The tape keeps running, and it’s empty of anything but static. Is Dad still there, in that room, that moment when he made that recording? Is that him I can hear shuffling around the office, putting things away? Straining to hear more, I put my ear to the speaker.
‘Trudy!’
One word, my name spoken as clearly as it could be, and I am propelled back across the room. It sounded like Abe’s voice!
A whip of lightening brightens the air for the briefest of moments, followed by a dark, grinding roll of thunder. Outside the window, through the dripping wet foliage, I can see the horse mount, and beyond that the five-bar gate that leads down to the Bee Boles stands open. The thunder explodes again, and I realise I can’t remember a time when that gate has ever been unlocked. I don’t know why, but as I leave the house and the rain drives down on the top of my head, I feel like I’m following that voice, Abe’s voice.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
At Ponden, down the lane that leads to the water meadow that the stream runs through, there is a curious construction. As old as the oldest part of the house, known as the Bee Boles, it is shaped like an drunken ‘L’, a drystone building holding several deep compartments just big enough to have once contained handmade straw hives. Here, the Heatons of Ponden would house the wild bees that they had brought down off of the moor, making honey and mead and candles out of the bounty that those industrious little creatures provided. It’s long since been overgrown with weeds and blackberries, but once it meant the world to the house and those that lived in it. It’s a place that both Agnes and Robert would have been very familiar with.
The walk through the woods is slippery, my footprints filling with water the moment I lift my sodden boot, my soaked hair running in rivulets down my back, rainwater stinging in my eyes. At least the worst of the thunder has shifted beyond the horizon, the sound of the sky gradually dulling with distance. Making my way down the steepest part of a track, I reach out for a sapling. Finding no purchase in the slippery moss-covered trunk, I half slide, half fall the rest of the way and arrive in a silvery puddle whose water soaks right through my jeans.
This had better be a hunch worth following.
The boles look like the kind of ancient ruin you might find in the heart of a jungle, so covered in brambles and weeds that, if you didn’t know that they were there, you might almost walk past them, mistaking them for one of the rock formations that make up the cliff at their back. Quite suddenly the rain stops. In a heartbeat, the air is fresh and clean, and a sliver of sunlight brings everything into sharp focus, a kaleidoscope of greens. For the briefest of moments I’m dazzled by the glare of something fiery red, like the flare of an old photograph, and then it’s gone, and all I can hear is the rush of the swollen stream gushing towards the reservoir, and the heavy drops of the last of the rain filtering through the trees.
My hands are tangled and scratched by the brambles as I tug them out of the way, reaching into the strange little drystone bee dwellings one by one. Each dark cavern is choked with webs and creeping weeds, but nevertheless I search them for any hidden hiding space or cranny, trying not to think of the many-legged things tickling across the backs of my hands.
Out of the vast green Eden, there’s a rush of cold wind, and a great force axes into me, knocking me off of my feet. Tumbling backwards, I slide into the long wet grass, the sky spinning overhead, all the breath knocked out of me. There’s a moment before I can breathe in again, and in that moment, just above the ringing in my ears, I think I can hear someone weeping. Is it me? My fingers sink further and further into the boggy mud as I try to gain enough purchase to stand, looking around for whoever or whatever might have landed me to the floor like that. A short, sharp bark sounds and, twisting my head, I see Mab, four paws planted wide, teeth bared, eyes fixed on something in the woods. A flash of something in the foliage and then all is still again.
‘Come here, Mab.’ I reach for her. ‘Come here, girl.’
Obligingly she ponders over, bracing herself as I grab hold of her collar and pull myself onto all fours, flinging my arm over her body, digging into the boggy earth with my left hand to finally push myself free of the sucking mud. Just as I do, my frozen fingertips touch something hard and even colder than I am. Releasing Mab, I dig at the mud, which pools with brown water as soon as I clear a handful away. The iron-scented earth paints my hands and forearms the colour of the hillside, but finally my fingers close around the buried object.
I hear my own groan of effort as I pull free of the ground, falling back onto my rear once again. An old, wide glass jar, covered in thick muck, rests in my lap. Using my sleeve, I smear as much of it away with my hands as I can and see something inside: folded pieces of paper.
Mab regards me with her liver-coloured eyes as if I am the most ridiculous thing that she has ever seen. Perhaps it’s because I am smiling.
Out of nowhere, a thought that doesn’t seem as if it belongs to me presents itself so clearly I find myself speaking it out loud.
‘And now that which cannot be borne, must be borne. That which cannot be borne, must be.’
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I can hear Ma in the living room, chatting to Will as he gets ready for bed, so I creep through the kitchen and upstairs to Cathy’s room to break the seal on the jar.
The house waits patiently as I go to shower in the cold bathroom. Just as I am about to get in, I catch sight of my face in the mirror; the top half of my face is covered in mud, the lower half just spatters. Hesitantly, I reach out and touch the glass as I realise: I look like one of Agnes’s doodled faces. I hurry to wash myself clean in almost freezing water, rapidly changing my clothes, still shuddering even once I’m dry and warmly dressed again. And when I am ready, I set out my equipment and take my position on the floor in the centre of the room, the box bed at my shoulder.
