Yuki chan in Brontë Country (2 page)

W
ay down at the front of the coach Hana Kita is talking into a microphone. People are leaning into the aisle and peering over headrests, but there’s no sign of her. Hana Kita is pretty short but Yuki’s guessing that the reason no one can see her is that she’s making the announcement from her seat.

We’re now arriving in Haworth, she says, which provokes even more twisting and turning and faces up against the windows. Well, of course we are, thinks Yukiko, you goddamned idiots. Why the hell else would we be pulling in here? But the crazy old women are determined to crank themselves right up. They have come all this way and are going to make damned sure they get excited about every last little thing.

As the coach pulls off the road and into some sort of car park Hana Kita runs through the itinerary, explaining how many hours they’ll be spending in Haworth and how the coach must leave promptly at two thirty if they’re to reach the hotel in Windermere in time to make themselves comfortable before the evening meal. She insists that it’s quite safe to leave belongings on the coach, since Mr Thompson will be remaining with the vehicle
at all times. And now everyone’s looking over at the back of Mr Thompson’s bald head as he continues to wrestle the coach into position – a head which, according to Hana Kita, is packed tight with the highest-quality trustworthiness.

Hana Kita continues to blather away and Mr Thompson is still heaving on his big old steering wheel, but already people are getting to their feet and pulling on coats and jackets. Eager to get out there and breathe in some authentic Brontë air. That’s right, thinks Yuki. The same dreadful air that killed all three Brontë sisters when they were barely out of school.

She checks to make sure she has all her belongings and joins the others shuffling down the aisle. Then finally they’re out into cold and damp West Yorkshire. Further, barely audible announcements are made by Hana Kita. She raises the handle of her rolled-up umbrella, like a periscope. Yukiko swings her rucksack up onto her shoulders and they all go marching into town.

Yukiko’s first impression of Haworth is how very brown everything is – the walls, the roads, the buildings. London and Leeds had nothing like this level of brownness. Perhaps it is a moss of some sort, brought on by local industry. Or some rural, Northern mould.

The army of Japanese ladies stomps down the streets, with Yukiko at the rear, feeling unspeakably self-conscious. The same stomach-cramping embarrassment that gripped her in the hotel bar last night whilst everyone else sat around, chatting about their upcoming surgery … their
son’s promotion … the terrible pounding their pensions had taken in recent years – apparently oblivious. Yuki noticed the barman glance over on a couple of occasions, and how other guests would stroll into the bar and briefly freeze before this great mass of jibbering elderly Japs. Until eventually she had to creep away up to her room, to watch TV and sip whiskey straight from the bottle – hopping from channel to channel, hoping to find something stupid enough for her to understand.

She does her best now to keep her head down. Even if I were on my own, she thinks, and wearing my Jackie O sunglasses people would still pick up on my Japanese-ness. The hair. The skin, maybe. The way I walk.

Mrs Kudo comes striding up alongside her. Yuki sees how she glances at her packed-tight rucksack, then asks if she wasn’t inclined to leave it on the coach. Yuki shakes her head. Explains how her actual suitcase got lost on the flight over. So now she must be super-cautious about her rucksack and insists on having it with her at all times.

And this is more or less true. Yukiko did indeed stand at the carousel at Heathrow for almost an hour, constantly expecting to see her case the very next moment, before it occurred to her that it might actually be somewhere else. So, having landed in Britain and been subjected to a most unpleasant interview regarding her visit, its purpose, duration, etc. – all in a language she barely understood – her next task was to fill out a form in the same strange language about her luggage, what was in it, its value, etc. and to offer an address to which it might
be forwarded if anyone happened to trip over it in the coming weeks.

Ever since, she has imagined her suitcase, forlorn, on any number of international airport carousels … or wedged in some corner of a plane’s hold … lying on its side in the long grass at the airport’s perimeter … and even falling silently through a clear blue sky.

