by Jane Rogers
After we had changed our travelling clothes and refreshed ourselves with a good meal, Wroe held a short meeting in the Independent chapel (lent by them on special request, and about half full with Israelite members). The Whitby Israelites wish to increase their numbers and build a hall of their own, and to this end Wroe was to speak next day in the old market place, and in the small neighbouring communities of Sandsend and Robin Hood’s Bay. After meeting we were free; he appointed Leah to read to him, and charged Martha and I to meet them at the chapel at ten of the clock next day.
It was a beautiful evening – the sun, now low in the sky, sending streaks of gold out across the land, with dark clefts of shadow between them. I left Martha at the door of our lodgings, telling her I would join her soon, and made my way down the steep narrow lane towards the water front. Down by the estuary it was alive and swarming with sailors, fishermen, children and girls bearing upon their heads huge baskets of those shellfish they pick from the rocks. There is a splendid pier of stone built right out into the ocean. Leaning against its wall in the evening sun were groups of the local women knitting or busy with their fingers at some larger piece of work (I showed my ignorance when I enquired of our landlady later; ‘They are making the nets. Or repairing them – their menfolk’s fishing nets!’) Out at the end of the pier stands a half-constructed stone tower, it will be the new lighthouse. I longed to walk out along the pier, towards the golden sunshine and open sea, but the intimacy of the groups of fisher-wives held me back. I imagined their whispers and giggles as I passed. And then I found some narrow steps leading down from the place where I stood, on to the open beach at my left. There were small boats (which they call cobbles) pulled up on the sand and some men about painting or repairing them – but beyond, the sand stretched away empty and peaceful. I walked briskly past the fishermen, who paid me no attention, and on along the water line. It was a great relief to be on my own after the stifling carriage, and the busyness of the Whitby Israelites. There were a few people about, some strolling in the evening air, like myself, others digging in the sand (for shellfish? or for bait? I could not tell).
‘Hannah!’ My name, called in a male voice, made me stumble.
It was Mr Wroe. He came scuttling along the sand after me like a dark spider.
‘Are you alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know that is forbidden. You make a mockery of decorum.
‘I could not see it would do any harm. I am sure I am safer here than in Ashton.’
‘You do not have permission to wander about alone in Ashton any more than here. Wearing the apparel of the church, you drag its name into disrepute along with yourself.’
‘I am not your prisoner.’
‘No. Nor are you in any way aiding my work.’
I turned and carried on walking, he keeping pace beside me.
‘Do you like the sea?’ he asked suddenly, after several minutes pause, as if no words had passed between us. He went on to talk about the different coasts he had visited, expressing a preference for the Cornish, which he claimed was the most wild and sublime of any. There, spray from the sea leapt up a hundred feet into the air when the great Atlantic waves crashed on to the rocks – and islands with caves and grottoes stood fantastically on the sand between land and sea, inhabited only by birds and seals. Suddenly he stooped and picked up a stone, which he examined minutely, before passing it to me. It was a black square-ish shape, worn smooth on one side, but on the other revealing a delicate regular spiral pattern – similar to the shell of a large snail, or the curved frond of a fern. The spiral was ridged with parallel lines like rays – I ran my forefinger across them, they were in clear relief; all I needed was the ink, to take a fine print of them.
‘Do you know what it is?’
‘No.’
‘An ammonite. A creature which lived and died so many thousand years ago that it has turned into the rock, but leaves the imprint of its individual form.’
‘It is beautiful.’
‘A speck of life – part of the abundance with which we are surrounded. How can you find it beautiful, and lack faith? Do you think it is something random, rather than part of a tremendous and detailed design?’
I looked at the perfectly proportioned circling spiral, executed more skilfully in the rock than the work of the most talented engraver’s burin on a plate. ‘You wish me to take this stone as proof of the existence of God.’
‘Why not?’
‘And sickness, starvation, viciousness; these also prove His existence?’
‘Of course.’
