Remarkable Creatures

by Tracy Chevalier

  at Lyme and Charmouth, in Dorsetshire

  consisting principally of Bones,

  illustrating the

  Osteology of the Ichthio-Saurus, or Proteo-Saurus,

  and of Specimens of

  the Zoophyte, called Pentacrinite,

  the Genuine Property of Colonel Birch,

  collected at a considerable Expense,

  which will be sold at Auction,

  by Mr. Bullock,

  at his Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly

  on Monday, the 15th Day of May, 1820

  Punctually at one o’clock

  I studied this page without really taking it in. Only when I turned the pages of the catalogue and read the list of specimens, each of which I could picture and name where it had been found, did I begin to understand. He was selling it, every last cury I had worked so hard to add to his collection just for the satisfaction of knowing he would be handling it. All the pentacrinites he loved so, the ammos and parts of lobsters, the fish I should really have given to Elizabeth Philpot, the strange crustaceous insect I had never seen before and would have studied more carefully with the Philpots’ magnifying glass, but that he wanted it. All the fragments of ichies, jaws and teeth and eye sockets and verteberries, all about to be scattered.

  And of course the ichie, the most perfect specimen I’d ever seen, that I’d stayed up night after night to finish cleaning and mounting the very best I could. I did it all for him, and now he was going to sell it, just like Lord Henley sold my first ichie. And Mr. Bullock was in the middle of it again. My head buzzed so that I thought it would explode. I held the catalogue tight in my hands, wanting to rip it apart. I would have done so if it had been sent to me rather than Joe. I would have torn it all apart and thrown it in the fire, catalogue and letter alike.

  The letter. I had not read it yet. I had such an ache behind my eyes I weren’t sure I could read anything now. But I unfolded it, smoothed it out, rubbed my eyes, and let them rest on his words. Then I begun to read.

  When I finished, my throat was that tight I couldn’t swallow, and I’d gone hot in the face like I’d run all the way up Broad Street. By the time Mam and Joe come in, I was sobbing so hard my heart was sure to come out of my mouth.

  THERE WERE THREE COACHES a week from London, and each one brought me another piece of the puzzle of what had gone on there.

  The newspaper account arrived first. Normally there was no money for newspapers, but Mam come home with one. “We has to find out if we can afford this newspaper” was her logic. I could hardly turn the pages, my hands were trembling so. On page three I found the following notice and read it out to Mam and Joe:An auction yesterday by Mr. Bullock at his Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly of the fossil collection of Lt. Col. Thomas Birch, late of the Life Guards, has raised in excess of £400. The collection included a fine and rare specimen of the ichthyosaurus, which was sold to the Royal College of Surgeons for £100. Lt. Col. Birch announced that the funds raised would be given to the Anning family of Lyme Regis, who helped him to assemble the collection.

  It was brief, but it was enough. To see it in print like that made my hands go cold.

  Mam was usually cautious with money, making no plans for it until she held it in her hands. Seeing word of it in the newspaper, though, was as good as proof to her that it was coming, and she begun discussing with Joe what to do with it. “We’ll pay off our debts,” Joe said. “Then we’ll think about buying a house further uphill, away from the floods.” Cockmoile Square was regularly flooded, by the river or the sea.

  “I’m in no hurry to move,” Mam replied, “but we do need new furniture. And then you’ll need money to set up a proper upholstery business.” They talked on and on, with plans they’d never dared to dream of a week ago, relaxing in the luxury of being able to fart in the face of the workhouse, as Mam put it. It was comical how quick they went from being poor to thinking rich. I didn’t say anything as they talked, nor did they expect me to. We all knew we were getting the money because of me. I had done my part, and it were like I was a queen and could sit back and let my courtiers arrange things.

  I didn’t want to talk anyway, for I could not put my head to plans. All I wanted was to run off to the cliffs to be alone and think of Colonel Birch and what his actions meant. I wanted to relive the kiss he gave me, and go over every feature of his face, and recall his voice, and all the things he said to me, and all the ways he looked at me, and all the days we spent together. That is what I wanted to do, sitting at our only table. Not for long, it seemed—if Mam had her way we’d be buying a mahogany dining set to rival Lord Henley’s.

