The Dragon in the Cliff (7 page)

“Mary,” Mama called down the stairs after me. “Mary, what is the matter, child?”

I did not answer. I ran frantically from shelf to work table and back to the shelves again, taking the curiosities from the shelves and carrying them to the workbench.

Alarmed, Mama came down to the workshop. “What are you doing?” she asked.

I counted the curiosities on the workbench, “One, two, three …” There were about thirty curiosities in all. “Thirty,” I said, turning to face Mama. “Not enough, Mama. Not enough to make a difference when the visitors come next month. We cannot count on the curiosities to pay our debts or to buy our food.” I turned away to rush from the shop, but before I got to the door, Mama caught me in her arms and swung me around. Pressing me to her, she held me, as I cried with shame.

When I finally stopped crying, I told her how I lost my tools. Mama was quiet when I finished my story. She held me to her and swayed gently, rocking me back and forth, back and forth. “It was wrong of me to place such a burden on one so young,” she said. I wanted to say that it wasn't a burden, that it was just that I forgot myself, but Mama hushed me and held me in her arms while I cried.

We did not speak of the lost tools again. It was decided that I would go into service in a big house, where my food and bed would be provided. Mama would sell our belongings and go live with her sister, Aunt Letty Hunnicutt, and her husband, Mr. Hunnicutt, in Axminster until Joseph finished his term with Hale and was able to set up as an upholsterer. Then, God willing, we would set up house again.

Mama started a letter to Aunt Letty and Uncle Hunnicutt to ask if she might come live with them, but put the pen down after the first sentence telling of Ann and John's deaths. She left the letter lying on the table unfinished and went to sit at the window with her lacework, but she did not work. She stared out the window all that day, the next, and the day after. I cannot say how many days. I fled the house and wandered up and down the shore looking for curiosities. When I would return from my fruitless searches, Mama would turn away from the window to look at me and then would turn back to her lacework without a word. After a few stitches, her gaze would wander back to the window and her hands would grow motionless. She would forget to put out food at mealtimes. I do not know whether she ate, but we did not sit down together. We did not talk. We could not bring ourselves to. Talking would make our losses and the breakup of our family real.

Joseph, who had put out word that I was looking for a post, heard that the housekeeper at High Cliff was looking for a girl to run errands and to help the cook. High Cliff was a grand house on Pound Street where many newcomers to town were building homes. It was owned by a family that made its money in tea plantations in India. Joseph told me to go there the next morning.

How I dreaded the interview! More than that I dreaded leaving our home to go to work in a strange house and live among strangers. Lizzie and I had discussed what it would be like. Knowing that I had little choice in the matter and that I was afraid, Lizzie tried to comfort me with pictures of a kind, young mistress who would make a friend and companion of me and who would let me read her books, and take me with her to London and Bath. “Now that could be a real adventure, Mary. Going to London in the company of a young lady,” she said. “She might even let you sit in on her lessons.” Lizzie's gray eyes were round and solemn as she tried to convince me, but her mouth twitched and I could see that she didn't believe that such a thing was possible any more than I did.

Far more likely, I thought, as I climbed up Broad Street, was what happened to Susanne Allen. She had gone to work in a big house after her father died. We never saw her again down on Bridge Street. She did not even come when Grannie Allen, who had raised her, was buried. Her little sister, Fannie, told me that her mistress would not give her permission and had cuffed her when she cried.

The wrought-iron gate to the carriage yard was open when I arrived. I walked into the graveled courtyard. The house was large, with a portico supported by columns and wings stretching out on either side. I knew better than to call at the front door, but I could not find the tradesmen's entrance. I walked along one wing of the house to the side.

I was stopped by a gruff voice demanding to know where I was going. “This is private property,” the voice warned me. I looked around for the speaker, but saw no one.

“I'm looking for the servants' entrance,” I explained, still looking about to see who was speaking.

“Oh, come to see Mrs. Wiggins, have you? You look a bit young to be leaving home,” the voice said.

“Where are you? I cannot see you.”

