Lightning Mary

by Anthea Simmons

  ‘But how do I know where to look?’ I asked, for to be truthful, the mud and rocks looked all of a piece to me then, all the same as each other.

  ‘You got to trust your instincts, Mary, and you got to be looking... really looking! If you want to find a curiosity, you got to be curious! See how this rock is all piled up like a heap of washing? Layers and layers? You have to look for anything that looks strange in there, see, where the beasts get trapped. A bit further down, you might find some ladies’ fingers, nearer the foreshore. Or look for flat stones... but don’t you try to split them without letting me see them first. There’s a trick to it and if you get it wrong, you’ll smash it to pieces.’

  I stared at the cliff face and then I closed my eyes and pictured treasure in my hand and money in my pocket. Father was already collecting a heap of clay lumps and I began to do the same. My fingers were stiff from the cold and it was hard to get a grip. In future I would remember to put on my mittens.

  My hand hovered over the rocks. I could not make up my mind which to choose. I confess I made a little wish that I might find something exciting all by myself and make my father proud of me.

  The first few lumps yielded nothing. They fell away under my hammer and left nothing behind. The next ten, twenty, thirty were the same, but Father seemed to be having more success. I saw him slip three or four pieces into his bag in what seemed like no time at all.

  ‘You are so quick, Father!’ I said, rather envious of the ease with which he seemed to find things.

  ‘Quick?’ he replied quizzically. ‘Why, Mary, we have been here for more than the whole morning! See that pale sun and the sea so close? We don’t have long before the sun will be off home to the West and the sea will be wetting our boots. We shall have to hurry home if we are to beat them both and be gettin’ ourselves cleaned up for Chapel!’

  He was right. The feeble sun, which could just be seen tinting the grey clouds ahead of us as we had walked to Black Ven, was now right above our heads. The sea was no more than two feet away. How had the time passed so swiftly?

  Father had stopped work and was gathering up all his tools but I could not bear to think of going home without finding something by myself. I suddenly spotted a lump of rock the size of a goose egg. I seized it, tapped away at it and picked off lumps of clay with my frozen fingers. There, in the middle, was an oval stone, quite flat, about the length of my forefinger.

  ‘Father! Could this be a curiosity?’ I asked.

  He stopped what he was doing and approached to take a look at what I had found. ‘Why, do you think it might be, Mary?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know,’ I said. ‘I just feel it in my bones!’

  ‘Bones, eh?’ He winked at me. ‘Bones to find bones, eh, Mary? Well, let’s see if your bones are right!’

  He gave the rock one of his sharp little taps and it fell in two, just like the one that had held my first treasure.

  ‘Is there anything there?’ I was so excited I could hardly breathe!

  ‘Indeed there is, child!’

  There, like a tiny chalky ghost, was a most curious creature, like nothing I had ever seen before.

  ‘That’s a scuttle you got there, Mary! He’s like a cuttlefish. You’ve maybe never seen cuttlefish alive, but you’ve seen bits of them on the beach. Those white, feather-light things that look like a petal... the things the birds seem to like so much.’

  My first find! A scuttle! I hid it in my pocket with my first treasure. I felt so happy that I could have skipped about for joy but for the strange feeling that the ground beneath my feet might slip away if I disturbed it.

  Father finished packing away his tools. He looked at the sky, which had turned a sullen grey, grim clouds covering the setting sun.

  ‘Right! Best be heading home now,’ he said. ‘Weather’s closing in and it’ll be dark soon. We don’t want to be stranded now, do we? And we don’t want to be getting a scolding from your ma! She’ll be worriting!’ He gave my cheek a pinch. ‘Got that colour in ’em, like I promised,’ he chuckled.

  ‘When can we come here again?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s my girl! We can come just as soon as I have finished that desk. Sooner I am paid for that work, the better. With the price of corn these days, tis a job to put bread on the table. These little findings of ours won’t fetch much this time of year. Not so many fancy folk visiting. Still, we’ll have a store of treasures ready come the spring, won’t we, Mary?’

  ‘Maybe we’ll find a big treasure, Father?’ I said, in a hopeful way.

  ‘Don’t see why not! With you and Joseph and me all hunting together? I’d say it were as good as found!’

  3

  LEARNING THE TRADE

  Summer was the best time for selling, but winter was far and away the best for finding. Those storms throw the earth about, revealing treasures and then, just as quick, hiding them again. You have to be out there all weathers if you want to find things. But it’s mighty dangerous.

  The tide can come in while you aren’t watching and the sea will sweep you up and carry you off. The ground beneath your feet can be snatched away in an instant. Worse still, the ground above you can come tumbling down and bury you deep, where no one would find you until the sea carried the mud and rocks away again... and then it would be too late.

  You were not even safe in your own home. When I was a very small child, the sea rose up in a rage one night and hurled all manner of stones and such against our house. The water poured in – a great torrent – and sucked away the whole staircase as it left, leaving us all stranded upstairs. I scarce remember it, but Joseph could recount the whole story of how we were all rescued through the bedroom window at dawn and Mother often spoke of the destruction visited upon us by the sea.

