Moon Rising

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  My trailing limbs touched bottom not far from the Saloon. Keeping just within my own depth I summoned enough reserves to paddle my way along the beach until I was nearer the trestle bridge, perhaps two or three hundred yards, but the gap between sea and cliff had widened considerably. Desperate, incoherent, I swore and cursed with every rasping breath. Where was Bram, for God’s sake? A man with the Royal Humane Society’s medal for lifesaving should have been out on the beach looking for me, ready to summon the lifeboat. Where was he? Did he not care at all? Was everything a sham?

  When I had the sense to give in and finally allowed myself to roll ashore, I sloshed and scraped amongst sand and shells, barely able to lift my body out of the foam. Anger gave me the impetus to crawl the intervening distance to my clothes. Shivering with cold and shock, I dragged on my dress, covered myself with the shawl, and lay down to recover. As my teeth chattered, I thought I’d never be warm again.

  My mind was numb. I felt myself drifting, only to be roused by another bout of shivering. The whistle of the early morning train startled me, and with its rumbling, rattling progress across the narrow ravine, I knew I had to get to my feet, start walking.

  I felt like a castaway, my skin tight with salt and my throat parched. My thoughts, which had of necessity been concerned with survival, turned all too soon to this present disaster. Despite the shame, I was grieved to tears by the loss of something precious. I’d loved him, really loved him. There’d been no need to explain myself since he seemed always to accept me just as I was. And he was easy with me, even though I didn’t always understand him. Why did he have to spoil it? Together, we’d enjoyed so much; love as much as luxury; fun and excitement as well as the unexpected pleasures of domesticity. But I should have known, I told myself bitterly, that good fortune like that was never destined to be mine, especially when it involved another woman’s husband.

  And yet on the heels of bitterness came the inevitable protest, the feeling that life was being grossly unfair, that surely I deserved some kind of happiness? And, if only I tried hard enough, it could be mine. Could it be with Bram, though? Did I want it to be with a man who was not only married, but who used me in such a way?

  I wasn’t sure. Suddenly I wasn’t sure about anything: about his love for me or my love for him, whether he enjoyed inflicting pain, or was just excited by the idea of blood, by its colour and taste and the living flesh from which it sprang. If I was honest with myself, he frightened me at times, causing pain and disgust as well as pleasure. I recoiled from thinking what else he might do if we stayed together. All the same, I was even more afraid of what might happen to me if we parted.

  My sensible self said it would be wise to talk to him, not be too impulsive. I didn’t want to jump again from the frying pan into the fire. So with the sense that I’d made a very grown-up decision, I brushed the sand off my skin and tried to untangle my hair, sticky with salt and grit like skeins of drying seaweed.

