It was easy walking by the side of the canal. We just had to avoid the horses and mules that were pulling the barges, and the canal workers. Most of the barges were loaded with coal. There were a few passenger boats as well, and interspersed were other barges carrying a variety of goods. The canal itself was an impressive structure, Cathy. You would have been impressed by this feat of engineering. I remember you telling me about the pyramids of Egypt. You said that’s where gypsies were from. You told me about these huge constructions built by the hands of hundreds of slaves. You showed me some drawings in one of Mr Earnshaw’s books. You would be equally impressed by this canal though, I assure you. It was dug out of the earth, and completely level, so that the water didn’t flow like a river but sat like the water in a bath. The canal itself snaked through the landscape, remaining level at all times. It had taken some toil to dig it out, no doubt. Although not the duke’s toil, I suspect. Hundreds of men with pickaxe and spade. Sweat and blood. It had a peculiar smell. A metallic tang. The walls were constructed of large flat stones, with heavy top stones to finish the job.
‘Here,’ I said, and handed Emily one of the apples. I bit into the other one.
It was pleasant going on this towpath, no uneven tussock grass or boggy peat moor. The land was level and it was good to walk by the water, with the occasional flash of orange and bright blue of a kingfisher. We saw one dive for fish, then re-emerge, like a flame from a fire pit.
I tried again with Emily.
‘We’ll need lodgings when we get to Liverpool. We’ll need money. We’ll have to work the graves.’
She didn’t respond.
‘I’ve heard it’s a very splendid town. More splendid even than Manchester. Have you ever been?’
She shook her head.
‘We’ll have to go to the docks.’
‘Why?’
‘The voice that spoke through you, my mother, she said that I came to England on a ship. Do you remember the voice?’
‘No.’
I wondered whether I should get Emily to do her conjuring again. I needed more answers. But the experience had spooked me badly and in truth I was a little afraid of speaking with the dead. I was fearful that they would drag me across, into their world. And I wasn’t ready to go there yet. Or that they would come across and possess me in this world, so that I would look like me but inside be the soul of another. And I hadn’t yet worked out who I was.
‘Do you remember? When you conjure the dead?’
‘No. It’s like going to sleep.’
Had I travelled on a ship? I tried to recollect. I used the constant river traffic and the water to trigger buried memories.
‘I remember a dark confined space,’ I said.
Could this have been on-board a ship? It wasn’t clear in my mind. I just had a memory of the light from a small window and the sun pouring in. The heat on my skin. Motes of dust sparkling. My shirt wet with sweat.
I remember being under a table, or was it a chair? The room was full of men. But I could only see their feet and their legs. The air was filled with clatter. There was muck on the floor, mashed-up peas and orange peel. The man with the black teeth was reaching for me, with a knife in his other hand.
It was something of a shock to remember it so clearly. But at the same time I questioned these new memories. Had I really remembered that, or was it the voice that had come from Emily’s mouth? I wasn’t even convinced that the voice was that of my mother. It sounded older than I imagined her to be. But what age are the dead? And what do they sound like?
‘Where were you?’
I couldn’t recall anything else. There was nothing boatlike about the memory.
‘I remember being asleep on the knee of a woman,’ I said. ‘Only I wasn’t asleep. I was pretending to be asleep. People were talking about me. I remember opening one eye very slowly, leaving just a crack to peep from, and seeing a black cat staring back at me with pale green eyes. All around were shiny objects, reflecting and distorting the scene.’
But I couldn’t remember a boat. Or even a deck. I remembered walking barefoot on a stone floor and stepping on a pin, but holding back a cry of pain. I remembered climbing up a wooden staircase and avoiding the third stair because I knew that it would creak. How old was I? I remembered watching a boy and girl play with a ball. It was a sunny day and they were catching the ball and running across a field. I remembered wanting to join in the game.
