Solsbury Hill A Novel (22 page)

Tilda always kept the pitcher in Eleanor’s small room filled with clean, cold water. Eleanor poured some into the large bowl and splashed her face. It was late in the evening and she was hungry. Going down the tight back stairwell, her right shoulder bumped the wall and shook the
sconce, whose light flickered, and she had the feeling that she had been bumping into that same wall for decades, even centuries, and it brought a sense of faith and hope. Simple things that encouraged her. She continued down the stairs and saw Mead at the kitchen table reading his pink newspaper.

“You’ve been inside all day,” he said.

“I’ve just come down to make a sandwich. Were you out walking?” she asked.

It sounded bewilderingly like a married couple’s everyday exchange. She tried to find something sassy to say, but it wouldn’t come. The kiss he’d given her in the car had disoriented her completely.

“I didn’t go out today, no,” he said, “but the library’s nearly finished.”

They’d each spent the whole day at home. It was evening and hours stretched before them. She took bread from the bin and slathered it with mayonnaise. The kitchen seemed to her, for the first time, like a common kitchen, a place for making cheddar cheese and tomato sandwiches.

He seemed to sense she was uneasy. “Why don’t I open some wine?”

“That’d be great.”

Mead put down the paper. “I’ll go to the cellar and grab a good bottle.” She thought he might kiss her again, but he headed out the door and she was glad.

It was hard not to imagine that Mead might be able to make sense of a lot of things. He had already begun to
understand about the woman she’d seen on the moors, and he might be able to make sense of the letters she’d found. Knowing Haworth and how much was invested in the accepted story of the Brontës, she wasn’t at all sure she should say something, but neither could she fathom holding on to it all by herself.

Rattling in her mind were thoughts about Emily and her sad choice and the way she died. She couldn’t shake the thought that her mother had died, had died young, but she didn’t know of any choice she’d faced, except the little boy her grandmother had called her mother’s shadow. And Alice had maybe escaped all this, by wearing the ring, in loving Gwen, in loving Gwen well, in staying close to home. Eleanor didn’t know how to add it up, what it all meant. Emily had driven her toward the letters without explaining. If there was a curse, Eleanor feared she was somehow a part of it. She had tears in her eyes when Mead came in.

“Hey, what’s the trouble?”

He put the bottle of wine on the table and walked around behind her chair. He put his hand on her neck like a friend might, though the feeling he pulled inside was nothing like the feeling a friend might. The knot in her hair loosened and Mead said a swift sorry as he took the loose hair he’d undone and pulled it into a ponytail, tried to help with a bun, as she reached back and his hand was on her hand and she showed him how she twisted it and knotted it in one swift move. He leaned toward her, over the back of the chair, over
her shoulder, and he kissed her cheek and tasted what was left of the tears.

He walked around to the other side and sat across from her.

“Tell me,” he said. He said it so kindly, so simply, so completely without guile. He opened the wine. Poured two glasses, moved slowly and quietly enough not to interrupt her at all.

Her words tumbled out. “Today, I wandered through that closed-up part of the house, and I saw my mother’s room up there. I saw the room she grew up in. Have you seen it? Was it there when you were small, just frozen in time like that?”

He bobbed his head back and forth to say “more or less.” He took a great swallow of the rich red wine.

She didn’t know how to continue. “I’ve been reading some letters my mother wrote to my father and there was one she wrote the year before I was born. She wrote to ask him to promise to come back here with her. Here to Yorkshire. She said it a bunch of different ways, but it was the same idea, she just kept asking him to promise he’d come back with her, but even more that he wouldn’t let her come back alone.”

“Did he answer?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think he ever came, but I know she came back alone. At least that once.”

Mead’s eyes held hers with compassion.

“It seemed like she wanted my father to leave his print on this place. To mark it, make it not just hers but his, too.” She
stopped and shook her head as if she were trying to shake sense into it. How crazy would it be to tell him she was afraid of a curse?

Mead refilled their glasses and offered her some water to drink, because he knew she liked drinking water.

“Did you know she died here in a car crash?” she asked.

“I didn’t know exactly that. I knew she died here. I remember her a bit.”

“Shit. I never even thought of that. You knew her.” Wispy dismay. “Now, I am spinning.”

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, it’s okay.” She looked at his green eyes, his dark hair with hints of red Viking underneath, and she remembered how complex it was where he’d come from, who he was, who he might feel himself to be.

“It’s great that you knew her,” she said.

“I wish I could say I knew her. I just barely remember . . .”

“I didn’t even know my mother was coming here. That’s kind of weird, I think, right?” Her brain felt heavy with thinking and her body was tired and she realized how long she’d been carrying the weight of mystery around, unasked and unanswered, inside her.

She felt Mead’s presence, more conspicuous than ever before.

He could carry some of the weight of it. He already did. He had dazzling eyes and there was something arresting in
the way he listened to her, carefully, spoke sparingly, and paid attention to little things. Small things. Important things.

He pushed away from the table, came around again to her, and took her face between his hands and kissed her lips. Deliberately and passionately he kissed her and she felt herself unwinding, disintegrating, and coming back together all at the same time. He kissed her again, this time lightly.

“Take a bite of your sandwich,” he said, and she did. The grainy bread and cheese. He sat down across from her.

