The Lost Girls

by Jennifer Wells

  Outside, the first clouds of morning were starting to muddy the darkness, but there was just enough light for me to see my way across the village green. I had a piece of biscuit and some cheese to give Sam for his journey, and the rabbit’s foot to return to him, for now I thought that he would need luck more than I did. The omnibus was due at the crossroads in little more than an hour – Sam and I would not have much time for talking, but maybe that was for the best. I was sure he would be pleased to see me, though, and I thought that we could make the journey to Haughten Hall together, and that I could help carry his bags.

  A scream split the air as I stepped into the well of darkness at the crossroads and I dared not move until I saw the shadow of the fox, its head low and ribs pumping in time with the sound – a string of shrieks, like the stab of a knife as if each breath was forced out in pain.

  I took the road that ran between the fields and orchards, my feet stumbling on the dark path, until I heard the sound of the stream and took the path that followed it, past Haughten Hall and up on to the common.

  As the track became steeper, I passed under the dark elm trees of the thicket, the twist of roots underfoot and the mustiness of the foxholes somehow stronger in the still of the morning.

  The lamps were not lit at Waldley Court but, as I crossed the stable yard, I saw a faint crack of light from the open door of the old tack room. I feared I was too late and that Sam had already left. I pushed open the door slowly and peered inside.

  The room flickered with a dull light, the hiss of an old Tilley lamp, filling the silence. The air was so cold it felt almost damp – the brazier had been brought in from the yard but it contained nothing but charred sticks and fragments of green glass, as if a bottle had been thrown into the fire. There was a heavy smell of cider in the air, mingled with the tang of sweat.

  And there was Sam – not the boy with the lean, strong body and the exciting wild streak, just a shivering hump on the mattress, a blanket wrapped tightly round him.

  I put my hand on the lump under the blanket and shook what felt like a shoulder, but Sam neither spoke nor moved, a strange kind of rattle rising from his throat.

  ‘Sam!’ I whispered. ‘It is time to go. You have overslept. Where is your bag?’

  I wrapped an old tea towel round my hand and took the hot lamp by the wire handle, moving it slowly round the room, but I could see no bag. Nothing had been left out or put to one side and, when I found an old apple crate in the corner of the room, I saw that it was full of clothes, all neatly folded. On the upturned bucket by the mattress was Sam’s cloth cap and a battered coin purse, but there was no more than a couple of shillings inside. On the floor was an empty bottle labelled as ‘cider’ – the same green glass that I had seen shattered in the brazier.

  There was also a crumpled note scattered with tiny shards of pencil lead as if the words had been forced on to the paper. The letters were misshapen as if written by a child and, as they tumbled down the page, they became more and more unrecognisable, as if tracing Sam’s collapse into drunkenness. And then, at the end:

  I can’t. I’m sorry.

  The hurt I felt was as sharp as if it had been my own. I put down the lamp and hurried back to the lump on the mattress.

  ‘No!’ I cried. ‘There is still time!’ But there was not. There was nothing I could do and, as I picked up the note I realised that, even if I could have roused Sam and packed his bags, I could not change the fact that he did not want to leave.

  I thought of Iris waiting at her bedroom window, looking out upon the new day but seeing only darkness. I wondered how long she would wait, and I imagined her face pressed against the glass – the face that was beautiful but nothing more, for I now knew that my thoughts of any familiarity or connection had been no more than fancy. Yet somehow, I still felt that I shared her pain. If Sam would not go to Iris, then I would, for I could at least give her the note and explain a little of what had happened. Maybe I could even take her to Sam in the hope that she could rouse him, or that the sight of her face might be enough to change his mind.

  I would need to take the rough track over the top of the common to make sure that Iris saw me from her window. I feared that after the recent rain it would be overgrown and I knew that I could not snag my outfit on the bracken or gorse. I hurried to the apple crate and found a pair of britches, pushing my boots through the leg holes, and hauling them up to my waist. I tucked the skirts of my petticoat and nightgown into the top of the britches, fastening them tightly, and slung an old jacket over my shoulders. Then I took Sam’s cloth cap from the upturned bucket because I thought, if Iris could see it from her window, even if she could see that I was not Sam, she would know that I brought news of him.

  I put the scribbled note in the little lace bag and took up one of the shillings and put it in there too, along with the rabbit’s foot. Money and apologies would only go so far to console Iris, and I felt that what she really needed was luck.

  I pulled the blanket further over Sam, tucking it under his neck and stroking the sun-speckled skin of his face and his gingery beard. He did not move but his breathing was peaceful. Even in his sleep there was something wild about Sam, and I fancied that he was no more than an animal who had strayed the wrong way and ended up in some kind of trap. I wondered what would become of him.