‘I remember a boy throwing a ball into the tree and the ball getting stuck. It was a red ball.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember being on a boat. Trees, fences, stone walls, high buildings. There were four-wheeled carts and horses. Men loading and offloading. There were ships of every size. Sails flapping in the wind. Rowing boats. Dogs. Fishing nets. I was taken to a room. About six-foot square. The floor, ceiling and walls were all stone. There was an iron gate.’
‘And?’
‘I don’t remember. I remember sleeping on the streets. I had nothing to eat. I had to fight the gulls for scraps. I had to chase the rats from the bins. That’s when I must have come across Mr Earnshaw.’
‘Your adopted father?’
‘Yes. Or rather he came across me. He said he’d take me home with him. He said he’d look after me.’
‘And did he?’
‘He kept his promise. Things weren’t so bad at first. His wife didn’t like me. Mrs Earnshaw. She said she didn’t trust me. Didn’t know where I was from. But Mr Earnshaw persuaded her to look after me all the same. I remember one night, I couldn’t sleep. I could hear raised voices in the kitchen. I crept from my sleeping place and put my ear to the door. It was Mr and Mrs Earnshaw. They were talking about me. “Why have you brought this filthy creature into my home?” “I felt sorry for him. He had no one.” “You can’t bring every waif and stray back with you. You silly man.” I must have been a force of conflict between them, which they never truly reconciled. A few years after I arrived, Mrs Earnshaw got a fever. I used to watch Mr Earnshaw mop her brow. I’d fetch fresh water for him. He doted over her. Still, she never recovered from that fever. When she died Mr Earnshaw changed. He withdrew, became more distant. He’d spend hours in his study reading his books. Long into the night he’d sit, with just a candle for company. Or else he’d stay by the fire and stare into the flames. But he never neglected me. When Mr Earnshaw was around, he kept Hindley in check. He even sent him away so that he couldn’t beat me. But when Mr Earnshaw died, it all changed again. Hindley came back and he seemed to blame me. Not just for being sent away, but for the death of his father. Somehow, in his warped mind, I was responsible.’
‘This Hindley sounds like a right cock.’
After a time the barges thinned out and working men became scarcer. The sun rose high and I was grateful for such clement weather. There were two puttocks above us and I watched them soar upwards. Emily came out of herself properly and started to chat again beside me; her talk helped to pass the time.
‘How did they know we had come to Manchester?’
‘Who?’
‘Those men. Dick Taylor and that other knob.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Someone must have told them.’
‘How? We didn’t tell anyone where we were going.’
‘Well, how did they know then? They’re not bright enough to work it out for themselves. Do you think it was that old woman we passed on the moor, the one with the stick?’
‘I suspect they just guessed. Perhaps they’d tried other places first. They got lucky, that’s all.’
‘But they came to the inn where we were staying. A minute later we’d have been mincemeat.’
‘Just a coincidence, I’m sure. Don’t worry about it. They won’t get lucky again.’
I wondered how many inns they’d tried. Was ours the first or had they tried a great many others?
‘Are you sure?’ Emily said.
‘Of course.’
<
br /> In attempting to convince Emily, I was in fact attempting to convince myself of this. In truth, Cathy, I was deeply perturbed to consider that the men had tracked us to the inn.
‘There are as many people in Manchester as there are rats in the sewers. There are inns on every corner, gin bars in every cellar, a dark skin for every half a dozen pale skins. That will keep them busy for a while. They’ll have travelled by horseback no doubt, so have that advantage. But we have the advantage of being only two in a world of millions. Like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
‘But it’s easy to find a needle in a haystack,’ the girl said.
‘How so?’
‘You set fire to it, and all that is left is the needle.’
‘Well, let them set fire to the whole of England, they’ll still not find us.’
