Walking the Invisible

by Michael Stewart

  ‘Oh, dear!’

  ‘And she showed me her tattoo. On her back, all the way from her neck to her backside: “He is more myself than I am”. This is the day I was travelling to Haworth.’

  We head straight down the steep slope to reach the dam in Ponden Clough. We then follow the path around the head of the clough. Further up, we look back to take in the precipice of Ponden Kirk. There is a gap in the rock beneath through which it was said a maiden could crawl if she was to be married before the year was out. Also, according to Bradford-born author Halliwell Sutcliffe, ‘this dark kirk of the wilderness’ is a place where ‘Pagan mothers once worshipped lustily’. Last time I was here, I walked across the top, and standing on the edge of the kirk were two men who were not in walking attire. It was raining hard, but they were dressed for the high street. I knew that there was a film company making a documentary about Lily Cole, and that they were probably hanging around to film her. I saw some large bags behind them that could have contained their photographic equipment. Then I saw a large black Range Rover approach with Lily inside. Lily was the Parsonage Museum’s creative partner in 2018. Her project connected the parsonage with the Foundling Museum in Liverpool, culminating in her short film Balls, inspired by the story of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Not everyone responded favourably to Lily’s appointment. Brontë biographer Nick Holland called it a ‘rank farce’, a comment that was widely criticised, with several writers accusing him of snobbery.

  Eventually, we stop outside Ponden Hall, the Elizabethan farmhouse that is usually cited as the model for Thrushcross Grange in Wuthering Heights. Though it is certainly more complicated than that, it would have been an influence on Emily. The Heaton family were good friends of the Brontës, and the children visited the hall regularly. The house had an extensive library that included Gothic romances, books about property acquisition and a folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays. There are a number of references to Shakespeare in Wuthering Heights, including a direct reference to King Lear. Although the main house was built in 1634, an extension was added in 1801, and the lintel above the door is inscribed with this date, which is also the first word of Wuthering Heights: ‘1801 – I have just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.’ Mr Lockwood, the narrator of the story at this point, arriving from London, is referring to his first encounter with Heathcliff in a place he refers to as a ‘misanthrope’s heaven’.

  Ponden Hall is now owned by Steve Brown and Julie Akhurst, who have restored many of the original features. Although it has often been associated with the Lintons’ home in the book, it is much smaller than that described by Emily. The bedrooms include one with a box-bed built to the specifications of the bed Mr Lockwood slept in, fitted around a window that matches Emily’s description in the book.

  From here, we head back into Haworth and along the beck to Oxenhope Station. We are a bedraggled caravan of soggy walkers and Brontë enthusiasts. We haven’t encountered any ghosts, but, traipsing over the five moors that surround Haworth, we’ve walked in Emily’s wake. Our feet are wet, despite our high-tech footwear, no doubt as wet as Emily’s would have been. For all their precision engineering, in a deluge they are no better than hobnailed boots.

  I stop on the way home for a bag of chips. I’m served by a tall, thin woman with long, dark hair. There are two lads in front of me, and they say something to her that I don’t catch. She says in response, ‘Talk to me like that again, and I’ll give you a slap.’ She wraps the chips in newspaper and hands me the hot parcel. I look at her, and, for a moment, I swear I’m staring at the reincarnation of Emily.

  5

  Mr Earnshaw’s Walk to Liverpool

  It’s June 2016, and I’ve decided to recreate the walk that Mr Earnshaw took in 1771 when he travelled from Wuthering Heights to Liverpool. I will set off from Top Withens, it being the most likely source of inspiration for the farmhouse location in the novel.

  I left school at sixteen. I didn’t go to college, and I didn’t do A levels. Instead, I worked in factories around the Manchester area. It wasn’t until I was twenty-four that a girlfriend at that time suggested that if I wanted to be a writer, I should go to university to study English literature. It seemed like a good idea. Twenty-odd years later, I’m still with her. It was sound advice.

