To Walk Invisible: The Bronte Sisters Page #2

It's all a question of

how you might choose to look at it.

Tabby. Well, if that's how you feel.

Do you still write stories?

Sometimes.

About Gondal?

When we can.

Emily as well? You've been here

with her more than I have, surely.

We never talk about it.

Never?

Do you? Write?

Still? Not so much.

What about the infernal world?

I relinquished my pen.

Why? Because it frightened me.

Threatened to make

the real world seem...

pointless.

And colourless and drab.

And that way lies madness.

You know, the real world is what it

is, but we must live in it, so...

You should write, if it makes you

happy. I worry about my eyes.

And I think, as well...

when I got that reply from Southey -

"Literature cannot be the business

of a woman's life."

At the time I brushed it off.

But the longer I've dwelt on it,

the older I've got,

the more I've thought...

..what's the point?

The point...for me...

..I'm never more alive

than when I write.

You're the same, surely.

But with no prospect of publication?

It's just playing at it, isn't it?

Are we playing then, or what?

Does it ever bother you

that we might be getting...

a bit old? For that.

You weren't saying that

two weeks ago in York. No, well...

I didn't want to spoil things

in York.

It's something

I've been thinking for a while.

Well, what did you come out

with me for then? To talk.

What about? Things. At home.

Do you never think about...?

What?

The future!

What are we

without Papa and Branwell?

Papa won't... He won't live forever.

And he's blind,

and that house, our house,

it belongs to

the Church trustees, not us.

And Branwell! What's he doing?

What's he thinking

that he has such a hopeless grasp

on the realities of what comes next?

Are we nothing to him?

Does he even see us?

If we don't make

something of ourselves,

and God knows we've been trying,

I've been trying...

I was a governess at that

ludicrous place for five years!

What will we do, Emily?

What will...

What will we be?

It was when I came back

from Roe Head.

And he was there, at home,

Branwell.

And he wasn't supposed to be.

You'd gone. You and Charlotte.

You'd gone off back to Roe Head.

And he was supposed to be in London,

trying to get his foot in the door

at the Royal Academy.

That's when I knew

what a liar he was.

Sharpers? Thieves! So what?

They attacked you? You were robbed?

Four of them?! I think four.

In broad daylight? That's...

Well, surely someone saw

what happened?

You didn't even get there? No!

It was just after I arrived

at the coaching inn

at St Martin Le Grand,

and I knew my way around.

From the maps in my head.

But London...the whole thing is

so much bigger than I imagined.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes