The Lost Girls

by Jennifer Wells

  ‘Miss?’ Dora held a rope out to me and I saw it was attached to the bridle.

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I…’ But then I saw that Dora’s other hand was on her back and she stood with her hip thrust out to balance the weight of her swollen belly.

  ‘Alright,’ I muttered, taking the rope reluctantly. ‘Walk on!’

  But the horse did not budge, no matter how much I clicked my tongue and cajoled her.

  ‘What’s her name?’ I asked.

  ‘Edelweiss,’ said Iris, laughing.

  It was a word that I had seen written in botany textbooks next to pictures of a small white flower but I had never heard it spoken. Iris pronounced the word in such a way I only just recognised it. I was reminded that there were things that could not be learnt from textbooks and that people of her class would always have a kind of knowledge that went beyond reading.

  ‘Edelweiss,’ I repeated, trying to harden the sounds the way that she had. ‘Edelweiss!’ Iris kicked her on a little harder and we moved forward at last.

  We rounded the sunken fence and passed through the back gate, taking the track that led out on to the common, the horse’s hooves a soft thud on the rough grass. Edelweiss seemed to move at her own pace, happy to be out of the yard, I thought. There was a gentle bow in the rope between us. As we passed Sir Howard and my mother struggling up the slope, I was glad that the horse had none of the skittishness that Sir Howard had mentioned and when Iris said ‘walk on,’ I took it that she did not want to wait for them and I pulled the rope a little harder.

  As we passed the small clump of trees, I peered into the branches, but the man I had seen from the window was gone and there was not so much as a track through the bracken or broken branch to suggest that he had been there at all. Soon we came to the top of a little ridge with a good view of the rest of the common.

  ‘Aim for the little thicket of wych elms, the one with the foxholes,’ Iris said. ‘We can join the low track from there and it should give us some shade from this sun.’

  I pulled the horse on, the slow drum of its hooves sounding hollow on the springy turf.

  ‘My father knows nothing of horses,’ she said. ‘He grew up in London where they were only used to pull a carriage. I am late to get my first horse at fifteen. When we bought Edelweiss we had to completely clear out the end stable because my father was using it to store parts for his motorcar.’

  I glanced up to her as she spoke, glad that I had a reason to at last, but whatever it was that kept drawing me back to her face remained a mystery and I found myself stumbling over the tussocky grass.

  ‘My father bought Edelweiss from a neighbour he despises,’ she continued. ‘He feels he paid over the odds just to get her for me, but Samuel the stable lad still comes over from Waldley Court to exercise her. My father won’t let me do that. He says she needs to gallop to get the madness out of her, and I’m not ready for that.’

  She spoke of things that I could not reply to, subjects that were strange to me, for my mother and I could have barely afforded a donkey. Suddenly I remembered that I should dislike this spoilt little girl, who spoke of expensive motorcars, horses and staff to exercise them. I wondered how she thought we could ever be friends, and the fact that she had sat with me on the window seat in the library and mentioned friendship began to annoy me. I said nothing in reply to her, just led the horse forward, its hooves thudding behind me.

  After a while we came to a little plateau and I led the horse down the gentle slope and on to the cart track, Edelweiss’s hooves kicking up dust as I led her into the patch of shade where the boughs of the elm thicket overhung the track.

  ‘Whoa!’ Iris pulled back on the reins. She turned her head and I followed her gaze back up the slope and only then did I realise that there was no sign of my mother and Sir Howard, and I imagined my mother still panting behind us, her skirts bunched around her knees as she stumbled over the scrubby bracken, trying to catch up.

  ‘This is why I like this spot,’ Iris said. ‘They can’t see us here, nobody can.’ She swung her leg from the saddle and landed next to me on the track, then she took the rope from me, stroking the horse’s neck.

  ‘I thought you said we came here to get out of the sun,’ I said.

  But she just laughed. ‘Get on!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get on,’ she repeated. ‘Get up on the saddle.’

