Yuki chan in Brontë Country (5 page)

So Yukiko slides on down as far as she can without her face actually going under water. Her toes barely touch
the far end of the bath. She’s pretty much floating, with the heat beginning to get right into her bones now, when she thinks she hears something. Lies there, listening, for a second – super-alert. First the suspicion, then the conviction that the sound she’s hearing is her phone, back in the bedroom. Then all at once she’s dragging herself up and climbing out of the bath, bringing all that water with her. Grabbing her towel, wrapping it round her and heading for the door. Her fingers slip on the lock. She has to crouch down and yank her trainers from under the door. Before going hurtling out into the hallway.

Then – whump!

She hits the floor before she knows what’s happened – that her wet feet have shot out from under her on the bare floorboards. She’s on her side with all the wind knocked right out of her. Her shoulder’s hurting and she really is pretty shaken up. But once she’s sure she hasn’t broken anything she gets back to her feet, opens the door to her bedroom. Then limps over to the bed, grabs her phone and brings it up to her ear.

She swears into it. I fell, she says. Damn near broke my neck.

Yuki brings her shoulder round and studies it, to see if there’s any major damage. Shit, she says, that really, really hurts.

Kumiko wants to know what the fuck is going on and why Yuki keeps calling her on her mobile when she knows she’s at work and can’t answer it. Also, what does she mean about there being a mix-up?

Yuki gives herself a moment, to try and conjure up the necessary indignation. She rubs her shoulder. Limps back over to the door and pushes it to. The damned coach, she says. The damned coach went off without her and left her stranded. She rolls herself onto the bed. I was there, where I was meant to meet them, but the damned coach must have set off early. Oh, she was so, so angry, she says.

There’s a pause down the line from Kumiko. So where the fuck are you now?

Yuki explains how she’s still in Haworth, but how, in a way, that’s not such a bad thing. Because they’d only had a couple of hours to look around the village. Which is nothing like long enough. These tours are always in such a hurry to get on to the next place. So at least now she’ll be able to have a proper look around.

Yukiko pauses, to see if Kumiko’s got anything to say yet.

And where are you staying, she says.

Yuki tells her how she found this lovely little guest house. You should see the bath, she says. I was practically swimming from one end of it to the other when you called.

Another silence from Kumiko. Yuki does her damnedest not to jump on in and fill it up with bluster. She’s making more of an effort these days in that respect.

Says, I’ll probably just have another look around in the morning and get a train back in the afternoon.

What’s it called?

What’s what called?

Yukiko’s looking round the room now. Can’t think of anything.

The hotel. What’s the name of the place where you’ve got a room?

It’s the first English word that comes into Yuki’s mind. The Brontë Hotel, she says. Then pulls a face to herself. It’s a little bit scary. Just full of loads of weird old Brontë stuff.

Kumiko seems to be calming down a little. She says she just wants to be sure Yuki hasn’t gone mad or anything. That you’re not going to go wandering off onto the moors and disappear.

No way, she says. I’m just going to have a look around the village.

Another little Kumiko silence. Then she says, I know what you’re doing, Yuki. You’re so goddamned morbid.

Yuki is tempted to plead ignorance, or pretend to be offended. But that would only encourage Kumiko to lecture her some more. It’s actually quite a sweet little place, she says. And looks around the room. Then – she doesn’t know why, she just can’t seem to help herself – she says, I’ve decided when I get home I’m going to read all the Brontë novels, one after the other. Possibly in English.

She can hear Kumiko sighing. Or maybe laughing, in an exasperated sort of way.

You’re like a child, she says. Like a goddamned child.

T
he day after she arrived in London Yuki took the tube into town with Kumiko and was down at the railings of Buckingham Palace before eight, with the roads all packed with traffic but not another tourist yet in sight. She’d told Kumiko she planned to go to Covent Garden to get some breakfast, then on to a gallery or two. If she’d told her her real intentions Kumiko would’ve probably laughed in her face.

