Wuthering Heights

but
all good things come to an end and we took our leave. Even when we were two
miles away we could still hear him wailing, “Oh, yes she did.”
    ‘ “Oh, no she didn’t, we
replied.
    ‘ “Do you like him, Nelly?”
asked Cathy.
    ‘ “ Like him?” I
gasped. I went on to gasp, “He’s the sickliest whining little creep I’ve ever
seen. His father says he’ll snuff it before he is twenty!”
    ‘At this my companion waxed
serious. “He’s younger than I am,” she waxed. “I will see him again,” she
waxed. “By then all the soot will have cleared.”
    ‘Suddenly, nothing
happened, but it happened suddenly. I told her, “Your intimacy with your cousin
must not be revived, even if it means reviving him first.”
    ‘ “We’ll see,” was her
reply, and she set off at a gallop leaving me to toil in the rear. (Lots of
women have toil in their rear, it takes a simple operation to adjust it.) On
returning home, I realized I had a chill and was laid up. I was a poor patient,
I couldn’t even afford a doctor, I thought my illness a calamity only equalled
by the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, the Black Hole of Calcutta or a Southern
Railway Restaurant Car.
    ‘Miss Cathy came to wait on
me. She waited for three minutes. Few have slighter reason for complaint than I
had. Among them, Mrs Aida Scraggs from No. 29 Tower Hamlets, London, who had
the shits for three months. My confinement brought me exceedingly low, so most
of the time I was under the bed. Cathy was a wonderful nurse, like Florence
Nighingoon, the Lady with the Lump. Her days were divided between Master Edgar
and me. The master retired every night at six but advanced again at seven. I
generally needed nothing after six so I got bugger-all.’

Chapter
XXXIV
    --------------
     
     
     
    T THE CLOSE of three weeks, I was able
to quit my chamber but the rim left a tell-tale mark on my bottom. I used to
spend the evenings in the library, where I asked Cathy to read to me as my eyes
were weak. “Then read a weak book,” she said jokingly.
    I could have throttled her.
“I know,” she said with a sweet smile. I could have throttled her. 22 Suddenly she took
all her clothes off and did a frenzied African dance. She had a fanny like a
hedgehog. I was too stunned to speak, and she went off to bed. The following
night she seemed unsettled. Then smilingly she repeated her rude African dance,
flashed her hedgehog, then vanished. No Catherine could I discover, I searched
high and low, she must have been between. I listened at Mr Edgar’s door, but it
was silent save for Grand Armagnac Les Comtesole Cadignan eight years old. I
listened to the floors and the walls, but no Cathy, instead a strong smell of
oyster, mushroom pie and faggots. I could have throttled her, meanwhile I
practised throttling one of the servants, but when he went unconscious the fun
went out of it. I extinguished my candle and seated myself at her bedroom
window. Then I detected a figure creeping along. When it emerged into the light
I saw it was in fact a creep.
    ‘The creep was Cathy’s
groom. Cathy came in and rode up the stairs, he wearing an hernia belt carried
the horse away. She crapt 23 into the house, when I arose and confronted her.
    ‘ “Where have you been?” I
asked.
    ‘ “I’ll tell you if you
promise not to throttle me.”
    ‘I nodded till I got tired of
doing it.
    ‘ “I’ve been to Wuthering
Heights,” she said, in such ecstasy. She rapidly crossed and uncrossed her legs
to ease the tension. “Zillah, his housekeeper, brought us some warm wine. 24 It was bloody
terrible! Linton sat coughing in his armchair while I swung back and forth in a
rocking-chair. I talked and he coughed away so merrily.
    ‘ “Cough, Linton darling,
cough,” I said. We planned where we would go, like Bexhill, and what we would
do in the summer: screw. Linton assured me we were alone. He told me Joseph was
out on his way back to Somalia with some more porridge and Hareton Earnshaw was
out with his dogs in the woods retrieving dead gamekeepers and farmhands for
Heathcliff. It was a lovely evening. When I went the next time —”
    ‘ “You went twice!” I said with horror.
    ‘ “Yes, I went there twice
but only once,” she continued. “As I entered, he was lying on the settee. He
half got up to welcome me, the other half he left on the settee, but the effort
was too much; with a groan and a fart he fell back. Just then the oaf and
wanker, Hareton, burst the door open;