by Clara Barley
Am I glad he’s dead, I wonder privately? Do I fear God’s wrath on the matter? I am not sure He cares. Am I afraid I will be caught now that I have told Miss Walker? I certainly am.
While on the subject of telling the truth, seeing her fearful eyes on me and thinking that she may never speak to me again, I decide to tell her everything, for what have I to lose? If she may marry me and forfeit all others, then she needs to know what she is getting herself in to. I start from the beginning with Eliza. Then tell her, the first person I’ve ever shared it with, about my love for Mariana and how she broke my heart.
Miss Walker
What a pair we make. My perfect Miss Lister has her own secrets which she has revealed at last.
I knew she had other lovers before me. I wish she hadn’t; I wish I had been her first. I had always imagined her so invulnerable, but to hear her speak of Mariana, I could tell her heart had been broken. I feel jealous of Miss Lister’s love for her, but she seems to be reconciled to it now. She seems to have chosen me. How foolish I have been to keep her waiting. No wonder she has been so angry at my asking her to wait.
But to have led someone to their death and not told anyone! I am not as surprised as I should be. I have always slightly feared her. Does this repulse me, or attract me more? Does this make me as wicked? As complicit? Are there any sins left that we are not guilty of? Perhaps I need to steal something too, just to have done, as I’ll end up in Hell regardless.
Chapter Twelve
Summer, 1833: A year on from the first
kiss at Shibden
Miss Lister
Summer arrives, and I ask her plainly will she marry me? She says not yet, which I take as a no.
It is now a year since we first kissed at Shibden. A year of turmoil. A year that I have spent as a character in a novel whose life is turned this way and that with no care for my suffering, just others’ amusement. I’ve told her everything about myself, held up my very heart for her to inspect and she rejects me.
I shall leave tomorrow. The Hall is in a fair state and the estate is in good hands. My aunt seems in reasonable health and has my father and sister to keep her company. If I do not leave soon, she will no doubt fall ill and take a few years to die and all the time I will be stuck here wishing that I’d left when I had the chance. How awful of me to think this way, but I am driven to it. A year of my life I have waited. Wasted. My heart has been in joy and sadness and now falls into a melancholy I do not recognise. I have caught it from her. Her uncertainty, her fear of the future. Damn her. I will leave tomorrow.
There is another thing I must do before I leave, something which has played on my mind since I confessed it: I need to make right with Mr Beech. The poor fellow shoulders all the guilt for the death of our groom, but half the burden is mine. I shall seek him out at Langton Hall to make my peace with him. Though neither of us can be truly forgiven, to share our load may ease our minds. I hate the thought of it, but my mind is made up. I have guilt enough for the dead man, but to feel guilty for a man who lives when it can be amended is foolish. I was informed by Isabella that it was deemed an accident and that they paid our dead groom’s family handsomely. I shall put my fate in the hands of Mr Beech. Prison or the gallows may await. It will be some good gossip for Halifax.
If I am still a free woman, I will then call in on Mariana. It’s been too long, I find myself missing her. I wonder if I should tell her of the turmoil which has vexed me this past year? Will we laugh together at how I could have been so duped?
Shall I tell Miss Walker all this? Shall I tell her that her decision is ‘no’ and I am going to see my former love? That would be cruel. I shall tell her simply that I am heading for London and do not know how long I will be gone. I may venture farther. She’d hoped I’d put down roots here and would just wait for her forever. Instead, we shall part as friends and I shall see where I find her when I return. What care I?
My aunt tells me she is sad to see me go just a year after my return, and especially so quickly. I tell her I want to make good time for London and if she feels well enough then she and Marian shall journey down to join me in a few weeks before I travel farther. I rather like the idea of them joining me in London and even Marian seems to think it is a good idea. I suggest she could even then cross the Channel with me to re-visit France.
I make Marian swear to write to me should Aunt’s health fail and I must return in haste. I would rather be here to say farewell, even if it is a false call, than to miss her.
