such a young age.
One sunny winter day I had a surprise visitor to Silver Street. I was out in the garden with Louise, who missed working during the cold months and was looking for something she could do: spreading mulch around sleeping plants, checking on the bulbs she had planted, raking stray leaves that had blown into the garden, pruning back the rose bushes that persisted in growing. The cold did not bother us as it would have once, and in the sun it was surprisingly warm. I was finishing a watercolour of the view towards Golden Cap, which I had begun months before, but brought out again with the hope that the oblique winter sunlight might give the painting the magic quality it yet lacked.
I was adding a yellow wash to the clouds when Bessy appeared. 'Someone to see you,' she muttered. She stepped aside to reveal Molly Anning, who in the many years we'd lived there had never ventured up Silver Street.
Bessy's scorn vexed me. Despite my friendship with the Annings, Bessy all too readily took on the views of the rest of Lyme about the family, even when she had seen enough of Mary to form her own judgement. I punished her by standing and saying,
'Bessy, bring out a chair for Mrs Anning, and one for Louise, and tea for all of us, please.
You don't mind sitting outside, Molly? In the sun it's quite mild.'
Molly Anning shrugged. She was not the sort to take pleasure in sitting in the sun, but she would not stop others doing it.
I raised my eyebrows at Bessy, who was lingering in the doorway, clearly livid at the thought of having to wait on someone she considered lower than herself. 'Go on, Bessy. Do as I ask, please.'
Bessy grunted. As she disappeared inside, I heard Louise chuckle. Bessy's moods were greatly entertaining to my sisters, though I still fretted that she might walk out on us, as her slumped shoulders often threatened. After all this time she persisted in making clear that our move to Lyme had been a disaster. For Bessy my relations with the Annings represented all that was jumbled and wrong about Lyme. Bessy's a social barometer was still set to London standards.
I didn't care, except that it might mean losing a servant. Nor did Louise. Margaret I suppose lived the most conventional life here, still occasionally attending the Assembly Rooms, visiting other good Lyme families and doing charitable work for the poor. The salve she had created to soothe my chapped hands she took with her everywhere, distributing it to whoever needed it.
I gestured to my chair. 'Do take a seat, Molly. Bessy will bring another.'
Molly Anning shook her head, uneasy about sitting while I stood. 'I'll wait.' She seemed to understand Bessy's judgement that we should not have Annings as visitors; indeed, perhaps she agreed with her, and it was that rather than the climb up the hill that had kept her from Morley Cottage all this time. Now her eyes rested on my watercolour, and I found myself embarrassed--not for the quality of the painting, which I already knew was not good, but because what had been a pleasure to me now seemed a frivolity. Molly Anning's day began early and ended late, and consisted of many hours of backbreaking work. She barely had time even to look at a view, much less to sit and paint it. Whether or not she felt that way, she showed nothing, but moved on to inspect Louise's pruning.
This at least was less frivolous--though not much less so, for roses serve little purpose other than to dress a garden, and feed no one other than bees. Perhaps Louise felt similar to me, for she hurried to finish the bush she was trimming and laid down her pruning knife. 'I'll help Bessy with the tray,' she said.
As more chairs were brought out, and a small table on which to place the tray, and finally the tray itself--all accompanied by huffs and sighs from Bessy--I began to regret my suggestion to take tea outside. It too seemed frivolous, and I had not meant to cause such a fuss. Then as we sat, the sun went behind a cloud and it instantly grew chilly. I felt an idiot, but would have even more so if I then said we ought to troop back inside, reversing the move of furniture and tea. I clung to my shawl and cup of tea to warm me.
Molly sat passively, allowing the bustle of cups and saucers and chairs and shawls to take place around her without comment. I rattled on about the unusually clement weather, and the letter I'd had from William Buckland saying he'd be down in a few weeks, and how Margaret couldn't join us because she was taking some of her salve to a new mother sore from nursing. 'Useful, that salve,' was Molly's only comment.
When I asked how they fared, she revealed why she had come to see us. 'Mary ain't right,' she said. 'She ain't been right since the Colonel left. I want you to help me fix it.'
'What do you mean?'
'I made a mistake with the Colonel. I knew I were making it, and I done it anyway.'
'Oh, I'm sure you didn't--'
'Mary worked with the Colonel all summer, found him a good croc and all sorts of curies for his collection, and never had any money off him. I didn't ask him for any neither, for I thought he'd give her something at the end.'
I had suspected no money changed hands between Colonel Birch and the Annings, but only now was it confirmed. I twisted the ends of my shawl, enraged that he could be so callous.
