– God has arranged His creation in ways we do not always understand, she said. But it is a joy to have a child and, without this business, there are no children.
Bridie and I went away to the orchard without looking at each other. At last she came out with what I was thinking.
– It makes me sick, just the idea, she said. It will not happen to me.
I could hear she believed it and was comforted. I was not, and with a spurt of nastiness wanted to tip her comfort out.
– In that case you will never have children, I said.
We both knew poor Mrs Devereaux in the village, married but childless, and the pall of misery that hung over her, and the way she was spoken of, as if she were blind or misbegotten.
– Yes, Bridie said. Why would that be so bad?
But when she glanced at me I saw her fear and desperation. It was what I was feeling too, faced with the choices that were no choices.
In the bed later I knew Bridie was awake, thinking as I was that we had left behind the safety of childhood and were launched on the chartless seas of being women.
– I will never marry, she said into the darkness. Are you awake, Lisbet? I will never marry.
She laughed, that wild laugh no one in the drawing room ever heard, I was the only one who knew it. When I heard her drawing-room titter, I admired her for such a fine bit of theatre, when I knew her to be someone else entirely. But feared for her too, and for myself, because how could a person sustain a lie her whole life?
– So you will be an old maid, I said.
There was a long silence.
– Yes, an old maid, she said. A spinster. A nun. A witch. The Witch of Bridgerule.
Outside an owl spoke secretively.
– I think you are braver than I, I said.
But I had not finished the words when her voice, rough with feeling, rode over them.
– Could there be another way?
The owl hooted sadly, sadly, and the tree brushed at the window. We had only a few more years, was what I felt us both thinking, then each of us would be either a wife or a poor sad spinster.
– There’s widow, I said. Better than wife or old maid, if it could be arranged. Painlessly, of course.
She laughed again, one coarse yelp.
– Yes, she said, and black is so becoming.
I saw it like a cheerful engraving in a frame: the widows of Bridgerule, busy in their black, happily beached on the far side of wifedom. But there was my mother, not freed but shrunken by her widowhood. She’d confessed to me once that she hated the widow’s weeds, hated the way wives looked at her with pity or, worse, distrust, and clutched their husbands’ arms.
– We could have a school, Bridie said. Miss Veale and Miss Kingdon. Their little school on the hill, their girls loving them and all around saying, Whatever did we do before the school on the hill? We could, Lisbet. People do.
– Yes, I said. We could.
But we both knew we were exchanging comfort, not possibility.
I remember her now, dead these thirty years, the truest, deepest friend I ever knew. Remember too the things we shared in the dark warmth of that bed. The things we did there, one to another. Bridie to me, me to Bridie, and both of us together. We never spoke of them. Had no words for them. Had no shame of them, either. They were what two humans did together. They were what came naturally, a satisfaction as natural and sinless as eating to answer hunger, or drinking to quench thirst.
WE SAW IT EVERYWHERE
Now that we were women we saw it everywhere. The dog’s little shiny thing sliding in and out, and how frantic he got when the bitch was in heat, as if only death would stop him getting to her. The ram pawing and sniffing at the ewe. She indifferent and her sisters with their heads down, cropping away as if to say, oh, we are much too busy. The ram lunging and clutching at the ewe. Over in a moment, the ewe still plucking at grass.
Of the two of us, Bridie was the bold one. What I only thought, she said.
– Frankly, Lisbet, she said in that dry way of hers, I could take it or leave it, if that’s what it’s like.
In Bridgerule we saw no Troilus and Cressida, no Romeo and Juliet. We could see that men, when they could, took their pleasure with a woman, more or less any woman. And that women, when they could, took a man, no matter what he was like, if he could offer them a future. Only in the pages of books did we see any swooning and sighing. In the books the lovers wed on the last page, and what came after was a gauzy silence. We pored over the books, but they gave no guidance to girls trying to make sense of what was in store for them.
