Louise laid her hand over mine to stop me doing damage to one of Fortnum’s cups. I dropped the spoon and leaned forward. “Do you know, Louise,” I began, “I think—I think it’s not a crocodile at all. It doesn’t have the anatomy of a crocodile, but no one wants to say so publicly.”
Louise’s grey eyes remained clear and steady. “What is it, if not a crocodile?”
“A creature that no longer exists.” I waited for a moment, to see if God would bring the ceiling crashing down on me. Nothing happened, however, except for the waiter arriving to refill our cups.
“How can that be?”
“Do you know of the concept of extinction?”
“You mentioned it when you were reading Cuvier, but Margaret made you stop, for it upset her.”
I nodded. “Cuvier has suggested that animal species sometimes die out when they are no longer suited to survive in the world. The idea is troubling to people because it suggests that God does not have a hand in it, that He created animals and then sat back and let them die. Then there are those like Lord Henley, who say the creature is an early model for a crocodile, that God made it and rejected it. Some think God used the Flood to rid the world of animals He didn’t want. But these theories imply God could make mistakes and need to correct Himself. Do you see? All of these ideas upset someone. Many people, like our Reverend Jones at St Michael’s, find it easiest to accept the Bible literally and say God created the world and all its creatures in six days, and it is still exactly as it was then, with all of the animals still existing somewhere. And they find Bishop Ussher’s calculation of the world’s age as six thousand years comforting rather than limiting and a little absurd.” I picked up a langue de chat from the plate of biscuits between us and snapped it in two, thinking of my conversation with Reverend Jones.
“How does he explain Mary’s creature, then?”
“He thinks they are swimming about off the coast of South America, and we haven’t yet discovered them.”
“Could that be true?”
I shook my head. “Sailors would have seen them. We have been sailing around the world for hundreds of years and never had a sighting of such a creature.”
“And so you believe that what we were looking at in Bullock’s Museum is a fossilised body of an animal that no longer exists. It died out, for reasons that may or may not be God’s intention.” Louise said this carefully, as if to make it crystal clear to herself and to me.
“Yes.”
Louise chuckled and took a biscuit. “That would certainly surprise some members of the congregation at St Michael’s. Reverend Jones might have to ask you to leave and join a Dissenting church!”
I finished the langue de chat. “I don’t know that Dissenters are any different, really. They may differ doctrinally from the Church of England, but the Dissenters I know in Lyme interpret the Bible just as literally as Reverend Jones does. They would never accept the idea of extinction.” I sighed. “Mary’s creature needs studying, by anatomists, like Cuvier in Paris, or geologists from Oxford or Cambridge. They might be able to provide persuasive answers. But that will never happen while it is masquerading as an exotic Dorset croc at Bullock’s!”
“It could be worse, tucked away in Colway Manor,” Louise countered. “At least here more people will see it. And if the right people—your learned geologists—see it and recognise its worth, they may think it worth studying.”
I had not thought of that. Louise was always more sensible than I. It was a relief to talk to her, and gave me a little comfort, but not enough to stem my fury at Lord Henley.
When we returned to Lyme the following month, I went to confront him, even before I saw Mary Anning. I did not announce my visit, nor tell my sisters where I was going, but strode across the fields between Morley Cottage and Colway Manor, ignoring the wildflowers and blooming hedgerows I’d missed while in London. Lord Henley was not at home, but I was directed to one of the boundaries of his property, where he was overseeing the digging of a drainage ditch. It had been a rainy spring while we were away, and my shoes and the hem of my dress were sodden and muddy by the time I reached him.
Lord Henley was sitting on his grey horse, watching his men work. It annoyed me that he did not get down and stand amongst them. By then, anything he did would have made me cross, for I’d had a whole month during which to fuel my anger. He did dismount for me, however, bowing and welcoming me back to Lyme. “How was your stay in London?” As he spoke, Lord Henley eyed my muddy skirt, probably thinking his wife would never be seen publicly in such dirty clothes.
