Remarkable Creatures

by Tracy Chevalier

  Mr. Buckland got down from his horse and stumbled across the pebbles. The mare must have been so used to his constant stopping that she just stood there without having to be tied up. “I heard you found another monster, and I’ve come all the way from Oxford to see it,” he declared, his eyes already scanning the landslip. “I canceled my last lectures just to come early.” As he talked he never stopped moving about and peering at things. He picked up a clod of mud, studied it, dropped it, and picked up another. Each time he stooped I got a glimpse of the bald spot on top of his head. He had a round face like a baby’s, with big lips and sparkling eyes, and sloping shoulders and a little belly. He made me want to laugh, even when he hadn’t made a joke.

  He was looking eager and expectant, gazing here and there, and I realized he thought the croc was still on the beach. “It ain’t here, sir. We got it back at the workshop. I’m cleaning it,” I added with pride.

  “Are you, now? Well done, well done.” Mr. Buckland looked disappointed for a moment that he wouldn’t see the croc right there, but he soon recovered. “Let us go to your workshop, then, Mary, and on the way you can show me where you dug up the creature.”

  As we started along the beach towards Lyme, I noted all the hammers and bags hanging off his poor, patient horse. There was also, tied to the bridle and flopping against the horse’s side, a dead seagull. “Sir,” I said, “what you doing with that gull?”

  “Ah, I’m going to have the kitchen at the Three Cups roast it for my dinner! I am eating my way through the animal kingdom, you see, and have had such things as hedgehogs and field mice and snakes, yet in all this time I haven’t had a common gull.”

  “You’ve eaten mice!”

  “Oh, yes. They are rather good on toast.”

  I wrinkled my nose at the thought, and at the smell of the bird. “But—the gull stinks, sir!”

  Mr. Buckland sniffed. “Does it?” For such a keen observer of the world, he often overlooked the obvious. “Never mind, I’ll have them boil it up, and use the skeleton for my lectures. Now, what have you found today?”

  Mr. Buckland got very excited by the things I showed him—some golden ammos, a fish’s scaly tail I would give to Miss Elizabeth, and a verteberry the size of a guinea. He asked so many questions, mixing in his own thoughts as he did, that I begun to feel like a pebble rolled back and forth in the tide. Then he insisted we turn round and go back to the landslip to look for more. The mare and I followed him until he stopped suddenly, just a stone’s throw from the slip, and said, “No, no, I won’t have time—I’m to meet Dr. Carpenter at the Three Cups shortly. Let’s come back this afternoon.”

  “Can’t, sir—the tide’ll be in.”

  Mr. Buckland looked puzzled, as if a high tide were nothing to consider.

  “We can’t reach the landslip along this side of the beach when the tide’s high,” I explained. “Because of the cliffs bulging out there. The beach gets cut off.”

  “What about coming from the Charmouth end?”

  I shrugged. “We could—but we’d have to go all the way round along the road to get to Charmouth first. Or take the cliff path—but that’s not stable now, as you can see, sir.” I nodded towards the landslip.

  “We can ride my mare to Charmouth—that’s what she’s here for. She’ll take us quick as you like.”

  I hesitated. Though I had accompanied gentlemen upon beach, I had never ridden on a horse with one. The townsfolk would certainly have things to say about that. Though Mr. Buckland’s high spirits seemed innocent to me, they might not to others. Besides, I didn’t like being upon beach at high tide, hemmed in between cliff and sea. If there were another slip, there was nowhere to escape to.

  It was hard arguing with Mr. Buckland, for his enthusiasm ran roughshod over everything. However, I soon discovered he changed his mind so often that by the time he reached Lyme he’d had about a dozen other ideas of how to spend the afternoon, and we didn’t return to the landslip at all that day.

  Mr. Buckland didn’t get to see where I’d dug up the second croc, as the tide had covered the ledge by the time we passed it. I did show him the cliff where the first one had come from, though, and he made a little sketch. He kept stopping to look at things—silly, some of them, like ammo impressions in the rock ledges that he had surely seen many times before—so I had to remind him of Dr. Carpenter waiting for him at the Three Cups, as well as the much more interesting specimen sitting in the workshop. “Did you know, sir,” I added, “that Dr. Carpenter saved my life when I were a baby?”

  “Did he, now? That is what doctors often do—dose babies when they have fevers.”

  “Oh, it was more than that, sir. I’d been struck by lightning, see, and Dr. Carpenter told my parents to put me in a bath of lukewarm water—”

  Mr. Buckland halted on the rock he was about to jump from. “You were struck by lightning?” he cried, his eyes wide and delighted.

  I stopped as well, embarrassed now that I had brought it up. I did not normally talk about the lightning to anyone but had wanted to show off to this clever Oxford gentleman. This was the only thing I could think of that would impress him. It was silly, really, for it turned out later I were more than a match for him when it come to finding and identifying fossils, and his feeble grasp of anatomy sometimes made me laugh. I didn’t know that at the time, though, and so I spent an uncomfortable time being questioned by him about what had happened to me in that field when I were a baby.

