Outside the hotel, my footsteps moved faster. And faster.
Faster and faster, until I was almost running across the dark car park, weaving around other vehicles, heading for my car. I needed to get to safety, to shut myself away from the world before the tears caught up with me.
I didn’t cry ten years ago – I held myself together, the pragmatism and resignation to the way the world really worked shored up my weaker parts, keeping tears and outward hurt in check. I was strong, I was capable, I’d simply ended a relationship like millions of people do all over the world. Nothing unusual, nothing special, I’d just had to get on with it.
I threw myself into the driver’s seat as the first howl, from deep inside, ripped its way out of me and shattered the stillness inside safety. I curled forwards and gave in to another wail of grief. It hurt. It’d hurt for so many years, and I’d been ignoring the pain, carrying on through the anguish, not allowing myself to feel even a sliver of the agony. I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.
I clung to the steering wheel, an anchor, something solid to stop me completely breaking apart.
I love him, I love him, I love him.
Saturday, 9.45 a.m.
‘I knew you were trouble the second I saw you.’
I say nothing because I do not understand any of this.
‘You have taken everything from me. My son. My money. My money. Do you know how long I had to suffer that old fool? I ran around after him, bent myself to his every whim, and all for nothing. Nothing.’
‘What are you talking about? Who are you talking about?’ I ask.
‘My father-in-law! Fabian senior. I even named my only son after him. I HATED that name. But I knew, if I didn’t, he would cut us out of his will. We always had to do what he wanted because otherwise it would mean being cut out of his will. He controlled my whole life.’
‘You used Fabian losing his family to get me to do what you wanted,’ I remind her. ‘Isn’t that the same thing?’
‘Of course it isn’t!’ she screeches.
‘Why? Because when you do it, it’s fine, when someone does it to you, it’s wrong?’
‘You did not fit in with our family.’
‘But Alice does?’
‘Of course she does! She is from the right background, the right stock. Everything you are not.’
‘If you’ve got the perfect daughter-in-law, what is your problem? Why are you here acting like some kind of wannabe serial killer?’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t know.’
‘I’m not pretending – I don’t know. Why are you here?’
‘Fabian senior cut us out of his will. We do not get a single penny.’ She speaks slowly, carefully, venomously, so I can understand her.
‘Oh.’
‘Everything. EVERY. THING. Has been taken away from us. We are not even allowed to live in or take things from the house now he’s dead.’
‘He’s passed away?’ I ask. ‘Oh no. That’s sad to hear. Fabian loved his grandfather.’
‘Yes, he’s dead all right. And he has left his son and me destitute. We have fourteen days to vacate the property. The old bastard even had two psychiatrists certify that he was of sound mind before he changed his will, so it is watertight. No grounds for appeal, apparently.’
Wow, he really screwed them over. ‘I don’t understand your problem. He obviously left it all to Fabian and your other children. It shouldn’t be too hard to convince them to let you stay in the house. Your children love you, I’m sure they’ll share the money with you.’
‘What are you talking about?’ she screeches, brandishing the knife. ‘He left everything to you!’
Two weeks ago
I calmed down, pulled myself together, and changed my shoes, ready for the long journey home. As I was driving away, I saw Fabian standing at the hotel entrance, hands in pockets as though waiting for me to drive by.
Saturday, 9.50 a.m.
I laugh in her face.
She has got to be joking! He wanted me out of Fabian’s life just as much as his parents, so why would he do something like that? ‘Why on earth would he do that?’ I ask.
‘Because “he is Heathcliff ”. Whatever that means! That was all it said in the letter. “I am Heathcliff.”’
That was what he said that day they pushed me to leave Fabian: I am Heathcliff. It’d crossed my mind over the years, but I could never really work out why he’d said it at that moment.
‘Are you wanting me to sign all the money back to you?’ I query.
She waves the knife back and forth. ‘Oh, no, no, no. In the event of you being unable or unwilling to take on the responsibility of my money and my estate, the money will go straight to my main charity, and the estate will be sold, and all proceeds will support the local children’s homes in the area.’
