Thirty-one
The following morning I went into town again, this time to take my cheque to the bank. Not to turn it into cash, but to keep it safe against the day when I might need it. Knowing very little about bankers or banking, I went to Chapman’s on Low Lane. I’d heard they were Quakers, committed to fair dealing – besides, Jack Louvain banked there and I’d never heard him complain.
It was a nerve-racking exercise. With no previous experience, I had only the vaguest idea how to go about the business of the cheque, and the hushed interior with clerks on high stools made me glad of my new blouse and skirt. These gave me a veneer of respectability at least. A clerk came to the counter and peered at me from over his pince-nez. He bade me good morning and asked what he might do for me, so I handed him the note and said I wished to open an account.
He seemed to stare at it for longer than was necessary. I thought there was a moment of question or surprise, although it’s been my experience since that bank clerks and cashiers are rarely surprised by money, in whatever form it appears. Perhaps it was the fact that I was a new customer, young and female, fiddling nervously with gloves and shopping basket. He informed me that I would have to open an account first, before the bank could accept the cheque; and that I would not be able to draw against it until it had cleared.
‘Cleared?’
‘Until it has been established, miss, whether the signatory has sufficient funds in his account at...’ He peered at the cheque again. ‘Yes, at Coutts Bank.’
I felt the colour rise to my cheeks. I hadn’t thought of that! What if Bram’s open-handed generosity failed to match the truth of his situation? From what Irving had said, that seemed all too possible.
I swallowed hard and said, rather faintly, ‘Yes, I see,’ while wanting to snatch back the note and run. But there was no chance of that. The clerk had my cheque for £100 and was determined to keep it on his side of the counter. Even more alarming, he wanted to introduce me to the assistant manager, who, he said, would take down all my details for the opening of this new account.
Why bother, I felt like saying, if the cheque is worthless?
With confidence almost destroyed I had to go through what seemed a pointless rigmarole – and pay out good coin into the bargain – just to open the account. The assistant manager – Mr Richardson, a kind-eyed, quietly spoken man – asked what I thought were a lot of questions about this sum of money. Not how I’d come by it, but what I wanted to do with it once the cheque had cleared. It was rather a large sum, he said, to be left idle, and went on to suggest that I might like to consider investing part of it for higher returns.
I hesitated, wanting to respond in a positive way, yet too unsure of myself. He waited, suggesting gently that perhaps I should think about it for a while, and then we could talk later. I seized on that gratefully. Only as he saw me to the door did he remark upon my name, and ask whether I was closely related to the late Damaris Sterne of Robin Hood’s Bay.
Relieved that the ordeal was almost over, I replied at once. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘she was my grandmother.’
‘I thought so,’ he smiled. ‘I remember you when you were a small girl, visiting my mother at Bank Top. She was Rachel Sterne before she married – do you remember her?’
I froze. For a fleeting moment I had a clear picture of old Aunt Rachel, in a shiny black dress and elaborate white lace cap, wielding a stick as she ordered the servants about from her invalid chair beside the fire. She’d been a ferocious old lady who’d terrified me; I could not imagine this softly spoken, middle-aged man as her son.
My surprise must have shown, because he said: ‘Mother suffered a lot, but she always appreciated your grandmother’s visits.’
That surprised me again, since I could not imagine the old lady appreciating anything, much less the visits of a poor relation. But I thanked him anyway. Then Old Uncle Thaddeus sprang to mind, and I was alarmed at the thought of him knowing my business.
My new acquaintance – or I should say, relation – must have been adept at reading his clients’ faces. Before I could frame the words, he was assuring me of the bank’s discretion, and a level of confidentiality which equalled that of medicine and the law. By the time the interview was over, I crossed the threshold into Low Lane feeling much lighter. Only later, when I was going over the interview for the second or third time, did I dwell on the possibility of the cheque being worthless.
In bed that night I felt angry for worrying, telling myself that it was not possible to lose something I’d never possessed; but the idea of that £100, and even more, the possibility of making it grow into larger amounts, was exciting. If I could not have the security of marriage or the protection of a man who loved me – and it seemed to me then that I’d forfeited both – I told myself I’d better find my own hedge against the future.
Money was a form of protection in itself; it was also an escape route and a means towards other ends. So I fell asleep making plans, each more grandiose than the last, and all dependent on the backing and growth of that unexpected farewell gift. It stopped me thinking of the man who’d given the money, and who had really provided it.
~~~
In the clear light of day it seemed more practical to concentrate on finding some temporary work. The Penzance boats were starting to arrive, large, two-masted fishing luggers which – with the Peterhead boats a little later – came every summer to fish the great shoals of herring feeding off the coast.
Every year, from late June to early October, the Scots and Cornish boats anchored inshore during the day, and fished at night, their riding lights like glow-worms in the dark. Bobbing here and there across the horizon, they were a welcome sight, not just for the pretty view they presented offshore, but for their numbers and the trade they brought.
