The Girl at the Window

by Rowan Coleman

  Summer was at its height, and for once it was a clear, warm day, so the footpaths were busy, bustling with tourists. It was almost certain that I would be seen, Tru Heaton with an unknown male of the species, but I was gambling on it not getting back to Ma.

  I’d sat on the bench outside, and waited. When he came striding up the alley, I remembered his height, the breadth of his shoulders and the way that he moved. Looking at him took my breath away, and it was like every little bit of intimacy that we’d built between us in ink was washed away. Suddenly I was encased in shyness.

  ‘Trudy?’ He spoke my name as if he didn’t recognise me, and perhaps he didn’t, I worried. Perhaps he’d imagined an entirely different girl from the one who stood there now in ripped jeans and one of Dad’s old shirts. In my letters I’d been bold, and brave, capricious and flirtatious. I’d painted myself in primary colours. Me in the flesh – average height, average build, average grey eyes, a sunburned nose and a cloud of curly brown hair that tended to frizz – was so much less than the versions I’d created on paper, that all at once I’d wanted to curl in on myself and vanish.

  Nevertheless, I stood up to greet him and we hugged briefly, all wrong angles and hard edges, clashing without quite touching.

  ‘I’m here, then.’ Abe shoved his beautiful hands in his pockets.

  ‘You are,’ I said. ‘I thought we’d go to the Falls, and then up to Top Withens.’ Even as I said it I was regretting my words. That was an hour’s walk at least, and here was this stranger, tall and dark, a veritable Heathcliff, and all I really wanted to do was to go home and read about being in love instead. It would have been so much easier.

  ‘This is weird, isn’t it?’ Abe said after a few moments of us not talking, not quite looking at each other, and I loved him for it. ‘Shall we just walk and wait for it not to be?’

  Abe walked so much faster than me that I was out of breath trying to keep up with him, until he slowed, picking his way down the narrow rock path that led to the deep, dark greens of the leafy valley that leads to Brontë Falls. A small party of walkers was already heading up the hill on the other side of the bridge and I knew that, on a day like today, it wouldn’t be long before someone else appeared.

  It had been my dream to bring him here to this place, to watch his face as he took in the wild beauty of it; heard the sound of the white water tumbling down the scar cut into the hillside, where the limestone boulders left by glaciers were scattered down the hill like pebbles that had been kicked there by a giant. Three slender sister silver birches on the bank peered into the water, their canopies nodding in the breeze as if they were agreeing with each other about how perfect the view was, and the persistent call of curlews echoed one another, minute by minute. I wanted him to love it as I loved him; I wanted him to love it as he loved me. Then, as we stood on the little stone bridge, water rushing under our feet, his fingers reached out towards me and my fingertips met his in return.

  ‘We haven’t said a word to each other,’ Abe said, looking down into the bubbling, coppery water. ‘It hasn’t stopped being weird.’

  ‘I know.’ I didn’t dare move for fear of breaking that slight contact. ‘I thought it would be like …’

  ‘The letters,’ he said. ‘Me too, but it turns out that writing to you – it’s not the same as standing next to you. Writing to you I’m funny and smart, thoughtful, deep and devastatingly attractive. But standing next to you, I’m – I’m trembling because you’re near me, Tru. My knees have gone to jelly.’

  ‘Abe, I—’ I can’t remember now what I thought I was going to say to him, but whatever it was the moment was lost as the clatter of chatter chimed around the corner, a group of women, laughing and talking, their conversation falling into silence as they passed us.

  ‘Were you about to say I repulse you in real life?’ Abe asked me. He looked at me then, his dark eyes searching my face so keenly that for a moment it was all I could do to simply return his gaze.

  ‘Opposite, actually,’ I said. ‘That’s the problem, your knees are like jelly and I’ve forgotten how to speak.’

  ‘I want to be alone with you,’ Abe told me just as the next group of walkers appeared.

  I slotted my fingers into his and closed my eyes for a moment as I felt the friction of his palm against mine. And then I led him, step-by-step, moment-by-moment away from everywhere else.

