Emily's Secret

by Jill Jones

  Put up or shut up.

  The showdown was to be a formal debate that loomed like a menacing storm at the end of the summer.

  Having a gut-level feeling was one thing. Finding solid evidence to back it up was quite another. Alex had studied every available Brontë resource in the United States, but still had nothing stronger than a hunch to present, based on his interpretation of some of Emily’s work. The only element of her life he had so far been unable to examine was her environment—the wild and haunting moors of northern England which she had loved deeply and which had influenced virtually everything she wrote.

  So tomorrow he would travel to Haworth, the small West Yorkshire village that had been her home. He planned to review the material available at the Brontë Parsonage Museum Library there. But more than that, he wanted to walk the rugged countryside she trod, breathe the air she breathed. It wasn’t in a library, he felt, that he would find an answer. If he found one at all, it would come from insight gained by personally experiencing the forces that had touched her and molded her life.

  It wasn’t much to build his seditious suicide theory on, but it was the only strategy remaining. He must uncover Emily’s secret, for unless he found arguable proof, in late August, in front of many of the world’s preeminent scholars of English literature, he would be torn to shreds over the issue by another expert in the field, Dr. Maggie Flynn.

  Maggie.

  His colleague.

  His former lover.

  Alex stared at the letters carved in the cold marble memorial. “Why?” he murmured. “Why did you choose to die?” He ran his fingers across the engraved name.

  “Emily,” he entreated softly. “Answer me.”

  Rain, driven by a sharp easterly wind, pelted against Selena’s cheeks as she dashed from the old farmhouse. The gale whipped a long strand of dark hair from beneath the knitted cap she wore, lashing it with a sting into one eye. Unsure of her footing on the slippery, sandy mud, she made a careful run for the old Land Rover parked in the drive.

  Overhead, gray clouds scudded across the tops of the moors like large sheep in need of shearing. On the verdant squares of pasture below, real sheep huddled for shelter behind drystone walls that formed uneven geometric quilts over the landscape for miles in every direction. The world was cold and wet from four straight days of rain.

  Selena got into the dilapidated vehicle and turned the ignition, concerned whether the square-backed wagon would make it all the way to London and return. The ancient engine bucked and snorted. She ground the starter again. Nothing. She beat her palm against the steering wheel and pumped the accelerator furiously. “Come on!”

  At last the car rumbled to life, and after letting it warm up, Selena slipped it into gear and backed carefully up the steep drive into the lane. She allowed herself one last glance toward the house, where a bedraggled black and white border collie sat on the stoop, staring at her with sad, accusing eyes.

  “Damn it, Domino. Why don’t you have the good sense to stay out of the rain? And don’t look at me like that. I’ll be back tomorrow. By noon. I promise.”

  She was apprehensive about the long drive to London and hoped the rain would let up once she was out of storm-riddled Yorkshire. Glancing at her watch, she regretted having committed to visiting Matka en route. Selena had to be at the gallery in London by five.

  But she’d promised, and she knew her grandmother would be watching the clock.

  The nursing home where Matka lived was new and modern. The receptionist greeted her with friendly efficiency. Matka had reported the food was good and the place clean.

  But it hurt to see the woman who, through sheer tenacity of spirit had somehow managed to hold the fragile pieces of Selena’s childhood together, confined to a wheelchair, her body rendered mostly immobile by rheumatoid arthritis. Matka’s manner was always gruffly cheerful whenever Selena visited, but her granddaughter suspected the brightness was a front, a show put on for her benefit, like the old Gypsy used to do for her customers in the fortune-telling booth.

  Selena found her grandmother in her favorite spot beside the fireplace in the Community Room, a small package of a woman sitting in a wheelchair, hidden behind the wall of the daily newspaper she was reading. “Hey, Gran!” She poked her face over the papers and kissed the wrinkled forehead.

  “Stars in heaven, child! You like t’ a taken my breath. Where’t y’ come from, appearin’ like tha’ out o’ nowhere?”

