Theft

by Luke Brown

  A tour guide in the hall outside was explaining about Branwell’s ambitious affair with Mrs Robinson, mother of the children he and Anne were hired to teach. When her husband had died, Branwell had been convinced she would send for him.

  I backed out and into Emily.

  ‘This room is quite something,’ I said. ‘Look: he’s been reading a copy of his own poem in the newspaper.’

  ‘All these candles. I’m surprised he’s never set his bed on fire.’

  We peered around the room, like a forensics squad.

  ‘Do you think people, er? Goths, er?’ she said, indicating the rumpled sheets.

  We looked down at them together and back at each other.

  ‘Are you propositioning me?’ I asked.

  ‘I wonder what’s through here,’ she said, stepping through the door and out into a long room, full of letters and trinkets behind glass. I left her to it after a while, and wandered downstairs to the shop and then out onto the lawn where I sat on a bench and looked up at the front of the house. It was still drizzling. I put my hood up and felt damp creep into the seat of my jeans. There was more of an aura here, looking at the famous parlour from outside, where we would always be. I imagined the industry on the other side of the window, anger finding form, the money invested in the boy who was eclipsed by his sisters, whose achievements he never once mentioned in a letter, and which might have been kept from him. But of course he knew. I imagined being on the other side of the glass. Looking out at the bleached days of winter when the trees were stripped clean. The hope of the new bloom and the light. The feeling of being on the verge of some great unveiling, some beauty arriving to make sense of all the deaths and scarcity. Bitterness taking weight, itself and its cure, something to shape and send out.

  *

  I’m not very good at reading maps. Or playing chess. I have the ability to do both. But I’m impatient. I want to trust to instinct. So I move quickly. I lose. I get lost.

  We were trying to find Wuthering Heights, surrounded by lambs and rams and broken walls. Emily was gingerly stepping around little balls of sheep shit. I wasn’t sure I knew my way back so it was best to keep going onwards. The sun had come up glorious. We had stripped off our coats and jumpers.

  Then we came to a gate in a large pool of water. I was wearing the waterproof walking trainers that I took to music festivals; Emily’s mesh trainers would be soaked through in an instant.

  ‘I’ll carry you.’

  ‘You will not.’

  ‘Seriously, otherwise you’ll have soaking feet and will want to go straight back. You’re only a slip of a thing.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘You are. And I don’t like to talk about it, but I possess enormous physical strength.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Come on. We’ve gone on holiday to the nineteenth century. Gentleman are always carrying women over obstacles. Think of Persuasion.’

  ‘She slips and they become convinced she’s dead.’

  ‘But it all works out for the best.’

  And with that I put a hand under one arm and one under a knee and picked her up.

  ‘Put me down.’

  I slopped into the water. ‘Open the gate.’

  She fumbled with the latch. I walked through and set her down in the dry.

  ‘That was assault,’ she said.

  ‘It was our dignity or your feet’s dryness.’

  ‘We’re turning back at the next big puddle, that’s for sure.’

  We headed up another hill and from the top saw the landscape spread out around us, the ground where it was raining and the ground where it wasn’t.

  ‘God, I just want to lie down here with you,’ I said.

  ‘Paul.’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t mean. Just all of this laid out for us. Don’t you just want to surrender to it?’

  ‘In the wet and the shit?’

  We settled for standing up, watching the hillscape flicker between moods.

  I realised we were on the right track when we began to see the signs: the Brontë bridge, the Brontë waterfall, and after a while we arrived at Top Withens, the ruins of Heathcliff’s prison. There was no roof. A ram with pink earrings and droopy horns stared mellowly from the doorway.

  ‘Do I get an NUS discount?’ I asked him.

  Walkers were sitting on the walls, pouring cups of coffee and eating sandwiches. The sun was still out but the wind was picking up and made us put our jumpers back on. We poked around inside, and smiled at the other tourists. When we came out we could see the rain coming in towards us.

  On the way back, running out of energy, wishing we’d brought food and water with us, we stopped talking. I was anxious that I wasn’t taking us the right way and she kept pulling her phone out and looking at it. But we reached the same gate in its pool of water. I picked her up once more, taking more notice this time of how her legs felt against my arms, exactly how her body filled the small space it had in this world, in my arms, right there. I walked her through the gate and set her down again.

  *

  The Black Bull is a big old place, with high windows looking out into the damp; full of friendly senior citizens eating pie and chips. We ordered drinks and I asked the young goth pouring them which was Branwell’s chair.

  ‘Oh, it’s up on the staircase on its own, up there,’ she pointed. ‘I doubt that’s where it was when he sat on it, unless he war a right miserable sod.’

  ‘I’ve never liked men in pubs who lay claim to their own seats,’ said Emily.

  *

  We stopped to pick up the papers from a newsagent on the way back to the station. ‘I’m ready once more to read about the destruction of contemporary society,’ said Emily. ‘Andrew should have something in today.’