Miss Walker
She made the decision for me. After a year of waiting, she said it was no longer fair. If she’d been a male suitor, she would not have been made to wait half so long for a reply. She reminds me she is twelve years my senior and that all the travels she aims to undertake cannot wait. I had thought that she was settled now at Shibden with all her talk of plans for it, but I suppose they were to occupy her mind while she waited for my decision, and now that she has made it, all that is cast aside and off she goes.
I cannot stay here without seeing her each day, without the Moss House to retreat to, without being in her arms. It is all my fault. I have lost her. Even if I recant and declare a ‘yes’, she will not accept it now. I have missed my opportunity.
I cannot be alone here so I write to my sister to ask if I can join her as soon as they can send the carriage. I want to see what her life has become, see her children, my nieces and nephew. I shall throw myself into their lives and find joy in their company. I shall stay indefinitely with them as a family. No more lonely old Crow Nest for me. I shall away from here. If I cannot be with Miss Lister and her family, then I shall find my own family again.
I want to see Marian and ask her thoughts and keep up our friendship, but Miss Lister will be there. I send her a note inviting her to visit me and hope sincerely that she comes.
Miss Lister
One can never leave as quickly as one wants. I had to order horses and let Isabella and Mariana know to expect me and await their replies to confirm they would be home. I had to book lodgings on the way down and find a room to rent in London. I then had to write ahead to friends there, giving them the address to reply to.
Finally, a week later, I am packed and ready to go. My aunt cries and even Marian looks sad, but they assure me they will make the trip down to visit me soon. My sister ventures so far as to say she may come by herself if Aunt isn’t up to it, which pleases me, and I insist she does. London will be a marvel to her, Paris too, if she’s brave enough to join me. She has not been there in many years. I promise to look after her and we say goodbye fondly, as sisters should, and I feel guilty for leaving and always being so harsh on her.
My father bids me farewell and asks again if all the business is well cared for. I reassure him it is in safe hands with our steward and there is nothing he need do except support his decisions. He asks me quietly if I am seeing the lovely Mariana on my journey down and I reply yes, and he winks. He always makes me feel awkward about it, so I blush and rush into the carriage. With a wave of my hand I leave their lives behind, head from Shibden’s courtyard and up the track to the main Halifax road, past the spot where one day I plan to build a gatehouse, and turn right towards York.
At the last minute, I decide to call in at Crow Nest to say farewell. She meets me on the doorstep reluctantly like a petulant child. She barely looks at me as I tell her to be strong and look after herself. She tells me she is going to see her sister and I promise that we will travel together next time, that I will not be gone long. We can write all the time. But even as I say it, I know it is not true. I am heading off to see Mariana and intend to take pleasure with her. Familiar, passionate pleasure with my former lover and with Isabella too, possibly. I do not know how long I will be gone or even if I will return. I say I will write but I do not know if I wish to. I will leave her. If she cannot commit to me then she has lost me, and she can see how it feels to be le
ft alone. I kiss her on both cheeks politely and let go of her hands. She does not look at me.
So fly away, little broken bird. I cannot save you or fix you; the only one who can do that is yourself. You are not my kin, my wife, or even my lover any more. I will leave you here in your sad memories and hope that your sister can pluck you from this melancholy as I have tried to and failed.
Farewell Miss Walker. I am better off without you.
Miss Walker
I want to fall at her feet, beg her to stay, but I remain dumb. I understand her leaving me, I truly do. It just feels so cruel. But then, it is cruel of me to expect her to stay. A year since she first swept into my life and for a year I have kept her on a thread. Now she takes the scissors and cuts it and I am left, lifeless.