“Maybe you know more about all this than I do,” she said.

“I don’t think I do. I know a thing or two, but not more than you.”

She sighed. “I want to tell you about something I found.”

“Should I be worried?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“No, I am sure. Up in that strange part of the house. I was looking because Emily told me she’d hidden letters somewhere in this house. That it was important that I find them. And I did. It was a fluke that I found them, but they were in a little box. They were handwritten letters to Emily from a man named Robert Macaulay.” Her eyes were glassy as she looked into his.

“I can honestly say you’ve got my full attention.”

“This man named Robert Macaulay walked here, to Yorkshire, from the Outer Hebrides.”

Mead’s eyebrows rose and fell.

“He walked all the way to the moors, close by here, close to Trent Hall, and out there, by accident one day, he ran into Emily Brontë. She was staying here with friends, and she and Robert Macaulay fell in love.”

“This was all in the letters?”

“It was. And more.” Again she paused. “Robert wrote about setting out and walking to clear his head, to get away from his life and find quiet . . .”

“Ah, he was a scarperer,” Mead interjected.

“I don’t think so.” He didn’t seem to be taking it in. “Have you heard this before?”

Solemn, Mead shook his head.

“They had this place they met where they had picnics she brought and they went for walks and then in the evening . . . it’s fancy language but it sounds like they made love out there. He stayed at a pub nearby and she was here, at this house.”

He reached across the table and took both her hands in his. “I’ve heard about some of this from Alice. Not facts and not from letters. Don’t be troubled, tell me more,” he said.

Relieved, she went on. “Emily told me all of this. Everywhere she found me, she urged me to find these letters in the house, and I found them. I can hardly believe I found them. All these years, letters from him and a diary of hers, a drawing of Emily that he did . . .”

Mead rubbed the side of his face with his hand; there was a burden in what she was telling him.

“Emily’s brother, Branwell, was a twisted guy—something wasn’t right there. She didn’t go off with Robert, because of him. She was scared of lots of things, Emily. But, God, she was passionate. In one letter Robert wrote that she loved like she was dying of it.”

Mead was deep in thought. He spoke softly. “I suppose she did die of it.”

Eleanor looked up at him with tired eyes.

“You have raw material, Eleanor, real evidence,” he said.

Not fully comprehending the weight of this, Eleanor nodded. “Yes, I guess, evidence. She wrote the novel right then, too, in the middle of it all, after she went home to Branwell.”

“It would mean a lot, to a lot of people, you know, to know this,” Mead said.

“I don’t think anyone needs to know.” She held his eyes with hers.

“It would become a spectacle.” Mead contemplated.

“Emily wanted me to know. No one else has to know,” Eleanor said.

His eyes took in the whole of her: spark, ground, wisdom. “Right,” he said. “Okay, then . . .”

They both were startled as the kitchen door slammed open and Granley came in, tense and out of breath. “Sorry to bother you, Mead, but Tilda’s had a bit of a fright.” The old man took off his hat and excused himself to Eleanor.

“What kind of a fright, Granley?”

“She seems to ’ave seen a ghost, she has, and she’s unnerved.”

Tilda appeared behind him. She was trembling, shaking, and trying to make light of it herself.

“I’m a right idjot,” she said, but couldn’t stop her teeth chattering. “The wind’s bein’ its old fool self.” She sipped the whisky Granley had poured for her. A wool blanket kept her warm. “That’s it, I know it musta been the wind. But she looked at me and wasn’t movin’, stood there and looked right at me. I feel a fool makin’ a fuss this way.”

“It’s all right, Tild, it’s nothing at all. I mean, it’s not nothing. I’m sure you saw what you saw . . .”

“Have ye seen ’er?”

He shook his head.

“Ye ’ave seen her.”

“I’ve heard stories,” Mead said.

“So she’s real.”

“I’ve no idea,” he said.

Tilda folded the blanket and placed it on the stool. “Well, I s’pose that’s why God gave us whisky, eh?”

The kitchen lights were still on after they’d gone. Mead and Granley walked with Tilda back to their place up the stairs, around the back of the stables.

A chill ran through Eleanor when she realized she was alone in the house. Everyone else slept in one of the structures outside the main house. Despite the doors and curtains
closing off the rooms that weren’t used, the house was stony cold and resoundingly empty.

The kitchen door slammed open and Mead had come back to say, “I’ll sleep inside tonight. Just so you know someone’s close by.”

“Thank you for that,” she said. “It’s a big house.”

“I’ll stay in the room across the hall from yours. If you need me for anything at all.”

“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.” She stepped onto the first stair.

“Right,” he said. “Good night, then.”

“It is possible I’ll get scared in the night . . . ,” she said.

“Here’s hoping,” he said with a stunning cute smile.

A
n edge of Eleanor’s nail had chipped and was ragged. It snagged the blanket and pulled. With her teeth she tried to file it smooth, but it didn’t become smooth. Instead, another part caught between her teeth and ripped down to the quick when she moved it. There was a thin line of blood right at the base. Still the nail was ragged, and now her teeth were set on edge. She curled her thumb into the palm of her hand to keep it from snagging the nightgown, wrapped the blanket like a robe, climbed out of bed, and went to the room across the hall, where she knocked on the door.