  We walked in silence again, for what seemed like a long time, but this time there was the connection between us. For no matter what rocks we had to climb, or walls we had to negotiate, some part of my body was constantly in contact with some part of him, and each time we touched it was like an unspoken promise, a tiny charge detonating.

  Eventually, the footpath went one way, leading up to Top Withens, and that’s where we left it, and I took him down, deeper into the shadowy cool of the valley, tracing the banks of the stream until we came to a place where a thick copse of young trees sheltered us from view with their constantly moving canopy.

  At the very last moment I let go of his hand to pick my way over the stones in the stream to the mossy bank on the other side, turning back to look at him. Instead of following me, he just stood there across the water, watching me.

  ‘Are you coming?’ I asked him. ‘It’s dry here.’

  ‘I …’ He dropped his head. ‘I never really wanted something as much as this before. I’m scared it will go wrong.’

  ‘Well, I know. I’m the same. But it’s just us, Abe. We’re just the same people that we are when we write letters, and we’ve got all the time in the world to get it right, our whole lives to get it right …’

  I bit my lip, closing my eyes in horror. ‘I don’t mean … I’m not saying that I want to get heavy or anything … what I mean is …’

  When I looked up he was at my side.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said, taking my hand in his. ‘We’ve got our whole lives to get it right. We should start practising now …’

  What happened after that appears in my memory like a cloud of colours, a rainbow made up of endless, glorious hours of discovery.

  If I close my eyes now I see a burst of red and amber, I can still feel the residual heat of that day, the warmth of his mouth on my skin, the feel of his hips against mine, the thrill and the wonder of everything that was new and all that was familiar.

  The deep, abiding miracle of falling in love.

  CHAPTER SIX

  There was a different quality to the cold when I woke up this morning. Sharper, somehow, than just the long sunless hours of the night. Will was already up and when, wrapped in my sleeping bag, I stepped outside my room, the temperature was a little milder, just enough to make me stop and think about the hole in the ceiling and the roof beyond. I was on my way to see if Will was in Cathy’s room, when I heard his laughter from downstairs.

  I stood at the top of the stairs, leaning in to listen, and it seemed to me the house was listening too, every one of its usual creaks and sighs silent as I heard Will’s chatter. Of all the things I’d ever imagined it was certainly not Ma making Will laugh like the little boy he was. But his arrival in the house had stirred the still air, as I’d known it would. The next generation of Heatons had come home. Even in all this sadness it was something to feel glad of, from the heights of the rafters to the dankest depth of the cellar.

  When I entered the living room, though, Will was alone, sitting on the rug next to the fire, a paper filled with a drawing at his feet, amongst an assortment of felt-tip pens. His eyes were full of laughter as he looked up at the windows, where the very scant traces of dawn were just beginning to ebb in through the overgrown foliage. The frayed edge of a memory tugged at me, a little bit like walking into the room and finding myself there.

  ‘Oh, where’s Granny?’ I asked, looking around for the source of his amusement. He shrugged, and tucked his hands under Mab’s solid body, hiding something.

  ‘Who were you talking to, then?’ I felt an uncertain smile hovering on my lips, and
I was almost reminded of something … something that fell just outside of my grasp.

  ‘No one.’ Will grinned conspiratorially. ‘The cold woke me up so I came down here to draw by the fire. Granny said her back hurts and she was going to bake a cake.’

  ‘A cake?’

  Will nodded, and I got the distinct impression he was waiting for me to go so he could get on with his game.

  ‘Do you like my drawing?’ He handed it to me, and I stared for a few moments at a rather unprepossessing large undulating snake writhing in hurriedly scribbled green grass. Not his normal subject of planets or space stations, but it had been so long since he’d drawn anything at all that I loved it anyway.

  ‘How marvellous,’ I told him.

  ‘Will you keep it safe?’ he asked. ‘Put it in a safe place?’

  ‘I shall put it on Granny’s fridge at once,’ I promised him. ‘And while I’m there, I’ll make you some hot chocolate.’

  The second I walked out of the room, Will burst into laughter again and I heard him say, ‘She didn’t see you.’

