Читать книгу Remarkable Creatures - Tracy Chevalier - Страница 7

Mary Anning leads with her eyes. That was clear even the first time we met, when she was but a girl. Her eyes are button brown, and bright, and she has a fossil hunter’s tendency always to be looking for something, even when on the street or in a house where there is no possibility of finding anything of interest. It makes her appear vigorous, even when she is still. I have been told by my sisters that I too glance about rather than hold a steady gaze, yet they do not mean it as a compliment as I do with Mary.

I have long noted that people tend to lead with one particular feature, a part of the face or body. My brother, John, for instance, leads with his eyebrows. It is not just that they form prominent tufts above his eyes, but they are the part of his face that moves the most, tracing the course of his thoughts as his brow furrows and clears. He is the second eldest of the five Philpot siblings, and the only son, which made him responsible for four sisters after our parents’ death. Such circumstances will move anyone’s eyebrows, though even as a boy he was serious.

My youngest sister, Margaret, leads with her hands. Though small, their fingers are proportionately long and elegant, and she plays the piano better than the rest of us. She is given to waving her hands about as she dances, and when she sleeps she throws her arms above her head, even when the room is cold.

Frances has been the only Philpot sister to marry, and leads with her bosom – which I suppose explains that. We Philpots are not known for our beauty. Our frames are bony, our features strong. Moreover, there was really only family money enough for one sister to marry with ease, and Frances won the race, leaving Red Lion Square to become the wife of an Essex merchant.

I have always admired most those who lead with their eyes, like Mary Anning, for they seem more aware of the world and its workings. That is why I get on best with my eldest sister, Louise. She has grey eyes, like all the Philpots, and says little, but when her eyes fix on you, you take notice.

I have always wanted to lead with my eyes as well, but I have not been so fortunate. I have a prominent jaw, and when I grit my teeth – more often than I ought, for the world frustrates me – it tenses and sharpens like an axe blade. At a ball once I overheard a potential suitor say he did not dare ask me to dance for fear of cutting himself on my face. I have never really recovered from that remark. It explains why I am a spinster, and why I dance so seldom.

I have longed to move from jaw to eye, but I have noticed that people do not change which feature they lead with, any more than they change in character. And so I am stuck with my strong jaw that puts people off, set in stone like the fossils I collect. Or so I have thought.

I met Mary Anning in Lyme Regis, where she has lived all her life. It was certainly not where I expected to live. London was, of course, specifically Red Lion Square, where we Philpots grew up. Though I had heard of Lyme, as one does of seaside resorts when they become fashionable, we had never visited. We usually went to Sussex towns such as Brighton or Hastings during the summer. When she was alive our mother was keen for us to breathe the fresh air and bathe in the sea, for she subscribed to the views of Doctor Richard Russell, who had written a dissertation about the benefit of sea water, to bathe in and to drink as well. I refused to drink sea water, but I did swim sometimes. I was at home by the sea, though I never thought that would become a literal truth.

Two years after our parents’ death, however, my brother announced at dinner one evening his engagement to the daughter of one of our late father’s solicitor friends. We kissed and congratulated John, and Margaret played a celebratory waltz on the piano. But in bed that night I wept, as I suspected my sisters did as well, for our London lives as we knew them were over. Once our brother married there would be neither the place nor the money for us all to live at Red Lion Square. The new Mrs Philpot would of course want to be mistress of her own home, and fill the house with children. Three sisters was a surfeit, especially when we were unlikely to marry. For Louise and I both knew we were destined to remain spinsters. Because we had little money, our looks and characters were meant to attract husbands, yet ours were too irregular to help us. Though her eyes lifted and brightened her face, Louise was very tall – far taller than most men could manage – and had large hands and feet. Moreover, she was so quiet that suitors were unnerved by her, thinking she was judging them. She probably was. As for me, I was small and bony and plain, and I could not flirt, but would try to talk about serious things, and that drove the men away too.

We were to be moved on, then, like sheep shifted from one cropped field to another. And John must be our shepherd.

The next morning he laid on the breakfast table a book he had borrowed from a friend. “I thought for your summer holiday you might like to go somewhere new rather than visit our aunt and uncle in Brighton again,” he suggested. “A little tour, if you like, along the south coast. With the war with France cutting off travel to the Continent, so many more coastal resorts are springing up. There may be places you will like even more than Brighton. Eastbourne, perhaps, or Worthing. Or further afield, to Lymington, or the Dorset coast: Weymouth or Lyme Regis.” John was reciting these places as if going down a list in his head, placing a little tick beside each one as he named it. That was how his tidy solicitor’s mind worked. He had clearly thought through where he wanted us to go, though he would herd us there gently. “Have a look to see what you fancy.” John tapped the book. Although he said nothing, we all knew we were looking not simply for a holiday destination, but for a new home, where we could live in gently diminished circumstances rather than as London paupers.

When he had gone out to his chambers, I picked up the book. “A Guide to All the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places for 1804,” I read out, for Louise and Margaret’s benefit. Flipping through it, I found entries on English towns in alphabetical order. Fashionable Bath had the longest entry, of course – forty-nine pages, along with a large map and a pull-out panoramic view of the city, with its even, elegant facades cupped by surrounding hills. Our beloved Brighton had twenty-three pages and a glowing report. I looked up the towns our brother had mentioned, some of which were little more than glorified fishing villages, warranting only two pages of indifferent platitudes. John had made a dot in the margin of each. I expect he had read every entry in the book and chosen those that suited best. He had done his research.