  “You knew I was coming,” she reminded the wizened woman. “I’m on my way to London.”

  Matka squinted, her clouded dark eyes focusing on the young woman. “London, eh? What’d y’be doin’ in London?”

  Selena picked up the paper and folded it noisily, impatient at the game her grandmother seemed to play with increasing frequency, the one called I Don’t Remember. “You know that, too, Gran. Those paintings of mine I told you about. They’ve been on exhibit in a gallery there. The show’s over, and I’m on my way to pick them up. It’s been on a month. Got a lot of good reviews, too. I even sold a few.”

  Matka snorted and chewed her toothless gums. “Paintin’s! An artist, y’ want t’ be? Wha’ kind o’ life would tha’ be for a girl like you?” Like a locomotive, she was building steam, getting set to roll into her favorite subject. “You ought t’ find a nice man and settle down, have children. You’ll soon be turnin’ thirty, you know…”

  Her voice trailed off, and Selena said nothing. She found it difficult to defend her choice of lifestyle to her Romany (and sometimes surprisingly traditional) grandmother. She pulled an ottoman close to the old woman’s chair and took the gnarled, aged hands in her own.

  “We’ve gone over this before, Gran,” she said, summoning patience. “Think about it. Do you really believe that getting married and having a family would be the best thing for me?”

  The old woman looked at her with eyes that saw more than what was in front of her. Neither said a word for a long while, each remembering Selena’s violent childhood, the stormy parents who had deserted her at different times, in different ways. They both knew it was only after Matka had come to live with them that Selena had known any security or happiness.

  Selena didn’t like to think about those days. In fact, there was much she had carefully buried deeply inside her so she would no longer remember the horror. But she remembered when the old woman’s brightly-colored Gypsy van was parked for good in the shed behind her parents’ small home. She recalled how sad Matka had been to leave her wandering life on the road, but how glad she herself had been to find one loving soul in her life. The young girl and the old woman had clung to each other as the terror and turmoil of her parents’ lives raged around them.

  “It’s the curse,” Matka would swear, wringing her hands.

  “No, Gran,” Selena would reply under her breath. “It’s the whiskey.”

  Witnessing her parents’ unhappiness, Selena doubted she would ever marry, but her grandmother never gave up hope that she would change her mind. Because, in spite of the old woman’s superstitious belief that an ancient curse hung over the family, Matka prayed that one day, by some miracle, the hex would be dispelled and one of her line would at last be free to love without pain.

  That one had to be Selena. Because her raven-haired, olive-skinned granddaughter was the only one left, the last descendant of this branch of the ancient line of fabled Abram Wd, King of the Welsh Gypsies.

  Selena did not believe in any such curse. Her parents’ problems had been caused by nothing more mysterious than financial stress and alcoholism. Matka’s story about the curse, Selena felt, was just a Gypsy superstition.

  And Selena refused to let her Gypsy ancestry control her life.

  Sure, she loved the romantic stories Matka had woven for her as a child as they sat together by the fire on cold nights, tales of the old woman’s vagabond life. But Selena knew it was their Gypsy heritage that drove her father’s anger, her mother’s despair. Her father had left his own carav
an behind when he was only a boy, seeking his fortune in wartime England. He had been too young to fight, so he’d gone to work in a munitions factory.

  But life for a young Gypsy wasn’t easy in the Gorgio world. When anything went wrong, he was blamed. When anything was stolen, the Gypsy did it. In his first job, and in every other job, it happened again and again, until he simply gave up. That’s when the drinking began, and the fights. And his misery didn’t end until he pulled the trigger one dark, rainy night, sending his body to the bottom of a cliff outside of town. In spite of no longer being brutalized by her husband, her mother never recovered from his suicide, and Selena found her one morning, dead of alcohol poisoning.

  Matka patted Selena’s hands and shook her head sadly. “The curse has a strong hold on our family. No one’s escaped it in a hundred and fifty years. Perhaps it has touched y’ already, makin’ y’ lonely, afraid of love.” She sighed heavily.

