Mrs Stock did indeed know my tastes, it seemed. I followed her inside and began to climb the stairs behind her.
She turned. ‘Mary! Not with the fish! Put it in the pantry and mind you close the door or that naughty Zebediah will help himself!’
Zebediah was a very large, very fat, ginger cat with a chewed ear and a pink nose. He was not friendly at all. I cannot see the point of keeping a beast that bites and scratches and has to be fed sprats because it is too fat and too lazy to catch a mouse or a rat. He was curled up by the range, even though it was a warm day. He opened one eye as I came into the room and then that pink nose of his twitched and he was up on his feet fast as you like and winding himself around my legs as I tried to get to the pantry, so that I was obliged to kick him several times. This bothered him not at all. But then he saw me toss the fish onto a shelf and shut the door, quick as a flash, before he had a chance to rush in himself. In an instant, he turned from the false friend to an angry foe, growled and took a swipe at my legs with his claws, drawing blood.
‘You evil fiend!’ I hissed at him, copying his ways, but he stared back at me with his great yellow eyes as if nothing had happened and returned to his spot in front of the range. ‘Spoiled brat of a cat that you are!’ I finished. He took to washing himself, sticking his hind leg out as if he were a dancer. I quite admired him for that indifference – nothing like a dog which must always be petted and praised. Maybe I was more like a cat than a dog, though I do not care for sprats or to be too hot.
‘Mary!’ Mrs Stock’s voice came from somewhere up above. ‘Mary! I have just the thing for you!’
I licked my finger, wiped the beads of blood off my leg and went upstairs to find her. I am sure Mrs Stock liked her house very well and it must be most pleasant to have a comfortable bed and a room to oneself but, oh, the fussiness of it all! Bits and bobs and china on every piece of furniture and barely an inch of wall that was not covered in portraits of families and children and cats. It made my head quite giddy, so much was there to see. I followed the sound of her voice into a big room in which stood a very large wardrobe, the work of my father, I noted with pride.
Mrs Stock held out two dresses, one in a dark green, the other in a pale grey. Both looked serviceable enough to me.
‘Try them on, Mary! I can get them altered to fit you if they are too big for I am so much fatter than you will ever be! Just as well I am not the tallest of women, though! Isn’t that lucky?’
I did not really care if they were too large. I just wanted a garment to cover me up and hide my knees to stop folk laughing at me, and something I could breathe in without fearing that all the seams might burst.
‘You will grow into a fine young woman, Mary,’ continued Mrs Stock. ‘Very strong and capable. You are no great beauty, tis true, but you’ll make some man a very fine wife, to be sure, give it three or four years.’
I growled under my breath, somewhat like Zebediah. ‘I am only eleven years old. Why must people always be talking about getting wed? Tis all I ever hear!’ I imitated their wheedling voices. ‘ “You’ll be wed soon!” “You’ll have babbies of your own! ” Well, I won’t.’
Mrs Stock patted my arm. ‘Now, now. I did not mean to upset you. You are right. You are young, yet. Tis easy to forget, Mary, for you are so old and wise beyond your years in so many ways. You’ve had a lot to bear, with your father’s accident and your mother so often ill herself and with child again. Now. Try this dress on and we’ll have no more talk of growing up. You’ve time enough for that, I daresay. Now, let’s see how you look in the green dress! Off with that old thing!’
She did not look away as I struggled to take off my dress without my shift coming off with it. Things were happening to my body. Things I did not like. Things I did not wish her or anybody to see. I put the green dress on as quickly as I could. It was big, too big, but it hid my body and it did feel nice to be in a dress that did not squeeze or scratch, for the cloth was a fine, soft worsted wool, worn from washing. It was also plenty long enough but not so long as to trip me up. It would last a long time.
‘Take a look in the mirror, Mary. See what you think.’
