Tracy Chevalier - Remarkable Creatures

He had grown up just a few miles away in Axminster, and knew Lyme well, though now he lived in Oxford, where he taught geology. He had also taken his orders, though I doubted any church would have him. William Buckland was too unpredictable to be a vicar.

He had been along to look at the crocodile skull back when we’d showed it in the Assembly Rooms, but though he’d smiled at me, he’d spoken only to Miss Philpot. Two years later, when the croc was united, head and body, and cleaned and sold to Lord Henley, I heard Mr Buckland went to see it at Colway Manor. And since the gentlemen had come to hunt upon beach, I saw him occasionally amongst them. He had never paid much attention to me, though, so I was astonished now to hear him shout, “Mary Anning! Just the girl I wanted to see!”

No one had ever called out my name that enthusiastically. I stood up, confused, then quickly tugged at the hem of my skirt, which I’d tucked into my waist to keep it out of the mud. I often did that when the beach was empty. It wouldn’t do for Mr Buckland to see my knobby ankles and muddy calves.

“Sir?” I bobbed a sort of curtsy, though it weren’t very graceful. There weren’t many I curtsied to in Lyme-just Lord Henley, and him I didn’t want to now I understood that he’d sold on my croc and made such a lot more money than he’d ever paid us for it. Him I would scarcely bend my knee for now, even if Miss Philpot hissed at me to be polite.

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 cancelled 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 realised 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 Doctor 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 Doctor 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 Doctor 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 Doctor 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.