by Paul Magrs
She is too busy talking to old Jack, though. Presumably roving over her old memories of this place, and asking about whatever happened to her two ersatz aunties. But the noise is so fierce that I can’t keep up with their conversation, which has anyway descended into conspiratorial mumblings. I pat the terrier and pour a little Guinness into his empty dish.
Towards the end of the evening and a couple more drinks I’m feeling looser, woozier and less shy. When the folk musicians cajole and hector us, and then start up a jaunty version of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ I see no problem with having a little sing. Effie joins in and we gain confidence as the song goes on, the terrier barking from the bar beside us. We bring the disco classic I never even knew I knew to a rousing climax and the whole of the pub applauds us.
Then it’s closing time and we’re saying goodnight to Jack and his dog. I button up my coat and prepare to walk back down the hill to our chintzy B&B, but it seems that Effie has other plans. She grabs my elbow and steers me round the other way, behind the pub, and up a cobbled alleyway under whispering trees. The sounds of the departing drinkers recede behind us and I’m bursting with questions and wishing I’d nipped to the loo before I realise that Effie is drawing me towards the graveyard.
‘Really? Must we? Tonight?’ I don’t relish the thought of tramping about in this sepulchral place right now. For some reason it gives me the shivers even more than being in the churchyard of St Mary’s in our town. I don’t know why. There’s just something particularly unwholesome about this place. It’s chockablock with gravestones, for one thing, so there’s hardly any room to manoeuvre as I go slipping and staggering after Effie. And also, everything seems to be coated in a kind of ectoplasmic slime – which after the drink I’ve taken tonight could prove quite deadly to a lady of my years.
‘Effie…’ I hiss, as I realise she’s pulling on ahead, not waiting for me. She’s weaving excitedly between the tall headstones. She’s found her pen torch in her handbag and the yellow beam is flickering and bouncing in the mist ahead. Why don’t I have my own torch? ‘Effie…?’
‘I’m here, it’s all right,’ she says.
I move clumsily towards her voice. I take tiny, mincing steps because I know I could slip and break an ankle or a hip at any moment. What’s the matter with me? What is it about this place that’s putting the willies up me? Why am I feeling so vulnerable and strange?
‘Here,’ says Effie, suddenly right beside me. ‘This is where it happened. All those years ago. When I was just a little girl. This is the exact point.’
I glance around ruefully and see that we’re slap bang in the middle of this nasty necropolis. ‘Oh yes?’
‘This is where the spectre came to me. And this is where the ground opened and swallowed me up.’
We stand there for a dreadful moment, as if expecting the same thing to happen now.
‘But what was down there?’ I ask her. ‘Is it any clearer to you? What happened when you fell down the rabbit hole, Effie?’
She looks at me, stricken, and I can tell she doesn’t remember. ‘It was a colder night than this,’ she says, ‘When I came out this way, alone. And the ghost of the young woman came to me…’
At that very moment I hear a twig crack. ‘Effie! Sssh!’
She looks piqued. ‘What?’
‘Didn’t you hear that?’
She frowns again, and we both listen.
‘There’s someone out here with us.’ I’m on alert immediately, glancing around at the graves and wishing we were armed. There could be anyone lurking around these things. They could jump out at any moment.
‘I can’t hear anything now,’ says Effie. She’s feeling around the gravestone nearest her, as if looking for a secret switch or lever that might open up that hole in the ground.
I stand there uncomfortably as she runs her hands over damp stone. Then: crack. Another noise not made by us. Also, I can hear hoarse breathing, somewhere close. ‘Effie…!’
‘Ssshh!’
‘They’re coming closer!’ I’m getting ready to fight them off. My heart is pounding like crazy.
‘There’s no one there, Brenda,’ Effie sighs. ‘What’s got you so jumpy?’
And then she screams as a vast bulk materializes out of the darkness before us. For a second it could be anything. It could be Lucifer himself. But then, in her flailing panic, Effie hits the figure full force with her torch beam and we see the face of old Jack from the pub. He’s clutching his tiny Terrier, Delilah to his chest, and he’s all red and puffing from traipsing round the graveyard.
