Upon organizer request, onstage, the two Emilys will be flanked by their most famous pictorial representations: Miss Brontë, by the portrait painted by brother Branwell of the Brontë sisters three; Miss Dickinson alongside her likeness, age sixteen, visage wan, body recuperating, throat beribboned. Those images are now brought forward and placed on easels: the first hint that Miss Dickinson will sit stage left, Miss Brontë stage right. Briefly, the curtain at the back of the stage balloons. A complaint originating from that distance sounds remarkably bark-like. The wait is crushing, killing. It is exceedingly difficult for us to hold our water. We are in grave danger of succumbing to the strain.
At last! There! An inaugural glimpse. The white dress, its shade purer than virginal white, is inhabited by a red-haired, freckled, exquisitely delicate, exquisitely neat creature with a step so light we do not hear her progress, only her companion's, a Newfoundland twice his mistress's girth. A pleasant murmur crests and subsides. We did not realize we would also be treated to the authoresses’ dogs. At the first note of our spontaneous applause, Miss Dickinson stops short, averts her face, raises a hand to her cheek as if stung there or slapped. Only when silence replaces our offence does she proceed to her chair, drop upon it like a tissue and direct her stare offstage.
Miss Brontë leads with her chin. She is long and lean and, it must be said, less careful in her toilette than Miss Dickinson. Her dress is dark, with leg of mutton sleeves and skirts that cling, the petticoats beneath lacking fullness. There is mud on her nose and shoes and on the shank of her unleashed escort, Keeper.
Miss Dickinson dips sideways, as if in swoon. The microphones pick up her whispered greeting, the word “devoted” slavishly intoned. When Miss Brontë snaps her fingers, Keeper drops instantly to the floor. The sleeves of Miss Dickinson's dress visibly tremble.
"Forgive me if I seem frightened. I never see strangers and hardly know what I say."
"It is not absolutely necessary to speak. With Charlotte, in Brussels, I sat in drawing room after drawing room and never uttered a word."
"A constant interchange wastes thought and feeling,” Miss Dickinson murmurs. “And then we are obliged to repair and renew."
"There is nothing cowardly in retreat."
We have now heard their voices! We can now boast to anyone: we have inhabited the same room, seen life-sized Emilys converse. We have witnessed mud and freckles. We have glimpsed covered ankles.
The authoresses fall simultaneously still and silent, and there is no escaping the conclusion that Miss Brontë's silence presents as sullen. The dogs are aware only of their mistresses, alert to the smallest of their movements, the merest blink of an eyelid. Even when water bowls appear on either side of the stage, the dogs are not to be distracted from their dedicated mission. A sprig of heather flutters from Miss Brontë's hair; Miss Dickinson's sleeves resume their trembling.
"Affected,” a member of the audience judges—shockingly aloud.
The Emilys affect not to hear.
As if each would rather slice open her palms, Miss Brontë and Miss Dickinson reach for their Guidelines for Discussion sheets, copies of which have earlier been distributed to the audience. It is a suggestions sheet only. The Emilys have been apprised they need not confine their remarks to the topics thereon.
Compiled from requests by scholars, readers and fans, the list contains the following (highlighted) queries:
The effect of living in houses that overlook graveyards?
The consequence of fathers who shut themselves in their studies, who dine alone in their rooms?
Your staunch defense of drunkard brother Branwell, of adulterous brother Austin: justify.
Define “eccentric."
Favorite recipe?
Whose handwriting is the tiniest?
Which of you is the better mimic?
Publication: why/why not?
Why no Civil War poems? Why no Industrial Revolution poems?
Least favorite domestic chore?
Your opinion of relatives who tamper with an artist's work, postmortem?
Rather curtly, Miss Brontë declares that her brother has been ill-used by life.
"What fortitude the Soul contains/That it can so endure,” Miss Dickinson feelingly commiserates.
"I shall never renounce my brother. Never."
