Changing Heaven Read online

  BOOKS BY JANE URQUHART

  FICTION

  The Whirlpool

  Storm Glass (short stories)

  Changing Heaven

  Away

  The Underpainter

  The Stone Carvers

  A Map of Glass (fall 2005)

  POETRY

  I Am Walking in the Garden of His Imaginary Palace

  False Shuffles

  The Little Flowers of Madame de Montespan

  Some Other Garden

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part One - Wind

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Part Two - The Upstairs Room

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Part Three - Revenants

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This novel is for Emily B. and Emily U.

  and in memory of Ken Adachi

  How still, how happy! Those are words

  That once would scarce agree together;

  I loved the plashing of the surge,

  This changing heaven, the breezy weather

  –EMILY BRONTË

  SHE WANTS TO write a book about the wind, about the weather.

  She wants the words constancy and capriciousness to move in and out of the sentences the way a passing cloud changes the colour of the page you read outside on a variable day. She wants there to be thunder, then some calm, then some thunder again. She wants to predict time in relation to change and to have all her predictions prove wrong. She wants recurrence. That cloud that looks like the face of a man you might fear or love-she wants that cloud to appear on the horizon, then disappear, then appear again. She wants to be forced indoors by tempests and driven into air by heat, to be caught miles from shelter by a squall. She wants to see the Great Lake altered by the activity of the sky, to see a still moorland reservoir develop white-caps for the first time in its life, to look upon the spines of animals whose fur is being blown in the wrong direction; to see their eyes reflect rain, sleet, snow. She wants the breath of the wind in her words, to hold its invisible body in her arms. She wants the again and again of that revenant, the wind-its evasiveness, its tenacity, its everlastingness.

  “We’re blessed and cursed by the wind here,” one of the villagers might say to her, shouting to make himself heard above the gale. And in the weeks, the months to come, she will change her mind about the wind, as often as the wind itself will change its mind about the organization of the sky or how much further it should twist the trees.

  Sometimes this is a direct, purposeful wind, which, if you are to believe the villagers, inhales deeply on the Russian Steppes and hurls itself, with remarkable speed and accuracy, across vast distances to Haworth Moor in Yorkshire, England. Not a subtle wind, but one that is icy, fierce, and constant. It brings the white invisibility and lack of detail connected to Arctic places. It brings sound-a roar rather than a whistle or a howl; a brutal statement. Because it is a pure wind, a wind of the sky rather than of the earth, it brings weather. In the manner of a swift parade, patterns of clouds are moved by it to announce their intentions over and over again on the horizon.

  Sometimes the wind rarefies, becomes more amorous, less aggressive, more disturbing. Then it is a wind that has been around for a long, long time; a wind that, according to the ancient Greeks, was born about the same time as chaos; or that other semi-human, a Cyclops called Brontë–the Greek word for thunder. And what is thunder, hereabouts, but a strong voice making itself heard in a rough wind?

  She wants to write a book about disturbance; about elements that change shape but never substance, about things that never disappear.

  About relentlessness. About sky, weather, and wind.

  PART ONE

  Wind

  This is my home, where whirlwinds blow,

  Where snowdrifts round my path are swelling;

  ’Tis many a year, ’tis long ago,

  Since I beheld another dwelling.

  –EMILY BRONTË

  ARIANNA ETHER and her entourage climbed the steep main street of the village. All except one of the small assemblage bent their heads into the fierce north wind which, though not cold in early September, was not warm either. The one who walked tall, took the wind in his teeth and the low evening sun in his eyes, was a man of perhaps thirty-five years, dark-haired, of a slim, strong build with wide shoulders and broad hands. He wore a red scarf and a waistcoat of green corduroy-the latter having the effect of turning his eyes the same colour-for he had the eyes of a changeling: eyes that are fickle and true in their colour only to that which is near to them. These eyes, surmounted by perfect black brows, were the predominant feature in a face of extraordinary beauty. He was a beautiful, beautiful man with a character to match-if we are to take as evidence his unwillingness to let the wind, the sun, the hill get the better of him. However, on closer examination, one could see undeniable lines of acute anxiety branching out from the jewels of his eyes like the spidery threads of railways on a map. This man was clearly anxious, and had been for a long, long time. Around his mouth as well (this time like small streams on the same map) were traces of continued unhappiness mixed with the very stubbornness that would not allow him to bend his head to accommodate the dogged wind.

