Return to Wuthering Heights

It was the last place I wanted to be: on a class trip with my ex-fiancé, to the spot where he had proposed . . .

MISS FIELD! The coach is here.” I was hurrying into the school playground and almost collided with one of my students.

“Great, Jade. And are all of you here?”

“Yeah, miss. And the ones that need travel sickness pills have taken them. We’re just waiting for you, miss.”

“Lead the way.” My English literature group had been studying “Wuthering Heights” as part of their A-level course and I’d told them that my mother was a Brontë fanatic (which explained why I was Catherine Emily and my sister Charlotte Lucy).

Although we lived a good two hours away, my mum used to drag us up to Haworth and frogmarch us out to Top Withens, the ruined farmhouse which had inspired Emily’s masterpiece.

Before I knew it, I’d been arm-twisted into taking the class on the last Saturday of the spring term.

I mentioned the likely weather in early April, and I even told them that on one occasion we’d walked back to the village in a blizzard, but it was too late.

One of the girls’ fathers ran a small coach company and had a minibus spare that day, and Alison, the PE teacher, offered to come along to help keep an eye on our lively students.

So, although I desperately hadn’t wanted this trip, especially with the memories it would inevitably evoke, my spirits actually began to lift.

Today, I wouldn’t think about Luke, my fellow teacher and ex-fiancé.

It would show me once and for all that I was over him – or at least help me through another day.

“Sorry, Jade. What was that?” I brought my mind back to the present.

“Miss James says she’s sorry, but she dislocated her shoulder playing badminton last night, so she can’t come.”

My heart sank.

“Oh, dear,” I replied. “Well, I suppose I can cope with you villains on my own.”

“Oh, no, miss.” Was that a smothered smirk I saw? “Health and safety. We have to have two adults to look after us.”

“Well, yes.” I was suddenly uneasy. “So, who’s volunteered?” “Mr Harper.”

I stood stock still. Now I knew the reason for the smirk.

Luke Harper, head of the science department, a Heathcliff lookalike with black hair and almost black eyes – and my ex-fiancé.

I had first encountered him in my first week at the school, and by half-term we had fallen in love and were engaged.

We were happy until that evening just weeks ago when I found him locked in a passionate embrace with Jill, our voluptuous, red-headed drama teacher.

I’d thrown my ring at him, stormed out and buried myself in my classroom, catching up with marking, or some other muttered excuse.

Whenever my phone showed Luke’s number, I switched it off.

Now, though, I realised that Jade was watching me closely.

There was, of course, a super-active bush telegraph among the students, antenna tuned to every move the teachers made. I pulled myself together. “Well, Mr Harper can look after the boys,” I said coolly.

I saw him before he saw me. He was standing by the coach, chunky build, bare-headed, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

I walked up to him, feeling 15 pairs of eyes on me and 15 pairs of ears twitching.

“Good morning, everyone.”

“Good morning, Miss Field.”

“Mr Harper.” I nodded to him, looking somewhere past his left ear. “Thank you for stepping in at such short notice. I expect the boys will want to be at the rear, so you should sit with them.”

I was over it, I told myself. Even so, I couldn’t spend two hours sitting beside him.

He gave me an ambivalent look.

“Of course. Glad to help, and returning to Wuthering Heights will be a great pleasure.”

His eyes were reminding me of the time that we had gone there together, and where, as we’d huddled out of the

wind, he’d taken both my cold hands in his warm ones and kissed them, then got down on one knee . . .

I felt myself blushing and tore my eyes from his.

“Right, everyone,” I said briskly. “Let’s go.”

“Are we nearly there, miss?”

I smiled inwardly at the whiny tone.

“Yes, Fiona. Just a bit further and – yes. Look!”

I pointed ahead of us to where, on the desolate ridge, a low building, with a few stunted trees near it, crouched against the biting winds.

“There is Wuthering Heights,” I announced.

There was a cheer and I went on.

“Do you remember the opening lines of the novel? Well, try to imagine that you’re Mr Lockwood, riding to meet his new landlord, Heathcliff, on a bitter winter’s day.”

“But it’s a ruin!” someone exclaimed as we got nearer.

“I warned you,” I said as we went up the cobbled causeway to the stark outline of what had once been a sturdy farmhouse. “It’s very sad what’s happened to it.”

“But you’ll just have to put your imaginations to work, won’t you?” Luke put in.

It was the first time he had spoken and I ignored him.

As we clustered in the remains of the doorway, I fished out of my bag the sheaf of notes I’d brought and read aloud.

“‘1801. I have just returned from a visit to my landlord, the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with’.

