August 1993
- Heathcliff came to Wuthering Heights was hot. The air seemed to be crawling, twitching with insect-life. The shade was warm and soured and the sky was a dead, clouded stretch of pale colour. It was all heat, a sweaty residue was sticking Cathy's hair to the nape of her neck and there was sandy dryness in her mouth, prickly-heat screaming up her throat. Dad had them assembled in the reception room. On his return from Liverpool to inspect two Appaloosa horses to trade he'd promised her and Howard a present each. She awaited hers eagerly; while riding horses was fun, in summer all she wanted was to go faster, fast enough to create an artificial breeze, wipe dead flies off the blinders. She had requested a whip, for soon she would be seven and allowed a larger horse, and Howard, being mad on acoustic guitar playing for a full year, asked for some nylon guitar strings. As they waited Howard sat against the arm of the red leather chair, tapping his fingernails, and Mum fluttered around the windows like a stupid moth watching for him. Cathy stayed back a little, licked her index finger thick enough to leave a globule of moisture, and wrote her name in the dust on the side of the fireplace. It took exactly seven minutes of waiting, Cathy counted.
Dad strode out of the jaguar and shut the door gently, but instead of bringing a contract in his little black leather case or going to the boot to retrieve their usual business trip presents, he went around the car and opened the passenger seat door. He was wearing his usual soft grey suit, tailored around his beer belly and chubby neck. Mum began slinking the latches over the double doors and then pulled them open, bending her knees to gather the strength. Her blue sundress whirred around her knees as the air came in and blew Cathy's name, in dust, off the marble. Following Dad was a little black head.
"Peter?" Mum squeaked. "What – who is this?"
Cathy went running to her and leaned up against her waist, her jaw clicking open like a broken mouse trap. It was a boy, slightly taller than she was. It was silkily dark-skinned, black or Hispanic, and dirty. He was wearing no shoes and an old, school-like shirt with grass-stains on the knees of his jeans. His whole face was smudged darkly, filthily, and he was purple beneath the eyes from nightmares. She couldn't see much of his body as it was wrapped in a bitty grey woollen blanket. He did nothing but stare up at her from under his longish black hair, the curls falling into his eyes. His eyes were bold and black, staring with the unnerving beauty of an unfamiliar cat, with long lashes like a girl. His mouth was slick and cruel-looking as it flinched over his teeth, and Cathy thought of animals twitching inside of their muzzles.
"Everyone," said Dad carefully. Mum gasped.
"Peter, what in the name of Christ? Who is this boy?"
Dad placed his hand on the boy's shoulder. "I found him. On the street. Wrapped up in about fifty blankets, I thought he was an old man until I looked. I couldn't – well – I couldn't just leave him there."
"This is somebody's child!"
"One that was begging outside of a pub," Dad insisted. "He has no-one. Nothing. He's been stealing and begging, we had to return at least fifty quid to blokes in the pub before we left."
"Then what is he doing here? That vase alone is worth –"
"It's all he knows. We'll teach him better, make him into a new boy, a nice boy."
"He's not Pinocchio Dad, for God's sake."
Dad gave Howard a stern look, pinching his brow, and then patted the boy on the shoulder. "He doesn't even have a name. He won't tell me it. So, I think he's someone in need of a little TLC, and we've plenty of time and room to give it, haven't we? We –"
"You need your bloody head examining Peter Earnshaw!" Mum bellowed, marching over to him and pushing him back with the flat of her hand. "Are you out of your mind? We can't just keep him!"
And so she went on. Cathy stood at the door and Howard, slowly but carefully, grabbed her ear and pulled it upwards towards his mouth. He had warm acidy breath and it tickled her neck. She wriggled, but she would not cry, because she could happily refuse, and it would only annoy him further. Howard sometimes liked her tears when he was bored.
"Stay away from it," he said suddenly. "He'll be taken by the social in no time. It must be an AIDS baby. It's Mum's probably a scouse whore! "
"Why is he so dirty?" she asked.
"Because he's the dirty sort. He's a tramp, Cathy."
Mum screamed like a B-movie damsel. "It's – Peter he's – he's – wee! It's weeing itself!"
Surely enough the smell of stewing urine in the sunlight hurt Cathy's eyes and soaked the boy's feet. He seemed not to understand, but smiled, strangely, somewhat pleasurably, at Mum's disgusted face.
Howard grasped her wrist and pulled in inwards. "We have to stay away. Don't touch it, Cath. Don't go anywhere near it."
She didn't plan to, unless it was to tease it. It'd be like trapping a spider beneath a glass and roasting it on the window sill. It was the simple things in life that secretly entertained her.
Nonetheless, despite Mum crying all evening in the kitchen and refusing to speak, the little boy stayed at the house. He was about to be washed. Howard had called her to witness it.
