Page 40 of The Peculiar Incident at Thistlewick House

In return for Mallory showing Sarah something of her life, the young girl promised to share her favourite place in Thistlewick Tye with her new friend – the beach.

Growing up in the landlocked county of Derbyshire, Mallory had enjoyed a lush green landscape of rolling hills and limestone peaks, dotted with pretty stone cottages.

She’d seen the fast-flowing streams power the cotton mills, and occasionally travelled to the canals that transported coal, pottery and textiles to and fro, but she’d not seen the sea until she was nearly twenty, when the circus her father had sold her to pitched up in Scarborough, and her love for the coast began.

They’d been camped up at Thistlewick Tye for five days now and she’d ventured no further than the woods, and certainly not into the village to be mocked and ridiculed, so she was excited for this rendezvous.

‘Vere are you off to?’ Katerina barked, spotting her wrap a thick shawl about her thin body, as she tried to hide the worst of her face before setting off.

‘To explore the shore,’ she said. ‘My pains are bad and I thought walking might help. It’s such an overcast day, I don’t expect to meet many people.’

‘Have you done your chores?’

‘Yes, and Samson doesn’t need me. He’s rehearsing with Hazibub.’

Katerina nodded her assent and Mallory gratefully headed down to the Thistlewick Rift, as Sarah had instructed, passing only a grumbling man working on the hull of his small, careened boat, and paying her no attention.

Sarah was hidden around the bend of the cliffs, skipping about on a large cluster of flints. Mallory had only seen the beach from above, peering over the cliff edge, getting as close as she dared, but down here, the height of the land made her feel small and exposed.

‘We mustn’t get too near the bottom. Great chunks of land fall into the sea from time to time,’ the young girl explained, after throwing her arms around Mallory’s thin waist in greeting.

‘Twenty years ago, the bones of a big hairy elephant were discovered and lots of serious men in smart clothes turned up to take them away and study them. Mother told me all about it.’

It was low tide and the sands seemed to go on forever – a flat landscape disappearing into the distance, as though the world had no end. She was here for the glorious smell and sense of space, but coming from her colourful world, it felt somewhat dull.

‘The view of the sea is humbling, but there’s little to see.’

Sarah looked at her like an admonishing parent. ‘That’s because you’re used to big things,’ she said. ‘Lights and flames and jumping and sparkles. You should see the common in the summer, when the purple heads of the thistles cover the ground.’

Perhaps she was correct. As a child, Mallory had revelled in the beauty of a frost-covered spider web or watched a green tiger beetle, no bigger than her thumbnail, walk along the top of a stone wall. Had the excitement and glamour of circus life made the simple joys of nature seem mundane?

Sarah began to show her the different seaweeds floating in the shallows, and explained which ones were edible and how to use them in cooking.

Mallory determined to return with a basket and collect up the bladderwrack to make their camp meals go further.

Together, the girls hunted for periwinkles and each gathered a pocketful as her friend explained that winkles and mussels were less common in Thistlewick; the former more likely to be found in the salt marshes, and mussels more abundant further west, in Wells-next-the-Sea.

They walked along the tideline looking for things of interest that had washed up: bits of net, rope, driftwood and dead crabs. Sarah had amassed quite the collection of seashells, she confided, which was where the large whelk shell had come from.

‘Sometimes pieces of sponge wash up, and Mother is glad of them. We use them for washing. And look.’ She bent down to pick up a piece of blue glass, holding it up to the autumn sun. ‘Treasure!’

She chatted merrily away about how to catch a crab, with a string and fish heads for bait, and then how to pick it up without getting nipped.

As they walked back towards the cliffs, she pointed to some abandoned gull nests.

‘In the spring, there are those who’d have the eggs from the nests.

Fine for baking but a bit funny-tasting for me. ’

The day was biting but Mallory felt a warmth within. This simple walk along the shore with someone who paid no attention to her disfiguring lumps was one of the nicest afternoons she’d ever had. It was almost enough to make her forget the pain in her body.

‘What can you tell me about Christian Felthorpe?’ she asked, wondering if her friend could shed any light on the man she’d seen with Zella.

‘Handsome, isn’t he?’ Sarah giggled. ‘He’s all right for a rich person.

They act differently to us. I suppose there’s an order to things, and Grandma says those with money and a good education know what’s best for the rest of us, even when we don’t want to hear it.

’ She shrugged. ‘But, like everyone, all he wants is people to be kind to each other and for Thistlewick Tye to be a nice place to live. His father is away at the moment so he’s strutting about like a feathered peacock, but I feel sorry for him, not having a mother.

There’s a little boy called Noah in the village who also lost his mother, but his big brother looks after him.

I guess I’m lucky to have mine, even though it doesn’t feel like it when she’s telling me off for daydreaming… ’

Mallory’s brain was quite exhausted listening to her circuitous chatter but then she said something of interest.

‘…He’s not married yet and my grandmother says he simply isn’t the sort for dallying. She says boys who dally with girls are wicked because it’s always the girls who have to pay, and that his father has brought him up proper.’

Did this mean Christian Felthorpe’s intentions with Zella were honourable?

The beautiful Ballard girl really had cast a spell over the poor fellow then, because anyone could see that a romance between a circus girl and the heir to the Felthorpe estate had no future.

Perhaps it was just an innocent flirtation that would be over before it had even begun. She hoped so.

After a while, and aware that she’d been absent from the camp for a couple of hours, Mallory thanked her young friend for showing her the bounty and beauty of the coastline and they both headed back, following the stream and coming out on the common.

‘Sarah?’ a furious voice shouted. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick. Our Jack said he thought you’d come down here but there are jobs to be done and your grandmother needs help washing. You can’t just skip off when you feel like it, young lady. And who’s this?’

She turned to Mallory, who pulled her shawl back slightly, feeling it only polite to show some of her face as she was being addressed. The horror on the woman’s face was immediate.

‘A circus freak? What are you doing with this thing?’ The way she spat the word out, unable to even acknowledge that Mallory was a human being, stung more than her fingers when she’d plunged them into the tiny rockpools to investigate the creatures within.

‘Mallory’s my friend,’ Sarah insisted, as her mother grabbed a handful of collar and jerked her young daughter away from the stranger.

‘You don’t want to be making friends with the likes of them.

’ The woman looked disgusted. ‘Good for nothing except gawping at – the lot of them. I’ve just come from the grocer’s where the big fella was shouting at young Freda Drayton about a sack of potatoes he’d been sold, complaining they was rotten, when we all know he’s just after doing the shopkeeper out of more money. ’

But the sack had been rotten. Mallory had made the discovery when she’d been preparing vegetables that morning.

A few decent tubers on the top and then her hand had sunk into the wet flesh of those beneath, as a noxious smell drifted out.

It often happened. They were sold the low-grade produce or spoilt goods, with locals knowing they had the travellers over a barrel.

‘You’re being unkind,’ Sarah protested, standing up for her friend. ‘They’re clever people who know magic and perform the most incredible and dangerous feats. I envy them. Perhaps I shall walk tightropes when I grow up.’

Sarah’s mother looked horrified at the thought, and turned her temper on Mallory.

‘Have you been putting wild ideas in my daughter’s head?

I’ve heard of your lot kidnapping innocent children to work for no pay…

or worse. Keep away from her or there’ll be trouble.

Do you understand?’ Her nostrils flared, as she growled her threat and stormed across the common with her protesting daughter.

Mallory watched them disappear into the distance, with Sarah turning back, only to be jerked onwards. Pulling her cloak further across her face, she eventually wandered back to the camp, her apron pockets full of treasures and her head full of the injustice.