“What’s wrong with Brighton?” Margaret demanded.

I was reading about Lyme Regis then, and grimaced. “Here is your answer.” I handed her the guide. “Look at what John has marked.”

“‘Lyme is frequented principally by persons in the middle class of life’,” Margaret read aloud, “‘who go there, not always in search of their lost health, but as frequently perhaps to heal their wounded fortunes, or to replenish their exhausted revenues’.” She let the book drop in her lap. “Brighton is too expensive for the Philpot sisters, then, is it?”

“You could stay here with John and his wife,” I suggested in a burst of generosity. “They could manage one of us, I expect. We may as well not all be banished to the coast.”

“Nonsense, Elizabeth, we shan’t be separated,” Margaret declared with a loyalty that made me hug her.

That summer we toured the coast as John had suggested, accompanied by our aunt and uncle, our future sister-in-law and her mother, and John when he could manage it. Our companions made comments like “What glorious gardens! I envy those who live here all year round and can walk in them any time they like,” or “This circulating library is so well stocked you would think you were in London,” or “Isn’t the air here so soft and fresh? I wish I could breathe this every day of the year.” It was galling to have others judge our future so casually, especially our sister-in-law, who would be taking over the Philpot house and didn’t seriously have to consider living in Worthing or Hastings. Her comments became so irritating that Louise began excusing herself from group outings, and I made more and more tetchy remarks. Only Margaret enjoyed the novelty of the new places, even if only to laugh at the mud at Lymington or the rustic theatre at Eastbourne. She liked Weymouth best, for King George’s love of the town made it more popular than the others, with several coaches a day from London and Bath, and a constant influx of fashionable people.

As for myself, I was out of sorts throughout much of the tour. Knowing you may be forced to move somewhere can ruin it as a place for a holiday. It was difficult to view a resort as anything but inferior to London. Even Brighton and Hastings, places that previously I had loved to visit, seemed lacking in spirit and grace.

By the time we reached Lyme Regis, only Louise, Margaret and I were left: John had had to return to his chambers, and had taken his fiancée and her mother back with him, and our uncle’s gout had caught up with him, sending him and our aunt limping back to Brighton. We were escorted to Lyme by the Durhams, a family we’d met in Weymouth, who accompanied us on the coach and helped us to get settled at lodgings in Broad Street, the town’s main thoroughfare.

Of all the places we visited that summer, I found Lyme the most appealing. It was September by then, which is a lovely month anywhere. With its mildness and golden light, it will soften even the grimmest resort. We were blessed with good weather, and with freedom from the expectations of our family. At last I could form my own opinion of where we might live.

Lyme Regis is a town that has submitted to its geography rather than forced the land to submit to it. The hills into town are so steep that coaches cannot travel down them – passengers are left at the Queen’s Arms at Charmouth or the crossroads at Uplyme and brought down in carts. The narrow road leads down to the shore, and then quickly turns its back on the sea and heads up hill again, as if it wants merely to glimpse the waves before fleeing. The bottom, where the tiny River Lym pours into the sea, forms the square in the centre of town. The Three Cups – the main inn – is there, across from the Customs House and from the Assembly Rooms that, while modest, boast three glass chandeliers and a fine bay window overlooking the shore. Houses spread out from the centre, along the coast and up the river, and shops and the Shambles market stalls march up Broad Street. It is not planned, like Bath or Cheltenham or Brighton, but wriggles this way and that, as if trying to escape the hills and sea, and failing.

But that is not all there is to Lyme. It is as if there are two villages side by side, connected by a small, sandy beach where the bathing machines are lined up, awaiting an influx of visitors. The other Lyme, at the west end of the beach, doesn’t shun, but embraces the sea. It is dominated by the Cobb, a long grey stone wall that curves like a finger out into the water and shelters the shore, creating a tranquil harbour for the fishing boats and the trading ships that come from all over. The Cobb is several feet high, and wide enough for three to walk along arm in arm, which many visitors do, for it gives a fine view back to the town and the dramatic shoreline beyond of rolling hills and cliffs in green, grey and brown.

Bath and Brighton are beautiful despite their surroundings, the even buildings with their smooth stone creating an artifice that pleases the eye. Lyme is beautiful because of its surroundings, and despite its indifferent houses. It appealed to me immediately.

My sisters were also pleased with Lyme, for different reasons. For Margaret it was simple: she was the belle of Lyme’s balls. At eighteen she was fresh and lively, and as pretty as a Philpot was ever going to be. She had lovely ringlets of dark hair and long arms she liked to hold aloft so that people could admire their graceful lines. If her face was a little long, her mouth a little thin, and the tendons in her neck a little prominent, that did not matter when she was eighteen. It would matter later. At least she didn’t have my hatchet jaw, or Louise’s unfortunate height. There were few to match her in Lyme that summer, and the gentlemen gave her more attention than at Weymouth or Brighton, where she had more competitors. Margaret was happy to live from ball to ball, filling the days in between with cards and tea at the Assembly Rooms, bathing in the sea, and strolling up and down the Cobb with the new friends she had made.

Louise did not care about balls and cards, but early on she discovered an area near the cliffs to the west of town with surprising flora and wild, secluded paths shaped by fallen rock and covered with ivy and moss. This pleased both her botanical interest and her retiring nature.