  Fresh water loomed large on my list of immediate desires, to drink first, and then to wash in; and when my hair was clean and curling in the sun like soft red feathers, Bram would sit with me in the garden to brush it dry. He loved my hair, loved its luxuriant length and weight, loved to coil it around his fingers, pin it up, pull it down, wrap it sensuously around my neck; with his mouth against my skin he would tell me how very beautiful I was, how much he needed my love and understanding, how he would willingly promise me anything, if only I would stay...

  ~~~

  Blind to all else, and thoroughly enraptured by my own imaginings, I saw nothing until I entered the garden, until I was faced by a strange-looking man with a vast, domed forehead and long, auburn hair. He was very thin and exceedingly well dressed. In his skeletal fingers he held a yellow silk handkerchief, one that might have been perfumed, since he shook it at me rather like someone fending off an unwashed beggar.

  ‘No, you can’t go in,’ he said peremptorily. His arm, barring the entrance, tried to turn me away.

  ‘But,’ I protested, ‘I live here!’ Although I stood my ground, alarm and anger made me shrill. ‘Who are you? Where’s Bram?’ I tried to push past him, to get to the window, but the thin man with the frighteningly dark eyes was stronger than he looked. ‘What’s happened – where is he? Bram!’

  There was movement within, and voices, Bram’s raised as he wrenched open the door. ‘For heaven’s sake, Tom, let her in!’

  I wanted to fly into his arms, but something held me back. He reached for me and whispered, ‘Where in God’s name have you been? I was worried.’

  Worried? Was that all? ‘Not enough,’ I said with bitter reproach, ‘to come looking for me!’

  His face contorted with sudden anger. Turning away, he glanced back over his shoulder into the shadowy kitchen, and I became aware then of another presence, a dark shape moving in my direction, with pale hands and patrician features. An unaccountable but chilling impression of power set me trembling again, and all at once I knew that just a short while ago I had been very close to drowning. The energy of my walk home vanished, leaving the deep cold of the sea in my bones.

  In a silent plea for warmth and comfort, I reached out, grasped his arm. A voice I barely recognised as my own said feebly: ‘I went down to the beach – to swim...’

  ‘So I see,’ he acknowledged, giving me no chance to explain. He touched my hair with a certain dismay, which ordinarily, between the two of us, would not have mattered. But in front of these people – these friends of his with their fine clothes and perfumed handkerchiefs – the gesture held an intimation of criticism, of shame at my appearance. It cut deep and, as I drew back, he said with quick apology, ‘I’m glad, though, to see you safe. I was about to go looking for you when Tom and Irving turned up. Of all people – and at such an unearthly hour!’

  I could see then that he was agitated, and the nerve which had been a feature of the last few days was again jumping beneath his eye.

  Tom – Thomas Hall Caine – forced a smile to his small mouth as Bram took my arm and led me indoors. He presented me to the shadowy presence within, a tall figure who turned slowly, and with maximum effect, to reveal shrewd, deep-set eyes and a thin smile that seemed to assess everything about me in one unhurried glance.

  I had time, later, to reflect on his appearance, which impressed itself upon me like a photograph. Dark, greying hair worn long; a black frock coat and striped trousers which would not have been amiss at Morning Service. The silk bow and richly embroidered waistcoat were perhaps too flamboyant for Whitby in the forenoon, but Henry Irving was famous as royalty and could wear whatever he pleased – even the togs of a fisherman, if he should be so inclined – and still be thought no more than eccentric.

  I have never been more aware of standing at a disadvantage. When meeting total strangers, both before and since, I have been brave, foolhardy, sometimes even brazen; I’ve been cowed, shamed and furious, but never have I been so ill-equipped to meet a foe.

  And he was a foe, no mistake about that. A man who could look me over in such extremity, and dismiss me with no more than a slightly raised eyebrow of surprise, was never likely to be on my side. That he regarded me as a member of the serving classes, and thus beneath notice, was obvious. It struck me afterwards that had I been dressed as a fisherlass and standing on the pier, then at least I would have been accorded some status as an object of interest; but as a skinny, scuffed, untidy kitchen maid I was apparently less than nothing in his eyes.

  The truly infuriating thing, however, was that he had so little depth of sympathy with Bram, who was, after all, supposed to be his friend as well as a valued colleague. He was not willing even to scratch the surface of this situation to discover what was going on, or why it had come about. Conversely, my own intuition was so heightened, I felt the conflicting power of unspoken agreements and manipulations, like the tug of currents and the battering of waves. But, having survived the earlier battle, I was aware that I was not best placed to win this infinitely more dan
