Solsbury Hill

by Susan M. Wyler

  He nodded.

  She got up to go. “Thank you. I’ll take good care of it on the road.”

  It was an easy two-hour drive across the Pennines, from Trent Hall in the North York Moors to Haworth in the Yorkshire Dales. When Eleanor arrived, the woman at the Old White Lion Inn urged her to rush to the Brontë Parsonage before it closed, and it was less than a few minutes’ walk down a cobblestoned lane through a charming village.

  At the parsonage there was an exhibit called the Infernal World of Branwell Brontë and from what Eleanor read in the show’s brochure, the dark imaginings in Emily’s novel were no surprise: Emily alone had borne the care of her brother in the last years of both their lives, when he’d been murderously mad and wild from unrequited love and an addiction to alcohol and laudanum.

  Eleanor hadn’t known the children had lost their mother, early in their lives. She hadn’t realized they lived this close, one room right next to another in a small home in a very small town. She pictured the family, their complicated relationships. Each small room with a desk, a hard wood chair, paper and pen set out for writing. Everything plain and spare.

  Almost closing time, the parsonage had emptied of visitors and Eleanor ventured to the far end of the house to see Emily’s bedroom, with an undraped window that reached to the ceiling over a twin bed squeezed between two walls. Eleanor imagined Emily sitting up in bed, looking out the window with a pen in her hand and a small book to write in, but the house felt closed and tight and suddenly Eleanor wanted to get outside.

  It was twilight and if she hadn’t seen the tiniest pale blue bird on a branch in the parsonage graveyard, Eleanor might have been sorry she’d come, but the bird was as round and small as a Ping-Pong ball. She watched it hop up the branch, the way little plastic windup toys hop and flip, and at the end of the branch it spread its tiny wings and fluttered away. Like a cotton ball floating upward into the sky, it flew till she couldn’t see it anymore.

  She sat at the base of a gravestone. In the end, Yorkshire was a place where it was all right to feel grief. If nothing else, she’d begun to feel things differently. While she walked on the moors, with the wind as a friend, the mist above the ground and the boggy peat below, she was more alone than she’d ever been, but felt less alone. The Yorkshire moors were alive with something, and it matched the way it felt to be Eleanor.

  A steep cobbled street sloped out of town, away from the graveyard, but she took the road up to the Old White Lion where she would be staying the night. She stepped inside the Rose & Co. Apothecary, which was quiet and dimly lit and seemed like it hadn’t changed since the nineteenth century. Eleanor bought a pair of blue frilly knickers meant for naughty Victorian girls and a box of bath patisseries from a vintage apothecary recipe. She ordered haddock, chips, and mushy peas for dinner, then took a bath and went to bed early.

  J. M. Wilcock, Esq., and his wife lived on Tim Lane just minutes from the Old White Lion. Eleanor took a tiny wrong turn and wound up on Mytholmes Lane, where the town went untidy, with wires everywhere and straight lines of attached row houses. When she reached Victoria Avenue, she turned the car around, headed back to town, and tried another way out Lord Lane and over a bridge.

  The Wilcocks lived on a hill with a long drive and horses in a gated field. A pink bicycle and a blue bicycle rested against the stone wall by the orangey-red front door. Mr. Wilcock opened the door as she was walking up the path. His square face and round belly smiled. “It’s a damn good thing to see you, good to have you here. Come in, come in.” He led her into the hallway and then the front room. “I’m so glad you made the drive. On the wrong side of the road, too.”

  “Oh, it was fine, except for the roundabouts, but here I am.”

  “Let’s have a drink, shall we?” he said. “Drinks first.”

  “Always,” Eleanor said.

  “What will you have?” The doorbell rang. “That will be Jane . . . ,” Mr. Wilcock said.

  Mrs. Wilcock came in with a tray of bottles and glasses. “Our daughter insisted on joining. I hope you don’t mind . . .” Her limpid blue eyes looked directly into Eleanor’s. “Still a bit bewildered?”

  “I’m much better. I’ve been doing a lot of walking and it’s helped to clear my mind.”

  Mrs. Wilcock dropped ice cubes in four glasses and poured a generous amount of gin, vermouth, and a splash of Campari in each one. She handed Eleanor a drink.