As for myself, I found my Lyme pursuit on a walk one morning along Monmouth Beach, to the west of the Cobb. We had joined our Weymouth friends the Durhams to search out a peculiar stone ledge along the beach called the Snakes’ Graveyard, which was only uncovered at low tide. It was farther than we’d thought, and the stony beach was difficult to walk on in thin pumps. I had to keep my eyes cast down so as not to trip on the rocks. As I stepped between two stones, I noticed an odd pebble decorated with a striped pattern. I bent over and picked it up – the first of thousands of times I would do so in my life. It was spiral shaped, with ridges at even intervals around the spine, and it looked like a snake curled in on itself, the tip of the tail in the centre. Its regular pattern was so pleasing to the eye that I felt I must keep it, though I had no idea what it was. I only knew that it could not be a pebble.

I showed it to Louise and Margaret, and then to the Weymouth family. “Ah, that is a snakestone,” Mr Durham declared.

I almost dropped it, despite logic telling me the snake could not be alive. It could not be just a stone, though. Then I realised. “It is a – fossil, isn’t it?” I used the word hesitantly, for I wasn’t sure the Weymouth family would be familiar with it. Of course I had read about fossils, and seen some displayed in a cabinet at the British Museum, but I didn’t know they could be found so easily on the beach.

“I expect so,” Mr Durham said. “People often find such things here. Some of the locals sell them as curiosities. They call them curies.”

“Where is its head?” Margaret asked. “It looks as if it’s been chopped off.”

“Perhaps it has fallen off,” Miss Durham suggested. “Where did you find the snakestone, Miss Philpot?”

I pointed out the spot, and we all looked but couldn’t see the head of a snake lying about. Soon the others lost interest and walked on. I searched a little longer, then followed the party, opening my hand now and then to gaze at this, my first specimen of what I would learn to call an ammonite. It was odd to be holding the body of a creature, whatever it was, and yet it pleased me too. Gripping its solid form was a comfort, like holding on to a walking stick or a staircase banister.

At the end of Monmouth Beach, just before Seven Rocks Point, where the shoreline turned out of sight, we found the Snakes’ Graveyard. It was a smooth ledge of limestone in which there were spiral impressions, white lines against the grey stone, of hundreds of creatures like that which I held, except that they were enormous, each the size of a dinner plate. It was such a strange, bleak sight that we all stared in silence.

“Those must be boa constrictors, don’t you think?” Margaret said. “They’re enormous!”

“But boa constrictors don’t live in England,” Miss Durham said. “How did they get here?”

“Perhaps they did live here, a few hundred years ago,” Mrs Durham suggested.

“Or even a thousand years ago, or five thousand,” Mr Durham ventured. “They could be that old. Perhaps the boa constrictors then migrated to other parts.”

They did not look like snakes to me, or any other animal I knew of. I walked out onto the ledge, stepping with care so as not to tread on the creatures, even if they were clearly long dead and not so much corporeal bodies but sketches in the rock. It was difficult to imagine them as alive once. They looked permanent, as if they’d always been in the stone.

If we lived here, I could come and see this whenever I liked, I thought. And find smaller snakestones, and other fossils as well, on the beach. It was something. It was enough, for me.

Our brother was delighted with our choice. Apart from Lyme being economical, William Pitt the Younger had stayed in the town as a youth to recover his health; John found it comforting that a British Prime Minister would think highly of the place he was banishing his sisters to. We moved to Lyme the following spring, with John securing for us a cottage high above the shops and beach, at the top of Silver Street, which is what Broad Street becomes further up the hill leading out of town. Soon after, John and his new wife sold our Red Lion Square home and, with the help of her family’s money, bought a newly built house on nearby Montague Street, next to the British Museum. We had not meant our choice to cut us off from our past, but it did. We had only the present and the future to think of in Lyme.

Morley Cottage was a shock at first, with its small rooms, low ceilings, and uneven floors so different from the London house we had grown up in. It was made of stone, with a slate roof, and had a parlour, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor, with two bedrooms above as well as a room in the eaves for our servant, Bessy. Louise and I shared one room, giving Margaret the other, for she complained when we stayed up late reading – Louise her botany books, I my works on natural history. There was not enough room in the cottage to fit our mother’s piano or sofa or mahogany dining table. We had to leave them behind in London and buy smaller, plainer furniture in nearby Axminster, and a tiny piano in Exeter. The physical reduction of space and furnishings mirrored our own contraction, from a substantial family with several servants and plenty of visitors, to a reduced household with one servant to cook and clean, in a town with many fewer families whom we could socialise with.

We soon grew used to our new home, however. Indeed, after a time our old London house seemed too big. Its high ceilings and huge windows had made it hard to heat, and its dimensions had been larger than a person truly required; the grandeur false if you were not grand yourself. Morley Cottage was a lady’s home, the size of a lady’s character and expectations. Of course, we never had a man live there and so it is easy to think that way, but I believe a man of our position in society would have been uncomfortable. John was whenever he visited; he was always bumping his head on the beams, tripping over uneven door sills, ducking his head to look out of the low windows, wavering on the steep stairs. Only the hearth in the kitchen was bigger than the grates in Bloomsbury.

