by Mick Jackson
She heads up the stairs, where it’s a little cooler – and more dismal, if that’s possible – and stands on the landing, consulting her leaflet, where she learns that there were, in fact, another two Brontë girls, who died when they were still children. Two invisible, extra Brontës no one’s ever heard of, since neither lived long enough to lift a pen. The first bedroom she enters, it seems, is where the mother passed away, knowing that all her children would have to go on, motherless. With just their crazy father to look after them. And this really is just about too much for poor Yukiko. She’s tempted to throw herself onto the old bed and have a good long cry about it, and might have done so if she didn’t suspect that the bed, bedroom floor and the entire Brontë house would likely collapse around her, which would only mean her being dragged off to the local jailhouse, to be beaten about the body with copies of Wuthering Heights.
And suddenly Yukiko has had enough of death and child-abandonment, and slips quickly and quietly from room to room, like a ghost, until she encounters a large glass cabinet which holds one of Charlotte’s old dresses – faded pink, with traces of what appears to be some sort of paisley print. The waistline impossibly narrow. And, more than most, Yukiko appreciates how much work would have gone into the making of that tiny dress. The hundred individual pleats, gathered under the waistband. All the folds and stitching at the neck. Yuki suddenly can’t get enough of this dress. The waist, hardly wider than the neckline; the dress’s very headlessness. She stands and studies the thing until the glass case begins to slowly spin, the top floats free and the dress gradually emerges, like a satellite being delivered into space. And the dress floats off around the room, out onto the landing and all around the house.
Yuki walks on down a different staircase and is in sight of the gift shop, making her way between glass cabinets containing various Brontë personal items. She doesn’t intend to spend more than a minute or two here – is already looking forward to getting out into the daylight – but one of the first things she spots is a lock of hair, said to be Charlotte’s. And, weirdly, this makes Charlotte powerfully real to Yuki. A living, breathing woman. Then a handful of children’s toys that must have belonged to the infant Brontës and which, her leaflet tells her, were discovered beneath the floorboards. But what really knocks Yuki out are the scraps of paper covered in crayoned drawings and the tiniest handwriting. It takes her a moment or two to work out that they are, in fact, miniature, home-made books. Stitched and written with a child’s determined hand.
She’s still standing, staring at them, with her face so close to the glass she can feel its coldness, when Mrs Kudo joins her. Yukiko knows that she’s there. Knows that it will be Mrs Kudo. And without even turning to her, says, Aren’t they just about the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen?
For two or three years now Yuki has been collecting children’s books about Space Travel – ideally, from the Sixties and early Seventies, though she’s not averse to earlier publications which contain a little less science and a lot more speculation, with drawings of rockets that look as if they’re made of concrete, and moon stations with massive windows where astro-folk can relax and read a book.
Yuki’s convinced she’d make a pretty good astronaut. She’s patient, capable of medium-length periods of concentration and, despite all the panic regarding the loss of her puffers and phone charger, is really quite laid-back. She’s not sure she’d want to sign up for a trip to, say, Jupiter, but is confident she’d be able to handle four or five days’ floating about, just outside the stratosphere. Carrying out repairs on a space station, say. Or collecting samples. Or blowing up some meteor that was heading our way.
The whole weightlessness thing is one of the main attractions – just as it is, she suspects, for professional astronauts (though they’d never admit to it). So it’s perfectly natural that when you first get up there you’re going to goof about, tossing pens to pals, flipping up peanuts and chomping them out of the air, etc. But pretty soon you’d be only too happy to get on with some serious experiments, whatever they might be. Yuki thinks the lack of gravity might help with her sleeping. In space all your muscles and bones have no option but to just sort of hang there. Which must be weird to begin with, but you hear about astronauts returning to earth several centimetres taller than when they climbed into their rocket, and your body has got to appreciate that. So Yuki wouldn’t be at all surprised if, at the close of day, when she zips herself into her pod or secures herself to the wall with Velcro, she sleeps like a top.
