The Moss House

by Clara Barley

  I am envious of men’s freedoms to do as they please but do not wish to be one. I wonder if they are all as frustrated as the women they marry? Perhaps no one has pleasure with one another, excepting what is necessary to procreate. I wonder, are there only a few of us who have any pleasures of the flesh at all? I’ve met women older than me who have never even touched themselves. No one tells us what pleasure is so freely available; it remains instead a secret we may only learn by accident. It is male pleasure we are informed about, male pleasure that is gossiped about and focussed on, as though women are merely vessels for childbirth. If it were spoken of more and we were all happily pleasuring ourselves, what need would we have of men? I have heard from others who have lain with men that it is quick and uncomfortable. Although we are supposed to fit together as God intended, He also generously gifted us with an ability to not need the other for pleasure. Yet women risk a child, out of wedlock even, for quick pleasure which could be attained alone or with another woman with no threat of a child, and without having to endure male company. It is not the forbidden fruit, for it serves no evil.

  If God made me, He must intend me to be as I am. If so, can He judge me for how I behave, when I did not choose this form? I did not ask for a heart that loves only women. How can it be a sin to pursue how I feel, when He made me feel this way? These thoughts are not new. With each relationship they resurface. Questioning. I wonder what Miss Walker thinks of all this. Or is she entirely innocent and virtuous?

  Miss Walker

  As her eyes bore into me, all I can think is that I must look pretty. All I can think to talk about is family trifles and then I stupidly bring up marriage. Thankfully Marian joins us; she is oblivious to our stolen kisses and my thoughts that race and race and make me sound stupid. At least I manage to remain looking pretty.

  Father told me to be pretty. That was all he ever said. He never said I was pretty – just that I should look it. That way, he said, I would be chosen. The pretty girls are chosen. I wasn’t entirely sure what I would be chosen for, or if I ever would be, but the way he said it made it sound important. My maids said it too – this will make you look pretty, they’d say, as they tore through my hair with a comb. This will make you look pretty, they’d say, as they tightened my corsets. This will make you look pretty, my mother would say, as she had me fitted for a new dress.

  I was never sure if looking pretty was worth it.

  Miss Lister

  Miss Walker is naturally very pretty and makes me feel less so in her presence. Look pretty my dear, Mother would bark at me and at poor unpretty Marian. As if saying it would make us so. Luckily, she gave up on that quickly. Then it was, do not be too intelligent or people will not like you. Why does a girl need to study, Jeremy, why do we need to send our daughter to school? She quickly changed her mind when Father said I would be out of sight, out of mind. He winked at me as he said it. The annoying old fool was right though: being out of the sight and mind of my mother was the best thing that could have happened to me.

  I knew from a young age that I was more intelligent than her and I believe she knew it too. I kept her at arm’s length, answered dutifully and ‘looked pretty’ as best I could. Arguing only ever resulted in being sent to my room, so I just stayed there. Marian was no help. She was Mamma’s little girl. She at least tried to look pretty, though she was far from it. She made an effort to be graceful, to play the piano and sew. I did these too but always with an air of resentment as I would have rather been outside with Father or out riding with Samuel when he was home, or alone reading a book. Anything but making small talk and being told to push my shoulders back, or what colours would suit me best.

  I never envied my mother having myself as a child. I was precocious and probably very annoying – but all they had to do to be rid of me was send me to school like Samuel. Then one day when I was fourteen, with a wink, Father made it happen. It was Father who allowed me to walk with him, ride with him, shoot with him – but always in secret. I liked the freedoms he afforded me and that he respected my desires, but he was not a clever man either. I believe he thought of himself as my saviour, when I was merely biding my time to be rid of him. Them. All of them. My mother, father, Marian, Market Weighton and all its simpleness. School was an adventure and it was there I would finally meet someone my own age who was not ‘pretty’ either, but free and wild like me.

  Eliza was exciting. I had thought I had been an awkward child, but her parents must have been run ragged. She objected to everything and had been sent to school to teach her some manners through brute force, for nothing else seemed to affect her. I had been cheeky to my parents and frustrated them, but Eliza worried hers. She worried me. She was not pretty, but she was beautiful in my eyes. She was the first person to kiss me. I didn’t care that one day she would ignore me and the next sneak into my bed. I didn’t care that she made wild plans for our futures but then dismissed me as below her, or too plain.

  She had me on a string, but I didn’t mind. She taught me to kiss. Made me realise that girls could kiss girls. That I was not alone in how I felt.

  She was locked away in an asylum.

  Afterwards, I looked back upon our letters and wondered if I should have seen that her wildness was madness, that her passion was insanity. I feared that the only women that felt like I did would all be mad, or that I too was mad. I reassured myself that the letters were just letters between young girls in and out of love with each other. I reassured myself that the next person I loved would be better for me. Would love me back equally. Would not go insane.

  I look across at Miss Walker as she giggles with Marian, the two of them without a care in the world.

