Tracy Chevalier - Remarkable Creatures

I knew I should believe him, as he taught at Oxford, but his answers did not feel complete. It was like having a meal and not getting quite enough to eat. I went back to cleaning the croc and did not ask more questions. It seemed I was always going to feel a little hollowed out round my monsters.

Mr Buckland stayed at the Three Cups in Lyme for much of the summer, long after the second crocodile had been cleaned, packed and sent to Bristol. He often called for me at Cockmoile Square, or asked me to meet him upon beach. He assumed I would accompany him and attend him, showing him where fossils could be found, sometimes finding them for him. He was particularly keen to find another monster, which he would take back to Oxford for his collection. While I wanted to find one too, I were never sure what would happen if we did discover one while out together. I had the eye and was more likely to spot it first. Would that mean Mr Buckland should pay me for it? It were never clear, as we didn’t talk about money, though he was quick to thank me when I found curies for him. Even Mam didn’t mention it. Mr Buckland seemed to be above money, as a scholar ought to be, living in a world where it didn’t matter.

By then Joe was well into his apprenticeship and never come out with me unless there was heavy lifting or hammering to do. Sometimes Mam come with us, and sat knitting while we ranged round her. But Mr Buckland wanted to go farther than she did, and she had laundry to do and the house to look after, and the shop-for we still set out a table of curies in front of the workshop, the way Pa used to, and Mam sold ’em to visitors.

Other times Miss Elizabeth went hunting with us. It weren’t as it had been with the other gentlemen, though, where she and I had laughed at the men behind their backs when they kept making beginner’s mistakes, picking up beef or thinking a bit of fossilised wood was a bone. Mr Buckland was smarter, and kinder too, and I could see Miss Elizabeth liked him. I felt sometimes that she and I were two women competing for his attention, for I weren’t a child any more. I would look up from my hunting and see her eyes lingering on him, and want to tease her about it, but knew it would hurt her. Miss Elizabeth was clever, which Mr Buckland appreciated. She could talk to him about fossils and geology, and read some of the scientific papers he lent her. But she was five years older than him, too old to start a family, and without the money or the looks to tempt him anyway. Besides, he was in love with rocks, and would fondle a pretty bit of quartz more likely than flirt with a lady. Miss Elizabeth hadn’t a chance. Not that I did, either.

When we were together she become quieter, and sharper when she did speak. Then she made excuses, leaving us to walk farther down the beach, and I would see her in the distance, her back very straight, even when she stooped to examine something. Or she would say she preferred to hunt at Pinhay Bay or Monmouth Beach rather than by Black Ven, and disappear altogether.

Mostly, then, Mr Buckland and me were alone. Though we were fixed only on finding curies, our being together so often was too much even for Lyme folk. Eventually town gossip caught up with us-fuelled, I was sure, by Captain Cury. In the years since the landslip that almost killed him and me and buried the first crocodile, he had let me be. But he had never managed to find himself a complete croc, and still liked to spy on what I was doing. Once I begun hunting with Mr Buckland, Captain Cury got jealous. He would make sly comments as he passed us upon beach, clanging his spade against the rock ledge. “Having fun here on your own, you two?” he’d say. “Enjoy being alone?”

Mr Buckland mistook Captain Cury’s attention as interest, and hurried over to show him the fossils we’d found, and baffle him with scientific terms and theories. Captain Cury stood there uncomfortable, then made an excuse to get away. He loped down the beach, sneering at me over his shoulder, ready to tell everyone that he’d seen us together.

I ignored the talk, but one day Mam overheard someone in the Shambles calling me a gentleman’s whore. She marched straight down to Church Cliffs where Mr Buckland and I were prising out the jaw of a crocodile. “Get your things and come back with me,” she ordered, ignoring Mr Buckland’s greeting.

“But, Mam, we’ve only an hour left to dig till the tide’s in. Look, you can see all the teeth here.”

“Come away, you. Do as I say.” Mam made me feel guilty when I hadn’t even done anything. I stood up quick and brushed the mud off my skirt. Mam glared at Mr Buckland. “I don’t want you out here alone with my daughter.” I had never heard her be so rude to a gentleman.

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.