  And Sophie too, I thought, and when we were on the train I googled her name to find out where she’d placed her piece about the old betraying the young. I found her radio interview, but higher on Google’s ranking was another piece about intergenerational relationships that had also been published a couple of days ago.*

  THE ETHICS OF THE AGE GAP

  Sophie Lancaster

  I’m dating a man who is eight years older than me, and I’m wondering what I should think of that. My friends reassure me. We’re both young (I’m 25, he’s 33). He doesn’t look old, just a bit crinkled, like a favourite jacket you wear too much to get round to dry-cleaning. You could not imagine him talking about cars, or investment portfolios, or saying something positive about Jeremy Clarkson.

  But I can’t stop wondering to what extent I have become complicit in my own oppression. Whether I’m just helping to normalise the idea that older men are still handsome and women in their thirties or older are there to be passed over for younger models, in our cheaply made clothes and vibrant colours, with our youthful idealism to condescend to. Are we Dracula’s victims offering the neck too readily?

  To think of my newish man as Dracula is a bit rough on him: I am still waiting for him to sink his teeth into me. But older men can be a real threat to our principles: with their picking up of the bill, their neo-liberalist certainties, apathies, their anti-Corbynism and misty eyes at the idea of the centre-left. Move in with us and forget the struggle to transform society into a place where you can afford to rent. Forget your friends. Leave them behind. Our mortgage repayments are very reasonable. (A mortgage! we cry.)

  My current squeeze, like a romantic lead in an English romcom, works in a bookshop, and is as broke as I am. So I do not feel much at risk in his case that the patriarchy is purchasing me for its particular aims. (Chance would be a fine thing, I sometimes think, before I remember how lucky I am not to be compromised in this way.)

  My older man’s age does confer some benefits. He’s not as anxious as boys my age about how to present himself. He’s decided who he is, or at least what he looks like. He’s been around long enough to know a lot of people. He writes for a silly magazine and gets invited to the kind of party where you can d
rink cocktails for free and get offered drugs by sexual degenerates.

  Nevertheless, we always need to ask ourselves to what extent we’re willing to sell our youth to the older generation. It’s a constant temptation. We have what they want and they have some of what we want. Who can blame a woman for accommodating herself to the best options in a bad world? Let’s not talk about blame, but we can do better than this. We have better options than we might think. We won’t achieve equality if we sell ourselves cheap; or even if we sell ourselves dear.

  While I was reading it, Emily’s phone buzzed. ‘Paul?’ she said. ‘Andrew’s asked me to ask you something.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you romantically involved with his daughter? His words, not mine. There’s some article she’s written or something that he thinks refers to you. He found it when he was trying to find a radio interview she did yesterday.’

  ‘I’ve just finished reading that.’ I handed her the phone.

  ‘That girl,’ she said when she’d finished reading. ‘It makes it very clear what she thinks of me.’

  ‘Is that what she’s doing? I’m not sure it’s about you. I’m not sure I come out particularly well there.’

  ‘So that is you?’

  ‘Unless she’s using the outline of my life to disguise a relationship she’s having with another man.’

  ‘You and her?’

  ‘It’s, um. I didn’t know that’s how she thought of me. Or if she does.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘There wasn’t anything to tell. It was just after that ridiculous lunch at yours. We got a taxi together when we were both pissed off with you and Andrew. I did wonder if she was using me to make some kind of statement to you. But, actually, we seem to like each other.’

  ‘What were you pissed off about?’

  ‘Being used to stop her from making a scene.’

  ‘I invited you because you’d become a friend. You were supposed to be gone by the announcement. And in what way was that her making a statement to me?’

  She looked away from me, out of the window on the other side of the carriage, at all the scenery spending itself.

  ‘She asked me a lot of questions about the nature of our relationship,’ I said.

  ‘And what did you tell her?’

  ‘We’re friends. She thought she could detect conspiratorial glances between us.’

  ‘Whenever she said something stupid!’

  ‘I said that. And then she got cross.’

  ‘But not so cross.’

  ‘Yeah.’ We looked away from each other. ‘Well, why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘You’re right. Why shouldn’t you?’ She shifted to the edge of the seat.

  ‘It’s probably not serious. She’s just using me for a column, for some immediate gratification – to annoy her dad, to annoy you. It’s not even her real personality in those things.’

  ‘That’s even worse, in that case, if she’s just faking outrage.’

  ‘It’s just, I don’t know, like Andrew said, polemics. She knows her audience.’

  ‘If by polemical you mean unconsidered and cynical, then I agree with you. As long as you realise she’s just using you to annoy her dad and me. Don’t think I’m annoyed. It’s got nothing to do with me. Though why would you let yourself be used like that?’

  ‘I’ll decide for myself whether I’m being used or not. I don’t think it’s that simple. I don’t know why you are so annoyed.’

  ‘I’m not annoyed. Except you lied to me about it. So I am annoyed about that. It makes me realise you’re not honest with me.’

  ‘I thought you’d prefer not to know. I thought I was being tasteful.’

  ‘There was a more tasteful option available to you,’ she said, opening the newspaper again. After a minute of staring at the page she got up, told me she was going to make a call and walked down to the rear of the train.

  I reread the article on my phone, thought about ringing Sophie, but I wasn’t as annoyed with her as I was with Emily.

