Unaware, Bram took me in his arms with fierce affection, rubbing his cheek against mine until a wincing cry brought the grazes to his notice. At once he was full of apology and regret, licking blood and grit from my cheek and palms, kissing the place where his teeth had marked my neck. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered again, but somehow it was too much, and his attempts to console were disturbing.
I found it easier to banish unease with activity. Springing up, I began to strip off my clothes. ‘Can you swim?’ I challenged, laughing at his astonishment. ‘Race you to the Nab!’
As he struggled to his feet I ran into the sea, striking out at once before the shock could halt me. I swam across to the Black Nab and paused to catch my breath, pushing back the hair from my face as Bram swiftly crossed the intervening distance with smooth, powerful strokes. He was an excellent swimmer and I was impressed, but equally determined not to show it. As he reached for me I laughed and eluded him, slipping back through the water to cross the little bay. But as I turned to look, the sky was already paler, the moon fading as it dipped towards the horizon. Everything was still and silent in those moments before dawn, and I knew it was time to leave, before some passing fisherman caught sight of us playing the fool, or before an early and less understanding visitor reported us for worse.
‘You look like a mermaid,’ Bram said, coming up beside me and shaking water out of his eyes.
‘In that case, you must be Neptune!’ I retorted, tweaking the red-gold hairs on his chest.
For that he pinched me, and chased me back to the shore, where we stood laughing and gasping with cold and effort. In the dawn light he looked magnificent, dangerous, less a sea god than an early Viking raider. Watching water dripping from his muscular frame suddenly I wanted him again, had to kiss him, touch him, press my body to his until his arousal matched mine. He entered me then with an extraordinary ease and coolness that excited us both, making love with slow and satisfying concentration. It seemed to go on forever, until I locked my ankles around his waist to urge him on, and he flooded me once more in a long and shattering climax.
Afterwards, relaxed and limp, I felt myself collapsing like a rag doll. Sleep tugged as we lay against each other on that rocky ledge, until gradually I became aware that it was fully light and the sun was coming up. Across the eastern sea, almost like a benediction, a glorious sunrise turned everything to molten gold, shimmering until we could barely look.
But we gazed transfixed until the sun rose clear of the horizon, until that brilliant light left us both alarmed by the prospect of discovery. I should have swum again to cleanse myself, but there was no time to linger and I was reluctant to break the bond between us. For once I wanted to hold him to me and never let him go. A foolish and sentimental notion and part of me knew it; but if my skin was salty it was mostly warm and dry. I told myself it was silly to get wet again.
Nineteen
The mornings were glorious, with a blue, misty haze over the sea that spread upriver like a magic spell. The hedgerows were in full green leaf, with great creamy fronds of meadowsweet and cow parsley edging fields and footpaths across the cliffs. Below the Saloon the sands sported a brightly painted crop of bathing machines, and young children in pinafores appeared daily to dig trenches and build castles with all the dedication of apprentice engineers.
Around the harbour, naked urchins dived in and out of the water, while life and work went on as usual. Steam tugs towed barques and brigantines in and out with every tide, and cobles went out fishing. Each time I was in town, I scanned streets and quays for familiar faces, well aware that my time with Bram was precious, that I was hugging it to myself and didn’t want it spoiled or besmirched by any ill-judged comment. In short, I didn’t want to have to defend the indefensible.
But I was growing rapidly more attached to him, and this was borne in upon me one Saturday afternoon, as we were coming up to midsummer’s day. It was particularly hot, and I was helping Jack Louvain with an important photographic appointment at a big house near Dunsley. We’d agreed to meet outside the pub at Newholm, and when I arrived I half expected to find Jack inside, enjoying a pint; but, like the red-faced boy he’d employed to carry equipment up from town, he was seated outside by the village pump.
‘It’s water for me,’ he said wryly. ‘Clients don’t care for the reek of ale - especially those who summon photographers to their houses!’
