The Lost Girls

by Jennifer Wells

  I had thought myself busy, with some or other of these important jobs always waiting, but after a few days I realised how futile my achievements were and how little they mattered. After all, there was no one to see what I had done and no one to impress, not now that Howard had rejected me.

  When the doorbell finally put an end to the silence, my first hope was for Howard with a change of heart and a bouquet of flowers, but then I remembered that he had never once called on me at Oak Cottage, and that now I really did not want him to anyway. I still hurried to the door though, as I was lonely without Nell’s company and I would have been content with a call from the curate, the woman from the historical society or even the postman.

  But it was none of these.

  ‘Oh!’ I cried as I opened the door, for it took me a while to remember the woman’s name because she was not wearing her usual uniform.

  ‘Do come in,’ I said at last, realising that I was echoing the words that she had used to me so often when she had opened the door to me at Haughten Hall.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Ryland,’ she said, and only then did I realise that it already was.

  ‘Please sit down,’ I said, and when she looked to the chair by the window, I pointed quickly at the rocking chair by the hearth. She sat down awkwardly, folding her coat underneath her.

  ‘Dora,’ I added a little too late and the word seemed to hang in the air but I was glad that I had, at last, remembered her name. ‘Will you have some tea?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  I scurried into the kitchen. The kettle was still warm from breakfast and did not take long to boil. I brought the pot back through on a tray with milk, sugar and some slightly stale slices of the tea loaf that Roy had brought round a couple of weeks ago. Dora was not the lady of Haughten Hall but her association with the place was enough and I felt the need to impress her with my hospitality.

  I sat back down and poured a little weak tea, which she took with a ‘thank you’ but little else, so I busied myself serving cake. I fancied that she was a little younger than me, and thinner than I had thought – the cut of her stylish day dress quite different from the shapeless uniform she wore at Haughten Hall. Her hair was also curled and set, a smudge of rouge on her cheeks – the red, chapped skin on her hands the only suggestion that she was not some smart woman about town.

  ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ I said. ‘Or were you just passing?’

  ‘No, Mrs Ryland,’ she said. ‘I…’ Then she seemed to hesitate a little. ‘Well, firstly I think that it is a shame that you have been visiting Sir Howard all these years yet we have barely spoken.’ She spoke quite formally but the words didn’t quite flow and I thought her to be mimicking the fine speech she was used to hearing at Haughten Hall. ‘And it has been such a long time since I visited you at the parsonage.’

  ‘The parsonage?’ I repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Do you not recall, I visited a couple of times for…’ But when she came to say the words she faltered as if she wished she had not spoken at all. ‘It was personal advice,’ she said after a while. ‘We would pray together. I think that I even helped you to sew part of a quilt with pictures on – some biblical themes.’

  ‘The life of Eve,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t blame you for not remembering, Mrs Ryland,’ she said quickly. ‘I think that I was not the only lady to help make that quilt. There were already many panels when I first saw it, and each looked as if it had been sewn by a woman with a different style and ability.’

  ‘You were not the only one,’ I confirmed, but then I realised that I knew nothing of Dora’s life or what might have happened to her after she had left the parsonage, and the tone of her voice did nothing to suggest the outcome of our meetings.

  ‘But that is not why I am here,’ she said shortly. ‘As you know, I have spent many years at Haughten Hall, so I know Sir Howard’s affairs…’ She paused as if searching for the right word. ‘…Intimately.’

  ‘So you should,’ I said quickly. ‘It is your duty as a housekeeper.’ But there was something about what she said that unsettled me.

  ‘I don’t like to pry, Mrs Ryland,’ she said, ‘nor do I generally eavesdrop, but you might remember that when you were last at Haughten Hall, I was hoovering the landing and skirting boards outside the study. It must have made a terrible noise for your visit.’

  ‘I do recall,’ I said and waited for her to say more.