  When I came across John Sutherland’s essay ‘Is Heathcliff a Murderer?’ in the university library in 1995, I was struck by the opening sentence: ‘When he returns to Wuthering Heights after his mysterious three-year period of exile Heathcliff has become someone very cruel. He left as an uncouth but essentially humane stable-lad. He returns a gentleman psychopath.’ ‘Psychopath’ didn’t quite cut it. Heathcliff doesn’t suffer from an absence of feeling but of a surfeit. I started to really think about what had happened to him during those three years. I also started to think more about where Heathcliff was from, why Mr Earnshaw had travelled all the way to Liverpool and back in one trip, and why he had named the boy he brought back after his dead son. I became fascinated by the possibilities.

  Mr Earnshaw was a farmer. Why would he travel to Liverpool in the middle of summer when his workload would have been at its most intense? And why wouldn’t he take one of the horses from his stable? What would draw him to Liverpool? He couldn’t be on business. Liverpool wasn’t a market town. Why else would he avoid the established coach that went from Yorkshire to Liverpool unless he was travelling covertly? I started to think more about Liverpool and what it was most known for in 1771. At that time, it was the biggest slave port in Europe.

  In the book, Mr Earnshaw walks from Wuthering Heights to Liverpool and back in three days. We are told it is a sixty-mile journey each way. My own calculations make it more like seventy – 140 miles in total. I’ve walked from my home in Thornton, so by the time I get to Top Withens I’ve already done twelve miles. Wolfie walks thirty feet in front of me, on the lookout for grouse. I take the Pennine Way, over Dean Stones Edge, dropping down to Walshaw Dean Reservoir. The Pennine Way circumscribes these black waters before snaking south-west, but I leave the path before it does this, travelling instead over High Rakes and White Hill, through the hamlet of Walshaw and then along the wooded clough of Hebden Dale and Hardcastle Crags. I drop south up New Greenwood Lee to Knoll Top, taking a series of pathways until I come to the edge of Colden Clough. I feel a wet pat on my neck. Then another on my cheek. I look up and see silver rods falling from the sky: ‘boding abundant rain’, as Emily puts it in Wuthering Heights.

  As I join the Pennine Way again up to Pry Hill past Badger Fields farm, the rain comes down in buckets. It drips off my head, down my neck and down my spine. It drips off the end of my nose. The lip of my hood is a gutter. Eventually, I join the Rochdale Canal just past Charlestown. I walk along the canal path through Todmorden and then towards Littleborough. As soon as I hit the Lancashire–Yorkshire border, the scene changes. The canal waters that have been populated with middle-class hippies in painted barges now turn dirty with debris and discarded shopping trolleys.

  I see the market town of Littleborough in the distance. It’s past eight o’clock in the evening, and I’ve been walking for twelve hours with just a ten-minute break. I’m knackered. I must have walked more than thirty miles, and I can’t walk any more. My rucksack felt moderately light when I set off this morning. It now feels like I’m carrying a dead body on my back. I decide that Littleborough will be my home for the night.

  When I get to Littleborough, I’m soaked to the bone. My clothes cling to my skin. My feet squidge in the swamp of my boots. I go into the first pub, no dogs, then the second, no dogs, then the third, no dogs. Eventually, I persuade the final tavern to let me in. Despite the ‘No dogs’ sign, I cut such a miserable figure that the landlord takes pity on me. I sit in the corner and nurse a pint. I’m a pathetic spectacle, dripping rainwater onto the carpet. Wolfie sits by my feet, his fur flattened to his skin. He looks like a starving stray. A hulkish bloke with a bald head
and finger tattoos approaches my table.

  ‘Nice dog you got there.’ I nod. ‘He’s shivering, poor thing.’

  The man pulls his sweatshirt over his head, lifting his T-shirt up momentarily, revealing a scar on the side of his torso and more tattoos. He pulls it back down again, and then, using his sweatshirt as a towel, he dries my dog.

  ‘I told the landlord to let you in,’ he says. ‘Us lot, we’ve got to stick together.’ He points to my jacket, which is British Army surplus, and I realise he’s mistaken me for a veteran soldier.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say and hold my glass up. ‘Cheers!’ We chink glasses.

  ‘You seen a bit of action, then?’

  It’s too late now to admit the error. He’s bought it hook, line and sinker. He’s bumped into one of life’s familiars, and it’s made his night. I don’t have the heart to shatter his illusions.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, and nod in such a grim way I hope he will be silenced.