Bridie could come out with bold words—at least when she was alone with me—but that was because she had a mother and a father to look out for her, brothers who would protect her, and could look forward to a substantial dowry from Mr Kingdon when the time came. She and I might laugh together, but my laughing was hollow. I was not beautiful. I had no family, no portion. I was not connected to anyone of importance. My sole asset in the world was my maidenhead. I had just that one thing. I was beginning to understand that I must drive the best bargain I could for it, because once it was gone I had nothing more.
As we grew into young women, young men paid calls. Officers from the barracks at Holsworthy, masters from the school Bridie’s brothers attended, sundry curates. The men leapt to their feet when we entered the room. When we were leaving it they leapt to open the door as if we were incapable of turning a doorknob. If we walked in the fields they jumped over the stile so they could grasp our hand and put an arm around our waist to assist us. But without the voluminous skirts and petticoats, the shawls that slipped off our shoulders, the need for modesty that locked every natural movement, we would have had no need of assistance. So much elaborate courtesy and so many gallant platitudes did not obscure the puzzle that between our legs was something so precious we had to be made prisoners.
Precious, or dangerous? That was not quite clear.
We were never alone with any of these men, one woman with one man. Always it was shallow public talk in the company of others. The rambles Bridie and I had shared as children, over the fields and along the lanes, were discouraged, unless—as if by chance—one of Bridie’s brothers would be rambling in exactly the same direction.
– Bridget, you are a woman now, Mrs Kingdon said in mild exasperation after we had slipped away one morning. And Elizabeth, you too. I have to say it plain—there are men who will take advantage of a maid.
– Take advantage, Bridie said. Mother, what exactly?
Mrs Kingdon hesitated. I saw that her hesitation was not any shyness about explaining, because her concern was greater than her shyness. The problem was not modesty but the words, or the lack of them.
– You have seen the rams, she said at last. And the way the farmers keep them separate from the ewes. They let only the chosen ram in with them. But the ram is not so particular. Will join with any ewe if given the chance.
She took Bridie’s hand, and mine in the other.
– You girls are precious. Your future happiness hangs on keeping yourselves safe. Do you understand, dear girls?
Not quite, if the truth be known.
– So are boy children culled, the way the boy lambs are, Bridie said out of the dark that night. I don’t think so, otherwise would I have six brothers?
– No, I said. But in a way yes. The fellow with the most money has his choice of woman.
– And what will his choice be, she said, then answered her own question. A rich woman, or a good-looking one. Not us on either score.
I heard a noise from her, was it a laugh or a sob?
– They look at us, Bridie said. Up and down, and most especially at our…charms.
– And what of us, I said, do we look at their charms?
For there was the way men stood, an elbow on the mantelpiece, in their tight pale trousers, with the relevant part of themselves framed between the dark wings of their jacket.
– I watch a man’s face, Brid
ie said. Looking for…I know not what. Attention to something other than my charms? Perhaps an interest in myself?
– An interest in yourself! I repeated.
I felt the bed tremble with her laughing, then tremble more with mine too. A man interested in yourself! It was amusing enough to set the bed shaking so hard it might be heard below us in the room where Mr and Mrs Kingdon lay in connubial intimacy, and that thought was enough to stop us.
A father—one less remote than Mr Kingdon—might have done better. A father might have been able to find the blunt words for it. They will flatter you, a father might have said. They will sigh over your loveliness. A father would say, Do not even for one moment believe them. Do not, on any account, allow that penetration of your person that is the true goal of all those blandishments. Laugh, such a father would say. Do it kindly, by all means, but laugh him to scorn.
VIPER’S FESCUE
I met Mr Macarthur on the day I stood godmother to the Kingdons’ newborn, a sweet babe they named after myself. That was good Mrs Kingdon’s idea, to draw me a further degree into the safety of her family, give me a little more substance to bolster my prospects. Bridie and I were twenty-two. Mrs Kingdon could see what we could not: that the years were beginning to race by.
