by Clara Barley
I have read that in grief one is best to be just company. One is required merely to sit. Be present. Allow the person to grieve. How long will it last, I wonder? If it is months or years as I hear it was when her parents died, and then her brother, there is no way I could manage it, no matter what my feelings are for her. I wonder if I am best to leave her – not now, that would be heartless, but in a few weeks. I could take a trip for a few months and return afresh when she has recovered.
I stay until evening and though she begs me not to leave, I cannot cope. I make excuses and retire, promising I will be back for breakfast and that I have no plans to leave her any time soon. I just hope a few weeks is not ‘soon’ in her mind.
I care for her, I want to support her, I tell myself over and over as I ride in the carriage back over to Shibden ready to update the family about what new woe has befallen our little adopted flower.
Miss Walker
I should have kept us as friends and rejected her advances and not joined her in the Moss House all those days, not walked with her, especially into Halifax where people would see us together. Is God Himself judging me? Just as I began to feel some happiness and strength return to me, I have been dashed down onto the rocks and am helpless again.
Miss Lister
Another long dull day at Crow Nest. As I take the hour’s walk back to Shibden I see the Hall for what it is: run down, old, falling apart. It even sounds shabby. I shall rebuild it as a castle and it will be Shibden Castle. Or better still, Lister Castle. Yes, that’s where I shall live.
Of course, my sister and father roll their eyes at the idea when I share it with them at supper, but my aunt seems to smile at it. I could loose arrows from the ramparts and install some cannons. That will keep everyone away. I shall fashion it like High Sunderland Hall, one of the Priestley family’s lavish homes; built like a fort, only in the middle of nowhere on the bare hillside. There are no castles or forts in this region, there has never been need of them. We are not on a route to anywhere and are surrounded by unnavigable hills. This region has been left alone, so lacks the history of battles and kings.
Shibden’s roof is leaking again and the windows are draughty. Any plans I have drawn up for improvements seem too expensive. If only I had full ownership, I would forge ahead regardless. But in kindly including me in his inheritance, my uncle failed to give me the other two thirds of the income which would have made my life considerably easier. I must contend with my aunt and my father, who struggle to cope when I move a cushion. How will I ever make Shibden the Grand Hall or Castle it should be with only a third of the income?
I count my blessings that my uncle included me at all and I have some freedoms. As my father shows little interest in the estate, I have the freedom to make some changes here and there – but what I see is potential, a great deal of it, heading in two distinct directions; the potential to make more money from the land itself, and the potential to change the Hall for good. What I envisage, or should I say dream of, is parklands, a woodland walk, a lake at the bottom of the valley, a grand entrance, and once and for all to hide away the servants in passageways and tunnels. One cannot create the idea of grandeur to guests when the servants are marching back and forth in plain view.
The grand designs for little Shibden excite me, but their price takes the wind from my sails. I shall start small. I have restored the timber cladding to age the Hall again, increased the wooden wall panelling throughout. I have nearly convinced Father and Aunt that raising the ceiling and adding a staircase in the main hall will greatly improve it. I have more work to convince them yet. Without more money I cannot do much else for now.
Moreover, without more money I cannot travel again for a while. I enjoyed my time in Paris, but my friends have moved on and married. I’ll visit again but it will never be the same. I think I need a big adventure. Something no one else has done; at least not someone from Halifax. I can be remembered as the Lister Explorer.
I find my well-thumbed atlas and open it on a random page. Russia.
Then I remember my poor flower, wilting just a few miles away. Can I really consider leaving her? Or must I wait for her to recover and join me? How much convincing will it take for her to come to Russia with me? It’s taken several months just to get her to York. I decide I will give her a few more months; by my birthday in April I will decide our futures. Or rather, I will give her until then to decide to commit to me or not. If I am going to travel with a companion, I’d like at least to know privately that she is my wife.
Damn Mrs Ainsworth. Fancy falling out of a carriage.
Miss Walker
Miss Lister cannot stop me from crying and I tell her perhaps we should keep our friendship private, a secret even, but she will not hear of it. She gives me an ultimatum: unless I carry on as we were, she does not wish to see me. She tells me she will go travelling, on a two-year expedition, travelling all the way to Russia. Russia of all places! Why does she want to go to Russia? Why will she leave me?
She stands looking at me. Waiting for an answer. Miss Lister can be quite fearsome sometimes. She reminds me of someone else who looked at me like that once. I feel myself tremble. But she softens. Her face calms and she comes to sit next to me on the bed. She takes hold of one of my hands. She is so patient with me. She tells me not to fret and gives me until April to decide, but even April seems too soon. Then I realise that I need to tell her something. The reason I am so fearful, so doubtful, and it all finally comes tumbling out.
