Withering Heights (9 page)

“Why not switch to another make?” I asked, as Ben passed a double-decker bus, only to discover it had been lumbering behind a lorry that seemed to be laboring under the delusion
that it was a hay cart being pulled by a tired old nag. Making for further frustration, we were now going uphill, unable to see oncoming traffic.

“I couldn’t do that, Mrs. H. Like I’ve told you before, I had no trouble getting rid of me husbands when they didn’t work out, but I’ve kept me solemn vow to stay married to one make of bra for life.”

“I wish Dad would get rid of Betty,” muttered Ariel.

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” Ben replied, without shifting his gaze.

Silence pervaded the Land Rover’s interior. We finally made it past the lorry and came to a roundabout, followed the arrow marked TO THE NORTH, and got off at the right exit. Had I been driving, we would have circled until we were giddy. I dozed off and wakened to hear Mrs. Malloy rustling around in her handbag; there followed the crackle of candy wrappers.

“No, thank you,” said Ariel.

“Want a toffee?” A paper bag was handed up front.

“Not for me, thanks.” Ben edged to a stop at a red light in a street lined by narrow-faced gray stone shops, with an open-air market glimpsed around one corner.

“Then I’ll take two.” I handed the bag back.

Mrs. Malloy said it was always good to have a few sweets on hand. I agreed and we sped on, leaving the town behind and entering the motorway, which we stayed on for an hour or more. We might have been anywhere in England. Everything seemed the same from one moment to the next, an unending stream of uniformity from the vehicles to the buildings. Metal and glass . . . concrete and glass . . . all stripped of color, scale, and shape. Everything moving at the same automated speed. Where were the famous dales, the mysterious, beckoning moors? Did the Yorkshire I had imagined exist anymore? Or had it been paved over and roofed in for a shopping center?

“I’ve changed my mind.” Ariel spoke from behind my head. “I will have a toffee, Mrs. Malloy.”

“Aren’t you the kind little miss?” An irritable rustling of paper bag. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you the word
please
hasn’t been rationed since World War Two?”

“Maybe Betty attempted to clamp down on her behavior.” Ben spoke in a low aside to me, but Ariel must have heard. She sucked in an infuriated breath.

“Ellie, can we
please
put him out of the car?”

“That’s enough.” I almost yanked my head off in turning around to face her. “I understand you’re on edge—”

“I’m not. I’m perfectly calm.”

“That’s neither here nor there.”

“You just said—”

“What my wife is attempting to explain, Ariel, is that we are fast losing sympathy for you,” Ben informed her, “whatever your grievances.”

I settled back in my seat, staring rigidly at the windshield. More silence. We were exiting the motorway to a view of hills as rough-hewn as the stone walls bordering the fields surrounding the outline of a farmhouse that might have been Wuthering—not Withering—Heights. Way off to our right spread a shadowy stretch of what I hoped might be moorland. But I couldn’t enjoy this introduction to the county of gothic glory. Had Ben and I spoken too sharply to the girl? How precarious was her state of mind? Would Tom and Betty prove especially difficult if we returned her blank-eyed and silent?

“I don’t know why I have to come off sounding bratty, at the very times when I really want to be nice so people will like me,” Ariel remarked plaintively. “Like last night, Ellie, when I knew I needed to win you and Mrs. Malloy over. I could hear myself talking and it didn’t sound right, but there just didn’t seem anything I could do about it.”

“Got one of them multiple personalities?” Mrs. M asked eagerly.

“I suppose I’m perverse.”

“Probably.” Ben laughed, and I felt myself relax.

“Our own worst enemies, that’s what we all are sometimes.” Mrs. Malloy sounded ready to enlarge on this theme. But Ariel announced that we were now within a few miles of Milton Moor.

“And we haven’t stopped for lunch.” I looked at my watch to see that it was nearly noon. “Should we look out for somewhere?”

“It’s all right. That toffee did the trick. I’m not starving anymore. Why put off the evil hour? Of course, it’ll be bread and water for me.” Ariel sounded almost cheerful. It was Mrs. Malloy who betrayed uneasiness.

“I wonder if Melody will think I’ve aged some.”

