Curiosity (45 page)

The property is to let furnished, by a Mr. Linnison. Letitia is appalled by the serviceable mahogany dining room table and he agrees to replace it when he is able. An Axminster rug they select together is laid in the drawing room. Milkmaid Letitia gazes pensively from a Chippendale frame in the hall. In the entry leans a massive polished ammonite, abandoned by the previous tenant. “Couldn’t lift it to take it away,” explains Mr. Linnison,
demonstrating. “And nor more can I.” Though, somehow, it was transported all the way from the west end of Monmouth Beach.

The Bucklands are invited to dinner and arrive while Letitia is still dressing. “Here’s a beauty,” says Buckland. It’s the ammonite he means; he crouches to examine it, abandoning his wife. Henry looks at her curiously – a small, awkward collection of parts (both bony and curvaceous) dressed in pale green chambray. From upstairs floats the chiding voice of Sally, the nursery maid, and an indignant response from the baby. Buckland gets to his feet and surrenders his hat, revealing a pate newly hairless, except for its victorious forelock. “
Paracoroniceras lyra
,” he says to his wife.

In the drawing room, Henry raises a glass to his guests. “I wish you the joy of each other,” he says, thinking it a wish likely to be fulfilled. Fate has granted the professor a rare gift, it seems, a clever woman equipped by her own peculiarities to tolerate his. She moves like the geckos of Henry’s childhood, standing frozen by the window one minute, and the next, materializing with chin held high on the edge of a chair across the room. Buckland himself has strolled over to the cuckoo clock they carried home from Switzerland, and is manipulating its chains so that the tiny bird within pops in and out in a frenzy.

Letitia trips through the door and across the carpet, dressed in a delicate gown that recalls the muslin of her girlhood. She curtsies to both guests. “The bow is bent, the arrow flies, the winged shaft of fate,” she murmurs mischievously as Buckland kisses her hand: it’s the start of a charming performance she can sustain for about ten minutes. But the sight of Mrs. Buckland in her lettuce-coloured ensemble breaks Letitia’s rhythm. She allows a fatal pause, and then Buckland is in, snatching them away from romance and into his recent escapades in the ochre caves of Wales. Only the maid announcing dinner can pry them all from the ochre caves of Wales.

Over the soup, Letitia finds an opportunity to turn the lovers back to the circumstances of their first meeting. Indeed, they are eager to tell: the damaged wheel at Oxfordshire (what he said, what she said, what the coachman said), the bread and cheese and figs she carried, the clasp knife he was able to provide.
Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles
serving as a table. It’s the sort of joint entertainment Henry has often seen newly paired couples attempt. That impromptu picnic in the coach was a scant four months ago. Now Mrs. Buckland is occupied in furnishing their new home. Buckland has made a tabletop for the hall table, a mosaic of sectioned coprolites that his wife calls
fossil rejectamenta
.

Henry looks across at Letitia, but mercifully, she’s wearing the mother-of-pearl earrings she bought in Paris. “We may soon relocate to Jamaica,” he says by way of accounting for their status as renters. “The situation there has worsened in a way that no one anticipated. As an absentee planter, I consider the blame for this to be mine, at least in part.” Letitia sits with her eyes fixed to the tablecloth. Mrs. Buckland has straightened her spine. On her face dances the desire for a debate on the morality of her host’s sources of income. “In any case,” Henry says, deciding not to provoke everyone further for the moment, “the last year has been full of event for all of us.” The baby emits a corroborating cry from the room above.

The fish is brought in, a mackerel dressed with parsley. As Daisy serves it, Henry’s eyes are caught by the iridescent green jewel at Mrs. Buckland’s throat: it’s a hummingbird’s tiny head. He feels misery rising like a gas from his diaphragm, his buoyancy draining away. He resolutely turns towards Mrs. Buckland and offers her a smile.

“I have been thinking a great deal about
time
in these weeks since our return,” he says. “Not just about the profound effect on our destinies of certain single moments, but how elastic time is.
Some days you are to bed before you properly know that you have risen. Other days seem an eternity as they transpire.”

“Indeed,” says Buckland intently. “And if I may be excused for turning to natural philosophy over dinner, in this very phenomenon may lie the solution to the scientific problem that has vexed us for years. Perhaps our interpretation of the
day
and the
week
in the Genesis account has been all too literal from the beginning. Scripture itself tells us that a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

Mrs. Buckland makes a sly movement with her fingers. “You assert that the sun rose and set over two million times during the week of Creation?” she said.

“Not necessarily, my dear,” says Buckland. “It’s always possible the earth rotated more slowly that week. A prudent measure, from a mechanical point of view, for so new and complex a system. And given the molten nature of the primary rock, a cooling period would have been necessary. Newton himself allows the possibility.”

Everyone is momentarily silent, contemplating the notion of the sun taking a millennium to crawl across the heavens. Henry peels back the black skin on his piece of mackerel. And then Mrs. Buckland abandons Newton and the sun. She moves back to Oxford, to a story of her husband’s folly, eagerly describing the bear Buckland has procured for himself. A tame bear, it wears an academic gown and cap. It is introduced to the Oxford dons at garden parties as Tiglath Pileser. She named it herself – William told her she might. The mutton is carried in and Henry must carve, a task he sets about silently. Letitia is trying hard to catch Henry’s eye, but he resists her.

With the last spoonful of pudding, Letitia turns to Mrs. Buckland and suggests that they imitate ladies on the Continent and join the gentlemen after dinner. Henry recalls no such custom,
but he makes his way around the table and offers Letitia his arm, almost withdrawing it at the savage look she gives him.

“Will you be attending at the annual meeting of the Geological Society?” Buckland asks when they’re settled in the drawing room.

