Changing Heaven

by Jane Urquhart

  Ann discovers portraits of small people in the next room and senses that, after these statements of brutality, the absent children would be a relief. Entering, however, she is surprised by a collection of dwarfs, each more cynical, more knowing than the last. This is immediacy. They, unlike the frozen children, leap live from the canvas right into the territory of Ann’s childhood. Grotesque, accessible imps and elves, behind whom unfurl more and more rooms of chaotic injustices.

  Ann feels safe with these lively deformations. “Velazquez dwarfs,” her mother whispers, having at last torn herself away from Saturn’s murderous activities.

  Then, five rooms down, on a facing wall, Ann sees it: a familiar leg, from which is being pulled a familiar piece of clothing. Ann propels her mother straight through five doorways, past the El Grecos, past the Titians, past the Raphaels until the painting is there, directly in front of them. All the disciples, the pitcher, the bowl, the water, the tile floor, the table, the plate-all the details Ann has memorized at the Art Gallery of Toronto since the painting’s arrival three years before, after the money was raised.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” says her mother.

  Ann knows now that what she purchased was a square inch of fraud, a square inch of betrayal. Judas, she notices, is a major figure in the painting.

  In the hotel room at siesta time Ann takes off her skirt, leans back against the two large pillows she has placed behind her, and searches through her portable Penguin edition of Wuthering Heights for a suitable section concerning lies and betrayals: those particular lies, those particular betrayals that affect children. She settles for the part where Hindley has locked the young Heathcliff in the garret (Ann can see the garret). Catherine tiptoes up the stairs away from the guests who are listening to the Gimmerton Band, and slips out onto the roof through one skylight and into the attic by another.

  Ann imagines the roof. It is December. From the roof you would be able to see almost all the way to Gimmerton. Catherine, cat-like on top of Wuthering Heights, would not feel the wind that buffeted her. She would look for a moment towards the sky, see scudding clouds and a partial moon. The wind would force the fabric of her skirt up against her legs so that she would have to fight cloth and wind and slippery shale to get to him-the betrayed one-where he crouches in the dark. She would have to open the glass and drop lightly down to his side. There would be no colour there. The two children would be fumbling, murmuring, grey shadows. From the lower sections of the house they would hear what the pious old servant, Joseph, called the Devil’s psalmody; the songs of the Gimmerton Band. Ann can see the whole Gimmerton Band, “mustering fifteen strong: a trumpet, a trombone, clarionets, bassoons, French horns and a bass viol, besides singers.” The light of the lamps and candles flickering on all that brass.

  Ann can see the whole house now, as if someone had removed a wall, or as if it were an architectural plan. She adds all the detail she can: the fire in the kitchen hearth, the crumbs on the table, the double flight of stairs, and the empty chambers on either side of them. The two children whispering in the attic, heads bent towards one another, their hands touching and separating, touching and separating. Beyond them the winter moors, the rapid clouds, the moon, the wind, the wind. “The Holly and the Ivy,” the French horn slightly off-key.

  All of this in a Madrid hotel room while in a vast building, in another part of the city, groups of tourists take no notice of the hot plate, dead centre on the table in the real, the authentic, the actual Tintoretto.

  ARIANNA ETHER awoke into darkness dressed in her long white nightgown, or perhaps a garment even lighter, so easily did it move around her body. She was lying flat on her back in a place that was soft, yet strong with a strength of its own. She had no recent memories in her mind, only a feeling of being “lighter than air” and a sense of pure well-being.

  Happy, happy, happy wailed the wind around her. Heartfelt hallelujahs, it added and then, Hallowed, hallowed, hollow.

  Arianna was perfectly still. Only her eyes moved. There were no familiar walls to tell her where she was. But she found, to her surprise, that she didn’t care much one way or the other. She discovered, as she gazed, only the same piercing stars she had seen the night before and a perfume that the wind blew towards her.

  Hosanna, hosanna, howled the wind, breathing more and more perfume into Arianna’s vicinity. Heather, it added, rather softly, nudging Arianna towards recognition of her whereabouts.