  I got out the locket and begun to wear it again, under my clothes. I didn’t want to talk about Colonel Birch to Mam or Joe, for I didn’t know his intentions towards me. He’d not said in the letter, which was after all addressed to Joe as man of the family, and so was formal rather than loving. He wanted to do things proper. But what man would give a family £400 and not have real intentions?

  When the next coach come from London I was at Charmouth, waiting for it. I’d begun to go upon beach again, to hunt curies. When the coach were due I went up the lane to meet it, even though I’d said nothing to Mam or Joe about going and hadn’t even thought through what I would do when I saw Colonel Birch. I just went and sat outside the Queen’s Arms, where others were waiting as well, to meet passengers or take the coach on to Exeter. I got funny looks, which was nothing new, except instead of sneers there was wonder and respect, which I hadn’t felt since first discovering the ichthyosaurus. The news of our fortune had spread.

  When the coach appeared, my stomach flip-flopped like a fish in the bottom of a boat. It seemed to take a year to drive up the long hill through the village. When at last it stopped and the door opened, I closed my eyes and tried to calm my heart, which had joined my stomach—two fish now flopping.

  Then Margaret Philpot stepped down, and then Miss Louise, and finally Miss Elizabeth. I had not expected the Philpots. Normally Miss Elizabeth wrote to tell me which coach they would be on, but I’d had no letter. I did wonder if Colonel Birch might come out as well, but I knew Miss Elizabeth would never ride in the same coach as him.

  I was never so disappointed as at that moment.

  But they were my friends, and I went up to greet them. “Oh, Mary,” Miss Margaret cried, hanging on my neck, “what news we have for you! It is so overwhelming I almost can’t speak!” She clutched a handkerchief to her mouth.

  Laughing, I freed myself from her embrace. “I know, Miss Margaret. I know about the auction. Colonel Birch wrote to Joe. And we saw the newspaper account.”

  Miss Margaret’s face fell, and I felt a little bad to have robbed her of the pleasure of giving me such dramatic good news. But she soon recovered. “Oh, Mary,” she said, “how your fortunes have changed. I am so glad for you!”

  Miss Louise too beamed at me, but Miss Elizabeth merely said, “It is good to see you, Mary,” and pecked at the air near my cheek. As usual she smelt of rosemary, even after two days in a coach.

  When the Philpots and their things had been transferred to a cart to go on to Lyme, Miss Margaret called out, “Won’t you come with us, Mary?”

  “Can’t.” I gestured towards the beach. “I’ve curies to pick up.”

  “Come and see us tomorrow, then!” With a wave they left me alone at Charmouth. It was then the disappointment that Colonel Birch had not been on the coach struck me, and I went back upon beach feeling low and not at all like a girl whose family was coming into £400. “He’ll be on the next one,” I said aloud to comfort myself. “He’ll come and I’ll have him to myself.”

  NORMALLY WHEN THE PHILPOTS suggested I visit them, I went straightaway. I always liked Morley Cottage, for it was warm and clean and full of food and the good smells from Bessy’s baking—even if she liked to scowl at me. There were views of Golden Cap and the coast to lift the heart, and Miss Elizabeth’s fish to look at. Miss Margaret played the piano to entertain us and Mis
s Louise gave me flowers to bring home. Best of all, Miss Elizabeth and I talked about fossils and looked over books and articles together.

  Now, though, I didn’t want to see Miss Elizabeth. She had kept an eye on me for most of my life and had become my friend even when others wouldn’t, but when she stepped off the coach in Charmouth I sensed disapproval from her rather than any happiness at seeing me again. Maybe she was not thinking of me, though. Maybe she was ashamed of herself. And she should be—her judgment of Colonel Birch had been completely wrong, and she must feel bad about it, though she wouldn’t say so. I could afford to be generous and ignore her foul mood, for I loved a man who would pull me from my poverty and make me happy, while she had no one. But I would not seek her out to sour my happiness.

