The Madness by Alison Rattle EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Alison Rattle
- Language: English
- Genre: Gothic Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
A Mermaid on the Beach
By the time she was fourteen years old, Marnie Gunn could swim like a
fish. Hardly a day went by when her flannel shift was not hung out by the
fire to dry. Often as not, it was still damp in the morning when she pulled it
back on and went to the beach with Ma to attend to Smoaker Nash’s bathing
machines.
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It was Ma that’d made Marnie go in the sea every day to begin with. ‘The
best cure in the world,’ she said. ‘Make you strong and hearty, it will.’
Marnie was only five at the time and thought Ma was trying to drown her.
She would yell and hit Ma with her small fists, and kick at her with her one
good leg. But Marnie was only little and no match for her mother. Ma
would put Marnie under her arm and carry her down to the iron-grey sea.
She would grip Marnie tight around the waist and plunge her under the
freezing waves again and again. Marnie’s voice would shrink to nothing
with the shock of it.
‘I won’t have no cripple for a daughter,’ Ma would say. Marnie soon
learned not to protest. For worse than the piercing cold of the ocean was the
hot sting of the horsewhip that Ma would crack over the backs of her legs to
‘harden her up’.
Marnie had no choice but to learn to love the ocean. After a while Ma
began to loosen her grip and Marnie was astonished to find she could swim.
It was easy and natural.
Soon, Marnie couldn’t imagine life without her daily bathes. It was true
what Ma said. She did grow stronger every day, and while she was in the
water, she didn’t have to use her stick or think of her twisted leg or the cruel
taunts of the village children who would spit and laugh at her because she
was different.
When the children gathered on the lane to trundle their hoops or play tipcat, Marnie would hobble past as quickly as she could. Sometimes, she
would thrust her stick out into the path of a rolling hoop and send it
toppling into the hedgerows. It felt good to spoil their silly games. She let
their angry cries and nasty words wash over her as she hurried down to the
sea. ‘Imbecile!’ ‘Muttonhead!’
Marnie didn’t care. She had something they didn’t. She had the sea and its
soothing whispers and comforting embrace. She could swim for further and
for longer than any of them. When they hoiked up their skirts and rolled up
their britches to splash in the shallows,
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