What did I think? That was a question! I stared at my reflection. My face looked very white and pinched. I was certainly no beauty, but what of it? I could hear and see and speak as well as anyone and Mr De Luc had called me a woman of enterprise and intellect and Henry had called me a genius so what else were a head and face for? Not an adornment, for sure. A vessel for my brain, no more, no less.
The dress hung shapelessly from my shoulders so that my anatomy (I was proud to use the word) could not be seen and only the tips of my boots were visible instead of my grazed and bruised knees.
Mrs Stock was watching me closely. I could see her in the glass as she stood behind me. She spoke very quietly, almost under her breath, as if she did not want anyone else to hear, which was strange as there was no one in the house but we two.
‘Your mother will have told you about becoming a woman, I am sure. Oh, I know, we said we’d have no more talk of growing up and I will say only this. You know, I hope, that you may always ask me anything, Mary. You do know that, don’t you? Lord knows, I have had daughters enough myself to make me quite the expert. So do not be shy.’
Whatever did she mean? She seemed to suggest there was some great secret with her confidential tones and her offer of advice. And what was there to know about being grown up but that you had to get married and have babies? I had heard little else from Mother for the last year or more. Yet something about this conversation made me uneasy and I turned my attention to the other dress, picking at the buttons to distract myself.
Mrs Stock took it from me and folded it up. ‘I think we can say that this one will be satisfactory too. I could take them both in so that they fit you a little better, but I sense that is not your wish?’
I nodded.
‘Mrs De la Beche asks after you,’ she said, at last changing the subject as she folded up my old frock. ‘Poor lady. She has had a hard life and no mistake. You are both missing young Henry, I am sure. Maybe you could visit her again? I think she would like it.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I am very busy.’
I nearly said that I had science work to do, but science was still a dangerous word to use with those who thought it ungodly so I said no more and neither did she.
When I got home, Mother nodded her approval but Joseph laughed and said I looked like a wooden spoon poking out of a sack, a comment I found more comforting than insulting.
Father said nothing. I told him about the horse and he just said that he had seen it too. He was not interested to hear more so I did not tell him about the Swiss gentleman.
There was no mistaking it. Father was becoming unwell again. It pained me to think it and I had long been trying to put it from my mind. But the truth could be denied no longer. The past few weeks had seen him grow pale, with great purplish-black shadows under his eyes. He was getting thinner. Bones showed through his skin as they had last winter. He coughed. Sometimes he went into a fit of coughing for several minutes. These fits left him weak and seemingly wracked with pain.
I observed that Mother always watched him closely when he had these spells and I started watching too. I knew what she was looking for.
Blood.
Blood on the rag he put to his mouth. Blood on the bed where he laid his head. Blood on the rough linen shift.
We all knew what that meant.
The wasting disease. Consumption.
Death.
Some got better, it was true, but most did not. I thought back to that day I had almost stepped on Amy Martin’s grave. She had been joined by tens of others since then. Would Father soon be under the earth? Why had the Lord spared him if only to take him away again? For the baby that would be born before Christmas? For Joseph? For me? There was no sense in it.
At that moment, Father fell to coughing as if my thinking of it had
made it happen. He twisted and groaned as the violence of the cough tore through his chest. He was blind to us, deaf to our concern. He writhed like an eel on a spike.
I felt my fists forming into tight balls and I thumped my own sides as hard as I could. I felt tears of fury, hot in my eyes.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the coughing stopped. Father sat on a stool, hunched over his knees, clutching his head. His breath came out in ragged gasps. After a few moments, he stood up.
‘Sorry. Must have got a bit of dust in my throat. All’s well now.’
It was a lie. I knew it was a lie. I glanced at Mother. She shook her head and carried on with her task, darning one of Father’s stockings as if nothing had happened.
‘So, Mary!’ He was animated again, like the Father of old. ‘Tell me again what it was made you want to look at that poor dead horse, eh? Are you a little ghoul, my little streak of lightning?’ And then he looked at me in my new old dress. ‘Well! Look at you in your finery! Come and give your old father a hug, there’s a good girl!’
