by Clara Barley
Her aunt and Marian, it transpires later, both read it too and so we are all in on it except Anne. I am delighted to be included and this small, inconsequential conspiracy makes me feel more accepted than any previous occurrence. We now have a secret, the four of us against Anne. I quite like it. Though incomparable to the secret of Anne and I, of course.
I wonder often if they know? If they would not care, or if they would cast us out if they discovered it? Luckily, we still have the Moss House to retreat to and it is in there, rather than in our rooms, that I feel most unbridled and free.
Miss Lister
If she agreed with everything I say, then she would become a bore. We read in the newspaper of improvements to working conditions and increasing the minimum age of children to work in the mills. Ann seems to want to rescue the lot of them. I know she gave handsomely to a new orphanage but I do not tell her that I know. My family think that they protect her from my scorn, but let them have their small allegiance to her; it does them all good. I would not have said anything anyway. They believe me to be far more of a tyrant than I am, and I must keep up the impression of it, so I do not say a word. I’m glad the Lister money does not come from industry, the toil of others. My conscience is clearer than Ann’s, so let her contribute what she must to ease her guilt.
We trip to York more regularly now, sometimes with Marian in tow as well, and she joins me in visiting friends there, including the Bests and the Norcliffes. They seem to like her, and she grows ever more in confidence.
We take the walk into Halifax together and visit Whitley’s, the local book seller and stationer where I order more books for my diaries; hardbound with good quality unlined paper. My order has arrived of Rosamund Best’s publication of her paintings of all twenty-four churches in York. It’s a surprise gift for Ann and she opens the package and turns straight to the page of Holy Trinity before we’ve even left the shop. We smile at each other at our secret union and walk home arm in arm.
Whilst some aspects of Halifax are on the rise, the town centre reveals the changes are not all for the better. The extravagant cloth hall, once a hub of activity on the Saturday of trading, is now beginning to decline. It will no doubt become just another common place for a market and fall to ruin. The wealthy pass in their ornate carriages whilst we cannot help but see the poor and starving all around us. I cannot bear to look at them and keep my gaze fixed on our purpose, but Ann suffers on behalf of each and every one she sees and sometimes I wonder if I should leave her at home to protect her from all this – but isn’t this life itself? We cannot live in the delusion that everyone is as happy and content as our little family is at Shibden, with want of nothing but warmer weather.
Ann still seems in awe of my hobby to write my diary and watches me of an evening. I read aloud sections to her. She likes to select an old volume at random and let it fall open on a page. Luckily, she cannot read my handwriting well, or the coded sections, so I can freely read her a sometimes-edited version. In truth, there is little left of me she does not know, I just spare her the details. We are almost caught up with each other on our histories and I settle into the security that there will be no more revelations to surprise me or unhinge this tranquillity of knowing each other so well and sharing almost everything.
We have settled in well to our lives here but there is something I want to share with her still. Paris.
Miss Walker
Just when I am finally accustomed to our cosy life at Shibden, she harks on about travelling to Paris. I agree – why should I not? It will be an adventure after all, but only six months into living together, into our ‘marriage’, and off she wants to go. I knew this would be how she is, I’d just hoped for a little longer to grow accustomed to this new life and for my family to realise that this is a long-term, lifelong decision. But I do not take as much persuasion now. I am hers and she will protect me. Our Lister family will be waiting for us when we return. I will follow her anywhere. Well, at least as far as Paris.
Miss Lister
Just a short trip, I promise. Testing the waters. I can tell she is secretly excited as I make plans. She seems healthier than she has ever been, and I feel an urgency to get her overseas before anyone else dies out of the blue and she is undone once more.
She makes a nervous but welcome companion. This trip is much better than my last venture alone. I finally have her with me, on a ship, on foreign shores. Farther than she has ever been before. I never let go of her hand. One step at a time. I reassure her we can return home any day and she allows herself to ease into our voyage and relaxes as we walk the Parisian streets I am so familiar with. I share my other world with her, and I hope she feels free here like I do, away from Yorkshire. Away from the business of managing estates and finances, where I can forget I have any responsibility, except for my delicate companion whom I fill with breads and cakes, art and fresh air.
Miss Walker
Once she has me safely ensconced in Paris, I tell her that I am enjoying it which encourages her to suggest we go farther afield. She wants to go to Switzerland again, so that she may share it with me. She seems intent on reliving her travels and I ask her – will it not be dull for you to go again? – but she says I give her fresh eyes and she wants to see my reactions to the beautiful places she has seen. She last went to Switzerland seven years ago, and as she recounts her ascent of one of the highest mountains, for a moment I think she wants me to climb the thing as well. Luckily, she reads the concern on my face and assures me we will admire it from the valley below. She has an inkling to undertake another ascent but knows that it will be without me. I say I can manage on my own while she risks her life and she teases me and asks when my adventurous spirit died. I remind her in turn that we are now off to Switzerland on a boat, and before I met her I did not dare enter the woods by my house alone. I do not tell her I still fear this.