‘Well that’s something,’ I say diplomatically. I’m pretty impressed by how comprehensively Fabian senior has stitched up his son and his wife.
‘Is it?’ she snarls. ‘Is it really?’
I suppose to her, facing destitution after a lifetime of luxury, it isn’t ‘something’ at all.
She comes closer to me, the knife millimetres from my nose. ‘You seem to be enjoying this just a little too much—’
I knock the knife out of her hand, then follow it up with an uppercut punch to make sure she doesn’t go for the knife again. I’m not at all violent – unless I need to defend myself.
Unsurprisingly, Mrs Shibden has a glass jaw. She goes down like a lead balloon, and lies sprawled on the living-room floor, out cold. I know I should rush to the door, fling it open, and scream for help, but I need a minute or two. I lower myself into my seat again and try to gather myself together.
Saturday, 12.35 p.m.
My dear.
I sat at that meeting and remembered exactly how I felt when I was first brought to this house. A small boy who was never to fit in amongst all the pomp and finery. I stuck out, I was different, I was meant for something lesser but Fate had intervened. I swore never to feel less than; never to allow a person to feel less than. You see, my dear, I am Heathcliff. I am the young, orphaned child brought to wealth, educated, feted, reared in luxury – and yet reminded every day how lowly I was thought to be. I am the young child who knew no matter what, I would never be accepted into the higher echelons of society. Money would not allow me to become one of them. I would never truly belong. I have managed to create a pleasing façade, over the years. The memories of those who you come up with fade, the newer generation is dazzled by wealth and not so much by status.
I am Heathcliff. I fought for a position in this higher society, but in all of it, forgot who I truly am. In all of this, the slow transition to acceptance, I had forgotten my vow: to not allow another person to feel less than. I failed.
I have kept my eye on you, all these years. I have watched you continue your rise up the ranks, I have seen how you never seem to treat others as less than anyone else. My son, his wife, they have always felt inferior, but have always felt entitled to the very best. I intend to change this. Upon my death, I am bequeathing to you all of my wealth, accumulated and inherited. I know you will do great things with it. I am sorry I did not stand up for you when I should have. I am sorry for all the hurt you felt.
I hope you will, one day, find it in your heart to forgive me.
Fabian Effram Shibden, Snr
Fabian sits beside me on the steps outside my building while I read and re-read the letter from his grandfather. Fabian had been on his way here to deliver it, when he was confronted with his conscious and incensed mother being carted away in a police car.
He’d gone to the police station to be with her – until he heard a list of her crimes. Then he’d come straight back to check I was OK.
‘Wow,’ I say to him for about the twentieth time. ‘I’m, like, a gazillionaire.’
‘Yes, Zillah, you are,’ he says as patiently as he has said it the first nineteen times. ‘What are you going to
do with it all?’
‘Give it to charity and the children’s homes like he wanted.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. He was right, money doesn’t change who you fundamentally are. You can be the richest person in the world and still feel inferior.’
‘True.’
‘Although I will give some of it to my family, they could do with a bit of respite.’
We fall into silence for a few minutes. We haven’t been able to talk properly since he arrived back – too much to say, too much emotion to know where to begin. Eventually, Fabian breaks our awkwardness with: ‘In his letter explaining everything to me, Grandpa told me what they did – my parents, him. The choice you were forced to make. He said you stood up to them in a way he’d never seen anyone fight back before. He also told me to grow a spine and marry you.’
‘Shame you can’t remind him that you’re already married.’
‘I’m not. Alice and I were divorced last year. Marry in public, divorce in private.’
‘So what was all that stuff about at the awards? She was on the verge of fighting me.’
‘We’re still the best of friends. She knows all about how you broke my heart. She’s very protective.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ I say to him. He wouldn’t be the first married man to tell tall tales.
‘I hoped you might say that,’ he replies, and reaches for his inside pocket. ‘Exhibit one, divorce papers.’
