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Now I know that ammonites were sea creatures rather like our modern nautilus, with protective shells and squid-like tentacles. I wish I could have told Lord Henley so at that dinner, with his assured talk of coiled worms. But at that time I had neither the knowledge nor the confidence to correct him.
Later, when he showed me his collection, Lord Henley revealed more ignorance, not being able to distinguish one ammonite from another. When I pointed out one marked with straight, even suture lines crossing its spiral while on another each line had two knobs picking out the spiral shape, he patted my hand. “What a clever little lady you are,” he said, shaking his head at the same time and undercutting the compliment. I sensed then that he and I would not puzzle over fossils together. I had the patience and eye for detail needed to study them, where Lord Henley painted with a much broader brush, and did not like to be reminded of it.
James Foot was a friend of the Henleys, and our paths must have crossed at Colway Manor, certainly at the Christmas ball, when half of West Dorset came. But Louise and I first heard of him over breakfast after one of the summer dances at the Assembly Rooms.
“I can eat nothing,” Margaret declared on sitting down at the table and waving away a plate of smoked fish. “I am too agitated!”
Louise rolled her eyes and I smiled into my tea. Margaret often made such pronouncements after balls, and though we laughed at them, we would not have her stop, for these remarks formed our primary entertainment.
“What is his name this time?” I asked.
“James Foot.”
“Indeed? And are his feet all you could hope for?”
Margaret made a face at me and took a slice of toast from the rack. “He is a gentleman,” she declared, crumbling her toast into bits that Bessy would later have to throw onto the lawn for the birds. “He is a friend of Lord Henley’s, he has a farm near Beaminster, and he is a fine dancer. He has already asked me for the first dance on Tuesday!”
I watched her fiddling with her toast. Although I had heard similar words often enough before, something about Margaret herself was different. She seemed more clearly defined, and more self-contained. She kept her chin down, as if holding back extra words, and tucked into herself to listen to new feelings she was trying to comprehend. And though her hands were still busy, their movements were more controlled.
She is ready for a husband, I thought. I gazed at the tablecloth – pale yellow linen embroidered at the corners by our late mother and now sprinkled with crumbs – and said a short prayer, asking God to favour Margaret as He had Frances. When I lifted my eyes I met Louise’s, and they must have reflected mine, both sad and hopeful. It was likely mine were more sad than hopeful, however. I had sent many prayers to God that had gone unanswered, and wondered sometimes whether or not my prayers had been received and heard at all.
Margaret continued to dance with James Foot, and we continued to hear of him over breakfast, dinner, tea and supper, out on walks, while trying to read at night. At last Louise and I accompanied Margaret to the Assembly Rooms so that we might see him for ourselves.
I found him very agreeable to look at, more than I’d expected – though why shouldn’t Dorset produce men as fine-looking as any you’ll meet in London? He was tall and slim, and everything about him was tidy and elegant, from his newly cut curly hair to his pale, slim hands. He wore a beautiful chocolate brown tail-coat the same colour as his eyes. It looked glorious against the pale green gown Margaret wore – which must have been why she wore it, and had taken the trouble to get me to sew on a new dark green ribbon at its waist, as well as fashion a new turban with feathers dyed to match. Indeed, since James Foot’s arrival in Lyme, she had begun to fuss even more over her clothes, buying new gloves and ribbons, bleaching her slippers to remove scuffs, writing to ask our sister-in-law to send cloth from London. Louise and I did not bother much about our own clothes, wearing muted shades – Louise dark blues and greens, I violet and grey – but we were happy enough to allow Margaret to indulge in pastels and flowered patterns. And if there was money enough for only one new gown, we insisted she get it. Now I was glad, for she looked lovely dancing with James Foot in her green gown, with feathers in her hair. I sat and watched them, and was content.
Louise was less so. She said nothing at the Assembly Rooms, but when we were preparing for bed later – having left Margaret still dancing, with an assurance from friends that they would see her home – Louise declared, “He cares very much about appearances.”
I secured my sleeping cap over my indifferent hair and got into bed. “So does Margaret.”