It seemed likely after a span of forty years, but I crossed my fingers and said probably not. Ben nosed the car onto a sharply steep road with buff-colored houses, grimed with smoke, butting up against the pavement. All very prim and properly Victorian, with lace curtains screening the windows and pots of stiff-looking maroon and purple flowers on the steps. It was truly like stepping back in time. Finally my heart thrilled. A woman opened her door and whacked a mat against the wall. A cat leaped out of a tree and a little boy of about three came pumping along on his tricycle. A woman with orange hair came out of a house with a BED AND BREAKFAST sign on the gatepost. I noted a couple of side streets with shops and other businesses. Then we were again looking out on more open country, bordered by the dry-stone walls and punctuated by solitary trees and outcroppings of rock. Some cultivation, but mostly a sea of coarse wavering grass. We passed a man with shaggy black hair streaked with white, striding alongside a
similarly colored sheepdog, both of them completely at one with the landscape. Elemental. Timeless.

“Who said a moor is merely a lawn in need of mowing?” Ben inquired.

“I don’t know.” I was a little peeved that he’d broken the mood.

“You made that up yourself, Ben.” Ariel actually giggled, like a real child.

“Caught out!” He grinned and I simmered down. It was good that the two of them seemed to be coming to terms. Now all we needed was a little harmony on meeting Tom and Betty.

“We’re here. Time to face the music!” Mrs. Malloy tapped on her window. “Look! It says it on the brass plate on that brick wall: Cragstone House. And there’s the roof and the chimneys towering up to the sky. Well, I never!” She continued her raptures as we drove in through the gateposts. “There’s a cottage off to the side, but much bigger than the one Freddy lives in back at Merlin’s Court. This one could house a family of six without anyone bumping walls.” She had rolled down her window and stuck out her head, risking getting scratched by the shrubbery lining the drive, which gave way on either side to flower beds in a park setting.

“Oh, you’re talking about the Dower House! It’s rather nice inside. Lady Fiona still owns it and a couple of acres of land.”

“Is that where she’s living?” I asked.

“No, she’s temporarily in residence at a hotel. Mr. Gallagher’s old nanny is at the Dower House with her great niece, Val. Their last name is—”

She didn’t get to finish. Ben had parked the Land Rover facing a flight of steps that would have seated a full orchestra. The moment called for a rousing flourish of Mozart. The handsomely carved front door opened to reveal a man and a
woman descending to meet us. The stiffness of their gait suggested that they were either made out of fiberboard or were rigidly controlling their emotions. I decided the latter was more likely; Ben and I got out of the vehicle as if ordered to do so by two police officers. Mrs. Malloy and Ariel followed. I didn’t turn to see if they had their hands up.

The couple had reached the bottom step. Tom wasn’t much of a surprise. I had pictured him as being of medium height and stocky build, with pale, slightly protuberant blue eyes and a weak mouth. And there he stood. The reality was completed by the brown tweed sports jacket and elderly cords he was wearing, perhaps in ineffectual hope of looking like a landed squire, of the kind that lived for his trout fishing and pheasant shooting and had only given up smoking a pipe when it became politically expedient to do so. Betty was another matter. I had got her all wrong. She was neither an ethereal blonde trailing organza nor a raven-haired beauty wearing spiffy riding togs. She was a diminutive redhead in a too-large pale blue suit, with a nose that had been pinched out of plastic. Her eyes were clear green glass.

“Ariel!” Her voice was a spurt of ice-cold water. “Get over here.”

“Oh, Betty darling!” I was staggered to hear the girl reply. Indeed, I clutched at Ben’s arm and was glad of the additional support of Mrs. Malloy’s sturdy presence behind me. “Daddy!” A breeze, absent until now, fanned my cheeks and fluttered my skirts. It was caused by Ariel’s sobbing breath. She raced around me, hands extended, spectacles askew, and limp hair flying. “Please, please don’t be cross. I’ve got the loveliest surprise planned.”

Tom’s smile had the look of a false mustache that could be taken off and hurriedly slipped into his pocket if it didn’t meet with his wife’s approval.

“Get indoors this minute, Ariel!” Betty’s rigidity suggested an outraged Barbie doll. So far she had not deigned to glance at Mrs. Malloy, Ben, or me. Neither, for that matter, had Tom.

“Oh, but not before I tell you about the surprise!” Ariel flung herself at her stepmother. “This morning I had the brilliant idea to phone a—”

“I’m not interested. You’ve caused no end of an upset at a time when your father and I have other things to worry about. Tell her, Tom.”