‘You brought your divorce papers?’
‘How else could I make you believe me?’ He removes his mobile from another pocket, plays around with it until he produces a wedding picture of two women in bridal gowns. ‘Exhibit two, Alice on her second wedding day with her wife.’
‘Wow,’ I say.
‘And exhibit three …’ Fabian kisses me.
Our lips linger on the kiss, the sound of the sea gently playing in the air around us; very soon, I know, we’ll be making love under our field of wildflowers.
HEATHCLIFF IS NOT MY NAME
* * *
MICHAEL STEWART
YOU ARE WALKING THROUGH Butcher’s Bog, along the path at Birch Brink. You traipse across Stanbury Moor, to the Crow Stones. A morass of tussock grass, peat wilderness and rock. There are no stars to guide you, just the moaning of the wind. Stunted firs and gaunt thorns, your only companions.
Perhaps you will die out here, unloved and unhomed. There was the tale of Old Tom. Last winter, went out looking for a lost lamb. Found a week on, icicles on his eyelids, half-eaten by foxes. Or was it the last wolf? Said to roam these moors. The ravens will eat out your eyes and the crows will pick at your bones. The worms will turn you into loam. You’ve forgotten your name and your language. Mr Earnshaw called you ‘it’ when first he came across you. Mrs Earnshaw called you ‘brat’ when first she took you by the chuck. Mr Earnshaw telt to call him father and Mrs Earnshaw, mother, but they were not your real parents. Starving when they took you in. They named you after their dead son. The man you called your father, carried you over moor and fell, in rain and in snow. When finally you got to the gates of the farm it was dark and the man could hardly stand. He took you into the main room and plonked himself in a rocker. By the fire you stood, a ghost in their home. Next to you a living girl and living boy, who spat and kicked. This was their welcome to your new hovel. Over ten years ago now. You’d spent weeks on the streets, eating scraps from bin and midden. Kipped by the docks and ligged in doorways. You’d trusted no one, loved no one, believed in nothing.
It was tough in the new place but you’d had it worse. You’d almost died many times. You’d been beaten inside an inch of your life. Gone five days without food. Slept with rats and maggots. Nothing this new place had in store could harm you more than you’d been harmed before. Or so you thought. The girl was called Cathy, the boy Hindley, and you hated them apiece.
Over ten years ago. But you can still feel her hot spit on your face, and his boot in your groin. None of it ever hurt you as much as her words. Words that cut to the bone. Words that stab you in the back.
You stand on top of the Crow Stones on the brink of the wilderness. It is said that the stones were used for ritual sacrifice. The slit throat of a slaughtered goat. The gushing blood of a lamb seeping into the craggy carpet beneath your feet. The wind tries to blow you off your perch. Blow harder. You are the goat, the lamb, you care not for sacrifice. Let them take you. Let them bleed you. Fuck the lot of them.
For two years your adopted father tried to protect you from Hindley. From his maniac beatings, with fist and boot and club. Sometimes it worked. Until your adopted mother died and your father retreated into himself. The jutting stones of your adopted home were fitting symbols. The grotesque carvings and crumbling griffins were your companions. But not now. Walking without direction. It doesn’t matter where you go as long as you go away from that place of torture, that palace of hate.
They called you dark-skinned gypsy, dirty Lascar, vagabond, devil. You’ll give them dark, dirt, devil. Cathy wanted a whip. Hindley a fiddle. You’ll give her whip, him fiddle. You took a seat at the end of the hearthstone. Petted a liver-coloured bitch. There was some warmth in the room and it came from an open fire. Flames that licked, peat that steamed, coals that glowed, and wood that hissed.