  “Of course,” whispered Arianna, memory creeping back to her, the white wheels of memory creaking, working again with great effort as if throwing off years of rust.

  What is memory, Arianna?

  “Of course, I fell into the heather.” And there, she thought, turning her eyes slightly to the right, is my balloon. How white and lovely it looks against the black, my balloon, and how it waits there for me to climb back into it and return it to him now that he loves me.

  Helium, helium, snarled the wind as if unhappy with the direction that Arianna’s mind was taking her. Hogwash! it added.

  Help! thought Arianna, for it hadn’t occurred to her to use her voice. And then, I wonder what part of the moors I’ve fallen into?

  Hag, hag, helped the wind.

  Well, thought Arianna, you needn’t be nasty! And then in enormous happiness she laughed at herself talking, if silently, to the wind. And it seemed as if the wind laughed as well in a breathy, sobbing sort of way.

  Hello! it suddenly said. Then, disposing of “h’s” for a while it made a definite statement, several in fact, in a clear, unbreathy, female voice.

  “A hag,” it announced, “is not only an ugly old woman much like a witch, it is also a soft place in a moor, or a firm place in a bog. A respite of sorts one way or the other. You are, therefore, lying in a hag-a heathery hag, if you must know-lucky you. And at the right time of year, I might add. One week later! – had you fallen one week later the blossoms, the perfume would be gone. Until next August, of course, which may be sooner than you think.”

  “What?” said Arianna, her voice rising happily. “This is mad.” Single words sighed by the wind she could accept but dictionary definitions were something else altogether. She sprang to her feet, or rather floated, so extraordinarily lighter-than-air did she feel. She whirled ecstatically around in the wind, searching for the source of its voice in much the same way that she had danced, earlier in the day, around and around the room with Jeremy, until she became quite dizzy. Stopping, she used the sight of her balloon for ballast until she had to admit that it was not her balloon at all but rather the full moon which, tonight, had not yet gone down. Turning away from it, but not with disappointment, she was confronted by the pale face and clear blue eyes of a young woman who was almost as thin as herself, but who was dark rather than fair.

  “Nobody knows anything,” continued the woman, for it was she who had defined the hag. “You see that little knoll yonder?”

  Arianna, slightly in shock from her sudden awareness of the woman’s presence, craned her neck to examine the spot to which the woman pointed. And there, at the end of a series of billowing hills was a smaller one-rather regular in formation.

  “That is Hob Hill,” the woman announced, “and you think a hob is a fireplace, don’t you? Something you put your kettle on. Admit it, that’s what you think.”

  Arianna nodded, suspecting that she was wrong.

  “Wrong!” said the woman. “A hob is a little friendly spirit who slips into your kitchen at night when you are sleeping and helps you with your household chores. Sweeps up, mops down, et cetera. Since he is a little person, his hill, his moor, has to be smaller than these” – the woman gestured around her in all directions – “and so there it is. And if you don’t believe me then you are a fool!”

  “I didn’t say I thought it wasn’t true.”

  “You believe it then?”

  Arianna was silent for a moment, thinking. “Yes,” she eventually replied.

  The woman visibly relaxed. “Wel
l, that’s a good thing,” she said to herself, “particularly under the circumstances.”

  “Anyway,” she said to Arianna, “let me continue. These hobs can grow, if you want them to, into almost anything that you want them to be. Then, of course, they start changing their names and demanding more space. Space,” she repeated, looking around her, “then they need a lot more space.”

  Spa-a-a-c-e, roared the wind.

  “They’ll take over anything, everything. I’m sure you know the Celtic rhyme: ‘First he sweeps, then he polishes, then he grows up, and demolishes.’”

  Arianna didn’t, but at the moment felt it safer to remain silent.

  The woman was clearly warming to her subject. “After they grow they’re not so friendly any more. But they still belong to you. Completely. They are all yours. He is all yours.” The woman crossed her arms and looked at Arianna meaningfully. “Then, of course, he is a demon – utterly horrifying-but infinitely more interesting, I’m sure you’ll agree, than a little elf with a broom in his hand.