I’m about to dissolve into relieved laughter when a horrible thought hits me. Maybe he’s not as friendly as he seemed, back in the warmth and jollity of the Branwen Bronte.
Effie fixes him with her gimlet eye. ‘What are you doing, following us, Jack?’
Delilah is yapping with delight at seeing us again. Jack looks flustered. ‘I came looking after you two. It’s no good messing about in the graveyard at night, you know. Folk have seen terrible things out here. Hideous things.’
Effie snorts impatiently. ‘If you’re talking about ghosts, then that’s precisely what we’re interested in.’
‘Are you, now?’ he grunts, eyes narrowing.
‘Yes! So, if you’d just leave us in peace…’
But I can see that Jack has got things to tell us. Perhaps he could be of more help than Effie thinks. ‘Jack,’ I begin. ‘Do you know anything about a tunnel, underneath the graveyard, with a secret opening somewhere about here?’
He glowers at us, as if we are talking about things we oughtn’t. ‘Tunnels, eh? Under the graveyard? Under the parsonage?’
‘That’s right,’ Effie says, watching him shrewdly. ‘You know something about them, don’t you, Jack?’
‘Mebbe I do,’ he says. ‘But you’re not going to find anything by feeling your way around in the dark like that. You two must be frozen. Why don’t you come back to my house, eh? Warm up and have a little supper, eh? And then I can tell you what I know about this place.’
Effie and I exchange wary glances. Can we really trust him? He could get us back to his and try to do anything; make all kinds of terrible suggestions. But I see at a glance that Effie does indeed trust this figure from her distant past. Or perhaps it’s just that she doesn’t have any better ideas. We can’t stay out all night feeling gravestones for hidden levers.
‘We’d be glad to,’ she tells old Jack, and Delilah yaps again, as if she understands.
Jack turns to lead the way. ‘I was going to make some sausage sandwiches. All hot and peppery with tomato sauce. What do you think, ladies?’
I realise we haven’t eaten a thing while we’ve been in Haworth. That’s Effie for you: she’s been so intent on her mission and her memories that she’s got us neglecting ourselves. I almost groan in anticipated pleasure at the thought of Jack’s supper.
He doesn’t live too far from the churchyard. A tiny cottage at the top of the town, where he has lived all his life, he tells us. Inside it’s clean but cluttered, and he shows us indoors with some measure of pride. ‘Been a long time since I had lady visitors.’
As we settle in his front room and he hurries into his galley kitchen to put sausages in the pan, Effie and I are gazing around at the décor and the furniture. All of it is mid-period Victorian, chunky and prim at the same time. The room is lit by gas lamps and there are portraits of very stern-looking people glaring down at us. The other thing I realise – and so does Effie at the same moment – that the room, indeed the whole house, is a memorial to the Bronte sisters. Books, pictures, artefacts. Even china dolls. Everything is placed just so, as if in a shrine. A jumbo portrait of Charlotte in sentimental oil pastels hangs above the fireplace.
We listen to the sausages sizzling and take in all of this stuff.
Effie is away with the fairies, staring at the
Bronte memorabilia. I’m sitting with Delilah on my lap, tickling her warm tummy. Just as I’m wondering whether I should get myself a little dog, Effie suddenly bursts into animated life. She lurches forward in her chair. ‘When I lived here as a girl, I became obsessed with the Bronte sisters. I remember now. How did I ever forget?’ She clicks her fingers. ‘I used to think Charlotte told me things from beyond the grave…’
She hasn’t spoken all that loudly, but there’s a loud clunking noise from the kitchen in response. A second later Jack reappears through the bead curtain and he’s staring at her with a very strange expression, clutching a breadknife.
‘You heard Charlotte? She has come to you, too?’
We both gasp at his funny manner, almost spectral himself. I’m keeping a keen eye on that bread knife he’s waving.
