Lightning Mary

by Anthea Simmons

  And so it was. Father went back into his workshop and, though he was much weakened and very slow and had a cough which he could not shake off, he managed to make enough to keep our heads above water.

  Mother started smiling again as, once more, she found herself with child. I could not be pleased, try as I might. You know how I feel on these matters. Still, it meant that our days returned to how they had been before the accident, near enough.

  Then a day came that turned out to be very different indeed. Nearly a year since I had first met Henry. More than half a year since he had left Lyme.

  I had started running errands for Mrs Stock, Squire Stock’s wife. She had been very kind when Father was ill and had taken it upon herself to try to put paid work our way. I was happy enough to visit the stores and the market on her behalf and she profited from my skill at bargaining so, though she paid me pennies and sometimes shillings, I cost her very little if anything at all by the savings I made. Her husband owned a fair bit of land hereabout and Father, as I have told you, had made furniture for them before. Mrs Stock is a short, bustling sort of woman, always in a hurry and always talking at a very great rate. I let most of what she says wash over me like a wave over a pebble. Of course, I pay attention to instructions. Anyway, on this particular day, she seemed more animated than ever and beamed at me and pinched my cheeks as she told me to run along up to the top of Silver Street and call on Mrs De la Beche.

  My heart stopped for what seemed like minutes and I stared at Mrs Stock with my mouth open like a stranded mackerel.

  At last I said, ‘And what am I to do there, ma’am? Must I take or collect something for you?’

  At this, she looked very pleased with herself and pinched my cheeks again. ‘No, child. There is nothing to collect for me! It is you who have something to collect! And it will cheer you most marvellously! I am confident of that! After all the heartache you have had, you deserve some good thing to happen to you! Now, run along! The sooner you go, the sooner you may have your— Ah! But let it be a surprise for you, my dear Mary!’

  With that, she gave my cheeks one last pinch and winked at me before turning away and disappearing down the street.

  So. A letter from Henry at long last. That was all it could be. It was good of him to take measures to ensure that I would not have to bear the cost of its delivery, and very sensible too, since if it had been delivered to Cockmoile Square, I should have been obliged to refuse to take it, which would have been very vexing indeed.

  So I set off up the hill to Silver Street and the house of the sugared buns, though I doubted very much there would be any buns for me that day. I opened the big wrought-iron gate and went up the driveway to the front door. For a moment, I hesitated, wondering if it might not be better to go round the side to the tradesmen’s entrance, but I was not a tradesperson, at least not officially, and I had gone in the front door with Henry so I should do so again.

  I pulled the rope on the ship’s bell that hung by the door and waited, excited by the prospect of a letter.

  Nothing. Silence. I took hold of the knocker and gave the door a thoroughly good bashing. Still nothing. Had Mrs Stock sent me on a wild goose chase? I put my ear to the door and nearly fell headlong into the hallway when a woman of about Mother’s age and dressed all in black silk opened it. I recovered myself quickly and looked her up and down.

  ‘You are very smartly dressed for a maid,’ I said, ‘but then, I suppose they treat you well because they are so very much against slavery, though they have a cook as well, so perhaps they like servants well enough and tis nothing but humbug.’

  The woman tried to hide a smile which I thought rather impertinent since I was a visitor after all.

  ‘I am here to see Mrs De la Beche at the request of Mrs Stock. Please be so good as to tell her I am here.’ This is how fancy folk announced themselves when they deigned to visit Father’s workshop. I pulled myself up to my full height and wished my skirts did not lift to show my knees but it could not be helped.

  ‘Why!’ said the woman, near to laughter as far as I could tell. ‘You have told her yourself! You must be the famous Miss Anning Henry talks of so often. Welcome, Mary. I may call you Mary?’

  I was rather annoyed to have been put on the wrong foot as it were. ‘A person should not pretend to be another person. You might have told me. Why do you answer your own door? It isn’t normal.’

