Remarkable Creatures (17 page)

Mostly, then, Mr. Buckland and me were alone. Though we were fixed only on finding curies, our being together so often was too much even for Lyme folk. Eventually town gossip caught up with us—fueled, I was sure, by Captain Cury. In the years since the landslip that almost killed him and me and buried the first crocodile, he had let me be. But he had never managed to find himself a complete croc and still liked to spy on what I was doing. Once I begun hunting with Mr. Buckland, Captain Cury got jealous. He would make sly comments as he passed us upon beach, clanging his spade against the rock ledge. “Having fun here on your own, you two?” he’d say. “Enjoy being alone?”

Mr. Buckland mistook Captain Cury’s attention as interest, and hurried over to show him the fossils we found, and baffle him with scientific terms and theories. Captain Cury stood there uncomfortable, then made an excuse to get away. He loped down the beach, sneering at me over his shoulders ready to tell everyone that he’d seen us together.

I ignored the talk, but one day Mam overheard someone in the Shambles calling me a gentleman’s whore. She marched straight down to Church Cliffs, where Mr. Buckland and I were prizing out the jaw of a crocodile. “Get your things and come back with me,” she ordered, ignoring Mr. Buckland’s greeting.

“But Mam, we’ve only an hour left to dig till the tide’s in. Look, you can see all the teeth here.”

“Come away, you. Do as I say.” Mam made me feel guilty when I hadn’t even done anything. I stood up quick and brushed the mud off my skirt. Mam glared at Mr. Buckland. “I don’t want you out here alone with my daughter.” I had never heard her be so rude to a gentleman.

Luckily Mr. Buckland was not easily offended. Perhaps it was because he misunderstood her, for he was not the sort of man to think as the town did. “Mrs. Anning, we have found a most splendid jaw!” he cried. “Here, feel the teeth, they are as even as a comb’s. I promise you, I’m not wasting Mary’s time. She and I are engaged in tremendous scientific discovery.”

“I don’t care nothing for your scientific so-and-so,” Mam muttered. “I’ve my daughter’s reputation to think of. This family’s been through enough already—we don’t need Mary’s prospects ruined by a gentleman with no concern other than what he can get out of her.”

Mr. Buckland turned to look at me as if he’d never thought of me in that way before. I flushed and hunched my shoulders to hide my breasts. Then he looked down at his own chest, as if suddenly reconsidering himself. It would be comical, if it weren’t already tragical.

Mam begun picking her way back across the beach, skirting pools of water. “Come along, Mary,” she said over her shoulder.

“Wait, ma’am,” Mr. Buckland called. “Please. I have the greatest respect for your daughter. I would never want to compromise her reputation. Is it our being alone that is the problem? For that is easily solved. I shall find us a chaperone. If I ask at the Three Cups I’m sure they can spare us someone.”

Mam stopped but didn’t look round. She was thinking. So was I. Mam’s words had given me an idea about myself I had never really considered. I had prospects. A gentleman could be interested in me. I might not always be so poor and needy.

“All right,” Mam said at last. “If Miss Elizabeth or me ain’t with you, you take someone else. Come, Mary.”

I picked up my basket and hammer.

“But what about this jaw? Mary?” Mr. Buckland looked a little frantic.

I walked backwards so I could look at him. “You have a go at it, sir. You been collecting fossils all these years, you don’t need me.”

“But I do, Mary, I do!”

I smiled. Swinging my basket, I turned and followed Mam.

That was how Fanny Miller come back into my life. When Mr. Buckland collected me from home the next morning, Fanny was hovering behind him, looking about as miserable as a coachman in the rain. She kept her eyes on her boots, scuffing them on the cobblestones of Cockmoile Square to get the mud off. Like me, she were growing into a young woman, her curves a little softer than mine, her face the shape of an egg, framed by a battered bonnet trimmed with a blue ribbon to match her eyes. Though poor, she was so pretty I wanted to slap her.

