Bronte's Inferno XIV (As Writers Often Do)

Charon drove the great yacht of car down the sidestreet and doubled back behind my back yard and in front of the low-rise flats as though she was in a Mini Cooper in Turin. I heard the champagne flutes rattling in the Phantom V’s cocktail cabinet all the way to the Cold Edge Road. I popped the catch and took out a glass and a piccolo of the Widow, figuring there’d be less glass to rattle that way. Charon caught my eye and winked at me in the rear-view mirror. The glass divider had been open since before I’d got in the car, although Charon had remained silent until now.

‘Only way to travel, Sir. Would you like some music?’

‘Why not? You choose.’

She held up an eight-track cartridge with Chinese characters on a faded label showing a group of figures that could have been The Beatles or The Banana Splits.

‘I like this,’ she said.

It wasn’t either of them. Deep Purple Mk II encouraged Charon to drive even faster as she turned up 'Highway Star' so loud my fillings rattled. I almost spilled my fizz, when she hit the zed-bends on the rise out of Oxenhope. I was relieved when we reached Haworth. She finally slowed down, letting the Phantom V purr along Changegate, before we turned down Church Street and pulled up in front of the BPM: The Bronte’s Parsonage Museum.

‘Here? You do know it’s not open on Tuesdays?’

‘Of course.’

Charon got out of the car. Perhaps the uniform was a good idea. Anyone who drove like she did was liable to hauled over by traffic, much less someone of her heritage. I wondered what was under the Phantom’s bonnet, it had seemed to travel faster than anything that size had any right to. The driver opened the rear door, for all the world as if I was a visiting dignitary, albeit one wearing a second-hand cashmere coat and baseball boots.

I walked up the path to the entrance. The Editor-at-Large stood on the threshold arms wide in welcome, as though he’d been waiting forever to see me. We went inside. I’d been before. I remembered being suspicious of the whole thing, wondering how much was set-dressing and what furniture actually stood where it had two hundred years ago. The Editor ushered me along the entrance hall, we turned right through the kitchen and went into the library, with its sign reading “by appointment only”. There were two club-chairs facing each other over an occasional table. I had no idea if they were there permanently, never having made an appointment. The Editor indicated that I should sit, and took the other chair himself.

‘I thought we’d conclude our business here.’

‘Why?’

‘We tried to contract them, you know?’

‘Who?’

He sighed, his face's taut skin seemed almost transparent.

‘We weren’t called Charnel House then. We have had many names. From the first incunabula to E-books our name has changed with the times. Our names are legion. As are our writers.’

His dog bark laugh turned into a coughing fit.

‘We thought we might get Emily, but no – none of them signed in the end.’

‘Only Emily wrote just one book. Anne and Charlotte, they wrote several.’

‘Precisely, and who is the loser?’

Not for the first time, I pondered The Editor’s sanity. As writers often do.