Remarkable Creatures Part 17

"Did the men tell her? Did Cuvier write to one of them-Buckland or Conybeare-and they wrote to Miss Elizabeth? And now they're all talking about it in London, about-about us Annings and what we do to specimens." My mouth trembled so much I had to stop.

"Hush, Mary. Your mother came to see us."

"Mam?" Though relieved it was not from the men, I was shocked Mam went behind my back.

"She was worried about you," Miss Louise continued, "and Elizabeth decided she would try to help. Margaret and I could not understand why she felt she had to go in person rather than write to them, but she insisted it was better."

I nodded. "She's right. Them men don't always respond quick to letters. That's what Mam and I found. Sometimes I can wait over a year for a reply. When they want something they're quick, but they soon forget me. When I want something..." I shrugged, then shook my head. "I can't believe Miss Elizabeth would go all the way to London-on a s.h.i.+p-for me."

Miss Louise said nothing, but looked at me with her grey eyes so direct it made me drop mine.

I decided to visit Morley Cottage a few days later, to say sorry to Miss Margaret for taking her sister away. I brought with me a crate full of fossil fish I had been saving for Miss Elizabeth. It would be my gift to her for when she come back from London. That wouldn't be for some time, as she was likely to stay there for her spring visit, but it were a comfort to know the fish would be there waiting for her return.

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 b.u.t.toned 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 neighbours 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 f.a.n.n.y. 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 c.o.c.kmoile 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 to 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 were 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 sh.e.l.l?"

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 which 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 chiselling 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 jaw bone, 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 harbour were strewn about like sticks, abandoned however the water set them on the sea bed 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 wrote 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 f.a.n.n.y Miller. He never said anything, but I often wondered if f.a.n.n.y 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. f.a.n.n.y was getting 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 f.a.n.n.y, 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 weren't 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 f.a.n.n.y 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 f.a.n.n.y's complaints.

"We got to take this load to Charmouth first," Davy said. That were 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 sh.o.r.e 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 Prevost, from Paris."

"Paris?" I cried. I could not contain the panic in my voice.

The Frenchman gazed at the riot of stone on the floor, and then at me. "Enchante, mademoiselle," he said, bowing. Though he looked kindly, with curly hair and long sideburns and wrinkles round his eyes, his voice was serious.

"Oh!" He was a spy. A spy for Monsieur Cuvier, come to see what I was up to. I stared at the floor, looking at it as he must see it. Laid out side by side were two specimens-an ichie without a tail and a plesie without a head. The plesie's tail was detached from its pelvis and could easily be moved to complete the ichie. Or, I could take the ichie's head, remove some vertebrae from the neck of the plesie, and attach the head. Those who knew the two creatures well wouldn't be fooled, but idiots might buy them. From the evidence in front of him, it was easy enough for Monsieur Prevost to reach the conclusion I was about to join the two incomplete monsters together to create one whole, third monster.

I wanted to sit down with the suddenness of it all, but I couldn't in front of the men.

"I bring greetings from the Reverends Buckland and Conybeare," Charles Lyell went on, oblivious that he was adding fuel to the fire by mentioning their names. "I was Professor Buckland's student at Oxford, and-"

"Mr Lyell, sir, Monsieur Prevost," I interrupted, "I can tell you now I'm an honest woman. I would never fiddle with a specimen, whatever Baron Cuvier thinks! And I will swear on a Bible to it, sirs, that I will! We don't have a Bible here-we had one once for a bit but had to sell it. But I can take you to the Chapel right now and Reverend Gleed will hear me swear on it, if that will do any good. Or we can go to St Michael's, if you prefer. The vicar there don't know me well, but he'll provide a Bible."

Charles Lyell tried to interrupt me, but I could not stop. "I know these specimens here ain't whole, and I swear to you I will set them as I see them, and never try to swap parts. A plesiosaurus' tail might fit onto an ichthyosaurus, but I would never do that. And of course an ichie's head is far too big to fit onto the end of the plesie's neck. It would-n't work at all." I was babbling, and the Frenchman in particular was looking perplexed.

Then it all started to come down on me, and I had to sit, gentlemen or no. Truly I was ruined. Right there, in front of strangers, I begun to cry.

This upset the Frenchman more than any words could have done. He begun rattling away in French, with Mr Lyell interrupting him and speaking his own slow French, while all I could think of was that I wanted to call out to Mam to pay the Days just a pound, as I'd been too generous and we would need the extra s.h.i.+llings since I would no longer be able to hunt and sell monsters. I would have to go back to the piddling curies, the ammos and bellies and gryphies of my youth. Even then I wouldn't sell so many, as there were that many more hunters selling such things themselves. We would grow poor again, and Joe would never get to set up his own business, and Mam and I would always be stuck on c.o.c.kmoile Square and not move up the hill to a better shop. I let myself cry over my future until my tears were spent and the men were silent.

When they were sure I was done crying, Monsieur Prevost pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Leaning across the slabs so that he wouldn't step on the specimens, he held out the hankie to me like a white flag over a battlefield of stone. When I hesitated, he gestured with it to encourage me, and gave me a little smile that dug deep dimples in his cheeks. So I took it, and wiped my eyes on the softest, whitest cloth I'd ever touched. It smelled of tobacco and made me s.h.i.+ver and smile, for the lightning struck again, just a little. I made to hand it back, now smeared with Blue Lias clay, but he would not take it, indicating that I should keep it. It was then I begun to think maybe Monsieur Prevost were not a spy after all. I folded the handkerchief and tucked it away under my cap, for that was the only place in the room not filthy.

