Moon Rising (52 page)

‘You followed us into the church.'

‘Yes,' he admitted gruffly, ‘I did. I thought perhaps he might be ill, some stranger you were assisting. But it wasn't like that, was it?'

‘No,' I said calmly, wondering what interpretation he'd placed upon those tender gestures, those affectionate smiles.

‘Who was he, Damsy? Will you tell me?'

I hesitated, closing my eyes against an image of Isa Firth and the photographs which had so recently been destroyed. I closed my ears against the suggestion of jealousy in his tone. I'd spent my life hiding that affair of twenty years ago, but if Jonathan and I were to be together for any length of time – and I hoped we might be – then it could only be with honesty between us. I would tell him everything – eventually. But not now. For the time being he would have to trust me.

‘I think I mentioned him to you before,' I said gently. ‘I was in love with him once. He was the man who wrote
Dracula.'

Most of the characters in this book – the Sternes, the Firths, the Markways and the photographer, Jack Louvain – are fictitious and not intended to resemble real people, either past or present. By contrast, Bram Stoker, his family and friends, were very much alive in the early years of the twentieth century, and Whitby is known to have played a notable part in their lives.

Bram Stoker was a complex and secretive man, one who left few direct accounts of his life and experience. This is frustrating for the biographer, but leaves considerable scope for the imaginative writer. My interest in him sharpened considerably in recent years, and I gradually came to the belief that all the major components of his most famous novel were to be found, in his lifetime, in the little seaport of Whitby. The result is my own attempt to explain the man and that extraordinary novel,
Dracula.

This book has been a long time in preparation, and many people in Whitby who talked to me, lent me books and gave their help must have wondered whether it would ever appear. Well, here it is: a view of Whitby as Mr Stoker might have known it. My thanks to all those who gave assistance, from staff at Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, to individuals like Des Sythes and Pat Beal who were so generous with their time and information. Special thanks to Valerie and Joe Blakemore for continuing support through the difficult bits!

It remains only to say that I could not have begun to understand Mr Stoker without the work of his excellent biographers: Harry Ludlam, Daniel Farson, and Barbara Belford. Ms Belford's recent work,
Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula,
was particularly informative, as was Clive Leatherdale's
Dracula: the Novel and the Legend.
Amongst many other books consulted were:
Whitby Lore and Legend
by Shaw Jeffrey;
Forty Years in a Moorland Parish
by Rev. J.C.Atkinson;
The Streonshalh Files
by John Tindale;
Whitby
by Rosalin Barker;
A History of Whitby
by Andrew White; and
Frank Meadow Sutcliffe: Photographs,
published by the Sutcliffe Gallery, Whitby.

Ann Victoria Roberts

Whitby 1999