I had always enjoyed Bram Stoker’s Whitby in Dracula, which led me to Scott’s “Marmion”, but, the first time I went to visit my best friend, Neil, I’d just finished reading Possession by A.S. Byatt and was most enamored of her description of the quaint, seaside village. Because of these things, I had only one place in England I wanted to see and only one souvenir in mind: Whitby and a perfect piece of Whitby jet.
I arrived in Manchester, early Thursday, after a red-eye flight, wandered toward the arrivals gate and saw Neil. He was wearing tan trousers and a dark coat that looked warm. His dishwater blond hair was hanging slightly over his pale blue eyes, nevertheless, he looked far more awake than I felt. Of course, he wasn’t a jet lagged insomniac.
When the day finally came that we had planned to visit Whitby, I awoke with the tingly kind of anticipation one fondly remembers from Christmas as a child. I couldn’t wait to see the Abbey, hear the gulls, breathe the salt air. It seemed as if every bit of me was buzzing. We got dressed and headed toward York, our first stop, and that was when Neil said it, “I don’t really feel like driving all the way up to Whitby. I think we’ll just do York instead.” The buzzing stopped and my heart broke a little bit.
Perhaps I should have said something, but I tried to hide my disappointment. It felt silly, greedy, and horrible to be crying behind my sunglasses over a town I didn’t know and a piece of jewelry I’d never even seen. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. I had, after all, sprung this trip on him rather last minute. Surprise! I’m coming to visit you for my birthday! And he had been so wonderful about everything. He had shown me around Manchester, taken me to dinner and to the theatre, he even bought a bottle of champagne... Everything else had been perfect; he’d made sure of that.
York was beautiful. An old English city full of amazing architecture and history at every turn. We took photos, laughed, had lunch at a nice little pub, and then we wandered out to a street market. Neil lifted a small watercolor painting from a vendor’s table. “Ooh! Look at this! It’s Whitby!” he exclaimed, holding the painting toward me so I could see.
“Is it?” I asked.
“Yes, here’s the Abbey and the hundred-ninety-nine steps. You should get it.”
“But... We didn’t go to Whitby,” I said, unable to mask the sadness in my voice this time.
“Oh,” he said, suddenly realizing how much it meant to me and then smiling. “Well, we just have to go to Whitby then.”
We drove the last forty-seven miles up to Whitby. We climbed the hundred-ninety-nine steps of the East Cliff to the bluff where the Abbey ruins stand; we looked out over the North Sea and heard the gulls and breathed the salt air. And then we scoured every shop in town on a quest for my perfect piece of Whitby jet.
In a back alley, away from the tourists and the main road, there was an old, unassuming, white-washed building with dark trim and a dingy front window. We walked into the shop and a tiny brass bell jingled over the old wooden door. The shopkeeper said he’d be right with us. We said we were just looking and, in that same moment, two men walked in. Covered in mud and damp from seawater, they poured a batch of newfound jet onto the counter. I turned to Neil, smiled, and said, “This is definitely the right place.”
In the case near the door, on a silver chain, was a piece of jet in a shape that seemed an amalgam of a teardrop and an isosceles triangle. Even now, years later, every time that I wear that necklace I think about this story. It was the perfect piece to remember that day; it was my piece of Whitby jet.
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