The only possible upside to the loss of her suitcase is that it has provided Yuki with a solid justification for buying a whole new bunch of clothes. In fact, one of the revelations of her first few days in England has been the ubiquity of charity shops and the abundance of affordable, often perfectly eccentric items on their rails. Without doubt, Yuki’s favourite purchase so far has been the pair of size five dress shoes that she estimates to be at least sixty years old and which must have once belonged either to a rather formal lady or to a man with tiny, tiny feet. She’s also picked up two fifties-style print skirts and four blouses and admired various vintage pieces which, though she couldn’t quite afford them herself, would cost a holy cow fortune back home.

Of course, she could simply fill a container with such items, ship the whole lot back to Japan and sell them, which would almost certainly net her a profit significant enough to set her up to do this full-time. Every two or three months she’d fly over to the UK, accompanied by her own small gang of fashion lackeys, and together they would make their way along every metre of rail in Oxfam, Scope and Age UK. But that is how Yukiko
is these days. One minute she’s quite convinced she’ll actually go ahead and damn well do this. Is writing herself reminders to read up on the necessary certificates regarding taxes, shipping, etc. and becoming altogether quite breathless with excitement. Then, five minutes later, she’s slumped in Kumiko’s armchair, slowly losing consciousness, thinking it’s just about the dumbest idea she’s ever had.

Anyway, due to the cock-up with her luggage, half the clothes she’s currently wearing and most of those crammed into her rucksack belong to her sister, not least the New Balance trainers, which are a size too big and only stay on her feet due to the fact that she’s wearing an extra pair of socks. Frustratingly, Yuki had to go out and buy a new phone charger, after specifically acquiring and packing the little fitting that would enable her to use her own charger in the west. The new UK charger appears to work – has already charged Yuki’s phone on two occasions. But she remains sceptical, as if the power on which it now runs is thin and capricious and may at any point simply drain away into the air.

So Yukiko heads on into Haworth, in her too-big trainers, with Mrs Kudo marching alongside her, being deeply sympathetic about her luggage-loss. The same thing has happened to her, she says. She knows how unsettling it is. In fact, says Mrs K, when the Brontës’ mother originally moved to Haworth from faraway Cornwall, her luggage came along independently by ship. But the ship was wrecked and she lost all her personal possessions. So
arrival in Haworth after suffering comprehensive and troubling luggage-loss is a time-honoured thing.

Yukiko stops, right there in the middle of the street, obliging Mrs Kudo to stop beside her. Yuki looks her square in the eye; insists on clarification. Well, says Mrs K, they may have managed to fish one or two books out of the water. There is a mention somewhere of the sisters reading a book after their mother had died and the pages being stained with seawater. But everything else was lost.

And as they walk on again, Yuki wonders what sort of state she’d be in now if she hadn’t packed all her most precious belongings – specifically, her mother’s clothes and photos – in her hand luggage. Well, the fact is, of course, that she would simply have expired. Or exploded, like the coach, into a million pieces. The emergency services would’ve turned up, but some old fellow who’d seen the whole thing would say, ‘Don’t even bother with a bin bag. That Japanese girl was so upset she just went up in a puff of bloody steam.’

W
ell, Haworth sure must be super-small because about five minutes after leaving the coach Hana Kita’s rolled-up brolly is turning up a cobbled alley. And right there is some grey old church and graveyard, with the parsonage looming up beyond. The moment they lay eyes on it the ladies all let out tiny squeals and whimpers, as if they’ve arrived at some magical kingdom where all their pains and aches will be soothed away.

Yuki was under the impression the Brontë girls had been raised in uncompromising squalor, with much soot and scarce little soap, but it’s a fair-sized house. Having said that, it doesn’t look the least bit welcoming. In fact, it looks about as miserable as it’s possible for a building to be. They all troop through a side-gate, up half a dozen or so steps and out onto a little patio, then head straight on up to the front door, everyone gawping all around and taking in every detail. But before she’s reached the door Yuki senses that there’s a problem. The ladies ahead of her begin to bunch up. There is a blockage of some sort. And it slowly becomes apparent that the parsonage is actually closed.

