Curiosity

by Joan Thomas

  “Mind your tongue, Miss,” said the maid sharply, but asked her to wait in the hall all the same, and then Henry himself came out in his shirt sleeves, wearing a waistcoat in dove grey, this fair young gentleman whose betrothed was gone, gone, wiped out in the stroke of a pen.

  “The map you made me is wrong,” she said to his smiling face.

  “Possibly it is,” he said. “Well, then we should correct it.” He said he would go to the shore with her, but they were just eating their noon meal. He took her into a small room and said he would have something brought in for her. “I shall ask the maid to bring you a refreshment while you wait,” was what he said, and left alone Mary repeated this sentence to herself in the tongue of the high-born. Then the maid came back with a large tumbler of drink and a soft bread roll on a tray. “It’s sherry,” she said when Mary asked. It was sweeter than the Madeira, and softer.

  When he came back into the little room, he had his coat on. He asked her what was wrong with the map and she told him. “It offers the view of a kestrel hawk,” she explained. “I need the view of a mole.”

  As they walked along Bridge Street and passed the square, she gave a small wave in case Lizzie was watching from the window. They did not turn towards the western shore and the Undercliff. No, they went up through the graveyard and down towards Black Ven. It was Mary who set their course, walking in a demure way she had never walked before. She had changed in the course of the morning, she’d become soft through and through, without a centre. Like an invertebrate – with the same sort of thin shell between herself and the world. They were on the shore then. They stood shoulder to shoulder by the cliff and watched the waves fold over themselves, watched the fingers of water that chased up the shore after each wave retreated. The foreshore was a brilliant blue, the blue of the sky reflected in its pools. She turned and watched him watching the sea, looked at his straight nose and his hazel eyes, and thought with wonder that he did not see the happenings that lingered here on the shore, that left their smudge in the sand and their colour in the air. He came innocent to the shore, a visitor. Although deep in the Undercliff she’d told him about the sinking of the Alexander, the way the whole town stood on the Cobb in the howling wind and clutched each other while its great mast tipped. She’d told him about going out early the next morning, among all the other scavengers combing the shore for booty, and how she’d found the body. Why did she tell him? There was never such a gentleman for drawing things out of her, he was unique to his species. And then she had the sudden sensation that he could read her thoughts, and she said in confusion, “It were just here. The body of Lady Jackson. I came walking up and I saw something white on the foreshore, and I knew in a wink what it were.”

  “What did you do, Mary?” he asked.

  She felt heat gather round her eyes. “I went back to the cliffs,” she whispered. “I picked the coltsfoot blooming there, armfuls of it, and scattered the blossoms over her body.” And that was the truth.

  “Did you not tell them in the town?”

  “No. I left her to the sea.” Mary frowned and looked beyond him. If he carried on watching her in this fashion, he would see through her. “But later that morning, some folk found her. They took her up and laid her in St. Michael’s church. And then I carried flowers to the church to keep the body sweet. After a week, we learned who she was. Then her two brothers came from London and carried her away.”

  She ran across the sand now and stood still on the very spot.

  “It was just here I found her. She wore a white gown with lace at the bosom and trailing skirts. Her hair was spread out behind her. It was so fair it was almost silver. It lay on the sand like the wings of an angel. Even in death she was graceful, she had the grace of a lady.” And suddenly she had dropped on her side to the sand and she was showing him the way the arms lay.

  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 tê
te-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.

  They disembark in Cockmoile Square. While Mr. Aveline and Henry’s mother hurry to the entrance, Letitia lingers before the dark windows on Bridge Street. Henry tries to steer her across the square and she leans against him and turns her face up to his, crying gaily, “Pray tell me, what is the impression in Lyme Regis society of Henry’s fiancée?”

  “No impression at all,” he says. “Inasmuch as there is no society in Lyme.”

  She gives a little slap to his gloved hand. “You’ve never spoken of me to your friends?”

  “Of course, your name is known. But I prefer to leave the pleasure of discovery to others. What does a bachelor have, but his air of mystery?” There is the sea in front of them, night birds hanging motionless over the persistent waves. She says something else, but the moving darkness takes it away, and he pulls at her arm and then they’re at the narrow rectangle of light in the stone portico and through it. Looming just inside the door, waiting to greet them, is the Squire and, hidden behind him, his earnest little wife.

  In the custom of country dances, they’re served hot beef broth in a cup. The fiddles start up and they part and face each other in the wavering lines of dancers. Letitia sinks to honour her partner. When her glowing head comes up, she’s applied a mask of gaiety, whic
h stays on through the dance. But the minute the music lapses, she lifts her skirt with a brave little pout to show him her ankle. She’s been wounded – why do the cavalry officers insist on wearing spurs? Miraculously, her stocking’s not torn, although a mark can be seen darkly through it. There is blood on her gown, though, three red drops like blighted cherries just above the glossy embroidered fruit – his blood, he suddenly realizes: somehow he’s scratched the fleshy base of his thumb. They find a spot on the side and he picks up her wrist, feeling along the woven gold of her bracelet until he locates a sharp wire sticking out of it. While he’s bending the wire back with his fingernail, the second dance begins.

  She holds her skirt out of the way of tramping feet. She looks up at him with an expression of appeal – she wants to say something and the violins are very loud. He bends over. “It was by royal edict?” she says into his ear. So. This will be her method of intimacy: the startling, whispered non sequitur.

  They inch further back against the wall. “The king was the sponsor of Great Marlow,” he says. “Everything was by royal edict, every trifle. The hay for the stables was ordered by royal edict.”

  “Will it prevent our being presented at court?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I believe it will.” Laughter begins to shake his diaphragm.

  “Why did you never tell me?”

  He watches the swirl of colour on the dance floor and does not reply.