  ‘Me too,’ he says. ‘The people round here, the folk in this pub, good people, but they don’t know. They haven’t got a clue. What it does to you. What you have to do. What you see.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. I wonder if it’s too late to back out. But he’s on a roll.

  ‘I was in Iraq. Tell you what, I still have nightmares. When I came out, I couldn’t sleep. I was just drinking. Neat vodka. Straight from the bottle. I’d black out. Wake up somewhere. No idea how I got there. It was chronic. My girlfriend gave me an ultimatum. She said I had to get my head sorted out or she was going to leave me.’

  ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘She left me.’

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘Fuck her. Fucking bitch. They don’t understand. They haven’t got a clue. I’m telling yer. Fuck that.’

  That night, I find a bit of scrap land by the edge of the canal. It’s far enough away from the town, a quiet spot beneath the shade of a sycamore. It’s dark. I erect my one-man tent with great difficulty. In sober daylight, I can put it up in two minutes. But by moonlight, after five pints, it takes me about twenty minutes. As I climb into my sleeping bag, I realise there is no room for Wolfie. The tent is like a coffin – it fits me with no room for anyone else. He will have to sleep on top of me.

  I’m settling down when I hear voices. Muffled at first, they get clearer as a gang of lads approach. I can’t hear what they are saying. Wolfie is asleep on top of me. I can just make out their silhouettes from an outside light. They wear hoodies and smoke spliffs of pungent skunk. They play grime through their phones. They laugh and joke. Their laughter sounds sinister. They are harmless enough, I tell myself. Nothing to worry about. But what if, in their stoned states, they think it would be fun to chuck me in the canal? Don’t be daft, I tell myself. Why would they do that? It’s what lads do. When they’re together. They do stuff they wouldn’t do on their own. They egg each other on. It would be easy for them to pull out the pegs, grab my bivvie, one at each end, lift it up and launch it into the canal. It’s deep at this end. Lock end. I’d sink like a stone. I wouldn’t be able to get out of the tent, and I’d drown. Wolfie would drown with me. I take hold of the zipper and stay like that, poised. If they are going to chuck me in the canal, I want a fighting chance. I remain in that position for ten minutes, twenty, half an hour. My heart beats hard in my chest. My arm aches, but I don’t let go of the zipper.

  At some point, sleep must come, because the next thing I know the voices have gone and the shapes have faded. The gang has disappeared. The only movement is from my dog. His leg muscles spasm as he dreams of chasing a rabbit. I try and get back to sleep, but the weight of him, and the movement, make it impossible for me to rest. I think about waking him up, but then there would be two of us deprived of sleep. I let him dream on, while I lie there in discomfort.

  Eventually, day breaks, and I manage to stir Wolfie. He is the very definition of a creature who sleeps like a log. He sleeps the untroubled sleep of the innocent. I shake him gently and he wakes. I zip open the entrance, and we both climb out. He stretches, has a sniff around and pisses up a tree, while I pack up my tent and stuff my sleeping bag into its sack. I load my rucksack. I’ve travelled light. I feed him his breakfast and watch him chase the empty bowl up the towpath. I stretch. I’m sore and ache all over. The sky is bright grey. The ground is still wet, but the rain has stopped. My plan is to walk along the canal path to Manchester, then head over to Lymm and then Liverpool.

  As I walk, I creak. It was a poor excuse for a night’s sleep. The water to my left is as still as bath water, and as I pass by I disturb a kingfisher from its hunting spot. It flits past, brilliant blue and golden orange, its bill a black stiletto, and I think, as I always do when I see a kingfisher, of the first line of a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem: ‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame’. It’s a bit of a tongue-twister.

  I travel south-west past Clegg Hall, with Owl Hill in the distance, then through the edgelands of Belfield and Newbold. The canal passes through the town of Kirkholt, which spreads into Castletown. Past Boarshaw, the canal creeps south-east and then east as it intersects with the River Irk, then it drops a plumbline south as it passes through Chadderton. I seem to be on the outskirts of post-industry and urbanisation, and the view is grey and featureless. This canal was conceived in 1776, five years after Mr Earnshaw’s journey, when the area would have been a no-man’s-land, with highwaymen and cutpurses, vagrants and vagabonds. The canals brought an end to the highwayman’s trade. It’s hard to hold up a barge on horseback, even with a pistol. The canal opened in stages, in 1798 then fully in 1804.