Hindley called you dog and beat you with an iron bar. Mr Earnshaw tried once more to stop him. He sent Hindley to college, just to get the maniac away. And things picked up for a while. Then you watched your father die, watched the life drain from his eyes, his last breath leave his lips. You knelt at his feet and wept. You held on to his lifeless hand, the skin as brittle as a wren’s shell. Cathy wiped the tears from your eyes. Hindley came back from the funeral with a wife. She was soft in the head and as thin as a whippet. Always coughing her guts up. Things got bad again. Banished from the house, set to work outside, in the pissing wind and whirling rain. You were flogged, locked out, spent your evenings shivering in a corner while that cunt stuffed his face, supping ale and brandy. Eating and drinking, singing and laughing with his slut.
The wind has lulled now and you listen to its hush. You hear a fox scream and an owl cry. The night gathers in pleats of black and blue. The cold rain falls. You teeter on the brink. It would be so easy to tumble and smash your skull on the rocks. Let the life bleed out of the cracks and let the slimy things take you. No one would miss you. Not even you. The only thing that is real is the hardness of the rock and the pestilent air that festers. You could dive headfirst onto the granite. Dead in an instant. Released from the teeth of experience.
You think about the Lintons that day, when they came to visit. Supping mulled ale from silver mugs. You were a stain on their polished tray. You were the muck on their well-scrubbed floor. Leave them to it. You had turned your back on them and gone inside to feed the beasts. Fuck ’em. Fuck the rotten lot. Spoke to no one except the dogs. And when they had all gone to church, you went onto the moor. Fasted and thought. Had to turn things round. Had to get Cathy back.
You came in through the kitchen door, went to Nelly and said, ‘Make me decent.’ You were younger than Edgar but taller and twice as broad. Could knock him down in a twinkle. You wanted light hair and fair skin. Nelly washed and combed your curls. Then she washed you again. But she couldn’t wash the black off your face. Then you saw them, descending from a fancy carriage, smothered in furs. Faces white as wealth. You thought you’d show them that you were just as good as them and you opened the door to where they were sitting. But Hindley pushed you back and said, ‘Keep him in the garret. He’ll only steal the fruit.’ How ashamed you’d felt that day. How cold and lonely you’d been in that garret with just the buzzing of the flies for company.
That cunt Edgar had started, saying your hair was like the hair of a horse. You’d grabbed a bowl of hot sauce and flung it in the cunt’s face. Edgar had screamed like a girl and covered his face with his hands. Hindley grabbing hold of you, dragging you outside. Punched you in the gut. When you didn’t r
eact, he went for the iron weight and smashed it over your back. Go down. Kicking you in the ribs. In the face. Stomping on your head. Then he got the horse whip and flogged you till you passed out.
Cold stone slabs. When you had woken the next day from Hindley’s flogging, you discovered that he’d locked you in the shed. Aching all over, bruises everywhere, caked in dried blood. It wasn’t the first time he’d beaten you senseless, nor was it the first time he’d shoved you in the shed. You could cope with the beatings, and the cold stone flags for a cushion, but the humiliation still stung like a fresh wound. A razor’s edge had a kinder bite. You could hear them in the house. There was a band playing, trumpets and horns, clatter and bang. You could hear them chatting and laughing as you lay in the dark, bruised and battered. Your whole body a dull ache and a sharp pain. You swallowed and tasted the metal of your own blood. How to get the cunt? You didn’t care how long it took. Didn’t care how long you had to wait. As long as he didn’t die before you did. And if you burned in hell for all eternity it would be worth it. At least the flames would keep you warm and the screams would keep you company. Kicking the cunt was not enough. He must suffer in every bone of his body and in his mind too. His every thought must be a separate torture. He must have no peace, waking or asleep. His whole life, every minute of every hour of every day must be torture. Nothing less would do.
You think back to the day his slut gave birth to a son. She was ill, crying out in pain, and it was such joy to watch Hindley suffer. That week, as she lay dying, the cunt was in agony. How you laughed behind Hindley’s back. Thank you God, you said under your breath, or thank you Devil. You’d prayed to both, not knowing which would hear you first. All your prayers were answered. You knew what Hindley loved the most and it was his slut. You knew what would hurt the cunt the most – the slow painful death of his slut.