  ‘I know what you and Sir Howard spoke of.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid that Sir Howard and I have never agreed about Sam Denman, and I’m afraid we did squabble. We were talking a lot louder than we usually do so I am not surprised you overheard.’

  ‘Not that,’ she said shortly.

  ‘Not that?’ I echoed. Suddenly I remembered how the sound of her vacuum cleaner had stopped while I made my clumsy marriage proposal, and I felt my embarrassment return.

  She opened her mouth, but then shut it again as if she could not find the right words and she looked down at her chapped hands. ‘There is something you should know about Sir Howard,’ she said after a while.

  ‘What’s that?’ I said bitterly.

  ‘I don’t think you are the right type of woman for him,’ she replied, ‘at least not in the way you want.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ I cried. ‘Sir Howard would be first to admit that we have much in common. We are both widowed, we are of a similar age, we have a certain social standing—’

  ‘He never got over his wife,’ she cut in.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, and then I found that I could not say more because I knew that she was right. It was something that should have been obvious to me. Sir Howard barely left Haughten Hall, even for church, and spent all his time in his study – a room full of paintings of a woman he loved. She was a woman whose beauty had inspired the portraits, a woman who he imagined as a Pre-Raphaelite maiden, or ethereal nymph, and she was a woman that he had seen reborn for a short time in his daughter. Iris had been a constant reminder of her mother until she too was taken from him. Lady Caldwell was a woman he mourned twice.

  ‘I just didn’t want you to feel bad, Mrs Ryland,’ she said, her tone changing now that she felt I understood her. ‘In fact, I think that you would be a good match for Sir Howard, but he would never see it that way and nothing that you have in common would change that.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I just thought that I should tell you,’ she said, ‘for I was worried that you would be hard on yourself.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘it so happens that Sir Howard has shown himself to be lacking in compassion recently so I see that my marriage plans were folly. He is not the man I thought he was. He does not care for living people who are homeless and vulnerable. He cares more for a ghost than—’

  ‘She died in childbirth,’ she said quickly, then added, ‘The ghost you speak of.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I am sorry. It is very sad. I meant no disrespect to the late Lady Caldwell.’

  ‘I knew Lady Caldwell only a little,’ she said. ‘The house had more servants back in those days and I was barely thirteen years old when she died. My mother was the cook and they were training me up. I was not yet out of the scullery.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said again.

  ‘The thing I am trying to say is…’ She paused, as if she could not approach the matter after all, then said, ‘How long were you and your husband married?’

  ‘Fifteen years,’ I said. It was something I had never had cause to think of while Thomas had been alive, but it was a question I had become used to answering whenever I had to say that I was a widow.

  ‘You had some good years then,’ she said, ‘although he was taken too soon.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘The thing is that Sir Howard had known his wife for barely two years when she died.’

  ‘Two years!’ I cried.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Only two years. After all, she died so
young.’

  I suppose it was something that I had known all along if only I had cared to calculate it. Two years might seem a long time to someone in their youth but when one reached my grand age and could look back on life, two years was barely any time at all. It was a time that must have included introductions, courtship, marriage and pregnancy, and all in two years – about the time that it had taken Thomas and me to venture into the bedroom together, and even that was after our honeymoon.

  ‘I do not mean to be unfeeling,’ she continued, ‘but the marriage was not always a happy one. They were both so young and they had so little time to really get to know each other, but despite this, Sir Howard worshipped his wife, maybe more so after her death. You see, he blames himself for what happened.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ I said for I still found it difficult to talk of Howard in a way that seemed so personal.

  ‘Well, it is not so much that he mourns her at all,’ she said. ‘It is the way that he does it. You see, she was still very young when she died. Sir Howard never got to see her age or even know her well enough to see her flaws.’

  I thought of the portraits that hung in the study again, but now I realised that the artist’s brush had recorded things as Sir Howard had wanted to see them. His wife would be remembered as a young and perfect woman forever, long after the real memories had faded.