‘And the information you constantly purvey, that He is about to destroy it all – this is part of His Grand Design?’
‘It is.’
‘Then I am not clever enough to follow it.’
‘To be sure you are not. No one is. All He asks is that you should have faith. Then He will admit you to the circle of His love.’ He held out his hand for the stone.
‘If the circle of His love is after death, I reject it. Why does He not love people while they are alive?’
Wroe studied the stone in his hand, then blew down his nose like a horse. ‘Too many of ’em!’ he said, and raising his arm above his head, flung the stone far out to sea.
‘No! Why did you do that? I wanted it.’
‘What for?’
‘It was lovely. You could have made prints off it.’
‘He did. He has printed off a world, creatures great and small, each in its proper shape and proportion. A great abundant world of living creatures, and you talk of taking a flat image on paper.’
‘That is a way of valuing it.’
‘You are not asked to value it. It is not a thing of value. It dies, gets pounded to grains of sand underfoot. D’you think He is such a poverty-stricken housekeeper, that He must gather and save small remains? There is abundance, endless abundance, of these shadows we call life. Only His love is of value.’
‘But His love creates life. If He goes to so much trouble, surely He must value it?’
‘Do you think it is trouble for Him to make a snail? Or a human being? He who has created heaven and earth in six days from chaos?’
‘Why create it to destroy again?’
‘To show His love.’
‘By destruction?’
‘To be sure. Otherwise people will value it too much. Love His creations instead of Him, the shadow instead of the substance. Marvel over the creature embedded in stone, instead of at the infinite wisdom and skill of its maker.’
‘You would throw all this away.’
‘Of course.’
He glanced at me, I wondered if he was entirely serious. He increased his pace and moved ahead of me, zig-zagging across the sand, stooping now and then to examine pebbles or items on the ground. When he returned to my side he was carrying four smooth stones in the palm of his hand, which he offered to me.
‘I have not found another ammonite yet, but you may like these.’ He dropped them into my cupped hands, and they clacked against one another.
‘Stones. Shadow, not substance,’ he said.
I picked up the largest of the four and held it against my cheek. It was cool, utterly smoothed by sea and sand; in colour, dark grey, with a vein of red running through it, and shaped like an egg. He watched me.
‘You would keep stones.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘You would not exchange this world for a better?’
‘I would have this one improved.’
We walked on in silence. Then he said, ‘It is time to go back. It is time for my reading.’
As we came up the hill towards my lodging he moved on ahead of me. I opened the door and went up to my room, two stones clenched in each palm, cool and smooth and solid to my touch.
Next morning the most terrible smell brought me coughing from my bed. Our landlady, who seemed quite unperturbed by it, tells me it is the smoke from whale blubber. They boil it up for oil – and use the oil to make gas for street lig
hting, and a score of other purposes. ‘It is a pity you were not here two weeks since,’ she told us, ‘to see the whaling fleet come in. The whole town turns out to meet them then, and the giant carcases are hacked to pieces on the beach. Tis a fine sight.’ She is full of boasts of the wonders of her town. One is that their greatest whaling captain, one Willian Scoresby, sailed ‘right up the North pole’; another, that when great storms have lashed the town, whole streets of houses have vanished without trace into the sea. Not a matter of much pride to their unfortunate inhabitants, I imagine. The smell of this boiling blubber (on venturing out I could see the filthy smoke hanging in a cloud over the estuary) was quite sickening. When I appealed to Martha for her reaction, however, she affected not to notice it.
There is still something alien about Martha; she watches, she takes note. She never speaks unless she has to, although she can speak and understand pretty well now. Therefore any attempt at conversation becomes an inquisition. I offered to hear her read, so that Joanna’s good efforts might not be wasted, but apart from that brief interruption, we share our room in almost complete silence. She sits more still than anyone I have seen, as if she is in a trance. What is there? Memory? Plans for the future? The simplest questions are turned away.
‘Are you glad to come to Whitby, Martha?’
