Curiosity (20 page)

Finally he asks, “Can it possibly be the shell of a sea creature?” and Conybeare says, “Well done,” and goes on to tell them that science agrees that curiosities of this type are the remains of molluscs unknown now in Britain, presumably migrated to other waters. This one is an
ammonite
, although Conybeare cannot classify it as to type. As to its strange composition, why, perhaps it turned to stone as a consequence of the unique atmospheric conditions at the time of the Great Flood.

“Where at Lyme Regis does one find them?”

“Oh, there are curiosity-mongers in the lower town who sell them for a pittance.”

They’re seated on either side of the fire, and somehow Alger’s sitting room has transformed itself into an inviting salon, and Henry has begun to anticipate the pleasure of discussing his bird skeletons with Mr. Conybeare. But Letitia moves restlessly to stand by the hearth and it is difficult to avoid her eyes. How can he suggest postponing the outing to the Assembly Rooms without driving their guest away? Then, with an agile leap into the conversation, Letitia pre-empts him.

“And will we find Lyme Regis a lively centre for dancing and card playing and such?” she asks. From there, it’s just a few neat steps to the Clifton Assembly Rooms, and to the happy discovery that Mr. Conybeare had considered attending that very afternoon and would be pleased to accompany them now. And then Henry is settling himself into the carriage, he is waving goodbye to a disconsolate uncle, thinking all the while, Never must I underestimate Letitia Whyte, where social arrangements are concerned.

Here at last is Letitia’s entry to Bristol society, for if William Conybeare is not acquainted with every person in the room, he is certainly acquainted with the most prominent. Cards are abandoned in favour of dancing, and then Henry is abandoned in favour of a partner who knows the steps, and so he finds himself happily standing by the punch bowl with Conybeare. The fiddles strike up and the dancers rise unevenly from honouring their partners, and Conybeare tells Henry that this particular dance sprang up in Devonshire, inspired by a military exercise performed on horseback.
Walk
.
Trot
.
Canter
.
Gallop
, he says softly at intervals as the linked couples swing past. He confesses to a fiancée of his own, who also loves to dance. He confesses as well to the hope of a lectureship at Bristol; it was the need to cultivate old ties that prompted his current visit. And he frankly tells his age: he’s ten years older than Henry, yet in his telling, Henry is encouraged to believe that they may become friends.

“How did you begin to collect at Lyme Regis?” Henry asks.

“My friend and colleague William Buckland was born near there. He teaches now at Oxford. The little curiosities found at Lyme Regis are fascinating, but it seems also that many large creatures perished there in the Flood, and these are the focus of his study. There’s a great deal of pressure on Buckland to find evidence for his theories, if he wishes to retain a chair in Undergroundology. He’s been on an extended research tour for that purpose, although the Lyme Regis area remains the most significant site. Buckland has spent years trying to dissuade the ignorant townsfolk from grinding valuable fossils up for lime, for the stucco trade.”

While he talks, his eyes are on Letitia’s curls, the brightest patch of colour in the long line of muslin and ribbons. She executes a graceful turn a few feet away from them and Conybeare looks back at Henry, flashing him an approving smile.

She has very little family left in Ireland, just a few cousins. In England, there is only her cousin Penrose and her mother, to whom Henry is soon to be presented. The occasion is several times postponed, although the inn in question, a prosperous establishment called the Full Moon, is not a mile away. Its proprietor is a Mr. Auriol. “On the evidence of his name, your stepfather would appear to be of French extraction,” Henry observes.

“I really have no idea,” Letitia says coolly.

Finally, on a Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Auriol appears at Captain Whyte’s, alone and in ill humour. She’s a dark-eyed, unhappy-looking woman – Letitia bears very little resemblance to her – who resided in Bath before her remarriage and makes much of the absence of sedan chairs in Bristol. “It was a moment of folly,” Henry’s mother said of her marriage, and Henry studies Mrs. Auriol’s face and bearing for evidence of a passionate nature. She asks Henry three questions: where his mother lives, what his annual income is likely to be at his majority, and whether the cane-cutters on the plantation live in trees, as she has heard. She receives his answers gloomily. “It would be more commendable to provide employment for the destitute Christian of England,” she observes.

“Alas, the English constitution cannot withstand the tropical heat – to work in it, I mean. Indentured servants from Ireland and Scotland were used in the early days of the West Indies colonies, and a year or two of cutting cane generally killed them. When you consider it fully, slavery is in some ways more humane than indentureship. Ownership provides an incentive not to drive your workers to death – when indeed, with indentured servants, the impulse was to do so, to avoid paying them out at the end of
their term.” He has no idea where this argument is coming from, but he finds himself propounding it with some heat. “When the workers are your greatest capital investment, you must maintain them. Especially now, with the Wilberforce Bill, now that the trade has been abolished and the workforce can no longer be replenished at the next docking of a ship from Guinea, we must subsist the slaves properly so that they will breed.”

She looks at him, confounded. The old uncle seems to be biting his tongue. Perhaps he’s developing a new respect for Henry.

After Mrs. Auriol leaves, Henry invites Letitia out to the garden. “I sense your mother may have been angry about something.”

“She loathes my uncle because he will not receive her husband.”

“Your stepfather.”

