Lightning Mary

by Anthea Simmons

  ‘Let me do that!’ Frenchie was up at last and grinning at me like a fool. ‘That looks a bit big for a girlie!’

  Oh! He had made me well and truly mad with fury by then, so I dug my fingers into the mud and grabbed the biggest handfuls I could. That mud is dirty stuff on a white shirt, I can tell you. Frenchie looked a bit shocked for a moment and then he was grinning again.

  ‘Oh, Miss Anning. I mean, Mary... you are so easy to rile, so quick to lose your temper! I was only teasing you! I know how you hate to be called a girl!’

  ‘You called me “girlie”, which is disrespectful. A girl is as good as a boy any day! And if you know I hate it so much, why do you so do it?’ I fumed, dabbling my hands in a pool to wash off the mud.

  ‘Because you are so funny when you are cross! Your eyes blaze like a dragon’s and I almost expect fire to come out of your nose!’

  Hmmm. I was not offended by being likened to a dragon and I almost smiled.

  I turned back to the slab. ‘Come on then, you lazy creature. Help me set this upright so I can strike it fair and square.’

  Henry was quite strong for all he had the soft hands of a lady and the hair of one of those cherubs in church. He watched as I brought my hammer down along the seam of rock and the whole slab split asunder as if by magic and lay in two pieces like a massive Bible opened at the centre.

  We peered at the black surface. Many thousands of tiny discs like petals glinted in the sunlight.

  Beautiful.

  Worthless.

  ‘Goodness me!’ Henry was wide-eyed with wonder, the fool. ‘What are those? They look like stars in the night sky!’

  ‘Fish scales, you great numbskull. Nothing but fish scales. And look... a few fish bones.’

  I was very disappointed. I’d had a strange feeling in my own bones before I struck that slab, and an even stranger feeling in my stomach, as if I had swallowed a bee and it was buzzing around my insides. But this find was not a find at all. It was worthless.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mary.’ Henry moved to touch me but I stepped back quickly out of his reach. ‘I expect you thought there might be something big in there, something that would bring in plenty of money.’

  Yes. I had thought that and I was disappointed, but I was more disappointed that my bones and my stomach had lied to me and had let me down. What if I had lost my magic touch? What if I never found anything valuable again?

  ‘Don’t give up, Mary,’ he encouraged me. ‘I’ll wager you’ll find a magical monster one fine day and it will make you famous and bring you fortune!’

  ‘Pah! People like me don’t make fortunes. Fortunes aren’t made. They are given to rich folk by their parents. Look at you! You’ll never go hungry. You’ll always have a fresh laundered shirt on your back and a feather bed to sleep on. You will never have to give two seconds’ thought to where your bread will come from. And as for fame! There’ll be no fame for me! Who would pay me attention? A poor girl ! I hardly count for anything on this Earth! Why, you... you who say you are my friend, you have never even asked me to your house! For I would bring shame upon you, wouldn’t I? A poor wretch, dressed in rags. In your fine home? With your lady mother?’

  I do not know why I suddenly raged about visiting his house for I had no desire to see it whatsoever, but Henry had turned red in the face from shame and that gave me some satisfaction.

  ‘Well, you’ve not asked me to your house, either!’ he retorted. ‘And as for visiting us, I should think you would hate to have to wash your face and brush your hair and pretend to be nice to my mother whom you would, no doubt, judge to be an empty-headed woman and... and . . .’

  I was wrong. It was not shame. It was anger and he wasn’t done, yet.

  ‘And you still have your father, so do not tell me how terrible your life is. I would give all the riches in the world to have my father back at home, alive, with me and my mother! You may not have much, Miss Anning, but you have so much more than me. More than you will ever know.’

  With that he struck off in the direction of the town. He did not give me a backward glance. I could tell that he was wiping his eyes on his sleeves as he walked. What a strange creature! His father had been dead many months, yet he still cried for him as if it were yesterday. It was beyond my understanding. His father was dead and gone and nothing would bring him back, least of all crying. It must be very irksome to be so weak. If we had been brought low by every dead baby, we would have been fair worn out and good for nothing.

