– Every month? Bridie said, her voice a squeak of horror. Every single month?
– Yes, dear, Mrs Kingdon said. If the month passes without it, you are with child.
She sighed.
– 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?