Walk in West Yorkshire

“Walk in West Yorkshire” 

                                  By Katherine Marie Esposito 

… There she was, in the very place she had written about in her journal two years prior, before ever having left the country.

It was July. They’d been living together since January. The two met by sheer coincidence through a mutual friend the previous year in Chicago, where he’d been visiting from the UK on a business trip. Handsome, charming and fourteen years her senior, over the course of the next few months they’d fallen intoxicatingly in love. 

Sure, they were from different countries and lived four thousand miles away from each other, but that changed nothing about the way either of them felt. So, by the end of those glorious few months of his trip in Chicago, the girl was deeply touched and ecstatic when he proposed to fly out and stay with him for a few weeks at his home in West Yorkshire, UK. She would have followed him to Nebraska, never mind beautiful England.

Those few weeks had now turned into a half a year, and she was still living with him in the UK. Neither of them had wanted to be apart from each other. There had been talks of marriage and visas in the beginning…

But she had ruined things the way she always seemed to do in the end. He was falling out of love with her due to her in-ability to be truly happy, which not even she herself could understand. It was the one dark secret that the girl hadn’t told him, but he had found out anyway.

    Now when she looked into his eyes, which had once lit up with complete adoration for her, she saw nothing. They were hardened now, like dull amber stones of disappointment. Each passing day she would search his face for a faint glimmer of recognition, but they were strangers living in the same house. Each night she slept to his cold back, staring at his shoulder blade in the moonlight, longing to reach out for him. To touch him and to feel his warmth again the way she used to. But it was too late. Within a week, she was going home. Going back home absolutely heartbroken, ashamed and alone. 

                                         Always alone. 

      The girl stood in his front room and stared listlessly out the window at the forests across the hills. She needed to walk, to get away somewhere, anywhere. Her thoughts were coming to a head and feelings threatening to erupt into an emotional breakdown. Stepping outside, she closed and locked the front door behind her and slipped the silver skeleton key under the doormat for her return. It was 4 p.m. and she knew he wouldn’t be back home from work and his nightly round at the local pub, until 6 p.m.

With slow deliberate steps, she started out down his long, steep driveway, stumbling a bit on the loose gravel and dirt, resisting the urge to run and inevitably slip and fall backwards. As usual it was cool and gray that afternoon with a fine mist of drizzly rain. Inside she had pulled on his cozy sage-green hoodie, along with his favorite Newcastle football cap, because she needed to have some part of him close to her right then, and his clothing would have to suffice. Hands shoved in its front pockets, she began to walk blindly with her head down, wanting to get lost somewhere amongst the narrow stone roads and rolling, multi-colored patchwork hills of the English countryside.

              Down the path a couple of neighbors west of his property, the girl stopped to chat up a couple of shaggy Clydesdale horses in a field, both staring at her with gentle brown eyes as she spoke softly to them. From her side of the fence she picked a handful of tall green grass and offered a fistful to the closest one. He accepted it, and his warm wet muzzle and prickly whiskers tickled her pale open palm. The other horse stamped his hoof and snorted a steamy-breathed greeting.

     At that moment the girl wished she were a horse, oblivious to the human trials of depression and heartache. 

  Continuing down the path a mile or so, she came to a main T-section road. Option number one would lead towards the bustling little village with the old grey brick church and its lazy ringing bell, pubs with funny names like “The Golden Cock”, quaint florist shops, and cars that drove on the wrong side of the road. Instead, she chose to head right, which was unfamiliar to her and virtually deserted of shops. The rain had begun to pick up harder now and she gratefully tugged the brim of his hat lower over her eyes and pulled the hoodie over it. 

Across the field in the distant grey haze, a cat ran across an ancient dry stone wall. She absolutely loved the green and gray moss-covered stone walls, painstakingly built by hand hundreds of years before and perpetually damp, smelling of earth. They were scattered everywhere throughout the country hills. On several occasions she had pointed them out and admired them (much to his amusement). But there was nothing like them at home in the States, and she believed England to be filled with such a wonderful sense of history and beauty, making being there all the more special for her. So, even the old mossy dry-stone walls, long forgotten by the locals, deeply moved the girl.

