Nelly Dean

by Alison Case

  ‘May I touch it?’ he whispered.

  ‘Only if you want to lose a finger,’ I said. ‘Come, we’ll go a good distance from the house and let it go.’ I set off walking at a brisk pace, and Heathcliff half walked, half ran alongside, keeping close by the bird. I could have let it go nearer by, no doubt, but my blood was up and I needed the walk. I also thought it best to keep Heathcliff out of the way until things were settled down inside, lest Hindley take it into his head to relieve his own feelings on the poor lad’s backside. So we walked about a mile, to the top of a little rise, and then I stopped. I took hold of the corner of the apron, planning to shake it out like a sheet and release the bird that way, but Heathcliff begged to do it, so I let him take it. Ignoring my warnings, he unwrapped the bundle slowly in his hands – to make sure, he said, that the bird was not hurt – and sure enough, as soon as the falcon was free enough to struggle, it raked his arm with its talons. But Heathcliff took no notice except to curse. He took hold of the bird with both hands, holding its wings into its body and ignoring the small wounds it continued to inflict with its beak, and launched it upwards into the sky as you would a pigeon. It exploded into flight, and he watched it steadily as it winged its way into the distance.

  ‘He won’t be back,’ I said. ‘But good God, Heathcliff, what were you thinking to handle him so? Look at your hands!’

  He looked. Two parallel tracks were opened along one arm, from which blood dripped down to join that from several deep nips on his hand, and the other hand was also bleeding freely. Heathcliff shrugged, and we both began walking back.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I promised Cathy that I would see to it that the falcon was unhurt, and so I did.’

  ‘You mean you would as lief have them as not,’ I snorted, ‘so you can prove your bravery to her.’

  ‘And why not?’ he said. He held out his arms again, and surveyed his injuries with satisfaction. ‘What do you think young Edgar Linton would do, with wounds like these?’

  ‘Scream for the doctor, and take to his bed, most likely,’ I said. ‘But then, he would probably have the sense not to get them in the first place, so where does that leave you?’

  ‘That only shows he’s a coward as well as a milksop.’

  ‘There’s no cowardice in taking sensible precautions,’ I replied. ‘But have no fear, I won’t tell Cathy how gratuitous your injuries are. You may brag of your battle scars with no interference from me.’

  We walked the rest of the way in silence. When we came near the house, I told him to come into the kitchen with me, and promised I would fetch Cathy to him there. I left him sitting at the table, dabbing away the gore with a clean cloth and some warm water, while I ventured into the house to see how things were there.

  Frances was still on the sofa, with Hindley kneeling beside her, stroking her hair and murmuring comforts to her. She looked pale and shaken, and whimpered now and then, but between Hindley’s ministrations and a cup of hot tea, she seemed to be recovering. Cathy sat in a chair opposite, looking annoyed. She jumped up when I came in, and began pestering me with questions about what I had done with the bird. This set Frances to crying again.

  ‘Be quiet,’ I hissed to Cathy under my breath, ‘can’t you see you’re upsetting her? Go into the kitchen – you’re needed there.’ She took the hint and left, and I went over to Hindley and Frances.

  ‘Is it gone?’ Frances asked.

  ‘Far gone,’ I replied. ‘We took him a mile from the house, and he flew further off as fast as his wings could carry him. He’s probably in Scotland by now.’ I forced a laugh. ‘However badly he frightened you, my lady, we frightened him much worse, I can assure you. We won’t see him again.’

  She managed a feeble smile.

  Hindley pulled me aside, looking anxious. ‘I’ve sent for Kenneth,’ he said under his breath. ‘What else should I do?’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said in the same tone. ‘Just keep her calm, and perhaps see if she will take a little glass of wine, to settle her nerves. Don’t let her see that you’re worried: that will only worry her more. When Dr Kenneth comes I’ll tell him to pretend he just happened by.’

  Hindley nodded, and I went back to the kitchen, where I found, as expected, that Cathy had taken over cleaning Heathcliff’s wounds, and was listening with rapt attention to his description of the creature’s release.

  ‘I wish you had let me come, Nelly,’ she said peevishly. ‘I have never seen a falcon up close before. I should have liked to hold him.’

  ‘Your hands would look like Heathcliff’s if you had,’ I said, ‘and anyway, your sister-in-law had need of you, or she would not have held you so tightly. She’s in a delicate condition, you know, and mustn’t be upset. If you want to be a lady, as you say you do, you must learn to put others’ needs before your own, sometimes.’