gerous one.

  Twenty-seven

  It was clear that Irving was irritated by my interruption. To Bram’s credit, in that moment he displayed more concern for me than I expected. My dishevelled appearance, together with my terse explanation, had evidently registered. With a brief apology he ushered me through to the bedroom and closed the door.

  At once I turned to him, babbling incoherently about the sea and the Saloon, about my nakedness and fear of drowning, about the awfulness of coming back to find his friends at the cottage, ready to kidnap him back to London. Holding me tight, he murmured soothingly and told me not to worry, he was going nowhere.

  But if I looked exhausted and dishevelled, so did he. His hair and beard, once so short and well groomed, had been neglected recently, giving him a rakish appearance which had increased considerably after a sleepless night. He was wearing a jacket but had evidently dressed quickly since he was a minus a collar and tie. In fact he was so far from being himself I was afraid of what might yet be agreed, and let him go reluctantly.

  A few minutes later he returned with a glass of brandy and water, and then disappeared again while I drank it. Perched on the edge of the bed while forcing down that revolting combination, I realised he’d dropped something: a letter written in violet ink on pale yellow notepaper.

  It was expensive and scented – jasmine, I think – and closely written on both sides in a neat, upright hand. My nose wrinkled suspiciously at the scent, but my elation at the signature was short-lived, since it was only one page of a letter from Florence, and what there was made me curl with embarrassment.

  On a previous page, she must have been accusing him of taking her away from home and family in order to bring her to London – at the point, I judged, when Irving had bought the lease on the Lyceum, and suddenly offered Bram a job.

  ‘We did not even have a honeymoon,’ Florence wrote. ‘Instead, you gave all your time and attention to your lord and master, abandoning me in the depths of winter, to fend for myself in London. And I was expecting your child! What did you care whether I was frightened or homesick or feeling wretched? You were never there!’

  Even allowing for some exaggeration, there was a horrible ring of truth to that, and I found myself feeling sorry for that girl – no older than myself – who had been lonely and friendless in a strange city. But Florence had not gone under. Over the years she’d learned to survive, and it seemed there had been some consolation in their social connections. ‘I’ve learned to settle for what I have,’ she went on: ‘a comfortable home in which to entertain, interesting friends, and a moderately satisfying life of my own . . .’

  She made it clear that she would cling by tooth and nail to what she had. Florence did not see why it should be disrupted, why she should be made to suffer in order that Bram might indulge a whim. If he wanted to write, let him write at home – she might even see more of him – and if he must have a mistress to indulge his carnal tastes, why not in Kensington? All she asked was that he observe the conventions.

  Carnal tastes! I might have pulled a face at that the other day, but not now. Instead, I found myself wondering at the truth behind their marriage. He said she refused him – well, if that was true, why did she? And if he wouldn’t force her, then why would he force me? Pondering the answer to that, I was distracted by the men’s voices, Bram’s unmistakable tones deeper and heavier than usual, Hall Caine’s lightly accented, and, dominating both, Irving’s rich, well-modulated voice, busy propounding who-knows-what irrefutable solution to the present dilemma.

  I longed to know what they were saying, but my skin was itching and prickling with salt. Bram had brought in some water, so I stripped off to sponge myself clean from top to toe, trying not to wince at the bruises. There was little I could do about my hair, so I swept it up with combs, donning a skirt and blouse that I hoped was more in line with the Sternes of Robin Hood’s Bay than the half-drowned kitchen wench who had greeted them earlier. Peering in the glass, noting the blue-grey shadows under my eyes, I dusted my face with powder, my lips and cheeks with a hint of rouge, and was pleased with the effect. I was intending to surprise them all by marching into the kitchen, when, with a gust of wind, I heard the outer door open and close, and the heavy murmur of men’s voices ceased.

  Peering between the curtains, I saw Hall Caine leaving, but as I furrowed my brow, conversation in the kitchen resumed. Then I heard my name mentioned, and despite the old adage about eavesdroppers never hearing good of themselves, I paused at that with my hand on the iron sneck. The old door had a triangle of ventilation holes at eye level, and from there I had a good view of the room beyond, of Bram with his back to me, seated beside his makeshift desk, and Irving with hands locked behind him, standing before the fire.