Yuki thinks, Well, this could easily turn quite nasty.
Some of these women are pretty nuts. We come all this way and we’re refused entry? Then we’re just gonna have to chop down one of those old trees in the graveyard and use it as a battering ram.

But Hana Kita has fluttered up onto the toppermost step and is waving her rolled-up brolly. Everything is perfectly fine, she says. We are just a single, solitary minute early. An oversight brought about by over-keenness to get here and look about. A murmur of something like reassurance sweeps through the crowd. OK, so maybe we’ll hold back on all the rioting and looting for a couple of minutes. But despite her tidy little smile you can see how much this pains poor Hana Kita. How much she is sickened by this indelible blemish on her name.

So the ladies stand around and glare at the main door, as if working on it telekinetically. And now that she has a little time Yuki is finding that she has precisely
no
desire to head on into this weird old house. That she would, in fact, be very happy for the door to remain locked all day.

She thinks that maybe when everyone else goes in she might just slip away to some quiet little corner of the gardens. Where people might be less inclined to ask why she doesn’t join in. Or the graveyard. Yes, a graveyard would be a good place to hide.

She’s beginning to wonder if this whole trip was such a great idea. Whether it isn’t simply going to be too upsetting. And she’s digging her hands deep into her pockets, getting more and more anxious, when her eyes settle on one of the windows a couple of metres away and
she realises that she
knows
one particular corner of this intersection of stone sill, wall, glass and painted frame. She has seen it –
studied
it – a hundred times. It is in the background to one of her mother’s Five Photographs. In her rucksack she has a photo of her mother standing at this very spot. Her mother standing right here, before her, with the sun in her eyes – kind and beautiful and not at all dead.

Well, that’s really given her something to chew on. How, she wonders, do I feel about
that
. For some reason, Yuki had assumed that, like the other four photographs – outside the hotel … in her room … the tree … the water – that particular shot had been taken somewhere else. Some public house maybe, away down the cobbled hill. The parsonage, she’d always imagined, would be kind of white.

She’s still standing there, busy transplanting her mother from some other unspecified location to the space before her, when the main door opens. Hana Kita makes another brief announcement, and before she’s finished that great horde of ageing Japanese ladies starts shuffling forward, like cattle, on into the old, old house.

Yukiko thinks, Well, OK. It all makes sense again. This is why I’m here. And she vows to return to this spot, to have a better look, before the day is out. Picks up her bag and heads on in.

A woman at a small desk smiles meekly at each person who files past her. As if to say, Welcome, women of all ages and nationalities. Welcome, fellow Brontë lovers.
Yuki is inclined to confide in her that she is not like all these crazies she’s been lumped together with since the previous evening. Is not here to bow deeply before some long-dead sisters and their dull old books. Wants to whisper, I’m actually a
detective
. Like Columbo. Here on business. But, before she’s halfway down the hall, there’s some fuss regarding her rucksack. It hadn’t occurred to her that she might not be able to take it all the way round the house with her. She’s not 100% sure exactly what the concern is. That she might knock some precious Brontë ornament off a shelf and smash it? Or maybe attempt to slip some little relic into her overstuffed rucksack and set up her own modest Brontë Museum back home?

After some discussion between herself and a member of staff with Mrs Kudo acting as intermediary the situation is made plain. No bags in the house. And Yuki is obliged to head on back to a large cupboard by the front door and to relinquish it. In exchange she receives a pink numbered ticket. OK, she says (see how her English improves with every second), then is finally allowed to go on into the house. But she feels deeply uncomfortable now. Is convinced that when the lady in charge of bag-security is next engaged in English chit-chat, or goes off to make an English cup of tea, someone will creep in and grab her rucksack and make off with all her priceless, private things.

She does her very best not to think about it. Instead, she thinks on the fact that, considering how big the house appears from the outside, the rooms are actually pretty
small. Half of that first room is roped off, presumably to stop people sitting on chairs that once had a Brontë sitting in them or at desks where they scratched away at some gloomy Brontë book.