  “The question is,” the young woman mused, “why do one’s demons stick to one?” She looked at Arianna closely. “Because,” she answered herself, “one has created them, after all, one way or another, and so to them, whether they like it or not, one is mother, one is home.”

  After uttering this last word the woman sat on a rock and looked rather sadly towards the village where Arianna had slept the previous night. “Home,” she said again, but much more quietly.

  Arianna began to feel vaguely afraid. Her childhood, which had begun to nag her the day before, now made a reappearance. She remembered witches and how they were reputed often to live out on the moors, where they collected poisonous herbs and chanted weird words. They had also lived, she now suddenly remembered, in the wardrobe at the south end of her bedroom. Or at least, one had. She could recall every leathery line on the creature’s face, every wart. She resembled Aunt Agnes, who came to tea on Thursdays and who disapproved of children’s laughter. She resembled this woman not in the least.

  Witch, whispered the wind. It appeared to have calmed down somewhat, but, in fact, it was merely taking a rest so that it could gather strength.

  From this one witch, this one cupboard, Arianna’s childhood bedroom, in its entirety, recreated itself in her mind. The papered walls, the shelves for picture books and dolls. Six pennies hidden in a drawer. Five small white dresses where the witch was. A parasol, much loved. The hobbyhorse, a friend during the day, a terrifying enemy at night when he turned from white to grey. The whole world as it existed before her mother died and her father took to drink. Arianna began to visualize a little silver locket that she had forgotten until now. One that, to the child’s sorrow, would not open because it was not made to. Just a solid, shining heart to hang, bright, against white cotton.

  “I had one that opened,” said the woman, “with a lock of my mother’s hair inside, but it wasn’t as pretty as yours.”

  Arianna was startled out of her pleasant reverie. “What was that?” she asked.

  “I said that my locket opened but didn’t have such pretty engraving.”

  “How do you know?” Arianna approached the woman now and scrutinized her pale face. “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  “It was perfectly clear. Your little bedroom and then you, small, trying madly to open the tiny silver heart. It was all right here.” And the woman pointed to a boggy area vaguely to her right. “And, I suppose you’ve been trying to open an impossible heart since then, haven’t you? We always do these things at least twice. If at first we don’t succeed we become obsessed. It’s very simple. What’s your name?”

  “Arianna Ether.”

  “Oh, no, it’s not.”

  Arianna confessed. “It used to be Polly Smith but now it’s Arianna Ether.”

  “No, now it’s Polly Smith again. You were having some very strong memories. Arianna Ether had very few memories, n’est-ce pas? Hard at work in the here and now picking away at some closed heart. Where are we, by the way, these days in the here and now? What year is it?”

  “How can it be that you don’t know? It’s 1900, the turn of the century.”

  “Well, even that’s debatable. Maybe it’s the turn of the last century, or maybe it’s the turn of the next century, or maybe the centuries have stopped turning altogether. Who cares? Why did I ever bother to ask? Curiosity, I guess. Good thing you are out here. You might have still been picking away at that closed heart at the turn of the century after the next.”

  “That heart,” said Arianna/Polly with dignity and pride, “is open now.”

  “Really?” asked the woman with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “Black hair? Perfect profile? I have my doubts.”

  “How do you know?” asked Polly, “What are you?”

  “I am exactly the same as you,” said the woman, “Look, I’ll have a memory and you tell me what it is.”

  And Polly/Arianna, unpractised though she was, did see a coal fire and an unhealthy little boy sitting near it writing in a tiny notebook.

  “The boy?” she asked.

  “My brother.”

  “The fire?”

  “Our parlour.”

  “Then are we both witches?” asked Polly/Arianna, horrified at the thought.

  “No,” replied the woman. “We’re both ghosts.”

  “You mean I’m …?”

  “As a doornail.” The young woman extended her arm towards Polly/Arianna as if to congratulate her. As if to shake her hand.

  It took several moments for Arianna to grasp this information. “It’s not true,” she said at last.

  “Oh, truth,” said the woman vaguely, “I’d forgotten all about that. Facts, I suppose she means.” Then, looking at Arianna, “The facts are: we’re ghosts.”