When they came in on Saturdays they filled the harbour, the crews shopping for supplies, slaking unquenchable thirsts in quayside taverns; and on Sundays they worshipped in local churches. In their wake they drew fisherlasses from Scotland and Northumberland to deal with the fish, these women and girls following the shoals of herring down the coast. They worked the summer from port to port, taking board and lodgings with local families.
On their heels in August came the regular holiday visitors to Whitby, train-loads of day-trippers as well as the wealthier families with retinues of servants. With holiday accommodation at a premium, I considered taking in a couple of lodgers, but was reluctant to offend Mrs Newbold by breaking some rule of occupancy. But it was a good time to go looking for work as a waitress or housemaid, so again I prepared to do the rounds of hotels and boarding-houses on the west cliff. This time I was successful in obtaining a position at a small hotel, where one of the young chambermaids had suddenly walked out. I soon discovered why – the housekeeper was a tyrant, scarcely more civil to guests than she was to staff. But I’d suffered worse, and my weeks of rest and good food had replenished both stamina and resilience.
I had the feeling it pleased this sour-faced woman to have young and pretty girls slaving over menial tasks, since she seemed determined to make the job more difficult than necessary. But if the hours were long and the rules petty, at least an aching back took my mind off a severely bruised and battered heart; and there was an added bonus in such long hours, in that I was generally too exhausted to think at the end of the day.
I would fall into bed about sunset, and rise just after five to be at work for six o’clock, when the morning rounds of cleaning, tidying and bed-making would begin. All the upstairs rooms had to be done, including corridors, lavatories and bathrooms; afternoons were devoted mainly to sorting linen, mending, and ironing, and I was free to go home by five in the evening. I earned ten shillings a week plus breakfasts and dinners. Tea I took at home.
More to the point, I had no need to break into Bram’s cheque, which cleared, thankfully, within ten days. All the ideas I’d had in the winter, when money was short, were suddenly within my grasp but, for a little while at least, my nerve wave
red. When Mr Richardson asked what I would do, I said I was not yet ready to do anything; I needed to think and plan. Approving of that, he gave me some ideas to think about. Inevitably, the ones I favoured were those to do with shipping.
Thirty-two
One morning, about half-past four it must have been, I woke to a bedroom flooded with light. Awake and alert, with my heart pounding crazily, I was suddenly aware that my plans were likely to come to nothing. In all this time I hadn’t thought of it, but I should have had my monthly visitation at least a week before Bram left.
Trying not to panic, I told myself that the shock of his departure was enough to stagger the most reliable cycle, and mine had rarely been that in recent times. During the previous winter, thanks to cold and constant hunger, I hadn’t had a show for three months. And when it did come, it came like a spring flood when the snows have melted and the moon is full – I was afraid to leave the house for a week. I told myself that the opposites of too much food and self-indulgence were bound to have similar effect, and – completely ignoring my relationship with Bram – that it was foolish to worry. But all the time it was there in the back of my mind, colouring everything I did, taking the edge off every plan I made.
Waiting, wondering, it was difficult to be sure of anything, and I could only guess at being two to three weeks overdue. At the hotel I ran up and down stairs, working myself so hard I earned a stiff smile of approval from the housekeeper. Beside myself with anxiety, and afraid to confide in anyone else, I had just decided to go looking for Bella when she turned up one evening at the cottage.
As though it were yesterday, she said sorry for missing me at the pier; and then complained that the cottage was too well hidden, it had taken her an age to find. Although she seemed determined to criticise I could tell she was impressed, especially when I suggested sitting outside in the garden.
I wondered why she’d come, what it was she wanted, but all she would say was that she had to get out of the house, and was sick of the local pubs. Sick of men and booze, I judged privately. She looked haggard, with a feverish light in her eyes which spoke of desperation and too little sleep. I had the feeling she’d not rested for a long time. Despite having so much on my mind I wanted to comfort her, offer sympathy, ask what on earth she was doing, going with men for money, when she detested men so much. Instead I found myself asking banal questions and uttering the most mundane of comments. Having put a seal on my tongue in respect of her father’s death, it was as though I’d lost the power to break it.
Eventually my banal questions led Bella to ask me about Bram and, almost before I realised, I found myself telling her I thought he’d left me with a child.
There was a horrified silence, in which she stared at me open-mouthed; and then she raged and railed, for all the world like an outraged parent. A moment later she was hugging me and kissing me and saying she was sorry. Sorry for everything, I think, but then I was sorry too.
‘You could try a half pint o’gin and a hot tub,’ she said, casting a critical eye over me. ‘It’s been known to work if you’re not too far gone. In the meantime I’ll have a word with Nan Mills – she’ll see you right, don’t you worry.’
‘In what way, though?’ I asked dubiously. Nan, who lived at the top of the Cragg, was the local midwife, renowned for her ‘herbal remedies’ for female complaints. All very well, but other, less salubrious things were also attributed to her, always in whispers, and generally behind closed doors.
‘Nay, not that!’ Bella assured me, as though she’d divined my thoughts. ‘I meant her special mixture – tastes foul,’ she added with a shudder, ‘but it’d shift an army. I know – I’ve had some. And more than once, so don’t look so gawpy.’