  But I could not help a feeling of sadness creep over me as I watched him stumbling across the rocks, slipping on the seaweed. Maybe I could have been kinder; still, he must surely understand that I was only stating facts. Facts were facts. How could it be wrong?

  ‘Frenchie!’ I shouted as loudly as I could. ‘Frenchie!’

  He turned and his eyes were indeed red with crying. He just stood, staring at me. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug as if asking me what I wanted.

  But then his mouth opened in a great ‘O’.

  He started running towards me, screaming and waving.

  And then I heard it.

  The rumble behind and above me. A groaning. A tearing sound.

  I felt the ground beneath me start to shift as the noise grew louder and louder.

  I looked up.

  The cliff was on the move and heading straight for me.

  Huge slabs of mud and rock and scrub were sliding from the top, gathering speed. My blood turned to ice in my veins.

  ‘Run!’ bellowed Henry. ‘Run!’

  I ran as I had never run before, my chest burning, my heart pounding, trying to keep my footing on the slime of the seaweed.

  I reached Henry just as the great mountain of rock and mud and stones crashed onto the beach with a thunderous boom, shaking the ground beneath our feet.

  Henry threw his arms about me and near squeezed all my remaining breath clean out of my lungs. ‘Thank God!’ he sobbed. ‘Thank God!’

  He held me tightly for what seemed like an age and I felt myself getting very hot and wriggly for I do not like to be held so. It made me feel wild, like a trapped animal, so I pushed him away with all my might.

  What a sight he was. Red-eyed, covered in mud save for the streaks from his tears, filthy shirt (my fault, I know). He looked like any ragamuffin or ne’er-do-well. I had to laugh. So I did.

  He stared at me in disbelief and then he started to laugh too. We laughed and laughed like fools. We laughed so much we had to lie down on the beach and hold our sides.

  Did we think it funny or were we just glad to be still alive? I think I know.

  ‘That was close,’ Henry said, when we finally stopped our laughter.

  ‘Pish! I’ve had closer escapes than that,’ I said. But it was not true and I do not know why I told the lie. Maybe it was pride.

  We lay there in silence for a while. I knew I owed him my gratitude but somehow I could not say the words. To be truthful, I was not pleased to be the one who needed saving. I was the one who should have been doing the saving, for the cliffs belonged to me. They were my cliffs, my domain. I suddenly felt cross and hot.

  The silence was long. Then Henry sat up and stared out to sea.

  ‘Do you want to come to tea, Mary?’ he asked, wiping his face with a very muddy kerchief.

  ‘Now you are making a fool out of me!’ I replied, almost hoping that he wasn’t.

  ‘By no means. Come! We must celebrate!’

  ‘Celebrate what, exactly? We did not find anything!’

  ‘Oh, bother to that. I just saved your life even though you won’t thank me for it! Come on! There may even be a sugared bun!’ He stood and stretched out his hand to pull me up. ‘Oh... and Mother is away, so we can have tea all by ourselves.’

  I wished I had never said anything about visiting his house. I didn’t want to go. I was afraid. I admit it. When we were on the beach, I was the ruler of my world and he was my helper. I decided
when and where we went and what he had to do to help me when we got there. In his house I would be something else. I would not be the master. I did not like the feeling that came with these thoughts.

  But was I not Lightning Mary? Was I not the bravest creature in Lyme, as my father said? I decided to think about the sugared bun. Surely that was reason enough to forget my fears.

  I took a deep breath and leaped to my feet, brushing off the mud and sand from my skirts.

  ‘Very well. If we must. Let’s get it done.’

  Henry laughed, ‘Really, Mary. You are the strangest creature alive!’

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘And don’t you forget it.’

  How different Henry’s home was from Cockmoile Square with its poky kitchen and blackened stove! There were no long johns and chemises hanging to dry from the rafters, no pan of boiling cabbage making the whole house smell as if Joseph had broken wind (which he did frequently and thought very clever).