Captain Moriarty walked over from the Holsworthy Barracks with his friend Ensign Macarthur to join us for the baptismal celebrations. Captain Moriarty was a fair smiling man with a distant family connection to the Kingdons, and it was clear that he was there that day for Bridie. Like me, she was no beauty, but Mr Kingdon would make a useful father-in-law. He struck me as pleased with his magnanimity in offering the gift of himself to plain Miss Kingdon.
I saw how close his chair was to Bridie’s, how he hitched it closer on the pretext of clearing the edge of the rug. Watching Captain Moriarty looking at her, the way the men came and sized up Grandfather’s rams, I had to accept that Bridie and I would not be together for much longer.
Mr Macarthur was there to give his friend a chance with Bridie, and it was up to all of us to give them some air. Mrs Kingdon poured tea and managed what she did so well: the dance of conversation.
– Miss Veale is making a little study of our grasses, our pastures, she said and smiled at me, but then glanced uncertainly at Mr Kingdon. I could see she was wondering whether the study of pastures—less ladylike than other studies—might give the wrong impression of Bridie’s friend, and therefore of Bridie herself.
So I smiled at this Captain Moriarty and this Mr Macarthur, not because I liked the look of either of them, but because I wanted to reassure kindly Mrs Kingdon.
– Yes, I said. But of course it is only our local domestic Devon grasses, sheep’s fescue and the like.
Then I was concerned that might seem a mild rebuke to Mrs Kingdon, as if I were backing away from her pride in me, and the dance was in danger of becoming a stumble. But my scruples and doubts, and Mrs Kingdon’s scruples and doubts, were swept away by Captain Moriarty, who, it transpired, knew more about grasses than anyone else in the room.
Legs astride as if addressing a public meeting, he held up a finger.
– Ah yes, Miss Veale, very interesting, he said. Festuca ovina, sheep’s fescue. And I wonder if you are familiar with the somewhat rarer viper’s fescue?
Well, naturally I had never heard of viper’s fescue, and said so. Whereupon Captain Moriarty gave us the benefit of his considerable knowledge on the subject, and Mr Kingdon and Mrs Kingdon and Mr Macarthur and Bridie and I all nodded, and by the time Captain Moriarty had finished enumerating the points on his fingers, Miss Veale’s little study of the local grasses was a speck on the conversational horizon.
There was a small pointless pleasure in exchanging a glance with Bridie. What a windbag! But then she smoothed back her hair, the lock that sprang out from her temple like a cheeky rejoinder, replaced the teacup in the saucer without a sound, and in placing it on the side table turned herself a fraction further towards Captain Moriarty.
The glance was a consolation, but I knew a great loneliness in that moment, and from that day something awkward fell between myself and Bridie. We had shared that glance, but we could not say aloud what we both knew: Captain Moriarty might be a tedious know-all, but Bridie would say yes if he asked. No more than any other woman could she afford to wait for Troilus or Romeo.
OF COURSE A GENTLEMAN
So, while Bridie and Captain Moriarty sat in the parlour, or took a turn about the garden, Miss Veale and Mr Macarthur were there too, engaging in lively conversation with each other, behind the screen of which our friends could make their way towards an understanding.
Mr Macarthur was an ugly cold sort of fellow. There was nothing smiling or pleasant about him. A sullen bottom lip gave him the look of a petulant child, and he was badly marked by the smallpox. His eyes looked not quite right, as if they’d been put in carelessly, too far apart and one higher than the other. He was haughty too, glancing around with his curled lip as if finding Mr Kingdon’s parlour wanting.
But he was hardly in a position to be superior. He was the cheapest rank of officer, ensign, in the cheapest regiment, old Fish’s that had been hardly raised before it was disbanded, the war finishing too soon and leaving him stranded. Everyone in the room could do the sum: four hundred pounds tied up in his commission and nothing to show for it. An ensign on half-pay. The phrase was a byword for failure.
There was no question of him setting out to charm me in the same way Captain Moriarty was laying himself out to charm Bridie. An ensign on half-pay was in no position to lay claim to a woman with no portion. Added to that was his youth: he was only twenty-two, my own age. Or perhaps twenty-one. He was a little cagey about his age, as about many things.