‘Are we ready?’ I ask the room.
I have no choice but to hack away at the wax seal, which has clearly been inexpertly reapplied at some point during its history, although it has done its job preserving the contents. Under that is what looks like pitch-soaked cloth, bound around the thick neck with twine. Eventually I set aside what I can save of the seal, and, tipping the jar up, let the rolled pages fall into my hands. My heart bursts the moment I see Emily’s hand alongside Agnes’s. And there is more, another note, two sentences scribbled onto a torn piece of paper.
This jar was placed here by I, Robert Heaton, in 1848 at the request of my love and true friend, Emily Jane Brontë. She never cared for me as I for her, but she held good faith in me and I have concealed her work as she bade, and it shall remain concealed for always now that she no longer walks this earth.
Emily’s Robert, my great-great-great-uncle who died unmarried, held this secret close to his heart until his very end …
Separating out the papers, I focus on Emily’s letter, noting how her hand is deteriorating, how the sentences roam across the paper with so little direction that it takes me a few minutes to make sense of the words. As I read, I can almost feel the pain in her chest that came with every breath she took, the fever on her brow, the weakness in her arms, and I want to weep for her stoic refusal to concede to her condition.
December
Robert, I do not wish to fear death but I do.
I fear it, and fight against it with every little ounce of strength I have, I shall will it away, Robert. There is little else that I can now write, and indeed, this story pours out of me as if it is being spoken to me by another, and I am simply a scribe.
Charlotte and Anne would wish me to rest more. Papa continues to press the need for a physician to visit which I refuse. I do not wish to rest. I wish for each last moment of my life to be full of living!
Take this second volume. Keep it not with the first, nor with my notes or Agnes’s papers. Separate them, spread them far and wide so that they will not be discovered by any who will seek to destroy them. For they are me, Robert. And her. And she who is not yet born, p
erhaps. But they are not for the eyes of this age that will not recognise a woman’s life as having any value.
I am so weak that holding a pen, seeing the words on the page, is often a trial, but I won’t be halted until I am done.
But if I should fail, Robert, if death comes to take me before I am ready, then I wish you to know of the deepest gratitude and respect I have for you, dear friend, for the gentle love you have shown me when I have often been cold and haughty, cross and sullen.
I have never loved a man. I love the land, the moors and the sky, my dogs and my animals. I love this land that we live in, the imagination that sweeps me away to other worlds, and I like God well enough. I love my family dearly, but most of all I love life, Robert. I care for it as tenderly as if it were a lover. I wish that it would not spurn me, now, for I do not wish to go. I do not wish to go. I shall not go.
Never forget me
Your EJB
Underneath her signature she has sketched a copy of the face that appears again and again in Agnes’s papers. To read of her fear, her refusal to admit what she knows is happening to her, is heart-breaking, and to see how she realised that what she was writing would not be understood, but that she was determined to write it anyway, sets my heart alight with admiration for her. How Robert must have loved her, never turning from her, no matter how many times she spurned him, never losing faith in how much he loved her, not until the day he died, or beyond. Though she would never love him, he never stopped loving her.
This is what I understand about love, now. Love isn’t a transaction; it’s not a quid pro quo. It’s a force that goes far beyond that, a promise and a vow. It’s a declaration that says ‘I will always be at your side, even when you are far from mine. I will never leave you without an ally. I am yours.’
Not all my Heaton ancestors have been good. Some were drunks, some were cheats and liars, but this man – this man loved with honour, and there isn’t very much more a person can do to make a mark on the world, no matter how tiny it is.
As for his ancestor, Agnes’s Robert – did he leave his young lover to her fate or did he return for her? I move to her papers and read on.
1659
It makes no odds what he does to me. I accept it silently, like a good wife, close my eyes and let my mind wander the moors, retracing the paths in the heather and the warm smooth rocks under my back when Robert and I lay together, so perfect in joy that I felt like our love was as much as part of the land as the earth and the rushing water as each other.
But every morning, while he still sleeps, I take the tincture that Betty showed me how to make, so that I may kill any seed of life he might have planted in me.
He will do what he will to me. And I will work to the bone for him, because he has given shelter to me and my babe, but I will not let him bring forth life from me. Life should be made from love, from purity and joy. Not from what he does to me, night after night.
Catherine is my only joy and she is joy enough for a lifetime. She has the look of her father, though none see it but me. And she has hair like mine, as bright as a flame. She is healthy and strong. We see many mothers in the village bury their babes, and all the while Catherine thrives, fattens and grows. Whenever she sees my eyes upon her she smiles in delight. On a Sunday after church, when he is in his cups, I have the greatest joy of taking her to the moors where she may meet her true father, in the clouds in the sky and the whispering wind. I set her down amongst the heather and let her roam, exploring each creature she might find, overturning rocks, discovering pleasure in every inch of mud. She is my delight, my heartbeat, my hope.
