sort teenage boys ride, with thick-treaded wheels and a high-pitched engine – but the closer they get to it the more convinced Yuki is that it belongs to the girl and that she’s going to expect Yuki to climb onto the back of it, which she’s convinced is not such a great idea.
As they stumble down the path Yuki attempts to ask the girl, in her wretched English, how she knew where to find her, and several times the girl tries, and fails, to explain. Until, finally, she stops and mimes knocking at a door. And Yuki pictures this girl and the B & B Lady talking on the doorstep of the Grosvenor Hotel and the B & B Lady pointing out towards the moors.
Of course, what Yuki really wants to know is why the girl has taken such an interest in her. It’s conceivable that she may just have been passing when Yuki crawled over the wall from the graveyard, but there was nothing arbitrary in her hanging about outside the B & B or showing up just now. There appears to be no easy way of broaching the subject. Yukiko’s only thought is that she might appear to this blonde English girl as strange and exotic as the Brontës do to her.
The girl climbs onto the bike, kicks the stand back and with the toe of her other foot flicks out the kick-start. Jumps down on it, twice, before the engine catches, and pulls the throttle back hard a couple of times, to make sure it doesn’t cut out. Then she looks over at Yuki, with the engine gently rattling, until she finally approaches. Yuki finds a footrest and swings her other leg over, as if she’s mounting a horse. And since there’s nowhere else to put them she places her hands on the girl’s waist. Then the two of them go roaring down the path.
*
The girl seems to know how to handle the bike, following the path along the bottom of the valley with considerable care, but when at last they come up to the side of a tarmac road, she stops and looks long and hard in both directions before pulling back on the throttle with such ferocity that Yuki almost tumbles right off the seat.
As they fly down the road Yukiko thinks what a contrast this is to all the little capsules she’s been travelling in lately. The wind blasts at her face and hair as if they’re pushing through something solid. And Yuki looks down at the blur of road beneath her feet and wonders what condition she’d be in if she were to suddenly meet it, at such ridiculous speed.
Mercifully, within a couple of miles the bike is slowing down and pulling back off the road without them having passed more than a couple of cars coming the other way. This path is a little wider than the last one – more of a dirt track, with two furrows along it and a strip of grass in between – and seems to take them more directly where the girl wants to go. A couple of times she pulls up, to try and get her bearings. Then finally stops, kills the engine, flicks the stand down and, once she’s sure that Yuki is with her, heads off up a steep slope.
The moment they clear the ridge and the water’s spread out below them Yukiko can see how this is an altogether different proposition and recognises it as the location in her mother’s photograph. The water seems closer to the sky somehow and there’s a lot more of it. Down at one end, a stone pier runs out to some sortof small tower and Yuki finds that the tip of this construction appears at the edge of the photo, giving her something solid from which to orient herself.
She makes her way over to where her mother must have stood. Gets within a metre or so of it and glances at the photograph for confirmation. Then just stands and looks around.
The girl comes up alongside her. Asks to see the photo again and studies it pretty hard this time, as if now that they’re here she might see something significant in it. Some monster about to loom out of the water or something just sinking out of sight.
She asks Yuki who took the photograph. Yuki pretends not to have understood, and the girl asks again, which
As they stumble down the path Yuki attempts to ask the girl, in her wretched English, how she knew where to find her, and several times the girl tries, and fails, to explain. Until, finally, she stops and mimes knocking at a door. And Yuki pictures this girl and the B & B Lady talking on the doorstep of the Grosvenor Hotel and the B & B Lady pointing out towards the moors.
Of course, what Yuki really wants to know is why the girl has taken such an interest in her. It’s conceivable that she may just have been passing when Yuki crawled over the wall from the graveyard, but there was nothing arbitrary in her hanging about outside the B & B or showing up just now. There appears to be no easy way of broaching the subject. Yukiko’s only thought is that she might appear to this blonde English girl as strange and exotic as the Brontës do to her.
The girl climbs onto the bike, kicks the stand back and with the toe of her other foot flicks out the kick-start. Jumps down on it, twice, before the engine catches, and pulls the throttle back hard a couple of times, to make sure it doesn’t cut out. Then she looks over at Yuki, with the engine gently rattling, until she finally approaches. Yuki finds a footrest and swings her other leg over, as if she’s mounting a horse. And since there’s nowhere else to put them she places her hands on the girl’s waist. Then the two of them go roaring down the path.
*
The girl seems to know how to handle the bike, following the path along the bottom of the valley with considerable care, but when at last they come up to the side of a tarmac road, she stops and looks long and hard in both directions before pulling back on the throttle with such ferocity that Yuki almost tumbles right off the seat.
As they fly down the road Yukiko thinks what a contrast this is to all the little capsules she’s been travelling in lately. The wind blasts at her face and hair as if they’re pushing through something solid. And Yuki looks down at the blur of road beneath her feet and wonders what condition she’d be in if she were to suddenly meet it, at such ridiculous speed.
Mercifully, within a couple of miles the bike is slowing down and pulling back off the road without them having passed more than a couple of cars coming the other way. This path is a little wider than the last one – more of a dirt track, with two furrows along it and a strip of grass in between – and seems to take them more directly where the girl wants to go. A couple of times she pulls up, to try and get her bearings. Then finally stops, kills the engine, flicks the stand down and, once she’s sure that Yuki is with her, heads off up a steep slope.
The moment they clear the ridge and the water’s spread out below them Yukiko can see how this is an altogether different proposition and recognises it as the location in her mother’s photograph. The water seems closer to the sky somehow and there’s a lot more of it. Down at one end, a stone pier runs out to some sortof small tower and Yuki finds that the tip of this construction appears at the edge of the photo, giving her something solid from which to orient herself.
She makes her way over to where her mother must have stood. Gets within a metre or so of it and glances at the photograph for confirmation. Then just stands and looks around.
The girl comes up alongside her. Asks to see the photo again and studies it pretty hard this time, as if now that they’re here she might see something significant in it. Some monster about to loom out of the water or something just sinking out of sight.
She asks Yuki who took the photograph. Yuki pretends not to have understood, and the girl asks again, which
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