We came to an area with lots of boats toing and froing. You should have seen those boats go, Cathy. Faster than any horse and carriage, each one floating through the water like a swan. The surface of the water was a mirror of the sky, fringed with trees and green foliage. Occasionally we would come across a hump-backed bridge and the arch would complete itself in the glass of the canal, forming a perfect circle. There were herons perched on the edge of the bank, still as statues, their bills like spears waiting to stab a fish. Although there couldn’t have been many fish in this water, I didn’t think. But I was wrong. As I looked across the surface I saw that there were circles forming on the film of the water, as the fish came up for insects. Life seeps into the cracks everywhere you look.
‘It’s all right this, in’t it?’ Emily said.
‘Yeah.’
‘How far do you reckon?’
‘I don’t know, we just need to head west.’
‘Does this canal go all the way?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘Never been here before, but I remember my dad talking about it. There was a load of blabber about whether they’d do it or not. It cost a lot of money.’
‘Made a lot of money too, I expect. One thing you can be sure about, if some rich bastard is prepared to splash out, he’s doing it because he knows he’ll make a shitload of bunce.’
‘My dad talked about working it.’
‘Robbing?’
‘He preferred to call it redistribution. He looked into it but decided it were too risky. Too many people about.’
There were still sections that were incomplete and navvies grafted on the banks either side, shifting the stones into place. Mostly Irish by the sound of it. The sky was as grey as ton slate and I wondered if it would rain again. My coat had only just got fully dry and I didn’t fancy another soaking. The rain made the walking twice as hard. There was a mist over yonder but nothing significant. I recalled one time with you when we’d been up on Penistone Hill and a witch’s mist had set in, thick white smoke, rolling and settling beneath our feet. It had looked like it was solid, like we could walk straight across it to Crow Hill. You’d told me the tale of King Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon, who had disguised himself as his enemy and slept with his enemy’s wife at Tintagel. Where she had conceived of Arthur. How he had walked across the mists that Merlin had magicked into being. Deceit and treachery never far away. I told Emily the tale to pass the time.
‘My dad could work magic,’ she said.
‘Could he? What sort?’
‘You name it. He could make things disappear off the face of the earth.’
‘Really?’
‘That’s what the magistrate said.’
As we came out of Manchester there wasn’t much to look at. The landscape was flat. By the side of the canal was bramble and blackberry. Linnets picked at the berries. Every now and again we would have to stop to make way for the horses pulling the boats. They were harnessed with thick ropes and they dragged the cargo along the length of the canal. The towpath was wide, but the horses were big, muscular beasts, bigger than the horses around Wuthering Heights. Occasionally we saw a boat being pulled by a pair of donkeys, and often, smaller boats being dragged by mules. The snaking of the canal, I found out later, was to avoid locks. Locks being one of the main reasons for the slowing of traffic. It made our journey more interesting as the path curved and our view in front continually changed. Some of the barge workers stared at us. I supposed we made an odd couple.
‘How will you go about it?’ Emily asked. ‘Finding out who you are?’
I’d given this a great deal of thought, but knew not the first thing of how to go about tracing my roots.
‘Go to the docks. Ask around. Do a bit of digging. Someone must know something.’
‘You say that, William Lee, but it’s been nine years. That’s almost as long as I’ve been on this earth. A lot changes in nine years. There might be no one left with a memory for those days, for all you know. In any case, suppose you do find out, what will you do then?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a hell of a thing. Finding out who you are, where you’re from.’
The towpath ran out as we came to a sign: ‘Throstle Nest Bridge’. We had to cross to pick up the towpath on the other side. Boats queued while the horses were transferred over. I wondered why they’d designed it this way. The next thing I saw were concentric circles forming on the surface of the water, spreading outwards and morphing into each other. Then I felt the cold drops of water on my neck.
‘Oh fuck, it’s raining again,’ Emily said.
I looked up; the sky didn’t appear too threatening and I hoped it would pass over.
‘The one thing about my dad,’ Emily said, ‘he might have been a highwayman, but he never lied to me.’
‘Well, you’re lucky there,’ I said.
‘Why do you think he brought you back?’ she asked. ‘Mr Earnshaw, I mean.’