  Selena wanted to shake her grandmother and cry out, “There is no curse!” For intellectually, she didn’t believe in such nonsense. That stuff belonged in fairy tales.

  She would have pressed the point, if it hadn’t been for the paintings.

  Selena hadn’t shown Matka any of her recent work, even though it was the old, woman’s money that had paid for her education at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, because Matka would have spotted the letter in an instant.

  The letter.

  That impossible letter that Matka still kept, brittle with age, in the drawer of her bedside table at the nursing home. Selena wished she had it now. She would burn it and be done with it. The damned thing had caused nothing but torment and tears to countless of her superstitious ancestors.

  And now, it seemed, it was insidiously invading her own creativity, somehow manifesting on every canvas she painted. No, she didn’t dare show her art to Matka, for the old Gypsy would insist that the curse was attacking the only thing she loved—her work.

  Ironically, it was the continuity of the images in her work, especially the scraps of the letter, that had led Selena to some measure of recognition in London. Actually, the reviews had been good. One writer had even compared her favorably to Léonor Fini. The bizarre nature of her surrealistic compositions had captured the equally bizarre taste of trendy London, and she had sold several pieces. Tom Perkins had already asked her to show again in the fall.

  But she couldn’t keep painting like this—the same picture, in essence, over and over again. It was as if she were possessed when she went to her studio. She’d pick up her brushes, determined to stay away from the mauves and grays, the campfires, the dancing bears, the wild ponies, the monkey’s head, and above all, that ubiquitous scrap of letter that made its way onto the canvas regardless. Sometimes it was pounded beneath the horse’s hoof. Sometimes it was burning in the fire. Sometimes the monkey reached out with it teasingly, as if handing it to the viewer. Selena wished Matka had never shown her the letter or told her about the curse.

  She wished she wasn’t a Gypsy.

  She wished she could paint a bowl of fruit.

  June 2, 1845

  How beautiful the Earth is still

  To thee—how full of Happiness;

  How little fraught with real ill

  Or shadowy phantoms of distress;

  How Spring can bring thee glory yet

  And Summer win thee to forget

  December’s sullen time!

  Why dost thou hold the treasure fast

  Of youth’s delight, when youth is past

  And thou art near thy prime?

  June 4, 1845

  I should not write this lest Charlotte come snooping for he made me promise not to tell anyone of his whereabouts. And yet it is all so strange I am loath not to record it. I will mark it now, and maybe tomorrow awaken to find it only a mad dream anyhow, like all the rest.

  When I was upon the moors today, late in the afternoon, I climbed the ravine along the back hill. I do not know what made me go there today, because it is not common for me to walk that way. I was busy playing at Gondal in my mind and watching the water splashing down the beck, and I did not see what lay in front of me. Neither did I hear anything unusual, until my foot struck a low mound that stretched across the path. Then I heard an awful moan, and I saw that an injured man lay half hidden in the grass. Keeper heard it, too, and came running, ready to attack, but I held him off. I was not frightened, but I picked up a rock and approached him cautiously. He was the most ragged creature I have ever seen, and I guess from his dress he is one of those they call gipsie. He wore a silk kerchief knotted about his neck, and a large earring in one ear. His shirt was dirty and torn and stained with blood from his cuts. He opened his eyes while I stood there staring, wondering what to do about him. He looked up at me, his face filled with pain, and asked if I was an angel! (He thought he was dead.) I told him no, I’m Emily Jane Brontë. I brought him some water from the beck. He told me he had fallen from his horse, but I saw no horse nearby. Perhaps it ran away.

  He is badly hurt. I know his leg is broken, and he may have other injuries. He was in great pain, so much that it beaded in sweat on his brow though the day was chill. He would not have me summon help, though I fear for his life. I understand, for the gipsies are not welcome in the village and I, too, do not trust doctors on any account.

  I helped him to take shelter beneath a large outcropping of rock and tried to make him comfortable, but when I left, he was pale and not awake. Tonight, I will save some broth and bread, and Keeper and I will steal away after everyone is asleep. I pray he is still alive. This must be a most secret adventure.