  When I was young, I believed that if I wished enough, I would wake up a boy. Not because I wanted that form, but I wanted all the privilege it allowed. I would never have had any worries about my future had I been the eldest boy. My inheritance would have been set and the world would have been mine. I would have chosen a wife for love and would have been proud to have been seen with her. Instead, because of my form, not my mind or myself, I was condemned to wait on others to bequeath me money, such as the generous allowance my uncle gave me when I moved in with him and my aunt all those years ago. I finally had my own purse!

  For many years, while dear Sam was alive, I believed I would still have to marry. I suppose little Marian felt the same, and still does. Now she is beholden to me as the eldest and my choices, and although she threatens to marry the first man who will have her and have a baby boy to strip me of the Lister inheritance, she seems also to be without the desire to be enamoured with a man. Perhaps she is just too shy. Or does she feel as I do? She has never suggested it. Is she perhaps just too afraid and so will remain a spinster, unsatisfied by the world yet unwilling to go out and claim some of it for herself?

  Miss Walker

  If we were men we would go out for a ride or shoot and have something to discuss, instead of making small talk. My back aches from the effort of maintaining my posture and my corset digs in. Now she talks with Marian and I have a moment to look back at her; her dark hair, dark clothes, her own posture which seems so much stronger than mine. Looking at her reminds me of watching my brother playing with a sword and swaggering around with his shotgun and dogs. I wanted to look like him. John was not pretty, but attractive, fun. He never had to sit with his knees together, or sew, or play the piano. I had the piano keys before me but it never sounded the way I wanted it to. I was trying to make beautiful music but all you could hear was the ‘try’. I’m not sure if I was jealous of him or the way he was treated. Probably both. But he was my friend, my confidant. He would protect us as Father did, even if he teased me and made me giggle at the table when we shouldn’t. John knew that my job was to look pretty, and his job was to one day inherit and manage the Walker estate and protect me.

  I knew nothing of boys, except that one day one would choose me, and I would be loved. I wi
sh I could go back to my younger self – but what would I say? Would I tell her of what is to come? Could I offer anything of reassurance? As even now in adulthood I am as torn and as fragile as my childhood self. Born into privilege yet made to suffer for it. I know I am blessed in many ways, but to be left alone in this world so young seems too cruel. My parents were the constant in my life. While John went off to school and adventures, the family home always contained Elizabeth and me, my mother and father. They were happy days of trying to play the piano and paint and learn languages, none of which I was any good at but none of which mattered. I was loved. I was safe. I would one day be chosen, which I rather feared and hoped would not happen.

  My world was dashed apart when my parents died within months of each other, leaving myself and Elizabeth to mourn and fear for our futures. But we had John to protect us. John, who strode about with swords and purpose and who could play a tune on the piano with great gusto. He would manage the estate and, in turn, us. He would make sure that if someone did choose us, they would be the right person, a good sort of man who would treasure us and not take us too far from our home.

  John and I both warned Elizabeth not to accept that bastard of a man, but she ignored us, despite John’s protestations that he could look after us. She no doubt feared that having two dependent spinster sisters would put off any potential wife for John and jeopardise his chances at happiness. Captain Sutherland took her away from us, all the way up to Scotland, and never loves her as she deserves.

  John did find a loving wife not long after, but God decided to take John from us all. It was just two years past, on his honeymoon of all times. He died and left his new wife alone with child, which she lost too, and the Walkers did nothing to provide for her, but cast her aside as if she and John had never existed.

  And now I am alone; but Miss Lister has entered my life and may offer me a different path of comfort and protection. With her as a neighbouring companion, I would be able to stay where I know, where the people are familiar, with my memories surrounding me. And I believe she offers something else too, something I have only glimpsed and been denied: pleasure. A blush rises to my cheeks and I am sure she sees it. She stands abruptly and takes me for a walk; she does not invite Marian, and I am whisked away into the woodlands and our mouths find each other once more.

  To be held by her makes me feel so alive; more would be to burst. I look into her face and she seems earnest. I never want it to end, but she turns us back towards home and we carry on with our walking as if we had never stopped. Before long we are back at the Hall and she is bundling me into my carriage and I am hot and flushed and know not what to say other than a meek goodbye, and please call on me soon.

  I try not to think about the gossip I have heard about Miss Lister. Now that I know her, I shall make up my own mind. Admittedly, I now know well that something I heard is true: she certainly will never marry a man.

  I believe I have been luckless in love. I assumed I would be chosen, as I was taught I would be. That I would not have to worry about it, or actively pursue. I never imagined that I would reach this age and be a spinster. I will be thirty years old next year. I am probably past having children now, or would struggle to have them. My body feels older. Small lines corner my eyes and remain visible across my forehead, which will only deepen in time. I’m tired more often, my back aches all the time and I am always between a headache or soreness in my throat or a cough I cannot shake off. I no longer feel as I did even just a few years ago. I was still filled with hope, and even after what happened… I still believed I stood a chance at happiness. But then God chose to pluck my one chance of a good marriage away from me too… and I am questioning my own sanity for having feelings about another woman.

