Moon Rising (10 page)

I was saying only what I believed, what seemed so obvious to me, but Bella hugged me tight with gratitude. She was trembling too, with cold or anxiety, I could not be sure which. I pulled up the blankets around her shoulders and held her close.

‘But,' she whispered hesitantly, ‘I let him do things to me, don't you see? I shouldn't, should I? And it started just like this afternoon. Him being nice as ninepence, sitting me on his knee, giving me a cuddle, telling me I was his favourite. And I believed him, I thought he must love me best if he wanted to do things like that. But the trouble is,' Bella added, her voice deepening with pain, ‘I could only be best so long as I did what he wanted. And when I wanted it to stop, he wanted to punish me. So I kept on, all these years – and now -' she broke off, swallowing hard, ‘now he's started on Lizzie. Poor little Lizzie. That's why I saw red. I'm sorry.'

The images in my mind were an assault in themselves. I shuddered and hugged her closer. ‘There's no need to be sorry. How could you help it?'

‘I didn't want you to know,' she whispered brokenly. ‘That's why I'm sorry. It's disgusting – he's disgusting.'

‘Yes, he is,' I agreed, ‘but it's not your fault. You were just a child, like Lizzie – what could you do?'

It was a rhetorical question but Bella shook her head violently. ‘I don't know –
I
don't know –
and that's God's truth. But I should have done something – I knew it was wrong, I've always known, but I went along with it, I let him do things. And now – oh, God!' She turned and clung to me, sobbing brokenly. ‘I wanted to kill him, Damsy – this afternoon, when I saw him with Lizzie, I wanted to
kill
him...'