“It was very good, thank you, Lord Henley. I was astonished, however, by something I saw at Bullock’s Museum. I thought the specimen you bought from the Annings was still at Colway Manor, but I discovered you sold it on to Mr Bullock.”
Lord Henley’s face lit up. “Ah, the crocodile is on display, then? How does it look? I trust they spelled my name correctly.”
“Your name was there, yes. I was rather surprised not to see Mary Anning named, however, nor even Lyme Regis.”
Lord Henley looked blank. “Why would Mary Anning be named? She didn’t own it.”
“Mary found it, sir. Have you forgotten that?”
Lord Henley snorted. “Mary Anning is a worker. She found the crocodile on my land—Church Cliffs are part of my property, you know. Do you think these men—” he nodded at the men shifting mud “—do they own what is on this land simply because they dig it up? Of course not! It belongs to me. Besides which, Mary Anning is a female. She is a spare part. I have to represent her, as indeed I do many Lyme residents who cannot represent themselves.”
For a moment the air seemed to crackle and buzz, and Lord Henley’s piggish face bulged at me. It was my anger distorting everything. “Why did you make such a fuss to obtain the specimen if you were only going to sell it on?” I demanded when I had finally mastered my emotions.
Lord Henley’s horse was becoming restless, and he stroked its neck to calm it. “It was cluttering up my library. It’s much better where it is.”
“Indeed it is, if that is the casual attitude you took towards it. I did not expect such fickle behaviour from you, Lord Henley. It demeans you. Good day, sir.” I turned before I could see the effect of my feeble words on him, but as I stumbled away across the field I heard his bark of laughter. He did not call out to me, as other men might have. Doubtless he was glad to see the back of me, a bedraggled spinster scattering mud and bile.
As I walked I cursed under my breath, and then began to out loud, for there was no one about to hear me. “God damn you, you bloody idiot” I had never said such words aloud, nor even thought them, but I was so angry that I had to do something out of the ordinary. I was furious at Lord Henley for riding roughshod over scientific discovery; for turning a mystery of the world into something banal and foolish; for throwing my sex back at me as something to be ashamed of. A spare part, indeed.
But I was angrier at myself. I had lived nine years in Lyme Regis by then, and had come to value my independence and forthrightness. However, I had not learned to stand up to the Lord Henleys of the world. I could not tell him what I thought of his selling Mary’s creature in a way that he understood. Instead he ridiculed me and made me feel it was I who had done something wrong. “Idiot. Bloody idiot!” I repeated.
“Oh!”
I looked up. I was crossing a small bridge over the river just as Fanny Miller was coming along the path that led down to the centre of town. She had clearly heard me, for her cheeks were bright red and her brow wrinkled, and her girlish eyes were wide, like shallow puddles with no depth.
I glared at her, and did not apologise. Fanny hurried away, glancing back now and then as if she feared I might follow her and swear some more. Though horrified, she was doubtless also keen to tell family and friends what the queer Miss Philpot had said.
Although I dreaded having to tell Mary about her creature, I have never been one to put off bad news—the wait only makes it worse. I we
nt that afternoon to Cockmoile Square. Molly Anning directed me to Pinhay Bay, to the west of Monmouth Beach, where Mary had been commissioned by a visitor to extract a giant ammonite. “They want it for a garden feature,” Molly Anning added with a chuckle. “Daft.”
I flinched. In the Morley Cottage garden there was a giant ammonite with a one-foot diameter that Mary had helped me to dig out; I had given it to Louise for Christmas. Molly Anning probably didn’t know that, as she had never come up Silver Street to see us. “Why climb a hill if there’s no need to?” she often said.
Molly Anning would be glad for the money from that ammonite, however. Since selling the monster to Lord Henley, Mary had been hunting without success for another complete specimen. She had only found tantalising pieces—jawbones, fused vertebrae, a fan of small paddle bones—which brought in a little money, but far less than if she had discovered them all together.