Miss Lister
She tells me something happened between her and Mr Ainsworth when she was just seventeen, just after he was married to her friend. She says she did not wish for it but poor innocent thing that she is, didn’t realise until it was too late what his intentions were. Despite none of it being her fault, she takes the full weight of the guilt upon herself, as if she had sought out his attentions behind her friend’s back. But from what she says, I think he contrived the whole situation. Saw an innocent young woman who could easily be taken advantage of. All I can do is sit and hold this naive and trusting young girl in my arms as she weeps and shakes and blurts out her account of him seducing her, though she barely understood what he was doing. I hear how he orchestrated an evening where the two were alone, and he gave her one too many glasses of wine and convinced her that it was not a sin to have a playful kiss. Then a playful touch of her neck, her back and her thighs. She had wanted to please and believed the way to make him stop was to show little resistance and hope it would end, and he would laugh and say he had just been teasing – but it did not end. He was not teasing.
When she tried to squirm free of him, he moved on top of her with her two hands in one of his, and his other hand pulled up her skirts. She screamed, she told me. At least she thought she had. But he had sent the servants away and locked the doors. Her friend was asleep at the other end of the house. So she stopped screaming and blamed herself for allowing this to happen, for allowing him to think he could do this. She said to him, I hate you, and he replied that he did not care, and that no one would believe her. He would tell his wife that she seduced him, and she would lose her friendship forever and her reputation would be ruined; no one would ever marry her. Little Miss Walker believed him. And so she lay there looking at the ornate ceiling above her as he ruined the rest of her life.
Miss Walker
She was the first person I’d ever told.
I had always intended for Mrs Ainsworth to come alone to visit. So as not to arouse suspicion, I had written to beg her to come alone as I was unwell but wanted company. I hoped he would agree to it too, and then I would be alone with her, not to breathe a word about him, but to have my friend back, a chance for us to talk, remember our girlhoods.
But she is gone. At least she will never know about what happened. Selfishly, I felt some relief that I would never have to see him again. I believed it was all over and that I could finally carry on.
Only a second letter arrived just a few days after the first with his ugly writing on the front. I believed it would be about funeral arrangements, which it was, but it was a long letter, and in it he had the audacity to propose marriage to me. How could he? He ruined my one true friendship and could not even allow me to grieve for her. She is not even buried yet. How dare he!
Miss Lister held me for all the time I needed to cry and recover myself after receiving this letter. I hoped she understood some more of me now; why I feel at the mercy of others, so afraid of pleasure, deserving of nothing but a solitary life for what I have done. She tells me that I have done nothing, that it was all him. I try to believe her. Then she is exasperated with me, I can hear it in her voice. She moves away from me and paces, knowing there is nothing she can say to fix this.
I think she would shoot him dead if he showed up here. I think I would like that.
Miss Lister
That abomination of a man Mr Ainsworth has been writing each day now to beg Miss Walker to write back to him with a decision. His wife not even buried! Has he no guilty thoughts for what he has done? He simply thinks he can now claim her, again.
For some unimaginable reason she tells me she needs to think and will write back to him with her decision. As if there is any decision to be made! I am incensed and cannot hide it. She is now deciding between Mr Ainsworth and me.
I snatch from her a ridiculous six-page letter in which he exhorts that he has always loved her and is sorry he was so ‘forthcoming’ all those years ago. Forthcoming! He says he could not control himself around her. He’d married Mrs Ainsworth for money when they were both so young, but now he is free he wants nothing more than to marry Miss Walker. He goes on to say how he was there for her in the grief of her fiancé Mr Fraser and so she is in his debt! How was he there for her, I ask her? She tells me he wrote several letters of condolence, which she burned in the fire and never replied to. I tell her he would have been pleased at Mr Fraser’s death, leaving her still single and available for him in the future.
Then it strikes me. Could Mrs Ainsworth’s accident have been planned? I do not mention this, of course.
It takes some time, but I believe she finally now sees him for the snake he is, sees him as I see him, and then she becomes woeful that she has been stupid and naive. I cannot say much on that point without offending her.
She allows me to write back to him on her behalf with a blunt no. Although I’d have chosen stronger language, I must make it sound like Miss Walker. She will not attend the funeral as it would be simply too difficult, both for her grief and her fear of seeing him. She, or rather I, ask him to leave her alone for good. I tell him she will burn any future letters and he had no right to do what he did then, or to propose to her now. It seems to be the end of the whole bother; if only she could erase him from her memory as easily.
On the day of poor Mrs Ainsworth’s funeral, we go to our Parish Church and say our own prayers for her.
Since the sending of the letter, and thankfully no more arriving, Miss Walker slowly seems more emboldened and I tell her I will give her until summer, not April, when her strength will be back, for a decision on our commitment. I will not travel with her until I know for sure how she feels. We seal our agreement with a kiss; summer is the final time for her decision.
I say all this to her through smiles, but inside I am at a loss. This girl unhinges me when I see her. Come summer, I may have a lucky escape if she chooses ‘no’ and we will be done once and for all. I could set off into the world again. Perhaps I should have left the deadline at April after all and not let this drag on for too long.
Chapter Eleven
Spring, 1833: Another confession and another bout of melancholy
Miss Lister
It is my birthday night, the third of April. I am now forty-two years old. I never stood so alone. I am used and reconciled to my loneliness.