  Jane Wilcock came into the room, tall and elegantly dressed in this year’s Burberry soft black leather pants and a mahogany-red fitted sweater, with sensible walking shoes. As Jane shook Eleanor’s hand she said, “You’re a brave girl coming all this way to this quiet place. It must seem terribly dull after a life in Manhattan,” and then took her drink from the cocktail table and sat down.

  “It’s not the end of the earth,” Mr. Wilcock rumbled.

  Mrs. Wilcock smiled at her husband. “It’s true,” she said to Eleanor, “it was brave of you to come.”

  “I wish you’d had more time with Alice,” Mr. Wilcock said. “She outlived what the doctor said she’d do, but still, she was so happy to have you come.”

  Through lunch, the couple bickered a bit and Jane seemed accustomed to smoothing their differences. Mead had warned her, when he’d offered to drive, “Whatever you think of me, I’d be the best part of the journey, I’m pretty sure,” but Eleanor was enjoying the change of scene, the more modern home with large windows, linen curtains, bright lights, and white furniture. For the most part, the conversation was light and lively: a little American politics, a bit of fashion with Jane.

  “There was something you didn’t want to discuss on the phone,” she reminded Mr. Wilcock as he scooped the last bit of cream and cobbler from his bowl.

  “Oh, that. Sorry, no. I suppose that was just a ruse to get you out here.” He dabbed around his mouth with the linen napkin.

  “Ah . . .”

  Jane interjected, “Father wanted to know you better and we knew you wouldn’t be staying long.”

  “I want to make sure,” Mr. Wilcock began, “that you understand we are all your family. You shouldn’t be the least bit anxious about Trent Hall and all that goes with it. It won’t be a burden you’re inheriting, I promise you that. I’m here, I’m always here to help you in any regard.”

  “Gwen said it takes care of itself, but it’s not that . . . ,” Eleanor said.

  “I knew your mother, when we were young. I think she’d be pleased.” His eyes moistened. “It’s a long time ago, but I thought the world of her, and I think the world of you. Whatever you decide to do with Trent Hall”—he reached and took her hand now—“it’s something you want to be proud of. It’s a fine estate, Trent Hall.”

  “Yes, well, Papa.” Jane rolled her eyes at Eleanor in a friendly way. “Are you up for a walk, Eleanor? We hear from Mead you’re a noble walker. I imagine it’s in your blood! I think we should take you to Top Withens.”

  “Do you know it?” Mrs. Wilcock asked.

  “I saw something about it last night, at the parsonage.”

  “It’s our little Disneyland,” Jane said. “Haworth and the Brontës. The parsonage, the ghosts. Top Withens is thought to be Emily’s inspiration for Wuthering Heights, the house itself, that is. Do you want to go? It’s not a difficult trek.” Jane’s accent was particularly British, with musical lilting intonation, sharp consonants, and swallowed syllables. Eleanor nodded and without delay everyone was up and gathering scarves and coats.

  Along the way the moor grew barren and dry, but the walk was easy. Mr. Wilcock reviewed with Eleanor some of the details of the estate, what it meant for Eleanor, whether she stayed in England or not. The house could not be sold under any condition, he reiterated, but she needn’t live there all the time—Alice and Gwen hadn’t. There were people to care for it, if she found she couldn’t stay. Still, he encouraged her to find a way to stay and she
began to feel obligated.

  “What about Mead? Can’t I give it to him?”

  “You can’t. No. One has nothing to do with the other . . . ,” Mr. Wilcock said, somewhat breathless as they passed a low bridge and the climb grew more steep.

  “But he lives there and he should stay there. I mean, of course, he’ll live there as long as he wants. It’s his house.” She looked at Jane.

  “Mead makes do,” Jane said, and there was something about the way she’d spoken his name. Eleanor supposed that Jane had been a girlfriend of Mead’s at one time. And this made Eleanor a little more curious. Everything she’d encountered on this journey seemed to have another side: a shadow, a shimmer, an underbelly.

