Wuthering Heights

housekeeper,’ I informed her.
    She went to seize it, but
Hareton got it first, he put it in his waistcoat pocket, then his breast
pocket, then his hip pocket, his trouser pocket, then into his sock, down his
trouser front, then under his hat. That done, he gave it back to her. She
perused the letter eagerly, then eagerly she threw it in the fire. Then Hareton
took a watering-can and went to water the horses. He came back, he walked
moodily in, his eyes fixed on the floor; he tripped arse over tip. From the
horizontal position he said, ‘Der — what brought you here?’
    ‘Ah, an idle whim,’ I said.
    ‘Ah, an idle whim?’ said
Heathcliff.
    ‘I often have them. I had
idle whims this morning, my mother had whims very badly, the last one killed
her, she had a whim to jump off Beachy Head.’
    He then said, ‘Stay to
dinner, Catherine will prepare a meal.’ She appeared with a tray of knives and
forks. ‘That’s no bloody good,’ he said. ‘We want some food!’ With Heathcliff
on one hand and Hareton on the other, my arms were trapped. I had to eat like a
pig at the trough. That evening I rode home, having dined on eel and oyster
vindaloo. All night long I had the shits, so ends the romance of Wuthering
Heights.
     
    MANY YEARS later, one day I
was out riding and a sudden impulse seized me, just behind the knee. I wished
to visit Wuthering Heights. I asked a villager how far it was. ‘Fourteen miles
as the crow flies,’ he said. I told him I was not travelling by crow and set
off. Very warm streams of perspiration ran down my body, through my underpants,
down my legs and into my boots, where it escaped through the lace-holes as
steam.
    I could smell the fragrance
of stocks with just a hint of horse shit. Through the hall I could see Hareton
and Cathy. They were together. I was together but I was on my own. Cathy was
teaching Hareton reading.
    ‘Der,’ he read, ‘Der quick
brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’
    ‘Very good,’ said Cathy,
and as a reward she kissed him and he gave her boobs a quick squeeze.
    Then Mrs Nelly Dean spotted
me. ‘Mr Lockwood, what are you doing here?’
    ‘Ah, Nelly Dean, do you
know, there’s an old mill by the stream?’ I told her I’d come to pay Heathcliff
the rent.
    ‘Haven’t you heard?’ she
said.
    I listened but I couldn’t
hear anything. She told me that Zillah had left and now she was housekeeper. I
could hear that. She also told me that Cathy and Hareton were in love. ‘Have a
drink, you must be weary.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Ah gits
weary and sick of tryin’. I’m tired of libbin’ but ’feard o’ dying... dat old
man ribber he just keeps rolling a long.’
    ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ she said,
‘Mr Heathcliff has passed on.’
    Quickly I put the money
away. ‘How did he die?’ I asked.
    ‘Well, he started taking
walks at night in the wind and the rain. He used to come back flooded, and we
had to empty him out. “She’s out there!” he’d say, pointing out — some nights
he got it wrong and pointed in. One night I went to his room to bid him
goodnight, but he had gone. I looked in his bed, he was gone. I looked under
the bed, gone. I looked in his suits, there was nobody in them or money. I
thought, is it a ghost or a vampire? One night he was on the moor in a
lightning storm and I clearly heard him call, “Cathy, my love, come and look at
this!” When he came back at dawn he was black, smouldering his eyebrows and his
clothes were scorched. He had been struck by lightning twice in the same place. 29 He went up to his room. Then
came that final night. At dusk he went into his chamber. All night long he was
moaning “Cathy, my love.” Joseph shouted out, “Stop that fucking noise, it’s
worse than Somalia.” It was terrible. In the morning I tapped on his door and
went in with his breakfast and there was Mr Heathcliff.
    ‘Where?’ I said.
    ‘There,’ she said. ‘I could
not think him dead, but the way he looked I couldn’t think of him alive
either.’
    ‘But you had a choice of
two?’ I said helpfully.
    ‘Just in case he was dead I
ate his breakfast.’
    ‘He was perfectly still,’ she
continued.
    ‘Oh, that’s a sign of
death,’ I said helpfully.
    ‘He and the bed were
soaking wet, a water main over his head had burst in the night,’ said Mrs Dean.
    ‘Was he drowned in his
sleep?’ I asked helpfully.
    ‘It’s hard to say,’ she
said.
    ‘No, it isn’t. I just said
it, and I didn’t find it hard,’ I said