  I glanced round the room once more – at the upturned bucket, the cold brazier, the shards of green glass and the gentle swell of Sam’s breath under the blanket – and then watched it dim away into darkness as I turned off the Tilley lamp, the flame stuttering and the hiss fading to silence.

  ‘I forgive you,’ I whispered, but they were words that he would never hear.

  * * *

  By the time I left Sam the sky had brightened enough to throw long black shadows across the yard, but the excitement I had felt when I set off that morning was gone and there was now a bitterness in the air. I set out for Haughten Hall.

  I thought of how Iris would be waiting at her window that morning – waiting for her love, the man who would make everything right, the one who would sweep her off her feet, marry her and provide for the baby as they lived together in the little cottage by the sea. But Iris would not be eloping with her lover that morning. Today would not end like one of her romantic novels.

  It was not Sam who crossed the common to Haughten Hall that morning. It was me – Nell Ryland. A girl of no status and a delinquent, a girl with short hair who wore a yellowed nightgown and a man’s britches, jacket and cap, a girl who Iris felt was not worthy of love but taunts. She would have me, and she would have nothing of Sam but his scrawled words.

  For that morning, Iris would be Missensham’s May Queen after all. She would wear a cotton nightgown in the cold morning air and carry the heavy willow arch; she would walk for over a mile in pinching white slippers. All eyes would be upon her, watching her every move – she would need a smile that would not crack.

  Iris Caldwell would be the May Queen – the girl who had everything – but every step in those white slippers would kill her.

  29

  She was standing in front of the window, just as she said she would be. She wore the long white nightgown my mother had embroidered with little irises on the chest, the billow of a frilled petticoat beneath the skirts and her hair loose about her shoulders.

  I stopped when I saw her and I raised my hand to wave but she did not move and I realised that I stood in darkness and she could not see me. My hand fell back to my side as I did not want to break her stillness. I stood on the grassy track and watched her for a few moments more, just as I had seen Francis Elliot-Palmer watching her all those weeks ago.

  She was framed by the open curtains, the reflected orbs of an oil lamp hovering on the windowpane and in the glass of her dressing mirror, the light catching in her hair, and I thought her something otherworldly like the romantic portraits of her mother that hung in the study.

  Then she leant closer to the window, a hand up to her brow as if
trying to see past the reflections and out into the darkness.

  She would hate me because I was uninvited. She would hate me because I brought bad news. She would hate me because I was not him.

  I thought of heading home quietly and creeping back into bed, but whatever she would do without Sam, I did not want her to be alone.

  The window darkened as a figure crossed in front of the lamp, and now Iris’s father stood with her, his broad shoulders in silhouette. She turned from the window and took a step towards him but he held out his hand to stop her then raised it to her shoulder, gently turning her towards the mirror again as he placed the willow crown on her head and smoothed her hair around it. He leant his head over her shoulder so that they both looked into the mirror together, then he kissed her cheek.

  I held my breath and waited for him to leave.

  But he did not. He put his hands on her shoulders and the shape of her gown seemed to slacken the way it had when she had sat before me at the dressing table and she had loosened the ties so that I could brush her hair.

  He gathered her hair and passed it over her shoulder, but she did not take it the way she had with me, she just left it hanging loose about her face. His hands moved slowly down her back. The thought of his fingers moving across her body made my stomach drop. I thought him to be fumbling with another fastening on her nightgown but then he put one of his hands flat on her back and pulled the other towards him sharply, and only then did I remember the corset, and fancied that I could see the taught laces straining in his grip.

  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, t
he 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.

  Then she said quietly, ‘How do you know that Edelweiss will head for Waldley Court?’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘You said that Edelweiss would head for Waldley Court.’

  ‘Did I?’ I said. ‘Well, I thought that she always did. Sam told me so, and I saw her there a month ago tied to the fence.’

  Neither of us spoke for a while, for the next word could only be accusation or apology, but somehow I felt that, after all that had happened, neither still held any meaning.

  I wondered what she was thinking – if she knew why I had not visited her for so long after that day, if she now realised why I had refused to be her May Day attendant when we next met, and why I had tugged the brush so viciously through her hair.

  ‘Do you think me a harlot, Nell?’ she said after a while.

  ‘No more than I think it of Sam,’ I replied.

  ‘Most would not see it that way,’ she said, ‘but I cannot think it of myself because I thought that I loved him, and that made it alright. It is a shame that my father would never allow us to be together.’ She looked up at me and nodded her head earnestly as if in agreement with her own point. ‘Sam and I are from different worlds.’ She spoke as if she was reciting from one of her romance novels and I wondered how much of her affair had actually seemed real to her.