  ‘Sir Howard sees the paintings in the study every day,’ I said quietly. ‘He must want to surround himself with her memory.’

  ‘Lady Caldwell only ever sat for a few sketches and watercolours,’ she said. ‘Sir Howard commissioned most of the larger portraits after her death. It was how she started to become perfect in his eyes and would always remain so.’

  And no one else would ever compare, I thought.

  But she answered as if I had spoken aloud. ‘You are a lady in your sixties and—’

  ‘I know,’ I cut in. ‘You do not need to remind me of it. I know that I am hardly the svelte young thing in those pictures. I could not compare myself to that. I…’ I looked down but saw only the roll of stomach at the top of my skirt and the slack skin of my hands. I could not continue but I did not need to – she could see for herself.

  She reached forward and took my hand and I found that I did not resent it. ‘Men expect everything from us,’ she said. ‘They expect us to raise their children and run their houses yet they still expect us to have the thin waists and soft hands that we did in our twenties.’

  I nodded, although I had little experience of what she spoke of. I had not reached forty when Thomas died and I wondered what he would make of me if he could see me now in this shabby little room with my fat belly, grey hair and funny ways. Maybe he would find me repulsive, just as Howard did.

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ she said, ‘I have never seen Sir Howard with any woman since his wife died – even those society ladies.’

  I nodded for at last I realised that maybe I did not have the same standing as Sir Howard. I had been a vicar’s wife once, but that was so long ago now.

  ‘You said he blames himself for what happened,’ I said. ‘I thought she died in childbirth.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Sir Howard wanted an heir as soon as possible.’ She hesitated as if trying to think of the right words and then at last she said, ‘Well, I think Lady Caldwell would rather have waited but he was so keen. He blames himself for forcing it upon her.’

  I nodded. She did not speak of the Howard I knew, yet somehow I could imagine him as a young man moving in social circles that had certain rules and expectations. It was just the way things were done back then.

  ‘Was he there?’ I said. ‘When she died?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Through all of it. They knew that it would not be easy for Lady Caldwell to give birth so they had planned to cut the baby from her but she went into labour much earlier than expected.’

  ‘But Sir Howard has always been a rich man,’ I said. ‘There was surely a doctor to hand!’

  ‘There was,’ she said, ‘but it all happened too quickly. They were forced to operate in an emergency and they did it on a table in the drawing room, but there was not enough time to have the room cleaned and prepared properly. She died of blood poisoning. Sir Howard has not been into the drawing room since that day.’

  The drawing room at Haughten Hall was a room that I had never been received in and now I knew why. I had always thought that the portraits of Lady Caldwell that hung in the study must once have hung in a much grander room, where there would have been proper space and light to see them by – the drawing room that I had never seen.

  ‘He only told me that she died in childbirth,’ I said. ‘I suppose I never thought of what might have happened.’

  ‘I think that the fact that she lingered was the worst of it,’ she continued. ‘Poor Lady Caldwell did not succumb until two weeks after Iris’s birth.’

  ‘But why did they plan to cut the baby out?’ I asked. ‘Would it not have been safer to let her labour continue given the circumstances?’

  ‘Her hips were too small,’ she said. ‘They knew about the problem early in the pregnancy for my mother overheard Sir Howard discussing it with old Doctor Clark, so the plans were made. They were sure that a baby could not have passed through those hips.’

  I thought about one of the photographs that Sir Howard kept on his desk. The one of Lady Caldwell in a short summer dress kneeling next to a bucket and spade. The style of the dress and the way the fabric clung to her slender hips had led me to believe that the photograph was taken in childhood, but now I realised that I had been looking at a portrait of a grown woman.

  ‘Lady Caldwell’s own mother also died in childbirth,’ Dora continued. ‘They knew less about these things back then but Doctor Clark thought that it might be a condition passed down among the women in that family. Things like that are so often the way with these inbred aristocrats.’