She gives her little laugh. “Hardly that. I was in Bath when they married and I did not trouble myself to come down. I don’t speak of him. It is one of my rules.” And then, to his surprise, tears well in her eyes. She looks up at him with a transparent expression he’s never seen in her before, and goes to speak again, and then puts her hands over her face.

He reaches for a hand, draws it down, and leans forward to plant a kiss on her damp cheek. “When I come into my own,” he says, “we shall marry and never trouble with such things. We shall take a Grand Tour. To Paris and Venice and Mont Blanc. The war will be over by then.”

“Do you think the war is going to end?”

“Well, of course it will end, one day.”

She shakes him off and trips back across the garden, swinging her skirts like a child. “I hope the war is never over!” she cries in a falsely exuberant voice. “Never! I
adore
the uniforms. Oh, Henry, do enlist!”

“How can I enlist?” he shouts, exasperated, as she disappears through the door.

All their courtship was squeezed into five unconscious minutes in the copse behind her uncle’s house. He feels the loss of it, of
courtship
itself; the very word has about it a sense of ritual and leisurely pursuit. It also seems a pity to him that she came out at such a young age, in that her lessons were stopped. Her life looks unbearably tedious to him – worse than his. But she is never bored for long. In the vicissitudes of dressmaking and hair curling and calling card and post, she manages to find drama. She comes down the stairs on his arrival, breathless with eagerness, and Henry listens closely to discover the pending event that accounts for her excitement. But it all seems to spring from a source within herself, her own talent for endowing the day with intrigue.

On a sunny morning, he suggests they take their easels to the back garden to paint together, but she professes to detest painting, she adamantly refuses. “But you were painting in the garden the day I made your acquaintance,” he says, “and for several days before.”

“How ever would we have met, else?” she asks saucily. “My uncle would not be troubled to arrange an introduction.”

There is a terrible clatter – the butler is tipping coals into the hearth – and she sits smiling up at him, picturesquely arranged in the divan cushions, and then gives the little laugh that has so begun to annoy him. Henry turns and walks out, snatching up his hat from the hall table. He does not trouble to see that the door is closed properly but turns sharply away from his uncle’s house and angles across the road, fury clutching at his stomach.

Pretending to paint – pretending to an interest that was never hers – how much of what she seems to be is pretence? The ridiculous little laugh – it is the laugh of a coquette! He sees
himself floundering in the woods, a helpless dupe caught in her snare. A snare laid with absolute indifference to the real qualities of the man she’d chosen as her prey. And he fell into it. He allowed himself to become fodder for prattling letters to her silly friends. He is at Queen Square by then, walking kitty-corner across a park lined with mansions built by the Guinea trade. As would be evident to anyone walking through the square, by the number of Negro servants one sees – here a groom leading a pair of geldings towards a stable, here a gardener bent over the hedge (and he thinks briefly of the fierce and piteous woman he saw in Piccadilly, and wonders what became of her). He feels himself outside it all – Henry Beach, who will live life on his own terms. The day he walked to the neighbouring house to propose marriage to this girl, the thought he held to was this: I shall get the foundation of my gentleman’s life in place and then I need not trouble myself.
I shall give them this because it’s meaningless, and I shall be as I was
. And it’s true, he will need to have a home, and that home will need to have a wife in it. Or I shall become Uncle Alger, he thinks.

He’s a little calmer now, and he asks himself whether he loves her to any degree, and whether it matters. He considers how similar they are, their childhoods both spent on green islands far away, the lost fathers they hardly recall. She’s not sensible, but from all reports, young ladies are not. She is pleasing to look at and thrilling to touch. She seems to know how to conduct herself in society, if you make allowances for how very young she is. Already she has a facility with dress and charming gesture that surpasses that of other, older girls. His mother felt she would grow into something.

Henry is out of Queen Square now and walking quickly, almost running, along Welsh Back towards the bridge.
She is willing to overlook my disgrace at Marlow. She has an annual income
of four thousand pounds
.
I will have nothing, nothing from the plantation. She has a dreadful mother, but one unlikely to meddle. Any man would be proud to have her on his arm
. And then he is on the bridge, darting nimbly between the strolling couples.
Most engagements begin in this fashion. So fine a gentleman as Mr. William Conybeare admired her
.

He returns to her house the next day. He does not apologize and she does not reproach him. She asks him whether he will paint a formal portrait of her and he agrees. He decides to pose her indoors, as many sittings may be required. Inspired by her gown’s evocation of the classical period, he arranges her standing with one hand on a chair, which he will afterwards represent as a broken column. He does a charcoal sketch first to test out the composition. The arms and torso are three poorly stuffed sausages, and the face, while recognizable as a young lady’s, is not recognizable as hers; it seems he saw her more clearly a month ago, when he sketched her through the window. Captain Whyte shuffles into the morning room and looks at his easel, bemused.

When Henry is leaving, the old man follows him into the hall and slips him a shabby leather-bound book. “We’ll keep this away from the young lady’s eyes,” he says, winking. It’s an anatomy, which opens to a plate of a dark-haired young man smiling amiably, lifting a flap of skin in his abdomen to show the musculature beneath. “He may smile, poor wretch,” says Captain Whyte. “They’re all miscreants. Cut open still warm from the scaffold.”