by Mick Jackson
In the photograph taken outside the parsonage her mother wears the same scarf knotted round her neck. The cream coat is long gone, but the blouse is from the same period, and when she has it on and can feel it soft and sleek against her Yuki imagines the warmth of her flesh somehow reinvigorating the material – putting it in mind of being warmed by her mother’s skin.
She washes her face and cleans her teeth at the sink. Pictures her mother doing these same small things next door, with just a wall between them – the two of them leaning in towards each other.
Some people, possibly out of a misguided sense of kindness, have said that Yuki looks like her mother, but she can’t see it. What they share, she thinks, is the same fretful nature. The tendency to keep on picking away at something long past the point when it’s likely to do any good.
She has one last look in the mirror – at her standing in her mother’s clothes. Then grabs her coat, goes down the stairs, across the geometric carpet and out into the cold, old town.
The streets are pretty much empty. The people who went up and down the pavements a few hours earlier are now back home, slumped in front of their TVs. Or, like Mrs Kudo and the other Elders, gathered in a hotel bar, talking, drinking and pecking at bowls of nuts.
Within a few minutes she reaches the little lane that leads to the parsonage and heads on up it, past the ancient graveyard with its monstrous trees. A tall wooden gate blocks the steps Yuki took this morning. So there’s nothing to see of the parsonage but the vast blank wall at its side. Yuki stands and stares up at it, quite impassive. Plenty of other people must’ve tried to break in, she thinks. Brontë Obsessives. The Brontë Deranged. But they’d almost certainly have tried to gain entry via the doors and windows. Whereas Yukiko now sees that the way to do it would be to shimmy up the drainpipe, climb onto the roof, pull up four or five of those old tiles and squeeze down into the loft. Then it would just be a matter of kicking a decent-sized hole through the ceiling and dropping onto the landing. In no time at all you’d be buttoning yourself into Charlotte’s pale paisley dress, to go exploring the place at your leisure – poking your head into all the interesting little corners you’re not normally allowed anywhere near.
Of course, the staff wouldn’t appreciate you barricading yourself into their precious parsonage. Wouldn’t be at all pleased to turn up for work and find the front door wedged shut with Emily’s Death Bed. They’d call the cops. Shout down the phone at them, about how some crazy Jap had broken in and was wandering around in Charlotte’s dress and Emily’s No. 1 bonnet. But, other than a great deal of complaining, really, what could they do?
Curiously, now that she’s standing here, right beside the parsonage, the one thing she’d really like to get her hands on is that little lock of Charlotte’s hair. How incredibly strange, she thinks, to trim a lock of hair from a young dead woman. Did they imagine it might carry some of Charlotte’s spirit? Some clue to her literary talent? And yet here Yuki is, in her dead mother’s clothes, a couple of hundred years later, and not at all the conventional Brontë Fan, but desperately wanting to feel between her fingers the hair that once grew on poor Charlotte’s head.
Yuki has a good look at the gate. It’s quite conceivable, she thinks, that with a little scuffling and scrambling, she might manage to clamber over it. There are tiny gaps and recesses in the stone posts on both sides where her feet might go. But she’s already got a smashed-up shoulder and another fall would almost certainly kill her. She doubts she’d be able to accommodate the pain. So she begins to wonder if there’s maybe a way of climbing the wall back down the lane, over into the graveyard, to get to the wall at the bottom of the parsonage garden, which may not be as tall as the one bearing down on her here.
It’s worth a go, she thinks, so strolls back down the alley, looking for a section of wall she might have a hope of getting over. The top of the wall comes up to her shoulder, so Yuki sees how she’s going to have to compensate for her lack of natural ability in the climbing department with maximum explosive energy. She glances up and down the lane to check that no one’s coming, takes a breath, then just sort of hurls herself at it. She throws her good arm up and over. Her hand takes a hold of wet moss, with cold stone beneath. Well, it’s too late now, she thinks, to be bothering about such unpleasantness. From here on in it may very well be nothing but wet moss and cold, cold stone.