  It did have its effect, though, for Mr. Buckland clearly respected me for my experience. “That is truly remarkable, Mary,” he said at last. “God spared you and gave you an experience almost unique in the world. Your body housed the lightning and clearly benefited from it.” He looked me up and down, and I blushed with the attention.

  At last we got back, and I left Mr. Buckland in the workshop, hopping round the crocodile and calling out questions to me even as I went up to the kitchen. Mam was at the range, boiling another family’s linens. Doing laundry brought her just enough money for coal to keep the fire going so that she could wash another set of linens. She never liked it when I pointed out this circle to her.

  “Who’s that downstairs?” she demanded now, hearing Mr. Buckland’s voice. “You get tuppence off him to see it?”

  I shook my head. “Mr. Buckland’s not the tuppence type.”

  “Course he is. You don’t let anyone see that thing without paying. Penny for the poor, tuppence for the rich.”

  “You ask him, then.”

  Mam frowned. “I will.” Handing me the paddle she used to stir the linens, she wiped her hands on her apron and headed downstairs. I poked at the washing, happy enough for a little break from Mr. Buckland’s questions—though it would have been funny to see Mam try to cope with him. She was fine with some of the other gentlemen. Henry De La Beche, for instance, she bossed about like another son. But William Buckland defeated even my mam. She come up a time later, exhausted from his constant chatter, and without tuppence. She shook her head. “Your pa used to tell me when that man come to the workshop, he’d give up getting any work done and settle back for a sleep while Mr. Buckland went on. Now, he wants you back down to tell him about the cleaning and what we’re going to do with it. Tell him we want a good price, and don’t want being cheated by a gentleman again!”

  When I come in Mr. Buckland was leaving by the door that led onto Cockmoile Square. “Oh, Mary, I’ll just be a moment. I’m fetching Carpenter here to see this. And a few others this afternoon who I’m sure will be most interested in it.”

  “Just as long as it’s not Lord Henley!” I called after him.

  Mr. Buckland stopped. “Why not Lord Henley?”

  I explained about the first croc, with its monocle, waistcoat, and straightened tail as Miss Philpot had described it. “That idiot!” Mr. Buckland cried. “He should have sold it to Oxford or the British Museum rather than to Bullock’s. I’m sure I could have convinced either to take it. I shall do so with this one.�
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  Without asking, Mr. Buckland took over the selling of the croc from Mam and Miss Elizabeth. Before Mam could stop him he’d written enthusiastic letters to possible buyers. She were cross at first, but not once he’d found us a rich gentleman in Bristol who paid us £40 for it—the museums having said no. That made up for all that Mam and me had to put up with from Mr. Buckland. For he was about all summer, fired with the idea of crocodiles entombed in the cliffs and ledges, waiting to be freed. While we had ours in the workshop, he was in and out all day as if the room were his, bringing with him gentlemen who poked about, measuring and sketching and discussing my croc. I noticed during all the talk, Mr. Buckland never once called it a crocodile. He was like Miss Elizabeth that way. It made me begin to accept it were something else—though until we knew what that was, I would still call it a crocodile.

  One day when it were just Mr. Buckland and me in the workshop, he asked if he could clean a bit of the croc himself. He was always keen to try out new things. I surrendered my brushes and blade, for I couldn’t say no to him, but I feared he would do real damage. He didn’t, but that was because he kept stopping and examining and talking about the croc till I wanted to scream. We needed to eat; we needed to pay the rent. We still had debts of Pa’s to pay, and the thought of ending up in the workhouse never left us. We couldn’t spend the time talking. We needed to sell the croc.

  Finally I managed to interrupt him. “Sir,” I said, “let me do the work and you do the talking, or this creature will never be ready.”

  “You’re quite right, Mary, of course you are.” Mr. Buckland handed me the blade, then sat back to watch me scrape along one of the ribs, freeing and brushing away the limestone that clung to it. Slowly a clear line emerged, and because I went at it carefully, the rib weren’t nicked or scored, but smooth and whole. For once he was quiet, and that made me ask the question I’d been wanting to for several days now. “Sir,” I said, “is this one of the creatures Noah brought on his ark?”

  Mr. Buckland looked startled. “Well, now, Mary, why do you ask that?”

  He didn’t go chatting on as he normally would, and his waiting for me to speak made me shy. I concentrated on the rib. “Dunno, sir, I just thought . . .”

  “What did you think?”

  Maybe he had forgotten I weren’t one of his students, but just a girl working to live. Still, for a moment I acted the student. “Miss Philpot showed me pictures of crocodiles drawn by Cruver—Cuver—the Frenchman who does all those studies of animals.”

  “Georges Cuvier?”