Though it was too late to read, I did not blow out the candle, but watched the cobwebs flutter on the ceiling in the draught of heat from the flame.
“It is not his clothes, though they are a reflection of his inclinations,” Louise said. “He wants things to be proper.”
“We are proper,” I protested.
Louise blew out her candle.
I knew what she meant. I had felt it when James Foot was introduced to me. He was polite and straightforward – and conventional. I found myself trying to respond as blandly as possible. As we talked, his eyes flickered over the slight fraying on the neckline of my violet gown, and I felt a judgement clicked into a place in his head, a bit of information tucked away to be brought out and considered later. “Elizabeth Philpot does not attend to her gowns,” I could imagine him saying to his own sister.
For Margaret’s sake I tried to be proper when James Foot visited us at Morley Cottage one day. James Foot himself was obliging too. He asked Louise to show him the garden, and offered to send her cuttings of his hydrangeas when he found she had none. She did not tell him she detested them. He was keen to examine my fossil collection, and knew more about fossils than Henry Hoste Henley. When he suggested that I go to Eype, farther east along the coast near Bridport, to look for brittle stars, he added that I was welcome to visit his nearby farm. For myself, I did not quiz him about fossils as I wanted to, but let him lead the conversation, and it was pleasant enough.
After he left Margaret was in such a daze that we took her to bathe in the sea, hoping the cold shock would sharpen her. Louise and I stood on the shore while she paddled. The bathing machine, a little closet on a cart, had been pulled far out into the water to give her privacy, and Margaret swam with it between her and the shore, preserving her modesty. Once or twice we caught a glimpse of an arm or a plume of water as she kicked.
My eyes scanned the pebbles, though I did not expect to find any fossils amongst the chunks of flint. “I thought his visit was very successful,” I announced, aware of how uninspired I sounded.
“He won’t marry her,” Louise said.
“Why not? She’s as good as anyone, and much better than many.”
“Margaret would bring little money to a marriage. That may not matter to him, but if there is no money, then the character of the family he marries into becomes important.”
“But we did well today, didn’t we? Talking about the sorts of things he’d prefer, being agreeable but not too clever. And he was interested in us – he spent long enough with you in the garden!”
“We did not flirt with him.”
“Of course not – thankfully we could leave that to Margaret!” Even as I protested, I knew what she meant. Sisters are expected to engage in sparkling conversation with their sister’s suitor, to assume a slight intimacy that anticipates a familial link. However I was meant to act with James Foot, I had been awkward and leaden rather than a naturally welcoming family member. He would dread each occasion, as I already did, when we must repeat such conversations. For it had been tiresome being careful in order to please a gentleman for an afternoon. After little more than a year in Lyme I’d come to appreciate the freedom a spinster with no male relatives about could have there. It already seemed more normal to me than twenty-five years of conventional life in London had.
Of course Margaret felt differently. I watched her now as she floated into view for a moment on her back, her hands wafting about her like seaweed. She would be gazing up at the reddening afternoon sky and thinking of James Foot. I winced for her.
Perhaps for Margaret’s sake I would have managed to temper my behaviour, and grown used to spending time with James Foot without it always feeling like a burden. A few weeks later, however, I had an encounter with him on the beach that undid all my previous efforts to be a benign sister.
Richard Anning had just given his daughter a special hammer he’d made, its wooden points covered with metal. Mary was keen to show me how to use it to slice open lozenge-shaped stones, called nodules, to reveal crystallised ammonites, and sometimes fish. I did not tell her I’d never handled a hammer before, though she must have realised it when she saw my first feeble attempts to swing it. She made no comment, simply corrected me until I improved, a surprisingly patient young teacher.
Although it was a fair September day, there was a chilling breeze that reminded me autumn had chased away the summer. I was on my knees, aiming sharp taps along the edge of a nodule, which I held against a flat rock. Mary was leaning over, watching and guiding. “There, Miss Elizabeth. Not too hard or it’ll split the wrong way. Now, cut that bit off the end so you can prop it and hold steady. Oh! Are you all right, ma’am?”
The hammer had slipped and knocked the tip of my index finger. I popped it in my mouth to suck on it and remove the sting.