"Next thing you know Dad'll be holding his cock to teach him to piss," he remarked. Cathy laughed, though she didn't fully understand. He was in the bathroom full of white tiles, and his feet had left a grubby print on the rug. He was sat in the bath, his whole body writhing in it, glittering and sliding wetly, his eyes closed. He looked peaceful. He awkwardly scrubbed a bar of lavender soap against his throat, and Cathy watched intently as the clean water trailed slowly down to his collar bone and swirled in the dark little space, the rock pools joining his shoulder and neck. More water ran down him in rivers and broke into deltas across him, and now his skin looked lighter and strong and soft as new leather. His tongue slid out, ripe and pink, and danced across his lower lip. Cathy watched.
"Here!" Howard called to him, and opened the door wide. Cathy's eyes snapped back up to Howard's face. The boy stared at him. "A towel to dry yourself." And he threw in the cloth used to rest the horse shoes on. It was trampled with straw and shit. He was so dirty it was probably what he would have most been pleased with, Cathy mused, and giggled into Howard's thigh. He stared at them both, a frown puckering his forehead, and then Howard grabbed her once again by the hair and tugged her away.
It remained that way for two days. Dad asked if she would be so kind as to share her room with him, and they set out the camp bed from their last holiday in Cornwall, snuggled in tents. It was directly before her bed, so if she sat up in the night she'd see his strange staring-cat eyes. She refused to accept the idea.
He came to bed on both evenings and stood outside her door, "I'm getting changed," she told him, "don't you dare come in or I'll get my Dad to box ya ears." And like a good pet he stayed outside. She did not unlock the door. When she went downstairs to breakfast each morning Howard had spat a heavy slug of clear snot onto his forehead, and slowly it slid down his nose. Cathy had remained gazing at him for a minute on the second morning, and he stared back at her in that weird way of his, like a doll with glass eyes, as it slithered down his cheek. She could not tell if it was hardness or gentleness that kept him mute throughout the whole minute, or the whole day; Howard's jibes were never ending, and she noticed queasily he had kicked him so hard his dark skin had bruises flowering up all over.
Most nights, just after she locked the door, she could hear them shouting, Dad and Howard. It might be a door slamming, a single booming note, one time something falling and breaking with a porcelain clatter – something was always happening, someone was always raging. The boy sat outside of her room silently and she was almost sure he took some sort of pleasure from it. After all, how could he sit, in dumb insolence, and do nothing, not fight, not raise his voice, raise a fist, raise his blood pressure, while the others did? She hated him for being such a pussy, like Howard did.
They were a Christian family, a proud family, with honour and a crest and whatever else. Names travelled down bloodlines, names and noses, eyes, mouths. Howard reminded her of this as much as he could, because Dad professed a very similar ethic about Earnshaw pride, just but not so much Earnshaw genetics and superiority. She didn't know what to believe.
Within two days the boy was Christened into theirs, and God's, family. The vicar regarded him with a calm, pleasantly private resentfulness. She spoke about God, gesturing repeatedly to the high candled dribbling wax in its golden stand. Underneath the coloured glass the boy was stained streaky red as a skinned pig. The sun made a tear in his eye glitter. Dad had dressed him in one of Howard's old suits, simple and black, a white shirt. They had all been forced to dress up in their best, so Cathy chose her favourite dark blue velvet dress with the white ribbon sash. They all stood by their pews and Mum squeezed her eyes shut every so often. "Heathcliff Earnshaw," said the vicar, "receive the sign of the cross." Well, he would not accept it. She made a messy squiggle on his forehead with oil and then he howled and ran out.
The church was in the village. Where they lived, Cathy knew nothing but grass, little hills, ragged rocks full of minerals and secrets. She went to school in Harrogate, but as mindless and bleak as the moors could be she understood them better than any network of roads or signposts. Heathcliff went running out into it. She liked the name.
"Good fuckin' riddance," Howard muttered. Mum gave him a sharp word in his ear. Dad looked terrified, ashamed, and Cathy knew now Heathcliff would be wandering around, alone. She had to find him; she could smell him out, his grime and sweat and nastiness. She felt as if she had pins and needles in her head. Pumping her elbow into Howard's stomach she ran out after him.
"Cathy!" Dad called her, "No, Cathy! Come back!"
She did not go back, of course, and forced the doors open out into the drizzle of Sunday. She had seen his head had gone just beyond the brown bricked walls surrounding the churchyard. Graves sat in neat little lines where the dead people lay side by side, whispering beneath her feet. She scuttled over them hurriedly, shouting, "Heathcliff?"