  ‘I am,’ she said. ‘I am putting Heathcliff’s needs first. If I had been there to help, I might have saved him a few of these cuts – I shouldn’t mind being cut myself.’

  ‘Well I should,’ said Heathcliff. ‘Your hands are so delicate, I should hate to see them marred – a few more scars on mine won’t make any difference, they are so calloused already. I’m sorry you didn’t get to see the falcon, though. But if you want to see one up close, I know where we could catch one – there’s a nest near Pennistone Crag, remember?’

  ‘I don’t want to catch one,’ pouted Cathy. ‘I want them to be free. I love to watch them hover, and then drop like a stone to strike. I only wanted to be close to it, before it flew away.’

  I left them to their discussion, for I had other duties to attend to. Soon I heard noises outside, suggestive of Bodkin’s arrival, so I went out to waylay him and tell him how things stood. He agreed to pretend he had come by for a social visit, and promised also to stop in the kitchen afterwards, for I wanted him to take a look at Heathcliff’s cuts, and see if any needed stitching. With that I retreated to the kitchen myself. Bodkin came into the back about an hour later, and was able to assure us that Mrs Earnshaw had taken no lasting harm from her fright, and that Heathcliff needed no stitches. He could not stay to talk though, he said, for his father was laid up at home with a bad cold, so he had all his patients to attend to, as well as his own.

  ‘When he is up and about though,’ he added, ‘I am asking him to take over Mrs Earnshaw’s case, so you will not be seeing me here any more. You’ll have to come to see me in town, Nelly, if you want to gossip.’

  ‘Why is that? I thought you had agreed that you should take all the new patients?’

  ‘I am concerned it may be a difficult birth, Mrs Earnshaw is so slight. Father has much more experience than I do in these things; I think it’s best if he attends her.’

  After he left, and the children had run off, I sat down in the kitchen with a cup of tea, to catch my breath and collect my thoughts. I had scarcely thought at all while it was happening, but now, looking back, the whole scene moved me strangely. I felt again the stillness of the bound bird in my hands after its wild flailing in the house, the odd lightness of the bundle for its size, saw the fierce face with its black eye fixed on me, and most of all I remembered the explosion of flight out of Heathcliff’s arms, the confident power of its wings as it found itself again in its native air.

  It came to me, then, that the trapped bird was a good figure for any of the three of them: Hindley’s rage, Heathcliff’s desperate love, Cathy’s hunger for freedom – whatever drove them, it seemed to drive them each past sense and reason, past any care for the battering they gave to themselves and to each other. And further, I thought, each of them, there in that room, had sensed that, had seen themselves in that falcon. And so Hindley had tried to destroy it, Cathy to free it, Heathcliff to make it an offering to her. I thought to myself, ‘I am not like them,’ and it was like a revelation to me. Oh, I had bruised my wings on those ancient beams a few times, to be sure, but I had learned my lesson from it: folded my wings and resigned myself to walking about wi
th my two sturdy legs on the ground, like a sensible hen. I did not have it in me to fly wildly at a window again, and yet again, and yet again. And no doubt that was a good thing. But for all my pride in my own good sense, I could not help being sad at the thought.

  EIGHTEEN

  Mrs Earnshaw’s labour began in the evening. I had thought I knew what to expect, for I had been with my mother when my brother Tommy was born. But my mother was a strong, resolute woman, who had given birth before and assisted other women at theirs, and the mistress was none of those things. The moment the pains began, Dr Kenneth was sent for with great urgency, and he arrived jacketless and breathing hard, having galloped his horse all the way, thinking it an emergency. He was not pleased to find it nothing of the sort. But when he tried to leave, saying he would not be needed for many hours yet, Mrs Earnshaw grew so distressed that Hindley barred the door and forbade him to go. Dr Kenneth took it in good humour. He helped himself to a glass of Hindley’s brandy, and made himself comfortable on the settle.

  ‘It will be a long night of it for all of us, if you carry on this way at the start,’ he said, ‘for I might as well tell you now, it will get a good deal worse than this before it gets better.’

  ‘All the more reason to have you close by,’ said Hindley.

  Kenneth shrugged, and only asked that Heathcliff be sent to town with the message that he would probably not be back until late the next day.