  At this she laughed out loud. ‘Ah, dear child. Henry told me that I would find you strong of will and plain of speech and how right he was! We keep no maids here, Mary, only Cook, and she is more of an old family friend than a servant, so I hope you can see that we do not indulge in humbug. Come, I have a letter for you.’

  She turned and swept into a large room full of comfortable chairs, a settle and a grand piano.

  ‘Sit down, Mary. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘That I would! And a sugared bun too, thank you.’ The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.

  She laughed again and a question came into my head with such force that I could not help myself.

  ‘Are you still mourning for your husband? Only my father very near died months ago but now he is well again, to a degree, but I would not still be grieving if he had died. But then again, you do laugh a lot so you cannot be altogether sad, can you? Oh, and did sharks really eat the sailors when they were drowning and was the sea red with blood? Henry told me all about the shipwreck but I did wonder if some of it might not be real, just showing off, which he does do, mainly with Joseph but sometimes—’

  I checked myself for I could feel the torrent of words and questions threatening to overwhelm me as they do when my head is full and I have said nothing out loud for a long time, which I hadn’t.

  She looked sad for a moment and then she clapped her hands together in her lap and leaned towards me. ‘Well, Mary. Since we are speaking frankly, I will tell you how it is. I am mourning my husband, but I am mourning Henry’s absence more, even though he spent almost every waking hour out with you. I’ll let you into another secret, one woman to another. This is my most comfortable, most luxurious dress and I fancy black rather suits me, don’t you? So, I wear it to please myself and no one else. I am sure you can understand that, Mary?’

  ‘Well, I have no choice as to what I wear as you may see for yourself.’ I tugged at my skirts in an effort to cover my knees which I could see now were rather dirty and covered in scratches and bruises from kneeling on rocks. ‘But is it true about the sharks? And did the sailors want to eat Henry?’

  Again that tinkly laugh. ‘Mary, Mary! What a tonic you are!’ she tapped the side of her nose with one finger before she added, ‘To be honest and, again, between you and me, I think Henry might have been ever so slightly guilty of exaggeration, no doubt to impress you! There were hungry sharks, yes, and hungry sailors too, but neither got much more than ship’s biscuits! Now. Here is your letter.’ She took an envelope from the mantelpiece and handed it to me. ‘You can read it while I make some tea. I can make tea, you know! Cook is away today but she has left a very fine plum cake. Perhaps you would like a slice now and then you can take the rest home?’

  I nodded my head vigorously, but all my attention was on breaking the seal on the letter which was addressed to me in Henry’s neat hand.

  I had never, ever had a letter of my very own.

  The paper unfolded like a map. There in the middle was a very funny drawing of Henry on a horse, looking very fine in his uniform, except that he was sitting the wrong way, facing the tail and the poor beast was looking round at his bottom in shock or horror.

  He had labelled the drawing in the same way he labelled our finds:

  ‘Henry De la Beche, Cavalry cadet in full fig.’

  ‘Horse: Troy. A fine fellow who is not best pleased to have said cadet as his master. Has been known to bite cadet’s bottom.’

  ‘Note cadet’s riding position fails in one vital element. Can the scie
ntist identify the flaw?’

  The letter itself was quite short.

  Dear Mary,

  I hope that by now I am forgiven. Lord knows, I have been punished enough. This is no life for me. I am like a fish out of water as you may see from the diagram above. Some of your wilfulness seems to have infected my spirit for I am constantly in trouble for insubordination and for speaking my mind. If you do not know what insubordination is, do not ask Mother as it will only alarm her, but I rather think you do.

  I did.

  I continued to read.

  Am I trying to make them throw me out of college? Perhaps. It is a dangerous strategy for it will disappoint Mother and spoil my prospects but I cannot believe that I was put on this Earth to be a soldier.

  Enough of me. I heard from Mother who heard from Cook that your father has been very gravely ill. I am very sorry for him, for you, for your whole family. I have asked Mother to help and I believe she has enlisted Mrs Stock, for Mother does not go out about town much.

  Please write and tell me how you are and how the science is progressing and about your father too. Mother will give you pen and paper, if you need them.

