to sell or burn her furniture to keep a roof over her head and stay warm. She had plenty of tables rather than just the one. She didn't go out every day no matter the weather or her health and stay out for hours hunting curies till her head swam. She didn't have chilblains on her hands and feet, and fingertips cut and torn and grey with embedded clay. She didn't have neighbours talking about her behind her back. She should pity me, and yet she envied me.
I shut my eyes for a moment, steadying myself with the gravestone. 'Why can't you be glad for me?' I said. 'Why can't you say, 'I hope you will be very happy'?'
'I--' Miss Elizabeth gulped as if words were choking her. 'I do hope that,' she finally managed to say, though it come out all strangled. 'But I don't want you to make a fool of yourself. I want you to think sensibly about what is possible for your life.'
I ripped the lichen off the stone. 'You're jealous of me.'
'I'm
not!'
'Yes, you are. You're jealous of Colonel Birch because he courted me. You loved him and he paid no attention to you.'
Miss Elizabeth looked stricken, like I'd hit her. 'Stop, please.'
But it was as if a river had risen in me and broken its banks. 'He never even looked at you. It was me he wanted! And why shouldn't he? I'm young, and I've got the eye! All your education and your one hundred and fifty pounds a year and your elderflower champagne and your silly tonics, and your silly sisters with their turbans and roses. And your fish! Who cares about fish when there are monsters in the cliffs to be found? But you won't find them because you haven't got the eye. You're a dried up old spinster who will never get a man or a monster. And I will.' It felt so good and so horrible to say these things aloud that I thought I might be sick.
Miss Elizabeth stood very still. It were like she was waiting for a gust of wind to blow itself out. When it had and I was finished, she took a deep breath, though what come out were almost a whisper, with no force behind it. 'I saved your life once. I dug you out of the clay. And this is how you repay me, with the unkindest thoughts.'
The wind come back like a gale. I cried out in such rage Miss Elizabeth stepped back. 'Yes, you saved my life! And I'll feel the burden of being grateful to you for always. I'll never be equal to you, no matter what I do. Whatever monsters I find, however much money I earn, it will never equal your place. So why can't you leave Colonel Birch to me? Please.' I was crying now.
Miss Elizabeth watched me with her level grey eyes until I had used up my tears.
'I release you of the burden of your gratitude, Mary,' she said. 'I can at least do that. I dug you out that day as I would have done for anyone, and as anyone else passing would have done for you too.' She paused, and I could see her deciding what to say next. 'But I must tell you something,' she continued, 'not to hurt you, but to warn you. If you are expecting anything from Colonel Birch you will be disappointed. I had occasion to meet him before the auction. We ran into each other at the British Museum.' She paused. 'He was accompanying a lady. A widow. They seemed to have an understanding. I'm telling you this so that you will not have your expectations raised. You are a working girl, and you cannot expect more than you have. Mary, don't go.'
But I had already turned and begun to run, as fast and far from her words as I could.
I was not there to meet the next London coach when it come to Charmouth. It was a soft afternoon, with plenty of visitors out, and I was behind the table outside our house, selling curies to passersby.
I am not a superstitious person, but I knew he would come, for though he did not know it, it was my birthday. I had never had a birthday present, and was due one. Mam would say his auction money was the present, but to me he was the gift.
When the clock on the Shambles bell-tower struck five I begun to follow Colonel Birch's progress in my mind even as I was selling. I saw him alight from the coach and hire a horse from the stables, then ride along the road till he could cut across one of Lord Henley's fields above Black Ven to Charmouth Lane. He would follow that to Church Street, then down past St Michael's and into Butter Market. There all he had to do was to go right round the corner and he'd come into Cockmoile Square.
When I looked up, he appeared just as I knew he would, riding up on his borrowed chestnut horse and looking down at me. 'Mary,' he said.
'Colonel Birch,' I replied, and curtseyed very low, as if I were a lady.
Colonel Birch dismounted, reached for my hand and kissed it in front of all the visitors rummaging through the curies and the villagers walking past. I didn't care. When he looked up at me, still bent over my hand, I spied behind his gladness uncertainty, and I knew then that Elizabeth Philpot had not been lying about the widow lady. As much as I had wanted to disbelieve her, she was not the sort to lie. As gently as I could I pulled my hand from Colonel Birch's grasp. Then the shadow of uncertainty become a true flame of sorrow, and we stood looking at each other without speaking.
Over Colonel Birch's shoulder there was a movement that distracted me from his sad eyes, and I saw a couple come arm in arm along Bridge Street, he stocky and strong, she bobbing up and down at his side like a boat in