I found her near the Snakes’ Graveyard—I now called it the Ammonite Graveyard—which had attracted me to Lyme years before. She had managed to cut out the ammonite from a ledge, and was wrapping it in a sack to drag back along the beach—hard work for a girl, even one used to it.
Mary greeted me with joy, for she often said she missed me when I was making my London visit. She told me about all that she had found while I was away, and what they had managed to sell, and who else had been out hunting. “And how was London, Miss Elizabeth?” she asked finally. “Did you buy any new gowns? I see you’ve a new bonnet.”
“Yes, I have. How observant you are, Mary. Now, I have to tell you about something I saw in London.” I took a deep breath and told her about going to Bullock’s and discovering her creature, describing in frank terms the state of it, down to its waistcoat and monocle. “Lord Henley should not have sold it to someone who would treat it so irresponsibly, no matter how many people got to see it,” I finished. “I hope you won’t be approaching him with any future finds.” I did not tell her I had just been to see Lord Henley and been laughed at.
Mary listened, her brown eyes widening only when I mentioned that the creature’s tail had been straightened. Apart from that her reaction was not what I had expected. I thought she would be angry that Lord Henley had profited from her find, but for the moment she was more interested in the attention being given to it.
“Was lots of people looking at it?” she asked.
“A fair number.” I didn’t add that other exhibits were more popular.
“Lots and lots? More even than the number of people living in Lyme?”
“Far more. It has been on show for several months, so I expect thousands have seen it.”
“All them people seeing my croc.” Mary smiled, her eyes bright as she looked out to sea, as if spying a queue of spectators on the horizon, waiting to see what she would find next.
We will become fossils,
trapped upon beach forever
Finding that crocodile changed everything. Sometimes I try to imagine my life without those big, bold beasts hidden in the cliffs and ledges. If all I ever found were ammos and bellies and lilies and gryphies, my life would have turned out as piddling as those curies, with no lightning jolts to turn me inside out and give me joy and pain at the same time.
It weren’t just the money from selling the croc that changed things. It was knowing there was something to hunt for, and that I was better at finding it than most—this was what were different. I could look ahead now and see—not random rocks thrown together, but a pattern forming of what my life could be.
When Lord Henley paid us twenty-three pounds for the whole crocodile, I wanted lots of things. I wanted to buy so many sacks of potatoes they’d reach the ceiling if you stacked them. I wanted to buy lengths of wool and have new dresses made for Mam and me. I wanted to eat a whole dough cake every day, and burn so much coal the coalman would have to come every week to refill the coal bin. That was what I wanted. I thought my family wanted those things too.
One day Miss Elizabeth come to see Mam after the deal had been done with Lord Henley, and sat with her and Joe at the kitchen table. She didn’t talk of wool or coal or dough cakes, but of jobs. “I think it will benefit the family most if Joseph is apprenticed,” she said. “Now you have the money to pay the apprentice fee, you should do so. Whatever he chooses will be a steadier income than selling fossils.”
“But Joe and me are looking for more crocs,” I interrupted. “We can make money enough off them. There’s plenty of rich folk like Lord Henley who’ll want crocs of their own now he’s got one. Think of all them London gentlemen, ready with good money for our finds!” By the end I was shouting, for I had to defend my great plan, which was for Joe and me to get rich finding crocs.
“Quiet, girl,” Mam said. “Let Miss Philpot talk sense.”
“Mary,” Miss Elizabeth begun, “you don’t know if there are more creatures—”
“Yes, I do, ma’am. Think of all them bits we found before—the verteberries and teeth and pieces of rib and jaw that we didn’t know what they were. Now we know! We got the whole body now and can see where those parts come from, how the body’s meant to be. I’ve made a drawing of it so we can match what goes where. I’m sure there’s crocs everywhere in them cliffs and ledges!”
“Why didn’t you find any other whole specimens until now, then, if there are as many as you say?”