"The heart wants what it wants,” Miss Dickinson concurs. “I offered Mr. Higginson day lilies. I collect and press flowers."
"As everyone knows, I walk the moors."
"On occasion, I cross the garden to Austin's house. I have been called eccentric."
"My father called himself eccentrick in a letter to Mrs. Gaskell. I am, of course, my father's child."
"My sister-in-law is an exceptional hostess."
"Charlotte would so love to be."
"It is not as if we hide from our families."
"Our families see us daily."
"My valentines first exposed me."
"It is Charlotte who refuses to write in secret."
From the audience: "Bor-ing. Tell us something we don't know."
Audacious, incredible, scurrilous—but: the second sacrilege is somehow easier to accept. This time there is no heckling of the heckler from audience rank. Instead: evidence of agreement. Seats begin to empty. On the backs of vacant seats, the casual and disrespectful propping of feet.
The disenchantment is mutual. Miss Brontë's face turns stony. Miss Dickinson bows her head. Both dogs rise onto hindquarters, alert to audience/author disengage.
"My wars are laid away in books."
"I can simultaneously sweep the kitchen and dream of Gondal."
"My black cake is much sought after. Also my gingerbread."
"I peel apples for Charlotte, potatoes for Taby. I shall never teach again."
Someone near the front is tearing the Guidelines for Discussion sheet in half, in quarters, in eighths, in sixteenths.
"I have asked Vinnie to destroy my letters to the world."
"Charlotte will assume she knows best. Charlotte does not heed requests."
More and more restive, this audience. Those who still bother to face the stage fixate not on the actual but on the two-dimensional Emilys. Why are the genuine articles so unprepossessing in person? Why do they deliver their comments so flatly? Why are they in appearance, style and commentary, so utterly unremarkable? The entire evening feels like a sham, a put-on, an outrage. Our expectations have been toyed with and—dare we say it?—abused.
A gentleman stumbles on a set of knees in his quest for the aisle. Others push to join him.
The Emilys watch the exodus in silence. Miss Brontë offers Keeper the Guidelines sheet to chew on. Periodically, the Newfoundland drools and growls.
A woman in the second row stands and impatiently waves both hands. Flushed and flustered and initially tongue-tied, she is also imperiously demanding. The show she has come for has been withheld. She will not leave without attempting to get something of what she came for. Before either Emily deigns to comprehend her question, she must repeat her question ad infinitum. Her question is: “What story about yourselves would you prefer suppressed?"
Miss Dickinson looks to her Guidelines sheet but the question isn't there, it isn't there.
"Inviting a visitor to choose between wine and a rose,” Miss Dickinson whispers eventually.
"The Keeper beating,” Miss Brontë crossly admits. “The violence of that episode was greatly exaggerated."
"Read a poem!"
Miss Dickinson puts a hand to her cheek in a gesture that has become all too familiar; Miss Brontë bites and bloodies her lip. After a taxing, unpardonable delay, they launch in.
"The night is darkening round me / The wild winds coldly blow;/But a tyrant spell has bound me / And I cannot, cannot go."
"Because I could not stop for Death—/ He kindly stopped for me—/ The carriage held but just Ourselves—/ And Immortality."
"The giant trees are bending / Their bare boughs weighed wi
th snow, / The storm is fast descending / And yet I cannot go."
Some in the audience are convinced we could do as well onstage—better, even. Both recitations lack spirit and élan. Both lack credibility.
"My father's heart is pure and terrible,” Miss Dickinson bleats. “He cannot abide loquacious women."
"My mother went first to her grave. My father, I predict, will see all his children buried."
Miss Dickinson's distress, Miss Brontë's fatalism, detain a few curious souls. Even so, conversations irrelevant to either the work of Miss Dickinson or Miss Brontë build in volume. Guidelines for Discussion paper the floor.
"Heathcliff will forever be maligned."
"My Master will forever be misidentified."
"So what? Who cares?"
The final taunt.