  Here there was a cook in the snowiest white apron, heaping up fresh-made buns and shaking sugar over them from a great silver pot. All was order and cleanliness and plenty. Herbs were hung to dry over the spotless range. All manner of jars and bottles and packets lined the shelves. Cherries and plums were piled up in a glass dish which sparkled in the light from the vast window. How was it possible that a short walk up Silver Street could take a body into a different world?

  The cook left us to ourselves. She raised her eyebrows as far as they would go when she saw us, dirty as we were, but she said nothing. Just made the tea and set two buns from the pile on plates, smiling to herself as she did so.

  I had never held such a delicate cup in my whole life. I had never tasted tea. We almost never had sugar in our house, but Henry added two spoonfuls of it to my cup. It was all a wonder. I burned my tongue twice but I didn’t care. It tasted like the sweetness on the end of a clover flower petal (which make very good eating, I can tell you).

  Once I had drunk my tea, I could not tear my eyes away from those buns. I suddenly felt as if a great monster was tearing at my belly, so hungry was I.

  ‘Please, Mary, do help yourself!’ Henry pushed the plate towards me. ‘They are one of Cook’s specialities.’

  There was sugar all over the top of the bun. It shone like the fish scales. I wanted to lick it off but that was probably not the right thing to do. I watched as Henry bit into his and I did the same. It was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. Then I felt a pang of guilt and, I must confess, a little fizzle of curiosity, for I have heard the stories about the sugar plantations and Henry must know the truth, since he lived where the sugar comes from and his father had a plantation. The questions piled up in my head and tumbled out almost faster than I could speak them.

  ‘Is it true that many thousands of black people make the sugar? Is it true that rich men buy the black people at a market like sheep or cows and keep them as prisoners and never pay them? Is it true that the plants have leaves as sharp as any blade and that it cuts their hands and feet and faces? Did your father have slaves? Was he cruel to them? Did he beat them if they did not work hard?’

  Henry looked away as if to ignore my questions. He set his plate down on the table and then sat on his hands as if to make himself even more uncomfortable. Or maybe to stop himself from striking me, though he is a gentle soul. He may have been angry. I couldn’t tell.

  ‘We had slaves. Yes. Yes. We did.’

  ‘And did you treat them cruelly? Not you, I mean. Your father?’

  ‘No. He didn’t. We didn’t; but it was why Father had decided to come back to England. He did not like slavery. It sickened him. It sickened him to see how some of the other plantation owners treated their workers. He was pleased when our Parliament ended the trade in slaves two years ago but that wasn’t enough for him. He did not want it to be possible to own slaves. He really wanted them to be like workers here, free to work for a master or not as they chose.’

  ‘Pah! You think we workers be free to choose? We must take work where we find it and we are meant to feel grateful!’ I replied.

  He smiled a strange smile. ‘Yes, Mary. I know. But no one owns you – like owning a dog or a horse. No one has bought you and can do with you as they wish. I do not think you can imagine how that must feel. I cannot and I saw it with my own eyes. Imagine if I owned you?’

  I stood up, feeling my face burning and my eyes aflame with fury! ‘Nobody could ever own me. Ever!’

  Henry laughed. ‘I should think not! There isn’t a leash or a harness could hold you! But just imagine I did, or my family did. I would never know if you really liked me and spoke to me because we were friends or whether you felt obliged for fear of punishment or because you were our possession.’

  ‘Why would that matter? If I spoke to you, then I spoke to you. That’s that!’

  Henry seemed a bit confused by my observation. ‘Yes, but it might not be genuine. What you said. We would not be true friends because we would not be equal.’

  It was my turn to laugh. ‘And you think we be equal now? You are a mad creature, Henry Frenchie Beach!’

  ‘No. You are right,’ he said. ‘You are my superior when it comes to hunting treasure.’

  ‘Quite right too!’ said I, though I was mighty pleased that he misunderstood my meaning. ‘Now, eat the remains of your bun or I will eat it for you.’