  I was shocked at such words coming from a servant but there was no malice or mockery in Dora’s voice and she spoke the words with genuine sadness.

  ‘I don’t know if the condition affected Iris,’ she continued, ‘but from the way Sir Howard treated her, I am sure that he feared her dying in the same way. It was always thought that a female heir would marry the Elliot-Palmer boy and bring the two houses together but, watching his little girl grow into a young woman made Sir Howard uneasy and he called the whole thing off. He feared that Iris would be expected to produce an heir and would die the way her mother did. She could not go near Francis Elliot-Palmer nor any other man. He kept her as a child with ponies, short dresses, May Queen outfits and hand-chosen companions.’

  I thought of Nell; she had been the companion that Sir Howard had chosen for Iris. In Nell, Sir Howard must have seen a naïve vicar’s daughter with a childish bonnet, an uneducated village girl. He had never seen Nell as Iris’s equal.

  ‘Sir Howard’s wife was twenty-one when she died,’ she said, ‘and as Iris grew, she looked more and more like Lady Caldwell, and that scared him. He always wanted to keep Iris childlike, so she could never reach that age.’

  ‘I see that now,’ I said, ‘although I’m afraid that I did not at the time. I think I just saw Sir Howard as a little overprotective, for really every parent is a little sad when their child grows.’

  ‘You are not to blame,’ she said, ‘for you did not know him so well back then, whereas I did.’

  ‘Intimately,’ I said, repeating the word she had used before.

  She nodded. ‘I’m afraid that I did not support his ways, for I saw how they made Iris suffer. She needed to grow up in her own way and have her own life. It is why I did not stand in her way when she became sweet on Samuel Denman.’

  ‘Samuel Denman?’ I echoed. ‘Are you saying that Iris had a relationship with Sam Denman?’

  ‘Yes, Samuel. I thought you must have known, because the boy was some kind of family to you.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘Are you sur
e? They were from such different backgrounds. How did they even meet?’

  ‘It was that bloody horse,’ she said. ‘Do you remember the white mare?’

  ‘A little,’ I said.

  ‘Well, Sam sold it to them on behalf of Mrs Elliot-Palmer, and he taught Iris to ride. She was scared to sit on it alone and he was only a small lad so he would sit astride behind her, while I took the rope and I would lead them up on to the common.’

  There was something about what she said that jogged my memory, and I could picture two people on the back of the horse – but it was not Sam and Iris that I remembered but Iris and Nell, both astride the horse on the cart track by the wych elms. They were laughing together, Iris’s head resting on Nell’s shoulder, yet I could not remember the horse being led.

  ‘But you did not always lead them, did you?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You see, what you said just then caused me to remember a little more,’ I continued. ‘You were in the family way at the time and Sir Howard treated you terribly. You were in no condition to lead a horse, so as soon as you were out of the sight of Haughten Hall, you did not. You knew what Sam and Iris were doing together but you did not tell Howard, and when Iris went missing you did not even tell the police for fear that Howard would find out and dismiss you.’

  ‘I just wanted her to live a little,’ she said. ‘There was no harm. I have never really believed that Sam was involved in what happened – I always liked the boy.’

  She picked up a piece of cake and took a little bite, catching the crumbs in her hand as if we had been chatting about the weather. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said shrugging her shoulders. ‘I thought you knew. Maybe I was the only one who knew after all.’

  And then I realised that there was one other who had known.

  I knew the day that Nell must have found out about Iris and Sam. It was the day that I had sent her to Haughten Hall with a stupid errand of delivering liver salts to Iris, all in the hope of winning Sir Howard’s favour. She had worn her striped day dress and the boots that she complained rubbed her ankles. After she had left the house I had gone to sort the hymn books in the church, and I had returned home to find her broken. I now believed that what she had discovered that day had caused her to do what she did next – her ‘little mishap’ – something that, even after twenty-five years, I still could not speak of.