Moon Rising (11 page)

Read Moon Rising Online

Authors: Ann Victoria Roberts

BOOK: Moon Rising
12.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

The injustice left me open-mouthed with shock. Like someone blind, when she'd gone, I felt for my other possessions and placed them in my box, while Dick hovered in embarrassment on the landing, ready to help me carry it down.

Fortunately the month was April and the weather was good, and although I might have lacked many things I was not without relatives. Even so, by the time I arrived in Robin Hood's Bay it was early evening, and Old Uncle was on his way to a public meeting, long white hair and beard gleaming in the dusk.

He was not pleased to see me, and had no time to talk, so I had to go to the house and wait until he returned. His housekeeper took me through to the kitchen, where she gave me something to eat, but I felt very much like the condemned man abandoned to the contemplation of his sins. During that time, the anger that had waxed and waned during my walk built up again, fuelled by anguish, frustration, and the absolute conviction that Old Uncle was not going to believe me.

It was not the best way to begin an important discussion.

From his expression as he looked down at me, I knew immediately that he'd assumed I was in the wrong. That set light to my temper and I flung accusations like Roman candles, all kinds of things that had little to do with the problem in hand, but everything to do with my sense of injury. His influence had secured me the job, I said, so surely he could use that same influence to set Mrs Markway straight – to make her retract those accusations and clear my name.

His response to that was a curt demand as to why he should do such a thing when the whole affair was my own fault. The issue of the books was a matter for regret, but if I was so unwise as to set my cap at young Markway, then I must be prepared to take the consequences. How the boy's mother went about dismissing her servants did not concern him. Furthermore, he was not used to being spoken to in such a manner, especially by a mere chit of a girl. Eliza Markway was a difficult woman, he'd grant me that, but I should have thought twice before making a play for her favourite son.

‘Good sense should have shown you better than that, my girl! I shall try to help for the sake of your grandmother – but without references it will not be easy. Until you have somewhere else to go you may stay...'

But by that time I didn't want his help. Shaking with fury, on the verge of tears, I told him I would find my own jobs and never bother him again.

I wish now that I could recall sweeping out with pride, but I was trembling so badly I fumbled at the door and almost tripped over the threshold. Old Uncle tried to prevent me from leaving, even called after me from the front gate, but I couldn't wait to be gone. I ran off down the precipitous main street, slipping and sliding on cobbles all the way down to the Wayfoot, where house walls suddenly became defence walls and the sturdy little town met the sea.

I could go no further, unless I wanted to drown myself, and for a fleeting moment I was foolish enough to consider that as a dramatic form of revenge. But I stopped, and, like the child I was, sank down, sobbing furiously, on a smooth rock-seat. The night was calm and cool and after a while it soothed me. I tried to think what to do, while the tide lapped at a row of cobles drawn up on the beach, and gulls muttered on their rooftop nests.