No answer came. He would have walked back up from the village, into the tangled green and deeper dark of the moor, cloudy and sodden in mist. "Heathcliff?" she called. The wind boomed off her ears. "Heathcliff!" She vaulted herself over the wall, scraping the heel of her hand a scratchy blackish red, like a rotten apple skin. "Heathcliff!" Her hair clawed into her eyes. "Heathcliff!" She ran and ran up, her socks squelching in her loafers (Mum would go spare), grass hissing at her side. She was nearing the top of a small hill now.
And there he was, just wandering. He sounded like he was jangling with something, pennies or bangles. His hair was fluttering over his ears, and Howard's blazer lay, trampled and soaking up mud, its one arm waving in the wind like a wounded ghoul. Getting closer she noticed tiny droplets of sweat on the back of his neck, heard his sharp exhalation, noticed the flush in his face like sweet, warm wine.
"Heathcliff!"
He turned slowly, his head rocking on his neck, his eyes half-closed, dark, intent, lazy. He stopped. His shirt was stuck to him with circles of wetness under his arms, on the small of his back, his chest. His whole body squeezed and sagged with his breathing.
"Don't run away!" she demanded, finally close enough to talk. "Why did you go?"
He glowered at her, "Why do you want to know?"
She was stunned that he had actually responded, but her frustration lessened her surprise greatly. He sounded strange, as though he had a throat infection or cottonmouth. "Are you not even going to bother to thank my Dad, then? You're just going to run away again, after he let you stay with us?"
He scoffed, "I'd rather not, trust me."
"What was wrong?"
"I was better off before," he answered gruffly. "Your brother is a bully and a twat. You're not much better either."
Cathy scowled, "You're really ungrateful!"
"What exactly have I got to be grateful for?"He snickered.
"We let you stay in the house and you were all dirty! How many people would let you do that?"
"Oh, shut up," he said absently. "I'd rather have been outside freezin' my bollocks off."
"Well I think you're a nasty idiot!" Cathy bellowed, enraged. He'd caused her nothing but hassle since his arrival, and now he dared to laugh about it all. She already hated him.
"I think you're a bitch," he shrugged. Cathy wondered where in the world he'd managed to pick up so many naughty words. Where did he come from? Who spoke like that to him? Howard had taught her a few naughty words of course, in secret in exchange for bonbons, so she could fire them at Mum to scare her and get what she wanted, or at least give herself the giggles.
He put his hand in his pocket and squeezed, and suddenly she realised what the noise must have been; she had lost her change to give to the collection plate just before he had been guided to the font.
"You've stolen my collection plate money, haven't you?" she growled.
"At least you're cleverer than he is." He lifted a single pound coin out of his pocket and then dropped it back inside.
"Give that back!" she yowled, outraged. "You dirty horrible bastard!"
He laughed at the silent grey sky. She tried to think of more naughty words and could only recall two, and so used them both awkwardly.
She screamed a single, hawkish note. "Give it back! You – you bloody – you bloody fucking tramp!"
"I wish you'd just change the record," he said calmly.
"Give it to me!"
"Give me a reason," he chuckled.
She had never been denied anything she wanted if she cried, and she did not understand this total injustice – she was crying. Or at least the blood had rushed into her face and she was angry enough to, which was enough. "Because I want it!"
This, she was sure, was a perfectly acceptable answer. He shook his head. "Wow. You're more of a snooty bitch than I thought you were in the first place."
Crazed in her anger she lashed out her open hand and closed it around a large portion of thick, soft black curls. With all her strength she yanked down on it, and he wailed and his knees buckled like a foal's.
"Get off!" he snapped, "Ah! Get off, get off ah say!" He struggled against her, raking his raggedy nails over her hand. She pulled him backwards so he hit the floor with a sickly clack of his teeth. The sky was reflected in the dark of his eyes and the drizzle hit his face gently, forcing him to flutter his eyelashes. He was gasping for breath. She stamped on a clear black bruise on his forearm. He screamed.
"Give me the money!" she shouted.
"No!"
She straddled his torso, the hem of her dress drinking up the mud. "I mean it Heathcliff, or I'll bite you, I'll rip you up!"
Even with his uneven breathing he managed a curious smile. "Go on, then. Go on. I dare you! You won't hurt me, you –"
Cathy was too far consumed in her anger to calculate consequence. She dug her teeth into the lower corner of his face, his jaw, as hard as she could, and then scratched down his throat. A little bit of blood spouted out, rich and tangy, coppery, into her mouth. She couldn't tell if it was the scratch or bite that had made him bleed. His blood was a tantalising red, though she had imagined it'd seep out purple and treacly as snake venom. His whole body bucked under the shock and pain of it.
"No! Ah – O.K. – take it! It's in –"
The next thing he felt was her tiny little fingers brushing inside of the cloth of his pocket, against his upper thigh, prodding carefully, rolling. His groin burst into a heat, a pulsation. But then it was gone, and she stuffed the money back into her breast pocket.