At that moment I heard stones rattle behind me, and made the mistake of turning towards the sound with my finger still in my mouth. James Foot was a few feet away, gazing down at me with a peculiar look on his face of distaste overlaid with a mask of civility. I pulled my finger out of my mouth with a squelching pop that made me blush with shame.
James Foot held out a hand to help me to my feet. As I scrambled up Mary backed away, instinctively knowing how much respectful distance to give us and yet remain my guide and chaperone.
“I was just opening that stone to see if it held any ammonites,” I explained.
James Foot’s eyes were not on the nodule, however. He was staring at my gloves. To protect my hands from the cold and from drying clay, I often wore gloves, as in any case would be expected of a lady outdoors, whatever the weather. While first out fossil hunting I had ruined several pairs, stained with Blue Lias clay and sea water. Now I had a pair set aside to use on the beach, ivory kid leather that was soiled and hardened from the water, with the fingers cut off to the knuckle so that I could handle things more easily. They looked odd and ugly but they were useful. I also kept a more respectable pair with me that I could slip on when visitors approached, but James Foot had not given me the time to do so.
He himself was well turned out in a double-breasted burgundy tail-coat with polished silver buttons and a brown velvet collar. His own gloves were in matching brown. His riding boots shone, as if mud didn’t dare to come near.
At that moment I acknowledged to myself that I did not like James Foot, with his clean boots, and his collar and gloves matching, and his judging eye. I could never trust a man whose dominant feature was his clothes. I did not like him, and I suspected he did not like me – though he was far too polite to show it.
I clasped my hands behind my back so that he would not have to continue to stare at the offending gloves. “Where is your horse, sir?” I could think of nothing better to say.
“At Charmouth. A boy is taking him over to Colway Manor. I decided to walk the last stretch along the beach, as it is so fine.”
Mary was waving at me behind James Foot’s back. When she caught my eye she vigorously rubbed her cheek. I frowned at her.
“What have you found today?” James Foot asked.
I hesitated. To show him what I had would mean bringing out my gloved hands again for him to inspect. “Mary, fetch the basket and show Mr Foot what we have found. Mary knows a great deal about fossils,” I added as she brought the basket to James Foot and pulled out a heart-shaped grey stone impressed with a delicate five-petal pattern.
“This is a sea urchin, sir,” she said. “And here’s a Devil’s toenail.” She held out a bivalve in the shape of a claw. “Best, though, is the biggest belemnite I ever seen.” Mary held up a beautifully preserved belemnite at least four inches long and an inch wide, its tip perfectly tapered.
James Foot looked at it and went bright red. I could not think why until Mary giggled. “It looks like my brother’s—”
“That’s enough, Mary,” I managed to interrupt in time. “Put it away, please.” I too turned red. I wanted to say something, but to apologise would only make things worse. I am sure James Foot thought I had deliberately set out to embarrass him. “Will you be at the Assembly Rooms tonight?” I asked, trying to put the belemnite out of mind.
“I expect so – unless Lord Henley has other plans for me.”
James Foot normally spoke very definitely about what he was and wasn’t doing, but now I had the feeling he was giving himself a little room to get away. I thought I knew why, but to be sure I said, “I will tell Margaret to look out for you.”
Though James Foot did not move, he gave the impression of stepping away from my statement. “If I can, I will come. Please give my regards to your sisters.” He bowed, and moved away down the shore towards Lyme.
I watched him skirt a rock pool and murmured, “He will never marry her.”
“Ma’am?” Mary Anning looked puzzled. And she was calling me “ma’am” now. Spinster or not, I had outgrown “miss.” Ladies were called “miss” while they still had a chance of marrying.
“Nothing, Mary.” I turned to her. “What was it you wanted before? You were dancing about and rubbing your face as if you’d been stung.”
“You got mud on your cheek, is all, Miss Elizabeth. I thought you’d want to wipe if off so the gentleman wouldn’t stare so.”
I felt my cheek. “Oh dear, that as well?” I took out a handkerchief and spat on it, then began to laugh, so that I would not cry instead.
