Heathcliffs I Have Known: A Story from the collection, I Am Heathcliff

Heathcliffs I Have Known: A Story from the collection, I Am Heathcliff
Louisa Young

A story from Louisa Young to stir the heart and awaken vital conversations about love.One woman frankly recalls the several ‘run-ins’ she’s had with Heathcliff-esque men who have called themselves her boyfriend. And shows the true repercussions of the dangers of being coveted.

Heathcliffs I Have Known

by Louisa Young

A short story from the collection

Copyright (#uadd9036c-2af8-5c69-8128-aefe2568b41b)

Published by The Borough Press

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

In the compilation and introductory material © Kate Mosse 2018

Heathcliffs I Have Known © Louisa Young 2018

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photographs © Sally Mundy/Trevillion Images, © Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com) petals

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the works of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008257439

Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008303235

Version: 2018-07-17

Contents

Cover (#uf579e934-7647-553c-b278-1fdd7bdb5ec2)

Title Page (#u149f20b6-5849-59fd-99bc-e63a40ea2b93)

Copyright

Foreword by Kate Mosse

Heathcliffs I Have Known

Note on the Author

A Note on Emily Brontë

About the Publisher

FOREWORD BY KATE MOSSE (#uadd9036c-2af8-5c69-8128-aefe2568b41b)

SO, WHAT MAKES Wuthering Heights – published the year before Emily Brontë’s own death – the powerful, enduring, exceptional novel it is? Is it a matter of character and sense of place? Depth of emotion or the beauty of her language? Epic and Gothic? Yes, but also because it is ambitious and uncompromising. Like many others, I have gone back to it in each decade of my life and found it subtly different each time. In my teens, I was swept away by the promise of a love story, though the anger and the violence and the pain were troubling to me. In my twenties, it was the history and the snapshot of social expectations that interested me. In my thirties, when I was starting to write fiction myself, I was gripped by the architecture of the novel – two narrators, two distinct periods of history and storytelling, the complicated switching of voice. In my forties, it was the colour and the texture, the Gothic spirit of place, the characterisation of Nature itself as sentient, violent, to be feared. Now, in my fifties, as well as all this, it is also the understanding of how utterly EB changed the rules of what was acceptable for a woman to write, and how we are all in her debt. This is monumental work, not domestic. This is about the nature of life, love, and the universe, not the details of how women and men live their lives. And Wuthering Heights is exceptional amongst the novels of the period for the absence of any explicit condemnation of Heathcliff’s conduct, or any suggestion that evil might bring its own punishment.

This collection is published to celebrate the bicentenary of Emily Brontë’s birth in 1818. What each story has in common is that, despite their shared moment of inspiration, they are themselves, and their quality stands testament both to our contemporary writers’ skills, and the timelessness of Wuthering Heights. For, though mores and expectations and opportunities alter, wherever we live and whoever we are, the human heart does not change very much. We understand love and hate, jealousy and peace, grief and injustice, because we experience these things too – as writers, as readers, as our individual selves.

HEATHCLIFFS I HAVE KNOWN (#uadd9036c-2af8-5c69-8128-aefe2568b41b)

LOUISA YOUNG (#uadd9036c-2af8-5c69-8128-aefe2568b41b)

FIRST ONE WAS THE bloke who hung about in the Woolworths car park opposite the gates of the Juniors. Yes, he had a heavy coat on and his collar up and his stupid willy hanging out, and he looked at me and said, broodingly, meaningfully, ‘You’re mine.’

I said, ‘No I’m not, I’m my mum and dad’s,’ and walked on home, wondering if I’d got the possessives right. My mum’s and dad’s? My mum’s and my dad’s? Anyway I wasn’t bloody his. I was theirs, and when I grew up I’d be my own.

I’m not going to get them in order.

Generally, I gave them short shrift and got off lightly. I never had a weakness for them, thank God. Not like some girls. But I’ll only speak of what I know.

There was – Christ, I can’t give him his real name, he’s real, but by giving him a fake name I’m protecting him, to which I profoundly object. You can’t win.

He was younger, we both rode motorbikes. He looked a bit cherubic, not my type, fat mouth and soft hair, big mean eyes, excitable. Once I was riding my Guzzi up the Wandsworth Road and I saw him coming towards me on the other side. I pulled towards the white line and so did he, and we were both in open-face helmets and that was the first time he kissed me, which I thought was well romantic. I went around to his a couple of times, and one time I stayed over because we’d had a bit to drink, but we didn’t do anything. He wanted to, but he was being funny about it, starting and stopping, and I didn’t really want to anyway. After a few weeks I wasn’t very interested in him: he kept ringing up saying ‘What are you doing tonight?’ and I’d say ‘I’m seeing my friends,’ and he’d say, ‘But what about me? What am I supposed to do?’ and I wouldn’t say, ‘I have no idea; do what you bloody like,’ but I would think – twat alert.

Then one night he drove his Honda 750 through the closed front door of the place I was living, right into the hallway, came into my room, called me a fat-titted witch, took my hair in his hands and banged my head on the wall, put his hands around my neck, and he was saying ‘You’re mine’ – ‘I’m fucking not’, I couldn’t say, because he was strangling me. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I’m in love with you.’ My flatmate came barrelling down the stairs, the creep ran up to get hold of him and threw him at the banisters, broke his rib, it turned out.

The police came around, said, ‘Oh it’s domestic,’ and went away. It was a long time ago. I rang them the next day and said, ‘Oi.’

They picked him up in a dawn raid, and the DI said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was a coloured boy?’ – because he wasn’t, is why. He was half French or something, and a bit sallow.

Took it to court, he got off. The reason being, I felt bad for him, and didn’t tell the truth. I was up as a witness – you weren’t the victim then, you were a witness to what had been done to you. They said, ‘You’re his girlfriend.’ I said ‘No I’m not, I’ve only known him a few weeks and we’ve never had sex. That’s not girlfriend to me.’ I didn’t say what he had told me: there was a thing in his family where the men’s foreskins are too tight. His dad had it and his uncle; they got circumcised; it’s fine. But he hadn’t been circumcised. So every time he got a stiffy, he also got excruciating pain. So that had an effect on how he felt about women he fancied. So I became the reason for him getting severe sex-related dick-agony, and that’s why he did what he did. But I was young and in court and didn’t feel able to tell everyone in their wigs about his dick issues. I was sorry for him! Plus I thought my flatmate’s broken rib and the busted-down door etc., etc., would tell the story without me having to go into details. More fool me. The lesson being, when you’re up against the men, whatever kind of woman you are, use everything you’ve got.