‘That’s one of the things I want to find out. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense right now. But I intend to make some sense of it.’
Bright yellow lucifer grew tall along the towpath where the canal forked. One side going left, the other side right. We stopped.
‘Which way?’ Emily said.
The clouds were thickening and the rain was now siling. The film of the canal water was a chaos of creases. Everything was sopping. We looked for a passing boat to ask for directions, and as we waited we picked the plumpest blackberries from the nearby bush. After a short time, a boat approached. The bargeman told us to go right. We crossed over another bridge and joined the yonderly towpath. I still had a handful of blackberries. I ate them as I walked. They were sweet.
The canal straightened out for a time and the barges thinned by. There wasn’t much to see. A crow. A wagtail. Trees. Grass. Canal. The plash of rain.
‘This is boring,’ Emily said.
‘Can’t win with you. One minute you’re moaning because it’s hard going. The next minute you’re moaning because it’s too easy.’
‘I’m getting wet.’
‘No kidding.’
‘I’m fucking soaked.’
‘Yep.’
‘Tell me more about this Hindley,’ she said.
I told her of another time when I had inadvertently saved his son’s life. I don’t know where you were, Cathy, probably at the Lintons’ with your feet under their table.
‘Hindley was drunk and carrying on,’ I said. ‘He was standing on the stairs and he held his son with one hand and a bottle of brandy with the other. He dangled Hareton over the balcony.’
‘What was he trying to do?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps in his drunken madness he thought his child would enjoy the excitement of being on the precipice. I happened to be walking past as he dropped the brat, either by accident or by design, I don’t know which, but I remember catching it in my arms. It was instinct. I wish I hadn’t done it. I wish I’d let it fall to the floor and dash its brains out. But it was good to see the brat scream when Hindley tried to make amends and stroke its cheek. It hated Hindley almost as much as I did. And it gave me solace to know that. Nelly told me l
ater how Hindley had held a knife to her throat when he had caught her hiding the brat. He had grabbed it and threatened to break its neck. She had watched him carry the brat upstairs and hold it over the banister.’
‘I’m glad that you saved the brat’s life,’ Emily said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Gives you something else to beat Hindley with.’
As we walked by the water, I thought about this. It made a great deal of sense.
We came across a flock of Jack Nicker. A dozen or so, feasting on thistle seeds. They flashed gold and red, the only colour for miles around. Everything else was grey and the falling rain was like lead pellets. All this time I kept my eye on the way we’d been, looking back furtively so as not to alarm Emily, but I made sure we were not followed.
‘I’ve got seeds stuck between my teeth,’ Emily said.
So had I. We stopped and I picked two stems of woody grass and fashioned them into toothpicks.
‘I like crunching the seeds between my teeth,’ Emily said. ‘You get a sort of satisfaction, destroying things.’
‘I suppose you do.’
A Game of Skittles
‘I could murder a beer,’ Emily said.
‘I didn’t know you drank.’
‘I didn’t. I’ve just started.’
We were standing by a bridge to the side of a tavern. We’d been walking all morning through braying rain. My surtout was clinging to my skin and the seams were rubbing the flesh raw.
‘I suppose we could both do with a drink and something to eat,’ I said.
Inside, the barman eyed us suspiciously. We must have been a sight to behold, Cathy. A barefoot girl in an oversized shirt, a ripped frock tied at the waist, and a dark-skinned gypsy in naught but a coat and breeches. Wet as water rats. He refused us custom at first but I managed to persuade him. I bought us some bread and cheese, a flagon of ale for the girl and some hot tea for myself. We sat on stools around a small table next to a group of navvies and bankers. They were drinking ale and smoking their clay pipes. I watched them chat and laugh. One was dark-skinned like me and it was good to be in the company of another. I earwigged as Emily supped. The dark-skinned one had been transporting goods on the coaching roads and was talking about how much safer it was on the canal.
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