The cat had disappeared from the length of the four foot high wall. The girl thought wistfully about her own beloved tabby a close friend back home was caring for, and hoped the little stray here had a safe and dry shelter nearby. 

Walking onward, she came across an impossibly steep hill to the left, leading to what she guessed to be the start of a small residential area. The back of her thighs burned in protest as she leaned forward against the now gusty wind and rain. Almost to the top, she was beckoned to her left by a mostly hidden opening in the woods which extended into a path of sorts. 

          Climbing the ever-narrowing steps, she was suddenly enveloped by a vibrant green canopy cover. The trees were lined in dense rows on either side of her and their branches completely engulfed each other above, forming a shrub cave. It was suddenly darker and quieter... the only sound being the occasional call of a lone crow and the steady drum of the gray rain, muffled by the thick leafy ceiling. It was here on these crumbling old stone steps where she sat down, mostly shielded, but with the odd fat droplet filtering through and splattering her shoulder or nose.

The girl reached into a pocket for the cigarette she’d rolled earlier. Slowly exhaling a plume of smoke, she thought of him and the situation they now found themselves in. Why was she this way? The ugly dark side lurking in her heart. She felt imprisoned by herself and some unnamed entity she was put on this earth to understand and conquer. A struggle that’d been inside her for one thousand years; one that she desperately wanted to overcome. 

Living out of a car with her mother. Three-day benders. Mother stabbing Father in the chest and then the pleading look in his eyes while begging his four year old daughter for help. Jail time. Constant fighting, drinking, prostitution, up-rooting, drugs, maggots, police... decay, death certificates, autopsy reports. Later, the weird religious and emotionally abusive foster parents. 

Along with her freedom also came darkness. 

   Almost 30 years had gone by since then, yet there she was, sitting alone in the middle of the woods somewhere in England because she was unable to let go of her past and inner demons. She had tried to overcome her dark side for him and he had tried to help her break free of it with his love, but both had failed.

The girl would have done anything to break free from the misery. Anything except change.

Pulling her knees to her chest and lowering her head, the tears flowed uncontrollably. What had she done? How had she allowed this to happen? Openly sobbing, she repeatedly whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry...” to no one but the old forest. The girl found herself begging to whatever universal force was out there to please, please let her rewind the past and make things right again. And yet… deep down, she knew it was over and their time together had come to an end. The knowledge filled the girl with such overwhelming sadness that she felt crippled. 

She lifted her head. Had an hour gone by? With no watch or phone, but judging from the dusk that was falling, she guessed it must have been approaching six. Shivering, she slowly picked herself up and concentrated on forming a permanent mental image of this place and time that she stood in. The private tree den that was, for that moment, hers. The smell of wet green earth, rotting leaves and cold damp stone. Eerie grey shrouds of mist, drifting low over the gentle slopes of the Greenbelt in the distance. The trees and earth and rain had witnessed her bare soul and had wept along for her and with her. An intuitive knowingness that she would again come back to this part of the world took over her senses and provided a bittersweet solace. It was a feeling similar to deja vu, and one that was an inevitable part of her now.

With a final look around at the special place she discovered, she descended the footpath, walked back down the hill and again through the narrow roads. It was cold now. If the horses were still in their field, she could not see them in the darkness of the lonely countryside. She crunched back up the winding steep gravel driveway that led to the pale brick house. His shiny blue sports car was parked there now. The white and purple wild flowers she’d picked from the yard the day before were illuminated in the window by the front room lamp, an image which had once filled her with warmth. Now, she felt empty and defeated as she bent down to retrieve the silver skeleton key, preparing for the forced exchange she would inevitably have with him. 

  I took a deep breath, lifted my chin, and walked inside.