The recipient of a jab from an undoubtedly sharp elbow cleared his throat. “You shouldn’t have done it, Ariel. We’ve been worried sick about you, and I’m sure you’ve put Cousin Ben and his wife to a lot of bother.” He finally looked our way. “Whatever made you take off like that?”

“And why to them?” Betty’s tone said it all.

“I couldn’t think of anyone else. Ellie had been kind, sending those books to me.” This was uttered in a broken little voice. “We don’t have many relatives and none that we ever see, now that Grandma Hopkins is dead. I’ve been so mixed up and miserable. Everything changed after the lottery. People talking about us. Moving to this house. Being frightened that you’re right, Betty, about Lady Fiona murdering her husband and burying him out here where we could be stepping on him every day and disturbing his eternal rest. I can’t sleep at night because I’m so scared of waking up to see his ghost.”

“Clever little whatsit!” Mrs. Malloy muttered from behind me, and Ben murmured agreement.

“Ariel, you know that murder business is nonsense,” said Tom.

What was there that Betty could say? She stood looking furiously flummoxed, and Ariel nimbly seized the moment.

“You’re right, Dad, I did put Ben and Ellie to a lot of trouble. But they were wonderful. And so was Mrs. Malloy, who
works for them. It was mostly her who made me see what a silly girl I’d been, not talking my fears over with you instead of running away. We have to find a way of making it up to them, don’t we?” She turned and beckoned to us, her smile one of timid optimism.

The scene had come more broadly to life. There was concerted movement now. The Hopkinses were moving toward us, Ariel with the prancing gait of an exuberant six-year-old, Betty with a visible lack of enthusiasm, and Tom looking uncertain as to whether or not he should take his smile out of his pocket and stick it back on his face. I let Ben and Mrs. Malloy go ahead of me. While they were being greeted, I focused my attention on the stark edifice that was Cragstone House.

It lacked a north tower, or the remnants of an ancient keep, so beloved of my heart in fiction. But in other ways it was splendidly suggestive of dark doings, fueled by unbridled passion, being conducted within. It was many times the width of Merlin’s Court, its rugged gray stone walls rising three stories to a jagged roof as black as a night sky, with chimney pots too many to count. I could picture it gobbling up normal-sized houses for breakfast and, like Oliver Twist, asking for more: just one small cottage . . . or maybe two . . . to keep things going until lunch. There was a furtive aspect to the tall narrow windows, which when combined with the grappling ivy and the shadowy passageway separating the ground floor of the main structure from the west wing, produced the requisite shivers to be experienced by the hapless governess or the unwanted visitor about to enter the premises. Yes, I could see why Ariel had nicknamed it Withering Heights.

Ariel appeared at my side to grab my hand and propel me forward, whispering to me as I put one faltering foot in front of another, “Dad seems pleased to see Ben, and Betty is thawing,
so now it’s up to you not to ruin everything. Act humble and impressed.”

“That shouldn’t be difficult.” I was the governess clad in a stiff black gown with the demurest hint of a white collar. My bonnet was serviceable, my boots sturdy and well polished. Poverty had not defeated my attempts to present myself tidily to an uncaring world.

“Betty, darling!” Ariel, still clutching my hand, was jumping up and down in a way that Tarn and Abbey at seven had outgrown and even five-year-old Rose didn’t do much anymore. “Here’s Ellie. Oh, I do know the two of you are going to be great friends! I can feel the emanations!”

Did we have here a budding Madam LaGrange?

Betty extended a miniature hand, which I took gingerly, for fear it would break off in my grasp and Tom would have to put the Barbie doll back in the purchase box and return it to the manufacturer for a refund. That would solve my problem of trying to get on her good side in hope of being asked to spend a few days at Cragstone.

“As Tom has been saying to your husband, we appreciate your bringing Ariel home and sorry her acting out had to involve you. It’s embarrassing for us and awkward for you.” Her voice was stiff and jerky, causing me to wonder if the wrong mechanism had been installed or she had been played with more than recommended.

“She’s at a difficult age.”

“You can say that again. Sometimes I think she hates me.” Emotion showed fleetingly on Betty’s face.

“It’s a stage. We all went through it.”

“I’m not sure I’ve outgrown mine,” she said surprisingly. “Let’s go inside, shall we? You must be ready for a cup of tea.”

“Thank you, that sounds wonderful.” We followed in the
wake of the others, Tom and Ben going up the stairs ahead of Ariel and Mrs. Malloy.