“I intend so.”

“You’re going to London?” says Letitia with sudden interest, but Buckland is speaking over her, asking Henry about the Jardin. Which of Cuvier’s savants did Henry meet? Henry goes through the list. Buckland remarks on how they managed to keep their posts through so many political transformations.

“Indeed, it shows an admirable talent for dissembling,” says Henry. “You and I would not so reshape our science to suit our masters.” Buckland’s eyes are fixed on the fire; he declines to take the bait.

“Lamarck was not present?”

“No, and I was especially sorry not to have the opportunity to meet him. While in Paris, I read his recent paper with great interest. He begins by studying invertebrates – molluscs in the Paris basin – and finds slow changes that seem to act as an index to the age of the rocks. It would appear to be a useful method in identifying strata where there’s been a disturbance in the earth. I have been wondering whether we could work with Mary Anning to use the ammonites in the same way.”

“Mary Anning may not condescend to work with my husband,” says Mrs. Buckland, putting up her chin. “She recently expressed scorn for his knowledge of the lias fossils. Mrs. Murchison reported this to me.”

“She has taken to wearing a gentleman’s top hat,” says Letitia suddenly. “I saw her yesterday, climbing up from the shore. Is she deliberately ridiculing her betters?”

“She’s simply being practical,” says Henry.

“What is practical about a top hat?” cries Mrs. Buckland. “They were designed solely and purposefully for ostentation, to add inches to a gentleman’s height.”

“On the contrary,” says Henry. “Such a hat will provide Miss Anning protection from falling rocks. A modicum of protection, at least.”

“She
parades
her lack of femininity,” says Letitia. “What can be her motive? It must provoke disgust even in men of her own class.”

“It is not the top hat that accounts for our discomfort with Mary Anning,” says Henry. “It is Mary Anning’s superior knowledge in all subjects related to her field. It is her refusal to pander to male vanity and pretend that the gentlemen with whom she discourses have come to this knowledge before her. That is the true challenge Mary Anning presents to men of every class.”

In the satisfying silence that follows this little speech, he gets up and crosses to the window. He opens the casement with the thought that, when the tide is in, as it will be now, its roar might be heard as high as Pound Street. The only sound that floats in is the cooing of doves in the ash grove. He has spoken to Mary only once since his return. She was with Miss Philpot, down at the jetty taking up sea water in buckets to clean their fossils. Behind them, patient horses dragged their caravans into the waves. She was still in mourning. Her face was a bit thinner, but the black bonnet imparted a new elegance to her appearance. He offered his condolences, and she thanked him and met his eyes calmly. He stood there, bereft of words, and gems of sunlight scattered off the flailing forms of supplicants lowering themselves into the water.

“I ran into Colonel Birch last night,” Henry says finally. “He tells me that Mary Anning has secured a London agent.”

“And who would that be?”

“George Sowerby.”

Buckland recoils sharply in his chair. “Related to the botanical artist?”

“Eldest son of. A most esteemed and well-connected fellow. It is excellent news for Miss Anning.”

Buckland raises his eyebrows and presses his lips together in a sour approximation of gladness for Mary.

“On another subject, Mr. Buckland,” Henry says. “A disturbing rumour concerning yourself has made its way across the Channel. The French are greatly agitated by a report that you participated in the desecration of the remains of their greatest monarch. I stoutly denied it on your behalf.”

Buckland emits a high-pitched whinny of a laugh, and Henry sees that he is guilty. So does Mrs. Buckland: a little frown appears on her forehead.

“I see,” Henry says. “And how ever did Lord Harcourt gain possession of the heart of Louis XIV?”

Buckland gets up and crosses to the hearth, so that they are both standing. He reaches for the poker and begins to rearrange the coals with every appearance of nonchalance, but a sudden flush has risen in his cheek. “The royal tomb was ransacked during the revolution. I believe this particular relic changed hands several times in the intervening years. Someone approached Harcourt about it at Versailles, just sidled up to him in the garden. I suppose he’d been noticed in Paris buying all manner of nonsense. He has quite an amusing collection of esoterica.”

“So he was displaying it at Nuneham?”

“In a silver casket.”

“And when he showed it to you, you snatched it up and ate it?”

Buckland props the poker back at the hearth. He shrugs and slouches to his chair, never once raising his eyes to meet the three pairs of eyes fixed on him. “And a nasty morsel it was! I later
learned that it was
gangrene
that dispatched the Sun King! Nothing I’ve eaten revolted my digestion more – except possibly the hyena. But it was worth it to see the expression on Harcourt’s face. He’d paid a fortune for that putrid lump. A king’s ransom, dare I say, ha?”

“So I see I needlessly tarnished my reputation in defending yours.” Henry is still standing at the window. “I was also questioned as to why you’ve not announced the discovery of a massive land reptile found at Stonesfield.”

“Everything in good time.” Buckland sprawls in his chair with legs outstretched. His lips are pulled tight across his teeth: this is rage disguised as geniality. “Tell me, Henry. How was your assault on Mont Blanc?”

“It failed. No doubt you’ve heard.”

“Doubtless there will be other opportunities.” He begins to kick the hob with a boot. “If I may say, Henry, about your notion of organizing the fossils by the light of the strata, or the strata by the light of the fossils – it is manifestly a fool’s enterprise. Which is to be taken as absolute index?” He continues to beat out a rhythm on the hob. “In any case, I quarrel with the direction such studies tend, the pernicious theory behind it, which is one of gradual change. I quarrel with finding man a crocodile improved.” He reaches a hand towards his wife’s chair and turns an affectionate eye towards her, as though in her upright, dumbfounded form is proof positive. “I fear there is a draft from that window. Are you warm enough, my dear?”

THIRTY