I glared at Miss Elizabeth. She had always been good to me, giving me work cleaning curies, bringing us extra bits of food and candles and old clothes, encouraging me to go to Sunday school to learn to read and write, sharing her finds with me and showing interest in what I found too. We couldn’t have got the croc out of the cliff without her paying the Day brothers to do it, and she handled Lord Henley, her and Mam.
Why, then, was she being so contrary with me, just when my hunting had got exciting? I knew the monsters were there, whatever Elizabeth Philpot said. “We didn’t know what we was looking for till now,” I repeated. “How big it was, what it looked like. Now we know, Joe and I can find ’em easy, can’t we, Joe?”
Joe didn’t answer straightaway. He fiddled with a bit of string, twirling it between his fingers.
“Joe?”
“I don’t want to look for crocodiles,” he said in a low voice. “I want to be an upholsterer. Mr Reader has offered to take me on.”
I was so surprised I couldn’t say a word.
“Upholstering?” Miss Philpot was quick to get in. “That is a useful trade, but why choose it over others?”
“I can do it indoors rather than out.”
I found my voice. “But, Joe, don’t you want to find crocs with me? Weren’t it a thrill to dig it out?”
“It was cold.”
“Don’t be stupid! Cold don’t matter!”
“It do to me.”
“How can you care about cold when these creatures are out there just waiting for us to find ’em? It’s like treasure scattered all over the beach. We could get rich off them crocs! And you say it’s too cold?”
Joe turned to Mam. “I do want to work for Mr Reader, Mam. What do you think?”
Mam and Miss Elizabeth had kept quiet while Joe and I argued. I expect they didn’t need to butt in, as Joe had clearly made up his mind the way they wanted. I didn’t wait to hear what they said, but jumped up and ran downstairs to the workshop. I’d rather work on the croc than listen to them, with their plan to take Joe off the beach. I had work to do.
With head and body together again, the monster was almost eighteen feet long. Getting it out of the cliff had been an ordeal that took three days, the Days and me working flat out whenever the tide let us. The whole thing was too big to lay on the table, so we’d spread the croc out along the floor. In the dim light it was a jumble of stony bones. I’d already spent a month cleaning it, but I still had some way to go to release it from the rock. My eyes were inflamed with squinting at it so much and rubbing dust into them.
At the time I was too young to understand Joe’s choice, but later o
n I come to see that he had decided he wanted an ordinary life. He didn’t want to be talked about the way I was, sneered at for wearing odd clothes and spending so much time alone upon beach with just rocks for company. He wanted what others in Lyme had—security and the chance to be respectable—and he jumped at an apprenticeship. There was nothing I could do about it. If I were offered the chance like Joe—if a girl could be apprenticed to a trade—would I have chosen the same and become a tailor or a butcher or a baker?
No. Curies were in my bones. For all the misery that come to my life from being upon those beaches, I wouldn’t have abandoned curies for a needle or a knife or an oven.
“Mary.” Miss Philpot was standing over me. I didn’t answer; I was still angry at her for siding with Joe. Picking up a blade, I begun to scrape at a verteberry. It were one of a long line, stacked one against the other like a row of tiny saucers.
“Joseph has made a sensible choice,” she said. “It will be better for you and your mother. That doesn’t mean you can’t continue to look for creatures. You don’t need Joseph to help you find them, do you, now that you know what you’re looking for? You can do that yourself, and then hire the Days to extract them, just as we did with this one. I can help you with that until you are old enough to manage the men yourself. I offered to help your mother with the business side as well, but she says she will do it herself. And she was rather good with Lord Henley.” Miss Philpot kneeled by the croc and ran a hand over its ribs, which were all flattened out and crisscrossed like a willow basket. “How beautiful this is,” she murmured, her tone softer and less sensible than before. “I am still amazed at its size, and its strangeness.”
I agreed with her. The croc made me feel funny. While working on it I’d begun going to Chapel more regularly, for there were times sitting alone in the workshop with it that I got that hollowed-out feeling of the world holding things I didn’t understand, and I needed comfort.
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