When we arrived they were finishing a picnic lunch under awnings in the garden. It was a benefit in one way, since everyone looked replete and good-tempered, but it necessitated much straightening and cleaning up before we could begin. Mothers tugged and wiped at the little ones, while the grandmother fussed over the seating arrangements. Who should have precedence next to her husband – it was his birthday, after all – and which child should sit on whose knee.
Biting back an urge to interfere, I turned my attention elsewhere. The design of the house was plain in the extreme, but the enclosed rear garden was a delight of arches and arbours, swagged with trailing ivy and heavy-headed roses. Through tall windows opening into a sitting room I could see carpets and easy chairs, polished tables, pretty ornaments and a pianoforte decked with photographs. They were beautiful things, but it was what they represented that struck me so forcefully.
Bram’s home with Florence must be like that, I thought, not just a little two-roomed cottage with a tiny scullery and stone floor. All at once I was seized by shame and envy and a sense of despair. Bram could never give up such surroundings for the bare simplicity of what we shared at Newholm, and yet, almost without realising it, I’d become used to playing house with him and wanted it to go on.
At this time of year it was all right – charming was the word he used – but it couldn’t possibly compete with servants and a house in London, especially in the depths of winter. I was fooling myself if I thought it could.
With a forceful nudge, Jack muttered under his breath, ‘Get them into some kind of order, for heaven’s sake – we can’t have the tallest and the shortest stood together, no matter what Grandmama says about age and precedence. And get that child on to somebody’s knee before it falls over and starts screaming. Otherwise we’ll still be here at midnight!’
I was glad to do as I was bidden. My thoughts were pointless and painful, so I thrust them aside and organised the children instead. Jack and I worked together until the pictures were taken and he was satisfied, and then, having consumed plates of cake and welcome glasses of lemonade, we gathered up the equipment and made our farewells. We’d been out for hours and I thought we would go straight back to Whitby, but he said the light was just at that interesting point; and anyway, he had some extra plates from the sitting which were just begging to be used.
The lad he’d brought with him was dragging his feet, and I was feeling the strain, but Jack was adamant. So we made our way down to the beach at Upgang, where the old Mulgrave Castle Inn, with tiled roof askew and chimneys leaning, stood perched on the very edge of the cliff. It was catching the evening light against a darker sky, and from below there was a wildness and drama about the place, as if it were defying the elements still. And maybe hiding within its walls the dutiable kegs and silks of days gone by.
But although the old smugglers’ rendezvous had been closed for a year or more, I suspected it was still used by certain of the fishermen for short periods at dark of the moon. Its dubious reputation hung on, as it might cling to an old rogue until the day of his death. But all it needed was one more winter, one more ferocious storm to undermine the shale, one more prolonged period of frost, and the old inn would be no more.
Jack managed to get a picture from the beach before the incoming tide made the angle impossible, and, having climbed back up, was insisting on a pose from me when I saw Bram coming down from the direction of Newholm. He was happy to find us, happier still to watch Jack working with me, insisting on knowing all the technical and artistic details involved in the taking of such a photograph. Being tired and hungry, I w
as not best pleased; all I wanted was to go home.
I fidgeted unhappily, while Jack seemed intent on explaining everything to his new pupil, even to the extent of letting him view me – upside down, of course – through the camera’s great fish-eye lens. With an intelligent audience he wanted to show off, and started talking about composition and the art of making pictures with a camera. Gritting my teeth, I moved here and there as requested, while the two men fussed over shadows and focus and the angle of my limbs against the weathered walls of the inn. But my misery produced frowns and Jack wanted wistfulness for this photograph, so I had to straighten my face and think about something I was longing for, like passionate kisses for tea, and strawberries and cream for supper.
~~~
Since there was no need for me to be at the studio, next day Bram and I went out for our customary walk rather earlier than usual. It was a beautiful evening, very still, and most of the way from Newholm we could see the walls of church and abbey catching the last of the sun, while the sea was reflecting the sky. By the time we reached the east cliff the light had gone, and a high tide was filling the harbour; the Sunday visitors were leaving, while groups of old mariners were discussing the weather, and saying the extraordinary heat couldn’t last.
