Lightning Mary

by Anthea Simmons

  ‘I seen him!’ she crowed, her evil eyes sparkling like chips of quartz in a rock. ‘Up on Black Ven on the Sabbath! Dragging you poor souls with him and away from the Lord! Let this be a warning to him. He has been spared to show God’s mercy and that he might return to the one true church! The Lord be praised!’

  Joseph stood by me and pinched my back as I took her miserable leavings. I wanted to say something. I wanted to say that I did not believe she would find herself in Heaven when her time came and that I could not help but hope that time would be soon, carrots or no. But I was good and stayed silent. She saw the black look of hatred which Joseph said passed over my face like a storm cloud over the sea and shook her bony finger at me. ‘I see that ingratitude, child. I see the Devil in your face. You are your father’s daughter and no mistake! Unnatural!’

  I did not care. Let her see what was in my heart! I wanted to kick her down the steps.

  ‘She means well,’ said Joseph when she’d gone.

  Hmmm. Indeed. I’d have liked to see her mean ill, then!

  Mother had a strong dislike of charity for she was proud like me, but the baskets of food had been a blessing, she said, and, truth to tell, we were better fed some days than we ever were before, which was good for the unborn as well as the living. I don’t think she still believed the baby that grew in her belly was a blessing but it was, at least, another reason why Father must get well.

  Harry May brought us a bit of salt fish two or three days every week for a month and that was most kind of him, for the weather did not allow sea fishing and he was sharing what must have been the last of his supplies, set aside for the winter. Even when winter was nearly done, spring storms could keep the boats ashore as much as any snow or ice. Folk had to survive on what they had kept from harvest – salted, pickled, preserved somehow.

  Squire Stock, one of Father’s customers, sent us eggs, milk and cheese from time to time. At least the cold meant that the milk stayed fresh for many days, instead of curdling and going sour as it did in summer. Mother warmed a little for Father and tried not to mind when it spilled down his nightshirt. On good days, she managed to get him to swallow a morsel of coddled egg. He ate so little, grew so thin, but still he didn’t die.

  When I wasn’t sitting with Father and Joseph was not at his apprenticeship, we carried on doing our best to make sure there were plenty of treasures to sell when the visitors arrived.

  Joe and I were never much given to squabbles (except where Henry was concerned), but I knew it irked him that treasures seemed to leap out of the mud and into my hands whilst he dug and scraped for leaner pickings. It pleased me, of course. I cannot pretend it does not still, but I have never crowed or boasted about it. Even to this day, Joe complains sometimes that it wasn’t fair and I know he thought it wasn’t fair because I was younger than him and a girl! Mainly because I was a girl. Why that should have made any difference, I have never really understood. I suppose many would think it strange if Joseph could sew a frock or dress a baby, but why one thing should be for a boy to do and another only for a girl was beyond my understanding. It was quite ridiculous. I could thump any boy pretty much as hard as he could thump me, if I’d a mind to, as Henry found to his cost, but it wasn’t just about thumping. It was everything. Girls were just expected to stay at home and cook and clean for men, far as I could see. And have babies or lose them.

  That baby of Mother’s, planted before the accident, gave up living before it was ready to be born. I found Mother one day, huddled in the corner of the bedchamber, clutching a little bundle of bloodstained rags and moaning to herself. I had seen this before but this time it seemed both cruel and a blessing at the same time. Mother had suffered enough. She loved babies. I did not. I was glad that there would be no crying babe, taking all her attention and laying her low, and I could not understand why they mattered to her so much but they did and that was that. She had had nothing but hardship these past months and I did not wish her any more.

  ‘Must we have a burial, again?’ I asked, as gently as I could. But she shook her head.

  ‘No, child. It was scarce there. Scarce formed. A scrap, poor mite.’

  I did not ask her why she cried so hard for a scrap. I left her to her grief, and when the time came for bed there was no trace of blood or rags or the baby that never really was. I do not think Father even knew that it had been and gone so fast. It was a loss to her alone.

