she said, ‘and you must be Nell.’ She offered me her hand but it seemed to wilt from her sleeve, the way a lady offers her hand to a gentleman, and I was not sure whether to shake it or kiss it.

  ‘Why don’t you girls go to the library?’ said Sir Howard, breaking away from my mother’s chatter. He smiled at me warmly, little creases forming in the skin around his eyes as if his whole face was smiling. ‘You can get acquainted while Agnes and I discuss Iris’s lessons.’

  Iris beckoned to me and I followed her out into the corridor, where Dora was dragging a heavy carpet sweeper across the runner and into the next room. The library was another large room, each wall lined with leather-bound books. There was a long window with a padded seat and a view over the stable yard and neat lawn. The boundary fence was sunk low into a ditch so that the scrubby grass and clumps of trees that dotted the edge of the common could be seen from the house.

  Iris crossed to the window seat and sat on one end, so I followed and sat on the other.

  ‘I have heard so much about you from your mother,’ she said, smiling. ‘Such wonderful things.’

  ‘Well, I know that one of you is lying there,’ I said, but then I realised that I had spoken too quickly so I added, ‘Either my mother when she said them or you when you say you heard them.’ But the words did not come out any better and I felt my face warm again so I removed my jacket.

  She laughed. ‘I have heard that you are spikey, Nell,’ she said, ‘and I like that, but tell me about yourself. I hear that you are stuck at home, like me.’

  ‘You mean that I am jobless because—’ I began, but she did not let me finish.

  ‘Are you bored at home?’ she said. ‘Your mother tries to dress it up but I gather that you do little at the moment.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I…’ But I found that I could not explain.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I do very little too. I was always expected to marry Francis Elliot-Palmer, but my father is now against it and I get no more than a few snatched words with Francis at the season’s balls. Do you know Francis Elliot-Palmer?’ She looked at me earnestly as if she expected me to know him, and that I should.

  ‘I do not,’ I said, although the truth was that, in a way, I did. I knew that Waldley Court on the other side of the common was known as the Elliot-Palmer House, but I only knew Sam Denman who worked in the stables there. Elliot-Palmer was one of the names you saw carved in stone all over the church walls and on the grandest tombs in the graveyard. It was one of the names you would see at the bottom of the programme for the village fete and in the announcements pages of the newspaper. It was a name you would see in Missensham just as often as Caldwell, and the two names frequently appeared side by side.

  I thought of this boy, Francis Elliot-Palmer, the one who had been destined to marry Iris but now never would. I imagined him standing with Iris, side by side as their family names so often were, but not even their hands touching. I fancied that he was just as fair as Iris but tall and muscular like some fairy-tale prince, and at that moment I could not help but feel a little sorry for her.

  ‘Instead of marrying I will go to finishing school in Switzerland,’ she said wearily, ‘but not until I am sixteen and up till then my father just wants to keep me entertained.’

  I thought that it was a funny thing to say and I wondered if I was part of her father’s plans and had been brought here to entertain her like a performing monkey, but this time I did not speak out.

  ‘Did you ride here?’ she said, leaning into the light of the window and I noticed that her eyes were wide with excitement, the twist of a tiny blue vein in the delicate skin of her temple.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I don’t ride.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said disappointedly. ‘I thought that everyone in Missensham could ride.’

  ‘We don’t exactly have the room to stable a horse,’ I said flatly.

  ‘You should meet my pony then,’ she said, pointing out the window in the direction of the stable yard. ‘We can take her out on the common. There is a direct track from the back of the house.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, glad to get out of the house where I felt I would break something or should be curtsying all the time. ‘I would like that.’

  ‘Good,’ she said smiling, and I realised that I had been looking at her face all the while we had been speaking and could still not understand what it was about her that made it so difficult for me to look away.

  ‘I knew we would be friends!’ she said. I felt something deep inside me do a little jump but it was a feeling I did not understand and I was annoyed that this girl I had expected to hate had caused it.

  ‘Come!’ She stood up and held out her hand to me and I took it reluctantly as we headed back to the study.

  ‘Father!’ she called from the doorway. ‘I am taking a ride on the common with Nell.’

  My mother and Sir Howard looked up from their books.