‘Well, I thought that was the case… yes,’ Effie whispers. ‘But I was just a child, Jack. I was a fanciful child, imagining things. The fresh air up here got to me and my blood was singing with vitality from all my running about on the Moors… I was just a girl, Jack…’
There is an avid look on Jack’s ancient, weathered face. A slow, spreading, triumphant grin. ‘Nay, lass. It was more than that. I believe… we believe… that Charlotte really does speak. She makes her feelings plain from beyond the grave, and she still does, to this very day…’
There’s a pause then as he goes off to check the sausages and to make up the sandwiches, during which Effie and I exchange a worried glance. He sounded a bit crazy when talking about Charlotte, but both Effie and I know better than to pooh-pooh anybody’s supernatural encounters. Effie is off in a trance, trying to claw back her memories, and I can sense the frustration rising in her.
Soon the old man is back with plates of doorstep-thick sandwiches. The dog perks up and takes an interest.
‘Here, bring your plates with you,’ he instructs us, and leads up deeper into his darkened house. We’re munching on the most heavenly supper as we follow him up the plushly-carpeted stairs. The air swarms with the scent of singed Cumberland sausage and some kind of incense. A musky, mysterious smell.
On his top landing there is a cupboard and he makes us pause before dramatically throwing open the door. When the glowing shrine is revealed within, Effie almost chokes on a crust.
‘It’s a shrine to the divine Charlotte and her sisters,’ whispers Jack, as we all stare at the plaster figures and the ornate goldleaf trim and the strung fairy lights. He lights incense sticks and tealights and the dog whimpers at our feet at the triumvirate of pale statuettes and the various offerings that lie around them. A dead mouse, curled tenderly. A rook, speared through the breast with a hatpin. Thimbles, Tarot cards, a bottle of blue ink, and a packet of Yorkshire tea. The dead creatures smell rank, though this doesn’t effect the serene expressions on the faces of the Bronte sisters.
I hear Effie’s indrawn breath and feel the pressure of her foot on top of mine as she tries to communicate wordlessly with me. I know she’s telling me that this isn’t right. This is crazy. We’ve got to get out of this place before the old man decides that we could be worthy sacrifices on the altar of the Brontes, too.
‘Do you have an offering for Charlotte, Emily and Ann?’ he asks, all of a sudden.
Effie roots around in her pockets and gingerly places a toffee on the altar. I produce an unused postcard from Paris from my handbag. The Mona Lisa. I’m sure the ghosts of the Brontes will appreciate it.
It’s a relief when Jack shuts the cupboard door and we are free to return to the downstairs parlour. There we eat our sausage sandwiches hastily, and in awkward silence.
‘You’ll stay for another mug of tea?’ he asks hopefully.
The tea is dark and sweet as molasses. It’s left a fur on my tongue. I shake my head and prepare to fasten up my coat and beat a retreat.
But then Effie is saying, ‘You know… this does all ring a bell. The Brontes. The sisters. I did hear them… I heard their voices… they came for me, I think. Can that be right?’
Jack nods with satisfaction. ‘They did indeed. They would take girls away. Certain girls. Special girls they had chosen. They would spirit them away in the night for a year and a day. That was the rumour in these parts. The Bronte sisters had their own chapel school, it was said. Under the earth. And there they would take these girls and teach them things they would need to know.’
I boggle at him. ‘The Bronte sisters stole children?’
‘Their ghosts did, yes,’ he said. ‘And only girls. But not any more. No, never any more. The Bronte girls have been quiet since 1973 or thereabouts. No one has seen hide nor hair, though our congregation pray for them to return to us. They never come.’
I glance at Effie and see that she has gone stark white. The greasy and crumb-covered plate is almost slipping out of her hands. ‘I was one of them,’ she says, the words coming dragged out of her. ‘I was one of their girls. They took me away. For a year and a day. I think I’m remembering now.’
§
It’s me who takes charge, following Effie’s epiphany.
Old Jack tries to stop us. Oh, not with force or anything nasty. Just kerfuffle and eagerness. He’s ecstatic to learn that Effie truly did meet the Bronte ghosts. To an ardent fan and acolyte like him, that makes her the next best thing to a goddess herself. Well, I know it’s no good if anyone starts treating Effie like that. Her head starts swelling up and you can’t get any sense out of her. As I’m bundling her out of his over-furnished cottage it’s like Jack is desperate for a touch of the hem of her mackintosh. He’s gone all worshipful around her.