‘You were angry,' I said soothingly, hoping I was saying the right thing. ‘In your place I'd have felt the same way.' Picturing his brutality, I shivered. I'd always been wary of him, but this new knowledge was frightening, it opened up areas of wickedness and depravity I'd never suspected, and made me suddenly suspicious of all men.

~~~

Bella and I generally spent a lot of time together during the day, but after that incident in the kitchen she began to spend nights in my room as well. It was awkward, because my bed was narrow, not big enough for two, and – rather against my better judgement – we swapped my bed for her wider one. She said she felt safer with me, that we were cosy together in her little room under the eaves, and it's true we were; but I'd become used to being on my own, and Bella invaded my privacy. I liked some time to read, straining my eyes with a candle sputtering away on a chair by the bed; it was my pleasure at the end of a long, cold day.

As with many other things, the essence of this pleasure was not discovered until it had become a rarity. I was very fond of Bella, and had long admired her spirit and toughness, but after a while – after the kitchen incident, that is – I began to wonder whether it was no more than a surface disguise. She was still tough enough on the outside, in everyday life, but with me she became another Bella, more dependent somehow, needing my reassurance and advice on everything. She would hold my hand or link arms whenever we went out, and the nights spent together became more usual than otherwise. To begin with it was flattering. I felt I was helping her, I was her backbone, her support; we stood together against the icy winds of fate. If I was uneasy about recent developments then I told myself not to be selfish, Bella needed me.

The hugs and squeezes of friendship became warmer, in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. One night, when she had been telling me how much she disliked men and their kisses – which, apart from my experience with Mr Stoker, I could understand – we became quite silly in demonstrating to each other how we would like to be kissed. It was fun at first, and we could hardly pucker our lips for giggling; then it became warmer, a little more serious, a little more
just so,
with a teasing of lips and teeth and tongue that roused the blood more, I think, than either of us intended. We pressed against each other and, with closed eyes and burning lips, travelled the sensual journey from tenderness to passion. As the experiment went on, it was like being in an exquisitely drugged state, where all rational thought has ceased to be. In the midst of some inner fantasy, I was being kissed and caressed to oblivion by a delightful but faceless other being, so completely transported that none of the usual barriers came into play. I let myself go, floating on outstretched wings until I reached some extraordinary peak of sensation, and with a delightful shudder came plummeting down to earth.

If it was intensely pleasurable, it was also strangely shocking. There was a sense of aloneness afterwards which had me clinging to Bella as though to a lifeline, while she clung and quivered in return. But it was not until later that it started to bother me, when it happened again, and was no longer such a spontaneous expression of comfort or joy. In the days that followed I became seized with severe unease, not to say guilt, at the realisation of what we had done. I was fond of Bella, she was my dearest friend, but I did not look on her with desire in my heart; and although she was beautiful and I could acknowledge that with no more than a touch of envy, the thought of her did not excite me.

Unfortunately, neither did the sight of any man in Whitby, and for a while I worried about what was happening to me. Then, as fate would have it, something occurred to take my mind off Bella. Towards the end of January I met Jonathan Markway crossing the bridge.

I had been avoiding Southgate for months. Ever since my dismissal, that stretch opposite the boatyards, where the Markways had their ship-chandlery, had been forbidden territory.

A year ago, I'd been congratulating myself on being accepted for the position of general maid in a household where they also employed a cook and a daily woman. It was, after all, only a short time after my grandmother's funeral in Bay, when everything had been sold and the house given up, and I was urgently in need of employment. I was looking for a live-in position, but most of the local vacancies were daily, and the agency ones were all too far away for my liking. Old Uncle Thaddeus was still being kind to me then, and, knowing I was reluctant to leave the area, he recommended me to the Markways.

He'd known the family as business acquaintances for decades, but told me little about Mrs Markway, beyond the fact that the chandlery had belonged to her father and that she was the real business head, the one to be reckoned with. She spent much of her time in the shop, while her husband and elder son dealt mostly with the warehouse. The younger son, Jonathan, was serving an apprenticeship at sea.

He would have been about nineteen then, and he was at home the day I went to be interviewed. We came face to face suddenly, just as his mother was showing me the house. He was shy, I could tell by the way he looked at me and then as quickly glanced away. Yet in that first sweep of his dark eyes he seemed to absorb every detail of my appearance, from my red hair to the good black dress I was wearing. Awareness brought warmth to my cheeks and I was glad Mrs Markway had her back to us, her attention on the layout of the upper rooms and the work I would have to do.

In the light of what happened later, I dare say I should have paid more attention to that momentary alarm, but I was young then and thought myself invulnerable. And I should have listened to Cook, who tried her best to warn me about Mrs Markway, a woman who doted on her sons. She was determined to have the best for them, and the best, in her opinion, was to be found by her side, running the family business and making money. Jonathan might have rebelled and gone off to sea, but then, for Mrs Markway, nothing less than his own command would do, and for that he would have to apply himself to book-work as well as the more practical aspects of seamanship. Young women were not part of the plan – especially not servant girls, not even those with good family connections.

