‘I am passed. I have crossed over.’
‘Are you in heaven?’
‘You have nothing to be afraid of.’
‘What’s my real name? Where am I from?’
‘Your real name is not your real name. You are from far away.’
‘But where? I’m going to Manchester, Mother, to make something of myself.’
‘You came to Liverpool with me when you were very young.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘We were on a boat.’
‘Were we?’
‘Only I died before we got to the docks. I’m sorry, son. I wish I could be there with you. I want you to know that I’m watching over you. Always. I didn’t mean to leave you on your own in this world.’
‘I know, Mother. I understand.’
I felt hot tears spill from my eyes and run down my face.
‘Go back to Liverpool and look for where you came from. That’s where you’ll find who you really are.’
With that Emily closed her eyes again and collapsed on the floor. I wiped my own eyes with the sleeve of my coat. I went over to where she had fallen. I picked her up and shook her.
‘Wake up.’
I shook her again. At first, nothing. Then she opened her eyes.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine. Did someone speak to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone who said she was my mother.’
‘What did she say?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
I was shaking badly. I put the girl down on the ground and sat beside her. I closed my eyes and tried to gather my thoughts, but it was my emotions that were welling up inside me. I felt like a just-found orphan again. I was back by the fire, with Hindley glaring at me, and Mr Earnshaw telling him to stop scowling. ‘Where’s your manners, son? This boy is less fortunate than you. He has no mammy or daddy. He has no home. I want you to treat him as you would your brother, do you hear me? You’ll see, you’ll be best friends before you know it.’ But the boy stood in the shadows and glared. I was dumb with fear.
I opened my eyes again. There was a crow in an ash tree close by, cleaning its beak on a branch. Then it unfurled its slick wings and took flight. I watched it soar over the moors.
‘Well?’
I regained my composure.
‘Well, what?’
‘Do I pass?’
Had I been taken in? I wondered. Had my dead mother really spoken through the mouth of this girl? Certainly I knew that the dead could pierce the skin separating their world from ours. You had told me yourself of the ghosts that lingered in ancient places and the spirits who wandered the earth in search of solace, but had this girl the power to summon them, or was it a trick? When she spoke it was with another’s voice. How could a girl speak with the voice of another? It had to be real.
‘How do you do it?’ I said at last.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is it a trick?’
‘What kind of crooked character would use someone’s grief for their own amusement? What do you take me for, William Lee? I promise you it’s not a trick. All I know is that I have been blessed with a power. A power that can comfort and console both the living and the dead.’
What had the voice told me? Not who I was, but how I could find who I was. But I knew that already. Was it possible through practice or through a peculiar talent to fake spiritual possession? It had felt real at the time, sure enough, and the emotions the visitation had engendered in my soul – there was nothing fake about them. Real or not, I supposed it didn’t matter; all that mattered was how well it could convince. It had convinced me. It would convince others.
‘I don’t know, Emily.’
‘I can make us a lot of money.’
‘So why do you need me?’
‘I said I could make money. I didn’t say I could keep money. A girl like me, travelling on her own, I don’t stand a chance against the cutpurses and the freebooters. I need protection.’
I reflected on my lot. The pitman had his marrow, the smith his striker, sawyers worked in pairs, but I was on my own, Cathy. If what the girl had said was true, if my mother had spoken through her, then my mother was dead, and there was no one on earth waiting to take me in their arms. Perhaps me and this girl would provide some sort of company to each other. If she was as good as her word, then maybe it could work. She would need someone strong to protect her earnings. On her own, she and her money would be easily parted.
‘You can stay for as long as you pay your way. I’m willing to give it a go for now.’
‘I won’t let you down.’
‘If you do, you’re out.’
The girl shrugged. ‘So where are we heading?’
I thought for a moment. Manchester was no longer my desired destination. We could go there to rest, but we would move on to where Mr Earnshaw had found me in the street.
‘Liverpool.’
‘What for?’