  Jane hooked her arm through Eleanor’s and walked with her more quickly so they’d pull ahead of her parents. In a conspiratorial tone she said, “Don’t be overly bothered. Father wants you here. He’s sentimental that way. You must do what’s right for you.” She slowed down to light a cigarette, cupped her hand around the flame, her arm still hooked with Eleanor’s arm.

  “Mead won’t be turned out—of course he can stay at Trent, but he has a mysterious place he’ll inherit one day.” She pulled in a deep draft of smoke. “An estate on an island in the Outer Hebrides.”

  “Really? Does everyone have an estate here?” Eleanor said.

  “Hardly. He doesn’t go there, but it is his ancestral home and he’s never been under any illusions about Trent Hall.” Jane unhooked their arms and they mounted the last part of the hill to see Top Withens for the first time.

  “You don’t have to worry about Mead,” she said.

  Eleanor had pictured a grand house, dark, with bent and twisted trees, cliffs, and ditches dug out by rain and wind, all in a forbidding landscape, but Top Withens was a disappointment. Most of the building was gone, there was no roof, and there were woolly sheep with black faces and piercing pale eyes mulling about inside the broken walls.

  Eleanor walked down the slope to the front of the house and stood next to one of the two remaining trees on the hill. It was unromantic and the whole place seemed an unlikely site for the place in the book.

  “This can’t be it. It doesn’t feel like the house in the book at all,” Eleanor said to Jane, who’d just made it down the side of the hill to join her.

  “Not convinced?”

  “This can’t be it.”

  “Starting a revolution?” Only half of Jane’s face lifted when she smiled. “What do you think the ghosts must make of it?”

  “If I were a ghost I’d stay pretty far from here, wouldn’t you?” Eleanor said with as much levity as she could muster. It was wearing her down, all the glib talk of ghosts.

  “I can’t imagine they’re fond of tourists,” said Jane, smiling.

  Jane was kind and irreverent and it was good to have her around. Her deep brown hair was tied with a scarf. She was more handsome than pretty, with a strong square jaw, full crimson lips, and almond eyes.

  “You know I can’t stay,” Eleanor said. “I don’t understand why no one said anything about this to me years ago, so I could have planned something, but how in the world can I stay?” She shook her head with small rapid shakes. “It makes no sense to me.”

  “Father can’t imagine anyone but you in that house,” said Jane. She lit another cigarette with the one she’d just finished. “Trent Hall’s an old estate and it’s meant to be yours. Over here, these things mean something.”

  “I just think Mead should stay.”

  “Mead will stay,” said Jane. She nodded her head toward the other tree and they climbed the slope to stand under its shade. Jane leaned against the trunk and Eleanor sat in its crook.

  “The thing about Mead is, he’s got an idea in his head that there’s a Catherine for him, out there somewhere, and he’s doing all he can to prepare himself for her.”

  “A Catherine?”

  “Heathcliff’s Catherine. Alice was a Brontë scholar and those books were his bedtime lullabies. A great love requires a sturdiness of self, he says.” Eleanor thought she heard an ache in Jane’s voice. “A hardiness developed in accord with these Wuthering Heights moors.” Jane shook her head as if shaking away a pesky bee.

  “This place doesn’t look anything like Wuthering Heights,” Eleanor said, “but Trent Hall, on the other hand . . .”

  “You’re absolutely right.” Jane brushed off her pants and sweater.

  “I sleep in the room within a room.”

  “I’ve seen the room. It’s true,” Jane exclaimed. “Must have been a fashion at the time. Let’s be off, shall we? We can have tea at the Rochester before you get on the road. How’s that?” She called out, “Mum, Papa,” with the accent on the last syllable.

  The insistent tree woke Eleanor in the night and she cranked the window open to push the branch away, but it found its way back and continued to scrape and scratch the pane. Eleanor woke and slept and woke again and each time wiped tears from her face. She’d brought up a Goethe book she’d found on one of the half-empty shelves in the study downstairs, so she read for some hours, then slept again.

  Like sap from a tree, her eyes wept all through the night. She might have dreamed, but she couldn’t remember the dreams. Even in the morning, with the curtains open and the sun in her eyes, she turned over in bed and pulled the comforter up to cover her shoulder, pulled a pillow against her belly, read with the book perched on a pillow, and soon fell asleep again.