  Having lost yet one more infant and with a husband ailing and still like to die, Mother was not best pleased about us going back onto the eastern beaches below Black Ven or Monmouth’s western shores. However, when we returned one day with thirty snakestones and the largest, most sparkling lump of what we called angel’s wings, we could see her doing sums in her head and reckoning the money that could be unlocked by selling those finds.

  I took the angel’s wings up the stairs to show Father. The golden rock was as large as my two fists. It looked so curious, as if a mass of wood chips and shards of broken glass and nail heads and buttons had all been melted together and turned into gold. When I looked at it closely, I could see that it resembled coal too. Gold coal. What strange matter! If I were a true scientist, I would know exactly what it was.

  I was going to lay it on Father’s chest, as if it were a gift, but it was so heavy that it might have crushed him, for his bones were like a bird’s. Instead, I drew back the curtain so that the sunlight struck it and sent beams of golden light around the room.

  ‘Father! Look! It is an angel, come to visit!’

  He opened his eyes and then closed them again as a shaft of light dazzled him. I moved away from the window.

  He opened his eyes again. He smiled. A very small smile.

  I had not seen Father smile for what seemed like for ever.

  He moved his lips to speak but they were cracked and dry so I set down my prize and gave him a sip of water. He swallowed it all without dribbling. He tried to sit up but he was too weak.

  ‘Mary!’ So faint, I could scarcely hear.

  I climbed on the bed and put my ear near his lips.

  ‘My little Lightning Mary!’ he whispered and he lifted his scrawny arm and held out his hand. I rested my hand in his. It felt like a bundle of twigs. The palm was cool and damp. I did not like the touch of it but I was pleased to feel those twiggy fingers close around my own.

  ‘You aren’t going to die, after all!’ I said. ‘I thought you were, but you were taking a long time over it so I thought maybe you would get well after all. That is what I told Mother but she has been worrying so and it’s been horrible for us and did you know you piss the bed and dribble and groan all night long so we can get no sleep and you weren’t even interested in my eel skull and—’

  He gave my hand a feeble squeeze. ‘Hush! Hush!’ he whispered.

  He closed his eyes and for one moment I wondered if I that had been my chance to say goodbye and instead I had talked nothing but nonsense.

  But then he opened his eyes and smiled again. ‘Oh, Mary! May you never change!’

  ‘I never will!’ I said.

  ‘That’s my girl.’

  He closed his eyes and let go of my hand. I wiped it on my skirt because it was all clammy from his touch.

  ‘Do you want to see my eel skull now?’ I asked, but he shook his head very slightly.

  ‘Tired. Tomorrow.’ And with that he fell back to sleep.

  I went down to tell Mother.

  ‘He’s talking. He wants to see my eel skull tomorrow. We must give him an egg tonight to build up his strength.’

  ‘Must we, indeed,’ said Mother. ‘There are but two remaining and I had thought to give them to you and Joseph, now you are both shooting up like bean poles.’

  ‘Father needs it more than me. Besides, I don’t want to grow more. My clothes are too tight as it is. I can scarce breathe and you can nearly see my knees in this dress.’ It was true that my few clothes were becoming very tight and I did not
like the feel of them at all.

  Mother looked at me long and hard. I thought she might be about to cry. ‘You’re becoming a woman, Mary! You’ll be all growed up soon. With babbies of your own and a man by your side to look after you.’

  At that moment, Joseph came in and it was just as well for I think I would have screamed with fury. Mother knows I do not like talk of babies or husbands.

  ‘Mary’ll never be wed!’ said Joseph. ‘She can’t abide anyone in her company except we three and that fancy boy of hers.’

  My face grew hot with anger, but I bit my tongue and said nothing for, in truth, I did not know what to say. I had been riled by his rude description of Henry but I was also befuddled for a moment by a strange feeling that I might cry.

  ‘Don’t tease her, Joe, there’s a good lad. She will come around to a husband and babies soon enough.’

