Moon Rising

by Ann Victoria Roberts

  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.

  Thirty-seven

  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 foll
owing 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.

  There was also a sense of satisfaction for me, in that I had travelled with one cargo, seen another growing in the great forests of northern Europe, and yet another – wheat – beginning to ripen before our eyes as we reached the great delta where the Danube entered the Black Sea.

  If nothing else, our journey had been one of enlightenment. Henry often said, drily, that it had been a trial akin to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress; but by the time we reached Constantinople his endurance was wearing thin. He managed to persuade me to abandon cargo ships in favour of something more conventional, and we transferred to a hotel for several days of sightseeing before picking up a passenger steamer to take us on to Piraeus and the ancient city of Athens.

  After all our privations – and we had endured many in the previous six weeks – it was good to have some basic comforts. Henry, who had been stoical, was delighted to play the tourist, and so thankful to be in acceptable circumstances again, he was ready to give me the moon had I asked for it. All I wanted was the chance to work for him – which was perhaps a shade more difficult – but to my surprise he was even willing to grant me that. As a consequence we were both immensely happy, drawn closer by our shared experiences. Reluctant to let go, we took another month to get home.

  ~~~

  Henry may well have believed that I would not work for long, because either pregnancy or boredom would intervene, but I was so pleased with myself, so full of satisfaction at all we’d overcome and managed to achieve, I found it hard to believe anything could dent my happiness, let alone puncture it. We had agreed on where I would work, how many hours, and what I would do, and every morning we set off to Henry’s office in the city.

  Most of his work was done elsewhere, either at the Baltic Exchange or in meeting other brokers and agents at various hostelries and coffee-houses nearby. The City being such a male preserve, that was perhaps the most taxing part. The public houses were not exclusive clubs, but the men who frequented them liked to think they were. To begin with, my appearance – albeit in sober grey or brown – shocked them, and that first week I found myself so uncomfortable that if I’d been less determined I would have surely given up.

  I kept telling myself that working on the fish market was worse, that a woman who had sailed on a Whitby collier, and travelled all the way through eastern Europe, ought not to be afraid of civilised men in an English city. But some were extremely hostile. Wherever I went I was either stared at or pointedly ignored, while the men to whom I was introduced talked at me or around me, sat in silence or made some excuse to stand up and move away. At first, Henry was embarrassed too, but, having made a bargain in Constantinople, he was determined to stick by it.

  There were one or two seriously unpleasant moments, in which Henry was cut dead by men he’d regarded as friends, but at last the situation settled down enough for me to be accepted as one of Leadenhall Street’s minor eccentricities. I could not enter the Exchange, of course, because I was not a member, but I was able to involve myself in most other aspects of the business of buying and selling. New ships, old ships, cargo space and cargoes.

  If the Addisons were surprised by my addition to the London office, old Mrs Addison was delighted. She wrote a glowing letter to Henry, praising his shrewdness and pioneering spirit, which brought forth a wry smile; but as I settled down he became happier and, as I began to pull my weight, I think he even started to be proud of me. His praise, reluctant at first, was genuine, and that for me was the very pinnacle of satisfaction. I had proved myself to him. I felt then that I could go on to prove myself to his contemporaries.

  That was when I received my first communication from Isa Firth.

  Thirty-eight

  Mystified by the handwriting, which was so much more precise than Bella’s unformed scrawl, and far less elegant than Mr Richardson’s, I wondered who else would write to me from Whitby. Inside was a letter, folded around an unmounted photograph. I didn’t need to peer too closely at the couple in the centre of the picture, the naked man and woman making love amongst the rocks, to know who they were. After the first second of shock I even knew where it had been taken.

  I slipped it straight back into the envelope, as though hiding the evidence would obliterate it. Thankfully I was breakfasting alone that morning, but even so it was a while before the panic subsided, I dared not read the note, nor examine the photograph, in case someone came into the room. Like a criminal I slipped upstairs to be alone, but not before taking a magnifying glass from the study.

  Even without the glass I could recognise my own face quite clearly, catching the light from the rising sun. With my head thrown back, arms clinging to my lover, legs hooked around his naked haunches, it seemed I was urging him on to greater endeavours – which may well have been the case. With the glass, however, details were even more distinct – our clothes on the rocks, the remains of a picnic, the foam of the incoming tide – all somehow suggesting other hungers, other surges. What could not be seen, because his head was turned away, was the face of the man so obviously pleasuring me, but his back was beautifully defined from head to heel, he was almost moving in that captured moment, muscles rippling in the low, revealing light.

  It was a shockingly beautiful picture, so good it might have been posed. Except I knew how natural it was, how stolen, how long the photographer must have watched and waited amongst the rocks at Saltwick Bay before he pressed the shutter.

  And that was when I had to rush to the wash-stand, in order to vomit my shock and disgust. It was a while before I stopped shaking, before I could be sure the nausea was over. I sponged my face with water from the ewer, and sat down by the window to read what was written.

  Isa Firth. Her signature was so clear it was as though she stood before me. Bile rose again but with an effort I quelled it, forced myself to take in her words.

  Cutting aside the fact that she and I had never had anything of any moment to say to each other, that letter must have been the chattiest blackmail note ever written. She must really have enjoyed conveying the bad news; I even sensed a relish to the bitterness that came off t
he page.

  News, tone, content, were all shocking. One blow came hard upon another until I hardly knew what to do, what to think.

  Jack Louvain was dead.

  I could barely take this in, and had to read the details over and over again. A nasty accident on the cliffs at Upgang – Jack had slipped and broken his leg. The leg refused to set properly, which meant it had to be amputated – but then the wound wouldn’t heal, gangrene had set in. Despite several operations and a long stay in hospital, Jack had died a month ago.

  Isa had apparently been housekeeping for him for some time, as well as working in the shop, and in the course of sorting his possessions had come across some very interesting photographs. Ones Mr Louvain seemed not to have published. She felt it was a shame to leave them languishing in a drawer, as she was having to find money to erect a suitable stone to his memory. As I’d been such a friend of his, she thought I might like to buy this photograph of myself, and so help contribute to keeping his memory alive...

  Jack had taken it?

  No, I refused to believe it. How could he? Why would he?

  And yet he must have done. He had. My initial reaction was that the death and suffering of a Peeping Tom were well deserved. But hard on the heels of that came disbelief, a conviction that none of it was true, bar Isa Firth’s poking and prying, and her wicked desire to stir up the past and ruin my life. But then grief for an old friend overtook me; Jack wasn’t old enough to die, he couldn’t be dead in such a terrible way, he –

  But he was, he had to be – Isa wouldn’t, couldn’t, make up something like that, it was too easy to check. Anyway, his death, true or not, was incidental to the facts, and the facts were that Isa Firth had somehow found prints of Bram and me making love one early morning at Saltwick Bay during that summer of ’86.