“Up here in the tree,” the voice said.

Then I saw him high in a beech tree, a wrinkled, old man with a long white beard, wearing a broad hat with a saw in his hand. “The tradesmen's entrance is round the other side of the house,” he told me.

I walked back to the front of the house, past the porticoed entrance, past the tall blank-eyed windows that seemed to be looking down on me disapprovingly, and around to the other side where down three steps was a small, black door. I knocked. No one answered. I knocked again. My heart was beating so loudly I could barely hear anything else. After several minutes during which I knocked repeatedly, I heard someone call through the door, “Stop that banging!”

I called back, “It is Mary Anning, the cabinetmaker's girl. I have come to talk to Mrs. Wiggins about running errands.” I heard the bolt being pulled.

The door opened a crack. “Wait here,” said a red-faced woman in large checkered apron and white mob-cap. Then she slammed the door in my face.

I waited for several more minutes before she returned to say that Mrs. Wiggins would see me. She led me through the scullery and the kitchen into a small room with a pine table, one chair, several leather-bound account books, and a number of locked cupboards, and left me to wait there. Soon I heard a heavy tread in the hall and Mrs. Wiggins, an enormous woman dressed all in black except for a white cap, was upon me.

“You have come to see about running errands?” she asked in a booming voice as she looked down on me from her towering height.

I opened my mouth to answer. I moved my lips. But no sound issued. I nodded my head instead.

“Don't wave your head at me,” she bellowed. “Answer ‘yes, ma'am,' or ‘no, ma'am.'”

“Yes, ma'am,” I whispered.

“Speak up! You are Anning, the cabinetmaker's child?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I repeated.

“The one who sells curiosities?”

My chin hurt because Mama had tied my bonnet too tightly, but I was too frightened to raise my hands to loosen the strings. “Yes, ma'am,” I answered.

“I hear that you go down to the beach to look for them.”

“Yes, ma'am. I sell the curiosities now that my father is dead.”

She snorted at this. “And your mother permits you to wander around the beach by yourself, unchaperoned?”

I did not reply. “Answer me,” she demanded, but she went on before I could. “Does she not know that there are smugglers there? Brigands? And still she allows a girl to go there. But then your family does not attend St. Michael's, does it, girl?”

“No, ma'am,” I said. “We go to chapel.”

“A Dissenter? No, you will not do,” she said. “I cannot vouch for the morals of a girl who has been allowed to run free like you. We are respectable people here.” And with that she dismissed me.

I ran all the way down Broad Street, past the proud, tall-windowed houses, through the throngs crowding the marketplace and shambles, and onto to the safety of Bridge Street in a confusion of feeling. I had escaped from Mrs. Wiggins, but her rejection still left me in need of work. I did not tell Mama why Mrs. Wiggins did not hire me. Mrs. Wiggins's disapproval of my fossil hunting would have caused her great anguish. Instead, I muttered something about there being a mistake. And Mama, who was vague about everything those days, did not inquire further. “Something will turn up soon,” she said, and turned back to the window.

Not knowing what else to do, I continued to go to the beach in search of curiosities. One day, not long afterward, as I was returning from the beach, I saw Dr. Carpenter leaving our house. Fearing the worst, I ran into the shop, and up the stairs, calling, “Mama! Mama!” I pulled the door open and stopped. Mama was not in her customary place by the window. She was kneeling by the sideboard. On the long table were dishes, salvers, mugs—the contents of the sideboard.

“I've sold the sideboard to Dr. Carpenter,” Mama explained. “He is giving me a good sum for it. Now you needn't go into service, and I needn't give up our house and go to live with Mr. Hunnicutt. We can stay here together … for a little while longer.”

I ran to her and threw my arms around her neck. “Oh, Mama,” I said over and over, unable to say anything else.

“It is just a thing, a piece of furniture,” Mama said, wiping her tears with the back of her hand.

But I knew that the sideboard was not just another thing. It had always meant a great deal to her. Papa made it to become a master cabinetmaker. It was the one fine thing in our house, the one thing that showed Papa's true craftsmanship. It had a bowed front with inlaid rosewood panels.