James Foot did not come to the Assembly Rooms that night. Margaret was disappointed, but did not become alarmed until the next day, when he sent word – without delivering it himself – that he had been called to Suffolk to tend to family business and would be gone some weeks. “What family?” Margaret demanded of the hapless messenger – one of Lord Henley’s many cousins. “He said nothing to me about family in Suffolk!”
She wept and moped and found excuses to visit the Henleys, who could not or would not help her. I doubted James Foot had told them why he’d gone off Margaret – or at least, he would not be specific about my gloves or the belemnite. He was enough of a gentleman not to mention such a thing. But it would have been clear enough to the Henleys that we were not an appropriate family for him to marry into.
Margaret continued to attend Assembly Rooms balls and cards evenings, but she had lost her glow, and the times I went with her I sensed she had slipped from the top rung of the social ladder she had been climbing. A snub from a gentleman, whether or not it is justified, does a subtle damage to a young lady. Margaret was not asked to dance every set, and compliments on her gown and hair and complexion were less frequent. By the time the season ended she looked weary and dull. Louise and I took her to London for a few weeks to try to cheer her, but Margaret herself knew something had shifted. She had lost her best opportunity to marry, and she didn’t know why.
I never told her about meeting James Foot on the beach. It might have brought some comfort to Margaret to know that my eccentricity had contributed to his decision not to continue to court her. But she would have sensed too that even if I had given up my fossils and bought new gloves, it would not have been enough. A man chooses a wife by taking an intricate measure of her and her family; it takes more than an unusual sister to throw off the calculation. James Foot had decided that the Philpots had neither the money nor the social standing for him to pursue Margaret. My brandishing stained gloves and a suggestively shaped fossil only confirmed what he had already determined.
I was upset for Margaret, but I did not regret James Foot’s withdrawal. I suspected he would always have looked at me as if my gloves were soiled. And if he judged me, how would he judge my sister? Would he suck the liveliness right out of her? I could not have borne it if my sister married such a man.
Years later I ran into James Foot at Colway Manor. Margaret always had a headache coming on when we were invited to their parties and suppers, and out of loyalty Louise and I wouldn’t attend without her. But once when I had gone to discuss some fossil business for the Annings with Lord Henley, I came upon James Foot and his wife arriving as I was leaving. She was small and pale and trembled like a pansy; she would never wear a turban to a ball. I knew then that it was just as well Margaret had been kept from that fate.
The summer of James Foot had been the height of Margaret’s potential. The following season she was treated as a fine gown that has dated in storage, the neckline now too high or low, the cloth a touch faded, the cut no longer so flattering. We were surprised that this could happen as easily in Lyme as London, yet there was little we could do to change it. Margaret kept her friends and made new ones from the seasonal visitors. But she no longer returned at night with a sparkle and a dance around the kitchen. In time the turbans she persisted in wearing seemed less daring and more a Philpot peculiarity. She did not manage to escape into marriage like Frances, but sank into spinsterhood beside Louise and me.
There are worse fates.
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I don’t remember there ever being a time when I weren’t out upon beach. Mam used to say the window was open when I was born, and the first thing I saw when they held me up was the sea. Our house in Cockmoile Square backed onto it next to Gun Cliff, so as soon as I could walk I’d be out there upon the rocks, with my brother Joe but a few years older to look after me and keep me from drowning. Depending on the time of year, there’d be plenty of others about, walking to the Cobb, looking at the boats, or going out in the bathing machines, which looked like privies on wheels to me. Some even went in the water in November. Joe and me laughed at them, for the swimmers would come out wet and cold and miserable, like dunked cats, but pretending it was good for them.
I had my share of tussles with the sea over the years. Even I, with the tide times as natural in me as the beat of my heart, got caught out from looking for curies and cut off by the sea creeping up, and had to wade through it or climb over the cliffs to get home. I never bathed deliberately, though, not like the London ladies coming to Lyme for their health. I always been one for solid ground, rocks rather than water. I thank the sea for giving me fish to eat, and for releasing fossils from the cliffs, or washing them out of the sea bed. Without the sea the bones stay locked up in their rock tombs forever, and we’d have no money for food and lodging.