  Henry did as he was told. I was satisfied.

  When I got home, I didn’t tell Mother or Father or Joseph where I’d been. I just put the leftover buns on the table and smiled a mysterious smile and left them standing in the kitchen with their mouths open like gawping gurnards.

  9

  A USEFUL FRIEND

  After that, Henry often brought buns with him on our expeditions, wrapped up in a twist of paper. Sometimes I pretended not to be at all interested for I could not have him think that I was like some stray dog to be tamed with a scrap of food, but then he would sit on a rock and lick the sugar off slowly, as I had wanted to do, while laughing at me as I tried to ignore him.

  ‘Come on, Mary. I know you are a proud one, but Cook made these for you,’ he said, holding out one of the sugary temptations.

  It is a hard thing to be hungry, to feel your stomach seemingly try to eat itself, but you can get used to it. You have to, or all you’d do is think about food all day, which would be of no use whatsoever.

  I took the bun. He smiled. I had found out for myself how powerful it felt to be able to feed others but I did not like him to have that power over me and I did not thank him for the bun, which was very bad manners.

  ‘I do know that I am very fortunate, Mary, and that much of my good fortune was an accident of birth.’ Henry was looking at me in that ‘please like me’ way he had.

  ‘Some accident,’ I muttered, my mouth full of bun.

  ‘And I know that you are proud and don’t like anyone to feel sorry for you, just as you do not feel sorry for others,’ he continued.

  I licked my lips. ‘I do feel sorry for people who suffer hardship when it is not of their own doing. There are plenty of those in Lyme. Fishermen who have lost fingers when they got caught in the nets, sailors with legs blown off by Frenchies, orphaned children,’ I replied. ‘I feel no such sorrow for people with more money than sense or who needlessly put their lives in danger, like those fools who go in the winter sea or try to clamber about these cliffs with no knowledge.’

  ‘But you put yourself in danger, Mary,’ said Henry. ‘Must I have no sympathy for you if you are crushed in a mudslide or swept out to sea? I might not be there to save you next time!’

  I smiled at his talk of saving me. Because he had done so the once, he seemed to think he would do so again, but I was able to look after myself and it was only because I had been distracted by him walking away, crying, that I had missed the signs.

  ‘No sympathy for me, thank you!’ said I. ‘You may feel sorry for yourself for missing an adventure, but don’t ever feel
sorry for me! I know what I am doing!’

  And with that I jumped up and set about cracking open a pile of rocks. Henry laughed and started to do the same, only his were all empty, as I knew they would be.

  I did know what I was doing. I knew when and where to go along the coast. I could tell, mostly, which stones had curiosities in them and which did not. I was learning every day how to read the sea and her moods and I was a demon, though I say it myself, at haggling with the customers. That was something neither Joseph nor Henry could do well at all, even though they vied with each other and thought I did not notice. Joseph was stubborn about prices and made people lose patience and walk away. Henry just smiled at them and took the first offer they made, so I told him he could have no part in selling since he cost us money with his ‘How-do-you-dos’ and flattery and general lack of a nose for making money.

  Most of the time, Joseph seemed to pretend Henry wasn’t even there, but he often made remarks behind his back about his rank or clothes or abilities. Then, one day, as Henry fiddled about with the setting out of the curiosities on the stall, he spoke straight to him.

  ‘I suppose you be too grand for trade,’ he observed, and even I could hear the sneer in his voice.

  ‘You may be right, Joseph,’ Henry answered very calmly. ‘I do not think I have found my métier.’

  ‘Your whattier?’ I asked, for that was a word I had never heard before.

  ‘My métier... the thing I should be doing to make my way in the world. It’s a French word. Sorry!’

  ‘Ha! Always knew you were a Frenchie!’ I said, but I was only teasing him and he knew it.

  ‘Well,’ said Joseph, moving everything on the table back to how it had been before Henry had rearranged it, ‘there you have it. It’s not your met-ee-ay, Frenchie.’