“Now, let’s go on inside,” I said.

A brief squall of rain had begun and we huddled against an interior wall built of solid stone, while over our heads the wind shrieked and I shivered.

“I think the weather’s setting in, so we’ll have our lunch then head back. At least we’ll get an idea of what poor Mr Lockwood goes through.

“Remember, he goes back to Wuthering Heights, is caught in a blizzard, and has to spend the night there.

“Can you remember what happens?” I asked hopefully.

“He sees the name Catherine scratched over and over by the bed, then he has a terrible nightmare.”

“Well done, Fran.” I smiled. “Can anyone remember the nightmare?”

“There’s a ghost girl crying outside the window and she grabs his hand, so he rubs her wrist on the broken glass until the blood runs down,” one of the boys said with relish.

“Yeah, and she keeps crying, ‘Let me in. I’ve been out on the moors for twenty years’.”

“That’s right, Kyle,” I replied. “Then, when he screams, Heathcliff comes in and tells him to go to another room, then he pulls open the window and –”

I suddenly realised Luke was beside me.

My hand trembled, I dropped the paper and he picked it up.

I held out my hand, conscious of the eyes on us, but instead he began to read, his voice filled with emotion.

“‘Cathy, do come. Oh, my heart’s darling. Hear me this time, Catherine, at last!’”

In the dead silence that followed, Luke handed me back the paper and I took it, unable to meet his eyes, a maelstrom of passions inside me mirroring the turbulence outside.

At last I managed to speak, making a great show of consulting my watch.

“Time’s getting on and it’s quite a walk back to Haworth. I want to go in the parsonage, and see Emily’s grave in the church, so we’ll get going.”

On the long trudge back I was in no mood for the remote beauty of the moors, the sunlight flashing out across the landscape in between the violent rainstorms that swept across it.

I walked among the girls, shielding myself from Luke.

We arrived back at last, a bedraggled crew, then walked round the parsonage with the table where the three sisters sat each evening creating their masterpieces, saw the enormous collar of Emily’s dog Keeper, and the couch where she had died.

Then we went to the church to see her simple grave.

I told them everything I could, deliberately delaying the moment that they would all disappear into Haworth for the free hour I’d promised them before I knew who my fellow teacher would be.

Finally, they all scattered and Luke and I were left alone in the lane outside the church.

I turned to escape, but he caught me by the arm.

“Let’s have a cup of tea,” he suggested.

“I don’t want one,” I said childishly.

“Yes, you do,” he said calmly, then steered me to a corner table in a little café.

I busied myself sorting out my notes while he ordered some tea, and when it arrived he poured and pushed a cup towards me.

“Thanks,” I muttered ungraciously.

“Cathy.” At his tone I looked up sharply and saw that his eyes were very serious.

“What?” I began stirring my tea rapidly.

“Cathy, you know I Iove you.”

“No, I don’t.”

He sighed.

“Look, I’m sorry. About what happened. It was just . . .”

I opened my mouth but he shushed me.

“It was nothing at all. You know how I was in charge of the lighting for ‘Guys And Dolls’.”

“Of course I do,” I snapped. “I was helping with make-up.”

“And you know it was a triumph. The best ever, people said.”

“Yes.”

“And you know a few drinks had been laid on for after the last night. Cathy, it was just a kiss – the excitement of the moment.

“I should never have done it and I’m sorry. You were right to be angry. Please, hear me out.”

But I interrupted him. I owed him at least this.

“I’ve never told this to a soul, not even you – when I was a child my father had an affair.” I shrugged.

“Mum forgave him – perhaps for my sake – and I think they’re happy now,” I continued. “But when I saw you and . . .”

My voice tailed off and I felt him take both my hands in his.

“Thank you for telling me,” he said quietly. “But Cathy, please don’t think I’m like that. I’m not.

“I love you and I’ll always be true to you. It was one mistake. I promise nothing like that will ever happen again.”

“What can I say?” I whispered.

He gave a faint smile, though I sensed the anxiety behind it.

“‘Reader, I married him’, would do nicely.”

I smiled back. “Wrong Brontë.”

I saw the relief flood through him.

He took from his pocket the ring that I had thrown away, slid it back on to the ring finger on my left hand and, raising my hand to his lips, he gently kissed it.

Dimly, I became aware of a muffled cheer and, looking round, saw through the misted-up window a row of cheeky, smiling faces.

“Back to the coach, I think,” I murmured and, to the strains of Kate Bush’s marvellous “Wuthering Heights”, we rumbled out of Haworth. ■

“It was just a kiss – the excitement of the moment”