I Am Heathcliff

by Kate Mosse

  But if she really were bound as he was, she could never have thought of marrying Edgar, could not have said the things she said, that it would degrade her to marry him. Degrade? How could it degrade her to be with another part of herself? How could she think of promising to be one flesh with another, when they had so often rejoiced that they were united more closely than any marriage? You are me and I am you, she would say. But somehow I am you meant she was Cathy in him, seeing what he saw and feeling what he felt, but still fully herself, while you are me meant that he was swallowed up in the whole fullness of her person. He had told himself that they were equals, twin yolks in a single shell of consciousness, that she was as much his as he was hers. But had he ever been more than the dark supplement, the shadow cast by her brightness? You complete me, she liked to say. We are one person. Yes, he realised now, and that person was Cathy. He had accepted that because being hers, with her, of her, being her, was all that he had ever wanted. And who could wish to be him anyway – dark, despised, beaten as he was – even himself? Now he saw: for her it was only ever talk, a game she played at. Oh, the cord was real enough for him, he could not doubt that, with its tension even now feeling as if it would drag him from the cave back to her if he did not hold himself against it – but it was rooted in his heart alone: for her it was no more than a leash she held in her hand, something she could jerk to control him or drop at will to be free.

  He would break it this time, he resolved. He would reach its limit and keep going until it snapped. It was only a question of bearing the pain, and he was used to that. He had failed before because he believed that his pain was also hers, and that he could not bear. But now he knew better. And if it ripped the heart from his chest and he died, so be it. Better that than to live as a mere pet to Edgar’s wife, to be kicked or stroked, exiled or curled at her feet, according to her need or fancy.

  He shifted in his dark hole to look out, and saw that the storm had passed. He crawled out from the cave and stood up. The clouds were gone, and there was moonlight enough to walk by. He made his way back to Penistone Crag and rested his hand on the stone. So many tales swirled round it – that it was sacred to the fairies, that it would grant wishes, for a price, that it could bind and unbind. Should he ask it for help in what lay ahead? He laughed bitterly and gave it a slap. ‘I’ve been called a changeling, a demon, and the Devil’s own child,’ he said aloud. ‘If I can’t do this myself, I doubt you can help me.’ He clambered back up to the footpath that ran along the ridge, set himself against the aching tug on his heart, and strode onward.

  It was as it had been before, the pain intensifying with each step, until he had to stop, gasping, fighting the urgent demand of his whole being that he turn and run back to Wuthering Heights. He heard her voice in his head.

  I am you and you are me.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I am Heathcliff. Not you.’ He leaned into the tension, forcing himself on, panting as he fought the pull, and felt a few tiny fibres begin to snap and curl back on themselves, each sending a sharp ping to his chest.

  You are more myself than I am.

  ‘I am Heathcliff. I can,’ – step – ‘live,’ – step – ‘without you.’ More fibres peeled away, but his heart was straining as if it would be pulled out of his chest. Grief and longing flooded him. Hers? No, it couldn’t be. She felt nothing. She would be happier without him. She would marry Edgar. He gathered his strength and flung himself forward.

  Snap.

  The recoil knocked him to the ground and he screamed, curled tight around the excruciating pain in his chest. The ripping sensation had been so intense he expected to feel blood on his chest, but there was nothing there. For some time he could only lie there, moaning, sobbing as he had never sobbed even when Hindley beat him bloody. Hours passed, and then dawn began to lighten the eastern sky. He uncurled himself and climbed unsteadily to his feet. His whole body felt ravaged, and there was an ache in his breast he knew would never heal, but there was no drag on his heart. He stumbled a few paces in the direction away from the Heights. No change. He kept walking.

  I am Heathcliff.

  HEATHCLIFFS I HAVE KNOWN

  * * *

  LOUISA YOUNG

  FIRST ONE WAS THE bloke who hung about in the Woolworths car park opposite the gates of the Juniors. Yes, he had a heavy coat on and his collar up and his stupid willy hanging out, and he looked at me and said, broodingly, meaningfully, ‘You’re mine.’

