Curiosity (36 page)

He crouched beside her, shaking his head. “No, Mary,” he said. “That’s not the grace of the lady – it’s just the action of the tide. A corpse washed up by the sea will always lie parallel to the shore. The trunk will lodge first on the sand because it is heaviest, and then the waves will pick up the clothing and hair.”

All this time in her brain, a tide was going out, and then in that moment, it was out. As he bent over her on the sand, she was Mary again, Mary with her strong limbs and her shame contained inside her, her shame humming along the spine that ran along her centre. She was an invertebrate no longer; she was herself. And still she let him untie her bonnet and loosen her hair, showing her the graceful way the tide would lay her out if ever she were caught by the sea. Still she let him bend his face down and run his tongue and lips over hers, as if to taste the salt the sea had left behind.

At the table in the square that afternoon, Will Darby looked boldly into her face. “Well, Mary,” he said. “Ye’ve left the birch grove, ye’ve taken to the beach.” His tongue stumbled on
beach
and his thin face turned scarlet.

“My, the devil’s fired up your wit,” she said as he turned and walked away. Poor fool, she thought. He’s been all day whittling a point onto that jibe.

A wagon loaded with bales of wool creaked across the square bound for the Cobb. The load had shifted and two drivers leaned into its side with all their force, struggling to hold the wagon upright until they made the Cobb. So, she thought. So, this is how it is. If it were Will Darby I were seen with in the Undercliff or on the shore, people would say we were walking out together and ask when the banns will be read. But
banns
and the name of
De la Beche
would never be said in the same breath with
Mary Anning
. Courtesies from Miss Philpot raised her in society. Courtesies from Mr. De la Beche dragged her into the mud. And him as well, perhaps. Or perhaps not. Could anything ever dampen his air of health and well-being and fortune in the world?

Whereas her – they needed to hate her for something. If it was not creeping after dragons, it was creeping after gentlemen. Madness to walk alone in the Undercliff with a gentleman, and madness to tell him your secrets, and greater madness to go to the shore, and slide down to the sand, to have a gentleman bend over you and loosen your hair in a scientific demonstration. She knew the rules of her class and he knew the rules of his. But it seemed that science made its own rules, although these rules would mean nothing to the townspeople, who had a fearsome private knowing. Last winter, they’d said the reeve’s widow was consorting with a common tranter. They did not say this in words, but mounted a skimmington on a moonlit night. When Mary heard the rough music and saw the parade come down the street, saw the mannequin with its yellow hair that could only be the reeve’s widow, she was bewildered; she’d had no notion. But sure enough, in a few months, the reeve’s widow was swollen with child. They were wizards in sniffing out in decency, the townspeople – Mrs. Stock and many others. They would smell the bracken of the Undercliff on her and sense the talk that took place there. They would see it on her, his attention
to her and the knowing his words brought out, the glittering residue of his kiss.

A coach had arrived without her attending – the sweet, intoxicating drinks of her wealthy friends had left her brain in distemper – not the Bath coach, but the shabby cab the inn sent to Axminster to fetch passengers from London and Salisbury. Just a sole passenger, it seemed, a young lady in green with fine orange curls tumbling from the front of her velvet bonnet. She had disembarked and was standing uncertainly in the square, looking up the hill, seeming to consider first Broad Street and then Church Street. The prisoner lying in the stocks set up hissing between his teeth at the sight of her. Then, leaving her bag unattended, she walked gracefully across to the curiosity table, holding the stem of her furled parasol in two hands, and spoke to Mary. “Do you know Aveline House? I wonder if you would direct me.”

TWENTY-THREE

e hears a step and springs to his feet, but it’s his mother. “Sherry,” she says to Brownley, who is standing in the hall. She comes in and closes the drawing room door behind her, waving Henry back onto the settee, and sits down close for a tête-à-tête. “She’s bathing and changing. Daisy is attending her. You can go and see her in a moment.” She cradles her round arms in their indigo silk. “What impropriety! What reckless impropriety,” she cries, her eyes bright with excitement. “Thank
heaven
she had a companion when she left London, at least. A Miss Francine Mortimer. I recall years ago a person by that name served as companion to Lady Finch. A tall, vehement creature. Do you recall, Henry, when we spent a fortnight with the Beckets in Derbyshire, that business with a thrush flying through a window into the upstairs hall?” “No.”

“Well, in any case, that was Miss Francine Mortimer who created such a fuss.” She shakes her head, musing over the memory. “And so Letitia was going down to Exeter?” Her tone is excessively casual, as though she thinks to catch him out.

“I have no idea.”

“You don’t know these friends she speaks of there?”

He raises his shoulders.

“She did not let you know she was leaving London?”

“Mother, do you suspect us of a clandestine correspondence?”