  At his side walked a woman who appeared to be the most delicate lady in England: a tall, pretty woman, exceptionally slender, with fine, fair, curly hair that would not lie flat upon her head regardless of the army of tortoiseshell combs and barrettes called into action for that purpose. Her hair, or part of it, was now lifted by the ridiculous wind as were her pale blue skirts and, it would seem, her arms as well since she held them slightly out from her sides, and walked as if she were balancing on a wire. In fact, it seemed the wind might carry her away altogether, so weightless did everything about her appear to be. Every man in the village who was watching this little parade, and most of them were, fell immediately in love with her, wanting to hold her down with his strong shepherd’s arms, wanting to construct black millstone grit walls to protect her from the weather, wanting to smooth the wind-tossed tresses from her forehead. And at exactly the same moment every man in the village fell to hating her handsome companion, who was apparently oblivious of this angel at his side, staring straight ahead, offering her no help at all in her negotiation of the perilous ascent of the main street, at the top of which waited the Olde White Lion Hotel, and shelter.

  All of the men knew the stories about Arianna Ether, which was, of course, not her real name at all-though they didn’t know that. It was rum
oured, for instance, that she had levitated in the cradle, so lighter than air had she been, from the beginning, that her mother had to use twenty blankets secured by large stones merely to confine her to her bassinette. Her father’s pet name for her had been “Milkweed” since she had, as a child, and even now, resembled the interior of the pod of that plant; both in her almost white, silky hair and in her inclination to float away. Later it was said that he had special iron shoes made for her, so that she would not be in danger of drifting up into the clouds when she played with the other children. And at night … at night her parents dared not leave the window open even a crack, for Arianna M. (for Milkweed) Ether could easily, as a result of her incredible thinness, have sleep-floated through even the smallest opening and disappeared into the cosmos beyond.

  So why, the outraged men wondered, as they searched shyly beneath her skirts for the iron shoes, and they wondered if perhaps she wore iron undergarments as well, why did her handsome companion not lay, at least, a friendly, steadying hand on her shoulder to weigh her down as she made her way up the street of this unfamiliar windy village?

  And what a village it was! What a village this is, thought Arianna (whose real name was Polly Smith), as she trudged against the wind over damp, unhealthy-looking cobblestones. When she had caught the first glimpses of West Yorkshire’s unique architecture from the train window she had been horrified, and this village, perched though it was, was merely more of the same. Rows of weavers’ black cottages, interrupted occasionally by a graveyard full of greenish-black stones or the square solidity of a black pub. She had at first blamed the dark village on the factories; still, there were no industrial chimneys in this elevated section of Haworth since the owners and builders had made use of the water power in the valleys below. “Millstone grit,” Jeremy had told her on the train, not bothering to explain. Those were the only words he had spoken to her all day.

  Arianna lifted her head now and the ferocious wind brought sudden, emotionless tears into her pale blue eyes. She could see they were almost at the inn. Was there a church? she wondered, gazing around. Then she remembered, ah yes, the church and the clergyman’s weird daughters who had, fifty years before, written books and died young; the latter fact not surprising in a place like this. Arianna had not read these books because, as she perceived it, the only function of a book would be to weigh you down if you happened, for whatever reason, to be feeling lighter than air.

  At this moment the crowd, spellbound though it was by Arianna and her menacing companion, turned its attention towards two burly men who were leading a horse and cart up the street. Or, to be more exact, towards the contents of the cart: a display of disorderly and colourful rumpled fabric. Necks craned, eyes narrowed, silent conclusions were drawn until, at last, one of the taller members of the gathering and one whose eyesight had remained miraculously undamaged by childhood diseases, announced with certainty:

  “Aye … that be balloon.”

  While the crowd gathered round the wagon to examine this deflated world wonder, Arianna lingered for a few moments at the door of the inn with her back turned to the public. Then, as always, displaying her most dazzling smile, she turned around and said:

  “I’m happy to be here and I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s performance.”

  This short speech was answered by cheers as Arianna, after waving one pale hand, followed her companion, who had let the door slam in her face, into the inn.

  The men were wrong about this handsome man. He weighed her down all right. He weighed her down very well.

  The interior of the inn was dim and decrepit, but warmed and cheered on this most special of occasions by a wood fire – a thing unheard of in this coal-consuming district in any season, let alone September. The landlord was a rotund, red-faced man whose visage mirrored, almost exactly, those on the decorative china tankards that lined his walls. Upon seeing Arianna enter he left off speaking with her dark companion and rushed forward to greet her, enthusiastically uttering his welcome in a language which was as foreign to Arianna as if it were Polish or Greek.

  “Tha’ll be agait aboon in t’ sky with birds,” he expostulated, “tha’ll be and only tomorra, God bless, and t’owd wind wutherin’ around tha’. And aw’ll be there watchin’, aye that aw’ll. Darnut goe aboon wi’out tha iron shoon, tha’rt that light – a slip tha’rt! T’ rahnd balloon, it were lakly skift t’ Lancashire, it were.”

  “Thank you,” replied Arianna, baffled.

  “Naw, a’wl fetch t’ vittels,” he announced as he scurried into an inner room, from which came sounds of iron pots and cutlery. “Sit tha’ doun.”