– Oh yes, he announced, I am considering the Bar, for all the world as if the Bar was beating a path to his door.
He was of course a gentleman. At least had the manners and education of a gentleman, rode with the hounds when he had the chance, he said, and could quote Horace and knew a little Greek, which reassured Mr Kingdon that he was a person worthy to take tea with his family.
But it came out that his father was in trade. Was—to put it bluntly—a draper. The way Mr Macarthur put it, his father was in a big way, his business no hole-in-the-corner affair of a half-yard of ribbon. He supplied the army and navy with the cloth for their uniforms, and it was not to be thought that Mr Macarthur senior stood behind a counter with a tape measure around his neck. Still, it was undeniable that Mr Macarthur junior’s commission had been paid for out of the profits from shirts and underlinen. It was clear how much these facts pained the son, a man whose every fibre was held together by pride.
Which was why we heard such a very great deal about what it meant to be a Macarthur. By Mr Macarthur’s account, his grandfather had been the Laird of Strathclyde in Argyllshire, and so had his grandfather’s father before him, and so on into the mists of time where, it was implied, the original Arthur from which the line descended was none other than King Arthur himself.
But the grandfather, along with his seven sons, one of whom was Mr Macarthur’s father, had chosen the wrong side in the battles of those times, and had been supporters of the King Across the Water. Not, Mr Macarthur was quick to reassure us, that he was a Papist, but for reasons of politics and the greater glory of Scotland. After the defeat at Culloden they had been stripped of their lands and titles, and Mr Macarthur’s father, after vicissitudes, had come to rest in Plymouth. There he married Mr Macarthur’s mother and produced his sons. Mr Macarthur was the younger of the two, and that chafed at him. Not that he had ambitions to be a draper, but he was bitter that the brother had the family business in Plymouth for no other reason than that he had been born first, while Mr Macarthur was rusticating at Holsworthy waiting for a future.
– My dear fellow, Mr Kingdon said at last with rich sympathy. What a shocking story. Your father must feel it deeply.
– He does, Mr Macarthur agreed. It is a wound that will nev
er heal, a daily affront.
There was feeling in the words. Mr Macarthur spoke of his own wound too, his own daily affront that he, descended from the Laird of Strathclyde, and perhaps from King Arthur, should be explaining himself in a modest vicarage in Devon. He was too proud to want to prove himself a gentleman but, in the cold reality of his present situation, was obliged to do so.
Captain Moriarty was propriety itself, bland as soap always, but Mr Macarthur blazed inside with something restless, something dark and acidic. There was a banked fire in him, and there was a quality about that banked fire that I found intriguing. Let me be frank: I was drawn to it.
He could be stony and silent, sitting there while Captain Moriarty made the running with Bridie. But in the garden, with Bridie and her captain within sight but out of earshot, he might set himself to amuse. He was a fine cruel mimic, could take off precisely the habit Captain Moriarty had of speechifying at solemn length. Mr Macarthur’s lean features could take on precisely his friend’s admiring astonishment at what a very great deal he knew.
It was nasty, and a nasty streak in myself responded to it. I found that there was a mimic within me too, who could perfectly take off dour Mr Kingdon and his rumbling pieties. I was not proud of mocking the benefactor who had been so good to me, but could not resist unleashing the sparkling and playful self who could amuse this aloof Mr Macarthur.
More than amuse. Through glances and hints too slight to be marked except by an eager girl, Mr Macarthur let me understand that I was the source of some interest, and I rose to his interest. It was not flirtation. If Bridie had said, Lisbet, you are flirting with him! I would have denied it, perhaps joked that what I was doing with Mr Macarthur was nothing more than rehearsal for when another more eligible suitor might make his way to the Bridgerule vicarage. That would not have been untrue, but it was not the whole story.
I did not see it then, but I can see it now: I was not watching him, but myself. Aspects of myself that had never revealed themselves were becoming visible to me, and the discovery was exhilarating.
A Room Made of Leaves Page 3