I was always looking for curies, for as long as I can recall. Pa took me out and showed me where to look, said what they were – verteberries, Devil’s toenails, St Hilda’s snakes, bezoars, thunderbolts, sea lilies. Before long I could hunt on my own. Even when you go out with someone hunting, you’re not beside them every step. You can’t be inside their eyes, you have to use your own, look your own way. Two people can look over the same rocks and see different things. One will see a lump of chert, the other a sea urchin. When I was a girl I’d be out with Pa and he’d find verteberries in the spot I’d already turned over. “Look,” he’d say, and reach over to pick one up that was right at my feet. Then he would laugh at me and cry, “You’ll have to look harder than that, girl!” It never bothered me, for he was my father and he was meant to find more than me, and teach me what to do. I wouldn’t have wanted to be better than him.
To me, looking for curies is like looking for a four-leaf clover: it’s not how hard you look, but how something will appear different. My eyes will brush over a patch of clover, and I’ll see 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 3, 3. The four leaves just pop out at me. Same with curies: I’ll wander here and there along the beach, letting my eyes drift over stones without thinking, and out will jump the straight lines of a bellie, or the stripy marks and curve of an ammo, or the grain of bone against the smooth flint. Its pattern stands out when everything else is a jumble.
Everyone hunts differently. Miss Elizabeth studies the cliff face and the ledges and the loose stones so hard you think her head will burst. She does find things, but it takes her much more effort. She don’t have the eye like me.
When he hunted, my brother Joe had a different method again, and hated my way. He is three years older than me, but when we were young it felt sometimes like he was years and years older. He was like a little grown up, slow and serious and careful. It was our job to find curies and bring them back to Pa, though sometimes we set about cleaning them too, if Pa were busy with his cabinets. Joe never liked to be outside when it were blowy. He found curies, though. He was good at it even if he didn’t want to do it. He had the eye. His way was to take a patch of beach, divide it into squares, and search each square equally, going back and forth at an even pace, slow and steady. He found more than me, but I found the unusual bits, the crocodile ribs and teeth, the bezoar stones and sea urchins, the things you didn’t expect.
Pa hunted by using a long pole to poke amongst the rocks so he wouldn’t have to bend over. He learned this from Mr Crookshanks, the friend who first taught Pa about curies. He jumped off Gun Cliff behind our house when I was only three. Pa said he’d had too much debt and even curies couldn’t keep him from the workhouse. Not that Pa learned from Mr Crookshanks’ mistake. Pa was always looking to find what he called the monster that would pay all our debts. Over the years we’d found teeth and verteberries and what looked like ribs, as well as funny little cubes like kernels of corn, and other bones we couldn’t make out but thought must come from a big animal like a crocodile. Miss Elizabeth showed one to me once when I was cleaning curies for her. She had a book full of drawings of all sorts of animals and their skeletons, by a Frenchman called Cuvier.
Pa didn’t hunt as much as we did, for he had his cabinet making, though he’d come out when he could. He preferred curies to woodwork, which upset Mam, for the money was unpredictable, and hunting took him away from Cockmoile Square and the family. She probably suspected he preferred being alone upon beach to a house full of squally babies – for she did have some squallers. All of them cried but Joe and me. Mam never come upon beach, except to shout at Pa if he went hunting on a Sunday and shamed her at Chapel. Though it didn’t stop him, he agreed not to take Joe and me out on Sundays.
Other than us there were but one other who sold curies: an ancient hostler called William Lock, who worked at the Queen’s Arms at Charmouth, where coaches between London and Exeter changed horses. William Lock found he could sell fossils to the travellers as they stretched their legs and looked about. As fossils were known as curiosities, or curies, he come to be called Captain Cury. Though he’d been finding and selling fossils for years – longer even than Pa had – he didn’t carry a hammer, but picked up whatever was lying easily to hand, or dug things up with the spade he kept with him. He was a mean old man who looked at me funny. I stayed away from him.
