Changing Heaven Read Online Free PDF

buckles and leather, looked back, once, at the lovely series of reservoirs, lifted both slender legs over the edge of the basket and, in ecstasy, jumped.
    The balloon sailed away without its passenger in a westerly direction, its shadow moving past the Old Silent Inn, over sheepfolds, across patches of ling and bilberry. It darkened, for just a second, the dancing water in the beck, extinguishing the blinding gold of reflected sun. It slid over, consecutively,Lower Withins, Middle Withins, and Top Withins – the alleged site of Wuthering Heights. Then, without a single sign of regret, it slipped over the shoulder of a hill and past the monolith that marked the entrance to Lancashire. Eventually it came to rest on the green of the town of Colne, where Jeremy rescued it the following morning.

T HERE IS ALWAYS , on the way downtown, someone on the street, someone she glimpses through the glass shield of the car window, someone who can cause Ann to be surrounded by the cloud of pathos that she has, by the time she is ten, begun to associate with the enormous, dark paintings in the city gallery; paintings filled with blood, lust, wars, and a lively assortment of seven or more deadly sins and betrayals.
    This time Ann spots her on the Toronto street corner of Church and Dundas: an old lumpy-legged lady struggling across the street with two full bags of groceries-the word “lonely” flashing on and off like a neon sign persistently, if invisibly, above her head. Cars honking her out of the way.
    Although she is now six blocks behind her, the old lady will haunt Ann. Ann knows this because that one glimpse of the old lady has caused her to sit bolt upright against the plush slab of the back seat of the car. It has taken her breath away, has caught in her throat. As surely as if her mother’s car had run directly over both of the lumpy legs, the old lady has thrown this particular day in Ann’s childhood into a kind of nightmare. Much as she tries to think of something else, Ann finds that her imagination is forced to follow the old lady home; home to her dreary furnished room, home to her hot plate. Ann has never seen a hot plate but once whispered, in fear and despair, from the back seat of the car, “Mummy, where do those old men live … the ones down here with the groceries?”
    “Were they sitting on benches in the park?” her mother had asked.
    “No, Mummy, they were walking with groceries and old ladies do too.”
    “If they are not sitting on benches in the park then they do not live at the Scott Mission. If they have groceries they live in a room with a hot plate.”
    The hot plate appals Ann. It renders her speechless with pity. The rooms these lonely beings enter, then, are empty except for one dangerous plate – glowing, hot, offensive. These old men and women take their groceries home, struggle up dark staircases, enter a shabby room and lean, wheezing, against the wall while they regard with sorrow that single piece of burning crockery. Such, according to Ann’s imagination, is the fate of the thoroughly betrayed.
    Nobody carries groceries on the street where Ann lives. Nobody, Ann is certain, has to spend hours regarding with sorrow that terrifying hot plate. Seldom has she seen anyone over the age of fourteen walking anywhere. The street’s outdoor population is composed instead of a row of stately, stationary maples, which in summer interrupt the sunlight that normally pours through the bow windows of the large mock-Tudor houses. Very occasionally, an old lady or two is seen in winter stepping gingerly into the snow from the front seat of a gigantic car while a grey overcoated son or son-in-law holds her firmly by the elbow.
    The old ladies downtown have no sons, no sons-in-law. Ann is sure of this. Their pasts contain nothing but a series of brutal departures: sons gone off to killer wars, husbands gone to buy that inevitable newspaper (from which there is no return), hope emigrating to a warmer