We also grew used to the smaller social circle of Lyme. It is a solitary place — the nearest city of any size is Exeter, twenty-five miles to the west. As a result its residents, while conforming to the social expectations of the time, are peculiar and unpredictable. They can be small-minded, yet tolerant as well. It is not surprising that there are several Dissenting sects in the town. Of course the main church, St Michaels, is still the Church of England, but there are other chapels too that serve those who question the traditional doctrine: Methodists, Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists.

I found a few new friends in Lyme, but it was more the stubborn spirit of the place as a whole that appealed to me rather than specific people – until I got to know Mary Anning, that is. To the town we Philpots were for years considered London transplants, to be viewed with some suspicion and a little indulgence too. We were not well off – £150 per annum does not allow three spinsters many treats – but we were certainly better off than many in Lyme, and our background as educated Londoners from a solicitor’s family brought us a degree of respect. That we all three were without men I am sure gave people plenty of mirth, but at least they aimed their smirks at our backs rather than our faces.

Although Morley Cottage was unremarkable, it did offer stupendous views of Lyme Bay and the string of eastern hills along the coast, punctuated by the highest peak, Golden Cap, and ending, on clear days, with the Isle of Portland lurking off land like a crocodile, submerged but for its long flat head. I often rose early and sat at the window with my tea, watching the sun rise and give Golden Cap its name, and the sight softened the sting I still felt at having moved to this remote, shabby watering hole on England’s southwest coast, far from the busy, vital world of London. When the sun drenched the hills I felt I could accept and even benefit from our isolation here. When it was cloudy, however, blowing a gale or simply a monotonous grey, I despaired.

We had not long been installed in Morley Cottage before I grew certain that fossils were to be my passion. For I had to find a passion: I was twenty-five years old, unlikely ever to marry, and in need of a hobby to fill my days. It is so tedious being a lady sometimes.

My sisters had already claimed their territories. Louise was on her hands and knees in the Silver Street garden, pulling up hydrangeas, which she thought vulgar. Margaret was indulging her love of cards and dancing at Lyme’s Assembly Rooms. She persuaded Louise and me to go with her whenever she could, though she soon found younger accomplices. There is nothing to put off potential suitors more than old spinster sisters in the background, making dry remarks behind their gloves. Margaret had just turned nineteen, and still had great hopes for her prospects at the Assembly Rooms, though she did complain of the provincial quality of the dancing and frocks.

For myself, it took only the early discovery of a golden ammonite, glittering on the beach between Lyme and Charmouth, for me to succumb to the seductive thrill of finding unexpected treasure. I began frequenting the beaches more and more, though at the time few women took an interest in fossils. It was seen as an unladylike pursuit, dirty and mysterious. I didn’t mind. There was no one I wanted to impress with my femininity.

Certainly fossils are a peculiar pleasure. They do not appeal to everyone, for they are the remains of creatures. If you think on it too much, you would wonder at holding in your hands a long dead body. Then too, they are not of this world, but from a past very difficult to imagine. That is why I am drawn to them, but also why I prefer to collect fossilised fish, with their striking patterns of scales and fins, for they resemble fish we eat every Friday, and so seem more a part of the present.

It was fossils that first brought me in contact with Mary Anning and her family. I had hardly collected a handful of specimens before I decided I needed a cabinet in which to display them properly. I have always been the organiser amongst the Philpots – the arranger of Louise’s flowers in vases, the one to set out the china Margaret brought from London. This need to put things in order led me to Richard Anning’s cellar workshop in Cockmoile Square at the bottom of the town. Square is far too grand a word for the tiny open space about the size of a good family’s drawing room. Though just around the corner from the town’s main square, where fashionable folk went, Cockmoile Square was made up of shabby houses where tradesmen lived and worked. One corner of the square held the town’s tiny gaol, with stocks sitting out front.

Though Richard Anning had been recommended to me as a decent cabinet maker, I would soon have been drawn there anyway, if only to compare my fossils to those at the table young Mary Anning tended outside the workshop. She was a tall, lean child, with the hard limbs of a girl used to working rather than playing with her dollies. She had a rather plain, flat face, made interesting by bold brown eyes like pebbles. As I approached, she was sifting through a basket of specimens, picking out pieces of ammonites and tossing them into different bowls as if playing a game. Even at that early age she was able to tell apart the various types of ammonites by comparing the suture lines around their spiralled bodies. She glanced up from her sorting, her look spirited and full of curiosity. “You want to buy curies, ma’am? We got some nice ones here. Look, here’s a pretty sea lily, only a crown.” She held up a beautiful piece of crinoid, its long fronds spread out indeed like a lily. I do not like lilies. I find their sweet scent too cloying, and prefer sharper scents: I have Bessy dry my sheets on the rosemary bush in Morley Cottage’s garden, while she hangs my sisters’ over lavender. “Do you like it, ma’am – miss?” Mary persisted.

I flinched. Was it so very obvious that I was not married? Of course it was. For one thing, I had no husband with me, looking after and indulging me. But there was something else about married women that I noticed, their solid smugness at not having to worry about the course of their future. Married women were set like jelly in a mould, whereas spinsters like me were formless and unpredictable.

I patted my basket. “I have my own fossils, thank you. I am here to see your father. Is he in?” Mary nodded towards steps that led down to an open door. I ducked into a dim, filthy room crammed with wood and stone, the floor covered with shavings and gritty dust. It smelled so strongly of varnish that I almost backed out, but I could not, for Richard Anning was staring at me, his sharp, shapely nose pinning me to the spot like a dart. I never like people who lead with their noses: they pull everything to the centre of their faces, and I feel trapped by their concentration.