To my mind, there's freedom and there's being cast adrift, and in that moment I was adrift like a boat at the slack of the tide. I could have been turned either way. That I turned back to Whitby, and ultimately took refuge with my cousin Bella and her family, might have seemed arbitrary, but Bella was also a friend. In retrospect, I can see that I headed back to Whitby mainly because I was too proud to apologise to Old Uncle Thaddeus. No matter what I'd done, the Firths were unlikely to judge me harshly; and anyway, a long and lonely walk seemed easier than having to explain myself to my other relatives in Bay. In my mind's eye they assumed ranks of blank incomprehension, row upon row of sensible, practical women, who would no more have understood my predicament than ever have found themselves in it.

~~~

Such thoughts and emotions flashed through my mind that January day as I watched Jonathan coming towards me. How I wished he'd come home a few weeks ago – things might have been different then! Seeing him now, so clean and slender and handsome, I felt branded. Not just by his mother's accusations, nor even by the smell of the fish-basket on my arm, but by my association with the Firths. I wondered whether everyone in Whitby knew about Magnus and his daughters and, if they did, what they were saying about me, living under his roof. As Jonathan came closer, I wished I could turn back the clock. Or at least look as though I was profiting from something, if only the wages of sin.

He had never been mine, nor I his; even so, seeing the light in his eyes I felt I had betrayed something. The low winter sun, dazzling and revealing, almost blinded me as he stopped to speak. I was squinting so badly it was necessary to edge round in order to see his face, and when I did I wished I hadn't. He might have been pleased to see me at first glance, but now that he could see me properly – looking so much less than my best with that heavy basket of fish – his dark eyes revealed his embarrassment. It could have been shyness and a genuine dismay at my fall in fortune, but I felt besmirched by recent events and was prepared for condemnation. At his greeting, which would surely have thrilled me before Christmas, I was suddenly angry.

‘By the way, how's your mother getting on?' I demanded waspishly before he could think what to say. ‘I haven't seen her since she sacked me for stealing your books.'

A flush of colour stained his tanned skin and he looked away, upriver, to where ships moored on the Bell Shoal made a dark forest of masts against the bright sky. Watching his reaction, I told myself he was trying to identify the lines of his own ship, a means of escape from all this. It seemed an age before he drew breath, before he turned back to me with lowered brows and a glance that glittered.

‘Yes,' he said at last, stiffly, ‘I heard about that, and I'm truly sorry. I thought I'd explained, but there was obviously a misunderstanding. I wish it could be set straight, but – well, since it's too late for that, I can only apologise. Especially about – well, about you losing your job.'

While I looked stonily downriver, wondering whether it was an apology I could accept, he paused and shook his head. ‘My mother isn't well, you know – it's difficult.'

I was so astonished, and he was so obviously embarrassed, I didn't try to keep him. Gone were the more civil questions that had been on my mind, such as where had he been, why were they late coming home, and had it been a good trip? For one painful moment our eyes met, and then I heard myself expressing regret, and on that note we parted, he to his work aboard a ship being repaired and refitted, and I to mine, hawking fish.

I cursed myself for a fool, but afterwards, when my tortured pride had settled again, it struck me that I might have misunderstood that statement about his mother. He may have meant that she was physically unwell, therefore it would have been unkind to challenge her decisions; on the other hand he could have been suggesting that his mother was going a little mad, even losing her reason. On reflection I thought the latter was most likely, and tried to feel sorry. I didn't succeed. I felt sorrier for myself.

Sorrier, but more or less cured of my infatuation with Jonathan Markway. At least I told myself that. With his dark curly hair and whipcord slenderness he'd become more good-looking than ever during the months he'd been away. Except I kept repeating Grandmother's old saying,
handsome is as handsome does,
and felt he'd let me down just by not being there when he was needed. Another reason for never marrying a seaman, I decided, while trying not to compare that kind of life with the one I was living at present.

I rarely caught so much as a glimpse of the other Markways, although Bella kept her ears open for gossip. She'd heard the old man had a mistress over towards Bay, and Mrs M. was making everybody pay for it, including the customers. So maybe she was a little mad, after all. I found myself feeling sorry for Jonathan, cooped up in the same house, but had no opportunity to express it. Whenever I saw him, it was rarely to speak to and never to exchange more than the briefest of greetings. For several weeks, during the worst time of the year, he remained before me like a reminder of what might have been. Bella told me to forget him, he wasn't worth sighing over, but that was easier said than done.

When I had time to dream I thought instead of Mr Stoker and wished he would come back, like a knight in shining armour, to rescue me from my troubles. He was a man, not a boy, and wielded more power than anyone I knew. Save Old Uncle Thaddeus, of course. But Mr Stoker's concerns were not in Whitby, they were in London, where that new play he'd told me about was apparently doing well.

The spectacle of Henry Irving's
Faust,