  Gwen had been up to check on her late in the morning, but hadn’t wakened her. Tilda came up at noon and left a tray with tea and warm biscuits that went cold. In the early evening, Mead knocked on her door.

  Eleanor woke and wiped her cheeks dry. “Come in,” she called, trying to make her voice light and bright. She wriggled up in bed, kept the comforter close to her chest.

  “Hey, you,” he said. He came in and sat tentatively on the edge of the bed. “You all right?”

  The wall of leaded windows let in lots of light. She’d drawn the curtains wide.

  “It’s not that I’m so tired.”

  His smile was encouraging.

  “I’ve just not figured out a reason to get out of bed today.”

  “Just thought you’d be thirsty or hungry.”

  “No, I’m not, but I was thinking . . .” She leaned against the pillows, the scratched window ledge behind her. “Would you be willing to take me out on a ride sometime, maybe tomorrow?”

  “If you mean horseback, I would.”

  “I do.”

  “Are you as masterful on a horse as you are on foot?”

  “It can’t be that hard,” she said.

  “You’ve never been riding?”

  She shook her head no. “I saw you wrangling the horses one day. I’m not here for much longer.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  He touched her foot under the covers and Eleanor’s heart jumped in her chest. She wondered if Mead and Jane had taken rides. Jane seemed the kind who’d be a natural on horseback.

  “Hard to say, I guess,” she said. “Maybe not a fact. But I’ll be ready to ride in the morning, if you are.”

  Mead stood.

  “Can we ride without running into anybody?” she asked.

  “I should think so. You’ll need a good jacket as it’s cold in the clearings. We’ll do our best to make the ride utterly uneventful, how’s that?”

  “Perfect. Thanks, Mead. I’ll see you early in the morning.”

  “You don’t want anything at all now?”

  She shook her head again.

  “I’ll wake you,” he said.

  “I’ll hear you in the courtyard.”

  “Come on, then.” His head cocked away from the house the next morning. Mead untied the horses and she realized she had imagined herself on the back of his horse with her arms wrapped a
round his middle.

  At the edge of the field, he gave her a boost up onto the saddle then slipped her foot into the stirrup, went to the other side, and slipped the other foot in. “Keep your heels down and away from her body.” He placed a rein in each of Eleanor’s hands, then climbed on his mare.

  “We’re so high off the ground,” she said.

  Mead introduced her to Kindred and she leaned forward to touch the smooth auburn hair.

  “Now, keep your hips nestled into the deep part of that seat, keep your face pointed in the direction you want to go and your hips square.” Eleanor wriggled in deep and pressed her heels down against the stirrups, sat up tall.

  “Good. Now imagine you’re part of that beautiful horse. Your arms are relaxed, the reins loose and easy.” He urged his horse forward without moving anything. “Ready?”

  Eleanor’s heart beat hard, her knees were loose, her calves were pressed against Kindred’s belly, and they rode away from the house. They rode straight on for over an hour. First they walked, then Mead encouraged a trot and a canter, till Eleanor was confident enough to let Kindred gallop the way she wanted to.

  The mare all fresh and wild in the morning, it didn’t matter so much what Eleanor knew about riding, she had only to relax enough to let Kindred soar. Eleanor laughed with joy when she cantered, then whooped when she galloped, all the sound swallowed by the wildness of the wind. Kindred’s ride was muscular and smooth, and as the hour became two hours, Eleanor felt the possibility of staying forever on the moors.

  What had been unnerving those first days—unbroken landscape, unmeasured time—now seemed wholesome and very fine. Mead’s solid body moved in rhythm with his mare as he bounded over low hedges. Unruffled, he turned his face to her and smiled, all satisfied. She wished they could keep riding, wished they would never turn back, wished there were nothing for her to decide.

  When there was a river to cross, Kindred headed in without hesitation; she pushed through the water as high as her shoulders, soaked Eleanor’s legs in the cold. Eleanor clung; she was scared and then she was stunned by the strength it took for the mare to climb up and out onto the river’s edge. The ripple of muscles under the blanket, Kindred’s legs rose high as she climbed out of the mud onto the bank.