In search of solitude, we walked to the far end of the graveyard to rest on Bram’s favourite seat, watching fishing cobles and a small schooner going out between the piers. We were soon reduced to shadows in the dusk, deeper tones of grey against the ranks of upright stones. Voices, snatches of music reached us from below, but all was peace around us, as though we were ghosts of ourselves already. The strangest feeling seemed to have a hold on me. I couldn’t have lifted a finger to dispel it, but after a while, Bram broke the stillness with a sigh that brought us both back to life.
‘Coming up here,’ he murmured, ‘it seems to happen every time... there’s something extraordinary about this place...’ His accent, which was rarely noticeable, always became more pronounced when he was stirred, and in that moment it was rich and undisguised. ‘It draws me, makes me want to stay.’
Hearing the longing, wanting to respond, I was almost afraid to speak. ‘Then stay,’ I whispered lightly, pressing myself to his side.
‘I wish I could.’ Turning, he slipped an arm around the back of the seat and drew me closer. ‘At this moment, it’s what I want more than anything in the world.’
I could scarcely breathe. ‘Do you?’
He brushed strands of hair away from my neck, and gazed at me with longing. ‘You know I do. This place and you – what more could I ask? You’ve given me so much, and I want you all the time. More than any other woman in my life...’
My heart raced. It was what I longed to hear, but that mention of other women brought his wife immediately to mind. Afterwards I could have cursed, but the words were out before I could stop them. ‘More than Florence?’
With a sudden grimace, he released me. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said tersely, rising to his feet, ‘even more than Florence.’
Furious with myself, wishing I was older, wiser, more tactful – or at the very least that I could learn to simper and keep my mouth shut – I watched in despair while he left my side.
A short distance away, across the path, an old table tomb stood close to the cliff edge, a reminder of others that were no longer there. It was a dangerous spot, but tempting, and Bram paused there often at sunset, leaning against the tomb and smoking his cigarettes while waiting for me to leave the studio. He stood there now, a dark silhouette, locked into the mystery of his own private world, while I watched from the bench, wishing he would talk to me, explain things to me, tell me what he wanted, what he really planned to do. Most of all, I wished I had the courage to ask.
I watched him, trying to read his mood from the set of his shoulders. After a minute or so he relaxed, turning to beckon me towards him.
‘You’re very young still, aren’t you?’ he murmured, kissing my forehead. ‘I tend to forget that.’
I’d have preferred him to say I was impudent, since that at least implied a certain crude wisdom; in this case to be young was to be ignorant, and I was too often aware of that. Feeling vulnerable, I perched on the edge of the tomb in silence and looked out across the harbour. Some distance below us was the East Pier and the pale strip of Collier’s Hope; to the left stood Tate Hill and the short stretch of Henrietta Street.
‘It must have been a grand place to live, once upon a time,’ he said musingly, following my eyes and studying the uneven line of houses below.
The street had been built as a fashionable extension to Kirkgate in the time of the third King George, on a ledge known as the Haggerlythe; now it was better known for its wooden smokehouses and oak-smoked herrings. Catching a drift of the aroma, Bram added drily: ‘But I’d have thought the view was wasted on a load of old kippers, wouldn’t you?’
Glad of his change of mood, playing up to it, I pointed to the gap between cliff and pier, telling him about the collapse of Henrietta Street into the harbour. ‘It used to continue right along the Haggerlythe – as far as the steps to the pier. In those days the gap wasn’t so wide.’
I had a strong memory of being plucked from my bed in the dark, clutched to my mother’s bosom as she ran out of our house on the Cragg. There were yells and screams and raised voices, torches blazing across the harbour, flashes of lightning, the crash of thunder.
