Remarkable Creatures (34 page)

I lugged the crate along Coombe Street, up Sherborne Lane, and all the way up Silver Street, cursing myself for being so generous, as it was heavy. When I reached Morley Cottage, however, the house was buttoned up tight, doors locked, shutters drawn, and no smoke from the chimney. I knocked on the front and back doors for a long time, but there was no answer. I were just coming round to the front again to try and peer through the crack in the shutters when one of their neighbors come out. “No point looking,” she said. “They’re not there. Gone to London yesterday.”

“London! Why?”

“It were sudden. They got word Miss Elizabeth is taken ill and dropped everything to go.”

“No!” I clenched my fists and leaned against the door. It seemed whenever I found something, I lost something else. I found an ichthyosaurus and lost Fanny. I found Colonel Birch and lost Miss Elizabeth. I found fame and lost Colonel Birch. Now I thought I’d found Miss Elizabeth again, only to lose her, perhaps forever.

I could not accept it. My life’s work was finding the bones of creatures that had been lost. I could not believe that I would not find Miss Elizabeth again too.

I did not take the crate of fossil fish back to Cockmoile Square, but left it round the back in Miss Louise’s garden, by the giant ammonite I’d once helped Miss Elizabeth bring back from Monmouth Beach. I was determined that she would one day sift through them and choose the best for her collection.

I wanted to hop on the next coach to London, but Mam wouldn’t let me. “Don’t be a fool,” she said. “What help could you be to the Philpots? They’d just have to waste their time looking after you rather than their sister.”

“I want to see her, and say sorry.”

Mam tutted. “You’re treating her like she’s dying and you want to make your peace with her. Do you think that will help her get well, with you sitting there with a long face saying sorry? It’ll send her to her grave quicker!”

I hadn’t thought of it that way. It was peculiar but sensible, like Mam herself.

So I didn’t go, though I vowed one day I would get to London, just to prove I could. Instead Mam wrote to the Philpots for news, her hand being less upsetting to the family than mine. I wanted her to ask about Cuvier’s accusation and the Geological Society meeting too, but Mam wouldn’t, as it weren’t polite to be thinking about myself at a time like this. Also, it would remind the Philpots of why Miss Elizabeth had gone to London, and make them angry at me all over again.

Two weeks later we got a brief letter from Miss Louise, saying Miss Elizabeth were over the worst of it. The pneumonia had weakened her lungs, though, and the doctors thought she would not be able to return to live in Lyme because of the damp sea air.

“Nonsense,” Mam snorted. “What do we have all those visitors for if not for the sea air and water being good for their health? She’ll be back. You couldn’t keep Miss Elizabeth away from Lyme.” After years of suspicion of the London Philpots, now Mam was their biggest supporter.

As certain as she seemed, I weren’t so sure. I was relieved Miss Elizabeth had survived, but it looked like I’d lost her anyway. There was little I could do, though, and once Mam had written again to say how glad we all was, we didn’t hear anything more from the Philpots. Nor did I know what had happened with Monsieur Cuvier. I had no choice but to live with the uncertainty.

 

 

 

MAM LIKES TO REPEAT that old saw that it don’t rain but pour. I don’t agree with her when it comes to weather. I been out upon beach for years and years in days where it don’t pour, but spits now and then, the sky never making up its mind what it wants to do.

With curies, though, she were right. We could go months, years, without finding a monster. We could be brought to our knees with how poor we were, how cold and hungry and desperate. Other times, though, we would find more than we needed or could work on. That was how it was when the Frenchman come.

It were one of those glorious days in late June when you know from the sun and the balmy breeze that summer has come at last and you can begin to let go of the tightness in your chest that’s kept you fighting against the cold all winter and spring. I was out on the ledges off Church Cliffs, extracting a very fine specimen of
Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris
—I can say that now, for the men have identified and named four species, and I know each one just from a glance. There were no tail or paddles, but it had tightly packed vertebrae, and long, thin jaws reaching a point, with the small, fine teeth intact. Mam had already written to Mr. Buckland asking him to tell the Duke of Buckingham, who we knew wanted an ichie as company to the plesie.

