Ill Will

by Michael Stewart

  ‘So we go to the docks and we make some enquiries, is that the plan?’ Emily said.

  ‘That’s the start of it. What will you do?’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘You can’t just follow me around all the time, you know.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My long-term plans, they don’t involve you.’

  ‘What long-term plans?’

  ‘To get an education. To get wealth. To get what’s mine.’

  ‘Well, I want an education too, you know. And I want wealth. I want what’s mine.’

  She started coughing from deep down in her lungs. I watched as she hacked and spluttered. I waited for the coughing fit to finish.

  ‘You’ll have to find your own way. I can’t be responsible for you all the time. Besides, once I’ve got my wealth and my education, I’m going back.’

  ‘To Wuthering Heights?’

  ‘To Wuthering Heights.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Unfinished business.’

  ‘Are you going to stick it to Hindley?’

  ‘I’ve not decided yet.’

  This was true. All I knew at this stage was that cunt was going to get it. And as for you, Cathy, I was still thinking on how best to teach you a lesson and make your life a misery.

  ‘My dad would have the lot of them rounded up and shot like cattle. He wouldn’t mess about. Your problem is you spend too long thinking about stuff instead of doing it. My dad used to say that there are two types of people: people who get stuff done and people who are cunts.’

  Yes, I wanted to say, and look how he ended up. But I bit my tongue.

  ‘What about the cake shop?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Can we open a cake shop there?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Near Wuthering Heights.’

  ‘There’s no call for cake in those parts.’

  ‘Everyone likes cake, in every part I’ve travelled, anyway, and I’ve been almost everywhere. You’re not travelled like me, you don’t know about these things. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re just a farm boy from the sticks. I’ve done this, done that. Been here, been there. It’s time you took some advice from one who knows.’

  I watched her stuff the last of the cheese into her mouth, followed by a heel of bread, then slurp the dregs of the ale. We got up and made our way back to the canal.

  In the distance I could hear a cuckoo’s hooting call. I remember Nelly one time saying that I was the cuckoo of the family and I’d asked you later why she’d said it. You told me that a female cuckoo lays its egg in another bird’s nest and that bird brings up the infant cuckoo – and that’s what Nelly meant. That I was a foreign infant, a parasite. But I found out later that when the infant cuckoo hatches, it pushes all the other eggs out. So in fact I wasn’t a cuckoo at all. I was the one who had been pushed out of the nest, first by Hindley, then by you, Cathy. Or maybe that’s what I should do. Go back to Wuthering Heights and kick you all out of the nest. I’d enjoy doing that. Be the cuckoo you all thought I was.

  The rain had stopped and the sun was burning through the clouds. I took off my coat and carried it over my shoulder, hoping it would dry. As I walked I mused. We’d be in Liverpool soon. But would I find what I wanted to? I had no idea how I would go about it. Emily was right. What if I found out nothing? What then? I would still need to raise the capital for a decent education. How was I going to do that? It all felt out of my grasp. And yet what did I have? Only to go on with the plan. There was nothing else to keep me on this earth.

  ‘This is boring,’ Emily said again.

  ‘You’re boring.’

  ‘Tell me a story.’

  ‘I don’t know any stories.’

  ‘You must do.’

  I thought back. I’d told her everything I knew. I shrugged.

  ‘If my dad were here now, he’d tell a brilliant story.’

  ‘Well, he’s not.’

  We walked in silence for a while, with the water to our right and bramble to our left. I tried a few attempts to get Emily to talk but she’d gone quiet again.

  ‘Here, let’s pick these,’ I said.

  We stopped. I picked some berries. Emily stared at her feet.

  ‘They’re good, try for yourself.’

  I handed her a blackberry but she didn’t respond.

  ‘You were saying earlier on, about your dad. About him thinking about working the towpaths. That he said it was too busy. Did you hear that man in the pub back there?’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘He was talking about how it was safe. Working the canals. He meant safe from thieves.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Well, it might be that your dad was right, that it’s because there’s too many people about, but I’ve been thinking, I mean, there’s hardly anyone along this bit. So it can’t be just that. It would be easy to come along on horseback and hold up one of the boats.’

  ‘And steal what? A ton of coal?’ Emily said.

  She thought about it for a bit.

  Then she said, ‘Besides, it would be easy to duck inside. And a horse can’t walk on water, so as long as the boat is in the middle of the canal, it’s safe. I mean, even if they fired and shot the boatman, how could they get to his booty? There would be no sense to it.’

  ‘That’s a fair point,’ I said. ‘No good for your dad then.’

  We came to an aqueduct. A stone bridge that allowed the canal to cross over an expanse of water beneath. As we walked along the narrow towpath, I looked down at the river below. The water was almost as still as the water in the canal. When we got to the other side of the bridge, I looked back at the aqueduct. The water was up to the brim of the bank.

  ‘How come it doesn’t overflow?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I bet your dad would know.’

  ‘He would,’ she said. ‘He’d definitely know.’