‘It happened one night when I was a child, not long before Christmas. There came a great rumbling and roaring, and half the cliff slipped into the sea. The far end of the street went first, taking most of the houses with it. Terrifying, it was – just like an earthquake – we could feel the noise and the shaking right the way across the harbour.
‘Everybody turned out to see what was happening. They thought the whole cliff was going. It was dreadful,’ I assured him, ‘like the last trumpet-call, they say. Chasms opening up, houses cracking and sliding down the cliff, huge chunks of rock and shale tumbling down – and worst of all, the graveyard fell away. Imagine – coffins coming down like rain from above! All smashed open along the Haggerlythe and on the Scaur. They say it was hard to tell bones and skulls from haggomsteeans amongst the rocks.’
He’d been gazing in awe down the cliff, but at mention of a dialect word, his attention came back to me. ‘What are they?’
‘Oh, magical stones, lucky stones – the ones with perfect round holes in, that you nail to the doorpost to keep evil spirits away. You find them on the Scaur,’ I said with airy unconcern, ‘along with giants’ teeth and cannon balls. You know, the ones you call ammonites. But for ages you’d find skulls and bones and human teeth as well.’
‘Teeth?’ With a little grunt of amazement he reached into his pocket for notebook and pencil, squinting to write in the semi-darkness, muttering something about fossils, and death and resurrection, while I peered over his shoulder.
It was a fact of life that both cliffs were unstable, and every winter brought small falls and new threats of collapse. The way I viewed things, people who fancied such extraordinary views – either in death or in life – had to be prepared to pay the price.
‘In the end, though,’ I went on, as certain other gruesome facts returned to mind, ‘the sea washed everything away. Just as well, since most of the graves were from the cholera burial ground – furthest from the church, and nearest the sea. No wonder folk were afraid to clear them up.’
At the mention of cholera, he slowly looked around and put away his notebook. ‘In Ireland,’ he said, ‘they had a terrible epidemic when my mother was young. Whole families died of it in Sligo. In one house close by, Ma said there was a little girl left alone. They could hear her crying piteously, and Ma begged to be allowed to help – sadly, the poor child died in her arms soon afterwards.’
‘And was your mother all right?’ I asked, awed by such courage. Whenever he spoke of her, Bram made his mother sound like a woman after my own heart, one with red blood in her veins and an independent sp
irit. I liked the sound of Charlotte Stoker, and was always eager to hear more.
He said she’d suffered no ill-effects, adding that his grandmother was a woman who swore cleanliness was next to godliness, boiling and fumigating everything.
‘But Ma always said she was too young then to think seriously of dying. Only she was frightened of the coffin-maker – he made her flesh crawl. He used to pound on the door of their house, asking did they have bodies to bury, and if not, did they want to be measured up for a decent set of matching coffins. If they paid him now, this terrible old rogue told them, he’d see they got the best of everything...
‘They told him to go away and not to call again, but he kept on. Eventually, Ma hung out the window and said if he came again she’d throw something at him, and it wouldn’t be money!
‘But he did come, so out went a great jugful of slops on his head – the man was furious! Shook his fist and said that if she died within the hour, he’d make sure she didn’t have so much as a box to be buried in. So Ma said she wouldn’t care anyway, and slammed the window shut.
‘He didn’t come again, she said, but the looters did – and they were far worse. At first they took only small items from empty houses nearby – mostly food and money – understandable when so many were so poor. But as each day went by they were becoming bolder, arriving in gangs and with handcarts – clearing whole houses of everything, from clocks and paintings to chairs and kitchen crockery, swigging whiskey as they went. Not just men, but women as well, wild-eyed, mad – capable of anything.
‘Ma’s family barricaded themselves in and kept a lookout, but by then they were becoming slightly mad themselves. It was July and the weather was hot, they’d very little food left in the house apart from flour and beans, and hardly any fuel to cook with. They were afraid to go out for fear of being stricken by the cholera or attacked by thieves, too frightened to sleep except in snatches – and it seemed these lawless gangs were now set to break in and murder them for the sake of a few sticks of furniture!
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