  But the sea, for all she can be a monster, is also the treasure-seeker’s friend. She can wash stuff clean so you can see it and she can bring down curiosities from high above where you’d never hope to reach them otherwise. Without the sea to pull apart those layers, we’d have slim pickings indeed. We thank her in our hearts, but fear her too.

  Father took Joseph and me on his expeditions whenever he could. We were even out on Christmas Day with our baskets and hammers. There wasn’t a muffler knitted could keep out the cold and Joseph and I had to fight to keep our teeth from chattering after Father joked that the noise and the rattling would bring the cliff down on top of us! We worked as hard and as fast as we could for the few hours of light the good Lord gave us but the luck I had had when I had first searched with Father seemed to have abandoned me. Most of what we found was what Father called ‘ornery’ but it would earn us a few coins come the spring and anything was better than nothing, as he rightly said.

  Mother despaired. ‘What are you thinking of, Richard, to risk the lives of the only two children left to us? And on Christmas Day too!’ she wailed.

  ‘But we want to go with Father!’ piped up Joseph. ‘It’s interesting! It’s good for us to be out!’

  Seemed Mother wasn’t the only one to think we should bide at home. One day that winter, a woman we’d never seen before, new to Lyme maybe, came up to Father and poked him in the chest with her walking stick. She must have been spying on us for she seemed to have her mind and her opinions quite made up.

  ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself!’

  Father was bewildered. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What have I done that I should be ashamed of? I can think of nothing. Do you have the right man?’

  ‘Indeed I do!’ she growled back at him. ‘These children are nothing but servants to you! Why, if they were slaves in the New World, you could not treat them worse! You daily risk their lives and for what? To line your own miserable pocket!’

  And with that she gave him an extra hard jab with the stick and marched off up Broad Street, muttering as she went.

  Father stood, dazed, for a moment. ‘Well, do I make you my little slaves?’ he asked. ‘Do you feel mistreated by your old fa
ther?’

  ‘No, no!’ we cried, for we would sooner be in our graves than miss our adventures on the cliffs.

  I loved to be out there with him. All weathers. I knew he would have been out there morning, noon and night but his cabinet work took him away for days at a time, making some fancy piece of furniture for folks with money to burn but still too mean to pay what’s fair.

  ‘You must make hay while the sun shines,’ Mother always said when he got what she called proper work. He muttered and looked black as thunder but he knew it had to be done.

  We had to be grateful to the nose-in-the-air highborn folk at every turn. The sun brought out all manner of fancy types from Bath and London. Prancing about in the Assembly Rooms. Picking their way around the town and holding their noses down at the quayside and grimacing at the boxes of the fancy fish that only they could afford to eat while we had the leavings. Dressed up in silks and frills, whether they were men or women, and looking as silly as could be to my mind. What was the use of a pale pink dress if it was trailing in the mud? What was the use of a bonnet with ribbons and feathers if it got snatched away by the wind? If I had to choose between fine clothes and a fine adventure, I’d choose adventure any day.

  Of course, I had no such choice and the plain truth was that when the summer brought these silly creatures into Lyme by the carriage-load, that’s when Father could sell some of his curiosities and make enough money to keep Mother happy for a while. He was quite well known and folk came from miles to see what was on his little table in front of the workshop. Joseph and I were proud to see our own finds laid out for them to gawp at. Of course, those folk in all their finery had to keep their gloves on to touch anything, so scared were they of a bit of dust or dirt, poor creatures!

  At least they were a bit more sensible than the mad people who came to Lyme in the winter months. Those poor souls followed the advice of a certain Dr Crane of Weymouth who advised bathing in the sea in January and February for its ‘benefits to health’! How I used to laugh at the sight of them, taking off their clothes in the bitter cold and rushing across the stones, yelping like puppies, and on into the grey water, screaming with pain as it turned their bodies blue and then red as any boiled lobster. They didn’t stay in long, I can tell you, and as for it being a cure for all ills and the secret to good health? Well, all I can say is that more went home in a box on the back of a cart than in a carriage, so a fat lot of good all that freezing water did them. I could have told them straight off that it was a fool’s errand and I would have charged them a lot less than any doctor for that advice. I do wonder where people’s brains are sometimes.

  I did not have much regard for those people as a rule, it is true, but there was one encounter which was a pleasure to be remembered always. My first real trade, when I was no more than eight years old. An old gentleman picked up a tiny little ram’s horn I had found and which Father had polished so that it shone in the sunshine. My heart thumped in my chest as I watched the old gentleman turn it over and over in his hand, staring at it in wonder.

  As I watched him, my hand went to the snakestone that hung from a leather strip around my neck. It was the one Father had found for me on my first visit to Black Ven. He had split it down the middle, polished both faces of the stone and put a hole in near the snake’s head for the leather. It gleamed a rich golden brown when it caught the sun and maybe it was a good-luck charm too, for the old gentleman seemed to catch a glimpse of it before he spoke again.

  ‘I’ll give you twopence for this,’ he said, holding out the coins.

  ‘Sixpence!’ The words were out of my mouth before I’d had a moment to think. Father looked at me as if he did not believe what he had just heard and, truth to tell, it should not have been more than three pennies at the most.

