The First Cut

3 Martha

The room was perfect. Usually, a single room in a bed and breakfast establishment is nothing more than a cupboard by the toilets, but this one, clearly a converted attic with a dormer window and white-painted rafters, had been done out nicely. Candy-striped wallpaper brightened the walls, and a salmon-pink candlewick bedspread covered the three-quarter bed. Just to the left of the window stood the washstand, with clean white towels laid neatly over a chrome rail. The only other furniture consisted of a small wardrobe with metal hangers that jangled together when Martha opened the flimsy door, and a bedside lamp on a small chest of drawers.

The owner leaned against the doorjamb with his arms folded while she made up her mind. He was a coarse man with hairy forearms and even more hair sticking out over the top of his white open-necked shirt. His face looked like it was made of pink vinyl, and six or seven long fair hairs curled on his chin.

“We don’t get many girls staying by themselves,” he said, smiling at her with lashless blue eyes. It was obviously an invitation to state her business.

“Yes, well I’m here to do some research,” Martha lied. “I’m working on a book.”

“A book, eh? Romance, is it? I suppose you’ll find plenty of background for that here, what with the abbey ruins and the Dracula legends. Plenty of romance in all that history, I’d say.”

“It’s not a romance,” Martha said.

He didn’t pursue the matter further, but looked at her with a fixed expression, a mixture of superior, mocking humor and disbelief that she had often seen men use on professional women.

“I’ll take it,” she said, mostly to get rid of him as quickly as possible. She didn’t like the way he leaned against the doorway, arms folded, watching her. Was he hoping she’d start taking out her underwear to put in the drawers? The room began to feel claustrophobic.

He stood up straight. “Right. Well, here’s the keys. That big one there’s for the front door. Come in any time you want, but try not to disturb the other guests. There’s a lounge with a color telly on the ground floor. You can make yourself a cup of tea or instant coffee there, too, if you like. But be sure to wash out your cup afterward. The wife has enough on. Breakfast’s at eight thirty sharp. If you want an evening meal, let the wife know in the morning before you go out. Anything else?”

“Not that I can think of.”

He closed the door behind him as he left. Martha dumped her holdall on the bed and stretched. The sloping ceiling was so low at that point that her fingers touched the plaster between the beams. She poked her head out of the window to see what kind of view you got for nine pounds fifty a night. Not bad. On her right, very close, at the top of the street, loomed St. Hilda’s Church with its high, dark tower, like one of the monoliths from 2001; to her left, on the opposite hillside over the estuary, stood St. Mary’s, built of lighter stone, with a smaller, squarish tower and a white pole sticking up from it like the mast of a ship. Beside it stood what was left of the abbey, where, according to her guidebook, the Synod of Whitby took place in AD 664, when the churches in England dumped their Celtic ways and decided to follow Roman usages. The poet Caedmon had lived there at the time, too, and that was more interesting to Martha. After all, Caedmon was the one who had called her here.

She unpacked her toilet bag and went over to the sink to brush her teeth. The shrimp had left fibers between them and a salty taste in her mouth. As she spat out the water, she glimpsed her face in the mirror. It was the only part of her that hadn’t changed much over the past year or so.

She wore her sandy hair cut short more for convenience than anything else. As she never had any reason to do herself up to look nice for anyone, it was far easier just to be able to wash it and forget about it. She didn’t have to wear any makeup either, and that made for less fuss. Her complexion had always been clear anyway, and the smattering of freckles across her nose was hardly a blemish. Her eyes were a little oriental-slanted almonds, and about the same light brown color. Her nose tilted up slightly at the end-snub, they called it-and revealed the dark ovals of her nostrils. She had always thought it was her ugliest feature, but someone had once told her it was sexy. Sexy! Now there was a laugh! She had her mother’s mouth: tight, thin-lipped, downturned at the edges.

All in all, she thought she looked haughty, stiff and aloof-prissy, in fact-but she knew well enough that her appearance had diverse effects on men. Not so long ago, she had overheard a conversation in a pub between two lads who had been giving her the eye all evening.

“Now there’s a bird looks like she needs a bloody good fuck,” the first one had said.

“Rubbish,” his mate had replied. “I’ll bet she’s had enough cock to pave the road from here to Land’s End -ends up!” And they had laughed at that.

So much for her looks. Perhaps men just saw in her what they wanted to see. They used her as a mirror to reflect their own vile natures, or as a screen onto which they projected their obscene fantasies.

She put her toothbrush in the chrome holder on the wall and turned away from the mirror. It was early evening now. The tide would be on its way in.

She had enough money with her to survive away from home for far longer than she needed to, and though she was almost certain that this was the place where she would find what she was looking for, she knew there was always a chance she could be wrong. It might be one of the smaller fishing villages along the coast: Staithes, Runswick Bay or Robin Hood’s Bay. No matter: she would check them all out if she had to. For now, Whitby felt right enough.

She was tired after her long journey. Maybe later, around sunset, she would go out and explore the town and find something to eat, but for now a nap was her best bet. First, though, she took what clothes she’d brought with her out of the holdall and put them in the drawers by the bed. There wasn’t much, all of it casual: jeans, cords, denim shirts, a jersey, underwear. The gray quilted jacket, in case of chilly evenings, she hung in the wardrobe.

Finally, she took out the most important thing she’d brought and smiled to herself at how it seemed to have become a ritual object, a talisman, and how simply handling it gave her a sense of awe and reverence.

It was a small, globe-shaped glass paperweight, flattened at the bottom, smooth and heavy on her palm. Ten pounds she’d paid for it at the craft center. For ages there she had stood in the heat of the kilns and watched the man making the glassware he sold, explaining the process as he went along. He thrust the long blowpipe into the white-hot heart of the furnace and brought out a blob of molten glass. Then he dipped this in the dishes of bright colors: vermilion, aquamarine, saffron, indigo. Martha had always thought you were supposed to keep blowing down the tube, but he had simply blown into it quickly and then covered the end with his hand. When the air heated, it expanded and puffed out the glass. She never did find out how he got the colors inside the paperweight, though, or how he made it so heavy and solid. This one was all dark shades of red: carmine, crimson and scarlet. The folds and curves they made looked like a rose. When Martha turned it in the light, the rose seemed to move slowly, as if under water. If ever she felt herself slipping away from her mission, denying her destiny, she knew that all she had to do was reach for it, and the smooth, hard glass would strengthen her resolve.

She placed it beside her on the bedspread and lay down. The rose seemed to open and pulse in the changing light as she stared into it. Soon she was sleeping soundly beside it.