  ‘I will not,’ I muttered under my breath, my hands balled in tight fists ready to thump Joseph or Mother if they continued in this vein. ‘I will never, ever. I will not be a man’s skivvy. I will not let myself grow fat with child or spend my days cleaning and cooking and waiting on a man like a slave with no life but what some, some man, says I must have!’ I spat out the words and a big gobbet of spittle landed on the floor. Joseph saw and started to laugh which enraged me. ‘Some stupid man, like you are becoming, Joseph Anning!’ and I pushed past him to go outside.

  ‘Wait here, missy!’ shouted Mother. ‘That’s no way to speak to me or your brother!’

  I stopped and turned round. ‘Why? Because you be so superior? Because you be so old?’

  ‘Mary, Mary!’ sighed Mother. ‘We have had difficult times and we are all weary and that makes us say things we do not mean.’

  ‘But I do mean it!’ I said. ‘I never say things I do not mean. Never. Ever.’

  And with that I went out and slammed the door behind me.

  What was happening to me? Hadn’t my father just showed signs that he might get better after all? Wasn’t my mother fair worn out with looking after him? Hadn’t she lost yet another of her precious babies? Wasn’t Joseph working hard, learning a trade so that he might put food on the table? And wasn’t Father a man and the best man I ever did know?

  I ran down to the Cobb. Harry and three other fishermen were working on their boats ready for the spring, painting on the sticky black pitch that would stop the water getting in.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t little Miss Anning come to pay us a visit!’ said Harry, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘How’s Father Anning this fine day?’

  ‘He spoke. He spoke to me!’ I burst out, and then suddenly I was crying and crying and crying as if I would never stop.

  Harry put down his brush and wiped his hands on his overalls. I thought he might try to hug me but he knew me better than that, it seemed. He ruffled my hair just as my father used to before he had his accident.

  ‘Tis the way of it,’ he said kindly. ‘While tis all gloom and doom and sorrow, we show a brave face to the world and go about our business as if all is well. Then, when it is all well at long last, all the sorrow we have kept at bay... just as the Cobb keeps back the storms... all that sorrow comes flooding over us, all of a sudden. You, young Mary, you can scarce believe your grief is over and that is why you cry. Tis the way of it,’ he said again, giving my hair one last ruffle.

  I dried my eyes and my runny nose on my sleeve and stood up as straight-backed as I could, which made my bodice feel very tight indeed, I must say. He was right. It made no sense at all, but he was right. We had all been hiding our sorrow, trying to pretend all would be well. Now it would be!

  ‘Thank you. And thank you for all the salt fish. It helped. And my eel skull. It is my favourite possession, apart from my necklace and my hammer, and I am showing it to Father tomorrow.’

  ‘Good girl!’ Harry smiled approvingly before taking up his brush again and returning to his task. ‘You’re a good little maid, for all you are a strange one.’

  Harry was a good man. And so too was Henry. Maybe I would get a letter from him after all. The thought of it warmed me a bit and I headed back for home a little lighter in my step and in my heart until I reminded myself that, if a letter were to come, it would be I who must pay for it. Let no letter come, then, for there was no money for such fripperies. Was there no end to the deprivations of we poor?

  13

  A REMINDER AND A REMEMBRANCE

  After that day when Father spoke to me at long last, he slowly, slowly began to look more like his old self again. The yellowed skin turned white and then pink; the bones which showed through gradually disappeared from sight again; his shaggy mane of knotted hair was washed and cut and his beard trimmed.

  He moved about slowly at first, clinging to one of us or leaning against the wall as he made his way around the house. He sat for long hours by the back door, taking in the weak early spring sunshine, and seeming to read pamphlets about God and the Church and Science. It seemed that the church people had not turned him from his Dissenter ways, for all they tried so hard. They would not have liked these writings, with their talk of not everything in the Bible being actual truth or of it being good to use science to help understand how the world was created. They were not very exciting to read and Father seemed to feel the same way for I never saw him turn a page, so I am sure he was just pretending to read them. The smile I had seen that day he spoke for the first time since his fall had not been seen again.