  ‘That’s a lot of money, young lady, for a bit of old stone,’ said the old gentleman.

  ‘It’s not a bit of old stone,’ said I. ‘It’s a treasure and I risked my life to fetch it out of the treacherous mud of Black Ven so rich folk like you can gaze on it.’

  The old man laughed. He seemed kind enough, not like some of them London types with their airs and graces. He turned to Father. ‘Your daughter drives a hard bargain, but she’s understood the importance of provenance.’

  ‘What’s provenance? Don’t you mean providence?’ I replied. It was a bit cheeky to talk back at a gentleman but I like to know the meaning of words.

  He smiled again. ‘Provenance is all about where things come from, my dear. Here’s your sixpence. Now that is providence! May it buy you a good dinner for you and your family. She’s a credit to you, sir. A brave little wench!’

  He pocketed the ram’s horn and tipped his hat at me. I thought my heart would burst. My first sale in front of Father. He could see how good I should prove at commerce!

  Father ruffled my hair, laughing all the while. ‘Well, my little Lightning Mary. You’ll be taking over from your old pa in no time at all. We’ll be rich!’

  But we weren’t. Nor never like to be so with the meanness of most of our customers. They picked over stuff, tutting at prices, and my outspoken ways did not always work the same magic with them. Father, on the other hand, could charm a bird out of a tree if he had a mind to and between us we sold enough to buy bread and milk and even meat.

  ‘These rich folk, Mary, they’ll beat you down at every turn! You got to stand your ground. Look them in the eye and don’t take any of their nonsense. It’s the only way and don’t you forget it! But hark at me! I’m telling the toughest little saleswoman in all of Dorset!’

  He would always ruffle my hair when he praised me. It was just about the only touch I could ever bear.

  4

  A SALE AND A SPY

  I was never one for toys or dolls. After my hammer, my snakestone necklace was my most prized possession. It was a comfort to me to stroke it as I shut my eyes and imagined myself somewhere on the beach, alone or with Father, finding curiosities amongst the seaweed, mud and stones.

  The children at Sunday School mocked me, as they always did:

  ‘Mary Anning got no bread!

  All she’s got is a stone instead!

  Mary, Mary! Can’t eat stones!

  Never mind, she’ll chew on bones! ’

  They thought themselves so clever with their rhymes. I reckon they were jealous of my treasure.

  It was true that we did not have much food. Nobody did, except the farmers’ children. Why those invading Frenchies would ever want to come here I never did understand, for most of the time there wasn’t much in Lyme more than mud and babies dying and folk scraping along, best they could. Leastways, in the winter months.

  One Sunday in March, not two months before my tenth birthday, I went on Black Ven by myself, after school. I ignored the girls who asked me where I was going. I pretended not to hear the taunts and jeers of the boys. I put them all behind me as I raced round the streets and onto the path behind the church.

  I just had a feeling that I was going to be lucky, going to find something really big or really beautiful or both, and nobody was going to stop me.

  I thought I’d find a treasure really quickly – and I did! A big lump of clay seemed to be waiting for me in my path. A few pushes and prods with my fingers to prise the mud away and there was a rock as big as a gull’s egg and just as smooth. Two sharp taps of my hammer and there was one of the finest ram’s horns I ever did see. I whooped with joy and then looked around to check no one had heard me. Not that I really expected anyone to be there, as Joseph was helping Father in the workshop and nobody else was inclined to fossicking ever since old Cruickshanks had jumped into the sea. Yet, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a movement and then I saw a head of blond curls ducking down behind a rock.

  ‘Come out!’ I cried. ‘Show yourself! I know you are there!’

  But the figure did not come out. Instead, I heard footsteps, gradually getting fainter as my spy ran away from me.

>   ‘Coward!’ I shouted, quite proud to have frightened the intruder away.

  I returned to my find. How splendid it looked, curled and ridged like the finest twisty horn you will ever see on a sheep itself.

  There’s many as believe exactly what it says in the Bible: that God created this whole world and everything that is in it all in just six days. Father said that couldn’t be. He said learned folk had worked out that days meant something else, and that it was six thousand years not days. But he also said he had heard that others were beginning to talk of many times that number. ‘As much as seventy-five thousand!’ Father said, though it was hard for me to imagine how much time that was, for even a day in my life passed slowly sometimes.

  We only talked of these matters on the beach or cliffs, where we could not be heard, because there were people who would have said Father’s thoughts were the Devil’s work and against the truth in the Good Book. There are many things I could not understand (and still cannot) and which made me think that not everything in the Bible was completely true. It says God created everything at once, but why have some things vanished? Why don’t we find live snakestones and scuttles? Why create a thing and then make no more of it? Especially something so beautiful. Makes no sense to me.

  And where are all the bones of men and horses and sheep and the like in the rocks? We only find those on the beach when the sea washes them up and she’s only had them long enough to feed the fishes and wash the bones clean as a peeled potato. They haven’t been buried deep in the earth as these curiosities have been. So did the rocks split open to fit the treasures in? How? It’s a mystery.

  I stroked the treasure and then took it down to the water to wash off the last of the mud. It was as big as the palm of my hand.