Curiosity (30 page)

“It’s not the iron that cuts the stone. You keep sand in its path, like this.” She showed him. “It’s the sand that does the cutting. But it must stay wet. See this barrel? You must pull the peg out if the stone becomes too dry. Look, a trickle of water will fall in just the right place.”

“Oh, my geological maiden,” Buckland cried, pushing his way in between them. “You are too clever by half.”

They worked, taking turns, until they had cut open all the stones they had. Lizzie put on her plaid frock and pinafore and came to sit on the steps to watch. Each bezoar stone they cut into the narrowest slices possible, to see everything inside.
Sectioning
, Buckland called it, and their fingers hurt from holding such narrow stones under the saw. Inside, they found tiny spines and fins and scales, tiny big-eyed skulls – it seemed the Ichthyosaurus, for all its soft and gentle eye, had no qualms about eating its young. Mr. Buckland was transported with delight, thrown back six thousand years, to the moment of the creature’s gobbling its dinner. But Mr. De la Beche became more subdued, speaking in a low voice to her, as if it were just the two of them there in the workshop.

When they had gone, Mary rested for a minute in the kitchen. Her mother was down in the workshop sweeping up the mess they’d made. Dust blossomed up from the stairs and pricked Mary’s nostrils. She was almost sweemy with hunger. She would cook the dogfish for their supper, but first she must meet the coach. Noise rose in the square and she picked up the stool to drag it outside.

It was not the coach; it was boys scuffling on the street. Mr. Gleed came down Broad Street towards the boys, and they fell apart with a last defiant shove to each other’s shoulders. Mr. Gleed had his collecting bag full of curiosities on his arm. Miles away in Plymouth, Mary thought, James Wheaton’s body is turning in its grave. Mr. Gleed stood for a minute at the end of the square, a small figure in shabby black. Would he dare to sell right under her nose? She could see him trying to decide whether he had sufficient gall. She stared unblinkingly at him. Finally, he walked nimbly away from the square and turned up Church Street. He was on his way up to the Monmouth Inn. He’d sell in the public house, something she had never done. He will see us starve, she thought. I shall start selling at the chapel door while he preaches.

A knot of young ladies waited for the coach, tossing merry cries into the air. Delicate tendrils framed their faces – the sort of curls you must have a lady’s maid to produce. Their gowns and slippers were white, the snowy white you must have a lady’s maid to maintain. Miss Whyte, in fact, was the name of Mr. De la Beche’s betrothed. Mary looked at the three young ladies across the square until they began to cast glances in her direction. I am a woman of science, Mary thought. I may stare. In her mind’s eye, she saw Miss Whyte with hair so fair as to be white,
and a high, serene brow. She saw her sitting by a casement with a book in her hand, her chin aloof, wearing a gown of palest yellow, her two white breasts lying open to appraisal like goose eggs in a bowl in the market. Wearing tiny slippers and a lacy shawl, and diamonds dangling where wires were made to go through her ears.

Colonel Birch came hobbling across the square, a fat, amiable ram, and Mary stood up off her stool. “Miss Anning!” he bleated. “What relic does Miss Anning have for me today?”

“Nothing new, I’m afraid,” Mary said. He owned scores of the small invertebrates spread out on the table, the ammonites and devil’s toenails and belemnites. “Nothing new – oh! – except this.” It was leaning against the house – another large hip bone she’d found near Charmouth.

“Capital, capital!” he cried, scarcely glancing at it. “I shall send Charles to carry it home. What do you say to a pound?”

“Colonel Birch,” she said, “last month I sold you the very piece.” She was always counselling him against buying, afraid he would turn against collecting entirely when he came to his senses.

“Oh, spare no thought for that, miss,” he said. “I shall not rest until I have another. If one is good, then two are better. Two by two into the ark!” He lifted his moustache to her, displaying his teeth. They were white and straight and set into a wooden plate. They came from a thief hanged at Bridport – so Will Darby from Sherborne Lane said. He bent over to examine the hip bone, leaning heavily on his stick in deference to his own hip. His rented rooms in Lyme had been full to the rafters and the landlord had complained. Recently he’d moved to a house in Charmouth. If Mary were rich and could keep a collection, she would keep only the best example of each type. It would be the
science
she thought of, not just a greedy piling into cabinets.

And then Colonel Birch was gone, hobbling back to the Assembly Rooms where his mount waited, and Annie Bennett wandered into the square with her basket of lavender. She came from Cobb Hamlet, not from her mother’s house, for she was Mrs. George Downing now. Mary looked narrowly at her stomach. Molly swore Annie was childing, but it was hard to tell for the basket. Annie leaned against the prison wall and turned her head in Mary’s direction. Some days they spoke to each other and some days they said the same thing with a look:
I am tired and you must be too
. The coach was late. Everyone was hungry and tired, leaning on the prison wall or slouching outside the Assembly Rooms, propping their weary gaze on her. They would stare: she had been written up in the papers, she was a poor woman visited by gentlemen. It was a truth in life that others could look at you and see what you could not see.

Now Mr. De la Beche was crossing Bridge Street towards her. While she’d been waiting there hungry and tired, he had bathed and dressed. He wore now his knee breeches and boots and a beautiful jacket of dark blue wool. “Yes, it’s me back,” he said. “Try not to look so stricken! I won’t keep you. I’m taking tea with Mr. Buckland. It shall be rock cakes at table, I warrant you. But why are you still here, Miss Anning? Is the coach late?” She nodded. “Just as well for me,” he said. “You never know what the coach will bring me, by way of passenger or post. And in any case, I hate to miss the excitement. In other towns with a steep decline, footmen will throw a drag out. But not in Lyme. In Lyme, they thrive on danger to life and limb.” He eyed her table. “And how is trade?”

She had never seen him wear this splendid coat before, scarlet flowers stitched on its cuffs and down both sides of the front. Everything Mr. De la Beche owned was bought with money
earned by blackamoors, who worked for him in the heat of the West Indies. If I were rich, she thought, it would not be lacy frippery I would buy, it would be this blue embroidered jacket. I would have his calfskin boots, and the red waistcoat, and the wonderful cape. If I were rich, I would have his leather kit.

He smiled at Mary now and examined the ammonites, sliding four or five very similar asteroceras into two rows to show the difference between them, winking at her to show he meant no offence, and that
something
passed between them again, although their hands were inches apart.

“Poor to middling,” Mary said. “I must pack up now. I have supper to cook.”

“But the coach has yet to come,” he said.

Oh, this day was all a jumble, all the recent days were a jumble! It was her hunger hanging like a fog between her and the square, her hunger that gave her the sense that she’d been on a long journey and had come back bewildered, somehow she’d lost her bearings in front of her own house. She couldn’t take her eyes off Mr. De la Beche’s jacket. On each button was stitched a single blossom, the work of many hours by the hands of an unknown woman.

“The flowers on your coat,” she asked. “What species be they?”

He turned up a button and peered at it. “I don’t know, actually,” he said.

Watchers in the square moved imperceptibly, angled their ears towards the questions she was putting to this gentleman. Took in the shine on his boots and the delicate neckerchief tied at his neck, and the clean, healthy glow on his cheek. Took her in as well, saw Mary Anning standing by the table in her rough-woven skirt talking to a gentleman. And then suddenly, so did she: she saw what they saw, a thin woman with unruly dark hair pulled
back under a cotton bonnet, a white bonnet gone grey, her hands callused and bare and brown, and the cotton lining of her jacket sticking from her cuffs like crude lace. And then the bugle sounded and everyone turned to watch the headlong plunge of the coach down the hill.

NINETEEN

Lyme Regis, Dorset. July 30th