  I said, ‘No I’m not, I’m my mum and dad’s,’ and walked on home, wondering if I’d got the possessives right. My mum’s and dad’s? My mum’s and my dad’s? Anyway I wasn’t bloody his. I was theirs, and when I grew up I’d be my own.

  I’m not going to get them in order.

  Generally, I gave them short shrift and got off lightly. I never had a weakness for them, thank God. Not like some girls. But I’ll only speak of what I know.

  There was – Christ, I can’t give him his real name, he’s real, but by giving him a fake name I’m protecting him, to which I profoundly object. You can’t win.

  He was younger, we both rode motorbikes. He looked a bit cherubic, not my type, fat mouth and soft hair, big mean eyes, excitable. Once I was riding my Guzzi up the Wandsworth Road and I saw him coming towards me on the other side. I pulled towards the white line and so did he, and we were both in open-face helmets and that was the first time he kissed me, which I thought was well romantic. I went around to his a couple of times, and one time I stayed over because we’d had a bit to drink, but we didn’t do anything. He wanted to, but he was being funny about it, starting and stopping, and I didn’t really want to anyway. After a few weeks I wasn’t very interested in him: he kept ringing up saying ‘What are you doing tonight?’ and I’d say ‘I’m seeing my friends,’ and he’d say, ‘But what about me? What am I supposed to do?’ and I wouldn’t say, ‘I have no idea; do what you bloody like,’ but I would think – twat alert.

  Then one night he drove his Honda 750 through the closed front door of the place I was living, right into the hallway, came into my room, called me a fat-titted witch, took my hair in his hands and banged my head on the wall, put his hands around my neck, and he was saying ‘You’re mine’ – ‘I’m fucking not’, I couldn’t say, because he was strangling me. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I’m in love with you.’ My flatmate came barrelling down the stairs, the creep ran up to get hold of him and threw him at the banisters, broke his rib, it turned out.

  The police came around, said, ‘Oh it’s domestic,’ and went away. It was a long time ago. I rang them the next day and said, ‘Oi.’

  They picked him up in a dawn raid, and the DI said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was a coloured boy?’ – because he wasn’t, is why. He was half French or something, and a bit sallow.

  Took it to court, he got off. The reason being, I felt bad for him, and didn’t tell the truth. I was up as a witness – you weren’t the victim then, you were a witness to what had been done to you. They said, ‘You’re his girlfriend.’ I said ‘No I’m not, I’ve only known him a few weeks and we’ve never had sex. That’s not girlfriend to me.’ I didn’t say what he had told me: there was a thing in his family where the men’s foreskins are too tight. His dad had it and his uncle; they got circumcised; it’s fine. But he hadn’t been circumcised. So every time he got a stiffy, he also got excruciating pain. So that had an effect on how he felt about women he fancied. So I became the reason for him getting severe sex-related dick-agony, and that’s why he did what he did. But I was young and in court and didn’t feel able to tell everyone in their wigs about his dick issues. I was sorry for him! Plus I thought my flatmate’s broken rib and the busted-down door etc., etc., would tell the story without me having to go into details. More fool me. The lesson being, when you’re up against the men, whatever kind of woman you are, use everything you’ve got.

  His mum said to me in the public gallery, why did I get the police on him? I said, ‘Because I was scared. And he might come bac
k, or do it again.’ She didn’t say to me, ‘He didn’t do it.’ She knew he’d done it. I could see in her eyes he’d done it before. Maybe to her. Then after it was over the DI asked me out on a date.

  Hm, then what? Oh yeah, Greg. German-Sicilian physiotherapist. Bad combination. Same name problem. I’ll call him Greg.

  I’d gone to Los Angeles, as people do, if they can; saved some money and had some dreams and ended up on the furthest coast of the mad country, staying with an old school friend, male, Steven. He was American in London, English in LA. By blood, a Russian Jew. His mother was dead, and his nature made things as difficult as possible, always. I loved him. His face was tragedy like Groucho Marx and his body like a small and convenient Michelangelo that you could take around with you. We weren’t lovers though. Not usually. One night there had been a very small earthquake. He’d woken me up because he knew I wouldn’t want to miss it. The apartment (in a peach-coloured retro block set around a courtyard, south of Downtown, gas stations, crack houses, police helicopters overhead) was small, and we were sharing a bed. It didn’t mean anything. We’d been teenagers together; we’d slept in piles like puppies throughout our teens.