Her feet keep on scrambling until she manages to get one knee over the top. Then the rest of her, so she’s just kind of lying there hugging the wall, with a leg and arm hanging down on either side. She takes a breath, slowly swings her ass over and lowers herself into what feels like a very dark pit.
When both feet finally reach the ground she turns and stands in the solid darkness. Maybe this wasn’t such a neat idea, she thinks.
She’s waiting for her eyes to adjust – to begin to pick out any sort of form or features. Then she has an idea. Pulls out her phone, taps the screen and its dim blue light almost lifts the graves from the gloom. She plots a vague course, braces herself and sets off between the gravestones. You see, Mother, she says to herself. You see what I am prepared to do for you?
Yuki has no way of knowing where each foot is falling. Whether it will find something firm or just keep falling, through the leaves and soft, wet earth. She edges round the first headstone and is heading on to the next one when the light on her phone cuts out and she’s dropped back into darkness. She stops. Fumbles for another button. Tells herself, Just don’t drop the goddamned phone. And when the blue light returns and she has steadied herself, she goes on again, on towards the next grave, with the phone held up in one hand and the other sweeping left and right before her, trying to fend off anything that might be in her way.
She creeps between the gravestones, tapping at the screen of her phone at regular intervals until another wall slowly takes shape in the distance – a wall that is thankfully nowhere near as tall as the one by the gate. She hauls herself up onto it, swings both legs over and drops down into the garden on the other side.
She stands and waits – for blinding floodlights to clank into action. For some mind-jangling alarm to be triggered and tear the night apart. But it’s still just Yuki in the dark and the silence. And now that she’s clear of the graveyard’s trees she has a little more sky above her and her surroundings are a little better known to her. There must be creatures, she thinks, tiny night-time creatures. Yuki imagines them, standing frozen in the darkness – wondering who the hell this is, crashing through their private habitat. For a moment she stands among them, listening. Then creeps across the lawns and gardens and on up to the house.
The parsonage looks even grimmer in the dark than it does by daylight. Like a colossal Brontë gravestone, set back from all the rest. It stands so grand and arrogant that Yuki is sorely tempted to inflict upon it some minor act of desecration. To chip away at one of its walls, say. Or scrape off a little sliver of paintwork. If she had the courage she’d find a rock and throw it at one of the windows. She likes to imagine that she would. But the house has such an almighty malevolent presence Yuki is sure if she went within a metre of it she’d be dragged in, swallowed up and never heard of again.
She tiptoes up onto the flagstones. Keeps glancing back over at the churchyard – to try and get her bearings and be sure of her means of escape. She finds the spot where she crouched this morning and clung to her inhaler. Then the place where her mother stood and posed for the photograph. And she takes up her position again, with her back to the parsonage. Is quite sure that some trace of her mother must be maintained here somewhere – in the old stone beneath her feet, or some remnant of breath, caught in a web beneath a window sill. And though she can sense the presence of her mother, it really is no more than what she senses any other day. So she unknots the headscarf, opens it out and folds it along the diagonal. Lifts it over her head and ties it under her chin. And even as she does so she feels something shift and give inside her, like a small door opening onto a distant, busy
place. It may just be the feel of the silk between her fingers, or that the act of folding the scarf has broken open some scent locked in its fine, tight weave. But as Yuki stands there in her mother’s scarf and blouse, recreating that earlier photograph when her mother was here in the North of England and apparently happy, before heading back home where she seemed to quickly go quite mad, Yuki has a sudden, overwhelming sense of her mother being right there with her.
Then the terrible longing rises up in her. Fills her up in an instant, until there’s nothing but the longing. And the pain and weight of it is too, too much. But even as she’s trying to comprehend what she feels – what moves and turns inside her – her mother and her love begin to slip away.
No, she says – almost audible. But the more she reaches for her, tries to retrieve her, the quicker she seems to slip away.
Until she’s gone. Back to her typical proximity, within hearing but just out of sight. And Yuki crouches – all pain and heartbreak – facing the very spot where she’d sat and struggled to catch her breath earlier in the day.