  We did not part as friends, for which I am eternally sorry, but I hope we might one day meet again and you will find me still, as before, your obedient servant and fellow scientist.

  As I folded up the letter, Mrs De la Beche re-entered the room with a tray which she set down on a little table by her chair.

  ‘Is he well?’ she asked. ‘I have not had a letter myself for some days now.’

  I was pleased she did not ask me if he was subordinate as I now knew him to be very insubordinate.

  ‘He is.’

  I hoped she would not ask more questions and she seemed to understand.

  ‘Do not let me forget to give you some writing materials when you leave. If you would like some?’

  ‘I would. Thank you.’

  All my words had dried up as the Marys in my head started to think of all manner of things and wanted to be left alone to do so. Science. Friendship. Father. Mrs Stock. Henry. My obedient servant! Quite right too!

  I smiled to myself and then began to eat the cake that Henry’s mother had offered me and which I had taken without paying it or her any attention at all.

  14

  BLOOD

  Not long after my eleventh birthday, which passed without celebration, I was running an errand for some sprats for Mrs Stock (for her cat, to be more truthful! There’s poor folk, poorer even than us, who would eat a cat let alone a sprat!) when I saw a crowd of people gathered at the end of the Cobb. I could not resist going to see what they were gawping at. It was low tide, so maybe some fool had fallen in the ooze and couldn’t get out.

  As I got closer, I could see bigwigs and their ladies pointing and pulling faces, the ladies with their lace kerchiefs over their mouths and noses. Then I saw what they found so disgusting. Hanging from the mast of one of the boats was the body of a dead horse, strung up by its hind leg. Its skin had been peeled off it so that the meat underneath shone pink in the sun. Fishermen were hacking chunks off it for bait.

  The smell was vile, so for once I could understand the ladies being so fussy. I could not help but be fascinated, though, monstrous though the sight and the stench were. I had not seen a whole carcass like this before. I could see the big slabs of muscle across the beast’s haunches, shoulder and neck. Smaller strands of white stretched between the joints. I divined that these were like the strings of a puppet, allowing the animal to move by lifting hooves, bending knees. The fishermen had stripped one leg completely and it dropped to the deck in a clatter of bones and a splatter of blood.

  One of the ladies went into a swoon and was just caught before her head hit the cobbles. Why she watched if she had no stomach for such things, I had no idea. Agreed, I too was observing but I was being a scientist. She was taking pleasure at the sight of a dead creature or just frightening herself with blood and gore. Either way, it was not a good reason to be there. Such things are not entertainment but there is no accounting for the strange tastes of these London folk.

  I moved closer so that I could study the body more closely. I had seen from my father’s case how a body diminished when the flesh was stripped off it through illness and that should have come as no surprise. After all, the eel’s skull was much smaller than the creature itself had been when it was alive and a fish skeleton gives few clues as to how much meat it provided before it was cooked and eaten. All the Marys in my head started running around having ideas about the curiosities and how bones held together and how many bones might be in a body and how big that body might really be with the meat and guts and skin all back where they should be. I wished I had brought paper and pen with me so that I could make a scratch for Henry.

  I was lost in my thoughts entirely, so I fair jumped out of my own skin when I was tapped on my shoulder.

  A man stood behind me. I thought I might have seen him somewhere else but, before I could fathom out where, he announced himself to be the very Mr De Luc who had admired Henry’s sketches last summer.

  ‘Ah! I see you have progressed from fossicking to the study of anatomy! A macabre subject for a young lady, I must say!’

  ‘Firstly, I do not know what ana-whatever you said is. Secondly I do not know what “mackarb” is. Thirdly, I am not a young lady, as I am sure you are well aware. Perhaps you would care to explain?’ I might as well learn some new words while I was about it. I could put them in my letter and that would give Henry something to think about!

