Remarkable Creatures (10 page)

When he had gone and Bessy was sweeping up the mud he’d left behind, Margaret came downstairs, her eyes red. She sat at the piano and began to play a melancholy song. I patted her shoulder and tried to comfort her. “You would not have been happy with that set.”

Margaret shrugged off my hand. “You don’t know how I would have felt. Just because it suits you not to marry doesn’t mean the rest of us feel the same way!”

“I never said I didn’t want to marry. It just didn’t happen—I am not the sort of lady a man chooses to marry, for I am too plain and too serious. Now I am reconciled to being on my own. I thought you were too.”

Margaret was crying again. I could not bear it, for she would make me cry as well, and I do not cry. I left her to take refuge in the dining room with my fossils. Let Louise comfort her when she returned.

Later that day I used Lord Henley’s visit as an excuse to go down to Cockmoile Square. I wanted to discuss with the Annings his interest in the skull, and also to hear about what Mary had found back on the beach, for she’d told me she was going to look for the crocodile’s body. When I arrived, I went first to the kitchen to speak to Mary’s mother. Molly Anning was a tall, gaunt woman wearing a mop cap and a grubby white apron. She stood at the range, stirring what smelled like oxtail broth, while a baby squalled without conviction in a drawer in the corner.

I set down a bundle. “Bessy made too many rock cakes and thought you might like some, Mrs. Anning. There’s a round of cheese in there too, and part of a pork pie.” The kitchen was cold, with the fire in the range feeble. I should have brought coal as well. I did not tell her that Bessy had made the rock cakes only because I ordered her to. Whatever their hardships, Bessy did not like the Annings, feeling—like other good families in Lyme, I expect—that our association with them demeaned us.

Molly Anning murmured thanks but did not look up. I knew she did not think much of me, for I was the embodiment of what she did not want Mary to become—unmarried and obsessed with fossils. I understood her fears. My mother would not have wished my life on me either—nor would I, a few years back. Now I was living it, though, it was not so bad. In some ways I had more freedom than ladies who married.

The baby continued to wail. Of the ten children Molly Anning had borne, only three survived, and this one did not sound as if he would last his infancy. I looked around for a nurse or maid, but of course there was none. Forcing myself to go over to him, I gave the swaddled body a pat, which only made him cry harder. I have never known what to do with babies.

“Leave him, ma’am,” Molly Anning called. “Attention will only make him worse. He’ll settle in a bit.”

I stepped away from the drawer and looked about, trying not to reveal my dismay at the shabbiness of the room. Kitchens are normally the most welcoming part of a house, but the Annings’ lacked the basic warmth and well-stocked feeling that encourages lingering. There was a battered table with three chairs pulled up to it and a shelf holding a few chipped plates. No bread or pies or jugs of milk sat out as they did in our kitchen, and I felt a sudden fondness for Bessy. However much she grumbled, she kept the kitchen full of food, and that abundance was a comfort that spread through Morley Cottage. The security she created was what saw us Philpot sisters through the day. Not to have it must gnaw at the gut as much as real hunger did.

Poor Mary, I thought. To be on the cold beach all day and come back to this. “I’m here to see Mary and Joseph, Mrs. Anning,” I said aloud. “Are they about?”

“Joe’s got work at the mill today. Mary’s downstairs.”

“Did you see the skull they brought back from the beach yesterday?” I couldn’t help asking. “It is quite exceptional.”

“Haven’t had the time.” Molly picked up a head of cabbage from a basket and began to chop at it savagely. She led with her hands, though not as Margaret did with frivolous gestures. Molly’s hands were always busy with work: stirring, wiping, clearing.

“It is just downstairs, though,” I persisted, “and well worth a look. It would only take a moment. You could do it now—I’ll look after the soup and the baby while you go.”

Molly Anning grunted. “You look after the baby, eh? I’d like to see that.” Her chuckle made me turn red.

“They’ll get a good price for the crocodile once they’ve cleaned it up.” I spoke of the skull in the one way I knew would interest her.

Indeed, Molly Anning looked up but didn’t have a chance to reply before Mary came clattering up the stairs. “You here to see the croc, Miss Philpot?”