  Arianna pulled out a chair beside her handsome manager. He had already ordered a pint, which he was now moodily consuming.

  “Ah, Jeremy,” she said, “I feel as heavy as lead.” And she did, she felt as weighted down as she had in a long time. They had been travelling, travelling, landscapes skimming by the sooty windows of railway cars, the constant sandwiches and beer, country fair after country fair. And very little had Arianna to show for it except survival and proximity to a man whom she adored, but who now no longer loved her back—though sometimes at night she might have been able to believe that he cared. Even there, however, even then, there was not, as there had been in the past, any tenderness, any endearments. It was something else that drew him to her flesh; something Arianna could not understand, and something that Jeremy resented but was unable to break from.

  He was her teacher, as he reminded her over and over, almost her creator. Without him she would be merely Polly Smith. Had he never been drawn to her ethereality he would still be the great “Sindbad of the Skies” (which he had been only two short years ago), not the Jeremy Jacobs who was now merely an accoutrement to her performances. She would be Polly Smith, he told her, shopgirl, charwoman, barmaid, scullerymaid, factory worker, or at best, paid slut. She would be, as she should be, in the crowd watching him. As she should be, should be. But, human nature being as fickle as it is, as the crowds had begun to thin for “Sindbad of the Skies,” they had begun to swell again whenever he had taken Arianna up into the skies with him.

  Arianna held and held to the memories of their flights together; flights that had taken place almost immediately after a long season of sensuality in a white room. She recalled Jeremy’s perfect profile, near hers, against a turquoise sky, and the crowd growing smaller and smaller below them. That unique privacy, their distance from the world, his heart near her shoulder. She was, in those moments, perfectly happy. Soon, however, he had insisted that she sail alone, meeting her afterwards in the dark anonymity of a small hotel room where he fiercely, and rather sadly, took whatever pleasure he could find.

  Once he had accused her of robbing him of the sky. “You’ve taken the sky from me,” he said, “you’ve made me earthbound. Now I’m concerned with mundane materials; train schedules, patching canvas and silk, testing leather harnesses….” He was wearing black that day and Arianna would always remember his eyes, like two lifeless coals, staring at her accusingly. She had begged him tearfully, then, to come to her, and, as they had in the past, to enter the clouds.

  He had looked at her with utter hatred. “You shop-girl, you SLUT!” he had shouted. “You are capable of understanding absolutely NOTHING!”

  And that night, for the first time, he had not come into her room at all.

  The landlord returned with a strange, heavy mass of meat and potatoes, which he called a pudding. As Arianna attempted first to decipher and then consume it, Jeremy, at last, began to speak.

  “You’ll be using the parachute tomorrow. I’ve printed that in all the announcements. There’s a flat field, apparently, somewhere in this God-forsaken countryside, and you’ll be landing there.”

  Arianna felt a little lighter. Whenever she used the chute Jeremy visited her room afterwards, and then became almost loving, almost as he had been in the past. Perhaps it was the sight of her falling-separating from the balloon, which had separated them
-that excited him. She didn’t know. All that mattered was the pleasure of his perfect face coming nearer hers and his broad hands on her skin.

  The landlord having retired into the back rooms, and Jeremy having announced his business intentions, the ground floor of the inn filled with an anticipatory silence, which seemed out of place in the gloomy interior. It was the silence of a space that was normally thick with conversation, pipe smoke, and human sweat. The silence of a room surprised by its own vacancy.

  “Have you noticed,” Arianna said now, “how quiet it is in here? It is as if something is absent, as if something has been shut out.”

  “Something has,” Jeremy replied, but not unkindly. “Listen.”

  Then Arianna heard the wind, roaring down the chimney and rattling the windows in their casements. It was struggling to get in, in exactly the way a prisoner shakes the bars of his cell when he is struggling to get out. There was anger and desperation in its assault and the suggestion of a refusal to believe that the materials that it attacked were unyielding.

  Why didn’t I hear this before? Arianna wondered, and as she wondered, Jeremy turned his chair and himself in a counter-clockwise direction, away from her, so that she was left with a view of one of his corduroy shoulders and the even darker shape of his hair against the inn’s dark wall.

  Later that night, though too early for sleeping, Arianna approached Jeremy’s room and knocked tentatively at his door. He slid back the bolt and allowed her to come in. Once she crossed the threshold, she walked over the worn carpet to a red chair near the window.

  “You should talk to me,” she said. “You should let me talk to you.” When he didn’t answer her she added, “I still love you.”

  “Your love is a prison,” he said. “I can’t get out.”

  “I don’t keep you,” she said.

  “Oh, you keep me, your delicacy.” A mock bow followed this. “I created you and now you keep me with you.”