Curiosity (19 page)

“Did you start to open it?” Joseph asked in Cockmoile Square. He meant the fossil.

“I’ll start today,” said Mary. Molly called to Mary to check the weather vane on the market tower but Mary turned and ran up towards Church Street as though she had not heard.

It was a day of fog and rain. The cliffs had vanished. The town was the whole world, a brave, wet circle of thatch and stone in a sea of dove grey. She left the circle of the world and started down the beach.

THIRTEEN

enry walks the ten paces to the house next door as if he’s facing his execution. But Captain Whyte, who receives him alone in his study, merely puts his newspaper aside with a
let’s be quick about it
expression, and Henry is obliged to launch directly into his proposal. Neither does Letitia seem to expect anything more than the mandatory question when he bows over her hand. “Yes,” she says with a giggle, and he slips the rustic ring on her finger. She holds her hand up to show how much too big it is. Captain Whyte, standing at the door, says, “There’s a goldsmith on the bridge who will size it for you,” and Henry promises to see to it.

Then they sit all three in the morning room and the coals in the grate turn silently, flamelessly to ash, sending out the stuffy heat that induces sleep. Captain Whyte does indeed love to talk, and holds strong opinions about what he calls “the Guinea business” – he seems to relish the fact that the young scion of a plantation has fallen under his influence. The mismanagement of the trade disgusts him, how fearfully gutted Bristol commerce was by its collapse. Why was the Royal African Company’s monopoly
allowed to go on for so long? Why did the Bristol ships insist on trading in beads and textiles from the East Indies when the Liverpool traders were clever enough to stock themselves in domestic goods? Henry raises his eyebrows and smiles on cue. “Black ivory,” the Captain calls the slaves, as though to establish himself as an insider. But there is something about the man Henry likes, the hint of Ireland in his speech, and the young adventurer he was still peeping from his narrow eyes. Across the room, Letitia inclines gracefully in a pale blue gown, pleating the skirt between her fingers, looking up from time to time to catch Henry’s eyes, her own greenly glittering. At the first chance, she jumps to her feet and asks whether Henry may take her walking. And so they go out, Letitia holding her white parasol in one hand and clinging to his arm with the other. They walk out to Redcliff Way and gaze at the signets reflected on the water, and he feels grateful to these birds for their calm beauty, for providing the adornment the day seems to require.

After that, they walk together every morning, and the signets are always there. Mute swans, they are: he points out the distinguishing lump at the base of the beak, and the curve of the neck. “People assume all swans are white,” he tells his fiancée. “But the swans of the southern hemisphere are black and white, and the swans of Australia are black. In the Americas, there are swans with pink legs and feet. So I have read.”

He feels a pleasant heat when she takes his arm. Her physical perfection amazes him – her poreless skin, the curls springing out between her bonnet and cheek, glittering like copper wire, her perfectly oval little face, the pretty curve of her lips, the white teeth revealed when she smiles. I could kiss her with impunity, he thinks (the liberties to which an engaged man is entitled having been the subject of a deal of private speculation).
But it seems a preposterous notion – as though by entering into this pledge, he’s taken on the role of protector, a proxy for her uncle. In any case, the libidinous tide that had swept him up has somewhat withdrawn. His foray into the woods seems mad to him now. They were all mad. That their guardians should, for so slight a thing, allow the fates of two young strangers to become forever entwined is deeply perplexing. There must be some hidden logic in it, a social precept so profound as to be unknowable, and he will have a lifetime to uncover it.

Her family is originally from Ireland. She was born in Lough-brickland, County Down. She’s only fourteen, but she’s been out for a year. She came out at the time of her mother’s new marriage. In the past season, she stayed with families in London, Shrewsbury, and Bath, and has collected many friends in her travels, with whom she corresponds avidly: Miss Francine Mortimer, Miss Mathilda Sheffield, Miss Ann Wakefield, Miss Sarah Morland (the latter two have recently acquired fiancés), and her dear cousin Penrose. The adventures of her correspondents, their flirtations in assembly rooms and country houses all over the kingdom, she breathlessly recounts in confiding tones, as though Henry is intimately acquainted with the individuals in question.

“I spent the early years of my childhood in Jamaica,” Henry says. He has volunteered several pieces of information about himself, including the fact that he was briefly at Great Marlow, but she seems incurious. Or perhaps she is extraordinarily tactful.

“
Jamaica!
Did you go to St. Kitts? Miss Fogg grew up in St. Kitts. She is seventeen, do you realize, and not betrothed. She had hopes of a captain with the Staffordshire Regiment, but all the time he was pursuing her own sister!” They’ve reached the junction with Baldwin Street, and she stops short and looks at him with an expression of high animation. “
Baldwin Street
,” she cries. “When we promenade on Baldwin Street, we must
converse in French all the way up and all the way back. It’s one of my rules!” She resumes walking, playfully spinning her parasol. “
Et qui connaissez-vous à Bristol?
” she asks. On the evidence, it would appear her French tutor was educated in Belfast.

