Moon Rising (36 page)

During my time with Mrs Addison I'd found that interests which had been just out of reach were suddenly within my grasp, and, allied to a schoolgirl talent for figures and the keeping of simple accounts, I'd discovered a whole new world, a world that challenged and delighted me. Thanks to sound advice, I'd done quite well at a time when others with more experience were suffering. Inevitably there were losses, but on the whole I'd been lucky – even with what I thought of as my ‘sentimental' shares.

Although Mr Richardson tended to be modest and self-effacing, I suspected he had a seaman's heart inside that banker's exterior. Indeed, from little things he said, I could picture him gauging the day ahead while crossing Whitby harbour bridge, studying the seas and the storms just like any other mariner. In short, I trusted him, and after a while he came to trust my instincts too. Between us we made a good team, and in less than five years Bram's £100 had grown far beyond my first imaginings. Nothing was truly predictable, but, if necessary, within a month or six weeks I could have raised something between £700 and £1,000.

~~~

With regard to Bram, one thing pleased me in spite of everything, since it was a poke in the eye for Irving. He was writing, and writing well.
The Snake's Pass
, his first full-length work of fiction, had been published about the time that Henry and I were married, but I'd had a copy in my possession for well over a year before I could bring myself to read it.

Somehow it brought him too close by half, worse than having him in the room with me. Reading his words, his story about a wealthy young Englishman travelling in the west of Ireland, was almost like being inside his head, experiencing his thoughts and emotions, especially with regard to the girl. Except in her youth and station she was nothing like me, but I couldn't help equating the two of us, just as I drew parallels between the young man and Bram.

It was an excellent tale of mystery and suspense, so evocative of life in Ireland that I was reminded of the stories he used to tell when we were together, not just about his mother, but of his own journeys undertaken as a young man with the Irish judiciary. At times I could almost hear his voice, that soft lilt which was always more pronounced when he was talking about Ireland. Often, sitting there reading alone, I felt I was drawing the essence of him from the page and into my mind. It was unsettling, to say the least. And I found myself wondering whether he'd gone to Whitby in the summer of 1890 in hopes of finding me again, to tell me about the book and his success.

Whichever, it was too late, and had been for a long time. I found it in my heart to wish him well, if only to justify my faith in his talent as a writer. Fate had decreed other paths for me, had brought me closer, in a way, to the Sternes and what they would have wished my future to be. But without Bram's cheque I might never have met Mr Richardson or the Addisons, and without them, how would I have met Henry?

The mere fact that I dwelt on these things was an indication of how unsettled I was at that time. I thought rather too often of what might have been, and found myself questioning acutely the point of wealth and idleness.

On one trip north, while Henry saw to business with the Addisons, I called on my old employer for a short visit. She sensed at once that something was wrong, and swiftly drew out the superficial problems. After an hour or so in Mrs Addison's company I felt brighter and more confident. As she remarked, my ‘legacy' might easily have been frittered away, but I'd not only acted sensibly by placing it with Mr Richardson, I'd worked hard at learning the principles of investment, and had subsequently made my own fortune. There was no need for me to feel unworthy of my husband; on the contrary, she said, he should feel proud of me. Regarding the matter of children, that was a matter for Higher Authority; I should cease worrying at once, she said, and concentrate on other things. Children would come along, all in good time.

Privately, I was not so sure; but I appreciated her advice, her comments, and most of all the simple fact of her faith in me. It gave me courage to speak to Henry of a plan I'd been contemplating for some time. When we returned home, I gathered my courage and said I wanted to go away for a while, not as a protest, but as a means of broadening my experience. He had travelled in his youth, but I had barely moved the length of the country. I had money, and was happy to pay my own way if he would allow me to go in company with a maid, or even a maid and manservant for protection.

My proposals dumbfounded him – and, I must admit, they scared me too – but whereas I'd expected anger and outrage, he said he'd think it over. A little while later he agreed, with just one stipulation: that he should come with me. It would do us both good, he said. He spoke to colleagues at the Exchange, and arranged to leave the business in their hands for a couple of months.

I was overjoyed.

The idea of the tour was inspired by my investments as much as those conversations with Mrs Addison, and having bought many a sixty-fourth share of cargo travelling from the Tyne to Tallinn, or from Taganrog back to the Tees, I wanted to see for myself how things were done. The old Whitby colliers were still plying their trade up and down the coast and across the North Sea, and there were plenty of grain ships creaking back under sail from the Mediterranean. That was how I wanted to travel. I felt it was time I faced my childhood fears. I tried to explain but poor Henry was appalled. He begged me to go for something more modern, one of the new steamships catering for passengers, not some old hulk that might sink without trace in the first storm we encountered.