Mr. Buckland didn’t seem to notice that, though, nor the frosty look that passed between her and me. “There, you see,” he said, “I’ve brought us a chaperone. She works in the Three Cups’ kitchen, but they said they could spare her for a few hours while the tide is out.” He beamed, clearly pleased with himself. “What is your name, my girl?”

“Fanny,” she said, so soft I weren’t sure Mr. Buckland even heard.

I sighed, but there was nothing I could do. After all the fuss Mam made about him getting someone to come out with us, I couldn’t complain about his choice. I would just have to put up with her—and she with me. Fanny were sure to be just as unhappy as I was that she had to come upon beach with us, but she needed the work and would do as she was told.

We went back to the jaw in Church Cliffs, Fanny trailing behind us. As we worked she sat some way away, sifting through the stones at her feet. Maybe she still liked shiny pebbles. She looked so bored and frightened I almost pitied her.

So did Mr. Buckland. Perhaps he felt idleness was an evil anyone would want to avoid. When he saw her playing with the stones he went over to talk “undergroundology,” as he liked to call geology. “Here—Fanny, is it?” he said. “Would you like me to tell you what those stones are you’re arranging? Most of what you’ve got there is limestone and flint, but that pretty white bit is quartz, and the brown with the stripe is sandstone. There are several different layers of rock along this beach, you see, like this.” He took up a stick and drew in the sand the different layers of granite, limestone, slate, sandstone, and chalk. “All over Great Britain, and indeed on the Continent as well, we are discovering these layers of rock, always in the same order. Isn’t that surprising?”

When Fanny did not respond, he said, “Perhaps you would like to come and see what we’re digging out.”

Fanny approached reluctantly, glancing up at the cliff face. She seemed not to have overcome her fear of falling rocks.

“Do you see this jaw?” Mr. Buckland ran his finger along it. “Beautiful, isn’t it? The snout is broken off, but the rest is intact. It will make an excellent model to use during my lectures on fossil discoveries.” He peered at Fanny as if to savor her response, and looked puzzled when she screwed up her face with disgust. Mr. Buckland found it hard to understand that others didn’t feel as he did about fossils and rocks.

“You saw the creatures Mary discovered when they were on display in town, did you not?” he persisted.

Fanny shook her head.

He tried once more to draw her in. “Perhaps you would like to help? You may hold the hammers. Or Mary can show you how to look for other fossils.”

“No, thank you, sir. I’ve my own work.” As she turned to go back to her safe seat away from the cliff, Fanny’s face was full of spite. If I were younger I would have pinched her. But she had punishment enough, being out upon beach with us, her presence allowing for the discovery of the very things she despised most. She must have hated that and would have preferred to scrub any number of pots in the kitchen of Three Cups.

Later Miss Elizabeth come along, hunting on her own. She frowned at Fanny, who now had out some lace she was making—though how she could keep it clean with so much mud about I didn’t know. “What is she doing here?” Miss Elizabeth demanded.

“Chaperone,” I said.

“Oh!” Miss Elizabeth watched her for a moment, then shook her head. “Poor girl,” she murmured, before passing on.

It’s your fault she’s here, I thought. “If you weren’t so funny about Mr. Buckland you could stay with us and release Fanny from her torment. And my torment too that she’s sitting there reminding me of the sort of woman I’ll never be.

Fanny was with us much of the summer. Usually she sat on rocks away from us or followed at a distance when we were wandering. Though she didn’t complain, I knew she hated it when we went farther, to Charmouth or beyond. She preferred remaining close to Lyme, by Gun Cliff or Church Cliffs. Then a friend might come out to see her, and Fanny cheered up and become more confident. The two would sit and peek round their bonnets at us and whisper and giggle.

Mr. Buckland tried to interest Fanny in what we found or to show her what to look for, but she always said she had other things to do and brought out lace or sewing or knitting. “She thinks they’re the Devil’s works,” I finally explained in a low voice, when Fanny had once again rebuffed him and gone to sit with her lace. “They scare her.”

