Remarkable Creatures

by Tracy Chevalier

  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.

  “Oh, Mary!” he cried.

  “Sir. Get me out, sir!”

  “I—I—” Mr. Buckland pulled at the rocks and mud but could not move them. “It’s too heavy, Mary. I can’t get you out with no tools.” He was in a kind of daze, as if he couldn’t think straight.

  We heard a cry then. We had forgot about Fanny. She was just a few feet from us, and weren’t so heavily buried as me, but there was blood on her face. She begun to scream, and Mr. Buckland jumped up and went to her. The clay was looser round her and he managed to shift it enough that he could pull her out. He wiped the blood from her face, and in doing so knocked the bonnet from her head, for he was scared and clumsy. It got caught up in a gust of wind and rolled away down the beach. Losing her bonnet seemed to upset Fanny more than anything else. “My bonnet!” she cried. “I need my bonnet. Mam will kill me if I lose it!” Then she screamed again as Mr. Buckland tried to move her.

  “Her leg is broken,” Mr. Buckland panted. “I’m going to have to leave you to get help.”

  At that moment part of the cliff farther along crumbled and crashed to the ground. Fanny screamed again. “Don’t leave me, sir, please don’t leave me in this godforsaken place!”

  I did not want to be left either, but I did not cry out. “Best to carry her, sir, if you can. At least you can save one of us.”

  Mr. Buckland looked horrified. “Oh, I don’t think I should do that. It wouldn’t be proper.” It seemed even he, who ate field mice and carried a bright blue sack and pissed in the sea, was uneasy about holding a girl in his arms. But now was not the time for worrying about what was proper.

  “Put an arm round her shoulders and one under her knees and lift, sir,” I coached. “She’s a little thing—you should be able to carry her, even a scholar like you.”

  Mr. Buckland did what I said and heaved Fanny into his arms. She screamed again, in pain and shame. Letting her arms flop wide, she turned her head away from him.

  “For God’s sake, Fanny, put your arms round him!” I cried. “Help the man or he’ll never get you back.”

  Fanny obeyed me, throwing her arms round his neck and burying her head against his chest.

  “Take her to the bath house—that’s the closest place—and send people straight back with spades.” I wouldn’t normally direct a gentleman so, but Mr. Buckland seemed to have lost his wits. “Hurry, please, sir. I can’t bear being alone like this.”

  As he nodded, another section of cliff fell away with a crash. Mr. Buckland flinched, terror written all over his face. I fastened my eyes on his. “Sir, pray for me. And if I die, tell Mam and Joe—”

  “D-d-don’t say such a thing, Mary. I’ll be back shortly.” Mr. Buckland would not listen, but staggered away, Fanny gazing at me with glazed eyes over his shoulder. Now that she had surrendered to his arms, she was beyond care. Later Dr. Carpenter would set her leg, but the break was awkward and never healed properly, and left her with one leg shorter than the other. She could never walk far or stand for long, and could never again come out upon beach—not that she would want to. Whenever I saw her hobbling down Broad Street to the Three Cups, I ducked my head to avoid that fearful blue gaze.

  Course I didn’t know any of that then, held fast in the landslip. I watched Mr. Buckland weaving down the beach with his burden, not going fast enough for me, and wondered why it was that the pretty ones were always rescued before the plain. That was how the world worked: With her big eyes and dainty features, Fanny did not get stuck, whereas I was caught in the mud, the cliff threatening to crumble on top of me.

  There was a lot of time to think. I thought of Mr. Buckland and how odd it were that for an ordained man so interested in what God had been up to in the past, he hadn’t been much comfort with prayers but run away from them. I closed my eyes and said a long prayer myself, for God to spare me, to let me live on to help Mam and Joe, to find more crocs, to have enough to eat and coal to burn, even to have a husband and children one day. “And please, God, make Mr. Buckland a runner rather than a walker today. Make him find someone quick and come back.” Although Mr. Buckland was happy wandering miles along the cliff and regularly walked to Axminster and back while in Lyme, he did not hurry. He had a scholar’s belly on him, and I worried that with Fanny in his arms he would not get back quick enough to save me.

  It was quiet now. The wind had died down, and a fine misty rain sprayed my face. Now and then I heard the faint skitter of more debris tumbling down the cliff to the ground. I couldn’t see it because it were behind me and I couldn’t turn my head all the way round. That was the worst, hearing it and not knowing how close i
t was, or if it would bury me.

  The mud that held me was cold and heavy and pressing on my chest, making it hard to breathe. I closed my eyes for a bit, thinking that sleep might make the time go faster. But I couldn’t sleep, so instead I followed Mr. Buckland in my mind as he went back to Lyme. Now he’s passing where we found the first croc, I thought. Now he’s passing the ledge with the ammo impressions. Now he’s reached the bend where the path starts. Now he’s in sight of Jefferd’s Baths. Maybe Mr. Jefferd is there and will come running, faster than Mr. Buckland. I traced the path there and back again—and it was not so far back to Lyme—but no one come.

  I opened my eyes. Mr. Buckland was a dot along Church Cliffs. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t got farther. But then, it was hard to say how much time had passed—it could have been ten minutes or hours. I looked the other way, down the beach towards Charmouth. There were no boats out, or fishermen checking crab pots, for it was too rough. There was no one at all. And the tide had turned, and was slowly creeping up.

  I gave up looking for help, and begun to notice things closer to me. The landslip had caused a churning up of rocks caught in an ooze of blue-gray clay. My eyes flicked over the stones near to me and come to rest on a familiar shape about four feet from me: a ring of overlapping bony scales the size of my fist. A croc’s eye. It were like it was staring straight at me. I cried out with the surprise of seeing it. Then, several feet past the eye, there was a movement. It was only tiny, but I cried out again, and it moved again. It was just a little pink spot sticking out of the clay, and with the rain in my eyes it was hard to see what it was. I wondered if it were a crab, scrabbling about in the mud.

  “Hey!” I called, and it moved. It was not a crab, but a finger. I felt so relieved and sick at the same time that I think I fainted. When I come to I looked at the spot again, and it wasn’t moving. I cleared my throat.