Remarkable Creatures (20 page)

It was indeed a fine specimen, fanning out like the lily it was named for. “Oh no, sir, it’s yours,” Mary said. “You found it. I could never take it from you.”

Colonel Birch took her hand, laid the crinoid in it, and closed her fingers around it. “I insist, Mary.” He held his hand over her fist and looked at her. “Did you know crinoids are not plants as they appear, but creatures?”

“Really, sir?” Mary was staring into his eyes. Of course she knew about crinoids. I had taught her.

I stepped forward. “Colonel Birch, I must ask you to show proper respect or I shall require that you leave us.”

Colonel Birch dropped his hand. “My apologies, Miss Philpot. The discovery of fossils excites me in ways I find hard to control.”

“Control it you must, sir, or you will lose the privileges you seek.”

He nodded and fell back to a respectful distance. We walked in silence for a time. But Colonel Birch could not be quiet for long, and soon he and Mary were lagging behind while he asked her about the fossils she preferred, her method of hunting, even her thoughts on what the ichthyosaurus was. “I don’t know, sir,” she said of her most spectacular find. “It seems the ichie’s got a bit of crocodile in it, some lizard, some fish. And a bit of something all its own. That’s what’s difficult, that bit. How it fits in.”

“Oh, I expect your ichthyosaurus has a place in Aristotle’s Great Chain of Being,” Colonel Birch said.

“What’s that, sir?”

I tutted. She didn’t need him to explain it, for I had described the theory to Mary myself. She was flirting with him. Of course he loved telling her what he knew. Men do.

“The Greek philosopher Aristotle suggested that all creatures could be placed along a scale, from the lowest plants up to the perfection that is man, in a chain of creation. So your ichthyosaurus may fall between a lizard and a crocodile in the chain, for instance.”

“That is very interesting, sir.” Mary paused. “But that don’t explain about the bit of the ichie that’s like nothing else, that don’t fit in with the categories. Where does that fit in the chain, if it’s different from everything else?”

Colonel Birch suddenly stopped, squatted, and picked up a stone. “Is this—Oh, no, it’s not. My mistake.” He threw the stone into the water.

I smiled. He might dazzle with his handsome head of hair, but his grasp of knowledge was superficial, and Mary had picked it apart.

“What about you, Miss Philpot? What do you like to collect?” In two lively steps Colonel Birch had caught up with me, escaping Mary’s awkward question. I did not want his attention, for I was not sure I could bear it, but I could not be impolite.

“Fish,” I answered as briefly as I could.

“Fish?”

Though I did not want to converse with him, I could not help showing off a bit of my knowledge. “Primarily
Eugnathus, Pholidophorus, Dapedius,
and
Hybodus
—the last is an ancient shark,” I added as his face went blank at the Latin. “Those are the genus names, of course. The different species have not yet been identified.”

“Miss Philpot has a big collection of fossil fish at her house,” Mary put in. “People come and look all the time, don’t they, Miss Elizabeth?”

“Really? Fascinating,” Colonel Birch murmured. “I shall be sure to visit as well and see your fish.”

He was careful, so I could never accuse him of rudeness, but his tone bore a trace of mild sarcasm. He preferred the bold ichthyosaurus to the quiet fish. But then, most do. They do not understand that the clear shape and texture of a fish, with its overlapping scales, its dimpled skin, and its shapely fins, all make up a specimen of great beauty—beautiful because it is plain and definite. With his gleaming buttons and thrusting hair, Colonel Birch could never comprehend such subtlety. “You’d best move along,” I snapped, “else the tide will catch us out before we reach Seatown. Mary, if you don’t stop talking, you’ll never find a brittle star for your collector.”

Mary scowled, but I was done tolerating Colonel Birch. I turned and strode towards Seatown, blind to any fossils underfoot.