“But that’s absurd!” Mr. Buckland said. “They are God’s creatures from the past, and there is nothing to be frightened of.”

He got up from his knees as if he would go to her, but I caught his arm. “Please, sir, leave her be. It’s better that way.”

When I looked over at Fanny she was staring at my hand on Mr. Buckland’s sleeve. She always seemed to notice when his hand touched mine as he passed me a fossil, or when I grabbed his elbow when he stumbled. She gasped outright when Mr. Buckland hugged me the afternoon we managed to get the croc jaw out of the cliff. In that way her accompanying us made things worse, for I suspect Fanny spread plenty of gossip. We might have been better off alone, without a witness to report back everything she saw that she didn’t understand. I still had funny looks from townspeople and laughter behind my back.

Poor Fanny. I should be kinder to her, for she paid a price, going out with us.

MY TRADE IS BEST done in bad weather. Rain flushes fossils out of the cliffs, and storms scrub the ledges clean of seaweed and sand so more can be seen. Joe may have left fossils for upholstery because of the weather, but I was like Pa—I never minded the cold or the wet, as long as I was finding curies.

Mr. Buckland also wanted to go out even when it was raining. Fanny had to come with us and would huddle wretched in her shawl, curling up amongst the boulders to shelter against the wind. We were often the only folk upon beach then, for in poor weather visitors preferred to go to the bath houses, which had heated water, or to play cards and read the papers at the Assembly Rooms or to drink at the Three Cups. Only serious hunters went out in the rain.

One rainy day towards the end of the summer, I was upon beach with Mr. Buckland and Fanny. There was no one else on that stretch of shore, though Captain Cury passed by at one point, nosing about to see what we were doing. Mr. Buckland had discovered a ridge of bumps not far from where we’d dug out the jaw in Church Cliffs, and thought they might be a row of verteberries from the same animal.

I was chiseling away at it to try and uncover the bones when Mr. Buckland left my side. After a minute Fanny come to stand close by, and I knew Mr. Buckland must be pissing in the water. He was always careful not to embarrass me and slipped off to do his business far enough away that I didn’t have to see. I was used to him doing that, but it always bothered Fanny, and it were the one time she come up to the cliff by me. Even after several weeks in his company, she was still a little scared of Mr. Buckland. His friendliness and constant questions were too demanding for someone like Fanny.

I felt sorry for her. The rain was coming down hard and dripping on her face from her bonnet rim. It was too wet for her to sew or knit, and there’s nothing worse than having nothing to do in the rain. “Why don’t you just turn away when he’s down there?” I said, trying to be helpful. “He’s not going to wave it in your face. He’s too much of a gentleman for that.”

Fanny shrugged. “You ever seen one?” she said after a moment. I think it was the first question she’d asked me in ten years. Maybe the rain had wore her down.

I thought of the belemnite Miss Elizabeth showed James Foot on this beach years before and smiled. “No. Just Joe’s, when he were little. You?”

I didn’t think she would answer, but then she said, “Once, at the Three Cups, a man got so drunk he dropped his trousers in the kitchen, thinking it were the privy!”

We both laughed. For a second I wondered if we might be starting to get on better.

We’d no chance for that. There were no warning, no pebbles raining down or the groan of stone splitting from stone. It were that sudden that one moment Fanny and I were laughing about men’s parts by the cliff, and the next the cliff just dropped, and I was knocked down and buried in the thick, rocky clay.

Though I don’t remember doing it, I’d thrown my hand up to my mouth as the cliff come down on me, and that made a little space for me to breathe in. I couldn’t see anything, and though I struggled I couldn’t move at all, for the clay was cold and wet and heavy, and it held me fast. I couldn’t even call out. All I could do was think that I was going to die and wonder what God would say to me when He met me.

There was a long, long time when nothing happened. Then I heard a scrabbling and felt hands clawing at me and wiping my eyes, and I opened them and saw Mr. Buckland’s terrified face, and I thought maybe I would not meet God yet.