16

OUR LIVES ARE FOR EVER CHANGED

Henry’s father had died very quickly. The fever struck, he took to his bed and, bang, a day later he was gone. Was Henry wrong? Was that swift death better? Better than this endless half-dying?

Three long months had passed and Father had hardly moved since the gentlemen had carried him up our narrow stairs and laid him on the bed.

It was so different from the last time. Last time we were all hope and determination. Now we were calm. Indifferent, almost. Mother cried sometimes but never for long. Her face was like a statue’s, unchanging, stern.

Joseph went to work. People brought us food and some gave us money. Harry visited and said his goodbyes just as I had said mine. The physician came early on, paid for by Squire Stock, but Mother had the sense to send him away. ‘I myself may need you more in the weeks to come,’ she said. ‘For there is nothing to be done for him, God save his soul.’

We did our chores. We kept him clean and watered. He had stopped eating long since. At first, he would try to smile or open his eyes but after the first few weeks, he did neither any more. We sat with him by turns but whether he knew we were there, I could not tell, for he never said a word.

I felt cold, hard, as if I had grown a thick, tough shell of bone or stone. I was impatient to be back on the cliff. All the time I sat with Father, I was puzzling over what the curiosities might really be, how they might have looked when they were alive. I practised making copies of Henry’s drawings. I took apart the skeletons of a mouse and a seagull, drew each bone and labelled it and put the skeleton back together again, using a little of the glue from Father’s workshop. I wrote to Henry and told him what I had done and drew a tiny mouse skull on one corner of the page. He did not write back.

We waited. There was nothing else to do.

One day, late in October, the minister came and asked him if he wanted to confess anything but Father stayed silent, eyes closed, mouth open, breath coming out of him with a rasp, like a bramble scratching on a wall.

Mother was but two months from her confinement and she would sit beside Father, stroking her belly and talking to the unborn child, cooing or singing to it, and I thought how very irritated I should be if I was that baby having to listen to all that twittering when I wanted just to be quiet or to be born. It seemed to soothe Mother, though, so I think she sang to herself as much as the baby.

 

On the tenth day of November, Mother woke earlier than usual and found Father cold. She gave one long wail and then was silent. She sat up in bed, her eyes shut, her hands cradling her belly.

Joseph ran to Father and tried to take hold of his hand but it lay stiff by his side. He laid his head on Father’s chest and howled like a wild dog, while Mother stroked his hair.

I stood in the doorway and stared at Father for a while. I could see that he had quite gone, but the strange thing was that he looked more alive than he had done in many a long month. Perhaps he was at peace at last, just as folk always say of the dead.

Later, neighbours came to lay him out and shooed me away when I wanted to watch what they were doing. Men dressed in black came and bore him away, for the doctor said there was still a danger from the disease that had killed him. I thought that it was rather too late to be talking of such dangers now, when we had shared our days and nights with him for so long but, in truth, it was better that they took him out of the house.

Mrs Stock came and sat with Mother for a while and talked to her of the burial. She lent Mother a black shawl, for no dress could be found to fit her. I wore the grey frock. Mother refused to have Father buried in his one good suit of clothing so that Joseph might have something to wear at the burial, so he went into the box in his work clothes. Why give your Sunday best to the worms?

Many people came, for Father, though a ‘wild one’ as I overheard someone say, was much admired by folk in Lyme and beyond. They cried and hugged my mother and tried to hug me. Some left us small gifts of sugar and biscuits and even wine. Harry May came with an old fisherman’s cap, filled with coins collected from all over the town. I counted the coins out at the table. Eleven shillings. No fortune, it was true, but nonetheless a very great kindness from folk with scarcely two pennies to rub together themselves.

We did not speak of Father for many days but then we did not speak of much. Joseph went to work and tried, fruitlessly, to be paid for his labours. Mother made bread, stretching across the great bulge of her belly to slam the dough down and stretch it away with the heel of her hand, then stopping to rub her back from the discomfort of standing.

I ran errands, same as ever. Some days it was as if Father had never existed. Others it seemed as though he might walk in the door at any moment. I did not like those days for they made me feel very anxious and unsettled. I didn’t cry. I missed Father, of course. Joseph must have felt the same way because twice I heard him sobbing into the bedclothes. He would stop as soon as he realised I was awake and listening. One night, he turned to me angrily and asked me why I did not cry.

‘Sometimes, Mary, I do believe you are unnatural. That lightning must have burned all feeling from you, for you do not seem to care that Father is dead. You are a hard creature, to be sure.’

I said nothing in reply. It was not true to say I did not care. I had felt a very great pain twice in my life: once, when Henry had gone, and then when Father had first been injured; but this seemed so long ago. As for Father dying, it seemed as though there was no more sadness left to be felt. Nothing would bring him back. I could feel no sorrow now, just unease because nothing seemed to be as it should. I like day-to-day matters to be normal or for me to have the power over them. I do not like surprises. I do not like shocks. I do not like chaos and I do not like to feel that anyone else has power over me. And now I did not like the feeling that we were waiting for something or that some great change was coming.

Then, ten days after we buried Father in the earth, some different men clad in black came calling, bearing not gifts but bills. They said they were sorry for our loss but it was plain to see they were more concerned about their own if we could not pay.

One of these grim visitors stood out, a nasty little man with black eyes like a crab’s. The landlord’s agent, Mr Sprague. He took great delight in drawing out a sheet of paper from his breast pocket and smoothing it out in front of Mother before pushing it towards her, a false smile on his face all the while.

‘One hundred and twenty pounds!’ My mother had turned white as a sheet. She clutched her belly and sat down before her legs gave way. ‘No! It cannot be so! One hundred and twenty! No! No!’