  ‘I told you,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘Even you will need to learn sometime,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but not now, not like this!’

  ‘Put your foot in the stirrup,’ she said, her voice hardening.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘My father knows you only as the vicar’s daughter,’ she said, ‘but I think you are more spirited than that. Am I wrong?’ She raised her eyebrows at me but she did not need to say anything more.

  My classmates in the village school had often taunted me for being the vicar’s daughter, but this time the remark seemed to cut a little deeper and I wondered how she really saw me – the poor village girl, the performing monkey brought to entertain her, or the servant forced to lead her horse. Maybe she had heard that I was a delinquent after all, but at that moment, I thought that she understood something about me, and I fancied that maybe she sensed the same familiarity that I saw in her.

  I bunched up my skirts and bent my knee, grasping it to my chest as I tried to wiggle my toe into the stirrup. The horse’s flank swayed against me and I grabbed the saddle with both hands, hauling my chest against the leather and twisting myself in the saddle until I could throw my leg clumsily over the back and sit upright. The horse moved underneath me in a slow lumbering waltz, every step about to topple me from the saddle.

  ‘Go on then,’ I said, my voice shaking, ‘but don’t pull her too fast.’

  ‘I’m not going to pull her,’ she replied.

  ‘I can’t ride alone!’ I said. ‘You heard your father – he says this horse is skittish!’

  ‘You won’t be alone,’ she said, laughing, and I saw that she was standing on a branch that had grown low over the earth, her hand on the saddle behind me.

  ‘No!’ I cried.

  But she took a little jump at the flank and I felt her wriggle against me as she swung her leg over the other side.

  ‘Budge forward!’ she said. ‘We both need to fit.’ She pressed her body into mine, circling her arms round me so that she could take the reins.

  The horse moved again and I grabbed the saddle with both hands, clumps of coarse mane tangling in my fingers.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It is perfectly safe. This is what the large saddle is for. It was how I was taught to ride. I was too scared to learn the usual way.’ She clicked her tongue and I felt her legs clench around mine as she kicked her heels into the horse’s belly. ‘Walk on!’

  Every step seemed to lurch towards the ground. The dust of the cart track and tussocks of grass spun beneath me and I dared not raise my head until we reached the higher ground where there was a little bend in the track. Only then did I look up and see the view over Missensham – the tightly packed houses of Drover’s Hill nestled on the slope beneath us and the busy high street, the Oxworth Road winding through the bottom of the valley and out to the crossroads and the farms beyond. I sensed a dull emptiness inside me where my fear had been, and I took a deep breath, no longer feeling the pound of my heart in my chest.

  ‘I can see the village green,’ I said, recognising the spire of St Cuthbert’s. ‘My cottage looks like a doll’s house from here. Although, coming from Haughten Hall you would probably think it that small anyway.’

  She laughed, or I think she did, for what I felt was the movement of her body against mine – the soft press of her breasts against my back and the clench of her thighs around my hips. I thought of the curve of her thighs in the riding britches that were little more than pantaloons and realised what she must have seen of me when I mount
ed – the flash of stockings up to my thigh and the frill of my drawers. Suddenly the heat of the morning seemed unbearable, and I said no more.

  Some way ahead of us, the twisted chimneys of Waldley Court rose from the shimmer of heat and dust, and I realised that the common was deserted on such a fine day, with only the occasional call of a crow and distant bark of a dog rising over the plod of hooves.

  ‘I can never go anywhere on my own,’ said Iris suddenly. ‘My father makes sure that I am always chaperoned, and it tires me.’

  ‘My mother is the same,’ I said, ‘but I think she wants to protect other people from me. She thinks I am evil.’

  She laughed but I had not meant it as a joke.

  ‘My father is just overprotective,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe that is the reason he does not want you to marry,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said, and I thought she might tell me more, but in the end she just said, ‘I don’t really know.’ I recalled that she had spoken of that man, Francis Elliot-Palmer, and thought it sad that she would never be with him.