She’d come across the photograph pretty much by accident. She was searching through a whole bunch of images of girls screaming in the 1960s, so was more or less guaranteed to end up with some shots of Beatles fans. She’s looked at the picture so many times since she can bring to mind a dozen details without any effort – how one particular girl’s hair falls across her face, the design on another girl’s knee socks, etc. – but, curiously, has trouble seeing the picture as a whole. Just lots of tiny details, all mixed up in her head.

There are, in fact, two different versions of the photograph, one more tightly cropped than the other, with fewer policemen in the shot. It adds a little more intensity, as if you’re right in the middle of all this
craziness, whereas Yuki actually prefers the wider shot and the consequent perspective. The overall shape of the thing.

The girls – and the crowd consists almost entirely of teenage girls – are going wild about The Beatles. Since most of the screaming girls and the policemen who’re doing their best to contain them have their faces turned to the left of the frame Yuki assumes that The Beatles have either just driven by and are heading on into the palace, or finished doing whatever they’re doing in the palace and are about to come back out. In the foreground, five policemen are standing, arms linked and legs apart getting pushed and pulled in ten different directions, with all that teenage female emotion raging away at their backs. One policeman’s helmet is tipped over his eyes, as if it’s about to go flying. The policeman to his right leans back, mouth open, apparently gasping for air.

Then there are the girls – sobbing, screaming, arms flailing. The two most clearly visible, on either side of the policeman whose helmet is about to hit the ground, are caught in pleasing symmetry, right foot back, pushing off the ground, left foot forward and up on the toes. Their skirts stop just above the knee. So not yet quite a mini. The girl on the left is blonde and seems to be shouting, eyes wide open. The girl on the right is dark-haired and could almost be laughing, eyes squeezed tight shut. Their arms are all tangled up with those of the policemen. There’s no apparent ill-will from either contingent, and yet the sense of suspended energy almost knocks you off your feet.

When Yuki reached the palace’s railings she saw how there were, in fact, three different gates to choose from, but by bringing the photo up on her phone and studying the various columns and wrought-iron ornaments in the background managed to work out where the girls had been. She strolled on over with the photograph still up on her phone and adjusted her position until the proportions of the columns were more or less equal and the railings stretched off in a similar way. Then she brought the phone down and stared into the space where the policemen had leaned and struggled, and the girls had struggled and screamed. Again, she wondered what had become of those girls and policemen. What their memories of that particular moment were. And, again, considered the practicalities involved in trying to trace them. In bringing them back here to have them assume the exact same pose.

The first time she saw the photograph she didn’t notice the professional stills camera held aloft in the middle of the girls, as if its owner was trying to keep it dry whilst crossing a river. Or the movie camera, just inside the frame over to the right. And it was only on a later viewing that she finally noticed the guy at the back, leaning in, with an old-fashioned pair of headphones clamped to his head, like some sort of spy from the ordinary world. So, not only were these moments being caught by several stills photographers and at least one movie camera, but someone was recording the actual
sound
. Because in this instance, Yuki feels, the sound is the crucial element. The
medium where the event’s real power resides. Imagine bringing each participant back and having them take up their position. Telling them to close their eyes and remember that day, fifty years ago. Maybe expose them to some sort of collective hypnosis, or just have them meditate upon the photograph. To have them reach right down and try and recover their younger selves, their teenage preoccupations. Then very slowly, on gigantic speakers, you’d bring up the original recorded sound. What would happen inside those people? What would happen to the fabric of our world?

Yukiko has seen plenty of movie footage of Beatles fans from the same sort of period. Highly strung young girls perched in their seats with the band performing off in the distance. You can see the girls winding themselves up – simultaneously a part of the overall frenzy yet disappearing into their own very personal teenage trance. They bring their fists up to their mouths … take a breath, of something overpowering … then start to scream and shake their head. It looks so pure. So beautifully pure and intense.

W
hen she wakes almost an hour and a half later the world has grown cold and dark around her. And having slept while the last trace of daylight drained away unsettles her, as if she’s woken beneath a stone.

She pulls on her dressing gown, retrieves her things from the bathroom and mops up the water on the floor in the corridor where she fell. For a minute or two she sits on the edge of the bed, still tired and fuggy. Then she takes out her mother’s blue blouse and silk headscarf, stands before the mirror and puts them on.

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.