  ‘As long as it is alright with Mrs Ryland,’ Sir Howard said. Then he turned to my mother. ‘I’m afraid that someone will need to lead the pony as she is a mare and can be skittish. The stable lad at Waldley Court had a few ponies for sale but as soon as Iris saw the mare, she begged to have it. A gelding would have been much more suitable for her first horse but little girls just love white horses, don’t they?’

  My mother opened her mouth but he did not wait for her response.

  ‘We shall all go on to the common together then,’ he said, standing up and holding his hand out to my mother. ‘Go and change, Iris; you can meet us at the stable.’

  My mother gathered up her coat and bag hurriedly and took his hand as he led her from the room.

  ‘My jacket is still in the library,’ I said. ‘I will have to catch you up.’

  But they did not offer to wait and continued down the stairs.

  My jacket was on the window seat where I had left it. I scooped it up, but as I did, I glanced out of the long window, a dark shape catching my eye. Beyond the stable yard and neat lawn was an area of scrubby grass on the edge of Missensham Common. A man stood not far from the house, among a small clump of trees. He was dressed in dark clothes and carried what looked like a long gun case over his shoulder, and another larger bag that made me think he might have spent the night outdoors, but he did not look like he was taking a stroll nor stalking game. In fact, he stood perfectly still, facing the house and I fancied that he held his head in such a way that he must be looking up to the window where Iris and I had sat just moments before.

  I leant forward and raised my hand to shield my eyes from the sun. The man took a step back towards the cover of the trees, but I felt my heart quicken a little when I realised that he had seen me but had still not looked away.

  ‘Iris…’ I called but then remembered that she had left to change and that I was alone.

  ‘Nell!’ my mother called from downstairs.

  ‘I’m coming,’ I shouted. ‘It’s just that…’

  But when I looked back to the window the man was gone.

  9

  I did not mention the man I had seen in the trees to anyone that morning. I told myself that it was not important. He had not been trespassing after all, but there was something unsettling about the way he had been looking towards the house and I seldom saw men carrying rifles in March as it was not the season to hunt pheasant or grouse.

  As I followed Sir Howard and my mother downstairs and out into the stable yard, I looked across the little sunken fence and out on to the common, but there was no man in black standing by the trees, and nothing to suggest that there ever had been.

  The white mare that Sir Howard had spoken of stood in the middle of the yard, saddled and ready, shuffling her hooves impatiently while Dora gripped her bridle and Sir Howard and my mother stroked her neck and made soothing noises. She was not the animal that Iris had described. She had none of the softness of a pony, her flanks were tight with muscle and her neck was
long and arched, and when Dora stepped back to steady her, I barely saw the top of the woman’s head over the creature’s back.

  Her saddle was longer and flatter than others I had seen, but it had none of the pommels and straps that I would usually see peeping from the folds of ladies’ skirts and I realised that Iris would not ride side-saddle but astride like a little girl on a rocking horse.

  ‘Iris, you are ready at last!’ cried Sir Howard, looking right past me. I turned to see Iris walking behind me in a riding jacket and britches. I had not seen such clothes on a girl before and I found myself staring at the curve of her legs and hips as if there was something indecent about her. I could not help thinking that she had forgotten her skirts and had left the house in just pantaloons.

  ‘Agnes and I will go ahead and open the gates,’ said Sir Howard, striding to the gate and beckoning my mother to follow him. ‘The beast seems to be a little calmer now.’

  ‘You said you had a pony,’ I whispered to Iris. ‘I might not know how to ride but at least I know that she is too large to ever be called a pony!’

  ‘She is as docile as one,’ she replied. ‘Despite what my father says. Look!’ She ran her hand along the horse’s flank, all the way to the curve of its rump until she was standing behind the tail.

  ‘Don’t!’ I said. ‘You should be careful, she could kick out!’

  She laughed. ‘The stable lad at Waldley Court has been teaching me about horses. She wouldn’t harm me.’

  ‘Sam!’ I said. ‘Sam Denman. I know him.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Samuel.’ The way she said the name reminded me that Sam was just a servant and I suddenly felt ashamed that I had mentioned him.

  Iris had to stretch her leg high to reach the stirrup but after a couple of hops she was towering above me in the saddle.