Ghosts of Yorkshire

by Karen Perkins

  Antony ran to retrieve it.

  I followed as far as the top of the stairs and thought I should have gone after him and locked him out as soon as he went into the garden, but I didn’t think of it in time. Instead I stood there, numb, unable to comprehend what had happened.

  We’d been married for thirteen years, and we’d never tired of each other. Our sex life was still healthy; we had no shortage of conversation or laughter. I’d thought we were happy; solid; soul mates. What a fool I was.

  He came back inside and climbed the stairs. Stood in front of me.

  ‘She’s nothing, it was just a game,’ he said. ‘It’s you I love, we can fix this.’

  I stared at him. Is he for real?

  My fists clenched at my sides and it took every ounce of willpower I possessed not to raise them. I wanted – so desperately – to lift them; to launch them at him; to push him; to thrust him back down those stairs; to kill him.

  I forced them to stay by my sides. I stared at my husband and his face changed. He wasn’t Antony any more, his features morphed to those of the man in my dream the previous night, and I relaxed. Heathcliff. Heathcliff was here.

  He held out his hand and took mine, then led me back to the bedroom, I climbed into the bed and he sat on the mattress next to me and stroked my hair; calming me, soothing me, sending me deep into sleep.

  Except I wasn’t falling into sleep, I was falling out of it.

  Slowly, awareness coalesced. I wasn’t snuggled in Egyptian cotton on a soft mattress; once again I was in a sleeping bag, on a flimsy canvas camp bed.

  I tried to roll over, but couldn’t. My mind was awake, I knew where I was, what had happened, the challenges that lay ahead; but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even twitch.

  But I wasn’t scared; I just watched myself sleeping in that bed.

  His hand stroked my hair. I knew I should be terrified, but I also knew I was asleep so I was not frightened; I was just aware, observing, fascinated.

  I grew more cognisant; realised my mind was awake even if my body was not. I enjoyed the feeling of relaxation and peace that I had rarely known before.

  I grunted as my body tilted, but I did not have the capacity to fend off whomever was there.

  My awareness grew and I understood the camp bed was sloped and skewed as if someone were sitting on one side of it. But there was no one there. I could no longer see my dream man.

  The bed lifted and I felt a hand in my hair again, smoothing it.

  My heart pounded, jerking me awake, and I stared wildly around the room.

  No one was visible. But I knew somebody was there. I stretched my hand down to find solace in the fur of Grasper’s head. He didn’t need any more encouragement and jumped up to join me on the bed.

  I realised he was just as confused as I was.

  9.

  ‘Blimey, that lad in the old Hovis ad had some legs, didn’t he? He almost ran up this hill,’ Jayne said, stopping for breath yet again.

  I didn’t need any persuasion to rest with her. ‘It gives new meaning to the words “high street”, that’s for sure. I feel more like Ronnie Barker than the Hovis lad – do you remember that TV sketch?’

  ‘Hill? More like mountain,’ Lara complained from behind us before Jayne could answer. ‘And these bloody cobbles will be the death of me.’

  ‘Well, they might be the death of one of your ankles,’ Jayne said. ‘Why on earth wouldn’t you just borrow a pair of Verity’s trainers?’

  ‘Heels, darling, heels,’ Lara said. ‘When they make a pair of trainers with heels, then I’ll try them. Until then, not a chance.’

  She caught us up, bags flung over each shoulder – she’d stopped at almost every shop on Main Street as an excuse to have a rest from the climb – and I took pity on her. ‘We’re nearly there, Lara. The pub at the top is just there – see?’

  ‘Pub?’ Lara said, hope in her voice. ‘Pub? Why didn’t you say so? Come on, Hans, help me up this last bit – it must be lunchtime and it’s definitely wine time.’

  ***

  Recovered, refreshed and replete, we left the Black Bull and made our way up the lane, past the church, and towards the parsonage for a gentler afternoon exploring the home of the Brontë sisters.

  ‘Oh wow, look at that graveyard,’ Lara said. ‘That is seriously spooky.’