I was too much aware of my position to want to dispute that. Of the two sons, Dick was pleasant enough, a slow-moving and determined young man, dependable where the chandlery was concerned, but not my sort at all. As for Jonathan, he was already apprenticed to the sea, and, as I said pertly to Cook when she warned me, I'd already sworn on my mother's grave that I wouldn't marry a seafarer. She said I'd soon change my mind when I discovered they were the only ones available in Whitby.

I paid no attention to that, and generally tried to keep clear of the boys. But for all my fine words, and despite my prejudices, I couldn't help but find Jonathan attractive. He was dark and graceful, with his father's Cornish-Breton looks, and a similar taciturnity of manner. For a long time our exchanges were barely more than civilities, but one day I was bold enough ask about the books on his shelf, classic novels beside a treatise on navigation, a set of mathematical tables and volumes on rigging and ship stability.

He knew I came from a seafaring family, and, as I explained, at home in Bay books had been important. My father had left a complete set of the Waverley Novels – all of which I'd struggled to read since I was old enough to understand – and Grandmother had possessed some ancient histories which had been in the family for generations. Not even Old Uncle Thaddeus could persuade her to part with those. While she lived, if he wanted to borrow the histories, he had to pay a fee for the privilege, and they had to be returned within the month. He grumbled, but he paid up and respected her for it. I'm not sure that he admired me so much for selling them to him.

That conversation broke the ice, and afterwards Jonathan and I often talked. He lent me his books and I lent him those favourites of mine that I'd managed to keep. And when I evinced an interest in his studies, he was happy to show off a little, explaining the finer points of sail against the coarser advantages of the new steamships, and his desire to understand and master both. For the time being, he said, pointing out his ship at her winter moorings on the Bell Shoal, he was pleased to be aboard a lively brigantine, as fast and seaworthy as any man might desire. I smiled at his description, and, whenever he was aboard during the day, would steal a minute or two by the upstairs window, seeking out the
Lillian
amongst a score of others, trying to pinpoint Jonathan amongst the shipwrights and carpenters working aloft or on deck. Just a glimpse of him could cheer the day's humdrum tasks for me, which should have told me much about my feelings. I found it was harder to ignore the tension between us whenever we happened to be alone.

That last evening, he was lingering in the yard as I came out of the kitchen for a breath of air. It was my habit before going up to the cramped quarters I shared with Cook, a moment of peace and quiet before bed. Instinctively, as he approached, I moved into deeper shadow. Lamps were still lit, and with windows on every side there was little chance of our meeting being entirely unobserved.

He said he would be leaving early the next morning, and wanted to say goodbye while we had this chance to be alone. A rush of innocent delight brought a blush to my cheeks, and I was glad of the darkness. But then the full import of his words reached me and suddenly I was tongue-tied; my smile became an anxious frown as I struggled for a reply.

‘I'll miss you,' he said earnestly; and: ‘I'll miss you, too,' I whispered at last, aware that the words were true. Suddenly, I had to remind myself of all my firm intentions in order not to give way to foolishness.

Unaware of my conflict, he went on: ‘I just wanted to say, if you want to borrow any of my books while I'm gone – the novels, I mean – then it's all right. I know you like to read. I'll mention it to my mother.'

‘Thank you,' I managed, while my throat felt close to choking.

‘Take whichever ones you want...'

I promised I would, all the time wanting to hold him, not his books. But then, leaning closer, he whispered: ‘I hope you're still here when I come back...' He was only a little taller than I, and, for one panic-stricken moment, as his eyes caught the lamplight, I thought he was about to kiss me. Instead he reached for my hand, and the lightness of his touch travelled through me like a shock.

‘I expect it'll be near Christmas,' he added gently, but at the time we were barely into March and that reminder was all I needed to bring me to my senses. ‘Well, then,' I responded breathlessly, jerking my hand free, ‘I'll pray for good weather and a safe return. Now, we'd better go indoors, before your mother wonders what we're up to out here.'

I ran upstairs after that, to stand rigidly by the window until I heard Cook's footsteps, when I slipped into bed and turned my face to the wall. Early next morning, watching Jonathan leave, I was acutely aware that I'd have given anything to be going with him, to be climbing into the boat, crossing that open stretch of water and boarding the brigantine waiting for the tide...

If Mrs Markway seemed remarkably cool after that, I tried not to feel that her ill-temper was directed solely at me. It lasted for several weeks, until the day she surprised me leaving Jonathan's room with one of his books in my hand. I'd returned
Gulliver's Travels
and was borrowing
Tristram Shandy,
but beside my bed was another volume, an anthology of verse that I'd been reading for some time.

Mrs Markway took one look and accused me of stealing the books. My protests only made things worse. According to her I was wicked, a liar and a thief; nothing I could say would deflect her. Indeed, at every mention of Jonathan's name she became more incensed and, when Cook spoke up for me, Mrs Markway flew into a rage and threatened to sack her too. With her jowls quivering, she told me to pack my things at once and leave – she would not have me in the house a moment longer. She even examined every single one of my own books, to be sure, she said, that none of them had been stolen from her son and secreted away.