  I find Ma bent over an old cracked mixing bowl, labouring with a wooden spoon. I discover a roll of masking tape in one of the drawers and tack up Will’s drawing.

  ‘I don’t know what that is, but it brightens the place up,’ Ma says, squinting at it.

  ‘Are you baking at six a.m.?’ I ask.

  ‘Lad looks like he needs feeding up,’ she says, without glancing up from her work. ‘Skinny little thing. Vegetables and hummus and the like – it’s all very well, but you need fat on your bones to get through a winter up here.’

  ‘I’ve made an appointment with this historic buildings renovation expert called Marcus Ellis; he’s going to come round and assess the house tomorrow.’

  ‘Marcus Ellis?’ Ma looks up at me. ‘Sounds like an idiot.’

  ‘His reputation says that he is the opposite of an idiot. And he grew up round here and knows Ponden, so he’s the best call, I’d say. I know you won’t like people in the house, Ma, but we have to save Ponden. She’s falling to bits, and we can’t let that happen. She’s always taken care of us.’

  ‘I know that.’ Ma works the cake batter with a violent vigour, her other arm pinning the bowl to the table. ‘It’s been too much for me these last couple of years, since the … since I got that bit older. I did my best, on my own. But this place costs a lot. More than I got. More than you’ve got.’

  ‘I know.’ I pour a lukewarm cup of tea from the pot she’s made, and sit down at the table to watch her. Outside, the earth is slowly bowing towards the sun, drawing wisps of colour into the expanse of night, revealing the grey-green of the trees, a hint of purple hillside glowing in the gloom. ‘It’s no one’s fault.’

  ‘You weren’t here,’ Ma says, pausing to glance at me. ‘It were your fault.’

  Eighteen years ago I’d have risen to greet that barb, just like she wanted me to. But this morning, in the kitchen still half filled with night, I let it pass along with the darkness.

  ‘The point is, this house, it’s more than just about us, Ma, it’s about history. And the Brontës, and all the Heatons that have been, and all the ones to come. So we need to take care of it. Until Abe is officially …’ The words thicken in my mouth. The idea that I was about to say ‘until Abe is officially declared dead’, like it was some kind of inconvenient admin, makes me gag. ‘Until Abe is found there is no insurance money, and I don’t have much, but I started saving a little when Will was born. And I think I have enough for the roof. And if we get Cathy’s room up to scratch then we can let people come and visit it for a pound.’ Ma spoons cake batter into two tins, and the smell tastes of Sunday tea and Songs of Praise. ‘Maybe you could make cream teas for visitors and then we could charge them ten pounds?’

  ‘Strangers tramping in and out all day. Tourists. Southerners,’ Ma says, growling. ‘How many cream teas would have to get served to make any money?’

  ‘I don’t know Ma, it’s just a thought, a start,’ I say. ‘All the farming land was sold off years ago – not that you or I would know what to do with it if it hadn’t been. We’ve got this great big house, and we’ll lose it if we don’t find a way to make it work. Probably a southerner’ll buy it. And we will be the Heatons that lost the house, after almost five hundred years. I don’t want that, and neither do you. We might not see eye to eye over some things, but we both love Ponden.’

  ‘It were never really my house,’ Ma says, pausing for a moment, taking in the emerging view. ‘But I did my best.’

  As I sit there, I think about reaching out for her hand, making amends, building bridges, but try as I might I can’t make my leaden fingers move from the table top. I’d thought that maybe the anger had drained away, that after all these years and the birth of my son, it had ebbed into nothing. But it’s still here, burning bright and hard in the centre of my chest, together with its twin, the same insistent question: why didn’t my mother ever love me?

  ‘I’ll do as I see fit then,’ I say, and I leave her to her baking.

  Now the winter axis is almost complete and night is due again. I spend the day in Cathy’s room. Washing the windows clean, sweeping away the cobwebs, and even vacuuming the carpet I’m planning to rip, out, just because it had to be at least 50 per cent dust. Once it’s done, I turn around in the centre of the room to take it all in, all the time captured there, unable to resist lying on the half-cleaned carpet to enjoy the simple quiet.