Foolish I might have looked; stupid I certainly felt. Things were coming out that I’d never known about Bella, that she’d never even hinted at; although from the way she’d lived perhaps I should have guessed. I found myself wondering whether the horror of recent experience had reduced all else to the level of minor transgressions, so that none of it seemed so bad any more, not even touting for custom in local pubs. But that was just one of the things I would have liked to ask. With everything bubbling at the forefront of my mind, I was almost afraid to open my mouth for fear of letting out the wrong thing.
Looking for a safe subject I asked about the family. She told me the lads were still fishing, although it was harder on their own and she didn’t know how they’d manage in the winter. Or if they’d manage at all. Douglas, the eldest, was talking about shipping as crew aboard a collier or timber ship, or maybe even finding a berth on one of these new steamships out of the Tees. He just wanted to get away, and his brother with him.
She didn’t blame them, and nor did I. Whatever they did, we both knew would be no harder than fishing, and could not be more brutal than life with Magnus Firth. The independence he’d clung to and held out like a carrot to the boys was barely more than a myth. Against the value of owning their own coble must be set the sheer precariousness of such a life, and the fact that alone, without their father, their chances of survival were even less.
At mention of Magnus there was a small silence, and then I found I couldn’t avoid the subject any longer. Clearing my throat, I asked awkwardly: ‘About your dad, Bella – what really happened that night?’
She stiffened and looked away from me, out to sea, at all the sails, large and small, between us and the horizon. Then, with a shrug, she said, ‘Well, like I told them at the inquest, he was off to meet somebody at Saltwick – smuggling, I dare say, you know what he was like. There was a storm blew up – I think he got caught in it, and either missed his way and fell, or part of the cliff collapsed. If you think about it, really, it’s the only thing that could have happened...’
It was all so plausible. ‘And did they search the cliffs?’
‘Aye, they did. But like I said to the constable, when he asked me did he have any enemies, I said my father had nowt else. And that’s true, as you well know. They’d have better asked, did he have any friends...’
Silence stretched between us. Longing for her to confide in me, tell me the truth, I asked then whether the police had suspected anything remotely untoward. Whether in spite of the verdict they’d thought Magnus’s death had been anything other than accidental.
She turned to me and moved her lips in what was more a grimace than a smile. ‘Nay, Damsy, I don’t think so.’
For a moment – just for a fleeting moment – I almost said: ‘You were lucky then, weren’t you?’ But even as the words were forming on my lips I felt them stiffen into silence. She didn’t want to tell me. And if she knew that I knew, was there not a possibility that she might see me as a threat? I told myself that it was an unworthy thought, but it was there, even so.
~~~
Bella brought gin for me next day, which was my afternoon off, and together we heated the water and prepared the bath. For at least two hours that evening I soaked and sweated and protested as Bella kept the heat up and the gin flowing. Red as a boiled lobster and as maudlin as Cousin Martha at her worst, I was finally allowed out, weak and dizzy, to stagger to my bed. The night passed in a drunken haze of spinning lamps and window frames, and I remember being horribly sick. Bella stayed the night and I was vaguely aware of her in the bed beside me, but that was all. Nothing happened, except I had a monstrous hangover next morning, and spent most of the day in the outside privy.
Only after I’d recovered from that foolishness did I start to think more clearly. If I really was carrying Bram’s child – and that doom-laden thought was beginning to outweigh everything else – then it was time to start making plans. Bella’s confident assertions about gin and herbal mixtures made me realise that other people’s advice was not always a substitute for good sense, and for too long I had not been utilising mine.
As I discarded false hope, it seemed my choices were bleak. Abandoned, with a child to care for, it would be all too easy to fall back on the Firths, sliding into
the habit of joining Bella in places like the Neptune and the Three Snakes as she touted for business. If that idea made me flinch, I turned abruptly from the thought of leaving any child of mine with the likes of Cousin Martha, to be dosed with gin every time the poor mite cried. That seemed infinitely worse. The best I could do would be to swallow my pride and throw myself on Bram’s generosity, and trust that he would be willing to continue his support.
It was a gamble, but the alternatives were far riskier. There was no point in being hasty. As he’d said I could, I wrote to him at the Lyceum, not to mention my condition but to thank him for the cheque, which I assured him was now safely invested at the bank. He’d always said that he took his holidays in August, and I ventured to suggest that he might spare me a day or two to talk things over. It was important, I wrote, and I needed a quick reply – a simple yes, or no, would do.
He would be busy, I said to myself as July wore on, as I hurried home each day to look for his reply. I even took to asking Mrs Newbold, when we met, whether any letters for me had been delivered to the farm; but that was a dangerous exercise, as she was already looking on me with suspicion in her eyes. At the end of the month she started reminding me that the rent had barely four weeks left to run, and, when I said loftily that I would continue to pay if she would but advise me of the sum required, she snapped back that the agreement had been with the London gentleman, Mr Stoker. If he required the cottage for another month or more, then that would be acceptable, but the owners would not thank her, Mrs Newbold, for letting out their property to some chit of a girl who was no better than she should be.
Moon Rising Page 24