“Well, Henry. This is all a consequence of your failing to go to her weeks ago, as I implored you to do.” She sighs. “At any rate, she had resolved on Exeter, and Miss Mortimer was to accompany her on the public coach. Before they were through Sussex, Miss Mortimer was wretchedly indisposed. Letitia tried to persuade her that they must find a means back to London, but Miss Mortimer insisted it was a passing thing. When they stopped for fresh horses in Salisbury, she was ill on the street in front of the inn.”

The door opens and Brownley comes in with a tray. The apparition of a tall, vehement woman convulsed over the paving stones lingers while he sets two glasses of sherry on the side table and goes out. “Fortunately, Miss Mortimer has friends in Salisbury, just down the road from the inn,” Henry’s mother says as the door closes.

“Why did Letitia not stay with them?” The side table is nearest him and he studies his glass of amber sherry, which seems to have a flower floating in it (a dab of red, cadmium red, blooming up from the red cloth on the table).

“Apparently, she felt unwelcome. As a bedchamber, she was offered a contemptible closet in what she insists was the servants’ quarters. She sat alone in the morning room for two hours with no fire in the grate. She says the servants had been instructed to ignore her. And so she came here. She can’t account for why she didn’t go to Exeter as planned. She says she thought the impropriety would be less if she came directly to her fiancé’s home.”

“There would have been no impropriety at all if she had simply written and asked someone to come for her.”

“Well, yes. She says she couldn’t bear to wait. And so, in the morning, she walked back to the inn and boarded the coach. She left without a proper goodbye, poor thing. Just a note on the bureau. And carrying her own bag, if you can imagine.”

He hands her a glass and touches his own to the rim of hers. As she leans forward, the tendons of her aging throat clench above her high-necked wrapper. He settles back into the cushions, conscious of his future waiting for him in the upstairs sitting room. “I’ve sent the boy up to Morley Cottage with a letter to ask if she may stay with the Philpots,” his mother says. “It would be better, I think, to avoid further occasion for gossip. You can walk up with her after you’ve had a quiet word. I’ll send Burnley with her cases.”

Letitia is reclining on a lounge before the fire in the upstairs sitting room, holding a goblet of wine at a dangerous angle, her legs crossed at the ankles. Her hair is unpinned and tumbles wonderfully over her shoulders. It’s as bright as when he first spied her in the garden in Bristol – in the firelight, it gleams like polished brass. She looks up as he comes in. Through these last months, by her lack of response to his open-hearted letter, he had the impression that he had gained the upper hand. When he sees her face, he realizes he’s been wrong.

She puts out a white hand and he takes it and presses it to his lips. She’s wearing the simple ring with the tourmaline that he gave her at their engagement, on her pinky finger now: once too large, it is now too small. “You’ve endured a difficult journey. You were not subjected to rude attentions on the coach, I hope?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. Her gown is cut very low
at the bosom: she’s abandoned efforts to hide the mole. He lets her hand go and takes a chair beside the lounge.

“Well, I must confess I am very surprised. I had begun to wonder if we should ever meet again. How was I to understand your silence?”

She rocks her wine gently in the goblet and looks at him as if unsure how he fits into the stream of thought that has caught her up. She takes a sip, and her throat is of such a translucence that he seems to see the red wine move down it. Her face in the firelight is a woman’s face, self-regarding, speculative, inward. She has successfully navigated a passage. Due to him, due to the suffering he caused her. She draws him in with her look.
What are the two of us to do?
she seems to be asking, and he feels a huge relief that this question is finally to be asked.

Then tears well up and overflow her eyes. Her head falls forward and her shoulders shake. He drops to a knee beside the lounge to catch the wine before it spills, and their hands meet on the goblet. She reaches for him with her free arm and then she is clutching him to her, pressing her face into his hair while she cries.

The next day she rests, under the solicitous attention of the Philpot sisters. He sends a note up to Morley Cottage to say that he will collect her in the evening for the dancing in the Assembly Rooms. They take the coach; his mother insists upon it. She and Mr. Aveline come as well, and stop in for a brief word with the Philpots. Letitia glides down the stairs of Morley Cottage in a charming white gown with lace at the bosom and cherries embroidered on the skirt. Her hair is pinned up and all her pretty ways are in place.

“What a delicate lace,” says Miss Margaret Philpot.

“And in Lyme one can, indeed, wear the sort of light gown that cannot be worn elsewhere in the kingdom at this time of year,” says Miss Elizabeth. “What wonderful sunshine we enjoy
all the year round! It was in November that the lady novelist stayed here, and she had nothing but praise.”

“The lady novelist?” asks Letitia, wrapping herself in a flimsy shawl.

“Oh, Miss Whyte,” cries the eldest Miss Philpot. “What delights await you! I shall lend you
Persuasion
. Miss Austen made us all famous.”

“But my dear, you do not want to wear those beautiful slippers,” says his mother. “There is a dreadful buildup of wax on the floor and they will be black by the end of the first dance. They will be impossible to clean, as Daisy can tell you.” The eldest Miss Philpot sends a maid upstairs to fetch Miss Whyte’s third-best slippers.