He was a lithe man of medium height, with dark, lustrous hair and a strong jaw. His eyes were the kind of dark blue that hides things. It always annoyed me how handsome he was, given his harsh, teasing nature and his sometimes rough manners. He did not pass on his looks to his daughter, who might have had more use for them.

He was perched over a small cabinet with glass doors, holding a brush coated with varnish. I took against Richard Anning from the start because he did not even set down the brush, and barely glanced at my specimens as I described what I wanted. “A guinea,” he announced.

It was an outrageous figure for a specimen cabinet. Did he think he could take advantage of a London spinster? Perhaps he thought I was well off. For a moment, as I glared at his handsome face, I considered waiting for my brother to deal with him when he next came down from London. But that could be many months, and besides, I could not rely on my brother for everything. I was going to have to make my way in Lyme without the tradesmen laughing behind my back.

It was clear to me from looking around his shop that Richard Anning needed the business. I should use that to my advantage. “It is a pity that you have suggested such an exorbitant sum,” I said, wrapping my fossils in muslin and placing them back in my basket. “I would have made your name prominent on each case, and everyone who looked at my collection would have seen it. Now, however, I shall have to go elsewhere, to someone more reasonable.”

“You going to show them to others?” Richard Anning nodded at my basket, his incredulity deciding me: I would find someone in Axminster, or even Exeter if I had to, rather than give this man my business. I knew I would never like him.

“Good day to you, sir,” I said, turning to sweep up the steps. I was thwarted in my dramatic departure, however, by Mary, standing square in the entrance and blocking my way. “What curies you got?” she demanded, her eyes on my basket.

“Clearly nothing that would be of interest to you,” I muttered, pushing past her and out to the square. I hated being stung by Richard Anning’s tone. Why should I care for a cabinet maker’s opinion? In truth, I’d thought my bits and pieces rather fine, for someone new to finding fossils. I had found a complete ammonite, as well as parts of several others, and the long shaft of a belemnite, the pointed tip intact rather than broken, as they so often are. Now I could see, even as I passed the Annings’ table in my anger, that their fossils far exceeded mine in both variety and beauty. They were whole, polished, varied, and abundant. There were specimens displayed on the table I hadn’t even known were fossils: bivalves of sorts, a heart-shaped rock with a pattern on it, a creature with five long waving arms.

Mary had ignored my rude remark and followed me out. “You got any verteberries?”

I paused, my back to her, the table, the whole wretched workshop. “What is a verteberry?”

I heard a rustling by the table, the clinking of stones knocked together. “From a crocodile’s back,” Mary said. “Some say they’re the teeth, but Pa and I know better. See?”

I turned to look at the stone she held out. It was about the size of a twopence coin, though thicker, and round but with squared-off sides. Its surface was concave, the centre nipped in as if someone had pressed it between two fingers while it was soft. I recalled the skeleton of a lizard I’d seen at the British Museum.

“A vertebra,” I corrected, holding the stone in my hand. “That is what you mean. But there are no crocodiles in England.”

Mary shrugged. “Just not seen ’em. Perhaps they’ve gone somewhere else. Like to Scotland.”

I could not help smiling.

When I went to hand back the vertebra, Mary glanced around to see where her father was. “Keep it,” she whispered.

“Thank you. What is your name?”

“Mary.”

“That is very kind of you, Mary Anning. I shall treasure it.”

I did treasure it. It was the first fossil I put in my cabinet.

It is funny now to think of that, our first meeting. I would never have guessed then that I would come to care about Mary more than anyone other than my sisters. How can a twenty-five-year-old middle-class lady think of friendship with a young working girl? Yet even then, there was something about her that drew me in. We shared an interest in fossils, of course, but it was more than that. Even when she was just a girl, Mary led with her eyes, and I wanted to learn how to do so myself.

Mary came to see us a few days later, having discovered where we lived. It is not hard to find anyone in Lyme Regis – there are only a few streets. She appeared at the back door as Louise and I were in the kitchen, picking the stems off the elderflowers we’d just gathered to make into a cordial.

Margaret was practising a dance step around the table while trying to convince us to make the flowers into champagne instead – though she did not offer to help, which might have made me more amenable to her suggestion. Because of her clatter and chatter we did not at first notice young Mary leaning against the door frame. It was Bessy, huffing into the kitchen with the sugar we’d sent her to get at the shops, who saw her first.

“Who’s that, then? Get away from there, girl!” she cried, puffing out her doughy cheeks.

Bessy had accompanied us from London, and relished complaining about her revised situation: the steep climb from the town to Morley Cottage, the sharp sea breeze that made her chesty, the impenetrable accent of the locals she met at the Shambles, the Lyme Bay crabs that brought her out in a rash. While Bessy had been a seemingly quiet, solid girl in Bloomsbury, Lyme brought out in her a bullishness she expressed with her cheeks. Behind her back we Philpots laughed at her complaints, though at times it brought us close to giving her notice as well, when she wasn’t threatening to leave.

Mary didn’t budge from the door sill, Bessy’s temperament having no effect. “What you making?”

“Elderflower cordial,” I replied.

