The World Within (7 page)

It must be hard for him too. When they’re working on the Glass Town saga, he’s so used to having Charlotte to spark ideas off. Even though he always claims the best ideas are his.

A sudden thought makes Emily sit up straight. Without Charlotte, Branwell will need her and Anne. They can go back to playing together, just like they did in the old days. Then when Charlotte comes back, she’ll have missed them so much she’ll want to join in again. It will be just as it used to be.

Emily puts her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Banny,” she says, using their old pet name for him, “why don’t we go on with Glass Town? It might cheer us up.”

He shrugs her off irritably. “Don’t call me that. I’m not a child anymore.” He glares at her. “And what makes you think I’d want to play with you? It’s the last thing I’d want to do.”

For a moment Emily can’t breathe. First Charlotte. Now Branwell. But she can’t let him see how wounded she is. She narrows her eyes. “I see, Mr. Clever. You think you can manage on your own, do you?”

He snorts. “Of course. I don’t need you.”

A hot rush of anger floods her chest. “Go on, then. But you’ll be sorry. Anne and I will keep our ideas to ourselves.”

“Ideas? You two? Hah! The rubbish you two think of is enough to make the cat laugh.”

Anne gets to her feet. “Branwell … Emily …”

Emily curls her hand into a fist, but before she can hit him, he says, “You’re such silly babies, you don’t understand anything about the things Charlotte and me want to write about. I’ll do Glass Town by myself. I don’t want you!” He flings himself out of the room and slams the door.

Emily smacks her fist down on the table, making Anne jump.

“Damn you! Damn you to hell!”

Anne’s staring at her with big eyes, but she doesn’t care.

After a long silence Emily hears the melancholy sound of Branwell’s flute floating down the stairs and all at once it’s too much …

A knot forms in her throat, threatening to choke her. The room suddenly seems airless and she makes for the window. Pressing her hands and forehead against the cold pane, she looks out at the graveyard, where the black slabs of the upright headstones stand forlorn, buffeted by wind-borne sleet.

She feels an arm slipping through hers and Anne says, “Never mind. Branwell might come round.” She gives Emily’s arm a squeeze. “And you don’t need to worry about Charlotte; I’m sure she’ll be all right. I’ll pray for her especially hard.”

Emily shakes her head, unable to speak.

Just at this moment she doesn’t want consolation, she wants … oh, she wants everything to be as it was, tight and right … and safe.

She pulls away from Anne’s clasp and heads for the door. But out in the hallway, she stops.

Where can she go? Where can she find a refuge?

The kitchen is what she chooses. Warm and full of comforting smells and with Tabby bustling about just as she always does.

When she comes in, Tabby, who’s standing at the kitchen table weighing flour, looks up at her with a quizzical expression on her face.

Without a word, Emily flings herself onto a stool and picks up the book she left on the table before breakfast. After a second Tabby goes on with her work, clinking the metal weights onto the scales. Emily sighs and slams the book shut. She looks for Tiger, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Listlessly she watches Tabby adding frothing yeast to the bowl of flour.

When she sighs for a second time Tabby looks over at her. “I daresay tha’s finding it a mite strange without Miss Charlotte. We’ll all miss her.”

Emily doesn’t answer.

“Pass salt box, lass.”

Emily pushes it over. And suddenly she knows what she wants. Just as she used to do when she was little, she begs, “Tell me a story, Tabby.”

“Well, now, let me think.” Tabby ponders with the salt spoon in her hand. “Did tha ever hear tell of Captain Batt?”

Emily shakes her head.

“Well, then, here’s a tale. One winter evening he comes home as usual, nowt appearing amiss, and up he goes to his room. But when it comes to be suppertime, he doesn’t appear. His manservant, a bit puzzled like, takes it upon himself to knock at the maister’s door. There’s no answer. The man tries the door. It won’t budge — it’s locked fast. It takes two of them to break it down to get inside. And guess what?”

“What?”

“The room were empty. Not a trace of the maister to be seen. But there on the floor were summat that made them shudder …” Tabby pauses for dramatic effect and makes her eyes go big. “It were a bloody footprint.”

Despite herself, Emily is entertained. “Did they ever find out what happened? To the captain, I mean?”

“The next day news came that the maister had been killed in a duel the afternoon before.”

“So it was his ghost who came home?”

Tabby shrugs. “That’s what folk say.”

“Do you think it really happened?”

“I don’t know, lass. There could be summat in it.” Tabby pours some water into her mixing bowl. “There’s many a tale of folk appearing to their kin at the very time they’re dying somewhere else.” She thumps the dough onto the table and starts kneading it.

Emily suddenly sits up straight. “Can I try that?”

“If tha likes. But wash thi hands first. And roll up thi sleeves.”

Preparations accomplished to Tabby’s satisfaction, Emily approaches the lump of dough cautiously.

“Nay, don’t dibble-dabble at it, in that namby-pamby way. Push wi’ the heel of thi palms and put thi weight behind it. The dough needs stretching else loaves’ll be as hard as whinstone.”

Emily, with sticky hands and flour up to her elbows, grapples with the elastic mass. As she wrestles it into submission, gradually the painful tangle inside her is soothed. By the time she’s done, she feels much calmer. Her anger toward Branwell, her grief about Charlotte, all those feelings that have been tearing at her have subsided for the time being.

Once the dough is proofing next to the range, Tabby says, “Now then, I want thee to run down to Mrs. Grimshaw’s for some sugar, for those blessed curates haven’t left me a speck of it and thi Papa will be wanting some in his coffee.”