“And you as well, Mary.”

“Come down, then, ma’am.”

I had been in the Annings’ workshop a handful of times during the years we’d lived in Lyme, to order cabinets from Richard Anning or to pick up or drop off specimens for Mary to clean, though most often she came to me. While Richard Anning worked as a cabinetmaker, the room had been a battleground between the elements representing two parts of his life: the wood he made a living from and the stone that fed his interest in the natural world. Still stacked against the wall on one side of the room were sheets of wood planed fine, as well as smaller strips of veneer. Buckets of old varnish and tools littered the floor, which was strewn with wood shavings. Little had been touched on this side of the room in the months since Richard Anning’s death, though I suspected the Annings had sold some of the wood in order to eat, and would soon sell off the rest, as well as the tools.

On the other side of the room were long shelves crammed with chunks of rock containing specimens as yet unlocked by Mary’s hammer. Also on the shelves and on the floor, in no order that I could discern in the dim light, were crates of various sizes containing a jumble of broken bits of belemnites and ammonites, slivers of fossilized wood, stones carrying traces of fish scales, and many other examples of half-realized, incomplete, or inferior fossils that could never be sold.

Over all of the room, uniting wood and stone, there lay the finest coat of dust. Crumbled limestone and shale creates sticky clay and, when dry, a ubiquitous dust that is almost as soft and fine as talcum powder, gritty underfoot and drying to one’s skin. I knew this dust well, as did Bessy, who complained bitterly about having to clean up after me when I brought back specimens from the cliffs.

I shivered, partly from the cold of the cellar, where there was no fire, but also because the room’s disorder upset me. When out collecting, I had learned to discipline myself and not pick up every bit of fossil I found, but look instead for whole specimens. Both Bessy and my sisters would rebel against the insistent creep of partial fossils over all available space. Morley Cottage was meant to be our refuge from the harsh outdoor world. If allowed indoors at all, fossils had to be tamed—cleaned, catalogued, labeled, and placed in cabinets, where they could be looked at safely without threat to the order of our daily lives.

The chaos in the Annings’ workshop signaled to me something worse than poor housekeeping. Here was muddled thinking and moral disorder. I knew Richard Anning had been politically rebellious, with admiring stories still circulating years later about a riot he had led protesting over the price of bread. The family were Dissenters—not unusual in Lyme, perhaps, which because of its isolation seemed to be a haven for independent Christians. I had no ill feelings towards Dissenters. I wondered, though, if now her father was gone, Mary might benefit from a little more order in her life—physical if not spiritual.

However, I would put up with a great deal of dirt and confusion in order to see what had been laid out on a table in the middle of the room and surrounded by candles, like a pagan offering. There were not enough candles to light it properly, though. I vowed to have Bessy drop off some the next time she came down the hill.

On the beach, with so many others about, I’d not had much chance to study the skull. Now, seen in full rather than in silhouette, it looked like a craggy, knobbly model of a mountainous landscape, with two hillocks bulging out like Bronze Age tumuli. The crocodile’s grin, now that I could see all of it, seemed other-worldly, especially in the flickering candlelight. It made me feel I was peering through a window into a deep past where such alien creatures lurked.

I looked for a long time in silence, circling the table to inspect the skull from every angle. It was still entrapped in stone, and would need much attention from Mary’s blades, needles, and brushes—and a good bit of hammering too. “Take care you don’t break it when you clean it, Mary,” I said, to remind myself that this was work, not a scene from one of the gothic novels Margaret enjoyed scaring herself with.

Mary twisted her face up in indignation. “Course I won’t, ma’am.” Her confidence was just for show, however, for she hesitated. “It’ll be a long job, though, and I don’t know how best to go about it. I wish Pa were here to tell me what to do.” The importance of the task seemed to overwhelm her.