She then dropped herself onto her hands, placing them either side of his head so their noses were inches from touching, and their breath mingled in a warm, soggy vapour between them. His eyes devoured her face with a rapid fervour. Her lips were thick and dry like her hands, a deep, tart-looking pink. She had a small, gently curved chin and eyes too blue to be real, peculiar, cold and fast and alive as the sea. The ends of her brown hair, fuzzy, kinked, sticking out in all the wrong places, swirled against his cheek.
"You've hurt me," he whispered hatefully, "I – I'm bleeding."
Her eyes moved slowly down to the gloopy mixture of blood and saliva on his cheek. She scrubbed it away with her hand. "I didn't know it would bleed," she said honestly. It continued to weep steadily. She stared, worried.
"You need to hold your hand against it," Heathcliff said, "to stop the bleeding, to stem it."
"I didn't mean for it to bleed," she insisted, and obeyed him, cupping her hand against the side of his face.
"No, I know," he answered. They remained staring at each other for several minutes, in total silence. Cathy yanked her sleeve over her hand and used it as a strange velvet bandage for his face, and then she rolled off him and sat next to him, breathing lightly.
"Where are you from?" she asked him slowly. "Howie, he says you're an AIDS baby and a tramp and that your bloods made of germs."
"I dunno whether any of that's true," he shrugged, "but it could be."
"Does that mean I might die now, because I've drank some of your blood?"
His eyes slinked over the sky until they reached her face. "Maybe."
He had meant to scare her, but it didn't work very well at all. "I'm too strong though," she smirked. "You can't kill me, I won."
"Maybe I let you win."
"No ya didn't," she laughed. "Because I'm like – well, I'm really strong and fast and things."
"Well maybe I'm not an AIDS baby, maybe I've been bitten by a radioactive spider," he suggested, grinning.
"But then I'd have super powers because I've drank some of your blood!" she exclaimed, "See? You can't win, Heathcliff."
"I'll win another time," he sighed, "you'll see."
"I thought you were going away though?"
He couldn't tell anymore. She was ever so ever so pretty, and her touch was medicinal, like cool water over a burn, like the gritty clot of medicine, so calming and sickly in the gullet. He closed his eyes carefully against the drizzle and sighed, trying to lean into her hand delicately enough for her not to notice.
But she noticed.
"I'm sorry, do I need to put more pressure on?"
"Yes," he answered instantly, without thinking. He felt stupid for simply allowing himself to forgive her so easily, but he couldn't seem to help himself. She felt much better than leaning on a woollen blanket or, even worse, the crumbling brick of a wall or a section of pavement, free from bird shit and chewing gum but nonetheless reeking of cat piss.
"O.K., sorry."
"Its fine," he replied, keeping his voice hushed. He didn't want to end the moment. The grass was the richest green here and the heather was gorgeously purple. There were goldenrods collecting dead bluebottles about them, and a small spider web had been weaved between the petals and leaves and was glistening bright white with jewels of water. The rain, for a change, was feathery soft and sizzled against the sweat on his face wonderfully, slithered into his mouth in between his teeth, nourished him – and Cathy was here, Cathy with her breathy chirpy voice and her sparrowy giggles and greyish warm hands.
"Will you leave because I didn't let you have a bed?" she asked. In honesty the answer was no; he had much appreciated their beige carpet. Her brother had been the main problem, that and the stuffy church and their stuffy Mother.
"Yeah," he lied; if he offended her again he was pretty sure she would gouge out his eye and lick off the juice like a summer ice cream. He liked her.
"Well how about then, Heathcliff, if I say you can stay in the camp bed Dad set up for you? It's in my room though, so you're not to look at me without my pyjamas on."
It seemed like a fair exchange.
"Alright, then. I'll come back."
She smiled at him, a tiny tug of her lips. She seemed happy. "And you'll say sorry?"
"It depends."
"What does it depend on?"
"On whether you'll stop 'em from having a go at me."
"What do you mean?"
"About Howard's jacket – I threw it in the mud. And, for upsetting your Dad."
"I think of something, then."
Cathy removed her hand and stood, and so did he. Against the grass the print of his blood on her skin was stark, gaudy red. It had dried on her stickily, combined with sweat and dirt, a bold red tar, raspberry jam.
"It's marked me!" she laughed, rubbing at it. It did nothing but stain the rest of her hand, her fingers, and then, as she went to lick it off, her mouth.
Heathcliff swallowed.
A/N: And so begins yet another Wuthering Heights modernisation. I hope everyone is enjoying it so far - any ideas or critique (and also praise!) is always greatly appreciated. Thank you and well done for getting this far! Please let me know what you think!