Fame and Wuthering Heights

‘The Carpenter’s Arms?’ said Tish. ‘We can’t go there.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the minute anyone hears an American accent and sees you with me, you’ll be mobbed. I don’t think you quite appreciate just how little goes on in Loxley. Your film is the most exciting thing that’s happened here since the Norman invasion.’

‘Well, where then?’ said Dorian. ‘I’m starving. And, no offence, but I’m not sure how much faith I have in your cooking skills.’

Tish frowned but did not defend the indefensible. ‘Fine,’ she said, grabbing her car keys from the hook above the Aga. ‘I’ll ask Mrs D to watch Abel. Follow me.’

The King’s Arms in Fittleton was about ten miles from Loxley, a low-beamed, cosy village pub with squashy dog-eared sofas and a log fire that was constantly burning, even on summer evenings.

‘This is cute,’ said Dorian, nabbing an open table close to the fire. A few of the locals glanced round in mild curiosity when they heard his accent, but they soon resumed their interest in the tense game of darts going on to the left of the bar.

‘I haven’t been here in years,’ said Tish, ‘but the food’s supposed to be good.’ Dorian noticed that she pronounced the word ‘yars’. In movies he’d always found the upper-class British accent grating, but on Tish’s lips it was oddly charming and seemed quite unaffected. She ordered a fish pie from the blackboard. Dorian went for the moules marinières, and insisted on an expensive bottle of Sauvignon Blanc for the two of them. He ought to be exhausted. Starting with Chrissie’s five a.m. rant this morning, it had been a hell of a day. But for some reason he felt excited and revived. Both Loxley and Tish had been a pleasant surprise.

‘So. Tell me about your family,’ he asked. ‘You live in that incredible house on your own?’

‘I’m not on my own,’ said Tish, sipping her wine, which was delicious and tasted of gooseberries. ‘I have Abel and Mrs Drummond. And now all of you lot. It’s a veritable commune up there.’ She explained that she spent most of her time in Romania, and gave him the condensed version of her mother’s bohemian life in Rome and Jago’s latest Tibetan adventure.

‘A cave? He lives in a cave?’ Dorian cocked his head to one side.

He’s attractive, thought Tish. Not handsome, like Michel, but sort of joli-laid. An American Gerard Depardieu.

‘Would you care to elaborate?’

‘I’m not sure I can, much,’ said Tish. ‘My brother’s choices have never made a lot of sense to me. But you know, running an estate is hard work. I’m afraid that “incredible house” I live in has an incredible appetite for money. You wouldn’t believe how much it costs to run.’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised,’ said Dorian, biting a chunk out of the warm bread the waitress had left on the table. He gave Tish a brief potted history of his own Romanian background, and how he’d come to inherit the long-lost family Schloss. Tish noticed the way his eyes lit up when he spoke about the castle and its treasures, and the way the light faded when he mentioned his wife, and how hard Chrissie had found the transition to life in Transylvania.

‘She’s an actress, you know, so she has that temperament.’

Tish didn’t know, but nodded understandingly anyway.

‘There’s a part of her that still craves excitement and adventure,’ explained Dorian. ‘The Schloss is indescribably beautiful, but it can be lonely, especially when I’m away and Chrissie’s on her own with Saskia.’

‘Saskia?’

‘Our daughter.’ Dorian picked up the last remaining mussel from his bowl and sucked it out of its shell. ‘She’s three.’

Tish thought it odd that they’d been talking about his family life in Romania for fifteen minutes, and this was the first time he’d mentioned a child. ‘You must miss her.’

‘Sure,’ he said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Reaching in his wallet, he pulled out a photograph and handed it to Tish. She expected to see a little girl’s picture, but instead it was a professional headshot of an attractive blonde woman with tough, slightly angular features. To Tish’s eyes, the woman in the photograph looked cold as ice, but maybe it was just a bad picture.

‘Chrissie,’ said Dorian proudly. ‘Stunning, isn’t she?’

‘Gorgeous,’ lied Tish, wondering if Michel carried Fleur’s picture around in his wallet and showed it to every stranger he encountered. I have to stop thinking about Michel.

‘Tell me about Curcubeu,’ said Dorian, abruptly changing the subject. ‘What exactly is your work there?’

‘Anything and everything,’ said Tish. ‘There’s so much need.’ And she was off, waxing lyrical about the failings of the Romanian government and the shameful neglect of the country’s abandoned children.

‘That’s incredibly impressive,’ said Dorian when she’d finished, ordering a sticky toffee pudding to share and a second bottle of wine, despite Tish’s protests. ‘Not many girls your age would give up a life of privilege back home to go and do something like that.’

Tish frowned. ‘You mustn’t think me some sort of saint. I like the work. Oradea’s a dump, but Romania’s got some strange magic to it, something that keeps drawing you back there – despite the corruption and the bureaucracy and the godawful winters. But I imagine I don’t need to tell you that.’

‘No.’ Dorian smiled.

‘Strange, isn’t it, our paths crossing like this?’ said Tish. ‘And both of us having a Romanian connection?’

They talked solidly for another hour and a half, about Romania, life and literature – Tish had almost as encyclopaedic a knowledge of the Brontë sisters’ work as Dorian did, and could practically recite Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre – and about Viorel Hudson and Sabrina Leon, Dorian’s Heathcliff and Cathy.

‘Viorel has a Romanian connection too, doesn’t he?’ asked Tish.

‘You might not want to bring that up when you meet him,’ warned Dorian. ‘I tried, but Hudson has a low opinion of the motherland.’

Tish, who spent her life in Romanian orphanages like the one she assumed Viorel Hudson had been dumped in, didn’t blame him.

‘I’ll say this for him, though: he’s a terrific actor,’ said Dorian. ‘The minute I thought about doing this movie, I knew I wanted to cast Viorel. He was born for the role.’

‘And Sabrina?’ asked Tish. ‘I’ve only ever seen her in gossip magazines, so I don’t know if she’s a good actress or not, but she doesn’t look like an obvious choice for Cathy.’

‘Not looks-wise, perhaps. But if you want someone as wilful and spoiled and frankly insane as Catherine Earnshaw, Sabrina’s your girl.’

‘Catherine wasn’t insane,’ protested Tish. ‘She was sensible. She chose a decent man over a wicked one.’

Dorian looked at Tish quizzically. ‘You admire that, do you? Being sensible rather than passionate?’

Tish blushed. ‘I think passion can be overrated.’ Suddenly the conversation seemed to have taken a rather personal turn. ‘But I suppose, in an ideal world, one wouldn’t have to choose.’

There was an awkward silence. Tish changed the subject.

‘Is she as pretty as she looks in the pictures?’

‘Sabrina? About a hundred times prettier,’ said Dorian truthfully. ‘That’s part of the problem. For Sabrina and Cathy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that when you look like that, no one ever says no to you.’

By the time they left it was almost midnight.

‘I’ll drive if you like,’ said Dorian.

Remembering the sound of his gear-changing when he’d arrived this morning, not to mention the fact that the drive from Manchester had taken him three and a half hours, Tish declined the offer.

‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘You drank all that second bottle so you’re definitely over the limit.’

They made it back to Loxley without incident. Tish took them home the back way, via Home Farm, which looked even dourer, bleaker and more soul-wrenching by moonlight. Dorian’s heart leapt at the sight of it. That’s my Wuthering Heights. He’d been dreaming this movie for two years now. Today, he’d felt as though he was walking into his own dream. Tomorrow, he would spend all day up at the farm, measuring light and distance and planning the exterior long-shots with Chuck and the camera crew. He couldn’t wait.