  Oh, if only she were a man, I would not hesitate. I would have begged her to propose, probably after our first meeting. I would have had no doubt in my mind that I could spend the rest of my life with her, share all I have with her. It would have been a perfect match. She has her own money so would not be desperate for mine, though I’d happily share it. We already have some of the same friends, so I would not have to move far, if at all. I would not be dragged up to Scotland like my poor sister, plucked from all she ever knew to be with him. Oh God, how can You be so cruel to snatch one suitor away from me and then place another before me, even more perfect, only for it to be disallowed? Not legally I suppose, but morally and in Your eyes. Is it a test? Do You tease me with her? Am I being punished? Is my whole life to be tormented?

  Miss Lister, how I wish you were a man. I would marry you this instant.

  Or is it because you are not a man that I have fallen for you? Is that wrong? That when I think of you, I think of your soft lips, your female form… Oh, I am wicked and must pray for forgiveness.

  Miss Lister

  She kisses well; I am sure she has done so before. She must have at least some experience, though it surely cannot compare with my own.

  With Miss Walker packed off home again, Marian seems very interested in my new friend. We talk for a while in easy company as sisters should, but we always end up riling each other. I do not know what starts the argument, but she marches off and I am left wishing our brother Samuel were here, the three of us again. School gave me the independence and educational start I needed, and returning home again just made me want to leave. Mother, Father, Marian. The only joy was when Samuel came home, but then he joined the Army. He left us for Ireland and would never return. He drowned, the letter said. No details. An accident.

  He had been a strong swimmer.

  We had written to each other always. I’d shared everything with him. I was angry for years that he would be foolish enough to get himself drowned and leave me. I was now the eldest of our Lister clan; with just Marian and I surviving of the six of us, and all our mother would say was, look pretty or neither of you will be chosen.

  Without my brother, I was now at the mercy of my uncle who sat on the bulk of the Lister estate and incomes. Father had little left and didn’t seem to be of even the slightest ill heath, excepting his elbow injury from the American War, in which anyone would think he’d lost an arm. Luckily my uncle knew me well and how unlikely I was to marry. I would need my own income to survive in this world and I am grateful to this day that he knew it. He understood my desire for independence; he himself had never married and nor had my aunt, with whom he always lived at Shibden. Brother and sister together, as I had long hoped dear Sam and I would be in time. We’d have had a jolly time together at Shibden like our uncle and aunt.

  After years of visiting, I finally moved into Shibden in my twenties to escape from my parents. Despite a generous allowance from my uncle, it was only when I was thirty-five years old that I finally gained my own income when my uncle passed. He had chosen to divide the estate and incomes between myself, my father and my aunt, which I understood, although couldn’t help begrudging. My aunt had never had much involvement in the estate, excepting the running of the Hall and its staff, and Father had so little interest in anything but reading the newspaper, they were both quite happy for me to take it all on myself, which was no easy task. While my uncles and father and their predecessors had never run up any debt, neither had they managed to profit. They were happy to live off the rents and so never had any involvement with the profitable wool trade or any new industry. In fact, they retreated from public life and revelled in the seclusion Shibden affords.

  It was hard work and of course I met with objection each step of the way. Folks are reluctant to change, especially changes which cost, and they certainly didn’t want to deal with a woman. They are more used to me now and although I see only a third of the profits, I feel as though the estate is mine. I just wish I had more income to invest. My other uncle’s property, Northgate House, sits empty in town but has such potential. I see it becoming a first-rate hotel, possibly with a dance hall. One day I might get my hands on that too.

  Then
to poor Marian goes an annual amount, but my uncle must have assumed that she would marry, or that I would be responsible for her. Of course, I’d never cast her out, but she could go back to our mother’s house in Market Weighton if she wished. She seems intent on staying here with us though, even though she moans about us all, and about Shibden. I wonder if she is lonely? I expect every time we come to blows, even over the most trivial thing, that she will pack her bags and return to her friends back home. But she does not. She is attached to my aunt, as we all are, and perhaps she thinks she has more chance of a suitor in Halifax.

  Miss Walker

  There are no suitors in Halifax. They have all been suggested and paraded before my sister and me, and we before them. Not one of them turned our eye. They all had a back story of debt or misdemeanours. Not one of them ever asked about us and what we wanted from life; they merely gushed over what they could offer us, as if they were the ones sitting on a fortune.

  Then Sutherland strode in and my sister’s knees went weak. I could see why, but I could also see through it. I never trusted him but couldn’t put my finger on the reason why, at least not until it was too late. She was smitten by the Captain who swaggered and pomped and probably could have done better than my sister for his looks but would have only managed a clergyman’s daughter for his lack of money and standing. He’d achieved his Captaincy but that was all. He was penniless but good with words, full of charm and dashing. My sister didn’t stand a chance.