  The view becomes more urban as the canal goes through Failsworth and then Newton Heath. It was here, aged sixteen, just a stone’s throw away, that I started as an apprentice winder – a now obsolete trade involving the fitting of electrical coils in motor casings. The factory was Mather and Platts, and it employed thousands of staff, mostly men, with a few women working in the offices upstairs. I was attached to a bloke called Old Tom, and my job was to assist him. What that meant in reality was standing by his workplace while he fitted electrical coils into motor casings. Occasionally, a motor casing would need to be stripped, and I’d get to work with a hammer and chisel, but mostly it was standing around. You weren’t allowed to put your hands in your pockets. If the foreman caught you, he’d give you a bollocking. The factory closed shortly after I left. The whole area has undergone a facelift and has been rejuvenated, and as I reach Miles Platting there is an uneasy mix of hipsters living in narrow boats and gangs of lads in hoodies from the estate, smoking reefers.

  I leave the canal just off Ancoats and walk into Manchester city centre. I go down Tib Street, which used to be all pet shops and porno shops, but now is full of hipster bars and boutiques. I remember coming here as a kid to watch the brightly coloured Siamese fighting fish. Each pet shop, and there were more than twenty of them, specialised in a different animal. The whole street stunk of lizard piss, snake shit and sawdust. Now it smells of freshly roasted coffee and speciality herbal teas. I find a café with some seats on the terrace and order a drink. I sit outside with Wolfie.

  Everyone is sipping coffee. A woman in a black beret hugs the bowl of her cup as though it were a lover. Her lips kiss the rim. Coffee with froth, with whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles, with a flake in it and a raspberry ripple and a cherry on top, the way you get a child to swallow its medicine. This is the fuel of our service economy. No great ideas were conceived drinking coffee.

  I walk through town, past Affleck’s Palace, where I used to hang out in the late eighties with all the goths and punks, and down Market Street, wending my way between happy shoppers and homeless beggars. It’s an odd mix, this cheek-by-jowl poverty and plenty, but I guess not that different from how it was in the late eighteenth century.

  The first factory in England was built in 1717. It was a silk factory on the River Derwent that employed three hundred workers. But it was here in the north that the Industrial Revolution r
eally took off, thanks to a combination of soft water, steep hills and cheap labour. In 1750, the population of Manchester was 25,000. By 1800, it had quadrupled to 100,000. In 1750, there were two factories. By 1800, there were more than fifty. I imagine the great wave of immigration from the rural surroundings, and from further afield – the Emerald Isle and further still – a huge influx of workers to fill the labour holes. Some of them would have come here to seek their fortune only to find themselves out of work and unhomed. It is here in the late eighteenth century that the first soup kitchens began to feed the poor – they are still here to this day. And it is here that drink and drug addiction became a visible problem – it still is today.

  Past the spice addicts in Piccadilly Square that stand like extras in a George A. Romero film, down Deansgate, I make my way to Castlefield, where I join the Bridgewater Canal. It was opened in 1761, ten years before Mr Earnshaw’s walk. Emily would have been aware of this feat of engineering, it being the first canal in England, although it is not a true canal, as it required an aqueduct to cross the River Irwell. The Duke of Bridgewater built it to transport coal from his mines in Worsley to his factories in Manchester. The duke visited Canal du Midi in France and, after being dumped by the Dowager Duchess of Hamilton, decided on this symbol of his virility.

  I cross the aqueduct at Barton and join the road as I now need to head south-west again, through Irlam and Cadishead. The walking here is grim. Close to a massive industrial estate, there is a constant caravan of articulated trucks and flatbeds, spitting out toxic effluence. It has started raining again, a fine mist, and the salts, cements and powders that spray off the back of the lorries coat my skin like a mud mask, with the rain acting as a glue gun. My face soon feels stiff and crusty.