‘I’ve got some unfinished business there.’
‘Where is it?’
‘We head west until we get to the coast.’
‘That’s where Liverpool is?’
‘Yes, I think so. It’s a big town with a port where ships come and go. Hundreds of boats sail there.’
At the same time as I was talking to Emily I was remembering. The boats, the bustle, the ocean. I recalled what Sticks had told me.
‘I was a navvy, laa. I built up the banks of the Irwell and helped construct the locks. After that I worked on the duke’s canal. Digging, puddling, the lot.’
‘What’s the Irwell?’ I’d asked him.
‘Don’t you know, laa? It’s a waterway. Goes all the way to the coast. It’s where all the goods from around the world come from.’
‘There’s a canal, Emily. From Manchester to Liverpool. It’s just been built. We can follow its length along the towpath. It shouldn’t be hard to find.’
‘Sounds like a plan. Shall we get something to eat?’
‘You’ve only just eaten.’
‘It gives you an appetite.’
‘What does?’
‘Conjuring dead people.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘Well, take it from me. You stick by me and you’ll go a long way, William Lee, see if you don’t.’
I thought about the last man she had probably said that to and saw him hanging from his neck. We both stood up and made our way back to the road. It was a well-constructed turnpike, and, with the sun in front of us, I reckoned it must be heading into Manchester. I was sick of trudging through fields of mud and moors of peat bog. We weren’t far from the town, I figured, and far enough to be safe from the men who would have turned back some time past. I wondered how easy it would be for the farmer’s son to steer a horse with only one hand. It would be difficult work, I wagered. Good. He had either bled to death or was now so handicapped by his amputation that finding us was an impossible task. We could relax, I decided. As we walked I felt something touch my sleeve. I looked down and saw that is was Emily. I shrugged her off.
For the most part the road was good. There were rough-looking wagons drawn by sturdy horses. Draymen, delivering tun and butt, hogshead and barrel. There were farmers’ carts, piled high with hay, and finely carved coaches, ornately decorated. There were those who travelled on foot like us. Farm labourers who had finished their shifts, tinkers peddling their wares from one town to another. A coach pulled by four grand horses, coloured ribbons plaited through their manes, white, red, yellow, blue, riding past us. A coach driver sat high up front in uniform. Three men sat at the back in top hats, and at the front, three women in fine dresses carrying brightly coloured umbrellas above them.
‘We’ll be rich like them, one day,’ Emily said.
‘How do you work that one out then?’
‘With my brains and your brawn we’ll go a long way.’
‘Cheeky bleeder.’
‘I’m serious. We can make a lot of money, me and you.’
‘Can we now?’
‘We can buy a shop.’
‘What sort of shop?’
‘A cake shop.’
‘Don’t get ideas.’
‘We’ll start small, but we can get bigger as word spreads. We can employ bakers and cake-makers. People to serve behind the counter. We can oversee it all. Eat as many cakes as we like. Fancy cakes, with caraway seeds and oil of sweet almonds. Red cherries, loaf sugar, cinnamon and rose water. Icing and whipped cream. Custard and syrup. Pretty soon, we can open up another shop. Then another.’
I didn’t want to correct her by telling her she had no place in my future. I had no interest in cakes, or shops of any kind. But then, part of me thought, maybe she has. Maybe I can take her back with me to Wuthering Heights, as Mr Earnshaw had brought me, where she can live in comfort, in front of the fire. Maybe find something useful for her to do, like tend fowl, but nothing too burdensome. The more I walked the more I mulled it over. It would wind Hindley up and push Hareton out of the picture. This made me smile. As I thought it through, I could see it as a possibility. I felt Emily’s hand in mine. I didn’t shake it off.
Tripe and Black Pudding
The journey to Manchester town took a day and a night, and we slept under the stars. We found a sheltered area beneath a blackthorn and I made a fire to keep warm. We suppered on faggots we’d purchased along the way. As we lay looking up at the many constellations, I taught Emily what you had taught me all those years ago. I pointed out the Dog Star and the Northern Cross. I showed her Leo and told her the story of Hercules strangling the great beast with his bare hands. I pointed out the swan and the bear and the ram and the bull, and all the other animals that filled the night sky.