"Miss Anning, please let me speak," Charles Lyell begun tentatively, perhaps fearful I would burst out crying again. I did not; I was done. I noticed then that he was calling me Miss Anning rather than Mary.

"Perhaps I should explain to you what we are doing here. Monsieur Prevost kindly hosted me last year when I visited Paris, introducing me to Baron Cuvier at the Museum of Natural History and accompanying me on geological expeditions in the area. Thus when he wrote to say he was coming to England, I offered to take him to some of the most important geological sites in the southern parts of the country. We have been to Oxford, Birmingham and Bristol, and down to Cornwall and back, via Exeter and Plymouth. Naturally we were keen to come to Lyme Regis and visit you, to go out on the beaches where you collect fossils and to see your workshop. Indeed, Monsieur Prevost has just said he is most impressed by what he sees here. He would tell you himself, but alas, he speaks no English."

As Mr Lyell was speaking, the Frenchman squatted by the ichthyosaurus and run a finger up and down its ribs, which were almost complete and beautifully s.p.a.ced like iron railings. I could no longer just sit while he was crouching with his thighs so near to me. I picked up a blade, kneeled by the ichie's jaw and begun to sc.r.a.pe at the shale clinging to it.

"We should like to examine the specimens you have found more closely, if we might, Miss Anning," Mr Lyell said. "We would like also to see where they have come from on the beach-they, and the plesiosaurus you found last December. A most remarkable specimen, with its extraordinary neck and head."

I froze. His bringing up the most worrying part of the plesie sounded suspicious. "You seen it?"

"Of course. I was there when it arrived at the Geological Society offices. Did you not hear of the drama of it?"

"I heard nothing. Sometimes I feel I could be the man in the moon, for the little I hear of what's happening in the scientific world. I had someone who was going to keep me informed, but-Mr Lyell, do you know of Elizabeth Philpot?"

"Philpot? No, I have not heard that name, I'm sorry. Should I know her?"

"No, no." Yes, I thought. Yes, you should. "What was it you was saying-about the drama?"

"The plesiosaurus was delayed in its arrival," Mr Lyell explained, "and did not reach London until almost two weeks after the Society meeting at which Reverend Conybeare was speaking of it. You know, Miss Anning, at the meeting Reverend Buckland was very complimentary of your collecting skills."

"He was?"

"Yes, indeed. Now, when the plesiosaurus arrived at last, the men could not get it up the stairs, for it was too wide."

"Six feet wide, the frame round it was. I know, for I built it. We had to turn it sideways to get it out this door."

"Of course. They tried the better part of a day to get it up to the meeting rooms. Finally, though, it had to be left in the entranceway, where many Society members came to look at it."

I watched the Frenchman crawl between the ichie and plesie to get round to the plesie's front paddle. I gestured with my head. "Did he see it?"

"Not in London, but when we went to Birmingham from Oxford, we stopped en route at Stowe House, where the Duke of Buckingham has taken it." Mr Lyell, though polite as a gentleman ought to be, made a little face. "It is a splendid specimen, but rather swamped by the Duke's extensive collection of glittering objects."

I paused, my hand on the ichie's jaw. So this poor specimen would go to a rich man's house, to be ignored amongst all the silver and gold. I could have wept. "So is he-" I nodded at Monsieur Prevost "-going to tell Monsieur Cuvier that the plesiosaurus isn't a fake? That it really does have a small head and a long neck and I weren't just putting two animals together?"

Monsieur Prevost glanced up from his study of the plesie with a keen look that made me think he understood more English than he spoke.

Mr Lyell smiled at me. "There is no need, Miss Anning. Baron Cuvier is fully convinced of the specimen, even without Monsieur Prevost having seen it. He has had a great deal of correspondence about the plesiosaurus with various of your champions: Reverend Buckland, Conybeare, Mr Johnson, Mr c.u.mberland-"

"I wouldn't call them my champions exactly," I muttered. "They like me when they need something."

"They have a great deal of respect for you, Miss Anning," Charles Lyell countered.

"Well." I was not going to argue with him about what the men thought of me. I had work to do. I begun sc.r.a.ping again.

Constant Prevost got to his feet, dusted off his knees and spoke to Mr Lyell. "Monsieur Prevost would like to know if you have a buyer for the plesiosaurus," he explained. "If not, he would like to purchase it for the museum in Paris."

I dropped my blade and sat back on my heels. "For Cuvier? Monsieur Cuvier wants one of my plesies?" I looked so astonished that both men begun to laugh.

It took Mam no time to bring me down from the cloud I was floating on. "What do Frenchmen pay for curies?" she wanted to know the minute the men had left to dine at the Three Cups and she could leave the table outside. "Are they looser with their purse strings or do they want it even cheaper than an Englishman?"

"I don't know, Mam-we didn't talk figures," I lied. I would find a better time to tell her I were so taken with the Frenchman that I'd agreed to sell it to him for just ten pounds. "I don't care how much he pays," I added. "I just know Monsieur Cuvier thinks well enough of my work to want more of it. That be pay enough for me."

Mam leaned in the doorway and give me a sly look. "So you're calling the plesie yours, are you?"

I frowned, but did not answer.

"The Days found it, didn't they?" she continued, relentless as always. "They found it and dug it up, and you bought it off them the way Mr Buckland or Lord Henley or Colonel Birch bought specimens off you and called them theirs. You become a collector like them. Or a dealer, as you're selling it on."

"That's not fair, Mam. I been a hunter all my life. And I do find most of my specimens. It's not my fault the Days found one and didn't know what to do with it. If they had dug it out and cleaned it and sold it, it would be theirs. But they didn't want that, and come to me. I oversaw them and paid them for their work, but the plesie's with me now. I'm responsible for it, and so it's mine."