She must be patient with me; all of this is new, but it infects me. I am truly enjoying this adventure. I am away from all that ails me, the warmer climes do me good, her enthusiasm creeps into me and I feel that by her side I could go anywhere. I am also comforted to know that our beloved Shibden and my new family await us when we eventually return and that too gives me such comfort. I can enjoy my place here on foreign shores all the more knowing a home awaits me. The letters from her family come addressed to Miss Walker and Miss Lister and I love that I am included, they see us together, and care to ask after my health and happiness as well as Anne’s.
Switzerland is as stunning as she promised, like the Pennines of home but on a grander, snow-capped scale. The clouds cover some of the peaks as if they are part of Heaven. I understand her wish to climb above the clouds but know I do not have the strength for it. She reads to me the diary she wrote when she was here last, and we retrace her steps in the towns and lower hillsides. In this new landscape, away from all we know, I am able to push all the questions and all that society expects to one side, and I see that how I feel about her is simple. I love her.
She shows me the travel notes she has written and tells me of her intentions to write them up into a book to be published one day. I encourage her and she lets me read them myself, unlike her diaries which I know she edits as she reads aloud to me. I buy her a gift of a new blank volume from a stationer we pass, with much confusion as I do not speak a word of the language. I present it to her for her travel writing and she promises that it will be our next project on our return to Shibden; together, we shall write up her notes, edit them and create a volume for publication. Now, seeing France and Switzerland for myself, I make some notes of my own that we can add; it will be a collaboration, she says. I realise I am rather committing myself to further travel, but so be it. To complete a book together, what an achievement!
We wonder if we would ever dare publish it under the names Mr and Mrs A. Lister. Only time will tell.
I write to my sister of what a wonderful time we are having and all
the new sights I am seeing. This letter goes to her home where Sutherland will read it and I picture him pawing it with his large dirty hands, passing it to Elizabeth with disdain and some comment or other about me.
I write to Mrs Priestley and Miss Whitaker and tell them what joys I am having with Miss Lister who has opened my eyes to the world. I tell them our journey here has much improved my health. I tell them of Anne’s plans for us to venture farther to the Pyrenees and of Anne’s ascent of Mount Perdu several years ago that no woman before her had accomplished, and how she hopes to make another. I even suggest next time I will make the ascent of a mountain with her, though I know none of us will believe this.
I do not tell any of them of the looks we receive, the asking after our husbands. How do they let you travel unaccompanied, they ask us? They assume Anne is a widow because of her black clothes and she does not correct them, despite calling herself Miss. I ask her if it wouldn’t be easier to call herself Mrs Lister and have done with it, and I could be Mrs Fraser and wear black too and they can assume we are two wealthy widows with a desire to get away from the rest of our lives in mourning – but she’ll have none of it. She introduces us as Miss Lister and Miss Walker, her companion, before I can say differently. Sometimes when she leaves me as I am too tired to venture out, I am left alone with someone who will talk to me, perhaps a kindly lady who speaks some English, I explain that we were both engaged and that our fiancés died, so we are almost like widows and sought company in our shared loss. They sympathise, pat my hand and pay for more tea. I like this fiction that people can understand and accept us for. I just want to be accepted. I like the sympathy, the connection, but Anne would hate it if she found out.
Miss Lister
We are outsiders to everyone else in the world because of something we cannot help: love. I had thought to love was just between two people, but as time passes, I realise our love alone is not enough. If we must hide, are seen as shameful by those who are supposed to love us too, our love is diminished, made to feel wrong when it should feel right. How can we not live openly? If I chose to marry a woman then why could it not have been in the eyes of God in a church, surrounded by our family and friends who would have been pleased for us and blessed our union and accepted us for who we are: two women who love each other? How can there be shame in that? We cause no one else any harm but are harmed ourselves by it. If only I could have been like the other women I fell for, most of them able to love either sex and so able to fall to normality, to conform. But that would be a lie, an endless torment, to deny myself who I am, and to what end? To make others feel more comfortable in my presence? To make everyone else feel that the supposed natural order is intact?
Not wanting to scare her from future travels, I keep to my word and return her safely home after just a few weeks. I have given her a taste of the possibilities for our future. But on our return journey, I realise that I too am looking forward to going home. I am not returning begrudgingly, but because we have had a good time and want to share it with our family. We want to complete all the plans we have talked of at Shibden, finish the extensions, see the new lake dug and filled next to our Moss House, create our own romantic walk through the estate.
Our future together looks promising and I feel like a newly married husband, returning after his honeymoon to take up residence as master of the house with his beautiful bride. For the first time in so many years, I am happier than I have ever been – even more on this journey home than when we left a few weeks before. Shibden pulls us back and welcomes us with open arms.