  Sometimes I sat with him, picking over a pail of muddy stones which I had brought up from Black Ven in the hope of entertaining him and rekindling the interest he had once had, but he never so much as looked.

  ‘Are you afear’d to go back out there, Father?’ I asked one day, as we sat together. He was daydreaming; I was turning two crocodile teeth over and over in my hands and thinking with half my head about whether they were not teeth at all but maybe bones.

  He stayed silent, staring straight ahead of him, down the street, as if transfixed by something only he could see.

  ‘Well?’ I persisted. ‘Are you? Afear’d? Because I be not afear’d. I go alone and I could take you with me, if you are. You could bring your stick and lean on me when the path gets stony or steep, and sit upon the rocks and spy out likely finds.’

  But he did not answer. Only stared.

  ‘Have you gone deaf, Father?’ I asked, pulling at his sleeve. It seemed as if he was a thousand, thousand miles away. He put his hand up to his head where the scar showed in a raised white line, like the worm trail on a mussel shell. ‘Does your head hurt, still?’

  Still no reply.

  There wasn’t much purpose in talking to a person who wouldn’t answer. I fell to wondering. Could a person stop being the same person and become someone else? He looked like my father. He smelled like my father (which was a very good thing as that stinking creature in his sickbed had not been nice to be close to at all). Yet, somehow, he was not himself. Not Father. Just like an empty shell, the creature in it long gone, eaten by a gull maybe, so he was eaten up by his ailment, such that nothing of him remained except the body he’d lived in.

  A sudden wave of anger came over me. What was the point of him being spared if he was of no use to man nor beast? What was his purpose if all he did was sit in silence or eat our scant food or pass away the hours in bed? There was work he could be doing and money he could be earning. There wasn’t even any entertainment to be had from him! He was neither interesting nor interested. We had been so happy, so joyful that he had recovered from the fall, but that happiness, that joy had faded, truth to tell. I began to ponder whether it might not have been better had he died for he had wasted so much of our time and effort and grief and all to have him sit on the step in the sun, saying not a word.

  I gave him a poke in his ribs, which still stuck proud like the hull of a wreck. He gave a thin wail of pain but still did not look at me.

  ‘Father!’ I said, as fiercely as I could. ‘You have to stop
this nonsense now. I know tis not my place to berate you, but we have all suffered for long enough. Tis time you did . . .’ And here I hesitated for I was about to say a very rude thing indeed which I had heard a rough woman say to her drunken husband: ‘Tis time you did do your business or get off the pot!’

  There. I’d said it. I had not understood what the woman had meant at the time for her husband was not on the pot, him being in the street at the time, but now I saw it clear. It was a way to say ‘Pull yourself together or give up!’ and that is what I wanted Father to understand. He could not be a burden to us or to himself a moment longer.

  I watched his face for signs that he had heard. A little tear welled up in the corner of one eye and rolled down through the lines in his cheek and vanished into his beard. It was like watching a raindrop go down a window pane. It seemed to take for ever. But I could not feel sorry for him. I had no sorrow left.

  I was close to poking him again when, of a sudden, a slow, small smile spread across his face as, still staring ahead, he reached out for my hand and took it, squeezing hard.

  ‘Oh, Mary!’ he cried, turning to me at last. ‘What a creature you are! Why, who but my little Lightning Mary could haul me out of my pit of despond? I will not ask where you learned such a phrase but, by the heavens, it hit its mark and no mistake! How right you are. It’s been long enough. Long enough, indeed. I beg your forgiveness and your mother’s and Joseph’s. You’ll have to bear with me a little longer for I am still weak but, as you say, tis time.’

  It was the longest speech he had made in many a long month and it warmed my heart to hear him with something of his old resolve and spark.

  ‘I’ll help you, Father. Spring’s nearly here. There are visitors in Lyme already. I can sell our curiosities whilst you make cabinets. There are customers waiting for you to return to your work, so there is money to be made if you could just get back into the workshop.’

  He ruffled my hair and I felt my love for him return. ‘So be it, Mary. So be it.’