Wuthering Heights

kind-hearted. Could you point out some
landmarks to help me get home?’
    ‘There’s one,’ she said,
and pointed to the front door.
    ‘I hope this will be a
lesson to you to make rash bloody journeys in weather like this,’ cried
Heathcliff’s stern voice from the kitchen. Having a voice in his stern seemed
not to bother him. ‘As to staying here, you’ll have to sleep with Joseph, our
resident homosexual.’ With this insult, my patience ran out and down the road.
I uttered an expression of disgust, ‘Old Arab bum!’ and pushed past him into
the yard, colliding with a young wretch, who was training to be heavyweight
champion of the world.
    ‘I’ll go with ’ee as far as
the park,’ he said.
    ‘You’ll go with him to
hell,’ exclaimed his master.
    ‘I don’t know that way,
zur,’ snivelled the lad rolling himself into a foetal position in the snow. In
that position Heathcliff rolled him out the front gate and down the hill, where
he finished up as a snowball and heavyweight champion of the world.
    ‘I hope that lad’s ghost
haunts ’ee,’ said Mrs Heathcliff.
    In the shed by a lantern
Joseph sat within earshot, so Heathcliff shot it, he was milking a cow.
    I snatched the lantern,
promising to return it on the morrow. Leaving him milking in Braille, I rushed
to the nearest postern, then realized I hadn’t snatched a lantern but a bucket
of milk.
    It would have to do.
    On opening the little door,
two hairy monsters flew at my throat, bearing me down and extinguishing the
milk, while a mingled laughter came from Heathcliff and Hareton, ha-mingle-ha.
I was forced to lie still till their malignant selves pleased to deliver me. I
ordered the miscreants to let me up.
    Then winking at speed, I
made several incoherent threats of retaliation, the vehemence of my agitation
brought on a copious nose bleed. I managed to stem the flow by sticking a
carrot up each nostril, knowing they contained Vitamin C. Heathcliff roared
with insane laughter. To calm my rage I put on my hat, and to let him know I
meant business, I put it on at a jaunty angle. To come and see what the uproar
was Zillah, a stout housewife came in.
    ‘Well, Mr Earnshaw,’ she
said, ‘Are we going to murder folk on our own door-step? Look at t’poor lad,
he’s blocked up with carrots,’ she said, pulling the dogs off my neck. ‘Wisht,
wisht, I’ll cure that nose bleed.’
    With these words she
suddenly poured down my neck a bucket of icy washing-up water containing
knives, forks and spoons which lodged in my trousers impacting heavily with my
reproductive organs. As I clutched that area to remove the cutlery, Heathcliff
and Hareton howled with laughter. I was dizzy and faint, I reeled backwards, I
reeled forwards, then upright; as I revived, Zillah ushered me to a bedroom,
saying, ‘Usha, usha!’
    ‘All fall down,’ I said.

Chapter
III
    ------------
     
     
     
    EADING THE WAY upstairs Zillah told me
not to make a noise. Her master had an odd notion the chamber she would put me
in. I asked the reason. She did not know, there had been many ‘queer
goings-on’. My God they’re all homosexual, I thought. Zillah opened a
door.
    ‘Is this my chamber for the
night?’ I said.
    ‘No,’ she smiled. ‘That’s
under the bed. If you use it, don’t put it back as the steam rusts the
springs,’ she said.
    Alone, I fastened my door.
I blocked the keyhole in case someone used it for a base purpose. By my bed I
placed my candle on a window-ledge. It was covered with scratched writings and
names, Catherine Earnshaw, then Catherine Heathcliff, and again Catherine
Linton. What a goer! Here was evidence she had had it away with three
different men, or had it away once and changed her name twice.
    In vapid listlessness I
leant my head against the window but so heavy with ice and frost was it, my
head stuck to it. Wrenching my head away, part of the pane stuck to it, I
managed to wrench it off, but my hair stuck to it, leaving me with a bald
patch, which I disguised with some soot from the chimney. I tried to sleep but
couldn’t, then I remembered I was standing up.
    That discovered, I lay down
and closed my eyes. I had not been asleep five minutes when a glare of white
letters started from the dark, the Bradford and Bingley, the air swarmed with
Catherines. I tried to rouse myself, I discovered my candle resting on old
books. I snuffed it out and started to read: 6 ‘Catherine Earnshaw, her book’, and a date some
quarter of a century