We had intimate relations in the Moss House again today. She had three long orgasms. We seem to be back on track these last few weeks and she says she cannot bear to be without me, yet she still harks on sometimes about it being wrong. However, she does not resist my caresses. This last week, despite it being my birthday, she is miserable again, as usual. The little thing has everything to be wished for but the power of enjoying it.
Miss Walker
I would be so lonely without her now. Miss Lister tells me she shall pass away like a meteor and leave no trace behind.
Miss Lister
I keep telling myself I do not care what she decides come summer, but when I lie with her in my arms, tears roll down my cheeks. I obviously care more for her than I imagined. Am I under her spell? To have this snatched away, what would I do next?
Miss Walker
I cannot give her a decision yet; she gave me until summer and I will not answer sooner, but I do swear to her that I will never marry.
Miss Lister
It wasn’t the right moment to bring it up; after all, she was declaring that she would never marry, which could have just meant to a man but may have meant to either sex, but I quite like the idea of a wedding ceremony. I’ll wait until her decision and if it’s a yes, then damn it, we’ll be married too.
Miss Walker
Without much suggestion from me, despite my hopes for it, it is she who proposes that we marry – each other. I say if we are to do it, it should be done properly, an unbreakable commitment. Perhaps that will set my mind at rest, if we commit in the sight of God. She assumes my answer come summer will be yes. Why wouldn’t it be?
Miss Lister
She says if we were to marry it would need to be binding, the same as a marriage; we will declare on the Bible and take the sacrament together. A summer wedding.
Miss Walker
I wonder, if men are not allowed to be wed to each other and are even hung for it, then it must be the same between women?
Miss Lister
Someone has got into her head. She’ll make herself ill again. I speak with authority to reassure her.
Miss Walker
She brings up Mr Ainsworth again. She wants me to say that it’s not my fault, that I can move on, but the words do not come to me and I start to cry all over again, as if everything happened just yesterday rather than many years past.
Miss Lister
I have begun to lose respect for her. Can I honestly wait for the break of summer for a decision when it seems plain she can never decide? Thank God my mind is not like hers.
Miss Walker
Then she shakes me and looks me right in the eyes and says we all have our regrets and sorrows. We just have to live with them. I ask her what sorrows and regrets could the perfect Miss Lister ever have? And she replies, I killed a man.
Miss Lister
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I know it is not the sort of sentence you can retract. As Miss Walker sits there, her eyes red from the tears of her own sorrows, and her mouth now wide with shock, I know I must tell the truth as she has done. My confession has burned inside me. I haven’t even committed it to my diary in my secret code, but now it has come tumbling out. With the saying of it, I selfishly feel some relief. But of all the people I could have shared it with, is meek little Miss Walker the one to tell something that could lead me to the gallows? But it is said now. I certainly have some explaining to do.
I pour us both a stiff drink and explain to her that I had wanted him dead but had not wished it to have happened. He was Shibden’s groom and I had always argued with the man a great deal. He was constantly undermining me, questioning what I did, moaning when I asked him to do the very job I paid him for, belittling me in front of other staff. I should have had the courage to dismiss him or discuss him with Father, but the other staff all thought highly of him, as did Father. They never saw what he was like with me alone, how he looked at me with judgement in hi
s eyes. As I was often away in France, I just hoped one day I would return and he would have moved on. But he never had.
It happened at Langton Hall when I was visiting Isabella and her family. Her brother was all set for a spot of shooting and, trying to be of use and not allowed to shoot myself, not through lack of skill or experience but through lack of invitation to join them, I ordered our groom up the tree to scare the crows. He protested but I was sick of him. I made him go up. I asserted my authority and threatened him with his job. I’d rather hoped he would refuse to climb up and just walk away. That was what I really wanted, for him to have walked away and I could have simply employed a new groom with no one any the wiser. It was my fault he was there when Mr Beech shot. Poor Mr Beech, the Norcliffes’ long-serving groom, who was simply trying to scare some birds into flight, carries the full brunt of the blame; no one saw me near, but I was there when he fell. I saw him bloodied and crumpled at the base of the tree. When I heard the others running towards us, I ran and hid.
I felt guilty for Mr Beech who shot him, but I confess I was also relieved, and concerned that someone may have seen me argue with him just before. They hadn’t though. No one was watching me. Or judging me. Except myself. And God.
I confess to her my fear of being charged. But how could I have known they would start shooting so soon? They have hanged people for much less, I tell her. The people of Halifax would bay for my blood, I’m sure. They’d bring back the gibbet specially to chop off my head. Who would testify on my behalf in a courtroom? Would they talk about my peculiarities? My fear is that if accused, anyone I’d ever met or who didn’t like the cut of my jib would testify against me and I would not stand a chance. Even if found innocent, the accusation would ruin our family name, end our business, all the tenants would leave us; I would never truly be free again. It all pours out and she takes it in.