“Elderflower champagne,” Margaret corrected, with an accompanying flourish of her hand.

“Never had that,” Mary said, eyeing the lacy flower heads and sniffing at the muscat bloom that filled the room.

“There is such an abundance of elderflowers here in June,” Margaret said. “You should be making things out of them. Isn’t that what country folk do?”

I winced at my sister’s patronising words. But Mary didn’t seem offended. Instead her eyes followed Margaret, who was now spinning about the room in a waltz, dipping her head over one shoulder, then the other, twisting her hands in time to her humming.

Lord help her, I thought, the girl is going to admire the silliest of us. “What is it, Mary?” I did not mean to sound so short.

Mary Anning turned to me, though her eyes kept darting back to Margaret. “Pa sent me to say he’ll make the cabinet for a pound.”

“Will he, now?” I had gone off the idea of the cabinet if it was to be made by Richard Anning. “Tell him I will think on it.”

“Who is our visitor, Elizabeth?” Louise asked, her fingers still in the elderflowers.

“This is Mary Anning, the cabinet maker’s daughter.”

At the name, Bessy turned from the table, where she was turning out a fruitcake she had left to cool. She gaped at Mary. “You the lightning girl?”

Mary dropped her eyes and nodded.

We all looked at her. Even Margaret stopped waltzing to stare. We had heard about the girl struck by lightning, for people still talked of it years later. It was one of those miracles small towns thrive on: children seeming drowned then spurting out water like a whale and reviving; men falling from cliffs and reappearing unscathed; boys run down by coaches and standing up with only a scratched cheek. Such everyday miracles knit communities together, giving them their legends to marvel at. It had never occurred to me when I first met her that Mary might be the lightning girl.

“Do you remember being struck?” Margaret asked.

Mary shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with our sudden interest.

Louise never liked that sort of attention either, and made an effort to break up the scrutiny. “My name is Mary too. I was named after my grandmothers. But I didn’t like Grandmother Mary as much as Grandmother Louise.” She paused. “Would you like to help us?”

“What do I do?” Mary stepped up to the table.

“Wash your hands first,” I ordered. “Louise, look at her nails!” Mary’s nails were rimmed with grey clay, her blunt fingers puckered from limestone. It was a state I would become familiar with in my own fingers.

Bessy was still staring at Mary. “Bessy, you can clean in the parlour while we’re working here,” I reminded her.

She grunted and picked up her mop. “I wouldn’t have a girl who’s been struck by lightning in my kitchen.”

I tutted. “Already you’re becoming as superstitious as the local people you like to look down on.”

Bessy blew out her cheeks again as she banged her mop against the door jamb. I caught Louise’s eye and we smiled. Then Margaret began to waltz around the table again, humming.

“For pity’s sake, Margaret, do your dancing elsewhere!” I cried. “Go and dance with Bessy’s mop.”

Margaret laughed and pirouetted out of the door and down the hallway, to our young visitor’s disappointment. By then, Louise had Mary plucking stems from the flower heads, careful to shake the pollen into the pot rather than around the kitchen. Once she understood what she was to do, Mary worked steadily, pausing only when Margaret reappeared in a lime green turban. “One feather or two?” she asked, holding up one, then another ostrich feather to the band crossing her forehead.

Mary watched Margaret with wide eyes. At that time turbans had not yet arrived in Lyme – though I can report now that Margaret pushed the fashion onto Lyme’s women, and within a few years, turbans were a common sight up and down Broad Street. I am not sure they complement empire-line gowns as well as other hats, and I believe some laughed behind their hands at the sight, but isn’t fashion meant to entertain?

“Thank you for helping with the elderflowers,” Louise said when the flowers were soaking in hot water, sugar and lemon. “You may have a bottle of it when it’s ready.”

Mary Anning nodded, then turned to me. “Can I look at your curies, miss? You didn’t show me the other day.”

I hesitated, for I was a little shy now to reveal what I had found. She was remarkably self-possessed for a young girl. I suppose it was working from such an early age that did it, though it was tempting, too, to blame the lightning. However, I could not show my reluctance, and so I led Mary into the dining room. Most people when they enter the room remark on the impressive view of Golden Cap, but Mary did not even glance through the window. Instead she went straight to the sideboard, where I had laid out my finds, much to Bessy’s disgust. “What are those?” She gestured to the slips of paper beside each fossil.

“Labels. They describe when and where I found the fossil, and in which layer of rock, as well as a guess at what they might be. That is what they do at the British Museum.”

“You been there?” Mary was frowning at each label.

“Of course. We grew up near it. Do you not keep track of where you find things?”

Mary shrugged. “I don’t read nor write.”

“Will you go to school?”

She shrugged again. “Sunday school, maybe. They teach reading and writing there.”

“At St Michael’s?”

“No, we ain’t Church of England. We’re Congregationalists. Chapel’s on Coombe Street.” Mary picked up an ammonite I was especially proud of, for it was whole, not chipped or cracked, and had fine even ridges on its spiral. “You can get a shilling for this ammo, if you give it a good clean,” she said.

“Oh, I’m not going to sell it. It’s for my collection.”

Mary gave me a funny look. It occurred to me then that the Annings never collected to keep. A good specimen to them meant a good price.

Mary set down the ammonite and picked up a brown stone about the length of her finger, but thicker, with faint spiral markings on it. “That’s an odd thing,” I said. “I’m not sure what it is. It could be just a stone, but it seems – different. I felt I had to pick it up.”