I was just as appalled by his remark, which seemed to suggest that we shipped cargoes in vessels that were unseaworthy – so he was forced to take it back. Eventually we compromised by booking passage at the beginning of May aboard a well-seasoned, but not old, sailing vessel bound from the Tyne to St Petersburg. The Addisons arranged everything with a young shipmaster who often had his wife travelling with him. On this occasion she remained at home, but at least he was used to having a woman aboard.

Aboard the
Bonny Lass
, we sailed with the tide just after midnight. Our quarters were cramped and our bunks small, and Henry – not quite jokingly – wondered aloud how he'd ever agreed to this. I was just as apprehensive and that first night found it difficult to sleep. As the gentle motion of the river gave way to the more boisterous action of the open sea, I thought I might prove a poor sailor, but thankfully, by mid-morning the queasiness had passed. With bright weather ahead and a following breeze, the little brig fairly skimmed over the waves. I think I fell in love from that moment, with the sea, with ships, with that sense of being at one with the elements. As sails were reefed and unfurled, as the wind cracked in the shrouds, I understood at last what had enthralled members of my family from the beginning.

On a surge of sympathetic feeling, I thought of Jonathan Markway and wondered how he was faring, whether he'd gained his Masters ticket yet, and the command which had been so important to him. I hoped so: he deserved that. And with my eyes on the Master and Mate I even wished, rather foolishly, that he was aboard this ship, so we could have talked. In admiring their alertness and skill and experience, I felt I was admiring and understanding him.

We were fortunate with the weather, having good-speed westerlies and very little rain, but Henry was not a good sailor. Our time was spent either in the cabin or pacing the afterdeck, trying not to get in the way. I was too intrigued by what was going on to mind any inconvenience, but for Henry the voyage was something of an endurance test.

Despite constant washing down by the crew, coal dust from the ship's hold kept reappearing. My skirts suffered worse than Henry's gloves, but they came to symbolise his feelings. By contrast, I loved every minute; even managing to be amused by my own irritations, which in truth were minor compared to some I'd known, especially when I'd lived with the Firths.

I found myself thinking of those days, when sand and fish-scales clung to everything, and the old house reeked of smoke and bait and mussel shells. Having avoided eating fish for years, I was forced to contemplate it again aboard ship. We had fresh cod, caught on a long line, served baked for dinner with potatoes and beans; then there was fish pie, pickled herrings, and kippers from the stores. Occasionally the cook served smoked German sausage and beans, although we did have bacon and eggs for breakfast.

Despite the food – or even because of it – I enjoyed that bracing voyage across the North Sea and through the Skagerrak. It thrilled me to be sailing those cold blue seas on a bright May morning, to see the soaring mountains of Scandinavia, the tiny islands and deep inlets from where our ancient forebears had set sail in their dragon-headed longships, to raid the gentler coasts of England.

Such thoughts reminded me of Bay and Old Uncle Thaddeus, his fascination with the invasions of more than a thousand years ago, the dialect and folk-tales that only now were beginning to give way to the modern world.

That voyage across the Baltic Sea to St Petersburg was but the first leg of our journey. If Henry was pleased to be on dry land again, I was less so, finding the scale of the Russian city daunting. The buildings were breathtaking, beautiful but huge, the streets as broad as an entire village at home, and even the system of waterways on which the city was built seemed to me a giant's creation. I could not understand it, since the people were of normal size, although Henry supposed it was Peter the Great's way of impressing the rest of Europe with his riches and power; and we must not forget, he said, that Russia's western capital reflected the vastness of the continent beyond.

The very idea struck a chill into my soul, and I was relieved that in planning our itinerary from the Baltic to the Black Sea, of the two routes open to us, we had not chosen the Russian one from St Petersburg to Moscow, and Moscow down to the Crimea. It sounded simple until one studied the maps and saw the endless distances involved, the apparent lack of relief in the form of mountains or great cities.

Instead, we had chosen to stay with our ship during the short journey to Narva where it would be loading a return cargo of timber. From there we left the ship to travel overland through part of the great forests which supplied our needs, down to the ancient port of Tallinn, which had a special significance for me. Henry and I climbed the rocky heights of the old town to look down on the sheltering bay, with the great Gulf of Finland beyond. Somewhere out there, beneath the grey seas, lay the wreck of the
Merlin,
lost in a violent spring storm when I was just a child. With the wreckage were the bones of my father and grandfather, and seven crew.

Henry made enquiries for me, and for that I will always be grateful. He discovered the area where the
Merlin
had foundered, a submerged skein of rocks not unlike Whitby's Scaur, where many other ships had also come to grief. It was not accessible from landward, but I bought a wreath of flowers and, when we took ship for Stettin, as we passed the spot I cast the flowers out upon the waves. They floated like a lifebuoy, which at once seemed dreadfully ironic and made me weep and wish I hadn't done it; but Henry understood and let me cry. We stood there on the afterdeck, clinging to the ratlines and watching the little wreath of flowers grow smaller and smaller, and we talked about love and death, about my family and his, and even a little about his first wife which, in an odd sort of way, brought us closer together.