  ‘Anatomy. A-na-toh-mee. It’s the study of the structures of organisms... living creatures... and how they work. And macabre? Well, that means... I do not know the English word... maybe gruesome? Something disturbing to do with death? And you are a young lady to anybody who is a gentleman and I consider myself to be one such. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘It does. I am a scientist more than anything, though.’ I said this in hushed tones, confident that none could hear me.

  He raised his eyebrows at this. Why do adults always do this with me? It is most vexing!

  I continued more forcefully, ‘I am a scientist so I must study all manner of things.’ Then it struck me that he might be useful again. ‘If people find a horse bone or an eel skull or a sheep’s jaw, they can tell what it was when it was alive because they have seen it alive. Do you think a person might be able to tell what a creature was even if they had never seen that creature living? In fact, if no one had seen it living?’

  He pulled at his long moustache and twisted the ends into a point. ‘That should, indeed, be possible but I think you would have had to have seen a very great number of creatures to have enough of the information you would need to make what is, let us be very frank here, my dear young lady, a guess as to what the unknown creature might be or how it looked. Perhaps I might suggest that only one who had observed and rebuilt many skeletons might be able to come by such knowledge.’ He paused. ‘I must assume that you are speaking of your “curiosities”?’

  ‘I might be,’ I said cautiously, for I did not want him stealing my ideas, and I also wanted to think about what he had said about other skeletons. ‘Are you a scientist?’

  He looked very pleased with this question. ‘I am. I pursue a science to which, I am rather proud to say, I have given a name. No, not De Luc. I call it “geology”—’

  ‘The study of the Earth,’ I interrupted him. ‘My friend Henry is a geologist. Well, he will be. He’s being insubordinate on a horse at the moment, but he will be a geologist when he has finished that.’

  Mr De Luc seemed to think this was highly amusing and it was, especially if you had seen Henry’s funny drawing.

  ‘Well! My word! What a knowledgeable young lady you are! It is my honour, mademoiselle, to be reacquainted. I wish you well in your studies! You must attend a very enlightened school.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t go to school any more, not since my father ha
d his accident. Besides, I only went on Sundays to learn my letters and such but there’s neither money nor time for school now. I have to make my own studies when and where I may.’

  The gentleman looked gravely but kindly upon me. ‘I am sorry to hear that your father met with an accident. I trust he will make a full recovery. You are clearly a young woman of enterprise and intellect and I look forward to reading many an expert pamphlet on your discoveries!’

  With that he tipped his hat and walked away down the Cobb and back towards town.

  So! I am a woman of enterprise and intellect! Another story for Henry, and a most productive day indeed.

  I tore myself away from the poor horse and the crowds and went to get Mrs Stock’s cat’s sprats. I saved her a penny or two as Mr Samways gave me a handful of fish he had dropped in the sawdust while arranging his wares. I washed them off under the town pump and they were like new, if a little mangled. The cat would have to put up with that, fussy creature.

  When I got to Mrs Stock’s house, which was a walk of more than two miles up Red Lane, she was in her garden, sorting out the canes for her runner beans.

  She stood up, smiling, as she saw me approach. ‘Mary, child! I wondered what had happened to you! You have Zebediah’s supper?’

  I held up the little packet which had been leaking fishy water all the way up the path.

  ‘Good girl. He will thank you for it.’

  I doubted that very much since Zebediah was not, as far as I knew, the first-ever talking cat.

  ‘So much to do and the time just flies by,’ she continued, as she gathered up her scissors and the ball of twine with which she had lashed the canes together. ‘And look at you! Growing up so fast!’

  Everyone kept on so about me growing up. What benefit there was to growing up, I could not work out for the life of me. I was suffering mightily from the tightness of my clothes, I knew that.

  Mrs Stock must have seen my discomfort. ‘I have been thinking for some time now that we need to get you some clothes more befitting a young lady! Now, Mary, don’t you scowl so! I know your taste! I would not dare to suggest sprigged muslins, even though I hear it is quite the latest fashion! Oh, I see you wrinkle your nose! Worry no more. I will find you some plain old workaday dress of mine in grey or brown and then you will be happy. Is that not so?’