“It’s a bezoar stone.”

“Bezoar?” I frowned. “What’s that?”

“A hair ball like you find in the stomachs of goats. Pa told me about them.” She put it down, then took up a bivalve shell called a gryphaea, which the locals likened to the Devil’s toenails. “You haven’t cleaned this gryphie yet, have you, miss?”

“I scrubbed the mud off.”

“But did you scrape it with a blade?”

I frowned. “What kind of blade?”

“Oh, a penknife will do, though a razor’s better. You scrape at the inside, to get the silt and such out, and give it a good shape. I could show you.”

I sniffed. The idea of a child teaching me how to do something seemed ridiculous. And yet … “All right, Mary Anning. Come along tomorrow with your blades and show me. I’ll pay you a penny per fossil to clean them.”

Mary brightened at the suggestion of payment. “Thank you, Miss Philpot.”

“Off you go, now. Ask Bessy on the way out to give you a slice of her fruitcake.”

When she was gone Louise said, “She remembers the lightning. I could see it in her eyes.”

“How could she? She was little more than a baby!”

“Lightning must be hard to forget.”

The following day Richard Anning agreed to make me a specimen cabinet for fifteen shillings. It was the first of many cabinets I have owned, though he was only to make four for me before he died. I have had cabinets of better quality and finish, where the drawers glide without sticking and the joints don’t need to be re-glued after a dry spell. But I accepted the flaws of his workmanship, for I knew that the care he neglected to put into his cabinets he put into his daughter’s knowledge of fossils.

Soon Mary had found her way into our lives, cleaning fossils for me, selling me fossil fish she and her father had found once she discovered I liked them. She sometimes accompanied me to the beach when I went out hunting for fossils, and though I didn’t tell her, I was more at ease when she was with me, for I worried about the tide cutting me off. Mary had no fear of that, for she had a natural feel for the tides that I never really learned. Perhaps to have that sense you must grow up with the sea so close you could leap into it from your window. While I consulted tide tables in our almanac before going out on the beach, Mary always knew what the tide was doing, coming in or going out, neap or spring, and how much of the beach was exposed at any given time. On my own I only went along the beach when the tide was receding, for I knew I had a few clear hours – though even then I often lost track of time, as is so easy to do while hunting, and would turn to find the sea creeping up on me. When I was with Mary she naturally kept track in her head of the movement of the sea.

I valued Mary’s company for other reasons too, as she taught me many things: how the sea sorts stones of similar sizes into bands along the shore, and which band you might find what fossils in; how to spot vertical cracks in the cliff face that warn of a possible landslip; where to access the cliff walks we could use if the tide did cut us off.

She was also handy as a companion. In some ways Lyme was a freer place than London; for example, I could walk about town on my own, without needing to be accompanied by my sisters or Bessy, as I would in London. The beach, however, was often empty save for a few fishermen checking crab pots; or scavengers of debris whom I suspected were smugglers; or travellers walking at low tide between Charmouth and Lyme. It was not considered a place for a lady to be out on her own, not even by independent Lyme standards. Later, when I was older and better known in town, and when I was less bothered about what others thought of me, I went out alone on the beach. But in those early days I preferred company. Sometimes I could convince Margaret or Louise to come with me, and occasionally they even found fossils. Though Margaret hated to get her hands dirty, she did enjoy finding chunks of iron pyrites, for she liked the glitter of fool’s gold. Louise complained of the deadness of rock compared to the plants she preferred, though she did sometimes scramble up the cliffs and study blades of sea grass with her magnifying glass.

We spent much of our time on the mile-long beach between Lyme and Charmouth. East past the Annings’ house, at the end of Gun Cliff, the shore bends sharply to the left so that the beach is out of sight of the town. The shore is flanked for several hundred yards by Church Cliffs, which are made up of what is called Blue Lias – layers of limestone and shale with a blue-grey tint forming a striped pattern. The beach then curves gently around to the right before straightening out towards Charmouth. High above the beach past that curve hangs Black Ven, an enormous landslip that has created a slanted layer of mudstone from the cliffs down to the shore. Both Church Cliffs and Black Ven hold many fossils, gradually releasing them over time onto the shoreline below. That was where Mary found many of her finest specimens. It was also where we experienced some of our greatest dramas.

By our second summer in Lyme, Margaret had settled well into her new life. She was young, the sea air gave her a fresh complexion, and she was new, and therefore the object of much attention amongst the entertaining set. She soon had her favourite partners for whist, her preferred bathing companions, and families who would parade with her along the Cobb. During the season there was a ball at the Assembly Rooms every Tuesday, and Margaret did not miss a dance, becoming a favourite for being so light on her feet. Louise and I sometimes accompanied her, but she soon found more interesting friends to go with: London or Bristol or Exeter families in Lyme for part of the summer, as well as a few select Lyme residents. Louise and I were relieved not to have to go each time. Ever since the cutting remark I had overheard about my jaw years before, I had not been comfortable dancing, preferring to sit and watch or, better, read at home. One hundred and fifty pounds per annum between three sisters does not leave money for the purchase of many books, and Lyme’s circulating library contained mostly novels, but I requested that any gifts at Christmas or birthdays should be of books on natural history. I went without a new shawl so that I might buy a book instead. And friends from London lent books to me.