  “It’s not true. I feel … I’m supposed to fall; but the parachute-”

  “Didn’t open.”

  “I must get back to him,” announced Polly/Arianna, floating as quickly as possible to a standing position. “He’ll be waiting and oh, God, he’ll be angry. Where’s my balloon? What wild wind! Where did it take my balloon? I must get back to him!”

  “Him, him,” hummed the wind.

  “You mean you want to haunt him?” asked the woman. “Because if that’s what you mean it can be easily arranged.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I want! I want to haunt him. Haunt him. I want him and I want him to want and to love me!”

  Hurly burly, burly burly! chanted the wind. Haunt, haunt, haunt!

  “Personally,” said the woman, “if you want my opinion, and even if you don’t, I think that haunting is a waste of time. Mooning around rather, when there’s so much to be done out here. And now that there are two of us there’s twice as much. All this sorting and sifting and settling of accounts. Mountains of memory after you’re dead!”

  “I’m not dead.”

  “Yes, you are, and so am I. Only I’ve been dead a little longer.”

  Suddenly it began to snow-fiercely. The little black village disappeared from sight. Every feature of the landscape was shut out by white. Arctic weather.

  “This is my home, where whirlwinds blow, where snowdrifts round my path are swelling. ’Tis many a year, ’tis long ago, since I beheld another dwelling,” chanted the woman.

  “What’s all that?” asked Arianna in confusion.

  “Oh … just something I wrote.”

  “Well, it seems quite strange to me.”

  “Yes, I was quite morbid, really. It’s amazing how much I’ve cheered up since I’ve been dead.”

  The wind roared through the two women.

  “Do you always get blizzards like this in September?” asked Polly/Arianna.

  “Sometimes. But it’s not September any more. It’s probably, let me see, February. When you are dead, time has no meaning and weather is more capricious.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Arianna, but to her surprise rather light-heartedly, “I gue
ss I really am dead. He was handsome and now I’m dead. What’s your name?”

  “Emily Jane Brontë. I wrote a book, but I’m not sure that matters. Brontë means thunder in Greek.”

  “No, it’s not,” said Arianna, astonished at her own sudden knowledge. “It’s not Brontë, it’s Brunty. Your father changed his name. Was he a lot like thunder?”

  “No … yes. Now he is like memory.”

  “So, if we decide not to haunt, what exactly do we do out here?” Arianna surveyed the wastes all around her.

  “We remember,” said Emily. “And now that there are two of us we’ll watch each other’s memories and tell each other stories.”

  “True stories?”

  “Oh … truth …” said Emily, vaguely. “Whatever you want, I don’t mind much, really, one way or the other. It depends on what you remember … whether you remember the ideas or the objects.”

  “I remember him,” said Arianna. “I remember hope.”

  “Yes, memories of hope are good. A beautifully unrequited state and very memorable. You hoped …”

  “I hoped all the time for a house.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Emily, now surrounded by the spring flowers on the moors. “Yes, I see it. Let’s remember houses. We could talk about building them.” She hugged her transparent knees in anticipation. “You must tell me the story of that house. You don’t still want to haunt, do you?”

  “Well, not just yet,” said Arianna, who was already beginning to construct the story in her mind. “But maybe this house we never built was already haunted … by something.”

  “Oh, good,” said Emily sitting, now, cross-legged at her companion’s feet, “a ghost story! I just love ghost stories!”

  Ghosty, ghosty, chuckled the wind, and in quite a lyrical fashion for, by now, it was summer.

  THE HIGHWAY.

  Its arrival in the province has, for Ann, heralded the end of an era. And the beginning of another where four lanes sew the disparate parts of her life together like a long, grey thread. The highway connects everything: the countryside and the city, the known and the unknown. It makes certain of her mother’s friendships possible to maintain. It reduces distance to a manageable time frame. It connects the house in the city with Ann’s mother’s past-a village and a farm in a rural landscape that becomes, with the advent of the highway, a miraculous hour and a half away. An hour and a half of grey speed and you are able to enter the nineteenth century; its general stores, its woodstoves, its large high-ceilinged rooms, its dusty gravel roads.