  We rejoined the towpath, where two adult swans glided through the water, followed by their young. The cygnets were almost as big as their parents, but their feathers were dull and grey and their beaks were black. I heard that swans mate for life, Cathy. The pen doesn’t make a promise to the cob and then renege on that promise, when a poncier cob comes along. The pen stays true to her word. She doesn’t betray her heart’s desire, she knows what matters most.

  As we approached a place signed Worsley, the water in the canal turned at first from brown-green, to russet, and then an umber colour, until eventually the water was bright orange.

  ‘Why’s it turned colour?’ Emily said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe someone spilt some paint.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘There were two men back there painting a fence.’

  ‘They weren’t painting it orange though, were they? Besides, did you see the size of the tin?’

  She shrugged. She went quiet for a while.

  ‘Why’s the sky blue?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. You might as well ask why the grass is green. Or why a buttercup is yellow.’

  ‘Don’t you ever think about these questions?’

  ‘I’ve got more important things to think about.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like where I’m going. Where I’ve been.’

  ‘Well, I think about them. I asked my dad the same question. And he knew the answer.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said the sky was blue because God wanted it that colour.’

  We came to the end of the canal. The waterway terminated by a dock. I looked up at the sun. We were heading north – in the wrong direction.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It can’t be this way.’

  There were barges parked up, being loaded with coal. The clock nearby was striking thirteen. I remembered Stick’s words. I recounted the story to Emily.

  ‘The flatmen were getting back late after their di
nner break. They were down the pub, getting bevvied up.’

  ‘Bevvied up?’

  ‘That’s what Sticks called having a beer. Anyway, they were having a beer and getting back late, so the duke had a special clock fitted, rang out thirteen times when it was one of the clock. Crafty sod, that duke.’

  We asked another boatman. He told us that we needed to go back to the aqueduct. The water underneath the bridge was the Irwell. This was the waterway that would take us to Liverpool. I remembered Sticks’s words again. I’d misunderstood what he’d meant. It was only three miles back the way we came, but I was getting tired, my legs and feet were aching, and the thought of retracing our steps made my heart sink. Nevertheless, we turned around and walked back the way we had come to the bridge.

  ‘We’ve got to walk all the way back. Because of your mistake,’ Emily said, shaking her head.

  ‘I didn’t see you correcting my error.’

  ‘I’m not an expert on canals.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  We got back to the bridge, then we dropped down onto a path by the side of the huge expanse of water. As we headed west once more I could feel the sting of another blister, this time on the heel of the other foot. The Irwell was not like the Bridgewater. While the Bridgewater had room for two or three barges, this stretch of water could fit a full fleet and still have space either side.

  We walked along its length, watching the barges and boats snake up and down, carrying their heavy loads. We saw a ship piled up with bales of raw cotton, no doubt destined for the Manchester mills we’d seen half-starved children pour out of. In the opposite direction, going towards Liverpool, we saw a ship loaded up with the finished cloths. There were boats carrying tobacco, sugar, tea and coffee. Spices from faraway countries. All kinds of finery. There were boats everywhere and men working the loads. There were ships powered by sails, but some were pulled by beast. We even saw a boat being dragged by a gang of men.

  ‘Why don’t we get a lift?’ Emily said.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘We’ve got money. We could offer one of the boatmen some bunce to take us to Liverpool.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ I said. I was reluctant to get chatting with anyone for any length of time.

  I thought about Mr Earnshaw. He had walked from Wuthering Heights to Liverpool, as we were doing now, and walked back again with me under his arm, carrying also a whip and a fiddle. He would have followed this route by the river, I imagined. What was Mr Earnshaw travelling to Liverpool for? We had never spoken about it. We had often spoken about my origins.

  You kept changing your mind, Cathy. One of your theories was that I was the son of an Egyptian prince. Another, that I was the son of a Yemeni king. Yet another theory said I’d descended from a Moor of the Maghreb, and we imagined the regal legacy that was due to me. It seemed strange to me now that we had been so curious as to my paternal origins but never about the nature of your father’s journey. He’d risked his life making it. The roads were filled with thieves and vagrants, waiting to stop a man and take his wealth. There were pickpockets and cutpurses who would think nothing of murdering a man for a few shillings.

  An even bigger threat were press gangs. We had heard many horror stories of them grabbing wayfarers and drugging them, making them sign away their lives for the king’s shilling. Then there were those who took the shilling willingly without being insensate with drink or drugs. In a country such as ours, which at least pretends to be free, it becomes a matter of no small surprise that so many thousands of men should deliberately renounce their privileges and voluntarily sell themselves to the most humiliating and degrading slavery, for the miserable pittance of sixpence a day.

  Sticks had told me of those volunteers who had thought they would become soldiers and see the world, but had just ended up with a chest full of lead. He had told me also of the men who had been kidnapped. Grabbed from off the turnpike and tied to the carts. Within a day they were on a boat heading for America to fight the war of independence. Somewhat ironically. I kept my wits about me. I had escaped one form of slavery and was in no rush to volunteer for another. I had my own war to fight. I had my own independence to defend.

