Tracy Chevalier - Remarkable Creatures

She were lying where the tide had left her, face down, seaweed all tangled in her dark hair. Her fine dress was sodden and dragged down with sand and mud. Even in that state I could see it cost more than all of our Anning clothes together. I stood over her a long time, watching to see if she might take a breath and spare me from seeing death in her face. It come to me that I would have to touch her, turn her over to see if she was dead and if I knew her.

I didn’t want to touch her. I spent most of the days of my life picking up dead things off the shore. If she had been stone like a croc or an ammo I would have turned her over quick as you like. But I weren’t used to touching dead flesh that had been a real person. I knew I had to do it, though, so I took a deep breath, quickly grabbed a shoulder and rolled her over.

I knew she were a lady the moment I saw her beautiful face. Others laughed at me when I said so, but I could see it in her noble brow and fine, sweet features. I called her the Lady, and I was right.

I kneeled by her head, closed my eyes, and said a prayer to God to take her into His bosom and comfort her. Then I pulled her up towards the cliff so the sea wouldn’t take her back while I went for help. I couldn’t leave her all unkempt, though: it would be disrespectful. Now I weren’t afraid to touch her, though her flesh was cold and hard like a fish. I untangled the seaweed from her hair and combed it out. I straightened her limbs and dress, and folded her hands over her breast as I’d seen others laid out. I even begun to enjoy the ritual of it-that’s how odd I were at that time in my life.

Then I saw a fine chain round her neck and pulled at it. Out from under her dress come a locket, small and round and gold, with MJ engraved in fancy lettering. There was nothing inside-any pictures or locks of hair had been scrubbed away by the sea. I didn’t dare take it with me for safe keeping. Anyone finding me with it could accuse me of being a thief. I tucked the locket away, and hoped no one found her and stole it off her while I was gone.

When I was satisfied the Lady looked presentable, I said another little prayer, blew her a kiss, and run back to Lyme to tell them I’d found a drowned lady.

They laid her out in St Michael’s and put a notice in the Western Flying Post to see if someone could identify her. I went to see her every day. I couldn’t stop myself. I brought flowers gathered from the wayside-daffs and narcissi and primroses-and set them round her, and tore up some of the petals to scatter over her dress. I liked to sit in the church, though it weren’t where we normally worshipped. It was quiet, with the Lady lying there so peaceful and beautiful. Sometimes I had a little cry for her or for myself.

It was like an illness come over me those days with the Lady, though I had no fever or chills. I’d never felt so strongly about anything before, though I wasn’t sure what it was I felt. I just knew that the Lady’s story was tragic, and maybe my story, if I had one, would be tragic too. She had died, and if I hadn’t found her, she might have become a fossil, her bones turned to stone, like all the other things I hunted upon beach.

One day I arrived and the lid on the Lady’s coffin was nailed shut. I cried because I couldn’t see her beautiful face. Everything made me cry. I lay down on a pew and cried myself to sleep. I don’t know how long I was asleep for, but when I woke Elizabeth Philpot was sitting beside me. “Mary, get up and go home, and don’t come here again,” she said quietly. “This has gone on long enough.”

“But-”

“For one thing, it’s unwholesome.” She was referring to the smell, which never bothered me, as I’d smelled worse upon beach, and in the workshop, when I brought back slabs of limestone and the piddocks in their holes died after a few days out of the water.

“That don’t matter to me.”

“It is sentimental behaviour that should remain in the gothic novels Margaret reads. It doesn’t suit you. Besides that, she has been identified and her family is coming to fetch her. There was a shipwreck off Portland of a ship arriving from India. She was on board with her children. Imagine sailing all that long way, only to be lost at the very end.”

“They know who she is? What’s her name?”

“Lady Jackson.”

I clapped my hands, so pleased I were right about her being a Lady. “What’s her Christian name? The M on the locket?”

Miss Elizabeth hesitated. I think she knew her answer would feed my obsession. But she does not lie easily. “It’s Mary.

I nodded, and begun to cry. Somehow I knew it.

Miss Elizabeth sighed hard, like she was trying to keep from shouting. “Don’t be silly, Mary. Of course it is a sad story, but you don’t know her, and sharing a name doesn’t mean you are anything alike.”

I covered my face with my hands and kept on crying, out of embarrassment now as much as anything else, for not being able to control myself in front of Miss Elizabeth. She sat with me for a little bit, then gave up and left me to my tears. I didn’t tell her, but I was crying because Lady Jackson and I were alike. We were both Marys and we would both die. However beautiful or plain a person was, God would take you in the end.

For a week after they took Lady Jackson away, I couldn’t touch curies on the beach for thinking of what they had been-poor creatures that had died. For that little while I allowed myself to be as timid and superstitious as my old playmate Fanny Miller. I avoided the gentlemen out hunting, and hid on Monmouth Beach, where it was quieter.

But no curies means no food on the table. Mam ordered me back upon beach and said she wouldn’t let me inside if I returned with an empty basket. Soon enough I pushed death away, till the next time when he come to stand much closer.

Later that spring I at last found a second crocodile. Perhaps all the gentlemen I was attending was what made it take so long to find one. Elizabeth Philpot must have been pleased she were right that the cliffs and ledges don’t give up their monsters so easily as I’d thought. When I found it at last, I was out at Gun Cliff one May afternoon, not even thinking of crocs, but of my empty stomach, for I’d had nothing to eat all day. The tide was coming in, and I’d almost got back home when I slipped on a ledge covered with seaweed. I come down hard on my hands and knees, and as I pushed myself up I felt a ridge of knobs under my hand. Just like that, I was touching a long line of verteberries. It was so simple I wasn’t even surprised. I was relieved to find that croc, for it proved there were more than one, and that I could make a living from them. That second croc brought money, respect, and a new gentleman.

It was a week or two after we’d removed the croc to the workshop. I was meant to be cleaning it, but there’d been a storm the night before, and a small landslip had appeared under Black Ven that I wanted to look over. There were no men about, and Miss Elizabeth had a cold, and Joe was counting tacks or blacking wood or whatever it is upholsterers are meant to do, so it was just me upon beach. I was scrabbling about in the landslip, the lias mud pushing under my nails and lining my shoes, when the sound of clacking stones made me look up. Along the beach from Charmouth a man come, riding on a black horse. He was silhouetted against the bright sunlight, so it was hard to make him out, but when he got closer I saw the horse was a mare, a plodder, and the man wore a cloak over sloped shoulders, and a top hat, and carried a sack at his side. Once I saw the sack was blue I knew it was William Buckland.

I doubted he recognised me, though I knew him: he used to buy curies from Pa when I was younger. I remembered him best for that blue sack he always carried with him to put specimens in. It was made of heavy material-just as well, since it was always bulging with rocks Mr Buckland had picked up. He would show them to Pa, who could see no use in them as they held no fossils. But Mr Buckland remained enthusiastic about his rocks, as he was about everything.