  “Yes, him. So we compared his drawings with this and found it were different in so many ways. Its snout is long and pointed like a dolphin’s, while a croc’s is blunt. And it’s got paddles instead of claws, and they’re turned outward rather than forward the way a croc’s legs are. And of course, that big eye. No crocodile has eyes like that. So Miss Philpot and I wondered what it could be if it’s not a croc. Then I heard you and a gentleman you brought here the other day, Reverend Conybeare. You was talking about the Flood”—actually they’d used the words “deluge” and “diluvian,” and I’d had to ask Miss Elizabeth what they meant—“and it made me wonder: If this ain’t a crocodile, which Noah would’ve had on the ark, then what is it? Did God make something that was on the ark we don’t know about? So that’s why I’m asking, sir.”

  Mr. Buckland was silent for longer than I thought he could ever manage. I begun to worry he didn’t understand what I meant, that I was too uneducated to make sense to an Oxford scholar. So I asked again, a slightly different question. “Why would God make creatures that don’t exist anymore?”

  Mr. Buckland looked at me with his big eyes, and I saw there a flickering worry.

  “You are not the only person to ask this question, Mary,” he said. “Many learned men are discussing it. Cuvier himself believes there is such a thing as the extinction of certain animals, in which they die away completely. I am not so sure of that, however. I cannot see why God would want to kill off what He has created.” Then he brightened, and the worry left his eyes. “My friend the Reverend Conybeare says that while the Scriptures tell us that God created Heaven and Earth, they don’t describe how He did it. That is open to interpretation. And that is why I’m here—to study this remarkable creature, and find more of them to study, and through careful contemplation arrive at an answer. Geology is always to be used in the service of religion, to study the wonders of God’s creation and marvel at His genius.” He ran a hand over the croc’s spine. “God in His infinite wisdom has peppered this world with mysteries for men to solve. This is one of them, and I am honored to take on the task.”

  His words sounded fine, but he had given no answer. Perhaps there was no answer. I thought for a moment. “Sir, do you think the world was created in six days, the way the Bible says?”

  Mr. Buckland waggled his head—not a yes or a no. “It has been suggested that ‘day’ is a word that should not be interpreted literally. If one thinks instead of each day as an epoch during which God created and perfected different parts of Heaven and Earth, then some of the tensions between geology and the Bible disappear. After five epochs, during which all of the layering of rock and the fossilization of animals occurred, then man was created. That is why there are no human fossils, you see. And once there were people, on the sixth ‘day,’ the Flood came, and when it subsided, it left the world as we see it today, in all its grandeur.”

  “Where did all the water go?”

  Mr. Buckland paused, and I saw again that flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. “Back into the clouds from whence the rain came,” he replied.

  I knew I should believe him, as he taught at Oxford, but his answers did not feel complete. It was like having a meal and not getting quite enough to eat. I went back to cleaning the croc and did not ask more questions. It seemed I was always going to feel a little hollowed out round my monsters.

  MR. BUCKLAND STAYED AT the Three Cups in Lyme for much of the summer, long after the second crocodile had been cleaned, packed, and sent to Bristol. He often called for me at Cockmoile Square or asked me to meet him upon beach. He assumed I would accompany him and attend him, showing him where fossils could be found, sometimes finding them for him. He was particularly keen to find another monster, which he would take back to Oxford for his collection. While I wanted to find one too, I was never sure what would happen if we did discover one while out together. I had the eye and was more likely to spot it first. Would that mean Mr. Buckland should pay me for it? It was never clear, as we didn’t talk about money, though he was quick to thank me when I found curies for him. Even Mam didn’t mention it. Mr. Buckland seemed to be above money, as a scholar ought to be, living in a world where it didn’t matter.

  By then Joe was well into his apprenticeship and never come out with me unless there was heavy lifting or hammering to do. Sometimes Mam come with us and sat knitting while we ranged round her. But Mr. Buckland wanted to go farther than she did, and she had laundry to do and the house to look after, and the shop—for we still set out a table of curies in front of the workshop, the way Pa used to, and Mam sold ’em to visitors.

  Other times Miss Elizabeth went hunting with us. It weren’t as it had been with the other gentlemen, though, where she and I had laughed at the men behind their backs when they kept making beginner’s mistakes, picking up beef or thinking a bit of fossilized wood was a bone. Mr. Buckland was smarter, and kinder too, and I could see Miss Elizabeth liked him. I felt sometimes that she and I were two women competing for his attention, for I weren’t a child anymore. I would look up from my hunting and see her eyes lingering on him, and want to tease her about it but knew it would hurt her. Miss Elizabeth was clever, which Mr. Buckland appreciated. She could talk to him about fossils and geology, and read some of the scientific papers he lent her. But she was five years older than him, too old to start a family, and without the money or the looks to tempt him anyway. Besides, he was in love with rocks, and would fondle a
pretty bit of quartz more likely than flirt with a lady. Miss Elizabeth hadn’t a chance. Not that I did either.

  When we were together, she become quieter and sharper when she did speak. Then she made excuses, leaving us to walk farther down the beach, and I would see her in the distance, her back very straight, even when she stooped to examine something. Or she would say she preferred to hunt at Pinhay Bay or Monmouth Beach rather than by Black Ven, and disappear altogether.

  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.