It takes a while for her to return to herself. To be reinstated. She gets to her feet and stares at the cold, dark garden. Then turns and looks back up at the house. Thinks, If every person who came here took just one small scrap of the wretched house away with them, in no time at all there’d be nothing left but a whole bunch of dust and rubble. And maybe the world would be a better place.
She takes a step or two towards the parsonage, perfectly aware of the consequences. Goes right up to it, feeling for a coin in her pocket. And having found one, brings it out, leans in and starts to dig away at the stone. A couple of crumbs fall into her hand and she closes her fist around them. This is coming home with me, she tells the house. All the way back to goddamned Japan. And you will never ever see it again, you miserable goddamned fucker.
She drops the bits of stone and the coin back into her pocket, turns and sets off across the garden. Knows very well what’s going to happen. Can already feel the rage of the place funnel up and begin to roll out into the darkness. Feels it come tumbling after her as she hobbles across the lawn. Thinks, Maybe this is what I want.
She reaches the wall, but finds it almost impossible to climb back up it. The ground must somehow be lower on this side. But she scrambles away, feeling that terrible malevolence moving in on her. And is beginning to regret her actions now, just as she knew she would – her feet skittering away at the wall and her going nowhere. Then finally, finally gaining traction, scrambling up, over and into the graveyard. But with that weight of evil almost upon her and not having the time to bring out her phone. So going clattering between the gravestones in complete darkness. Catching her shin on one, her hip on another, as if she’s running a gauntlet of stone. And not at all sure which way she’s heading, or whether she’ll ever find her way out of here. Finally running into a wall so hard that it smacks her in the chest and knocks the wind right out of her. Not having a clue what wall it is, what’s on the other side. But clambering up, flipping herself around, then letting herself fall.
She lands in a heap on the cobbles. But, far from feeling released, it’s as if she’s brought half the graveyard over the wall with her, like some dreadful sediment. She gets to her feet and all the bumps and scratches seem to suddenly come alive to her – across her hands and arms, down both her legs. I may have to ask the B & B Lady for some sort of English ointment, she thinks. May have to convert my room into a place of convalescence.
She brushes herself down then turns, with the intention of heading back towards the high street, and has barely limped any sort of distance when she has the powerful sense of someone else being there in the alley with her. She turns around and sees a figure standing, watching, not far away.
Yuki is so thoroughly taken aback that she sort of yelps, quite involuntarily. The girl doesn’t move. Just carries on watching. And Yuki’s next thought is that this girl, whoever she is, must’ve been there when she came lumbering over the wall just now. May have even seen her go creeping into the graveyard ten minutes earlier. All of this rushes through her mind as the girl continues to stare at her. Then Yuki turns and heads away, back down the alley. She keeps on walking – hurrying now – but can’t stop herself from having one last look over her shoulder. Just a teenage girl with blonde hair, hands tucked into her coat pockets – standing and watching, silent.
Yuki reaches the high street and limps on down it, quite distracted. It’s the sort of thing, she knows, that will get right under her skin if she’s not careful. Because what was meant to be a private act – her own peculiar little ritual – now appears to have been compromised. As if a strange young girl having witnessed Yuki creeping away from the parsonage has cut a nick in her entire Psychic Brontë Enterprise and threatened to let all the superstition and voodoo escape.
Yukiko’s scuttling down the road, back towards the B & B, with all the cuts and bruises raging about her, when she passes a pub, catches a blast of hot food and realises that the last time she ate was at the little picnic out on the moors. So she carries on down the high street, to the one shop still throwing light out onto the pavement. She picks out some cellophane-encased savoury pastry from a cooler, a two-litre bottle of Coke from the fridge and, after some deliberation, commits to a souvenir tin of Brontë biscuits, with all three sisters staring glumly from the lid.