  Kenneth was right – it was a very long night. Despite all his efforts to reassure her and explain to her what was happening, Mrs Earnshaw persisted in treating each wave of pain as a new and terrifying crisis, and Hindley took his cue from her. The doctor was a kindly man, and had developed great patience with the peevishness of suffering, but at length even his good nature was worn away, and he grew quite snappish with them both. So first we would hear her scream, and then stomping and curses from Hindley, followed by a few choice words from Dr Kenneth, then silence, and then the whole sequence would repeat itself a little while later, in a way that would have been comical if we were not all so exhausted. A few hours into this, Cathy and Heathcliff took advantage of their elders’ preoccupation to sneak off to the stable, where they could sleep in peace. I would have liked to join them there, but I knew I might be called upon at any time to provide refreshments, clean linens, and so forth. I soon gave up on my efforts to snatch some sleep between the outbreaks of noise, and crept downstairs, thinking to keep Dr Kenneth company and work on some sewing. But I found Hindley there instead, he having at last been banished from the birth-room altogether. He was pacing anxiously, and drinking brandy at a rate that did not bode well, so I retreated to the kitchen with a candle. There, for the nonce, I was left alone with my thoughts. Deprived of sleep, and agitated periodically by the ruckus upstairs, I was perhaps not in the best state to reflect soberly upon my future, but reflect I did.

  It had been hard to accept Hindley’s marriage, but I thought I had succeeded. Now, listening to his wife’s cries, I realized that the babe to come – and more to follow, no doubt – would bring a whole new set of pains for me to endure in silence. I might manage the whole estate for them, and Hindley would scarcely notice or care, so wrapped up would he be in his new family. I had been so sure that I belonged at Wuthering Heights, that I was needed – nay, loved – there, as I would be nowhere else. But now, it seemed to me, my illusions were stripped away, and I saw that I had been pouring out my heart in return for a handful of promissory notes that would never be paid. My mother had been right: I should leave Wuthering Heights – it was only a matter of hanging on until a little while after the birth, when the household would be sufficiently settled for me to give my notice.

  By the time dawn came, I was ready to seize any excuse to leave the house, so when Joseph announced at breakfast that Heathcliff and Maggie would both be needed again for haying in the far field, I hastened to volunteer myself in the latter’s place. Maggie was delighted at the prospect of being left in charge of the kitchen.

  ‘You needn’t fear that I’ll be put out by the birthing upstairs,’ she assured me. ‘I’ve been with Ma through her last four, and I’m ever so good at helping. My ma calls me her “little midwife”, and Dame Archer said I had the makings of a good one.’

  ‘Don’t go intruding yourself,’ I warned her. ‘Keep out of the room unless you are asked to come in. Ladies are very particular about whom they have around them at such a time. Keep the large kettle aboil, and keep hot tea and buttered oatcakes and cheese ready in the kitchen, to bring in whenever Mr Earnshaw or Dr Kenneth come downstairs – there’ll be no regular meals today. Beyond that, just take your orders from Dr Kenneth, and be a good girl and keep your questions to yourself. Can you do all that?’

  ‘Of course I can,’ she said proudly. ‘I just wonder that you can bear to leave at such a time.’

  ‘I’ve been at my post all night, so I’ll be glad of a change, and some fresh air,’ I said, truthfully enough, but I was gladder still to get out of reach of those screams, and to have work to do heavy enough to drive thought from my mind.

  When Maggie came running out to the field to tell me of Hareton’s birth, and announced that I was to have sole care of him as his mother was not expected to live, it struck me like a blow to the chest. I stood shocked and bewildered, listening to little Maggie’s rapturous description of the baby, trying to take in what I had heard.

  ‘Did the birth go badly, then?’ I asked.

  ‘It went as well as could be expected, Dr Kenneth said, but she was too weak to start with, and the consumption’s got hold of her good now,’ she said, growing more composed now that her subject was a gloomier one.

  ‘She’s consumptive?’

  ‘Why yes, I thought you knew that,’ Maggie said, puzzled. ‘I thought everyone knew, and we weren’t to speak of it ’cause it made the master fly out so. That’s what my ma said, anyway. I know the look of it, for my older sister Abby went that way, you know, she just wasted away, just like the mistress is doing, but she hadn’t so much to keep her here, for her sweetheart had died the year before, and she couldn’t get a position being ill like that, so she felt a burden on us. It’s different for Mrs Earnshaw, with such a likely babe, and a loving husband, and being mistress of a fine house, and all that. I don’t think I could bear to die, if I had all that.’ Maggie chattered on, as she was wont to do, and while her endless stream of talk had often been an annoyance to me, I was grateful for it now. I listened with only half an ear, while my mind whirled, struggling to digest the momentous news. All my plans were upended in a moment, my thoughts in turmoil. And beneath it all, like the drumbeat of distant thunder, the not-to-be-thought: did I wish this?