 

 

 

COLONEL BIRCH WAS TO stay for several weeks to build up his collection, taking rooms in Charmouth but coming to Lyme daily. His claim on Mary’s time was sudden and absolute. She went out with him every day. To start with I accompanied them, for even if Mary didn’t, I worried what the town would think. When we three were together I tried to find the comfortable rhythm I had when I was out only with Mary, where we each concentrated on our own hunting and yet felt the reassuring presence of a companion close by. That rhythm was ruined by Colonel Birch, who liked to remain with Mary and talk. It is a testament to her hunting skills that she was able to find anything at all that summer with him babbling at her side. Yet she tolerated him. More than tolerated—she doted on him. There was no place for me on the beach with them. I might as well have been an empty crab shell. I went out three times with them, and that was enough.

For Colonel Birch was a fraud. To be accurate, I should say,
Lieutenant
Colonel Birch was a fraud. That was one of his many petty ruses—leaving off the “Lieutenant” to promote himself higher than he was. Nor did he offer up that he was long retired from the Life Guards, though anyone who knew a bit about them could see he wore the old uniform of long coat and leather breeches rather than the shorter coat and blue-gray pantaloons of the current soldiers. He was happy to bask in the Life Guards’ glory at Waterloo, without having taken part.

Worse, I discovered from those three days on the beach with him that he did not find fossils himself. He did not keep his eyes on the ground as Mary and I did, but searched our faces and followed our gazes so that as we stopped and leaned over, he reached out and picked up what we were looking at before we had time to do so ourselves. He only tried this method with me once before my glare stopped him. Mary was more tolerant, or blinded by her feelings, and let him rob her of many specimens and call them his own finds.

Colonel Birch’s amateurism appalled me. For all his professed interest in fossils, and his supposedly robust military constitution ready for all hardships, he was not a scrabbler in the mud in search of specimens. He found his through his wallet, or his charm, or by picking them off others. He had a fine collection by the end of the summer, but Mary had found and given them to him, or nudged him towards those she had spotted. Like Lord Henley and other men who came to Lyme, he was a collector rather than a hunter, buying his knowledge rather than seeking it with his own eyes and hands. I could not understand how Mary would find him appealing.

Yes, I could. I was a little in love with him myself. For all my complaints, I found him very attractive: not only physically, though there was that, but because his interest in fossils seemed genuine and penetrating. When he was not flirting with Mary, he was capable—and keen—to discuss the origins of the ichthyosaurus, and what it meant to be extinct. He was also clear about God’s role, without seeming disrespectful or blasphemous. “I am sure God has better things to do than watch over every living creature on this earth,” he said once when we were walking back to Lyme along the cliff path, the tide having cut us off. “He has done such amazing work to create what He has; surely now He needn’t follow the progress of every worm and shark. His concern is with us, and He showed that by making us in His image and sending us His son.” Colonel Birch made it sound so clear and sensible that I wished Reverend Jones could hear him.

Here, then, was a man who thought and talked about fossils, who encouraged us women to look for them, who would not mind that I regularly ruined my gloves. My anger at him stemmed not so much from irritation at his inability to be a hunter rather than a collector, but from indignation that he never for a moment considered me—closer to his age and of a similar class—as a lady he might court.

Whatever I thought of him, it was not for me to decide what Mary did or did not do with Colonel Birch. That was for Molly Anning to sort out. Over the years Molly and I had grown to understand each other, so that she was less suspicious and I less intimidated. While she had little education and saw neither poetry nor philosophy in our discoveries, she accepted their importance to me and to others. That importance may have been measured in coins that kept her family fed, clothed, and sheltered, but she did not ridicule the value. Fossils became an item to be sold, as significant as buttons or carrots or barrels or nails. If she thought it peculiar that I did not sell the specimens I found, she did not show it. After all, in her eyes I did not need to. Louise, Margaret, and I could not be extravagant, but we were never fearful of the bailiff or the workhouse. The Annings, however, lived on the edge of starvation, and that can sharpen a mind. Molly Anning became quite a shrewd saleswoman, squeezing out extra shillings and pennies here and there.

She envied me my income and my position in society—what society there was in Lyme—but she pitied me too, for I had never known a man, never felt the security of marriage or the love of a baby in my arms. That rather balanced out the envy and left her neutral and reasonably tolerant towards me. As for me, I admired her business sense and her ability to find her way through difficult circumstances. She did not complain much even though she had a right to, given her hard life.