‘Yes.’ There is always a reluctant pause before the reply.
‘You like it here?’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you like?’ Silence. ‘Is it the sea?’
‘Yes.’
After a while, ‘Do you like being in the prophet’s household?’
‘Yes.’ Stupid question; how could she not, after her previous existence?
‘Do you think – do you imagine you may leave one day?’ At this she simply stares, I wonder if the notion frightens her.
‘I am sure you will not have to leave. I mention it simply because I have thought of leaving – I may, in a few months’ time perhaps – I cannot imagine, you know, staying in one household for the rest of my life.’
The confidence becomes embarrassing, and foolish sounding, in mid-utterance. She has no interest in this.
We held two Israelite meetings on the second day, the first, at noon, poorly attended, but the latter attracting a crowd of some forty persons. We finished with the signings round about three of the clock, and Mr Wroe dismissed us. I said I would take a walk.
‘Would you like to accompany me, Martha?’
‘Yes.’
My heart sank, but I reasoned with myself that the gesture had been made by offering to take her, there was no need to make attempts to be sociable, and I would walk and think as freely as if I were indeed alone. In fact, in greater freedom, for she provided that chaperone which Mr Wroe had insisted on the previous evening.
We called back at our lodgings for shawls, then set off down the steep cobbled way towards the harbour, taking the opposite direction to that I had taken last night. Although the sun was shining and the sky overhead a glorious pale blue, the streets were as dark as tunnels, so tall are the houses, and so narrow the roadways between them. As we came down to the harbour we could see that the first fishing boats were already home; and others coming on in. A thick cloud of seagulls swooped and screamed over one boat, where two men sat on deck gutting fish. While we watched, one stood and hurled the bucket full of offal out into the water, and the gulls dived, screaming, moving together as if they were all of a piece, like a wave. Down beside the big ships at the quayside, it is like being in a forest – so tall and thick do the masts stand. We watched them raise the drawbridge to allow three more of these fine vessels into the upper reaches of the river, where they are moored at a safe distance from the roughness of the sea. Here the smell of fish is sufficient to overpower even that stench of whale blubber. Each detail is strange and compelling; the contrivances (being repaired by a gang of shouting, joking boys) in which they capture lobsters and other creatures of the deep; the bustling queue of carts waiting for the drawbridge to be lowered; the shouts and cries of women to men busy on the boats, and the squawks of gulls wheeling overhead. There is a thrill in the very shape of the town, diving down from clifftop height to the watery estuary at its heart. What an oppression is the tame flatness of Ashton!
‘Shall we visit the ruined abbey? Up there, beside the church?’
We crossed the drawbridge in a throng of eager pedestrians, and carts laden with baskets of fish. At the other side, to our right, I noticed the large Friends’ Meeting House on the corner. Mrs Brown comes from a Quaker family, they are the strongest denomination in the town, she told us. We bore left, up through the market place, where stands the tollbooth; up past open doorways where the women lean, knitting; past narrow ‘ghauts’ through which we caught glimpses of the river – up to the abbey steps. There are a great number of these, and they are extremely steep, so much so that we were twice obliged to stop and wait for breath to carry on. Looking back then, the view was splendid – yellow late afternoon sunshine pouring down on slack-sailed boats in the harbour, on blue sea and yellow sands, and on the dry brown fields at the top of the cliffs.
The abbey is fallen into a very ruined condition – it was broken up in Henry VIII’s time. The great broken arches stand, roofless against the sky, like a natural wonder blasted by storm. The ground is lumpy with fallen stones, over which grass and nettles have sprouted, reclaiming that consecrated earth for Mother Nature. Walking through what must have been the nave, I turned and was struck by the sheer beauty of two arches set against the horizon – for directly to the seaward side the land falls away, a steep drop down to the water’s edge. There is a magic in the combination of stone – worked, crafted stone, soaring – and pure sky, with no intervention of earth.