  From the silence and Irving’s poised, predatory stance, I gathered that questions had been asked and he was waiting for answers. With the outer door shut there wasn’t much light at that end of the kitchen, and he looked pale and bloodless in the shadows, a black and white figure shifting slightly against the cast-iron range and glowing coals behind. Yet his presence filled the room. If this man were behind me at Cock Mill, I thought with a shiver, and happened to grasp my arm, I’d be looking for the marks of a cloven hoof...

  By contrast, Bram was sunk in gloom, chin in hand, elbow on the desk. When he spoke I could feel his misery. ‘I know, I know,’ he said at last. ‘I do understand – I just don’t know what you want me to say.’

  ‘But surely,’ Irving intoned, ‘you must have thought of these things?’

  ‘Of course. The problem is, I’ve given my promise.’

  ‘And are you not obliged, my dear chap, to honour other promises previously given?’ The voice was velvet, but the eyes probed and devoured. ‘Hmm? To me, if you recall – not to mention to poor dear Florence, who is beside herself with anxiety.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Irving, let’s leave Florence out of this, shall we? It’s no use invoking her name, when you know as well as I do that you and she have been at daggers drawn ever since I brought her to England as my bride!’

  In spite of what I’d just read, the depth of Bram’s bitterness shook me; but I was glad to see that Irving had the grace to look discomfited. He turned away slightly, and, as he thought himself unobserved, I could see how carefully he watched and judged his quarry, how he shifted viewpoint but remained in charge; above all, how he tempered his performance to suit the situation. Now, turning back, he looked hurt, and managed to sound even more so.

  ‘My dear chap, please understand that Florence and I drew up terms and came to truce long ago. She and I have learned to respect each other, just as we now respect each other’s needs, and the time you spend with each of us.’

  It was said simply and reasonably, as though they had every right to divide him up between them. Furious at that, I felt my fists curl and had to turn away. There was a rumble of disagreement from Bram; when I looked again he had abandoned the safety of his desk and was running fingers through his hair in a distraught kind of way. ‘Florence has her own life,’ he said curtly, ‘as you well know. She hardly needs me, except as part of the scenery.’

  ‘Well, I beg to disagree there,’ Irving said, with what seemed to me his first ounce of real sincerity. ‘She says she loves you, and in that respect I believe her... I know she can be difficult, Bram, but she is a woman, after all, and which of us can begin to understand the workings of a woman’s mind?’ He shook his head, and for the first time looked away, into the darker recesses of the kitchen. ‘You’re lucky, you know – at least your Florence has learned to be accommodating. In my opinion, most of them are destructively and certifiably mad. Look at Tom, for goodness’ sake! Rossetti I was almost able to understand, but this – this child he’s involved with now. Blackmailing him, for heaven’s sake, at the age of thirteen!’

  The great actor paced the width of the hearth, looking genuinely bemused. ‘What is it about young girls, Bram? One can hardly call it innocence when they�
�re up to sordid little tricks like that!’

  I was still trying to work out what he meant about Hall Caine and blackmail, when he paused to look at Bram again. ‘And this one,’ he said quietly, ‘that you’re involved with – is she blackmailing you?’

  For a solitary moment which seemed to stretch on and on, I felt my life was suspended. Even the blood paused in my veins, only to pound afresh with Bram’s indignant denial. I fell back against the wall, barely able to hold myself up.

  A scatter of rain against the window brought me to my senses; when the brief flurry passed I opened the casement, gulping at the damp, chilly air. How could this man, knowing nothing, suspect such a thing of me? I felt like a child, wounded, ignorant and helpless, and wanted to hurt him in return. I had visions of abandoning him on the cliffs at dark of the moon, or far out at sea in a small boat; but Bram always spoke of Irving’s enormous nerve and courage... Anyway, I found it daunting enough to think of him travelling all those miles – apparently overnight and presumably after a performance on stage in London – simply to see Bram face to face. That spoke of great stamina and determination. And friendship? But Hall Caine – why had he come? As Florence’s emissary, I imagined, although I wouldn’t have trusted a man with eyes like that. But perhaps she had no idea about the thirteen-year-old blackmailer? No doubt ladies were protected from such unsavoury details.