  After I had made my greetings to Hindley and Mrs Earnshaw, and paid my compliments to the infant for the latter’s benefit, Dr Kenneth gestured me out into the hallway and shut the door before gently depositing the bundle in my arms.

  ‘I told Hindley he could not do better than to give the child into your care, Nelly,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You know I have a high opinion of your capacity as a nurse.’

  ‘Did he agree to it?’ I asked anxiously.

  ‘Well, he didn’t much like hearing that his wife must not nurse the child herself. He’s a doting fool about that poor lass, and imagines that motherhood is just the thing to restore her health, when anyone can see she’s sinking fast. I’m counting on you to see to it that she spends as little time with the child as can be gently managed – it will make it easier for both of them when she goes, and that will not be long now.’

  ‘I mean, did he agree to it being me – instead of someone else?’

  ‘Well of course – whom else could he want? But you must not expect him to take much interest in the babe, just yet – fathers generally don’t, until the child starts running about and babbling at least, and he has other things to think of.’

  The whole time I was speaking with Dr Kenneth, I was looking at the little creature in my arms. We call a newborn ba
by ‘beautiful’ if he is good-sized and red, squalls loudly, and has all his fingers and toes, but most of them have little other claim to the title, as their faces are generally bruised and misshapen from the birth. It takes a few days, if not weeks, before they are at all pretty to look on. Hareton was no exception to this rule, on the whole. But his eyes were beautiful: almond-shaped, wide open and dark, and he stared out at the world with solemn stillness, as if he were in awe at the strangeness of it all, like a much older child.

  I would like to tell you that I was besotted with him the moment I met those eyes, that in their steady, liquid gaze any doubts I might have had about taking on this charge dissolved like the morning dew. And in time that was true. But it was not true then. I was terrified. The child seemed at the same time so fragile and so momentous a charge, and I sensed that accepting it would be the end of all freedom of choice, whether to stay or to go, yet I knew not how to refuse it now. No, it was not love that made me reach out my arms that day and accept the burden laid in them. Mostly it was habit: the habit of doing as I was bid, of accepting without complaint any duties laid upon me. And there was some vanity too: at Dr Kenneth’s faith in me, at Maggie’s jealousy, even at Hindley’s acceptance that I was the most fit person to have care of his son.

  Later that day I undressed him for the first time, to bathe him and change his clothes. In the creases of his neck and limbs, the moisture of the womb still lingered. It turned the cloth pink when I wiped it away. It gave me the strangest feeling to find it, as it brought before me so vividly the place he had but lately come from. For months he had lain curled under his mother’s heart. And now he would lie on mine.

  Dr Kenneth left a jar of cows’ teats preserved in spirits, and a booklet for me, titled ‘Raising By Hand: The Most Approved and Hygienic Method’, by a Dr Theophilus Perkins, which I looked into as soon as I had a moment to spare. Strangely, the bulk of it was taken up with a long diatribe against wet nurses, supported by many grievous examples. They were in general women of low morals, he wrote, who too often had come to motherhood by no honest means, and were usually diseased as a result. They were not uncommonly addicted to drink, so that their poor charges ‘might as well be sucking at a gin bottle’. A wet nurse, if she left her own infant at home to nurse a stranger for pay, must be an unnatural mother, and hence no fit guardian for an infant. But if she nursed the two infants together, she would be sure to give the lion’s share of the nourishment to her own offspring, to the detriment of her paid charge. A mother who had lost her own child, however, posed an even worse threat: she might become so attached to the child that she would be unwilling to leave it when the natural term of her employment ended. Such women had been known to steal the child they nursed, and either disappear with it for ever, or, facing certain capture and prosecution, kill both themselves and the poor infant, rather than be separated from it. I read this section with great curiosity, though it was hardly relevant to the task before me, as it cast some light on what had always puzzled me in Mr Earnshaw’s strong resistance, years before, to allowing a wet nurse for Hindley.