I sat on a broken column and looked out through one arch, to sea. Although I was still in sunlight, I found myself shivering; the continuation of these golden sunlit days leads one into a false expectation of summery warmth. Summer is over, and winter nearly here, as the early sunset and sharp evening chill clearly indicate. I was glad to hear Martha, who had been close behind me, move on. A lady with a sketch book was positioned not too far from me, and a young couple who were clearly lovers came into view walking past the second arch.
I watched them for a little; they were holding hands, and only tearing their gaze away from one another when there was some particularly difficult patch to negotiate underfoot. Silhouetted against the pale evening sky, their joined forms also made an arch; an irregular, moving one, but still echoing the symmetrical stone shape.
I moved on from my perch, wandering aimlessly across the uneven ground, pausing now and then to take in a view. One wall remains pretty much standing, its noble windows filled with sky, vastly more beautiful than any combination of lead and glass. As I rounded its end to gain a view of the far side, I spotted a familiar figure. The black-clad, hump-backed shape of Mr Wroe, standing in a curve against a pillar, staring into the distance. He was perhaps thirty yards away, and not facing towards me. As I stood hesitating, thinking on balance it would be best not to greet him, after his criticisms of the previous night, I became aware of a figure approaching from the right – a tall, clumsily moving woman – Martha. The pillar was between her and Mr Wroe, so she could not have seen him; but she was moving towards him in a straight line. I watched her gain the pillar, disappear behind it, and then stop. Perhaps he had spoken to her. She turned and dropped on one knee in front of him, as if she had to beg forgiveness for being there. Rachel and Rebekah curtsey and bow their heads to him, so did Dinah. But to drop to her knees on a grassy hillside, in full view of other sightseers – I am surprised he does not discourage such displays. Then as I watched, he reached forward to her and stroked her head, caressing it around the ear, as one might pet a favourite dog. I watched her stand, and move to lean against the pillar beside him, three-quarters hidden from my view.
There was a sudden tightness around the exterior of my skull. I stood there not knowing what
to do, unable to suppress a feeling of distress quite unmerited by events. Surely I should be glad if he treats Martha with kindness? Then the tightness around my head contracted to pain; a genuine headache, needing the touch of a kindly hand to stroke it away.
Picking my way as fast as I could, I crossed the abbey and started down the steps. Down from that beautiful pink-lit spot, into the darkening valley. Let him see her home, she would not need my companionship now.
Next morning was damp and cloudy, not raining, but with rain in the air, and a strong breeze off the sea. I awoke soon after dawn, and slipped out before breakfast (Martha and I, by unspoken consent, let morning prayers fall into abeyance, when we are lodged together). I made for the cliff path which runs along from the lane up above our lodgings. Once I got into the open the full force of the wind hit me. I walked at a good speed, cursing the voluminous folds of my skirt, which every now and then took the wind like a sail. I shall make myself some bloomers such as the Owenite women wear, for travelling and walking and garden work; and if Wroe dislikes them he may try a skirt himself. Him and his stupid petticoat rules.
Even as high up as I was, the wind carried some of the salt spray to my face – a fine sharp sticky dew. I could go. I could cross the ocean, the Atlantic ocean, as thousands have done, make my own way in that great land on the other side. Once I took the first step, a whole new life would unravel and follow. In the air below me I watched the seagulls ride and glide, part carried by the wind, part carving and steering courses of their own.
Martha returned a full hour after me, last night. But I pretended to be asleep when she came in. I find myself watching her, covertly, as she seems to watch me.
*
I had two further conversations with Mr Wroe during the tour; one in Scalby, and one on our last night, in Harrogate. In Scalby, he offered me a glass of wine after I had read to him. I have noticed him taking wine with his food before, but it is the first time it has been offered to me. I took the glass and stood awkwardly with it, until he thought to offer me a seat. It was a damp, coolish evening, and there was a newly lit fire blazing in the hearth. We both watched the flames in silence – I waiting, nervously I own, for whatever he had to say to me.