with its storms and apparitions, its sulphurous infernos and angelic visions, had apparently made headlines in the daily newspapers. Jack Louvain told me that there were even electric sword-fights, which neither he nor I could envisage, but we spent many an entertaining hour talking about the possibilities. For different reasons, perhaps, each of us had a passionate interest in the production and would have loved to see it, but not even Jack could afford the costs involved.

Nevertheless, he started paying me for the jobs I did around the studio, cleaning and tidying, and mounting and filing the endless sets of cartes-de-visite ready for the influx of visitors in the summer. To have the value of my work recognised did more to cheer me than anything else that winter. For the first time I felt I was doing something worthwhile, something respectable, something of which Uncle Thaddeus might not entirely disapprove.

Ten

In the dark days of February, even spring seemed a long way off. It was always a bad month, the lowest point of the year on the east coast, when snow and freezing cold gave way to easterly winds and downpours that continued for days on end. The wind-driven rain searched out chinks and gaps in leaking roofs and ill-fitting windows, everything was perpetually damp, and the touch of unwarmed clothes on any naked patch of skin was like the cold, clammy kiss of a shroud. We shivered with emptiness too. In all my life I have never been so hungry, nor so dependent on the state of the weather, on the boats going out and coming in, returning with their precious and perishable cargoes.

There were times, depending on the tides, when we were up at two and three in the morning, skaning half-frozen mussels from their shells, fingers stiff and swollen with chilblains, often cut and bleeding from the day before. Even so, if the weather was suitable for fishing, the work had to be done; and those who wanted to eat – as Magnus Firth delighted in reminding me – had to be prepared to bait the lines.

Mussels were the best for cod, but they were pricey, having been brought across country by train from Ireland and the west coast. We'd fetch them in bags from the station, skane them, soak them in water for a few hours to plump them up, then start baiting the lines, each line with more than two hundred lethal hooks. At least four lines were prepared for every trip, and I swear I remember the pain of every one. But the worst thing was if the boats did not go out: then the lines had to be stripped and cleaned again, for the bait soon went off.

I hated Magnus Firth and despised him too, but I was virtually as dependent upon him as his wife and children. More often than not I wished him dead, yet at the same time when he went out fishing I prayed for his safe return because I could not bear to think what would happen if he failed to come back. And there was the matter of Bella's brothers, who deserved better than the fate I wished on their father.

We always made sure they ate before they went out in the boat, even if it was no more than oatcakes and fried potatoes, since it was not unknown for men to die from the cold out there on the open sea. Bella and I kept the children fed, and we were helped by contributions from Isa, who generally brought cooked meat and pies when she came home. Just occasionally Magnus would be out for a short time and come back flushed with some secret success. Then it was off to the nearest pub to booze all night. Mysteriously, when he came back, he still had money in his pockets. I learned not to ask questions about that.

Although much of the time that winter we were cold and hungry, the situation did have its advantages. When Magnus was fishing, he was busy for twelve and fourteen hours a day, too exhausted for anything other than sleep when he came home; and money was so short all round that Cousin Martha's credit was limited, her gin strictly rationed by Bella. To keep occupied, she knitted endlessly, unravelling the best parts of old ganseys to make sea-boot socks and mufflers for the boys. She looked melancholy and haggard, but I liked her better for it.

For several weeks the intensity of common need kept the whole family pulling together, and for a while I was lulled into thinking that things were not so bad, my being there was making a difference, and that I was welcomed for my contributions.

We saw little of Isa but when she did come home her first words on spying me were invariably spiteful. Why was I still living with the Firths, she would demand, when I'd been trained for better things than skaning mussels and baiting long-lines? Watching me work, she would point out any one of a dozen inadequacies, making me feel clumsy and stupid for even trying. But she never offered to help and, with prudish disapproval, even managed to puncture the gallows humour shared by Bella and myself.

What almost brought us to blows, however, was my new, paid employment at the studio. Only a few hours a week, but I was proud of it, and she was jealous. I know now that she'd carried a torch for Jack Louvain for years, ever since he had persuaded her to sit for a portrait while she was still at school. The portrait was so flattering it was almost sinful, and people who knew the Firth twins were usually astonished to be told it was Isa. For some reason Jack Louvain preferred her to Bella, and I swear she came closer to simpering in his company than she ever did elsewhere. Obviously it galled her that I was often alone with him in the studio – something she no doubt dreamed about during her time off in Middlesbrough. She even managed to intimate that I was providing sexual favours in return for money.

Other books

Bloodlines by Alex Kidwell
Stand Your Ground by William W. Johnstone
The Fall by Toro, Guillermo Del, Hogan, Chuck
Women by Charles Bukowski
The Girl From Ithaca by Cherry Gregory