  ‘It’s definitely atmospheric,’ Jayne agreed. ‘Shall we have a look around?’

  Lara was already halfway down the path, Hannah and Grasper in her wake, and Jayne grinned at our friend’s enthusiasm for a cemetery.

  ‘Are you all right, Verity? You’re very quiet today.’

  I squished my lips together in a pathetic attempt at a reassuring smile, then gave up. ‘Bad dreams,’ I said.

  ‘Antony?’

  I nodded. ‘That morning I found his phone and found out about those women. I know it was months ago, but it still hurts.’

  ‘Of course it does.’ Jayne put her arm around me and squeezed. ‘It devastated you – Lara and I have been really worried. But it’s a good sign you’re dreaming about it, it means you’re processing it, starting to deal with it, deep down.’

  ‘You sound like Lara.’ I attempted a laugh and faltered.

  ‘Well, I spend enough time with her.’ Jayne’s smile was genuine. ‘But seriously, Verity, dreams are how we deal with what life throws at us. You’ve not stopped since it happened; the divorce has only just been finalised, and you completed on the guesthouse two days ago. The past is now the past, and you’ve embarked on a different future; it’s no wonder you’re dreaming about him – you’re getting him out of your system.’

  ‘I hope so.’ I shuddered. I hadn’t told anybody just how close I’d come to pushing Antony down the stairs. Did the fact I dreamt about that moment mean I still wanted to kill him?

  ‘What? There’s something else,’ Jayne said, as astute as ever.

  I decided on the lesser of two evils. ‘Well, it was weird – I relived the phone call, the arguments, the emotion, everything—’ I broke off before I said too much. ‘But right in the middle of it, Antony changed.’

  ‘What do you mean, changed?’ Jayne sounded guarded.

  ‘He became ... well ... someone else.’

  ‘Did he look like Antony?’

  ‘No – nothing like.’

  ‘Well that’s a relief! I thought for a moment you’d changed the way you think about him, but it sounds like you might be getting ready to meet someone else.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jayne. No one’s ever getting the opportunity to hurt me like that again.’

  ‘I know, honey,’ she said. ‘But don’t tell Lara or she’ll be signing you up to all the dating sites.’

  This time my laugh was genuine. ‘Not a bloody chance,’ I said. ‘Don’t you dare say anything to her!’

  ‘Anything about what?’ Lara said. ‘What’s up with you two? Come on and have a look at this place, it’s amazing.’

  We followed her into the graveyard, and I understood why she was so enthralled. Six-foot-by-three-foot stone slabs lay so close together not a blade of grass could grow between them. Just like my dream. If not for the names etched on them, it would look like a patio.

  ‘There must be ten names on that one,’ Lara said, pointing. ‘How deep would the grave need to be for ten coffins?’

  I shook my head, unwilling even to think about it.

  ‘Oh God, they’re so young!’ Jayne said. ‘Look – aged two, four, six, twenty six. I haven’t seen any age above thirty yet.’

  ‘Not a great place to live in Victorian times,’ I remarked, then jumped as a flock of birds took off as one from the nearby trees.

  ‘A parliament of rooks,’ Lara said. ‘How fitting.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘That’s what a flock of rooks is called, a parliament. They were believed to be the souls of the dead. It’s quite profound to see them in a graveyard.’

  We walked on in silence, all o
f us a little overawed by our surroundings.

  ‘Is that the parsonage?’ Jayne asked, pointing between the trees.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. After my dream it looked strange with the extension, although the addition now looked as aged as the rest of the building.

  ‘What a place to grow up, looking at this through your windows every day,’ Lara said. ‘Those poor children.’

  ‘I don’t think there were trees then, either,’ I said, then shrugged at Jayne’s enquiring glance. ‘I did a bit of reading up on the village and its famous residents before I moved in.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. At least this bit has more character than the patio down there.’