  Then she gave a little chuckle. ‘Anyway, Francis is hardly the kind of man one needs protection from. Perhaps he would suit you better, Nell, although your mother would not approve of him.’

  ‘Then I think he would suit me fine,’ I replied, laughing, although I was glad that she could not see me blushing at the thought of this boy I had never met.

  ‘Francis is a religious bookworm just like your mother,’ she said. ‘He is reading Theology at Oxford, but it is not just the Bible and God that he studies. He has special leave to stay at his family’s house past the start of the Trinity Term so that he can record the May Day celebrations on one of those cine camera things.’ She spoke as if Francis excited her and that I should be excited by him too, but she was describing a world that held little meaning for me as I knew it was one I could never be a part of.

  I nodded silently.

  ‘On May Day morning Francis will start filming the festivities here in Missensham,’ she continued. ‘Then he will drive to some more villages on the way back to Oxford and record their celebrations too. He is not so interested in the blessings and church services – he says most of what happens on May Day is pagan.’

  She seemed to relish the last word, as if it was something bold and daring, and I couldn’t help but feel shocked, for my mother had taught me that paganism was something so evil that one should never even speak of it.

  ‘Do you like the sound of him?’ she asked, a little excitement in her voice.

  ‘I think he would suit me just fine,’ I repeated, although this time my words seemed to falter.

  ‘You don’t already have a sweetheart, do you?’ she asked.

  I thought of Sam. I would sometimes go to meet him at the stables of Waldley Court and I would hide in the old tack room where he lodged and talk to him as he worked. Last time he had come in as I lay on his mattress and he had said that he liked the look of me there. He’d said that I should return.

  ‘Nell?’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly, ‘I don’t have a sweetheart.’ Iris had already called my sweetheart ‘Samuel’ as if he were a servant and I felt ashamed again.

  But she did not question me further, just jerked the reins towards her, pulling hard on one side so that the horse turned in the road. ‘Oh, Nell, look!’

  We were now facing back down the track towards the clump of elms. There were two figures in the distance, a large man bobbing up and down as if he were running and a dumpy woman trying to keep up with him, her skirt billowing about her as she moved – Sir Howard and my mother – and only then I realised how long we had been out of their sight.

  There was something about them that made me laugh – the way they seemed to jiggle about frantically, elbows out and feet stumbling, tufts of loose hair flapping in the breeze.

  Then Iris laughed too and we laughed together at these ridiculous people, each of their stumbles refuelling our giggles. Iris still held the reins tightly, her chin resting on my shoulder and her arms circling my waist, and as she laughed, I realised that I could feel her breasts press against my back once more, but this time I realised that I did not mind.

  ‘It looks as if your mother is chasing my father,’ she said. ‘Although she has been doing that for many months now, with even less dignity.’

  I felt a little drop in my stomach and remembered how my mother had been talking of Sir Howard constantly for the last few months. Sir Howard was a man that my father would not have approved of and I felt sick that my mother would betray his memory like this. I did not laugh any more.

  Then everything seemed to shift beneath me and I lurched forwards, grabbing handfuls of white mane to steady myself as the horse turned suddenly.

  A small brown dog was running hard across the common towards us, its head low to the grass and its legs flailing out behind it. It barked as it ran and I realised that the barking I had heard earlier had never stopped.

  Iris let go of the reins and slid off the saddle. ‘Quick, get off!’

  I swung my leg behind me but my other foot was wedged in the stirrup and I landed heavily on the dirt.

  Edelweiss made a little noise at the back of her throat, her hooves kicking up dust clouds from the track.

  The dog did not slow when it neared us, its feet drumming the grass and its tail whisking the air as it ran. It had a large head, the jaws gaping in a manic smile, but when it jumped up at me I felt the softness of tongue not teeth.

  ‘Iris!’ I cried, ruffling the dog’s ears. ‘Iris, look – isn’t he funny!’ but when I looked round I saw the track in shadow and the white of the horse’s belly above me, the flare of nostrils and the thrashing of hooves against the air.