Robert is still gone. Betty says they have no word from him, or if they do it is never related to her. Perhaps she speaks the truth, or perhaps she seeks to spare me, imagining me settled and at peace, a wife now, a mother yoked by drudgery. Betty believes that is best, that is safe. But she doesn’t know that whatever it is that is keeping Robert from me now, cannot forever resist the great force of our love. He will return to me, because he cannot do otherwise.
And when he does, Catherine and I will be waiting.
In the meantime I will take my tincture and watch my daughter grow, biding my time because I know my time will come.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Ma sits next to me and we read each sheet silently together, as Will sleeps on the sofa, wrapped in dog. I read a little quicker than her. Having read them once before, my eyes are more used to the old dialect and writing. Sometimes I pause to explain or interpret for her, but there is an unprecedented ease between us, a familiarity that I have never known before. How is it that I have never truly known this woman, my own mother, never really seen her as she is until now? She’s been so lonely for so long, even when Dad was alive, even when I was growing up here, caught up in her stiff upper lip, so busy trying to make the best out of a bad situation that it became impossible for her to reach out for love. And I, who have known love as kind and as gentle as it can be, denied the same to her.
Of all the mysteries that seem to circulate in the air around me, this is one I can’t fathom at all, and yet it is the one that has given me the greatest cause for hope. Slowly, as she reads, Ma’s hand steals into mine and there is a small moment of close calm. A bonding.
Putting aside for one moment the wondrous find of more of Emily Brontë’s words, Agnes’s story is incredible. Not the details of it, perhaps – the number of vulnerable young women seduced and abandoned to fend for themselves throughout history must be impossible to count – but Agnes is extraordinary because she herself has told it.
Try as I might, I can’t think of another story like this, not even the Autobiography of Mrs Alice Thornton that Grace mentioned. Alice, who lived around the same time as Agnes and not so far away, was an educated gentlewoman, compelled to write her life story in response to slanderous gossip. Her account of her trials and tribulations in the Civil War was remarkable enough. But that these journals, by a lowborn servant girl, exist seems almost impossible. She must have been a remarkable soul.
‘Agnes …’ Ma says her name softly in the candlelight. ‘That’s not a name you’ll find on the family tree. Poor lass.’
‘Yes, I know. Somewhere in this house, or on Heaton land, is the rest of Agnes’s story and perhaps Emily’s retelling of it, or at least part of it. If we find it, we make the greatest literary discovery of our age; we give Emily her voice – and we’ll finally know Agnes’s story.’
‘You say she led you to this?’
‘Something led me to it, something more than coincidence. Maybe it’s just that Ponden is in my blood, that I know it as well as any Heaton that has ever lived here, and we’d always choose the same places to hide our secrets. Or maybe she is there, in the lights, in the shadows …’ I think for a moment of my hand trapped in the broken bookcase panelling. ‘In the dark.’
I nod and shrug at the same time, still finding it rather hard to admit to.
‘In my heart, Ma? In my heart I feel like it’s her. A mother – a mother who wants her baby back.’
‘If it is her, couldn’t you just get her to turn up the whole thing all at once and pop it on the table?’ Ma asks a little mischievously, glancing expectantly at the table.
‘I’m fairly sure that’s not how it works,’ I say with a small smile. ‘But I do know that every other piece we have found has been in the house, or in the grounds. Well, almost every other piece. We simply have to take the house apart looking, Ma. Will you help me?’
‘S’pose I’d better,’ Ma says. ‘You never could find your nose in front of your face as a kid.’
‘Mums always find everything,’ I say, thinking of Will’s words. ‘Ma … I think I had to be grown and a mother myself to see how you struggled, to try and understand what you went through when I was a kid. These days there are names for those feelings, postnatal depression, grief. So many reasons why we might not have been close back then …’
‘Agnes.’ Ma speaks across me, chewing at her t
humb. Frowning deeply, she gets up and goes into the kitchen, coming back with a torch.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask her, knocked a little off balance by her change of subject.
‘I’ve just remembered something,’ she whispers. ‘Follow me.’
‘What about Will?’
‘He’ll be safe with Mab,’ Ma says. ‘That dog loves him like her own pup. Come on.’
Reluctantly, I follow her into the hallway, propping the door open with a single workman’s boot that, as far as I can tell, has no partner. Ma opens up the understairs cupboard, which is full of all the things that have ever been put there and forgotten.
‘Are you expecting to find Emily’s second novel in some mismatched wellington boots?’ I ask her as she tosses rubbish out behind her like some burrowing rodent.
‘Don’t just stand there, help me, you great lump,’ Ma instructs as she unloads the contents into the hall. I can see the crescent of Will’s head through the open door and so on I go, moving boxes.
‘What are we looking for?’ I ask her. ‘You haven’t got the rest of Emily’s book tucked away in here, have you, but you forgot to mention it?’
‘You’ll see,’ Ma says, infuriatingly, and when finally the little cavity is cleared, she bends and, with surprising strength, drags a sheet of wood, an old table top, perhaps, out of the cupboard, revealing the top of a flight of stairs.
The Girl at the Window Page 22