~~~

In Stettin we disembarked again, and began the first stage of our overland journey through Europe. I mention it now, not because it came at an important time in my life, but because of the strange coincidences which revealed themselves later.

While Henry and I boarded our train to Berlin, and continued southwards from there via the ancient cities of Dresden, Prague and Vienna, unknown to me, Bram was busily working on a novel which had had its beginnings in Whitby. While he was writing about Jonathan Harker crossing Europe at the beginning of May, I was making a similar journey with Henry. By the end of that month we were following the River Danube through what is known as the Carpathian Gate at Bratislava; but where Bram sent Harker up into the Carpathian mountains, we continued in a southerly direction, via Belgrade.

That much-disputed city had been fought over for centuries and it was easy to see why. From the east, the city was so positioned that it held the key to Hungary in the north, and to protect that half of their empire the Austrians had fought long and hard to oust the Turks, which they'd only succeeded in doing some twenty-five years before. Since then, it had become the capital of an independent state, Serbia, but we sensed such hostility and oppression we were glad to move on.

The brooding, snow-capped peaks of the Transylvanian Alps loomed ahead of us, where the great River Danube was squeezed through a narrow, winding gap into fifty miles of violent cataracts, ending at a place called the Iron Gate. It was wild, stormy country, and, the river being in flood, we were forced to leave our steam launch for an overland journey by carriage.

Some years later, reading Bram's account of Harker's journey through the mountains, I relived those days and found myself shivering at the uncanny similarities. We were equally anxious and apprehensive, dependent as we were on the surly mountain people while traversing roads which hardly justified being classified as tracks. With much relief we left that oppressive region and put the fortifications of the Iron Gate behind us. Thereafter, with the Carpathians to the north, and the Balkan ranges to the south, the valley broadened into a fertile plain.

~~~

The weather was at once milder, and great stretches of pale green wheat were rippling in the breeze. It did my heart good to see a familiar crop, to be away from the vast, oppressive heartland of continental Europe. We were both aware of feeling safer. Henry had been subdued, and I felt as though I had been withstanding some nameless threat; but at last, with the sea before us, we were as excited as children on a day trip to the coast.