Contractually obligated to remain onstage as long as anyone remains in the auditorium, Misses Dickinson and Brontë, with dogs, remain.
There is hissing in the hallway. There is booing in the lavatories. We are, to the person, exceedingly sorry we came.
[Back to Table of Contents]
The Chance
Susan Wardle
The three of us are pulling weeds when the steam car comes bumping and puffing down the dirt track.
"Sally, it's a car!” says Jem. He's eleven and I'm fourteen and neither of us has seen a car other than in a picture book.
"You keep working.” Old Ma Wheatley grabs the rifle and walks across the potato patch to the gate, a man's shirt flapping on her thin frame. We don't get visitors often, not since Old Ma threatened the Chairman with a gun.
I hoe my way to the lane. What affects Old Ma affects Jem and me. I skip three rows, bringing me up behind the scribbly bark tree next to the track.
"Nice car,” Old Ma says to the driver. Its bonnet is dented and there are scrapes down the side. The door has a hole in it as round as my fist. The driver swings down from his seat and takes off his hat. He's younger than Old Ma, hair graying at the edges, eyes echoing the sky. “Where did you get it?"
"It was my father's,” he says.
"And who was your father?” she asks.
"Garrett Wheatley,” he says, and then, “Mum?"
"I haven't got a son anymore,” she says.
He starts telling a story, about his childhood and a little boy whose dad owned a rail yard and whose mum made the best pavlova and how he borrowed his dad's steam car to go fight in the War.
Old Ma picks her teeth, acting like she's not listening. My heart is pounding. I never knew she had family. I thought we were her family now. Why would she want us if she had a real son?
"I'm sorry I went,” he says.
"Put it in the garage where the whole world can't see it,” Old Ma says, stony faced. “I'm glad Garrett didn't live to see this.” She turns and sees us listening. “Back to work!"
* * * *
His name is Harris. He stays for dinner and helps himself to seconds. I think of the garden bed, and the hen that isn't laying.
"When are you leaving?” I ask.
"Thought I'd stay for a while, help out around the place.” He shoots us a grin, “Didn't know Ma had found help already."
"Can I drive the car?” Jem has been dying to ask all day.
"Dishes then bed,” Old Ma says. I wash while Jem wipes, then we kiss Old Ma on the cheek and walk out of the house and across the meadow, picking our way past the rusting engines and wagons, to the carriage we sleep in. We've lived in the carriage since the day we arrived five years ago after the Nationalist came through asking for volunteers and shot our Mum and Dad for saying no.
I light a candle and pull the curtains while Jem gets into his pyjamas. We have two beds set up where the passenger seating used to be and a bookcase made of planks of wood separated by bricks.
I tuck Jem in and blow out the candle.
"Do you think Old Ma would let me drive it?” Jem asks sleepily.
"I don't know,” I say. “Go to sleep.” It's simple for him, he doesn't think about consequence. I do. We're not kin, and Harris is. We just turned up one day and never left.
In the morning Harris brings in the goats for milking and helps finish pulling the weeds.
"Hey Harris, watch this!” Jem throws a stone at a galah sitting on the fence. It hits the pink feathered chest and the bird takes off, screeching abuse.
Harris laughs, “Good aim.” He pegs a stone at the gate post, hitting it. Jem looks impressed.
It's different having a man around. Harris makes the work go faster and easier, he tells stories about the coast and cracks jokes.
"Did you fight?” Jem asks.
"Yes,” says Harris, his face serious. Old Ma glares at them. She doesn't like talk about the fighting.
* * * *
* * * *
"What are you doing?” Harris is watching Jem and me work.
"Fixing the train,” says Jem proudly.
It's Sunday afternoon and Old Ma is having an afternoon nap. Jem and I are out in the rail yard, working on a rusty old steam-train engine. It's Jem's dream to fix it up and steam out of here.
Old Ma laughed when we started working on it. Promised us if we ever get it working and drive it to town she would give it to us. Every Sunday afternoon, and evenings in summer, we paint over rust, and work grease into levers, pistons and cogs. I do it for Jem. I don't believe in dreams.