He held me tightly and I smelled that sour smell again. I was afraid. I was angry. More angry than anything else. Did we have to go through all that turmoil all over again?
That night, I prayed as hard as I could. I prayed that Father would be spared. I offered God a deal. Spare my father and let me suffer some consequence or let him die quickly and in little pain. Anything but the turning upside down of our lives to no good purpose.
The next morning, there was blood on the front of his shirt and blood on the back of my nightgown as if I had sat on a gutted fish. It seemed that God intended for us both to die.
15
MOTHER BREAKS HER SILENCE
By midday I had blood on my nether garments, coming from I knew not where precisely, only that it was shameful and frightening and that I had a gnawing pain deep in my belly as if a rat was chewing on my entrails.
What if I bled to death? What if the Lord was punishing me for saying I was a scientist? What if I had made a pact, not with God, but with the Devil? I took one of the napkins Mother used for the babies and tried to staunch the bleeding. I also tried to wash out my nightdress and drawers without Mother seeing, but she caught me in the yard, scrubbing with all my might at the stain.
She pulled me away from the pail and into her arms. She kissed the top of my head and said softly: ‘Oh, Mary. My little Mary. Are you all so growed up now? I must welcome you to the blessings and the woes of womankind, poor child... or woman, as I must call you now.’
I pulled away from her and went back to my scrubbing. ‘Am I to die?’ I muttered. ‘Or have a baby?’
‘Lord, no! Tis just nature. You have become a woman is all!’
‘Why did you not warn me?’ I asked through gritted teeth, as all the Marys in my head started to run about, squawking like headless chickens.
‘I had not thought t’would be so soon, you being more like to a boy than a girl in your ways, but it seems that will not spare you a woman’s burden. God grant you a woman’s joy one day. You will see tis a price worth paying.’ She ran her hand tenderly over the growing curve of her stomach.
I felt a fury in me then. I scrubbed and scrubbed as hot tears ran down my cheeks and joined the reddened water in the pail.
‘Come!’ said Mother, gently pulling at me. ‘Leave those clothes to soak. You’ll wear a hole with your scrubbing. Come and sit with me and let me tell you how it will be for you.’
I shook her off. ‘I have but one question. Will it stop? Or shall I bleed to death?’
‘It will stop. But it will come again every month just the same, unless you are with child, until ye be too old to bear children and then it will stop entirely.’
‘Then I wish to be old now. I wish it to stop now!’
‘I know, Mary. I know. Tis hard when first it comes but it is nature’s way and we must accept it for there is nothing we can do to stop it save for being with child. One day, Mary, one day you may wish to have babbies of your own.’
I turned on her. ‘Why? Why must it always be about babbies and husbands and doing the will of men! Why? Is there never to be talk of anything else? Is that all the life I have before me? Is that all I will ever be? Why? Why was I spared death by the lightning strike if it was just for this? It is unjust! And what of men? Do they bleed? I see by your face that they do not! Why is it women suffer so?’
She stroked my head. ‘Tis all creatures of our sex, Mary. Tis nature, as I told you. Men pay their dues in other ways. Lord knows, your poor father is paying a heavy price.’
‘He brought it on himself, you said. His accident? He brought it on himself! Did I bring this upon myself? Did I ask to be a woman? I did not. I hate it! I hate these!’ I banged my chest. ‘I hate babies and husbands and men and being poor and the sickness and the toil and the injustice! What have we done? Why are we to be punished so? Why? And what about Father? I tried to make a pact with God but he did not listen. He just sent me blood and sent Father blood too. Much the Lord cares about the likes of we! It is unjust! It is unfair!’
Mother looked at me sorrowfully. ‘Whoever told you that life was fair, Mary? Not I. It is what it is. We must make of it what we will and be thankful for such kindness and mercy as is bestowed upon us.’