  When Emily returned, she asked me, ‘Is that really what people think of me? That I’ve sold what remains of my youth to Andrew for the privilege of living somewhere nice?’

  ‘Not even Sophie said that. And I don’t think his money is what you’re most attracted to.’

  ‘It’s not.’

  ‘It wouldn’t even matter if it were. People are always falling in love with what is convenient to them. The age gap just makes it starker in your case.’

  ‘I’m not with him because of fucking convenience.’

  ‘I know.’

  She looked at me, waiting for me to say something else.

  ‘I like Andrew too,’ I said.

  ‘Do you, really?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, he’s been decent to me. He’s decided he should put me on the right track. I could take offence at how easily he’s concluded that I’m on the wrong track, but, well…’

  ‘I can see how his manner might rub you up the wrong way,’ said Emily. ‘But he’s trying to be helpful, and wouldn’t you rather have a conversation with someone challenging than one of these bland idiots?’ She threw the paper she’d been reading down on the seat beside her. ‘He’s by far the most intelligent man I know.’

  I wasn’t going to argue that point. We didn’t talk for the rest of the journey.

  *

  We went to the same pub when we got back to town. I wasn’t in the mood to cook. We didn’t eat anyway. We drank.

  ‘There’s Wozza,’ said Emily.

  ‘You’re going to know the whole pub after a couple of weeks here without me,’ I said.

  And there was Joanne too, waving at me from the other side of the bar. I waved back, and she looked at Emily and raised her eyebrows. Emily took a seat and I went to say hi to Joanne on the way to the bar.

  ‘Is that your girlfriend?’ she asked, and I told her we were just friends. ‘She’s beautiful,’ she said, and I said, ‘Oh, she’s all right. You look great yourself.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘How’s London? I thought you might call me, invite me down.’

  ‘Would you have come? Would you have been able to? That would have been nice,’ I said, after which there was an embarrassing pause. ‘What’s been happening with you?’

  ‘It’s the same old,’ she said. ‘Have you seen Carl’s dad’s here?’

  I turned in the direction she pointed, where I saw Mike sitting on his own and looking at me. I waved and he nodded. The pub was a lot quieter than it had been yesterday – there were plenty of tables left. The lights were bright and there was a crowd of lads hanging around by the fruit machines. Wozza had walked over to the table Emily had chosen, and was leaning over to tell her something.

  ‘I’ll go and say hi to him,’ I said. ‘I’ll come back here too for a proper catch-up.’

  ‘Ah, don’t worry. Look after your lass. We’re off to the Euston after this – there’s a band on.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll come over.’

  ‘Maybe see you there. Kevin’s back in town though. He gets jealous if he thinks men are trying to chat me up.’

  ‘Surely men and women in this day and age are allowed to exchange pleasantries.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she said. ‘You just need to point that out to him.’ On her way to the door she looked over her shoulder and waved at me.

  Mike was looking down at his pint when I walked towards him. ‘How are you, Mike?’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘What are you doing here again?’

  ‘Stuff to do with the house. I brought a mate down to stay there for a few days. How’s the family?’

  ‘Oh, they’re coping. Janine isn’t so good. All this is a distraction, hey?’ He picked up the ‘Vote Leave’ beer mat lying on the table and tossed it down again.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I bet you’re not into it, are you?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s a load of bollocks.’
<
br />   ‘That’s what I thought too. They think we’re going to get our fishing industry back? It’s been dead forty year. Idiots.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You agree, then? That we’re idiots?’

  ‘Don’t start this, Mike. I don’t think you’re an idiot. I don’t think a lot of people here are idiots.’

  ‘You’re just being polite. Scared. Go on. Admit it. Admit that we’re all idiots. Idiots like Carl was. Poor fucking idiots.’

  ‘I better get back to my mate. Carl wasn’t stupid.’

  ‘His exam results said he was.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’

  ‘Poor fucker. He found it hard that you could walk away and he couldn’t. To see life as stark as that. Everyone sorted into two categories.’

  ‘I had to do some work for those results.’

  ‘But you liked that work, eh?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘And he didn’t. I’m not saying he couldn’t have tried more. Of course he could.’

  ‘I wish I’d kept in better touch.’

  ‘He wanted to be someone else.’

  ‘Most people do. He’s not the only one to mess up his chances.’

  ‘Yeah. Well.’ He looked over where I was looking. ‘I hope that’s not true. Girlfriend?’

  ‘I wish.’

  Wozza had a hand on her shoulder and was bending over to tell her something.

  ‘I think you’d better rescue her. Look after the pair of you.’

  ‘Take care, Mike.’

  He raised his fingerless hand and waved bye. ‘Too late for that, pal.’

  *

  Wozza was still there when I got back with the drinks.

  ‘I know you,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘We used to see each other on the beach, back in the day.’

  ‘You used to dance!’ he said. ‘You danced like Jarvis Cocker.’

  ‘You liked to try to make me.’

  ‘Go on, do it now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘Yeah, go on, Paul,’ said Emily.

  I sat down. Wozza glared at me. ‘Only joking, buddy,’ he said. ‘Plenty of time for that later. Emily and I were just getting to know each other.’