"Oh Heathcliff! Why have you done this terrible, terrible thing?" sobbed Cathy, sinking to the ground and fairly beating the moorland with her tiny but spirited fists.
Heathcliff looked down at her, his brow furrowed with anger, his eyes flashing with an unnamed passion, his mouth twisted in rage. I, unbiased but frequently baffled narrator, Mr Lockwood, was filled with fear. What if his face should drop off, out here in the windswept moors with only the new turbines towering above us to bear witness to our plight?
"Ha!" roared Heathcliff, masculinely. "You ask me why I have done this terrible thing, Cathy? Why I have granted permission for green energy firm, Banks Renewables, to install a windfarm on the moors around my farmhouse, ruining the view from here to Thrushcross Grange and back again? With particular effect on other householders of perhaps more refined tastes and delicate aesthetic sensibilities? The type who, were a movie ever to be made of our mad, wearyingly tormented lives, could well be played by David Niven? Ha! Look into that mad, treacherous, damned organ you call a heart, Cathy, and tell me why!"
Cathy, so tiny and vulnerable yet so spirited, looked up at her tormentor. "Oh, why must you torment me so, Heathcliff? Very well, I admit it – I know why you have so gleefully despoiled this area that once possessed a beauty as natural and outstanding as my own! Yes, yes, I know your heart too!"
They all know each other's hearts round here. I don't know how. They're years off even getting the telegraph yet.
She drew herself up to her full, spirited, tormented height and shook her tormented hair spiritedly back from her face.
"You want to hurt me! You want to hurt Edgar! You can't bear that I tormentingly chose to marry money – I mean, his big house – I mean, him, rather than a great big cruel dirty brute of uncertain provenance like you, no matter how much better you fill out a pair of breeches! And so you have filled the landscape with these awful things, ruining Edgar's view forever with their ugliness – your ugliness! – and reminding me always how very much bigger your penis is than his. Oh, Heathcliff," she cried, dissolving into spirited, tormented tears again. "Why must you be so cruel? So well hung and cruel? And tormenting."
Suddenly Heathcliff stepped forward, grasped Cathy by her spirited arms and crushed her to him. Honestly, it's like I'm not even here.
"If you were only to look at me once with what I know is in your heart, Cathy," he rasped even more masculinely, "I would tear down these turbines with my bare hands! What care I for clean, renewable energy resources? You are my world, as I am yours. We're the two most selfish characters in literature. I mean, you should hear what I'm planning to do to Isabella. Let the planet burn, as long as I have you and you have me and we have each other and each other has we!"
I leaned against the foot of one of the wind turbines. As the lovers' hearts clamoured and emotions beat the air around me, above us its blades sliced cleanly on through the crisp, cold upper atmos. How remote the turbine seemed from all the passions being played out below! How quietly it went about its business of turning kinetic into mechanical energy and reducing CO2 emissions! How I wished the pair of prannets – the old Yorkshire word Nelly had taught me for "total tits" – could take a lesson from the silent, graceful structures standing noble sentinel over us.
"I cannot, Heathcliff!" said Cathy, wrenching herself from his grasp and turning tormentedly but spiritedly away, back towards Thrushcross Grange. "I am Edgar's now! I do tapestry and eat sweetmeats and if he wants to impress me he buys me jewellery instead of battering things and glowering! It's nicer and I've nearly finished my third cushion! And soon we'll start having children and giving them confusing names so no one will ever be able to keep easy track of what's going on!"
With that final cruel but spirited blow, she took to her heels and ran. Back to Edgar, back to Thrushcross Grange, back to his tiny penis.
"Ha!" shouted Heathcliff, again. "You wait, Cathy! See these rotary blades? Three to a turbine? I'm going to hang a puppy from every one of them! You'll come back to me then, Cathy! I'll not rest until you're in my dog-murdering arms once more!"
He turned on his manly heel and stormed off towards Wuthering Heights. There was nothing for me to do but follow. Truly, I thought, Nelly was right. There's nowt so queer as folk.
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