‘And should we be thankful if God takes Father from us? And that we shall be left alone, with yet another mouth to feed? Are we to be grateful for that?’
‘We must accept what we may not change, Mary. You must be content with your lot on this Earth, or you will be unhappy, for it is not going to change no matter how hard you wish it. Come! I’ll make you a special drink that will ease your cramps.’
‘I don’t want a special drink! I just want this to all go away!’ I cried, and I pushed past Mother and ran out of the square and up the road to the church. As I ran through the graveyard I stamped on the ground as hard as I could and shouted to the gravestones: ‘You are free. More free than I shall ever be until I be in the ground with you!’
I was crying. My hair was in my eyes. The pain was worse and I felt that, whatever Mother said, I would surely die. Where better to end my days than on this shore and by this sea that had wanted to take me into its depths for so long?
Just as I reached the little gate to the path, I suddenly remembered Henry’s sketchbook. The memory of it hit me as hard as any blow. I wiped the tears from my eyes and the snot from my nose with my sleeve and took the book from its hiding place in the wall. It was just as it had been all those months ago, a little curled from damp perhaps, but in the main unspoiled.
I clutched it to me and slid down to my haunches with my back to the wall and there I stayed for an hour or more, my head full of pain and sorrow and anger.
When my passion had subsided and my headache eased, I began to leaf through the pages and recall to mind each day of that summer. There were his little maps, his intricate drawings of serpents and scuttles and then another picture. One I had not seen before and the sight of which seemed to stop my heart for a second. A dark scene, dusk maybe. The cliff shapes were black against the deep gloom of the sky. In the centre, a figure striking a rock with a hammer, again black against the sky. Splitting that sky in two jagged halves, a bolt of lightning with its point touching the head of the figure.
Beneath the drawing, Henry had written: Lightning Mary. Scientist and Friend.
Lightning Mary. The secret, private name that only my father used. Henry must have heard my story and thought of the name himself, for I had never told him in case he thought my brains only came because of the storm, as so many did. I did not want him to think that. My mind was my mind.
I traced the letters with my finger and felt a swell of pride. ‘Scientist and Friend.’ Better than wife and mother any day.
Mother was making bread when I returned home. A cup of pinkish water stood waiting for me.
‘It’s gone cold,’ she said, not looking up from her kneading, ‘but I daresa
y it will work almost as well. Raspberry leaf.’
I drank it down. It was bitter and had not much taste of raspberry.
‘And here, take these.’ She gestured to the deep pocket in her apron for me to help myself as her hands were grey with flour. ‘You’ll have worked out what to do with them, I’m sure. No different from the nappies, I am afraid, and the same boiling to get them clean. You’ll need to change them more than once a day and don’t run about or they may fall out of your drawers.’
I took out the napkins and shuddered, before stuffing them in my own pockets.
‘Father will die, won’t he?’ This fact seemed now as clear as day in my head.
Mother slammed the dough down onto the table, sending up a cloud of flour. ‘He will.’
‘When?’ I asked. Mother seemed so calm.
‘I fear he’ll not see the year out. Your blood came today. His many weeks since.’
‘You didn’t tell me. Why?’
She turned to look me straight in the eye. Her own were filled with tears. ‘Because you were a child. Because you have long enough to be sorrowful. Because you cannot change it, and because he is precious to you and you are precious to him, and because he bade me keep silence. Now you ask me straight and I cannot hide the truth from you. We must be brave, you and I and Joseph. Braver than we have ever been. Now. Take him his dinner, Mary, and mind you say nothing of this to him. It would break his heart.’
She drew a deep breath, sighed and turned her attention back to the dough.
The route to Father’s workshop took me right along the seafront and up a narrow alleyway. The town was full of visitors, promenading up and down Marine Parade, enjoying the sunshine despite the gusts of wind which came off the sea. I weaved in and out of them, ignoring their stares at my dress, which billowed like a sail.
Lightning Mary Page 10