If she doesn’t buy it now, she knows, she’ll only come back and buy it tomorrow. Her only dilemma is whether to give it to Kumiko or keep it for herself. She’s doing her best to pay the woman behind the counter by offering her various bank notes … How much do you need? Just take it! Take it all! … when she remembers she still has her mother’s headscarf up over her hair. If I was wearing my Jackie O sunglasses, she thinks, it might make a little more sense.
She limps back up the hill. Her left hip, her right shoulder and the knuckles of her right hand are all pretty painful – but she’s feeling a little calmer. Perhaps because she has some food, and is already picturing herself lying in bed, watching TV, eating. With a couple of drinks working away inside of her.
She reaches her street and is counting down the doors to the B & B – can already see it up ahead – when she again has that sense of someone close by, watching. She waits until she’s right at the door, with the key in the lock, before allowing herself to turn around. And there, no more than twenty metres away, on the other side of the street, is the same girl who was standing in the lane beside the parsonage. Yukiko looks straight at her but, again, the girl doesn’t seem the least bit embarrassed and keeps on staring right back at her.
The evening slides by very nicely, thank you. Yukiko takes the bottle of Jameson from her rucksack, pours a couple of belts of it into the glass from the bedside table and tops it up with Coke. Turns on the TV and opens up the cheese and onion pastry. Then, to keep the Coke good and cold, she opens the window and tucks it away, right in the corner of the ledge. There’s barely a breeze out there, so it seems pretty unlikely it’s going to fall and take out someone heading down the pavement. She looks across the street, half expecting to see the ghost of a girl still standing on the pavement and gawping up at her, but she’s gone.
Her first drink lasts barely five minutes. And by the time Yuki’s filled her glass for a second, then a third time she realises her shoulder has suddenly stopped aching. She can feel some crunching as she shifts it in its socket, as if a little grit has got in there somehow. But there’s no great pain or discomfort. She lifts the glass up to the light and thinks, Man, this stuff is good.
She undresses. Her mother’s blouse is plucked and scratched from all the clambering over walls and clattering between gravestones, but Yuki finds this doesn’t particularly bother her. She checks out all her little cuts and bruises. My poor, poor body, she thinks. Then climbs under the covers and flicks through the channels, looking for a horror film with practically no dialogue, or something so uncompromisingly English that it’ll be like watching a film from outer spac
e.
She tops up her glass another time or two. Then is suddenly gripped by an all-encompassing hunger. The pastry’s long gone but Yuki remembers the biscuits. Souvenir Brontë Biscuits are exactly what she needs right now. But the Brontë Biscuit Tin is reluctant to surrender its contents to some drunk young woman. A strip of sticky tape has the lid pretty much welded to the tin. It must take Yukiko the best part of five minutes just to locate the end of it and another couple to pluck enough of it up with her fingernail to be able to pinch it between her finger and thumb. Then, as she peels it back, the tape keeps splitting, but Yuki is determined that it will come off whole, rather than in lots of little strips. Damn you, Brontë Biscuit Tin!
When she finally manages to remove the lid Yuki is deeply disappointed. She’d hoped the biscuits might be Charlotte- and Emily-shaped. Or that, at the very least, there might be moulded representations of their faces in the chocolate. But there’s nothing remotely Brontë-related going on here. Just eight or so separate silos, with a differently crimped or textured biscuit stacked in each one. Yukiko picks a couple out. Then makes her way methodically around the rest of them. Has a little breather while she pours herself another whiskey, then goes around again.
One of the TV channels is showing an American movie from the late 1980s, though Yuki doesn’t recognise any of the actors. It looks like the kind of movie that is more or less guaranteed to feature someone jumping through a plate-glass window and falling, in slo-mo, from a very great height.
Yuki starts to think about the room next door, where her mother slept. Turns down the TV and creeps over to the adjoining wall. Puts her ear up to it and listens. Then she goes over to her door, out into the corridor and heads along it a little way. If anyone was in there, she thinks, there’d be some light coming under the door, or noise of some sort. But there’s nothing. So she goes back to her room, climbs back into bed and stares at the wall a little more.