Yukiko is beginning to feel pretty agitated. Can’t stop thinking about the many very important things in her rucksack and how she’d pretty much die without them. Being all penned in with the aged ladies in this half-roped-off little room isn’t helping. Oh no, indeed.

Hana Kita is dispensing great slabs of Brontë Wisdom, regarding whose study this was and what kind of studious things used to go on here. Yukiko, like Hana Kita, is on the short side, so has no hope of seeing her face. But the woman’s voice is so hushed and hallowed she can barely make out half of what she says.

Yukiko can tell when she’s in trouble: she digs her thumbnail into the top of her forefinger, or the nail of her forefinger into the flesh of her thumb. She does this, she knows, when she’s anxious, frustrated or embarrassed. It’s not as if she makes a conscious decision to start digging the nail of one digit into another. She just looks down and there it is. Could it be, she has wondered, that by bringing about a small but powerful charge of actual pain she is trying to find expression for some deeper pain that is only half-formed and unintelligible? All she knows is that it is a guaranteed symptom of the fact that something ugly’s bubbling away, which is certainly the case right now. Because she’s digging the hell out of her forefinger with her thumbnail – practically drawing blood. Also
getting quite breathless. Poor Yuki is huffing and puffing like she’s just run up a hill.

She manages to hang on for another few seconds, then finally turns and bundles her way out of the room. And long before she reaches the bag department she has that little pink ticket in her hand. I need a puff on my inhaler, she tells herself, which is in the top pocket of my rucksack. Otherwise, I may well just completely fade away.

She zips right by the woman on the ticket desk. Lifts a forefinger, as if to say, I will be just one single minute. Or even, I’m digging the nail of my thumb into my forefinger. And we all know what that means.

She hands her ticket over to the Bag Lady, who looks back at her in a state of wizened bewilderment. Then at last Yuki has her bag and is heading for the door, out into the cold North English air. Plucking out her puffer, giving it a vigorous little shake. Exhaling as far as she can, in order to squeeze every last bit of breath right out of her. Then plugging the puffer in her mouth, releasing the gas and sucking it up, up, up. Holding the medication right there, locked up inside her, so she can absorb every atom of its chemical goodness.

Yuki had two brand-new, boxed-up puffers in her bag that went missing, along with her clothes, toiletries, phone charger, etc. Fortunately, she also had one open in her jacket pocket, in case she needed it during the flight, but with no more than a couple of days’ puffs left in it. So on her first morning in the UK she had to make an
appointment with Kumiko’s doctor and got a prescription for two replacement puffers.

Sometimes when she fills herself right up and holds it there she has this idea of herself as being completely empty, like a human balloon. She once read somewhere that every cell of a human being is 97% space, so maybe that’s not too far from the truth. Right now, her biggest concern is that the puffer she got from the UK doctor isn’t perhaps half as potent as the ones she gets back home and that there may come a moment in the near future when, without warning, the puffer will fail to deliver the necessary fix. That she’ll suddenly find herself gasping and flailing in a foreign country, with neither the breath nor even the charge on her phone to call for help.

A pair of bona fide Brontë Lovers stroll by, heading for the main door, and glance at Yuki bent over her rucksack. She smiles pathetically back at them. Then, once they’ve gone she has another look at the front of the parsonage, as her breath settles. Specifically, at the spot where her mother stood. She opens up the top of her rucksack, pulls out a thick brown envelope. Tips out a smaller envelope, with five colour photographs in it, and flicks through them until she finds the one taken here ten years earlier.

Yuki’s mother looks straight at the camera, almost smiling. Yukiko tries to gauge how far from the wall she must have stood. Not very far at all. She gets to her feet, moves slowly towards the parsonage and, by referring repeatedly to the photograph, finds the right place. She turns, drops her hand and, for a moment, looks forward,
imagining her mother’s lovely face. Her mother’s face with a smile just beginning to form there, the same as every photograph ever taken of her.