When we got to Manchester town there was much commotion and mulling about. I was taken first by the sights, then by the sounds, and finally by the smells. In truth they must have hit my senses at the same time, but the magnitude of the vision I saw before me was too much to take in. The town in front of us was like nothing I had ever seen. It was more like a picture from one of your story books. A fairy-tale kingdom with palaces and princesses. Ladies and gentlemen of fine attire. Some wore fancy clothes, silk coats and embroidered waistcoats. Brightly coloured frocks, coloured ribbons and outlandish nosegays. Men with coloured strings through their breeches. My nose was assaulted with their perfumes. But also there were those in tattered rags, ravelled dugs and barefoot.
The buildings towering above us, reaching up to the clouds, were fit for giants. Like the Nephilim that Joseph spoke of. Doorways and arches that reached up to accommodate Goliath. Spires that pierced the blue canvas of the sky. Stones patterned with grotesque carvings and the roofs set with domes and decorated pikes. My ears were pricked with the clamour of industry. The clanking of metal plates. The clatter of iron-rimmed cartwheels on cobbles. Walking sticks, silver-tipped, tapping on the bevelled sets. Shouting, laughing, wailing. Street sellers hoarse with their own boasts. Pigeons and gulls grabbing at crumbs spilling from hand baskets and carts. Squawking and screeching. The stench of burning coals, of rotting offal and festering fruits. Piss and shit and vomit. A beggar sleeping in the gutter. A painted chaise pulled by fine mares. I saw the driver crack his whip and drive his vehicle over the fingers of the beggar, slicing through two of them as though they were breakfast sausages. Not stopping to help the man, but cracking the whip for his horses to go faster. I grabbed hold of Emily. This was a place where you had to keep your wits about you. The vision before me was one part heaven and one part hell. I could barely decide what to make of it.
We walked down a street signposted ‘Shudehill’, then along another signposted ‘Withy Grove’. There was such an array of accents, from every corner of the kingdom, and even from the Emerald Isle. I remembered that was one of your other theories to my origins, Cathy. You said that the Spanish Armada had planned to attack England but that there had been a severe storm and that some of its vessels were wrecked on the west coast of Ireland. I was the son of a Spanish duke and an Irish gypsy. The duke had been saved from the storm by the gypsy girl. She had pulled him out of the water half-drowned and revived him, then she had nursed him back to health in her caravan. She had fallen in love with the duke. Then one day, some sailors came for him and he was called back to his ship and she never saw him again. Only now she was carrying his child. I used to laugh at some of your ideas, but I was comforted by them too: I was from somewhere, I was someone, I wasn’t just an orphan.
As we walked further into town, past Cannon Street and along Market Street Lane, there was an overpowering stench of industrial refuse and of open sewers. Children played among the garbage and privy middens. There were buildings everywhere; some looked like they’d only just been built. And all around these were buildings in different stages of construction. Some were just a few walls and others were wanting roofs. Others again were merely marks on the ground. There were skeletons of buildings waiting for their flesh and skin. There were builders, sawyers, carpenters and various men at work. There was a hubbub and a swarm. There was gin being sold from wheelbarrows in the street and, later we learned, privately in garrets, cellars and back rooms. We saw many partakers stagger around in their bibulous stupors. We saw Methodist ministers reading from the Bible and other religious scripture; harlots selling their bodies; and beggars, their flesh rotting with distemper, covered with scorbutic and venereal ulcers. Among all this, stalls of every description selling their wares. Sweetmeat stalls, rope makers, chair menders, knife sharpeners. There were lanterns for sale and brimstone matches, sealing wax, silver buckles, snuffboxes.