Chapter Sixteen
Summer, 1835: A reminder of Halifax and all its simplemindedness
Miss Lister
Men are all bastards. Though I feel as though I should be a man in form and for feeling how I do for women, I cannot imagine I would be of such poor character as to be so vindictive towards others as men are. They feel threatened by those who challenge their ideals and political leanings, yet instead of rising to the challenge or seeking a solution, they reject forthwith any negotiation for sheer stubborn-headedness. Is it greed that drives them? Or the inferiority of the size of their cocks? If so, why should they fear mine?
I know that the men of Halifax fear me now that I am aligned with Ann. Even with Shibden Hall and estate at my command, I had never posed much of a threat to their way of life. Only now they see that Miss Walker and Miss Lister have aligned and between us we may have enough influence to sway the election. They do not like that I hosted Tory party meetings here at Shibden and donated to their funds. I am denied the privilege of a vote because of my sex and yet my tenants rely on me for their very income, so of course they should vote as I suggest! Why should I not encourage my tenants to support my politics? They do not like it when a woman influences men’s decision and men’s lives.
Despite my desires for a Tory candidate, I would now rather us be left alone. Men can be very nasty when they are threatened.
Miss Walker
I do not know how she stands it.
She looked at it. Then at me. Then led us off down the road as if it was nothing at all.
They had created an effigy of us both and set light to it.
Our forms were hanging in the street in plain sight. On fire! And she walked away. I could barely hide my tears. Thank goodness I had Anne’s arm to cling to, else I may have fallen in a faint.
How is she so strong? She marched us all the way back to Shibden, all the while talking of other matters as if she had not seen it. When we were finally safe inside, I could not help but sob, but she just sat me down, ordered tea and told me to pull myself together. What did it matter, she said? Men will be men. They do not like that we have influence over voters and are making our own money, and as they daren’t speak to our faces they do something to provoke us. The only thing we can do is not be provoked. She spoke to me as a teacher to a small child, but still I cried. I had been shaken. No one has ever done anything as horrible as this to me before, nor aligned me so openly to Anne.
I suppose I knew this would come, that no one would allow two women to be left in peace together. Just one year on from moving permanently into Shibden and all is undone.
What rumours there were already! And now to burn effigies of us together; it unites us as one, even though surely everyone knows that Anne does all the talking when it comes to business and politics. I’m just the little wife, drawn into her husband’s trials. Why couldn’t they have burned an effigy of her alone? I imagine by including me too they are trying to hurt her even more. She’ll probably be more determined than ever in her campaign to solicit more votes now. Oh, why cannot they just give her a vote? Then she’d stop all this nonsense!
I’m not sure what upsets me the most: the effigies, the violence of the fire, the way they hung there like real bodies, or that fact that she did not react. I long to see just one tear well up in her eye – something to show that she is hurt. But she hides it well. She is the husband protecting his wife, and I will always just be the wife. I will never be equal to Anne Lister.
Miss Lister
She had seemed so together, so much stronger of late since moving in with us at Shibden. My influence must have rubbed off on her. Being at Shibden, away from Crow Nest, her aunt and busy-body family, I had thought had done her good. I had seen her striding about with more confidence and we’d sit together in the Lister pew. We had walked through town with our heads held high and I started to believe that this was the way forward for us. We had accepted each other, and I’d hoped that this small town would let us be, but at this one small setback she seems unravelled. I wonder if all I have achieved with her will be lost? All my small steps of reassurance, giving her confidence and sharing our worlds, our very marriage, have all been undone in an instant.
I wish I’d had nothing to do with this election. It had seemed just, when I am denied the vote and feel so strongly about who should lead our region to a better
future, to lean on my tenants to vote my way. But if it means losing her, she whom I have grown to love and care for and look forward to spending my life with, I would never have been so vocal. Leave them to suffer at the hands of their vote. Let them learn the hard way that I was right. The Halifax crowd might wish me to lie down under the old gibbet blade so they can cut off my head, but the thought of being at Shibden without her again makes me wonder what there is to carry on for.
I’m astonished at how I feel. I never meant to let this woman infiltrate my life so much, but she has won us all over. My aunt, father and even Marian love her company and they can tell she has made me happier, though they know not what goes on behind closed doors. Now, we are all set to lose her, for the shock of this may return her to confinement at Crow Nest and the care of her aunt.
If this is it, I will pack my things and head to Russia next week. Burning our effigies indeed!
As I thought. All men are bastards.
Miss Walker
We are daughters to fathers and sisters to brothers. We are passed from our father’s hands to those of another man to whom we must answer and for whom we must provide sons, whom we will then be at the mercy of for all our lives. Men teach us, doctor us, pray for us, make laws which affect us and determine our fate. We never break out of the hands of men until we die. Why cannot they just leave us alone?