Oyster girl

[Cornish coast, 1850. A young female voice, accompanied by the sound of feet sloshing gently through the low tide]

Nothing there… nothing there… that one’s been eaten… there’s a bunch there, but I don’t fancy hacking them free…. nothing there…

[A pause as she stops wading]

This is silly. No point in it, not that I can see. So one’s turned up – washed up on the beach, what’s more – and it’s got what every oyster seller, man or woman, wants to find in their whole lifetime, just sat there in the belly of it, and now everyone’s head is turned – there must be more! it’s a sign from the sea, there must be more!

[She resumes wading]

Wasn’t even much of a sign, from what I could see. A shrunken thing, a dull thing: a dirty little pearl even with all the cack cleaned off her. Granddad always said no point in hoping for more than one such find in ten years. Wish father’d listen to him, but no. Now we must all go out fossicking for what we know won’t be there, instead of gathering up and selling as gets us a bit of a living.

[Pause]

I don’t see the appeal, anyway. They grow in the innards of things, don’t they? Not drop from the sky onto the oyster bed, fully-formed. I know enough to know there’s no magic in it. Mother says it’s a little piece of dirt at the heart of it, like a grain of sand. The oyster, she’s sore from it, all itchiness and aggravation, but she can’t get rid of it, has no fingers to pluck it out, so she has to smear it over and over with some pale, slippery humour. And it do take forever, the poor thing: layer after layer, year after year, till it goes hard as her own shell. Father says no, he’s read books, he has, it’s not like that, it’s some eggs of the oyster that’s got stuck or been made wrong and she wants them gone but where can they go? So she has to smother them, smother them slowly with that same watery bile. [Pause] For her own good she must do it.

[More gentle sloshing]

Of course, if someone gave me a pearl in an ear bob, or a necklace, I’d see the appeal right enough! At least for a time, I would. It’s all very well being pretty, as folks say I am, but you have to hang stuff off you to make pretty be worth something. I know all about that, young as I am. [Laughs] So who’d give me pearls? [Pauses to think] There’s a few I can think of. I’ve done well for myself there, Georgina says. Quite the popular little party with the gentlemen who come to stay. And good at letting them know I know it, too, though that’s her jealousy talking. They like to give me things; I don’t like to offend by not taking them. And who knows what men like that can truly afford? Much, much more than they show, I’m sure.

[Pause]

And it’s not a bad sort of a life, like she says, if you don’t care for churches nor for weddings nor for folk’s chatter at market stalls. And when a thing happens, as sooner or later it always happens, a man like that can set you both up well enough, keep you in food and clothes, a bit of comfort even. They’re not all scoundrels, not the ones who come down our way, at least. [Pause] Of course, I’ve yet to see any rings or necklaces from him, pearl or otherwise. I’m sure he could afford them, too, just as I’m sure he’s the one, the only one that could be. Maybe he knows, too. When a man knows, that’s when he stops courting.

[A moment’s pause]

Ah well. He’ll look after me right enough, even if I’ll never see him again. I’m not dirt under his shoe, though not much more than the pretty buckle on top of it. “Gentlemen come and gentlemen go”, Georgina says. [Burst of laughter] Don’t they just! And some of them leave something behind…

[Longer pause, during which she stops wading]

Soon enough, it may be more than just a few silly gentlemen passing down our way. Out there, westward across the sea, they’ve been coming too, in their boats and their larrups, great heaps of them, brother says. He’s been in Bristol and says what comes ashore hardly looks human, more rags than folks, gashly things made black as sin with the mire and smoke of their bare farms. And all of them frantic, hungry as wolves. Father hates them, mother dreads them. “They should all go to ‘Merica!”, he says. “Give the typhus time to rage itself out as well, not bring it here to England where we’ve enough of sickness already!”. [Pause] It’s a terrible thing, though. Must they eat their children, as the tavern boys jest so merrily? How is it that Nature makes some things grow where they’re not wanted, and nothing grow at all where a mass of people needs it?

[She resumes wading]

Here’s oysters at last, a big boden of them, more than enough to fill a basket. And there’s another lot just beyond! But still I must crack them open and find what I can find to please father. Such a waste. For if I truly looked, there’s enough to feed a few famished Irishmen. And that’d be more hands to pick them, more to make baskets for them, more to share in the load and the louster. [Pause] Let them come, then. I don’t fear them. Better the mouths that want feeding now than…

[Trails off. Longer pause, then decisively]

Well, my little piece of dirt, I must not let thee grow to be more than thou art. Perhaps there’s a few layers around thee even now. But thou mustn’t seek for room in this mazy world. I’ll find a way to wash thee back into the sea. There’s tansy and pennyroyal growing the other side of this bank. No one but us will ever know. I wasn’t meant to be mother-of-pearl, not for him nor any man. Just a good sister to the unlooked-for things that fetch up on my shore.