He stood there at the edge of the orchard looking like he would never be whole again.
The beauty of this girl standing behind him was not just physical, though. It seemed to O that she was lit from within by something most kids either did not have or hid deep inside: soul. He thought no one could ever hate her, and that was rare in this world. She was there to make things better.
When a women wants a cup of tea, usually she has to make it for herself, and forthe others around her. There is no better taste than a cup of tea someone has made for you.
That is what we women are trained for, to give to others, to make others comfortable whatever we feel for ourselves. It can be tiring, thankless to be so generous all of the time. I would like to be a bell ringer. Just to go up in the tower and for an hour concentrate on nothing but the sound of the bells and my place in them. That to me would be heaven. – Chapter 22.
I am Elizabeth Philpot,” I declard, “and I collect fossil fish.
I do not respect you, and I will never let you have any of my fossil fish.
Besides, no one can keep me away from my fish. Thank you, by the way, for the crate of fish you left for me. They are a delight. Come, let us go down to the sea.
Women always studied other women, and did so far more critically than men ever did. Men didn’t notice the run in their stocking, the lipstick on their teeth, the dated, outgrown haircut, the skirt that pulled unflattering across the hips, the paste earrings that were a touch too gaudy. Violet registered every flaw and knew every flaw that was being noted about her.
She was from an era when daughters were dutiful and deferential to their mothers, at least until they married and deferred to their husbands – not that Mrs. Speedwell had ever deferred much to hers.
She felt the strangeness of recognizing a place and yet not knowing it, of having a similar tone as if nothing had changed, yet everything had changed and aged, including Violet herself.
Father always said fishing is about not fishing as much as fishing.” Indeed. And about not thinking. We all need to do things that take us out of ourselves.
When Gilda appeared – out of.
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.
Mary Anning and I are hunting fossils on the beach, she her creatures, I my fish. Our eyes are fastened to the sand and rocks as we make our way along the shore at different paces, first one in front, then the other. Mary stops to split open a nodule and find what may be lodged within. I dig through clay, searching for something new and miraculous. We say very little, for we do not need to. We are silent together, each in her own world, knowing the other is just at her back.
It made me feel odd looking at that eye, like there was a world of curiosities I didn’t know about: crocodiles with huge eyes and snakes with no heads and thunderbolts God threw down that turned to stone. Sometimes I got that hollowed-out feeling too when looking at a sky full of stars or into the deep water the few times I went out in a boat, and I didn’t like it: it was as if the world were too strange for me ever to understand it.
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.
Cuvier has suggested that animal species sometimes die out when they are no longer suited to survive in the world. The idea is troubling to people because it suggests that God does not have a hand in it, that He created animals and then sat back and let them die.
I could have panicked. Before the journey I might have. But something had shifted in me while I spent all that time on deck watching the horizon: I was responsible for myself. I was Elizabeth Philpot, and I collected fossil fish.
So we continued, arm in arm along the beach, talking until at last we had no more to say, like a storm that blows itself out, and our eyes dropped to the ground, where the curies were waiting for us to find them.
He was a man, and it was expected of him to achieve.
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?