We would see Captain Cury from time to time upon beach, but until Miss Elizabeth come to Lyme, the shore were deserted of other cury hunters apart from us. Mostly I went looking with Joe or with Pa. Sometimes, though, I went down upon beach with Fanny Miller. She was the same age as me and lived just up the river from Lyme, past the cloth factory, in what we called Jericho. Her father was a wood cutter who sold wood to Pa, her mam worked at the factory, and the Millers were members of the Congregationalist Chapel in Coombe Street like us. Lyme was full of Dissenters, though it had a proper church too, St Michael’s, that was always trying to lure us back. We Annings wouldn’t go, though – we were proud to think differently from the traditional Church of England, even if I couldn’t really say what those differences were.
Fanny was a pretty thing, small and fair-haired and delicate, with blue eyes I envied. We used to play finger games during Sunday services when it got dull, and would run up and down the river chasing sticks and leaves we’d made into boats, or picking watercress. Though Fanny always preferred the river, sometimes she would go with me upon beach between Lyme and Charmouth, though she would never go as far as Black Ven, for she thought the cliff there looked evil and stones would tumble down on her head. We would build villages from pebbles, or fill in the holes tiny clams called piddocks made in the rock ledges. At the same time I would keep an eye out for curies, so it was never just play for me.
Fanny had the eye but hated to use it. She loved pretty things: chunks of milky quartz, striped pebbles, knobs of fool’s gold. Her jewels, she called them. She would find these treasures, yet wouldn’t touch good ammos and bellies even when she knew I wanted them. They scared her. “I don’t like them,” she would say with a shiver, but could never explain why, other than to say “They’re ugly,” if I pressed her, or “Mam says they’re from the fairies.” She said a sea urchin was a fairy loaf, which was their bread, and if you kept it on a shelf your milk wouldn’t go sour. I told her what Pa taught me: that ammos were snakes that had lost their heads, that bellies were thunderbolts God had thrown down, that gryphies were the Devil’s own toenails. That scared her even more. I knew they were just stories. If the Devil really shed that many toenails, he would have to have had thousands of feet. And if lightning was to create that many bellies, it would be striking all day long. But Fanny couldn’t think like that, and would hold on to her fear. I’ve met plenty of others the same – frightened of what they don’t understand.
But I loved Fanny, she being my one true friend then. Our family weren’t popular in Lyme, for people thought Pa’s interest in fossils odd. Even Mam did, though she would defend him if she heard talk about him at the Shambles or outside Chapel.
Fanny did not remain my friend, though, no matter how many jewels I brought back for her from the beach. It weren’t just that the Millers were suspicious of fossils; they were suspicious of me too, especially once I started helping the Philpots, who people in town made fun of as the London ladies too peculiar even to get a Lyme man. Fanny would never come if I was going upon beach with Miss Elizabeth. She got more and more funny with me, making comments about Miss Elizabeth’s bony face and Miss Margaret’s silly turbans, and pointing out holes in my boots and clay under my nails. I begun to wonder if she were my friend after all.
Then when we did go along the shore one day, Fanny were so sullen that I let us get cut off by the tide, as a punishment for her mood. When she saw the last strip of sand next to the cliff disappear under a foamy wave, Fanny begun to cry. “What we going to do?” she kept sobbing.
I watched, with no desire to comfort her. “We can wade through the water or climb up to the cliff path,” I said. “You choose.” Myself, I did not want to wade a quarter of a mile along the cliff to the point where the town begun on higher ground. The water was freezing and the sea rough, and I could not swim, but I did not tell her that.
Fanny gazed equally fearfully at the churning sea and the steep climb we faced. “I cannot choose,” she squealed. “I cannot!”
I let her cry a little more, then led her up the rough path, pulling and pushing her to the top where the cliff path goes between Charmouth and Lyme. Once she’d recovered, Fanny would not look at me, and when we neared the town she run off, and I did not try to catch her up. I had never been cruel to anyone, and did not like myself for it. But it was the start of the feeling I had ever after that I did not entirely belong to the people I ought to in Lyme. Whenever I run into Fanny Miller – at Chapel, on Broad Street, along the river – her big blue eyes turned hard like ice covering a puddle, and she talked about me behind her hand with her new friends. I felt even more like an outsider.