My sisters did not complain of missing London life. Being the centre of attention in a modest place suited Margaret better than fighting to be noticed amongst thousands in London society. Louise also seemed more content, for the quiet suited her nature. She loved the garden at Morley Cottage, with its view of Lyme Bay and a huge hundred-year-old tulip tree in one corner. The garden was much bigger than we’d had in Red Lion Square. There, of course, we’d had gardeners, whereas now Louise did most of the work herself, and preferred it that way. The climate challenged her as well, for the salty wind demanded hardier plants than those that thrived in soft London rain: hebe and sedum and juniper, salvia and thrift and sea holly. She created rose beds more beautiful than any I had seen in Bloomsbury.

Of the three it was I who thought of London most. I missed the currency of ideas. In London we had been part of a wide circle of solicitors’ families, and social occasions had been mentally stimulating as well as entertaining. Often I had sat with my brother and his friends at dinner as they discussed Napoleon’s prospects, or whether Pitt ought to have become Prime Minister again, or what should be done about the slave trade. I even occasionally contributed to the conversation.

In Lyme, however, I heard no such talk. Though I had my fossils to keep me occupied, there were few people I could discuss them with. When I read Hutton or Cuvier or Werner or Lamarck or other natural philosophers, I could not go around to friends to ask what they made of these men’s radical ideas. The Lyme middle classes were surrounded by noteworthy natural phenomena, but they did not show much curiosity about them. Instead they talked about the weather and the tides, the fishing and the crops, the visitors and the season. You might think they would be concerned about Napoleon and the war with France, if only because of its effect on the small shipbuilding industry in Lyme. But local families discussed repairs to the sea wall that was taking a battering, or the bath house not long opened that was doing so well others were sure to copy it, or whether the town mill was grinding flour fine enough. Summer visitors we met at the Assembly Rooms or at church or over cups of tea at others’ houses could sometimes be encouraged to discuss topics of more substance, but often they were travelling to get away from such talk, and relished local news and gossip.

I was particularly frustrated, as the fossils I was finding were so very puzzling, and filled me with questions I wanted to air. Ammonites, for instance, the most visible and striking of the fossils found at Lyme: what exactly were they? I could not believe they were snakes, as so many unquestioningly did. Why would they curl up into balls? I had never heard of snakes doing such a thing. And where were their heads? I looked carefully each time I found an ammonite, but could discover no trace of a head. It was very peculiar that I could find so many fossils of them on the beach, and yet not see them alive.

This did not seem to bother others, however. I hoped someone might suggest to me over a cup of tea in our parlour, “Do you know, Miss Philpot, ammonites remind me rather of snails. Do you think they might be a sort of snail we haven’t seen before?” Instead they talked about the mud on the road from Charmouth; or what they were going to wear to the next ball; or the travelling circus they were going to Bridport to see. If they did say something about fossils, it was to question my interest. “How can you be so fond of mere stones?” a new friend Margaret brought back from the Assembly Rooms once asked.

“They’re not just stones,” I tried to explain. “They are bodies that have become stone, of creatures that lived long ago. When one finds them, that is the first time they have been seen for thousands of years.”

“How horrible!” she cried, and turned to listen to Margaret play. Visitors often turned to Margaret when they found Louise too quiet and me too peculiar. Margaret could always entertain them.

Only Mary Anning shared my enthusiasm and curiosity, but she was too young to engage in such conversations. I sometimes felt in those early years that I was waiting for her to grow up so that I could have the companionship I craved. In that, I was right.

At first I thought I might talk about fossils with Henry Hoste Henley, Lord of Colway Manor and Member of Parliament for Lyme Regis. He lived in a large house set back at the end of an avenue of trees on the outskirts of Lyme, about a mile from Morley Cottage. Lord Henley had a large extended family; apart from his wife and many children, there were also Henleys in Chard, several miles inland, and Colway Manor brimmed with guests. We were occasionally invited too – to a dinner, to their Christmas ball, to watch the start of the hunt, where Lord Henley handed out port and whisky before the hunters rode out.

The Henleys were the closest to gentry that Lyme had, but Lord Henley still had mud on his boots and dirt under his nails. He had a collection of fossils too, and when he found out I was interested, he sat me at his side at dinner so that we could talk about them. Thrilled at first, I discovered after a few minutes that Lord Henley knew nothing about fossils other than that they were collectible and made him appear worldly and intelligent. He was the kind of man who led with his feet rather than his head. I tried to draw him out by asking what he thought an ammonite was. Lord Henley chuckled and sucked in a great slug of wine. “Has no one told you, Miss Philpot? They are worms!” He banged his glass onto the table, a signal for a servant to refill it.

I considered his reply. “Why, then, are they always coiled? I have never seen a live worm take such a shape. Or a snake, which some suggest is what they are.”

Lord Henley shuffled his feet under his chair. “I expect you haven’t seen many people lying on their backs with their hands crossed on their chests, have you, now Miss Philpot? Yet that is how we bury them. The worms are coiled in death.”

I held back a snort, for I had a vision of worms gathered around to roll one of their dead into a coil, as we prepare our own in death. It was clearly a ridiculous idea, and yet Lord Henley did not think to question it. I did not probe further, however, for down the table Margaret was shaking her head at me, and the man sitting across from me had raised his eyebrows at our indelicate talk.

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.