Part of the deal in her agreeing to be an astronaut would be that she got to design the crew’s clothes. Not the shiny suits you wear when taking off and landing, which she imagines have to be made of fireproof material with special wires for microphone cables and so on, but the kind of outfit you change into once you’ve cleared the earth’s gravity and are just floating around. The basic design would have to be clean and simple. No collars or cuffs which might get caught on important levers. Plus, it would be good to avoid beige, which has long been a cliché in casual spacewear. You could have a different outfit for each day. That way, when you look around and see how everyone’s wearing blue with yellow trim you know it must be Wednesday. Or if everyone’s in a pink jumpsuit with a Fifties V-neck you know that it’s Friday and there’s only one more day to go.
*
Of course, The Future won’t last forever. At least, not in the shiny, bright way we’ve come to imagine it. The day will surely dawn when the systems fail, the teetering tower of our technically dependant existence topples and everything suddenly slows, slows, slows right down.
If you happen to be on a flight at that particular juncture your best hope is that the plane will simply glide towards the nearest airport or flattish-looking field. And wherever that happens to be is where you’ll likely stay, quite possibly for ever. Unless you feel like walking the twelve thousand kilometres home. Or cycling. If you happen to have a bicycle.
All the tankers will slowly find themselves beached and picked apart by barefoot infants. The office blocks will be turned into glasshouses. We will live modestly, with modest aspirations. We will do our best to embrace our new slow life. But Yuki doesn’t regard all this as unbearably awful. True enough, there will be a period of adjustment – a period that may last some time. But once everything is settled we’ll be able to appreciate our new circumstances. Clean air! And imagine the silence! In no time at all the weeds will sweep through the malls and gas stations, and the moss will get to work. The world will become handsomely dilapidated. Yuki imagines us advancing courageously into this Beautiful Decrepit Future. Or, if not with courage, then innocence.
Yuki and the Elders are hiking up onto the moors, to see the heather. The heather which, Hana Kita has told them, is quite exquisite when it’s in flower. When she brings her groups up here in late summer, she says, they sit in its midst and eat their lunch like some purple heather hanami. But right now the sky is heavy and the heather’s like old grey string, as if this place was once the bed of some ancient ocean from which the sea retreated centuries ago.
But they must hike out here in order that the Elders can see where the Brontës used to go when taking a break from novel-writing. To view their natural habitat. There is talk of an old wreck of a house, way out on the moors, which is said to figure in Wuthering Heights. Though it’s not clear what they’re meant to do when they get there, except gaze in wonder, turn around and hike all the way back to town.
Some of the Elders are pretty fit, and desperate to prove it by going stomp, stomp, stomp off towards the hilltop in their brand-new boots, while those Elders who aren’t so able do their damnedest to keep up, even if it means bringing on a coronary. Yuki couldn’t care less. Her rucksack weighs a ton and her feet are slipping and sliding in Kumi’s too-big trainers. Which, by the way, are starting to get a little scuffed around the toes. And Kumiko is not the kind of person to overlook a little scuffing. She’s the kind of person who will mind a very great deal.
The Elders congregate in the bottom of the little valley and by the time Yuki joins them they’re hovering round some big old rock which is as smooth and polished as the stones in the path. Everyone quietens down, then Hana Kita declares that the Brontë sisters would often sit here when they were out walking. So this old lump of rock has been accorded some crazy name, such as Brontë Rock … the Brontë Chair … or Brontë Something. Yuki can’t quite make it out. But now the Elders all stare at the rock most gravely, as if they can imagine how the Brontë girls once perched upon it. Then one of them reaches out and strokes the hallowed old thing, as if it’s some petrified moorland creature. Which, of course, just encourages all the rest to do the same.