But it was so. There were bills for timber, for a new saw blade, the rent on the workshop had not been paid for months and the rent on the house had been paid with borrowed money. There was the bill for the burial. The total was a sum that would take six, maybe seven or more years for a man to earn, and who could tell how much longer without Father to earn it.

‘You’ll have to go to the workhouse, missus, if you cannot settle,’ said the crab-eyed Mr Sprague, with glee.

‘Or,’ said another gentleman by his side, who seemed more kindly, ‘I could arrange a loan for you and at very favourable terms, dear lady. Very favourable indeed!’

I was most indignant. ‘Favourable to you, maybe! Why would anybody borrow more money to pay a debt? That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard! Where is the sense in that?’

Mr Kindly-But-Stupid started gibbering away about how he was trying to help and I kept telling him it was a stupid trick to get more money from poor folk when Mother seemed suddenly to gather her wits and her skirts about her and stood up, her belly greatly adding to the effect of a woman on the warpath. ‘Thank you, Mary. I will manage this now.’

She gave them one of her blackest looks and demanded in the strongest terms that they give her the time to consider how she might settle their accounts. Then she sent them scurrying out of the house with a flea in their ear for being so shamefully cruel to a poor widow woman, great with child.

They nodded and muttered and fled. Mr Sprague had his tail between his legs, as they say.

Slamming the door behind them, Mother turned to Joseph and me. She banged on the table with the flat of her hand, closed her eyes for a moment and then stood up, straight as a ramrod.

‘We must make a plan,’ she told us. ‘We may go down but, by God, we shall go down fighting! Tis time for the Molly Moore of old to make her return!’ She had a look of iron about her as she reached for the pile of bills. ‘Joseph. Go to the workshop and fetch Father’s ledgers. There must be folk who owe us money. And make an inventory of all that is in the timber yard. We will sell that at the first opportunity. Oh, and tell that master of yours to start paying you a wage now you are of use to him. You’ve been asking long enough. If he will not, we must find you paid work and find it fast. You are an apprentice no more.’

Joseph nodded assent.

I looked at Mother with new respect. I had not seen her so decided and strong-willed before. She turned her gaze on me.

‘As for you, miss. It pains me to say it, but if we are to get out of this hole your father has left us in, you too will need paid work. Scullery maid, perhaps.’

My heart turned cold and my head hot. ‘No, Mother. No. I can make more money by selling treasures.’

Mother shook her head. ‘That’s fool’s talk, Mary. You’ve listened to your father for too long!’

‘Father made money! No, Mother, he did! But I can make more. I am a better tradeswoman than he. Joseph will testify. Besides you will need me here when that’ – I pointed at the great mound that was her belly – ‘when that is out in the world. Isn’t that so? Best I can be here when you need me and treasure-hunting or selling when you do not.’

‘She’s right, Mother,’ added Joseph. ‘She can find curiosities as if she were a magician and she is even cleverer than Father at getting money out of rich folk.’

Mother sighed.

‘I’ll run errands too. More than ever. Please, Mother! I will have no talent for maiding as well you must know. I would only lose a position as soon as I had gained it, for speaking out of turn or some such. You know how it is with me. I’m insubordinate !’ I was unable to hide a note of triumph as I said this.

Mother sighed again. ‘Yes, indeed you are. And proud of it too, I daresay. Well, maybe you can turn your faults into virtues. Let us see. You have twelve months to prove me wrong. No more.’

‘I am glad you have seen sense. I—’

‘Mind you do not overstep the mark, Mary Anning,’ Mother interrupted sternly. ‘You’ll not wrap me around your little finger. Now, make a start on those potatoes while Joseph fetches Father’s papers. Let us see how we might resolve matters.’

We were owed money. Not enough to end our troubles by any means, but enough to keep the worst of the creditors away from our door and us out of the workhouse. Not everyone who owed money paid promptly. It seemed that the richer they were, the more high and mighty, the less likely they were to settle a bill. It took Mother almost a fortnight to collect it all in.

‘Sometimes,’ Mother said, through gritted teeth, ‘sometimes tis like they believe they are doing us the favour, nay, giving us the privilege of doing work for them and they are amazed that we should wish to be paid as well!’

She was enormous with the baby that had yet to make its way into the world and cut a fearsome figure as she hunted down our debtors. If they did not respond to a bill delivered to the tradesmen’s entrance, Mother would accost them in the street or march straight up and hammer on their front door, demanding payment that very instant.

She would return, triumphant, and bang the money down on the table for me to count.

‘Seems Mary might have got her skills in trade from you, Mother!’ said Joseph admiringly.

‘Ha! I was a match for most in Blandford market, before I met your father!’ Mother laughed. ‘But, truth be told, I have a new method. When I see these bigwigs squirm and wriggle and try to avoid my eye and to ignore the bill, I just say, “Do you want me to set my Mary on you?” Ooh, they be afear’d of my fierce daughter! They pay quick as you like after that!’

Joseph burst out laughing. He clapped me on the back. ‘Mary the Money Monster! Quake in your boots if she comes for you!’

I am pleased to be fierce. It is useful. Father would have been proud of me but, for once, it was Mother’s praise of me that made me feel ten feet tall. She winked at me and I winked back. We were allies in the war against the debt and the threat of the workhouse.

December came and brought our new brother. Named for Father, Richard was a sickly thing, much like the rest.

Mother’s new-found spirit was not to be found in the wailing, whining creature and he was not long for this world. The new year had scarce begun when we buried him.

Mother did not mourn. I daresay it was a relief to us all.