  The graves here were still flat, but some were raised – either a couple of inches or a foot – resembling altars of death. I wondered what it would have been like as a child, growing up with intimate knowledge of a working graveyard like this, surrounded by death every day.

  ‘Apparently at the time of the Brontës, life expectancy was about twenty two,’ I said, falling into the defence mechanism of tour guide to avoid the emotion of it. ‘Patrick Brontë performed about three hundred baptisms a year, and then did the funerals for most of them, often only a few years later.’

  Jayne shivered and hugged herself. ‘Goodness, and think how many babies would have died even before baptism. It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘It wasn’t a healthy time to be alive, that’s for sure,’ Lara said, staring at a stone filled with names. ‘Where’s Hannah?’

  I started at the panic in her voice, then spotted her. ‘Over there, look, by the upright stones.’

  Lara hurried off and I glanced at Jayne, both of us fully understanding of Lara’s sudden protective instincts. It was humbling to see so many children’s deaths recorded in stone.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy, stop it, I’m playing with Grasper.’ Hannah squirmed out of her mother’s arms and chased after the Irish terrier.

  ‘Grasper!’ Jayne called, and I glanced up at the sharpness in her voice. She was more spooked than I’d realised. ‘Here boy!’ The terrier ran to his mistress and she took hold of his lead then passed it to the child. ‘Keep hold of him, Hans. He shouldn’t be running around the graves, it’s disrespectful.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Jayne,’ she said solemnly and clenched the leather leash with both fists.

  I looked up at the hillside, dotted with six-foot-high carved monoliths to celebrate and mourn the dead. ‘They look like sentinels,’ I said. ‘Guarding the village below from the moors above.’ I realised I was lapsing into my first dream and quietened.

  Lara and Jayne said nothing, and we stood in silence for a while, contemplating the rows of individually engraved millstone grit.

  ‘I don’t know which is sadder,’ Lara eventually said. ‘The stones with a long list of names, or the ones that are only half full.’

  I followed her gaze and spotted the stone that was affecting her. Two names at the top, then four feet of blank.

  ‘Their family didn’t survive,’ I said. ‘They died before they could have children.’

  ‘Can we get out of here?’ Lara said. ‘I’ve had enough.’ She shuddered. ‘There’s something about this place, something not right.’

  As one we turned and left the dead to re-join the living.

  10.

  I climbed into my camp bed utterly exhausted. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Lara so spooked. She wouldn’t leave Hannah alone, even for a second, and had said she could not ‘cope with the museum and more death’.

  Instead, we’d come back to The Rookery, Hannah had become fractious and emotional from the unaccustomed fussing from her mother, and they’d left just after an early tea.

  I missed them already. I knew I had a busy week ahead, but it seemed to stretch out emptily until Friday evening when they would return.

  The phone buzzed and I jumped, then scrabbled for it, a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I wondered what had happened.

  With relief I registered that the caller was not Lara or Jayne and swiped the answer icon. I instantly regretted it when Antony said, ‘Verity? Hello?’

  ‘Hello Antony,’ I said, resigned to the conversation, but determined to keep control of my temper and emotions. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Not good, Verity, not good.’

  My heart sank. It was one of those calls: self-pitying and maudlin drunk. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m just really low. I miss you, I’ve messed everything up.’

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  Antony huffed in frustration. He wasn’t sorry, he just wanted absolution. And probably the divorce settlement back. ‘I know, I know, things were just so hard – we hardly saw each other, always on different shifts, and we weren’t getting pregnant.’

  I gritted my teeth. I would not cry. I would not.

  ‘I was lonely, Verity, so lonely.’

  ‘We worked at the same hotel, Antony, we lived in the same house. If you had put the effort into us instead of that slapper—’ I broke off and squeezed my eyes shut in frustration. The last thing I wanted was to argue with my ex-husband. Even by being on the phone he was tainting my new home; my new life.

  He said nothing for a while, then changed tack.

  ‘You can’t put it all on me, you know. You could have made more effort.’

  I said nothing, wondering if I should hang up or if that would make things worse.