  Chapter 2

  Dr. Alexander Hightower at last bade a reluctant farewell to his beloved and long-dead friends in the abbey. Visiting the shrine had been a career-long desire, and he hadn’t been disappointed.

  Outside, the storm had subsided, leaving only a residue of high clouds and dripping leaves. Alex looked at a small tourist guide book he’d brought along and decided his next destination was within walking distance. He was used to exercise; it would feel good to stretch his legs and clear his head for his afternoon encounter with Maggie Flynn.

  Walking along Whitehall, with its impressive row of government buildings and associated sense of power, Alex tried to concentrate on the historical structures he passed. He noted a female bobby in uniform striding purposefully some distance in front of him. Still farther along he could see Nelson lording his imposing figure over tourist and homeless alike in Trafalgar Square.

  But nothing seemed to dislodge Maggie Flynn’s persistent presence from his mind.

  What was he going to say to her? What could he say? Sorry, but I never loved you? It was the truth, but he couldn’t say it any more now than he’d been able to before. Maybe they would just go for coffee. No, tea. This was England, after all. Tea and scones and small talk. And then she would go away, and he wouldn’t have to face her again until August.

  Somehow Alex knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

  With Maggie, nothing was easy.

  Alex remembered vividly the first time he’d seen Maggie Flynn. She was holding court in the midst of several awestruck male students on the campus where he taught. Her burnished hair was shining in the sun, a glorious reflection of the colors of the crisp autumn leaves swirling around the carefully landscaped grounds. She was a visiting professor from Oxford, and she took the small Virginian liberal arts college by storm, as was her style.

  Their affair had started innocently enough. She was assigned to his department and shared his field of expertise, and in her he had found a witty and intelligent companion whose radiance dispelled for a while the gloom of his existence. She was different from the colorless, faceless women he’d dated in a string of one-night stands that did nothing to ease the pain and guilt of his miserably failed marriage.

  Alex had been attracted to Maggie, not only because she was beautiful, but also because she was safely out of reach emotionally. She was cold beneath her outward dem
eanor. Unattainable. Which suited him just fine. He’d spent six years with someone exactly her opposite, someone warm and caring and sensitive whom he’d loved and trusted, only to have his heart ripped out when she left him for another man. He’d sworn then never to invest himself emotionally in another relationship. It simply wasn’t worth the pain.

  Alex and Maggie had read poetry aloud and talked about things literary that only scholars would deem interesting and important. They debated issues, sometimes hotly, over which they disagreed. They gossiped about their mutual acquaintances and compared the education systems of their respective countries. Maggie intrigued Alex, and for him, friendship was enough. He had no intention of getting involved in anything more serious with her.

  But that was exactly what Maggie had wanted, and she was a woman who would not be denied. And as they spent time together, Alex found the defenses he had so carefully constructed against involvement with the opposite sex proved inadequate against her indomitable will.

  From the start, Alex had been acutely aware of the sexuality that simmered, barely hidden, beneath the surface of her composed demeanor, and he would not have been male if thoughts of making love to Maggie had not erupted from time to time, ever more frequently as the days passed. By the time she gave up waiting for him to make the first move and assumed the role of seductress, Alex’s emotional wall of steel had melted in her white-hot heat. Without examining his own motives, needs, or desires, he allowed himself to be consumed by her burning passion, which obliterated all reason, all pain. He drank in her beauty, swallowed her fire.

  Maggie had won.

  Maggie always won, Alex thought bitterly as he walked, dodging puddles. That’s what Maggie Flynn was all about. Conquest. Victory. Maggie couldn’t stand to lose, and the more he gave, the more she took. The coldness that had in the beginning been appealingly safe had turned odious as her calculating and domineering nature surfaced more and more often. Their formerly friendly sparring turned into nastier fights. She took offense if he questioned her authority or knowledge of a subject. She was especially sensitive about her career path. She had clawed and scratched her way to the top at Oxford, and those efforts had left their scars.