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the
skylight. 10 Downstairs Mrs Earnshaw was now dancing with a table and later the grandfather
clock; it was good clean Victorian fun, which made the heart joyous. Alas! the
clock fell on her at exactly one-thirty p.m. In Heathcliff’s garret, Cathy asked
him why he was bobbing up and down. “I am praying to Allah.”
    ‘ “Won’t he keep still?
Oh,” said Cathy, “where is he?”
    ‘ “He’s dead,” said
Heathcliff.
    ‘Cathy looked puzzled, she
laid a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right? Shouldn’t you see a doctor?”
    ‘I let the couple converse
uninterrupted, then I told them the coast was clear, in case they wanted to go
there, and they both came down into the kitchen. He had not eaten since
yesterday’s vindaloo. I set him on a stool by the fire, I offered him a quantity
of good things, a carriage clock, a travelling case, camera, a set of
monogrammed golf clubs, a cuddly toy. “No, I’m not hungry,” he said. “All I
want is to pay Hindley back, he has beaten me black and blue.”
    ‘I had to point out the
black was there in the first place. But, Mr Lockwood, I’m annoyed how I should
dream of chattering on at such a rate (one pound an hour) and your gruel cold,
and you nodding for bed, 2 and you weak as a kitten. The clock is on the stroke
of eleven, sir.’
    ‘Nevertheless, Mrs Dean,
resume your chair; because tomorrow I intend lengthening the night till
afternoon. I prognosticate for myself an obstinate cold at least.’
    What a crashing bore this
man is, thought Mrs Dean. ‘Very well, Mr Lockwood, will you allow me to leap
over some three years?’
    ‘No, no,’ said the crashing
bore. ‘I’ll allow nothing of the sort. Are you acquainted with the mood of mind
in which, if you were seated alone, and the cat is licking its kitten — ’
Please, God, stop him, prayed Mrs Dean.
    ‘...on the rug before you,
you would watch an operation so intently that puss’s neglect of one ear would
put you seriously out of temper.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Mr Lockwood, I
don’t understand a word you’re saying. Can I continue?’
    Lockwood nodded, then
winced with a pain in his neck which he was.
    ‘It was the summer of
1778….’ Continued Mrs Dean.

Chapter
VIII
    ------------
     
     
     
    N A FINE June day, the last Earnshaw was born.
Alas! the mother was with consumption and, sure enough, she snuffed it, and Mr
Earnshaw raced to Liverpool to cash in the policy. The child called Hareton
fell wholly into my hands, which he often filled. With the policy money Mr
Earnshaw turned to drink: he started with lemonade, but that soon lost its hold
over him, and he turned to that fiend from hell, whisky. Insane on alcohol he
would run on to the road and expose himself to passing carriages, but it still
couldn’t match Heathcliff’s. The master’s bad ways set a pretty bad example for
Cathy and Heathcliff; his treatment of the latter was terrible. He made the
latter work all hours, he denied the latter proper meals, he also stopped the
latter’s pay. It made the former very sad, people would say, “What’s the matter
former?” But Cathy still had great attraction for the latter. I could not tell
what an infernal home we had. Every night Hindley would stagger in drunk with
his flies open and sick down the front; he became famous in the district for
his flashing. The curate stopped calling. The gas man came and read the meter
and asked who the author was.
    ‘Occasionally Edgar Linton
called to see Miss Cathy. At fifteen she was queen of the countryside, she had
no peer, a terrible anatomical shortcoming. One afternoon Hindley went out on a
flashing expedition, so Heathcliff, on the strength of it, gave himself a
holiday. Cathy and he were constant companions, he had ceased to express his
fondness for her in words, instead he would do a series of somersaults ending
up with a cry of “Hola” but he recoiled from her girlish caresses. As they
caused great heat in the trousers and the smell of burning