  ‘You were so cold, and always complaining, it’s no wonder I looked for comfort elsewhere.’

  ‘What? You can’t put this on me! You were the one cheating!’

  ‘We were arguing all the time.’

  ‘Probably because you were chasing other women!’

  ‘Verity—’

  ‘No! No, I’ve had enough. Please, it’s over, it’s done. We’re divorced, we’re separated. You go marry your slapper, and I’ll get on with my life. Goodbye, Antony.’ I finally hung up.

  Within seconds, the phone buzzed again. I ignored it.

  And again.

  I switched it off, lay back down, and stared at the ceiling somewhere above me in the dark.

  Tears rolled down the sides of my face and pooled in my ears. I stifled a sob, furious with myself for allowing him to upset me again. I’d cried a river since that day. It was time to move on, to get over it, over him.

  But how did you get over a broken heart? How did you put the pieces back together again? How did you ever let anybody in again?

  I sobbed once more as a lonely, empty future stretched out before me. Would there ever be anybody to share it with me?

  A face swam in front of my vision. Dark, handsome, piercing eyes, infectious smile. He held out a hand to me. I took it, and sank, swirling into a dark mist, letting go, drifting away from the bleak reality of my life.

  11.

  I woke with the image of those same eyes staring into mine, and lay frozen for a moment, my heart beating hard. My chest seemed to be the only part of me able to move as my breathing matched my heart in its intensity, clouding the air above me with evidence of life. For a moment I had been so disorientated I’d been unsure if I were alive or dead.

  I caught my breath. What was that noise? And again! Footsteps? I listened until I had to release air and take in fresh – the action violent enough to shake me out of my torpor. I laughed at myself – in silence and without mirth – of course it hadn’t been footsteps; just an old house on a winter’s day, and the remnants of a nightmare.

  I remembered Antony’s call last night. That would have been enough to spark all sorts of weird and frightening mirages in my sleeping brain.

  Shaking it off, I forced myself out of my warm bed into the cold morning air – the sooner the heating system was sorted properly, the better.

  Shuffling to the shower – thank goodness for fluffy slippers and fleecy onesies! – I remembered the eyes I’d woken to. They hadn’t been Antony’s blue irises; they had been dark, brooding, intense.

&
nbsp; ‘Oh for God’s sake, Verity, it was a bloody dream, stop spooking yourself!’

  I laughed at the sound of my own voice in the emptiness and switched the shower on. Time to be thinking about the day ahead, not the night behind. I undressed and stepped under the thankfully warm spray, then lifted my face to the waterfall.

  The builders would be here before too long, ready to start work on making the place mine.

  I soaped myself, thinking about my plans, my dream of how the next part of my life would be.

  The Rookery would have five bedrooms, and I was determined to make it spectacular, going that extra mile to make people feel welcome and valued. After living and working in the centre of Leeds for so long, I wanted to embrace country living: fresh air, a real community, and a slower, more enjoyable pace of life.

  I loved the Brontës’ books, and couldn’t be closer to the parsonage – one of the reasons I’d chosen this property – and I wanted to reflect the history of this place in my design and management decisions.

  The house was attached to a row of weaver’s cottages, so I’d use plenty of local textiles, and it stood to reason that Emily Brontë, and then Charlotte would have been regular visitors to the people who lived and worked here. In the 1840s, Emily had returned to live with her father and Branwell, and carried out the duties of curate’s wife – even though she was daughter. Then Charlotte when she returned to Haworth after a small taste of fame and the city life in London to care for her father, then as Arthur Bell Nicholls’ wife until her own premature death in childbirth in 1855.

  I sighed at the tragedy of so many talented and driven siblings dying so young. Poor Patrick; first burying his wife, then seeing all six of his children in their graves. Maria, his firstborn, at age eleven through to Charlotte, the most famous of his brood, at thirty eight.

  The pain and unfairness of it had me close to tears and I lifted my face to the spray of water and leaned back into the comforting hand around my waist. It had been a long time since Antony had joined me in the shower.