There were a great many shops. We approached the most sizeable. Inside there was an impressive variety of articles: tea, coffee, loaf sugar, spices, printed cottons, calicoes, lawns, fine linens such as you were now accustomed to wearing: silks, velvets, silk waistcoat pieces, silk cloaks, hats, bonnets, shawls, laced caps, and a myriad of elegant things, Cathy. In short, all the finery that you were now taking for granted. There was a druggist selling pomatum, fever powder, angel water, Jesuit drops. Hemlock for tumours and burdock for scurvy.
We came across another shop that sold every kind of offal. Many items to fill our appetites. There were red herrings, bloaters, cow-heel, sheep’s trotters, pigs’ ears, tripe and black pudding. The black pudding looked the most appetizing and I asked the shopkeeper what it consisted of.
‘It’s a sausage made of blood.’
‘What blood?’ Emily asked.
‘Pork blood. There’s oatmeal in there too, and pork fat. It’s a health food,’ she said. ‘It’ll keep your strength up.’
I liked the idea of feasting on blood, and in the absence of a good supply of Hindley’s, we bought two slabs and the vendor wrapped them in paper and lathered them with malt vinegar. We took our food outside and ate it. The taste was unlike anything I’d ever had before but very pleasant. Emily had eaten hers before I was even halfway into mine.
‘Lovely,’ she said, licking her lips. ‘I could eat another one of those.’
‘We’ve not got much money left now,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to get to work soon.’
But there was too much to see in these bustling streets and we wandered around for hours. Along Deansgate and King Street, there were soup kitchens and Irish vagrants. There were people living in sheds made of clot and clay and others made of brick. There were rats running in and out of the building and dogs running wild. We saw many a deformed infant, with knees swelled or ankles swelled, one shoulder lower than the other, round-shouldered or pigeon-breasted. Or in some other way deformed. There were younger infants still, hardly able to walk, with rag dummies in their mouths. We saw children not much older than four or five, leaving a cotton mill: small, sickly, barefoot and ill-clad. Children on street corners selling pins and needles. Women selling tapes and laces, fruit and cakes. I bought myself an orange and Emily a gingerbread man. I cut my orange in two
and sucked the juice out. It was only the second time in my life I’d ever tried one, the first time being when I stole one from a bowl that was meant for the Lintons. So its sweetness was still a novelty. I watched Emily savage her gingerbread man, gobbling down his head first, then his legs.
‘They taste better if you eat them like this,’ she said. ‘Before they get a chance to complain and run away.’
Then we saw before us, Cathy, such a peculiar object of misery, that my own history of affliction seemed as fortune.
Emily turned to me. ‘Look at that boy. What the hell happened to him?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
I couldn’t stop staring at this poor freak. He had neither a hat for his head nor a buckle for his shoes. He was no more than twelve years of age but much shorter than Emily. A cripple on crutches, little more than three feet in stature. His legs and feet were as crooked as twisted willow branches. His hair looked like a hog’s bristles and his head like a black cinder. My own was as white as Edgar’s in comparison. He was blind and used his crutches as feelers, testing the ground before taking a step forward, like a snail with its tentacles. The boy coughed with such a hacking sound, I thought he was going to hawk his guts up. I saw him spit blood onto the cobs. I overheard a conversation between two men who were standing beside us.
‘He’s still employed in his work. Would you believe that?’ the first man said.
‘And what work would that be then?’ said the second.
‘He’s a sweeper of chimneys.’
Emily moved closer to me and clutched the arm of my coat.
‘Poor bastard,’ she said, under her breath.
No torture Hindley rent on me could compare to the daily torture this boy suffered at his place of work. I glanced around. Everywhere I looked I saw routine cruelty and everyday misery. Alongside which there were fancy coaches and gentlemen and ladies, in and out of tailors’ shops, milliners’, candle shops and fine bakeries. So much wealth and privilege alongside so much privation. Not one of these gentle folk stopped to assist, or even seemed to notice this miserable wretch.
Ill Will Page 9