As the Elders pat the rock Yuki stands and watches, thinking, Do all women go soft as they grow old? Or just the ones who read the Brontës? It’s a rock. Just a big old rock. And if the rock does, in fact, lend itself to being sat on, then why would it only be the Brontës doing the sitting? Wouldn’t everyone else who came along have the same idea? It’s as if, in the Brontë-lovers’ soft heads, these moors were empty, save the occasional wandering Brontë. Not another living creature dared enter their realm.
She really doesn’t know why she gets so wound up about such things. In principle, she has no grudge against the sisters. Plus, having seen Charlotte’s dress and the little books she and her sisters made with their own small hands they now seem to have really existed in a way that they hadn’t before. When they were girls, Yuki and Kumiko used to make their own little books. Would devote entire weekends to cutting them up and filling the pages with tiny writing. Like sacred texts from some shrunken world.
Now everyone follows Hana Kita over to a stream and the simple bridge across it – just a couple of heavy stone slabs dropped into place. A pretty enough spot, but within a minute it has been revealed as being Brontë Bridge. Where the girls would sit and dangle their feet and stare into the water. Imagine! The Brontë sisters sitting and staring into the water and thinking about their books.
And not for the first time today, Yuki thinks, Is it not possible that the Brontës led a thrilling secret existence? A life that didn’t simply involve them wandering the moors, scraping away at their novels before expiring, one by one, on some poorly stuffed sofa. Is it not conceivable that they might have got up to something a little more wayward, once the sun went down? Might they not on occasion have got so thoroughly sick of all the awful silence and their own graceful suffering that they crept into their father’s room while he slept, took his pistol and slipped out onto the moors with it? That they covered their faces with what was left of the dresses he’d attacked with the scissors and held up some passing carriage. Before running off, all three of them, whooping and cackling, into the darkness, with fistfuls of jewellery stuffed into their pockets and bank notes blowing across the windy moors.
They’d need a stolen horse or two on which to charge across the heather and carry them back to town, to the local alehouse, where they’d spend the rest of the night puffing on pipes and drinking, along with a good deal more whooping and cackling. And when a fellow-drinker asked if they’d care to try and write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other they’d come over all bristly and pull out their father’s gun again, and say that they weren’t here to write goddamned Greek or goddamned Latin, either Individually or At the Same Goddamned Time. They were here to drink and smoke, and to spit on the floor if they wanted. Then everyone would back off and the sisters would go back to talking too loud and shrieking and drinking. And maybe even a little singing. Songs about a gang of carefree young women who abandoned book-writing because it was too mind-numbingly dull when put alongside being highwaywomen and teaching rich ladies and gentlemen not to carry so much cash and jewellery with them whilst travelling in the wilder regions of the land.
Yukiko wonders if the occasional thrill might not have helped them live a little longer. Might not have put some heat into their cold young bones. Despite the risk of somebody one day pulling out a gun of their own and blowing out their pretty Brontë brains.
*
Another mile or so up the path they stop for lunch – a location with which Hana Kita is clearly familiar, judging by the way she casually encourages everyone to take a seat on the crop of low boulders. Yuki is tempted to enquire whether this collection of rocks doesn’t also have its own significance in Brontëland. Was this not, perhaps, Brontë Picnic Corner? Or Brontë Quick Stop for a Pee? It’s not as if Hana Kita should take sole responsibility for all this Brontë-nonsense. Then again, she’s hardly helping put a stop to it.
Hana Kita instructs everybody to take out the lunch box they were handed in the hotel lobby this morning. In her own cardboard box Yuki finds an egg mayonnaise sandwich, a packet of crisps, a carton of juice and a Penguin biscuit. She places all four items on the ground, lined up squarely, and takes a photograph on her phone. Most of the Elders are too busy with their own lunch to notice. The ones that do don’t seem to mind. Perhaps they’re getting used to it. Think, Oh, she’s the girl who photographed her breakfast this morning. That’s just the kind of thing young people do these days.