Someone come to stand near me as I worked. I was used to visitors looking over my shoulder and seeing what the famous Mary Anning were up to. Sometimes I could hear them talking about me from a distance. “What do you think she’s found there?” they’d say. “Is it one of those creatures? A crocodile or, what was it I read, a giant turtle without its shell?”

Though I smiled to myself, I didn’t bother to correct them. It was hard for people to understand that there had lived creatures they could not even imagine and that no longer existed. It had taken me years to accept the idea, even when I had seen the evidence so plainly before me. Though they respected me more now I’d found two kinds of monsters, people were not going to change their minds simply because Mary Anning told them so. I had learned that much from taking out curious visitors. They wanted to find treasure upon beach, they wanted to see monsters, but they did not want to think about how and when those monsters lived. It challenged their idea of the world too much.

Now the spectator moved so that he blocked the sun and his shadow fell on the ichie, and I had to look up. It was one of the burly Day brothers, Davy or Billy, I wasn’t sure which. I laid down my hammer, wiped my hands, and stood.

“Sorry to bother you, Mary,” he said, “but there be something Billy and me need to show you, back by Gun Cliff.” As he spoke he glanced down at the ichie, checking my work, I expect. I’d got much better over the years at chiseling out a specimen from the rock, and didn’t need the Days to help so much, except sometimes to carry slabs of rock back to the workshop.

Their opinion mattered to me, though, and I was glad to see he looked satisfied with what I’d done so far. “What have you found?”

Davy Day scratched his head. “Don’t know. One of them turtles, maybe.”

“A plesie?” I said. “Are you sure?”

Davy shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, it could be a crocodilly. I never knowed the difference.” Recently the Days had begun sea-quarrying in the Blue Lias, and often found things in the ledges off Lyme. They never wanted to understand what they dug up. They knew it made me and them money, and that was all they cared about. People often come to me to help them with what they found. Usually it was a small bit of ichie—a jawbone, some teeth, a few verteberries fused together.

I picked up my hammer and basket. “Tray, stay,” I commanded, snapping my fingers and pointing. Tray come running up from the water’s edge, where he had been chasing the waves. He curled his black-and-white body into a ball and lay his chin on a rock next to the ichie. He was a gentle little dog, but he growled when anyone come near one of my specimens.

I followed Davy Day round the bend that hid Lyme. The sun lit the houses piling up the hill, and the sea was silvery like a mirror. The boats moored in the harbor were strewn about like sticks, abandoned however the water set them on the seabed at low tide. My heart brimmed with fondness for these sights. “Mary Anning, you are the most famous person in this town,” I said to myself. I knew very well I was too full of pride, and would have to go to chapel and pray to be forgiven my sin. But I couldn’t help it: I had come such a long way since Miss Elizabeth first hired the Days for us so many years before, when I was young and poor and ignorant. Now people come to visit me and write about what I found. It was hard not to get a big head. Even the people of Lyme were nicer to me, if only because I brought in visitors and more trade.

One thing did keep me from swelling too much, though, and were a little needle in my heart. Whatever I found, whatever was said of me, Elizabeth Philpot was no longer in Lyme to share it with.

“It be here.” Davy Day gestured to where his brother was sitting, holding a wedge of pork pie in his big paw. Near him was a load of cut stone on a wooden frame they were using to carry it. Billy Day looked up, his mouth full, and nodded.

I always felt a little awkward with Billy, now he was married to Fanny Miller. He never said anything, but I often wondered if Fanny spoke harsh words about me to him. I weren’t exactly jealous of her—quarrymen are not considered suitable for any but the most desperate women. But their marriage reminded me that I was at the very bottom of the heap, and would never marry. Fanny was having all the time what I experienced only the once with Colonel Birch in the orchard. I had my fame to comfort me, and the money it brought in, but that only went so far. I could not hate Fanny, for it were my fault she was crippled. But I could not ever feel friendly towards her nor comfortable round her.

That was the case with many people in Lyme. I had come unstuck. I would never be a lady like the Philpots—no one would ever call me Miss Mary. I would be plain Mary Anning. Yet I weren’t like other working people either. I was caught in between, and always would be. That brought freedom, but it was lonely too.