Unfortunately, Molly Anning allowed herself to be carried away by Colonel Birch’s charm almost as much as her daughter was. I had always thought she was a good judge of character and would have thought she’d see Birch as the greedy schemer he was. Perhaps like Mary she sensed he was the first real—and possibly the only—opportunity her daughter had to be lifted from the hard life of her own class into a kinder, more prosperous world.

I do not think Colonel Birch originally intended to court Mary. He was drawn to Lyme by a fever many have felt for finding treasure on the beach, where old bones with their hints of earlier worlds become as precious as silver. It is hard to stop looking once you have become infected. However, Colonel Birch was also presented with the unusual opportunity of passing whole days with an unaccompanied woman, and could not resist.

First, though, he had to win over her mother. He did so by flirting shamelessly with Molly Anning, and for perhaps the only time in her life, she lost her head. Ground down by poverty and loss, Molly had enjoyed little happiness in the years since Richard Anning’s death but suffered constant worry over money and fear of the prospect of being sent to the workhouse. Now a handsome retired soldier in a smart uniform was kissing her hand and complimenting her housekeeping and asking her leave to go along the beach with her daughter. She who had been so indignant at William Buckland innocently taking Mary out now threw away her caution for the price of a kiss on the hand and a kind word or two. Perhaps she was simply tired of saying no.

The shop where Molly Anning sold fossils to visitors began to run low on even basic specimens such as ammonites and belemnites, for Mary had stopped picking up other fossils, leaving nodules for others to break open, ignoring requests by other collectors for sea urchins or gryphaea or brittle stars. The good specimens she found she gave to Colonel Birch or encouraged him to pick up himself. Molly did not complain to her daughter, however. I helped as best I could by donating what I found, for I primarily hunted for fossil fish and left other specimens to others. But the Annings were low on funds and running debts with the baker and the butcher, and would soon with the coal merchant once it grew cold. Still Molly Anning said nothing—perhaps seeing Mary’s time with Colonel Birch as a future investment.

Since her mother wouldn’t, I tried to talk to Mary about Colonel Birch. When the tide was high they could not go out, and he would stop in at the Three Cups or attend the Assembly Rooms, where of course Mary did not go. Then she would help her mother, or clean Colonel Birch’s specimens for him, or simply wander about Lyme in a daze. One day I met her as I was coming up Sherborne Lane, a small passage that led to Silver Street from the center of town. I used it when I was not feeling sociable enough to greet everyone walking along Broad Street. Mary was drifting down the lane, her eyes on Golden Cap, a smile on her face, which shone with an appealing inner joy. For a moment I could almost believe Colonel Birch might seriously court her.

Seeing her so happy twisted my jealous heart, so that when she greeted me I did not restrain myself. “Mary,” I said abruptly, without the small talk that eases such conversation, “is Colonel Birch paying you for your time?”

Mary gave her head a shake, as if trying to rouse herself, and met my eyes with all of her attention. “What do you mean?”

I shifted the basket I was carrying from one arm to the other. “He is taking up all of your hunting time. Is he paying you for it, or at least for the fossils you find him?”

Mary narrowed her eyes. “You never asked me that about Mr. Buckland, or Henry De La Beche, or any of the other gentlemen I’ve taken out. Is Colonel Birch any different?”

“You know he is. For one thing, the others found their own fossils or paid you for those you found for them. Is Colonel Birch paying you?”

Mary’s eyes registered a flicker of doubt, which she covered up with scorn. “He finds his own curies. He don’t need to pay me.”

“Oh? And what have you found to sell, then?” When Mary didn’t answer, I added, “I’ve seen your mother’s cury table in Cockmoile Square, Mary. There is little on it. She’s selling broken ammonites you would have thrown back into the sea once.”

Mary’s elation had entirely disappeared. If that was my intention, I had been successful. “I’m helping Colonel Birch,” she declared. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“And he should be paying you for it. Otherwise he is using you for his own gain and leaving you and your family the poorer.” I should have left it there, where my words might have had a positive effect. But I could not resist pressing harder. “His behavior does not speak well of his character, Mary. You would do better not to associate with such a man, for it will hurt you in the end. Already the town is talking, and it is worse than when you attended William Buckland.”