6. A little in love with him myself
You might think saving someone’s life would bind you ever after. That is not what happened with Mary and me. I am not blaming her, but digging her out of the landslip that day, using Captain Cury’s spade and racing against the tide and the rocks that rained down on either side of us, seemed to drive us apart rather than bring us closer.
It was a miracle Mary survived, and intact as well, especially given Captain Cury’s terrible suffocating death just a few feet from her. She had bad bruising up and down her body, but only a few broken bones-some ribs and her collarbone. This kept her in bed a few weeks-not long enough to satisfy Doctor Carpenter, but she refused to convalesce any longer, and soon reappeared on the beach, bound up tightly to keep the bones in place.
I was amazed she was willing to go out hunting again after what she’d been through. Not only that-she did not change her habits, but went back to pacing along the base of the cliffs, where landslips could come down. When I suggested that Molly and Joseph Anning would understand if she did not want to go back to hunting, Mary declared, “I been struck by lightning and buried in a landslip and survived both. God must have other plans for me. Besides,” she added, “I can’t afford to stop.”
On top of her father’s debts, which years later the family was still struggling to clear, they now owed Doctor Carpenter. He was fond of Mary because of their shared interest in fossils, as well as for the pleasure he took from knowing his advice had saved her from the lightning strike. However, he still had to be paid for his care of Mary, and of Fanny Miller as well, as insisted on by her family. The Annings did not challenge this demand. More surprising, they did not expect William Buckland to pay for Fanny’s care; nor would Molly Anning let me write to him about it on their behalf. “He can afford it more than you,” I reasoned when I was visiting Mary to lend her a Bible she wanted to read while she was still in bed. “And it is because of him that Fanny was out on the beach at all.”
Molly Anning did not pause while she counted a pile of pennies from the fossil table sales. “If Mr Buckland felt he ought to pay, he would have offered to before he went back to Oxford. I ain’t going to chase after him for his money.”
“I don’t think he has thought about it one way or the other,” I said. “He is a scholar, not a practical man. If put to him, though, I am sure he would honour the debt and pay Doctor Carpenter-for Mary’s treatment as well as Fanny’s.”
“No.” Molly Anning’s stubbornness revealed a certain pride I had not realised she possessed. She measured most things by the coins they represented and the distance they put between the Annings and the workhouse, but in this instance I believe she understood that money was not the issue. Whether or not William Buckland was involved, the Annings had placed an innocent girl in danger, and effectively crippled her. Fanny could not now expect to marry well, or at all. Her fair looks might make up for a great deal, but most husbands at that working level of society would need a wife who was able to walk a mile. No amount of money could make up for what Fanny had lost. Molly Anning took on the debt as a sort of punishment.
Mary never talked about the half hour she was buried before I found her. But the experience changed her. I often caught in her eyes a faraway expression, as if she were listening to someone calling from the top of Black Ven, or a gull crying out at sea. Death had come and camped next to her on the beach, taking Captain Cury while sparing her, and reminding her of its presence and of her own limits. All of us begin to feel deeply our mortality at some time in our lives, but it is usually when we are older than Mary was then.
Mary’s contact with death also came at a time when she was maturing. One day I helped Molly Anning remove the bandages that had bound Mary’s broken bones, and discovered that under her ill-?tting dress she had a womanly figure, with her waist and breasts and hips all in good proportion. Her shoulders were perhaps a little hunched from her fascination with the ground, and her knuckles were raw, her fingers rough and cracked from use. She was not graceful, as Margaret had been at that age. But she had a fresh, bold presence that could attract men.
She had begun to sense it as well. She took more care to wash her face and hands, and asked Margaret for some of the salve she had concocted to try to save my own hands from the drying force of Blue Lias clay. Made of beeswax, turpentine, lavender and yarrow, it was useful for dressing wounds as well as chapped skin, but Mary wore it on her hands, elbows and cheeks, and I began to associate her with that scent, a curious mixture of the medicinal and the floral.
Mary’s hair was always going to be a dull brown, and scrubby from the wind rather than the curled ringlets that were the fashion. But she did at least comb her fringe daily, and pull the rest into a bun which she covered with a cap and bonnet. I am not sure how much good making an effort with her looks did, for her reputation was already much compromised by her time with Mr Buckland, even with the ill-fated Fanny as companion. The landslip accident might normally have brought Mary some sympathy, but Fanny’s injuries caused much indignation amongst working people, creating sides that cast Mary as the villain. If she was trying to soften her elbows and tame her hair, it could not be for any Lyme man she fancied she could snare. She had too openly flouted the rules of what was expected from a girl in her position. Now that it had tangible consequences in the form of Fanny’s broken gait, vague impressions hardened into harsh opinions.
Mary paid little attention to what others said about her, a trait in her I both admired and despaired of. Perhaps I was a little jealous that she could be so free with her contempt for society’s workings in a way that a woman of my class could not. Even in a place as independent-minded as Lyme, I was all too aware of the judgements made if one stepped too far out of place.
Perhaps Mary did not care for the sort of life Lyme had decided for her. She had spent a great deal of time with people above her station-me most of all, but also William Buckland, and various gentlemen who made their way to Lyme, having heard of or seen the creatures Mary had found. It rather turned her head, and raised her hopes that she might be able to move up in the world. I do not think she ever seriously considered any of the men as potential suitors: most gentlemen viewed her as little more than a knowledgeable servant. William Buckland was more appreciative of her talent, but was too caught up in his own head to notice her as a woman. Such a man would be deeply frustrating, as I briefly allowed myself to discover.
For Mary’s interest in men piqued my own, which I had thought dead but discovered was merely dormant, a rosebush that needed but a little attention to attempt to flower. Once I invited William Buckland to dine with us at Morley Cottage so that he might look at my specimen collection. He accepted with an enthusiasm I suspected was for my fossils, yet I allowed myself to think might be directed towards me as well. For a match between him and me was not such a mad idea. Granted I was several years older than him, and too old to have many children. But it was not impossible. Molly Anning had borne her last child at the age of forty-six. William Buckland and I were of similar social standing, and intellectually suited. Of course I was not educated to his degree, but I read widely. I knew enough about geology and fossils to be a supportive wife to him in his profession.
Margaret, always quick to spot romantic potential even for an aging spinster, encouraged these thoughts by going on about Mr Buckland’s vivid eyes, and nagging me about what I would wear to dinner. What began as genial interest grew to such a pitch of quiet excitement that by the appointed day my stomach was fizzing with nerves.