Our troubles truly begun when I was eleven and we lost Pa. Some say it were his own fault for taking a bad tumble one night coming back to Lyme along the cliff path. He swore he’d had no drink, but of course we could all smell it. He was lucky he weren’t killed going over, but he was laid up for months. He couldn’t make cabinets, and the curies Joe and I found only brought in a bit, so the debt he had already got us into become much worse. Mam said the fall weakened him so that he couldn’t fight the illness when it come a few months later.
I was sad to lose him, but I had no time to dwell on it, for he left us with such debts and not a shilling in our pockets: me and Joe and Mam, and her carrying a baby born a month after we buried Pa. Joe and I had to hold her up and almost carry her into the Coombe Street Chapel for the funeral. Between us we got her there, but we were a sight, staggering in with Mam to a funeral we couldn’t even pay for. They had to take up a collection in the town, and most showed up, to see what it was they had bought.
Afterwards we put Mam to bed and I went out upon beach, as I did most days, funeral or no, though I did wait till Mam were asleep. It would upset her if she knew where I was going. To her, Pa’s falling off the cliff when he should have been in his workshop were just proof from God that we shouldn’t have spent so much time on curies.
I walked towards Charmouth, an eye on the tide, which was coming in now but slow enough that I wouldn’t get caught out yet. I got past Church Cliffs and the narrow bit where the beach curves round and then widens out, with Black Ven hanging above, grey and brown and green stripes of rock and grass like the coat of a tabby cat, slipping down gradual rather than like the sheer face of Church Cliffs. Mud from the Blue Lias oozes onto the beach there and deposits treasures for those willing to dig through it.
I searched the clay, just as I had for so many years with Pa. It were a comfort, hunting by the cliffs. I could forget he was gone, and think that if I just looked round he’d be behind me, bent over stones or poking at a seam of rock in the cliff with his stick, working in his own world while I worked in mine. Of course he weren’t there that day, nor any day after, no matter how many times I looked up to catch sight of him.
I found nothing in the Blue Lias but shards of bellies, which I kept even though they were worthless with the tip broke off. Visitors only want to buy long bellies, preferably with the tip intact. But once I’ve picked something up it’s hard to drop it again.
In the rocks, though, I discovered a complete unbroken ammonite. It fitted perfectly in my palm, and I closed my fingers over it and squeezed it. I wanted to show it to someone; you always do want to show your finds, to make them real. But Pa – who would have known how hard it was to find such a perfect ammo – Pa weren’t there. I shut my eyes to stop the tears. I wanted to keep that ammo in my hand always, squeezing it and thinking of Pa.
“Hello, Mary.” Elizabeth Philpot was standing over me, dark against the grey light of the sky. “I didn’t expect to find you out here today.”
I couldn’t see her expression, and wondered what she thought of me being upon beach rather than at home, comforting Mam.
“What have you found?”
I scrambled to my feet and held out the ammo. Miss Elizabeth took it. “Ah, a lovely one. Liparoceras, is it?” Miss Elizabeth liked to use what she called the Linnaean names. Sometimes I thought she did it to show off. “The points on the ribs are all intact, aren’t they? Where did you find it?”
I gestured to the rocks at our feet.
“Don’t forget to write down where you found it, which layer of rock and the date. It is important to record it.” Since I’d learned to read and write at Chapel Sunday school, Miss Elizabeth was always nagging me to make labels. She glanced down the beach. “Will the tide cut us off, do you think?”
“We’ve a few minutes, ma’am. I’ll turn back soon.”
Miss Elizabeth nodded, knowing that I would prefer to walk back on my own rather than with her. She took no offence – hunters often like to be alone. “Oh, Mary,” she said as she turned to go. “My sisters and I are all very sorry about your father. I will come by tomorrow. Bessy has made a pie, Louise a tonic for your mother, and Margaret has knitted a scarf.”
“That be kind,” I mumbled. I wanted to ask what use scarves and tonics were to us now, when we needed coal or bread or money. But the Philpots had always been good to me, and I knew better than to complain.
A gust blew the rim of Miss Elizabeth’s bonnet so that it turned inside out. She pushed it back and wrapped her shawl close, then frowned. “Where’s your coat, girl? It’s cold to be out without.”