“I’ve brought you Cuvier as a guide, though I am not sure how much it will help.” I opened the book to the page with the drawing of a crocodile. I had studied it earlier, but now, standing next to the skull with the picture in hand, it was clear to me that this could be no crocodile—or not a species we were aware of. A crocodile’s snout is blunt, its jawline bumpy, its teeth many different sizes, its eye a mere bead. This skull had a long, smooth jaw and uniform teeth. The eye sockets reminded me of pineapple rings I was served at the dinner at Lord Henley’s when I discovered how little he knew about fossils. The Henleys grew pineapples in their glass house, and it was a rare treat for me, which even my host’s ignorance could not sour.

If it was not a crocodile, what was it? I did not share my concern about the animal with Mary, however, as I had begun to on the beach, before thinking the better of it. She was too young for such uneasy questions. I had discovered from conversations I’d had about fossils with the people of Lyme that few wanted to delve into unknown territory, preferring to hold on to their superstitions and leave unanswerable questions to God’s will rather than find a reasonable explanation that might challenge previous thinking. Hence they would rather call this animal a crocodile than consider the alternative: that it was the body of a creature that no longer existed in the world.

This idea was too radical for most to contemplate. Even I, who considered myself open-minded, was a little shocked to be thinking it, for it implied that God did not plan out what He would do with all of the animals He created. If He was willing to sit back and let creatures die out, what did that mean for us? Were we going to die out too? Looking at that skull with its huge, ringed eyes, I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a cliff. It was not fair to bring Mary to the edge with me.

I laid the book down next to the skull. “Did you have a look for the body this morning? Did you find anything?”

Mary shook her head. “Captain Cury was nosing about. Not for long, though—there was a landslip!” She shivered, and I noted that her hands were trembling. She picked up her hammer as if to give them something to do.

“Is he all right?” Although I did not care for William Lock, I would not have him killed, especially by the falling rocks that terrified me and other hunters.

Mary grunted. “Nothing wrong with him, but the croc’s body’s buried under a pile of rubble. We’ll be a time waiting for it.”

“That is a shame.” Behind this understatement I hid my disappointment. I had wanted to see the body of such a creature. It might provide some answers.

Mary tapped at the edge of the rock with her hammer, knocking off a sliver attached to the jaw. She seemed less bothered about this delay, perhaps because she was more used to having to wait to get even the most basic things: food, warmth, light.

“Mary, Lord Henley has paid me a visit and inquired after the skull,” I said. “He would like to see it, with a view to paying you for it.”

She looked up, her eyes bright. “He would? What will he pay?”

“I expect you could get five pounds for it. I can agree the terms for you. I think he rather expects me to. But . . .”

“What, Miss Elizabeth?”

“I know you need the money now. But if you wait until you find the body, and unite it with the head, I think you’ll be able to sell the whole specimen for more than if it’s in two parts. The skull is unusual as it is, but it would be spectacular if united with its body.” Even as I said it I knew this was too difficult a decision for Mary to make. What child can look beyond the bread that will fill her stomach now to the fields of wheat that may feed her for years to come? I would have to sit her mother down and discuss the matter.

“Mary, Mr. Blackmore wants to see the croc!” Molly Anning shouted down the stairs.

“Tell him to come back in half an hour!” Mary called back. “Miss Philpot ain’t done yet.” She turned to me. “People been stopping by all day to see it,” she added proudly.

Molly’s feet appeared on the stairs. “Reverend Gleed from chapel is waiting too. Tell your Miss Whatsit there be other folk wants a look. Anyone would think this were a shop with new frocks just come in,” she muttered.

That gave me an idea for a way the crocodile head could bring in a bit of money to the Annings if they were prepared to wait for the body. And they would not have to take the skull up to Colway Manor for Lord Henley to see it.

The next morning Mary and Joseph and two of his stronger friends carried the skull over to the Assembly Rooms in the main square, just around the corner from the Annings. The rooms were used little for much of the winter, to Margaret’s lasting despair. The main room had a large bay window that looked south out to sea and let in sufficient light for the specimen to be clearly displayed. A steady stream of visitors paid a penny to look at it. When Lord Henley arrived—I had sent a boy with a message to invite him—Mary wanted to charge him a penny too, but I frowned at her and she lapsed into a sullen silence I fretted might put Lord Henley off an eventual sale.