I usher Effie out into the street and the old man is calling after us, ‘May I see you tomorrow? Will you call on me again?’
I fob him off quickly and send him back indoors. Fancy shouting after us down the street like that!
I’m relieved when we’re alone and hurrying down the main street to ‘Villette’ at last, where hopefully we can get a night’s sleep.
I don’t know how Effie’s going to sleep with all these peculiar revelations whizzing round in her head.
We reach our destination and eventually find the housekeys we were entrusted with. The guesthouse is quiet and still. The single lamp left on in the hall is a kind of mute reproach to our late homecoming. But I don’t care what Mrs Harris thinks of us. I bet she’ll think we’ve been out carousing all night, when we haven’t. There was only a tiny bit of carousing, and after that it was all business for us. Spooky business and uncanny intimations. Not that we’d ever tell our landlady that. Best for her to think we’ve been partying.
In our room Effie sits on her bed and she’s shivering. I help her off with her coat and find her thicker cardy in her case.
‘You should get into bed and rest,’ I tell her.
‘I will do in a minute, ducky,’ she says. Her voice is rather hollow. In the glow of the bedside lamps she’s a shadow of her former self. It’s as if she’s shrunk back down to the size she was as a young girl.
‘Are you disturbed by what you’ve learned tonight?’
She pauses and really thinks about this. ‘I’m not sure. Disturbed, yes. But not unhappy. I’m… excited, I think.’
‘Excited?’
‘Can’t you imagine what it was like, Brenda? I was chosen. They picked me out. Those brilliant women. They knew I was here. They saw the potential in me. While I slept in that room above the grocery store, Charlotte and her sisters knew I was there. They called out to me.’
She’s grinning broadly by now and I’m feeling quite worried that she’s going to have a funny do. A breakdown or something. Can she withstand the emotions and memories that must be flooding through her mind? Surely it’s going to be too much?
‘I spent a year underground in their secret academy,’ she tells me. ‘When I stumbled through the graveyard that night, it was Charlotte who came to greet me and to tell me wh
at would happen to me next. She and I fell down that rabbit hole together. And it led to the secret academy underground. Charlotte’s school for special and talented girls.’
‘And you have never told anyone this?’
‘Never. After a year, the memories faded. No one knew where I had been. The story was that I became lost on the Moors one day. I had got lost up on the tops and there was a storm and I’d never come back. But then… a year and a day after I vanished… I wandered back down from the churchyard and into their shop. This bit I remember so clearly now. My new aunts’ faces when the door clanged open. There was a queue for groceries and everyone turned and looked in shock and dismay when the dead girl walked back indoors.’
Effie hugs herself inside her best cardigan.
‘They never told your aunties at home you’d gone missing?’
‘Just as well they didn’t. Imagine the fuss if they had!’
We both get ready for sleep. As I clean my teeth and take off my layers of make-up and cover my scars in smooth, cool cream, I turn over Effie’s story in my mind. It seems incredible. Almost unbelievable. But who am I to judge? After some of my own stories that I’ve told her and expected her to swallow?
We climb into our twin beds and turn out the lights. We don’t say very much more. We’re both exhausted.
Only Effie says, just as I’m on the point of sleep: ‘Aunt Maude knew it would happen. She knew the sisters would come for me. She wanted me to take the Book of Mayhem to them. My scrapbook filled with the most dangerous spells from those old books of magic. The Brontes would take them for safe-keeping, and train me up to be a witch. That’s what Aunt Maude intended to happen. You see, Brenda? I’ve always been at the mercy of my aunts. My female forebears have always controlled my destiny…’
And the next thing I know, we are both asleep.
§
Breakfast is a miserly affair, I must say. Sporty Mrs Harris who owns ‘Villette’ dashes in wearing her pink velour tracksuit and tells us that she simply doesn’t hold with cooked breakfasts. There are a variety of mueslis on offer, which she has mixed with her own fair hand. Well, that puts me off for a start.