  I found reasons why I couldn’t go up Silver Street. I needed to hunt curies to make up for the months when I hadn’t. Or I insisted on cleaning the house to prepare for Colonel Birch coming to see us. Or I went out to Pinhay Bay to find him a pentacrinite since he had sold all of his. Then I went to meet each coach from London, though three came and went without him stepping off.

  I was on my way back from the third coach, cutting through St. Michael’s from the cliff path, when I met Miss Elizabeth coming the other way. Both of us jumped a little, startled, like we wished we’d seen the other first and had held back so we wouldn’t have to stop and greet each other.

  Miss Elizabeth asked if I had been upon beach, and I had to admit I’d gone to Charmouth without hunting. She knew it were the day the coach arrived—I could see it in her face, working out why I had been there and trying to hide her displeasure. She changed the subject, and we talked a little of Lyme and its doings while she had been gone. It was awkward, though, not the way we usually were with each other, and after a time we fell silent. I felt stiff, as if I’d sat too long on a leg and it had gone to sleep. It made me stand funny. Miss Elizabeth too held her head at an angle, like her neck still had a crick in it from all that riding in the London coach.

  I was about to make an excuse and set off for Cockmoile Square when Miss Elizabeth seemed to reach a decision. When she is going to say something important she sticks out her chin and tightens her jaw. “I want to tell you about what happened in London, Mary. You are not to tell anyone I told you. Not your mother or brother, nor particularly my sisters, for they do not know what I witnessed.” Then she told me all about the auction, describing in detail what was sold and who was there and what they bought, how even the Frenchman Cuvier wanted a specimen for Paris. She said how Colonel Birch made his announcement about me at the end, naming me as the hunter. All the time she was talking I felt I were listening to a lecture about someone else, a Mary Anning who lived in another town, in another country, on the other side of the world, who collected something other than fossils—butterflies or old coins.

  Miss Elizabeth frowned. “Are you listening, Mary?”

  “I am, ma’am, but I’m not sure I’m hearing right.”

  Miss Elizabeth gazed at me, her gray eyes pinched and serious. “Colonel Birch has named you in public, Mary. He has told some of the most interested fossil collectors in the country to seek you out. They will be coming here to ask you to take them out as you have done Colonel Birch. You must prepare yourself, and take care that you don’t . . . compromise your character further.” She said the last with such a pursed mouth it were a marvel any words come out at all.

  I fingered some lichen on the gravestone I stood next to. “I am not worried for my character, ma’am, nor what others think of me. I love Colonel Birch and am waiting for him to come back.”

  “Oh, Mary.” A whole set of emotions crossed Miss Elizabeth’s face—it was like watching playing cards being dealt one after the other—but mostly there was anger and sadness. Those two combined make jealousy, and it come over me then that Elizabeth Philpot was jealous of the attention Colonel Birch paid me. She shouldn’t be. She never had to sell or burn her furniture to keep a roof over her head and stay warm. She had plenty of tables rather than just the one. She didn’t go out every day no matter the weather or her health and stay out for hours hunting curies till her head swam. She didn’t have chilblains on her hands and feet, and fingertips cut and torn and gray with embedded clay. She didn’t have neighbors talking about her behind her back. She should pity me, and yet she envied me.

  I shut my eyes for a moment, steadying myself with the gravestone. “Why can’t you be glad for me?” I said. “Why can’t you say, ‘I hope you will be very happy’?”

  “I”—Miss Elizabeth gulped as if words were choking her—“I do hope that,” she finally managed to say, though it come out all strangled. “But I don’t want you to make a fool of yourself. I want you to think sensibly about what is possible for your life.”

  I ripped the lichen off the stone. “You’re jealous of me.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Yes, you are. You’re jealous of Colonel Birch because he courted me. You loved him and he paid no attention to you.”

  Miss Elizabeth looked stricken, like I’d hit her. “Stop, please.”

  But it was as if a river had risen in me and broken its banks. “He never even looked at you. It was me he wanted! And why shouldn’t he? I’m young, and I’ve got the eye! All your education and your £150 a year and your elderflower champagne and your silly tonics, and your silly sisters with their turbans and roses. And your fish! Who cares about fish when there are monsters in the cliffs to be found? But you won’t find them because you haven’t got the eye. You’re a dried-up old spinster who will never get a man or a monster. And I will.” It felt so good and so horrible to say these things aloud that I thought I might be sick.