  I had a car. A 1978 Oldsmobile Delta Royale, eighteen feet long and six feet wide. I couldn’t drive in those days. I’d bought it in Nashville, but the guy I’d come across the States with wouldn’t let me drive it. He was a driving snob – a driving dream, too. Had a way of steering with one hand, the other arm along the back of the long wide front seat, that made me want to curl up over on the other end and smile and think about cooking pancakes for his breakfast. So he drove, and I put my boots up on the dashboard. When we got to LA he stayed a few days, but he moved on because we really did hate each other by then. All the way across the US he’d refused to dance with me. In Memphis I’d wanted to find Al Green’s church and go to Beale Street and daydream the Blues: he’d only wanted to do his laundry. We had one night there. In the launderette. Slept on the hard shoulder; a plant by the car, some southern vine, growing so fast it was over our wheel-arch by the time we woke up.

  So he buggered off; and I was happy to be with my old school friend, who, if he didn’t want to dance, would at least talk instead. After three months in the rural south-west an educated man was a joy.

  The last weekend before I was to go home we decided to spend in Mexico. Tijuana! Road trip!

  I loved the smell inside the car. Plasticky car seat, hot engine oil, something mosquitoey about it. Warm leatherette. Driving around LA, looking at palm trees. Actresses living in little white houses divided in two, in Hollywood. La Cienega. Silverlake. Melrose. Raymond Chandler. Nail bars. Desperate selfish young folk demanding the rewards they felt were due to their beauty and youth, and not getting them. All the same age: no children here, no old people. Twenty-one to thirty-two. Drug-taking.

  Greg, a friend of Steven’s, was going to come too. I didn’t mind because he was going to buy my car for a thousand bucks. Five hundred more than I paid for it, four thousand miles later. I was happy to take his money because he was happy to give it. So he could come on our trip; that was all right.

  We’d drive out to the Valley to pick him up. Wrong direction from Martin Luther King where Steven lived. Never mind – it was a trip! Fun like fishing! Get your stuff, pick up your friends, the sun is shining on a Southern California day.

  Greg was a big bloke. Six foot four, and unaware of the effect of it. The kind of man who was always being asked to move his legs, and it never occurs to him just to keep them out of the way. Steven and I were both five foot five. We liked holding hands – Steven was used to holding hands with women, used to it being nice because he was the same height. For a woman, his height was a special treat. No inequality, no arm-stretching, no having to compensate. Greg went in the back of the Olds and I went in the mom seat, and Steven drove. The small Europeans were mum and dad, and US Greg was the big kid in the back seat. Off we went to Mexico.

  We left the car at the border and then you walk across and you’re there. First we went to a bar and drank some. Then we went up and down a tourist street. I bought little plaster skeletons: one with a desk and typewriter, one on a motorbike, one playing the trumpet. Mysterious roughly made little faces, gazing out and away. Teeth like piano keys. I could have chosen seventeen. Peered and peered at all the things they had the little skeletons doing: dancing and eating and driving and reading the paper. Like the dog in Old Mother Hubbard: She went to the cobbler to buy him some shoes, and when she came back he was reading the news. Bought a couple of dangly ones, their limbs held together with string, like puppets; and a couple of skulls, painted white, the jaws that could go up and down because of a piece of string knotted underneath. Mexican stuff! Greg had been to Mexico before and wasn’t so excited about it.

  Then there was a street stall selling oysters in their shells, so we ate them, with a ferocious thin hot red sauce, and squeezed lime. Greg wouldn’t eat them. I thought I might get ill, but I didn’t care, I could be ill on the plane and the stewardesses would look after me and I’d get home sick and thin and purged and jet-lagged and laden with skeletons and Greg’s thousand dollars.

