For both of us the crisis came quickly, in great, heaving gasps of release. He held me fast, face hidden in my hair, body locked to mine, his reaction deep but wordless, while I seemed to be spinning endlessly in a darkened, star-studded world. Gradually, by the rhythm of his breathing, I knew he was calmer, and just as gradually I was restored to earth.
In a daze of dreams, I hardly knew what was real and what imagined. He was alive and well, I could feel him, taste his salt on my lips, recognise the scent of his body, but I could scarce believe he was by my side. Eventually, I opened my eyes to find him gazing at me, and, with a smile, I raised my hand to smooth the frown away.
‘Jonathan Markway,’ I said, on a deep, indrawn breath of satisfaction, ‘you came back...’
He traced the line of my cheek and brow, pushing back wild tendrils of hair. ‘Damsy Sterne,’ he whispered, ‘when I had your letter, I couldn’t stay away...’
But still, the frown stayed, the darkness in his eyes did not disappear. After a little while, he put some space between us and said carefully, ‘This morning, Damsy, on the east cliff, you were with a man. Who was he?’
I knew then that Jonathan was the man I’d noticed, watching from the shadows. As I began to protest he reached out to place a finger over my mouth. ‘I wasn’t spying, I promise you – at least, not intentionally.
‘You see, I went to your house in London, only to find you’d gone to Whitby. I came on by train, but it was late when I arrived, so I went straight to my brother’s. This morning, early, I called at the Royal, on the off-chance you might be staying there, but you’d already gone out and no one knew where. I couldn’t believe the ill-luck – I was so angry I just walked, back through town and up to the east cliff. But as I came through the churchyard, there you were, arm in arm with a man -’
‘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.’
Author’s Note
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
Moon Rising Page 40