  Miss Elizabeth stood very still. It were like she was waiting for a gust of wind to blow itself out. When it had and I was finished, she took a deep breath, though what come out were almost a whisper, with no force behind it. “I saved your life once. I dug you out of the clay. And this is how you repay me, with the unkindest thoughts.”

  The wind come back like a gale. I cried out in such rage Miss Elizabeth stepped back. “Yes, you saved my life! And I’ll feel the burden of being grateful to you for always. I’ll never be equal to you, no matter what I do. Whatever monsters I find, however much money I earn, it will never equal your place. So why can’t you leave Colonel Birch to me? Please.” I was crying now.

  Miss Elizabeth watched me with her level gray eyes until I had used up my tears. “I release you of the burden of your gratitude, Mary,” she said. “I can at least do that. I dug you out that day as I would have done for anyone, and as anyone else passing would have done for you too.” She paused, and I could see her deciding what to say next. “But I must tell you something,” she continued, “not to hurt you, but to warn you. If you are expecting anything from Colonel Birch you will be disappointed. I had occasion to meet him before the auction. We ran into each other at the British Museum.” She paused. “He was accompanying a lady. A widow. They seemed to have an understanding. I’m telling you this so that you will not have your expectations raised. You are a working girl, and you cannot expect more than you have. Mary, don’t go.”

  But I had already turned and begun to run, as fast and far from her words as I could.

  I WAS NOT THERE to meet the next London coach when it come to Charmouth. It was a soft afternoon, with plenty of visitors out, and I was behind the table outside our house, selling curies to passersby.

  I am not a superstitious person, but I knew he would come, for though he did not know it, it was my birthday. I had never had a birthday present and was due one. Mam would say his auction money was the present, but to me he was the gift.

  When the clock on the Shambles bell tower struck five I begun to follow Colonel Birch’s progress in my mind even as I was selling. I saw him alight from the coach and hire a horse from the stables, then ride along the road till he could cut across one of Lord Henley’s fields above Black Ven to Charmouth Lane. He would follow that to Church S
treet, then down past St. Michael’s and into Butter Market. There all he had to do was to go right round the corner and he’d come into Cockmoile Square.

  When I looked up, he appeared just as I knew he would, riding up on his borrowed chestnut horse and looking down at me. “Mary,” he said.

  “Colonel Birch,” I replied and curtseyed very low, as if I were a lady.

  Colonel Birch dismounted, reached for my hand and kissed it in front of all the visitors rummaging through the curies and the villagers walking past. I didn’t care. When he looked up at me, still bent over my hand, I spied behind his gladness uncertainty, and I knew then that Elizabeth Philpot had not been lying about the widow lady. As much as I had wanted to disbelieve her, she was not the sort to lie. As gently as I could, I pulled my hand from Colonel Birch’s grasp. Then the shadow of uncertainty become a true flame of sorrow, and we stood looking at each other without speaking.

  Over Colonel Birch’s shoulder there was a movement that distracted me from his sad eyes, and I saw a couple come arm in arm along Bridge Street, he stocky and strong, she bobbing up and down at his side like a boat in rough water. It was Fanny Miller, who had lately married Billy Day, one of the quarrymen who helped me dig out monsters. Even the quarrymen were taken, then. Fanny stared at us. When she met my eye she clutched her husband’s arm and hurried away along the street as fast as her game leg would let her.

  Then I knew what I would do with Colonel Birch, widow lady or no. It would be my present to myself, for I was not likely to have another chance. I nodded at him. “Go and see Mam, sir. She’s been expecting you. I’ll find you after.”

  I did not want to watch him hand over the money. Though I was grateful for it, I did not want to see it. I only wanted to see him. When he had tied up the horse and gone inside, I packed away the curies, then went quick up Butter Market and followed Colonel Birch’s path in reverse. I knew he would lodge as he always did at the Queen’s Arms in Charmouth, and so would pass this way again. When I got to Lord Henley’s field off Charmouth Lane I crossed to a stile and sat on it to wait.