Luckily the ledges gave me plenty of things to think about other than myself. Davy Day pointed at a ridge of rock, and I leaned over and made out a very clear line of vertebrae about three feet long. It seemed so obvious I chuckled. I had been over these ledges hundreds of times and not seen it. It always surprised me what could be found here. There were hundreds of bodies surrounding us, waiting for a pair of keen eyes to find them.

“We was carrying a load to Charmouth and Billy tripped over the ridge,” Davy explained.

“You tripped over it, not me,” Billy declared.

“It were you, you dolt.”

“Not me—you.”

I let the brothers argue and studied the vertebrae with growing excitement. They were longer and fatter than an ichie’s. I followed the line to where the paddles would be and saw there enough evidence of long phalanges to convince me. “It’s a plesiosaurus,” I announced. The Days stopped arguing. “A turtle,” I conceded, for they would never learn that long, strange word.

Davy and Billy looked at each other and then at me. “That be the first monster we ever found,” Billy said.

“So it is,” I agreed. The Days had uncovered giant ammonites, but never an ichie or plesie. “You’ve become fossil hunters.”

In unison the Days took a step back, as if distancing themselves from my words. “Oh no, we be quarrymen,” Billy said. “We deal in stone, not monsters.” He nodded at the blocks of stone awaiting their delivery to Charmouth.

I was astonished at my own luck. There was probably a whole specimen here, and the Days didn’t want it! “Then I’ll pay you for your time in digging it out for me and will take it off your hands,” I suggested.

“Don’t know. We got the stone to deliver.”

“After that, then. I can’t get this out myself—as you saw, I am working on an ich—a crocodile.”

I wondered if I were imagining it, but it seemed that for once the Days were not in complete agreement. Billy was more uneasy about having anything to do with the plesie. I took a chance then at guessing the matter. “Are you going to let Fanny rule what you do, then, Billy Day? Does she think a turtle or crocodile will turn round and bite you?”

Billy hung his head while Davy laughed. “You got the measure of him!” He turned to his brother. “Now, are we going to dig this out for Mary or are you going to sit with your wife while she holds your balls in her claws?”

Billy bunched up his mouth like a wad of paper. “How much you pay us?”

“A guinea,” I answered promptly, feeling generous, and also hoping such a fee would stop Fanny’s complaints.

“We got to take this load to Charmouth first,” Davy said. That was his way of saying yes.

There were so many people upon beach now looking for fossils, especially on a sunny day like this one, that I had to get Mam to come and sit with the plesie so no one else would claim it as theirs. Summers were like that now, and it was partly my fault, for making Lyme beaches so famous. It was only in winter that the shore cleared of people, driven away by the bitter wind and rain. That was when I could go out all day and not meet another soul.

The Days worked fast and got the plesie out in two days, about the same time I finished with my ichie. As I was just round the corner from them, I could go back and forth between the two sites and give them instructions. It weren’t a bad specimen, though it had no head. Plesies seem to lose their heads easily.

We had just got both specimens back to the workshop when Mam called from her table out in the square, “Two strangers come to see you, Mary!”

“Lord help us, it’s too crowded here,” I muttered. I thanked the Days and sent them out to be paid by Mam, and called for the visitors to come in. What a sight met them! Two monster specimens laid out in slabs on the floor—indeed, covering so much of it the men couldn’t even step inside, but hung in the doorway, their eyes wide. I felt a little jolt of lightning run through me, one I couldn’t explain, and knew then that they could not be ordinary visitors.

“My apologies for the mess, gentlemen,” I said, “but I’ve just brung in two animals and not had a chance to sort them out yet. Were there something I can help you with?” I knew I must look a sight, with Blue Lias mud all over my face and my eyes flaming red from working so hard to get the ichie out.

The young one—not much older than me, and handsome, with deep-set blue eyes, a long nose, and a fine chin—recovered himself first. “Miss Anning, I am Charles Lyell,” he said with a smile, “and I bring with me Monsieur Constant Prévost, from Paris.”