Emily tenses. But Tabby doesn’t seem to notice her dismay. She’s too busy counting out coins from the old tea caddy. Shaking her head, she says, “It’s all very well for thi Papa to invite yon fellows to tea, but they’re like locusts. They’d eat us out of house and home if they could.”

“Can’t you ask one of the others?”

“Now tha knows Miss Anne can’t go by herself, and besides it’s far too cold out for the poor mite. And I think Maister Branwell’d best be let alone awhile.”

Tabby has heard them rowing, then. Emily opens her mouth.

“Nay, don’t make a fuss, my lass,” says Tabby firmly, pushing the money into her hand. “I know tha likes a walk.”

Emily fetches her cloak, grumbling to herself. Of course Tabby’s right and if she’d suggested a ramble on the moors, Emily would have been off like a shot. But Tabby knows how much she hates going down into the village — it’s mean of her to make her go.

Once she’s out of the front door, Emily wishes even more that she
was
going for a proper walk. The cold is still biting, but the skies have cleared a little and above the church tower a pale sun is doing its best to shine through the veil of cloud. As she crosses the garden, where the twisted branches of the hawthorn and the bare stems of the fruit bushes are rimed with frost, her boots make a satisfying crunch on the frozen gravel path.

Passing through the wicket gate, she enters the churchyard. The dusting of snow on the gravestones crammed together on either side of her almost softens their oppressive presence. Almost, but not entirely. Whenever Emily sees these heavy grey slabs, she can’t help thinking of Mama and Maria and Elizabeth, even though they’re not buried here, but in the church. She tries to pass through the graveyard as quickly as possible, to not let herself dwell on them, but today she has to go more cautiously on the icy flagstones. By the time she reaches the corner by the church her mood is even darker. Casting one longing look along the track that would take her to the moors, she braces herself and passes through the archway into Kirkgate, Haworth’s main street.

Luckily it’s far too early for the bells that will release a stream of workers from the mills down in the valley, so she doesn’t have to endure the brazen stares of the girls as they clatter up the cobbles in their clogs. But there are two men outside the Black Bull. Out of the corner of her eye, she’s aware of their open curiosity and though they lower their voices as she goes by she hears them.

“Parson’s lass.”

“Miss Emily.”

Emily grits her teeth. Just because Papa is the parson, and therefore a public figure, the villagers seem to think they somehow own the whole family. It’s all very well for Charlotte to say, as she did once when Emily grumbled about it, that it’s their keeping themselves to themselves that makes the cottagers even more curious. Why shouldn’t they have a right to their privacy?

As she makes her way down the steep hill, the blackened stone cottages on either side of the narrow street seem to press toward her. Despite the cold, some doors are open to give light to the handloom weavers working inside. She imagines eyes watching her from within the dark interiors, but she looks to neither right nor left. She looks straight ahead, breathing through her mouth. Even so, she can still sense it, the smell rising from the open gutter beside her feet, which is choked with household waste, unrecognizable bits of rotting carcass, and the overflow from several privies.

Repressing a shudder, she makes herself keep going. Already she’s regretting this morning’s row with Branwell. She should have handled him differently. Instead of losing her temper, she should have buttered him up, and he might have agreed to let them help him. Charlotte would have known how to get him to do what she wanted.

Too late now. To take her mind off her failure she takes refuge in her favorite ploy. She isn’t Emily going to buy sugar, but Parry, in disguise, and on a mission to bring back the vital elixir that will restore the life of the land’s most revered sage. No obstacle will hinder her, no mire so foul nor enemy so hostile that she will not triumph.

Outside the grocer’s there’s a small knot of women passing the time of day. Charlotte would have forced herself to nod, to say, “Good morning.” Emily is having none of it: As they step aside to let her pass she turns her head away. But one of the women, bolder than the rest, addresses her.

“Miss Emily, I hope thi father is keeping well.”

She has to speak. She mutters, “Yes, he is, thank you,” and makes a dive for the shop door. But there’s no refuge inside. Mrs. Grimshaw saw Charlotte going past in the cart earlier and she can barely contain her inquisitiveness. Emily fends her off as best she can while Mrs. Grimshaw fetches a sugar loaf from the shelf. But even then the shopkeeper doesn’t relinquish it, holding on to it while she asks further prying questions.

Emily’s saved at last by the arrival of another customer. Mrs. Grimshaw turns to greet the newcomer and Emily slaps the money on the counter, snatches the sugar from her persecutor’s hand, and rushes out.

Stomping furiously back up the hill, she invokes the most terrible afflictions she can think of on the odious shopkeeper. But by the time she’s reached the church, she’s calmer, and the familiar sight of the parsonage, with its serene grey stone frontage and its many small square windowpanes polished to a shine by Tabby, helps to soothe her even more.

At the front door, reluctant to leave the fresh air and go inside, she sits on the step for a moment, cradling the sugar loaf, swaddled in its blue paper, in her arms like a stiff baby. Not for the first time she thinks how lucky it is that the parsonage is built up here, isolated from its neighbors and far above the curious eyes of the villagers.

Charlotte once asked her why she minded so much being sent on errands by Tabby and all she could say was, “They know my name. The villagers.”

She knew from the way Charlotte stared at her that her sister didn’t understand, but she couldn’t find the words for it, that sense of violation she experienced, out there among all those strangers.