My sister has sent the carriage to collect me. I do not have long before it arrives. How simple it would have been, already packed and dressed, to have climbed into the carriage with Miss Lister instead. To have decided that I would go with her down south and not up to Scotland where my sister waits. I could at any moment have said, let me go with you, and I’m sure she would have accepted. I would now be sitting next to her, my arm in hers, riding southwards on an adventure together. Instead I stand here on the doorstep, alone. Always to be alone. I stand here until the carriage arrives from my sister, not moving, lost in my thoughts. I have missed my opportunity. Again. I have let her drive off without me.
I step up into Sutherland’s empty carriage and am whisked northwards to the cold, to my sister. Yes, I want to see her, but her husband will be there, and they will make me socialise and try to pair me off with someone a long way from home.
The servants probably thought me mad, standing there on the doorstep. I knew I could not go back into the house after she left as I would have run into my room and locked the door and never left. So, I stood there and waited, and eventually boarded this carriage instead. I am a prisoner now, being transported to Scotland as punishment. A prisoner in my own life. A prisoner in my indecision. I think about the joy on my sister’s face, the little ones who will grow to know me and love me as their aunt. I have chosen my family over Miss Lister’s. Youth over age. I just hope I can bring them some happiness.
Farewell Miss Lister. You are better off without me.
Chapter Thirteen
Summer, 1833: A journey in
opposite directions
Miss Lister
At Langton Hall I told him directly, the guilt is not yours alone, it was my fault also. I might as well tell you, for if it should reduce your grief then that will be a good outcome. I’ve carried the grief of it myself and realised it was unfair of me not to tell you. I hope you can forgive me.
Mr Beech looked at me and seemed surprised, but then I saw relief creep in. I wondered for a moment if it would turn to anger, but he simply shook my hand, tutted quietly and then walked away. I could have lain down on the ground with the relief of it.
It became a week of confessions. After leaving Langton Hall and the Norcliffes behind me after a few days of catching up, reminiscing, and a pleasurable fumble with Isabella for old time’s sake, I head over to Lawton Hall in Cheshire to see its mistress, Mariana.
No sooner had I told her about the Langton Hall incident and how relieved I felt to have finally spoken with Mr Beech, than Mariana was itching to tell me something herself. I think she felt guilty at her choice over the years, her naive hope that Charles would not live long, but it turns out that there was another reason that she left me. She wants to tell me so I will not continue to think that it was due to a personal shortcoming of mine. She reassures me that I am perfect and was all she ever wanted, except – and she lands a heavy blow – that I could never give her a child.
The still childless Mariana stares at me with her wide beautiful eyes and I see this has burned away in her since she married Charles over fifteen years ago. She hasn’t told me before because she’d hoped it would happen for her, she tells me. Then it would have been self-evident. However, many years later, childless, for her to voice that this is what she wanted all this time, opens up a grief for what she has not been blessed with. From Miss Walker’s grief to Mariana’s, I seem to be the one others cry on at the moment.
I can see from her tears how much she wanted a child and to be denied the one thing that would have justified her decision, fifteen years of putting up with Charles, of breaking her own heart by leaving me, seems cruel. She cries as if she has actually lost a child. I imagine it is the idea of it, of what could have been, that grieves her. She sobs that if she’d had one straight away, when Charles used to take his pleasure with her regularly, the child would be fifteen years old, an individual learning their place in the world, talking to us now, looking like a young version of her.
For years she lay with him purely so that she may conceive, she confesses. I had thought it had just been on occasion to keep him happy. I knew she was having intimate relations with him regularly enough as he gave her, and in turn me, gonorrhoea. We would still meet regularly over the years after they wed, and I believe he knew what we got up to. He had affairs too, hence the disease, but they still tried, or at least she tried to conceive, and she allowed him to pleasure himself with her. In return he was happy to finance Mariana’s life and travels, often with me.
I passed the disease onto Isabella too, but I never told Mariana that. I couldn’t just be at her whim all the time, ready to lift my skirts at any time she wanted. Once Isabella realised I’d been with someone else, whom she rightly assumed was Mariana, that was it for us for many years, until I won her over once more. Charles’ indiscretion cost me a great deal of pleasure, and some awkward visits to the doctor and expensive treatments that have never worked. I believe he knew he’d given it to us both – he probably revelled in it. It was his small way of showing a power over me too. He probably contracted it on purpose.