“We should not set much stock in the things of this world. I would have had to sell it anyway when Joseph finishes his term. It is just as well that Dr. Carpenter offered me the money for it now. Truth be known, he paid me more than it was worth. I do not want to take charity from him, but he insists it is not charity. He tells me that he has admired it ever since he first set eyes on it.”

I did not ask her how we would pay Hale the thirty pounds due him when Joseph's apprenticeship was over. I was too relieved that I did not have to be parted from Mama and go into service to worry much about what would happen in five years. I would earn the money somehow.

SOMETHING STARES AT ME FROM THE CLIFF

Days and weeks passed without incident. I can remember little of that hard summer, except that somehow we endured. It was November again, a year since Papa was taken from us. I was walking along Church Cliff Walk intending to make my way down to the beach. It was quite a different scene from summer when the town was filled with visitors. In June, the deep blue sea stretched out against a paler blue sky, the air was warm, and there were groups of holidaymakers strolling along Church Cliff Walk in their light summer clothes. Now it was cold. Slate-colored clouds rolled across a lead sky. Except for me, the Walk was deserted. Down on the beach waves rushed headlong crashing against the base of the cliffs, threw spray high in the air, withdrew, and crashed again. The beach was impassable. But still I stayed on the cliffs, drawn by the wild force of the sea.

The clouds grew blacker, gulls cried as they circled overhead, a raindrop splattered on my nose and then another. I turned for home. I just reached the door as a clap of thunder announced the storm. The sky opened, letting loose a torrent. It rained steadily without letup for four days and for all that time the wind blew with gale force. “A real southwester,” Mama called it. I remained indoors wrapped up against the cold in Mama's wool shawl, listening to the wind driving the rain against the panes, rattling the shutters, and whistling through the eaves.

As soon as the rain let up I put on my clogs and dressed to go out collecting. “The wind is still high, and it is dangerous near the cliffs now,” Mama warned.

Remembering that Papa always said that the best finds were made just after a storm, I was impatient to get down to the beach. But I soon found that Mama was right. Though the tide was out, the waves, pushed by the wind, made the beach impassable.

It was several more days before I had another chance to go down to the shore. Thrown this way and that by the waves, huge timbers, barrel staves, bricks, driftwood, seaweed, pieces of broken pottery, and even rags littered the beach. It was slow work to pick my way over them toward a new slide that looked promising.

The first thing I pulled out of the mound of clay, rock, and dirt was flat bottomed and domed on top. It might have been a fossil urchin, but I could not be sure because it was covered with sticky, wet clay. I took it over to a pool left behind by the tide and started to wash it off. As I was watching the clay cloud the water of the pool, I heard a roar and turned, in fright, only to see a mass of dirt and pieces of rock falling from the top of the cliff to the beach below. Scanning the cliff trying to decide whether it was safe for me to remain, I found myself staring at a grayish white circle with two slightly curved parallel lines beneath it. Looking at it, I had the strange feeling that it was staring back at me.

I stood there for what must have been several minutes waiting to see if more of the cliff was going to fall before I approached it to see what the circle was. Close up it was easier to see that it was a curiosity, but I did not recognize it as anything I had seen before. I took my hammer and chisel out of my pocket and gently worked the wet Lias near the circle. Set inside the large, thin circle was a smaller circle made of several bony plates, like flower petals. At the center was a hole. Could it be an eye? I wasn't sure.

I slowly worked around the lines that protruded underneath. I bared more of the fossil, but I could not make out what it was. I worked in between the two lines with a nail. There was something there. It was perpendicular to the two parallel lines. I scraped off the wet clay with mounting excitement. There was no mistaking what I saw. It was a tooth, and there was another one next to it. I had collected teeth like these near the large vertebrae. I laughed. Could it possibly be? I whirled about madly until I fell down on the sand with giddiness. When I calmed down, I looked at it again just to make certain. There was no mistake. I had found the dragon!