  So we went and drank some more. We were drinking tequila. Of course we became extremely funny. There are photos Steven took: black-and-white eight-by-tens of the three of us on time lapse. Steven with his fading-out-of-reality face, his eyes and his voice blurring, his limited ability to bear the world wrapped up and protected by alcohol, retreating visibly. Greg big and smiley like a salesman at a convention. Me happy happy-happy. We’re in Mexico, being funny. Not telling jokes but inventing them and running with them, building a gang thing, his bow tie is really a camera kind of funny. Only-we-would-get-it, You-had-to-be-there funny. I loved being in a Mexican bar with two handsome men and tequila and an Oldsmobile and a bagful of skeletons. Steven loved not thinking about his mother. Greg loved these funny European guys, this cute girl, the cute weird way they talk and are.

  We got so drunk.

  There was a bar on a roof terrace, with ads all around, and their grimy backs visible, all insects and fire-risk wiring and wooden frames. There was a greenness in the west, a sunset. A smell of carbon monoxide, hot traffic. A bar in a basement, with a mariachi band. There were some busy roads, and some pedestrianised roads. A street with trees and fairy lights, and tables outside the bars. Dark, purple and jasmine dark. There were waiters who found us amusing and waiters who didn’t. Steven spoke Spanish. There was dancing; Greg was too big on the dance floor. There were people not as drunk as us and there were people drunker. Nothing closed. We were so funny. We were all arms around each other. The bags of skeletons got left behind and recovered. And left behind. And recovered because a waiter chased down the street to bring them back to us. The moon sailed on by.

  Was it dark or light when we crossed the border back? That day or the next? It was overhead lighting and insects cracking on lilac light-tubes and sober people and it was terribly, terribly funny. God, we must have been young for being so drunk to be so funny for so long. There was a woman with a small child trying to cross over; border guards saying no. Young guys with guns and uniforms. Something had gone wrong for the woman; clearly she had believed she would be allowed to cross. She sat with her child in the corridor, on the floor. I gave her my passport. One of the uniform guys brought it back to me: ‘Hey! Lady!’

  Greg told me off and did a big sensible bloke/silly little woman/crazy English people number with the border guy. My mouth pulled together. Of course it was a stupid thing to do. That really wasn’t the point. I didn’t like Greg after that. Not to recognise a ludicrous poetic gesture for what it was … It shrank the glorious folly of our enterprise.

  One of us drove, God help us. Then there was something wrong with the car, it was farting and jumping and any moment a police car would come and get us and we weren’t in Mexico now. We drove very slowly – too slowly. Outside San Diego the car packed up and we drifted onto the hard shoulder. Was it dar
k? Was it dawn? What day was it? As far as I know the car is still there.

  Across the flat brownish suburban nothing-land a yellow motel sign rattled against some kind of blue sky. We got there. We booked in. Three of us in a first-floor room you reach by a balcony along the front, with a Coke machine at the end by the stairs. Two double beds and a bathroom. Kind of disgusting. Shades of brown and pink.

  Steven went in one bed and passed out. I went in the other and observed my head spinning and spinning and spinning. Greg came out of the bathroom and got in bed with me, wrapping himself around me with a great sigh of relief and desire.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said, from the depths. ‘Get off.’

  He seemed to have passed out too. Great heavy huge lump. I was disgusted, tired beyond belief. He was all over me. Ugh. Pushed him off, shaking my head, wiping at my face, shaking myself, getting out of the bed. Pissed off. Got into the other bed. Steven out like a light. Pulled the cover up and sank into oblivion.

  His arms were there again. On me. Steven? No: Steven’s arms were small and strong and aware. This was that great breathing octopus, coming at me again – ‘Greg! Fuck off!’

  He was murmuring stuff. Possibly along the ‘Come on baby’ line. ‘You’re mine, baby,’ he says. He’s beside the bed, climbing in and blocking me. Steven is passed out on the other side. I push Greg and push back the cover and climb out and move away – he comes and puts his arms to go around me. ‘Get off, Greg!’ He’s murmuring: ‘You know you want me baby,’ and so on.