I wonder if the reason for her telling me about this longing for a child is that now she has given up. We are the same age, after all, and with nothing left for Charles to offer her and no sign of him dying soon, does she want to start up with me again? I try to ignore this thought as my hopes are so quickly dashed by her, but I do wonder, though I do not ask outright.
I stay with her for a few more days and when she talks of Halifax, she lets something slip and I realise she has heard of Miss Walker and me. Though I have not made anything more than a passing reference to her as an acquaintance, Mariana mentions my Moss House, which only my aunt or Mrs Priestley could have told her about. I wonder if it has made her jealous.
Finally, as it is a season of confessions, I tell her all about Miss Walker. It is done with now, so what have I to lose? I recount Mrs Priestley’s dramatic exit from Crow Nest and seemingly our lives, and Mariana laughs, as I did, but appreciates the loss of a friend. Would Mrs Priestley ever imagine that myself and Mariana were just as close? Probably not. She only saw us together on occasional visits as we tended to travel together or meet elsewhere; Mariana was never a permanent part of Shibden or Halifax life. She never wanted to be. Miss Walker, on the other hand, was in the centre of it all, somehow related to every other person in Halifax. We both feel sad after all our confessions, but neither has a solution for the other. She does not ask me to take up with her again. We do not even kiss. We are both alone.
To be condemned to a life alone over a potential child! I wouldn’t want the worry, the constant fear for them; so few survive to adulthood. What if you do not even like them? Or they kill you on the way out? I do not see the appeal.
Miss Walker
Within the day I am in love with them all, the three little babes. I want them for myself but am glad at least that they are related so I can have some small claim on them. They have the Walker colourings that my sister and I share: golden hair, pale skin and a small splattering of freckles, as if added as an afterthought. Elizabeth has raised them well; they are calm and smile readil
y. They are content and interested and after just one day the two little toddlers come to me and laugh and let me hold them; Mary and George. The baby Elizabeth lies happily in my arms gazing up at me with her wide bright eyes. I imagine she wonders how I can look like her mother but be different somehow. I could take the children out without Elizabeth and anyone would assume they were mine. I would give anything to walk into the town with baby Elizabeth in my arms and hear people coo over her and smile at me over what I have produced.
The weather is warmer than I thought. We sit outside and take the carriage to the coast and I see the sea, the wonderful ocean stretching before me, the sounds of waves I have not heard since I was a child, so much more reassuring and welcoming than the sounds of the winds and trees blowing back at home. I could sit for hours watching the little ones on the sands, the baby asleep in her cot, talking easily and freely with my sister as if we have never been apart. She gives me a pile of novels to indulge in and I feel alive, awake and content. I have almost forgotten my need for Miss Lister.
Weeks pass in our tranquillity with the children, breakfasts, lunches, reading, sewing, receiving visitors. Elizabeth updates me with what she hears from family in Yorkshire, often about me. I do not tell her anything at first, I just laugh at the gossip and respond to any references to Miss Lister with my well-rehearsed line: she was just a new acquaintance. Past tense.
Then Sutherland returns from his business down in London and bursts through our quietude. She reassures me he is only to be home a short while, but all of us are tense around him, almost not daring to be in the same room or breathe loudly in his presence. He asks rude questions such as why am I not married yet, what am I doing with the estate, have I written my will and what’s this I hear about a Gentleman Jack of Halifax? It takes all my strength not to be cold towards him but to answer courteously, not to let the children see that I am as afraid of him as their mother is. Elizabeth must be always on guard; most days, he strides in at an unpredictable hour without a word, his intentions clear, and she rises and goes with him to their bedroom, leaving me with the children and the nanny. She comes down a short while later and acts as if she just went to read him some poems, but she then holds the children closely as if they give her strength.