  Beams of ancient oak – forked branches still intact – vault above me, keeping the high ceiling up, no matter what weather the last half century has flung at them. The lower beams are braced against the stalwart walls, reinforced at some time with great black iron bolts. A jigsaw puzzle of repair and renewal – evidence of dozens of pairs of caring, careful custodian hands. Three stone-framed windows gather in all the last light of the day, turning the space into a prism of sorts, refracting and reflecting the whole of the glory of the moors and concentrating the essence of all that outside beauty inside this one place. I feel what I have always felt when I am here: that I’m walking amongst giants and navigating the clouds.

  No one has ever slept in this room, not as long as I’ve been alive, anyway, and I’ve never thought to ask why because it seems obvious: it’s already occupied by all the life that already lived here.

  The light bulb flickers as a gust of wind pipes down the chimney and blows ash into the room, along with a blast of freezing air. I shudder suddenly, seeing myself from above, at the windows, peering in.

  There’s still more work to do before I can rest; I need to get this carpet up before Marcus Ellis arrives first thing.

  Plunging the elderly box-cutter knife I found in the kitchen drawer into the worn blue wool, I drag it in stuttering starts and stops through the brittle material, and dust, mould and rotten bits of rubber are flung upwards. I hack and saw at the carpet, finally freeing a chunk, and the secret subterranean world between it and the floorboards I’m excavating is finally uncovered, and the discovery makes this archivist smile.

  When I look at what lies beneath, I realise why there is always a faint whisper and crackle accompanying every footstep in this room. The boards have been lined with newspapers, layer upon layer of them, by the looks of it, yellowing but dry and intact, which I suppose must be good news when it comes to the state of the boards beneath.

  Sheet by sheet, I begin to rip them out. Red-topped tabloids, mostly – that’s what Dad was into: footballers and Page Three girls – but my hands stop tearing, my heart stops beating, as I come across a half-finished crossword.

  I’m looking at Dad’s handwritten scribbles in the margin. They speak in a whisper, a long-distance hello from a lazy sunny day thirty years ago, welcoming me home. Carefully, I cut this hidden fragment of him out, holding it for a few minutes in the palm of my hand, before going to my room to unpack one of the acid-free cardboard folders I brought from London. There can’t be a better place to start my Heaton archive t
han with this fragile fragment of my dad, a tiny second of his life caught in biro forever. Dad used to make me laugh like no one else could, tell a story like no other man alive. These marks he made, they are him. Waiting here, woven into the house like so many Heatons before.

  Carefully, now, I peel back layer upon layer of paper. Under that I find sheets of patterned, mismatched lino. Carefully, I cut that away – and the first thing I see is the face of Lily Cove, a sweet young woman I know very well.

  She is one of Ponden’s ghosts, after all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘PARACHUTIST KILLED – TERRIBLE DEATH OF A YOUNG WOMAN’ reads the headline of the Lincolnshire Chronicle dated 16 June 1906, and there is Lily Cove, a grainy image of a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl, full of grit, jaw set in determination.

  One Halloween, when I was about nine, Dad took me down into the back field to show me the place where Lily met her death.

  I can still smell the sharp scent of wood smoke in the air and taste the mist coming up off the reservoir, filling the hedgerows and ditches with pockets of fog. I could have felt frightened, but I didn’t, because I was with Dad, and wherever Dad was, I felt safe.

  Halloween was my favourite tradition at Ponden Hall, because it really was just ours. No one ever came round our way trick or treating, and there was no one for us to call on for miles around, so Dad made a fire in the back garden and we’d toast marshmallows and he’d tell me ghost stories.

  Not of vague and dimly imagined dark, dark woods, or generic abandoned empty houses, though. His ghost stories would also be my ghost stories, because every single one of them belonged to the house. Every death, every tragic accident or brutal murder, was part of my Heaton inheritance.

  ‘June 1906,’ Dad had told me, his torch up-lighting his face. ‘At that time there was a fashion up and down the country for scantily clad young ladies to ascend high into the air on a trapeze attached to a hot air balloon and then parachute down to earth, delighting the crowds below with their daring and a flash of their thighs!’