Women of the Elders’ generation are forever complaining about how the Western bread-shops are ruining Japan’s high streets but none of them seems to be making much of a fuss right now. True, one or two are alternating mouthfuls of English sandwich with bites of Japanese pickle – jars of which they’ve brought all these thousands of miles for this very purpose. But at least the crazy chatter has died down a bit.
Yuki gets to her feet and heads on over to the plastic bag which Hana Kita has designated as the Communal Garbage Receptacle and drops her sandwich wrapper in it. Then, rather than head back to her own little rock, she looks out over the moors for a couple of seconds, as if admiring the view, before ambling over to where Mrs Kudo sits.
Mrs K looks up and smiles as Yuki joins her. She asks Yuki what she made of the parsonage. They talk about what a weird old place it is. Then Yuki admits she wasn’t expecting to enjoy her visit, but that in some ways – what with the dress, the handmade books, etc. – she finds it’s made quite an impression on her.
For a little while they sit and eat together. Yuki wants to ask Mrs Kudo about her love of the Brontës. To get some idea what it is about the Brontës and women her age. But by the time she finally opens her mouth she’s over-thought it all to such a degree that she asks Mrs Kudo why she loves the Brontë books, which is not what she meant at all. All the same, after some consideration Mrs Kudo turns to Yukiko and says that she loves the Brontë books for all sorts of reasons. But she first read them when she was quite young. Much younger than Yukiko is now. So her affection for the books is all mixed up with her own childhood and it would be hard to pick the two apart.
Again, Mrs Kudo and Yuki sit and eat in thoughtful silence, until Yukiko asks if there’s one particular Brontë book Mrs Kudo loves above the rest. Without hesitation, Mrs Kudo leans in – leans right on in so that Yuki can feel her shoulder pressing against her own. Jane Eyre, she whispers. Jane Eyre is by far the best book to come out of that parsonage. She sits back and smiles, as if this has been proven. As if it is simply a matter of fact.
And in that instant Yuki thinks that she really must read Jane Eyre at the soonest opportunity – and quite possibly every other piece of writing created by a Brontë girl. She thinks she should maybe keep an online journal as she reads them. It could be a Major Project for the next year or so, or however long it takes. She can’t believe she hasn’t come up with this idea earlier. And in that very moment she also commits to persevering with her English, so that she might one day read the books in their original language –
or at least Jane Eyre. Which is, of course, the finest Brontë book of all.
Then she thinks, This is how it starts. One minute you’re eating some peculiar English sandwich. Someone whispers something in your ear and the next thing you know you’ve been infected with the Brontë Sickness. Worst of all, you actually welcome it. Despite the fact that, given time, it will destroy every last healthy cell.
Mrs Kudo brushes the crumbs from her hands and turns to Yuki. And Yuki just knows she’s going to ask her which is her own personal favourite Brontë novel – and that when she discovers what a phony Yuki is, Brontë-wise, she will be so disappointed and look at her in such a sorry fashion that the small warm feeling she currently has inside her will be snuffed right out.
But, in fact, Mrs Kudo asks only if Yuki has recently graduated from college. Maybe it’s just that she’s about the right age. Yukiko nods. Mrs Kudo asks if she worked hard. Yuki nods again. Mrs K says she can tell. She says that her parents must be very proud of her.
Yukiko finds she can’t speak. She can hardly swallow. She stares at the ground and sort of shrugs. But Mrs Kudo leans over, so that her shoulder touches Yuki’s again, and says that she knows – knows for sure how very proud they must be.
After lunch, when everyone is filled right up with egg and bread, and all the litter is cleared away, someone suggests they should take a group photo. And suddenly Hana Kita is on her feet and striding around excitedly, corralling everyone into a tight little knot. There’s quite a fuss regarding who might actually hold the camera and therefore not feature in the photo. Hana Kita announces that she should be the photographer, but people object vociferously, distraught at the very idea. Yukiko’s pretty sure that the offer was 100% disingenuous. That Hana Kita is, in fact, determined to be right at the centre of the photographs – the fixed point around which this whole trip has been formed.