“
La veuve Rankin
,” he replies. “
Personne d’autre
.” She looks at him with disbelief and wrinkles her nose.

She comes to tea at Alger’s and is given a tour of the paintings in the study. Then Henry displays his bird drawings. She falls into silence at the sight of them and he is encouraged to go on, to draw the tea box of tiny bones onto the table. “I never imagined birds to have such a large pelvic bone,” he says, using a quill tip as pointer to trace the bone in question. “Actually, there are many features to these skeletons that surprised me. Imagine if you’d stumbled across one and had never seen a bird! Look at the little chain of vertebrae at the base of this spine. If you were unacquainted with
feathers
, wouldn’t you assume this creature to have had a short tail, like a terrier?”

But in response, she flings herself away from the table. “Who is there on God’s earth that has not seen a bird?” she cries shrilly. “Certainly not Mr. Henry De la Beche, who knows all there is to know about swans and hedge sparrows and their precious feathers and the colour of their legs!”

It is Alger who rescues him, opening up the pianoforte and inviting Miss Whyte to play, which she is happy to do. Henry closes the tea box and takes his place on the settee, where he sits smarting through a surprisingly expert rendition of a Haydn sonata.

She makes a point of telling him that she’s never once been to the Hotwell spa, or to the Pump Room, or the Clifton Assembly Rooms: her uncle refuses to take her. Having established himself as a pedant, having failed to proffer a collection of distinguished
friends, Henry can at least escort her to the Assembly Rooms, although whom they will converse with there without an introduction is a mystery to him. Uncle Alger offers the closed carriage, and on the agreed-upon Wednesday afternoon, pleased with the prospect of a drive up the Avon gorge to Clifton, Henry goes to collect Letitia and brings her to the house first for a word with his uncle. She is standing in the drawing room in high spirits, handsomely dressed in a new ensemble of rose and tan, when Sullivan announces a caller, a Mr. William Conybeare. “The bishop!” Alger cries. “I thought he had died.”

He’s still puzzling over the marvellous honour inexplicably bestowed upon him when Sullivan opens the door again to reveal a tall young man with a strikingly handsome and engaging face. The
grandson
of the famous and long-dead bishop, as it turns out, a fellow of Christ Church College, Oxford, and about to take holy orders himself. Mr. Conybeare hastens to explain the call: he’s a frequent sojourner in Lyme Regis, where he recently dined at Aveline House, and it is Henry’s mother who has sent him. After introductions are performed, Henry confesses that he has not yet met Mr. Aveline and their caller goes on to describe him as a fine fellow, an expert on many subjects in the natural world. “He owns a clockwork model of the heavens. When I was there, he set the spheres revolving for my amusement. He has been a bachelor all his days, and there was much amazement when his engagement was announced. Apparently your mother accomplished in an hour what maiden ladies of the region had spent years attempting! And you will both be in Dorsetshire before long, I understand?” With Alger chiming in on the third syllable of every word, trying to finish his guest’s sentences, Conybeare tells them what unrivalled scenery they will find there, what delights await them in the spectacular walks along the cliffs and the shore.

“Henry is going to Dorsetshire, but I am not,” says Letitia, perching on the edge of a chair and taking off her gloves. “I am going to London for the season. I am to be the guest of Mrs. Billings of Mayfair. Mrs. Anthony Billings?” And to Henry’s chagrin, she arches her fine brows knowingly at their guest. But it appears that Mr. Conybeare
is
acquainted with Mrs. Anthony Billings, and can attest to her amiable manner and the amusing pug that sits by her chair. The very model of a gentleman, Mr. William Conybeare, with his slender aquiline nose and quick, candid eyes, and a flourish to the tying of his cravat to which Henry can only aspire (and also the tiniest pause before each of his graceful utterances, as though his new acquaintances are the subject of some amusement to him. But perhaps not). Deftly setting aside Alger’s detailed inquiries into his health and the health of various members of his family (individuals entirely unknown to Uncle Alger), Conybeare turns back to Henry. “Well, sir, if you are to be on your own in Lyme Regis, you must join the ranks of the gentlemen collectors! You will be amazed at the variety of fossils one is able to procure on those shores.”

So (at the risk of appearing a child) Henry draws the curiosity his mother brought him out of his waistcoat pocket, where he’s taken to carrying it for the pleasure of its weight and the feel of its coils.

“Indeed, that is a beauty!” Conybeare declares.

“I have no idea what it is,” says Henry. “I confess to ignorance regarding the very nature of fossils.”

“They are an age-old mystery, indeed,” says Conybeare, and then he will not unravel it – he makes them guess.

“It was left by fairies!” says Letitia immediately. “They stole a child and left this stone in its place!” Conybeare laughs heartily. Uncle Alger pronounces it to be a stone carved by the Druids. As for Henry, he hesitates, palming the curiosity. There is something
so marvellously delicate about its descending coils, each of them minutely ridged in gold, as to make him believe it must be organic. This is the sort of detail that an artisan can only allude to.