  ‘My feet are killing me,’ Emily said.

  So were mine.

  Emily had a cut on the sole of her right foot. She stopped and I examined it. By now I had a third blister to match the other two. We walked in silence, alone in our pain. The rain was braying again now, and I could feel the water dripping onto my head and down my spine. I tried to think warm thoughts. I pictured you naked: the skin which had never seen the sun was as white as milk, and you were lying across the purpling heather. I was on top of you, and inside you.

  Emily scowled and dragged her feet. I resented her presence – she was an uninvited guest. At the same time I felt pity for her. She had nowhere to go, and no one to turn to. Like me she had nothing. We were united by our penury. We were wet and tired and our feet were sore. We stopped by the side of the path to rest. Emmets teemed beneath us. Dodging raindrops. Carrying leaves and other bits of vegetation. I took off my boots and examined my feet. One of the blisters had burst and the wound was bleeding. We were just past a place called Irlam, according to a sign. It was a grim place. Even the sycamore trees looked feeble and sickly. Not quite green enough. The rowan berries looked paler than they did in Yorkshire, more orange than red. Emily was looking up at the sky. The rain was easing off, and she was staring at a white disc, where the sun shone through the mist.

  ‘Do you think God sees us?’

  ‘Whether he does or he doesn’t, makes not a blind bit of difference to me. Unless he throws down two lightning bolts, one for Hindley and one for Edgar, he can kiss my arse.’

  ‘Do you think it is possible to get into heaven when you’ve done a bad thing?’

  ‘Depends on how bad the bad thing is, I suppose.’

  I thought about you, Cathy, saying that heaven was no place for us. You told me of that dream you had, where the angels threw us out in anger onto the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights.

  ‘Because it wouldn’t be fair, would it? If, on no account of your own doing, circumstances arranged themselves around you, and, you know, you ended up doing something really bad, that you didn’t want to do, that you wouldn’t have done, if things had worked out different. That wouldn’t be fair, would it?’

  ‘I don’t suppose it would.’

  I imagined she was thinking about her father but thought it best not to ask. I didn’t care about damnation in eternity, as long as I could get even on earth.

  We got talking to a boatman who was moored near where we were sitting. He was a big black man with skin so dark that I was as pale to him as Emily was to me. He had a huge bald head that looked like a giant lump of coal and shoulders like an ox. He was eating something from a small metal box perched on his knee. He asked us where we had been and where we were going. He told us he’d worked more on the canal than on the river.

  ‘Used to haul coal by cart before that. In them days, you’d have to go back and forth with that cart all day to carry what I can now shift in a morning. Half the time you wouldn’t make it. A wheel would break, you’d get stuck in mud. Robbers. This is loads better.’

  ‘Can you give us a lift?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Shush,’ I said. ‘Sorry about my sister. She speaks out of turn.’

  ‘I’d gladly give you a lift,’ he said. ‘Only, I’m stopping here till tomorrow. Got to pick up an order.’

  We carried on our way. We walked another three or four miles. Our steps getting shorter, our pace slowing. The journey was catching up on us and I could feel every muscle ache. I looked back. Emily was behind me some way now. I stopped a while and waited for her to catch me up.

  ‘I can’t go on,’ she said.

  ‘Keep going.’

  I slowed down to her pace and together we traipsed further on. I was barely aware of our surroundings, just the rubble and mud beneath our feet, but the n
ext thing I saw was a cartwheel in our path. Too tired to walk around it, we stopped. I looked up and saw that it was attached to an open-backed cart with two horses reined to it. There were four men and they were standing around a sack that had fallen off and spilt grain. The man at the front was tall and stocky, with a large bulbous head and long scraggly hair. He scooped up the grain and loaded the sack. He hefted it onto the cart.

  ‘Help us,’ Emily said in a feeble voice.

  The man stopped what he was doing. There was something shifty about his manner. I wanted to shush Emily but it was too late.

  ‘Look at these two,’ he said to his companion, a man with curly hair and a pointy nose. ‘Reminds me of when we were in the army. That thirty-mile hike we did across Dartmoor. Do you remember?’

  The pointy man laughed. ‘I remember the sergeant shouting in our ears till they rang like bells.’

  ‘I bet we looked like them.’

  ‘We need a lift to Liverpool,’ Emily said, in a firmer voice. ‘Where are you heading?’

  The bulbous man shrugged. He whispered to his close companion and gave the nod to the other two.

  ‘We’ve got money,’ I said. ‘We’ll pay you.’

  ‘We are heading that way, as it happens. In’t that right, Bert?’ the bulbous man said to the pointy man. Bert nodded.

  ‘What do you think, lads?’

  The other two men mumbled something.

  ‘How much have you got?’ the pointy man asked.

  ‘Enough,’ I said.

  ‘How much?’

  I pulled out my bag of coins and opened it up.

  The next moment the bulbous man was pointing a gun in my face.

  ‘Hand it over.’

  The barrel of the gun was staring down at me. I should have been afraid, or angry, but I felt nothing. I did as I was told.