"You're lucky this place is so far from the coast otherwise the army would have scrapped these engines for the war,” Harris says.
"They took iron sheets off some for the bakery roof,” Jem says waving a hand at the carriage carcasses by the shed.
"Here, that's not how you do it.” Harris takes the steam whistle off Jem. He pulls it apart and puts it back together properly, showing Jem how it's done.
He sticks around all afternoon, giving us tips.
"Are there still trains down on the coast?” asks Jem.
Harris shakes his head. “There were until about a year ago, two of them, steam trains like this."
"What happened to them?” Jem's eyes are fixed on Harris.
"One was derailed, the other got blown up,” says Harris.
"No one is going to blow up this train,” Jem says, horrified.
"Have you tried firing it up and building a head of steam?” Harris asks.
"No.” Jem shows him the driver's lever that we've re-built and how the fire door opens and the wooden boards we've used to replace the floor.
"What state are the old tracks in?” Harris asks.
Jem shrugs. Old Ma told us once how the train line ran all the way through the Tablelands and then down to the coast where it joined with the main line.
I look at the weeds growing between disused wagons and carriages and think of the Ironbark that fell on the track just past the river last spring.
"Are the tracks still good on the main line?” asks Jem.
Harris nods.
I wish Harris would go away. We don't need him.
"Have you ever been in the shed?” asks Harris, waving a hand at the big barn at the end of the tracks. It's shut with big double doors, and a padlock.
"No one's allowed in,” I tell Harris and hand him a valve full of gunk to clean. I don't tell him we've searched all four sides looking for a hole or secret entry. There is a small door on the same side as the house, blocked by a lump of iron as big as a dog.
* * * *
"Can we take the car to Market?” Jem asks the next day.
Old Ma snorts and keeps cutting up apples.
"Please,” he begs and Harris joins in. Lately one of them can't open their mouth to speak without the other finishing the sentence for him.
"And have every man, woman and child in town wanting to borrow it?” She is not one for attracting attention or making a fuss. I think the only time she did was when she told the Chairman she knew what he'd done after Mum and Dad were dead. It didn't make any difference as far as I could see, but Old Ma said it did. Said that the C
hairman knew that she knew. Maybe she was right; he never touched me again.
On Market Day morning the car is outside the house, Harris feeding wood into it, building up steam. We load it with eggs, goat cheese, fresh vegetables. We won't have this much for Market next month if hungry-mouth Harris stays.
Jem and I sit up on the back, in with the wood. Old Ma comes out of the house wearing a dress and a large bonnet tied with a scarf. In five years I've never seen Old Ma in anything but pants and a shirt. Slowly we bump towards town, steam puffing.
As we turn onto Main Street people come out of their houses to see us go by. Harris toots the horn. Shirley Masterton, who never says hello, grins. Jem and I sit up in the back waving. Even Old Ma nods at acquaintances.
As soon as we park we're surrounded by townsfolk. People shake Harris by the hand and reintroduce themselves, people he grew up with. Old Ma leaves us to trade, says she's got business on the other side of town.
I look after the stall and Harris talks.
"What news of the war?” Dave Neeson asks and everyone listens in.
"The Centralists are stretched,” he tells them. “If the Nationals can rally and make a hard strike at the City, the power could shift. But they're split, cut off from each other and needing supplies."
There's not much comment, just nods. People in the Tablelands keep quiet and hope the fighting stays on the coast. We don't pick sides because there's never a winner.
"We're bringing back the train,” says Harris.
"Do you think you can?” Neeson asks.
"My mate here believes we should try.” Harris wraps an arm around Jem, whose chest puffs to twice its normal size. “It'll be a lot of work and we'll need help rebuilding the tracks."
"You get us a train and we'll look after the tracks,” promises Neeson. “If I could transport my excess grain to Minda I'd be able to sell it for twice what I get here."
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 23 Page 3