  Iris held the rope tightly in her hand as the horse strained against it, its eyes wide as if it stared into hell itself.

  ‘Get the dog away!’ she shouted.

  I tried to grab the dog by its collar but it licked all over my hands. ‘Come, boy!’ I said, but it just quivered with excitement, its large head flicking back with the force of its bark, and I felt stupid for not realising the trouble it would cause.

  ‘Charlie!’ It was a man’s voice and I turned to see a figure hurrying towards us, a man dressed in black with a large rifle case slung over his shoulder – the man I had seen watching Haughten Hall from the trees.

  ‘P-Please!’ I stammered. ‘We are not alone. Her father is an important man and not long behind us…’ But my words were swallowed up in the thunder of the hooves as the horse reared again.

  The man said nothing, his pale eyes locked on mine for just a moment too long, and my heart seemed to skip a little just as it had when I had seen him from the window of Haughten Hall when I thought he had noticed me but not looked away.

  But then another voice, this time a woman’s: ‘Hold him fast!’

  I scooped up the dog by its belly but he writhed in my grasp and I dropped him on to the path where he spun in the dirt and sped like a bullet in the direction of the cry.

  The woman strode through the grass. She might have been my mother’s age but she could not have been more different. She was a tall, thin woman, with long limbs and the top of her back slightly hunched. She wore a pair of puffed cycling trousers and a small hat with a couple of feathers in it.

  When she reached the track, she caught the dog by the collar. It spun circles on the ground, its tail thumping in the dirt as she buckled its collar on to a short leash.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Elliot-Palmer,’ said Iris, glancing back at the horse who still picked her hooves off the track as if it was on fire.

  ‘No harm done, Iris,’ said the woman briskly.

  Then Iris added quickly, ‘My father is behind us.’

  They seemed to share a look, but they had little time to say anything more as we could already hear Sir Howard’s shouts as he caught up with us.

  ‘Iris!’ he called as he reached us, panting heavily. ‘Are you hurt, darling? I saw that d
ratted horse and unruly dog. Did you fall?’

  Iris opened her mouth but he did not wait for her response.

  ‘That beast is a menace!’ he shouted at the woman in the feathered hat, and I couldn’t help flinching at the force of his words, the gentle bounce I had heard in his voice when he first greeted me now gone.

  ‘You should expect dogs on the common!’ she shouted back. ‘I told you the horse was skittish when I sold you it. You should expect it from a mare. My stable lad recommended a gelding, but you still took her.’

  ‘The beast is not just skittish,’ he yelled, ‘she is clearly uncontrollable!’

  ‘Well,’ she hissed. ‘I suppose that is the trouble with us mares – we do not know our place!’

  They glared at each other for several seconds, and I sensed that they would have continued to shout had it not been for the others around them.

  Then the man in black walked slowly over to the woman. He held the dog by its collar in one hand and held the other out to her. She took it reluctantly. Together they turned and headed back up the track, the woman cursing loudly and the dog whimpering as it was pulled along with them.

  Sir Howard watched them in silence until he was sure that they would not return, then he took the rope from Iris and handed it to me as the horse was quite calm now. Without a word, he began walking back in the direction of Haughten Hall and we all followed him in silence – my mother still panting and bewildered, and Iris trudging along sulkily. The friendly atmosphere I had felt that morning was now gone and the woman’s curses rang in our ears.

  I looked back at the two figures walking side by side in the distance – the man with the long rifle case and the woman with the billowing trousers – and I noticed that the woman was waving her hands wildly in the air, as if the walk had done little to calm her anger. There had been something about the row I had just witnessed, something that told me that the words I had heard were not the first to be shouted in anger, and that they would not be the last.

  The little dog was now loose again and trailing at their heels, but then it stopped and I thought that it must have seen me watching. Suddenly it raised its head and then it was running again, back down the track towards us, its dark shape flying over the earth, its large mouth low and gaping and its legs flailing out behind it.