Tracy Chevalier - Remarkable Creatures

One sunny winter day I had a surprise visitor to Silver Street. I was out in the garden with Louise, who missed working during the cold months and was looking for something she could do: spreading mulch around sleeping plants, checking on the bulbs she had planted, raking stray leaves that had blown into the garden, pruning back the rose bushes that persisted in growing. The cold did not bother us as it would have once, and in the sun it was surprisingly warm. I was finishing a watercolour of the view towards Golden Cap, which I had begun months before, but brought out again with the hope that the oblique winter sunlight might give the painting the magic quality it yet lacked.

I was adding a yellow wash to the clouds when Bessy appeared. “Someone to see you,” she muttered. She stepped aside to reveal Molly Anning, who in the many years we’d lived there had never ventured up Silver Street.

Bessy’s scorn vexed me. Despite my friendship with the Annings, Bessy all too readily took on the views of the rest of Lyme about the family, even when she had seen enough of Mary to form her own judgement. I punished her by standing and saying, “Bessy, bring out a chair for Mrs Anning, and one for Louise, and tea for all of us, please. You don’t mind sitting outside, Molly? In the sun it’s quite mild.”

Molly Anning shrugged. She was not the sort to take pleasure in sitting in the sun, but she would not stop others doing it.

I raised my eyebrows at Bessy, who was lingering in the doorway, clearly livid at the thought of having to wait on someone she considered lower than herself. “Go on, Bessy. Do as I ask, please.”

Bessy grunted. As she disappeared inside, I heard Louise chuckle. Bessy’s moods were greatly entertaining to my sisters, though I still fretted that she might walk out on us, as her slumped shoulders often threatened. After all this time she persisted in making clear that our move to Lyme had been a disaster. For Bessy my relations with the Annings represented all that was jumbled and wrong about Lyme. Bessy’s a social barometer was still set to London standards.

I didn’t care, except that it might mean losing a servant. Nor did Louise. Margaret I suppose lived the most conventional life here, still occasionally attending the Assembly Rooms, visiting other good Lyme families and doing charitable work for the poor. The salve she had created to soothe my chapped hands she took with her everywhere, distributing it to whoever needed it.

I gestured to my chair. “Do take a seat, Molly. Bessy will bring another.”

Molly Anning shook her head, uneasy about sitting while I stood. “I’ll wait.” She seemed to understand Bessy’s judgement that we should not have Annings as visitors; indeed, perhaps she agreed with her, and it was that rather than the climb up the hill that had kept her from Morley Cottage all this time. Now her eyes rested on my watercolour, and I found myself embarrassed-not for the quality of the painting, which I already knew was not good, but because what had been a pleasure to me now seemed a frivolity. Molly Anning’s day began early and ended late, and consisted of many hours of backbreaking work. She barely had time even to look at a view, much less to sit and paint it. Whether or not she felt that way, she showed nothing, but moved on to inspect Louise’s pruning. This at least was less frivolous-though not much less so, for roses serve little purpose other than to dress a garden, and feed no one other than bees. Perhaps Louise felt similar to me, for she hurried to finish the bush she was trimming and laid down her pruning knife. “I’ll help Bessy with the tray,” she said.

As more chairs were brought out, and a small table on which to place the tray, and finally the tray itself-all accompanied by huffs and sighs from Bessy-I began to regret my suggestion to take tea outside. It too seemed frivolous, and I had not meant to cause such a fuss. Then as we sat, the sun went behind a cloud and it instantly grew chilly. I felt an idiot, but would have even more so if I then said we ought to troop back inside, reversing the move of furniture and tea. I clung to my shawl and cup of tea to warm me.

Molly sat passively, allowing the bustle of cups and saucers and chairs and shawls to take place around her without comment. I rattled on about the unusually clement weather, and the letter I’d had from William Buckland saying he’d be down in a few weeks, and how Margaret couldn’t join us because she was taking some of her salve to a new mother sore from nursing. “Useful, that salve,” was Molly’s only comment.

When I asked how they fared, she revealed why she had come to see us. “Mary ain’t right,” she said. “She ain’t been right since the Colonel left. I want you to help me fix it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I made a mistake with the Colonel. I knew I were making it, and I done it anyway.”

“Oh, I’m sure you didn’t-”

“Mary worked with the Colonel all summer, found him a good croc and all sorts of curies for his collection, and never had any money off him. I didn’t ask him for any neither, for I thought he’d give her something at the end.”

I had suspected no money changed hands between Colonel Birch and the Annings, but only now was it confirmed. I twisted the ends of my shawl, enraged that he could be so callous.

“But he didn’t,” Molly Anning continued. “He just went off with his croc and his curies and all he give her were a locket.” I knew only too well about the locket: Mary wore it under her clothes, but pulled it out to show Margaret whenever they discussed Colonel Birch. It contained a lock of his thick hair.

Molly Anning sucked at her tea as if she were drinking beer. “And he hasn’t written since he left. So I wrote him. That’s where I need your help.” She reached into the pocket of an old coat she wore-it had probably been Richard Anning’s-and pulled out a letter, folded and sealed. “I already wrote it, but I don’t know if it’ll reach him like this. It would if it were going to a place like Lyme, but London be that much bigger. Do you know where he lives?” Molly Anning thrust the letter at me. “Colonel Thomas Birch, London ” was written on the outside.

“What have you said in the letter?”

“Asked him for money for Mary’s services.”

“You didn’t mention-marriage?”

Molly Anning frowned. “Why would I do that? I’m no fool. Besides, that be for him to say, not me. I did wonder about the locket, but then there’s no letter, so…” She shook her head as if to rid it of a silly notion like marriage, and returned to the safer topic of payment for services rendered. “He owes us not only for all the time he took Mary away from hunting curies, but for the loss now. That be the other thing I wanted to say to you, Miss Philpot. Mary’s not finding curies. It were bad enough this summer that she give everything she found to the Colonel. But since he went she ain’t found anything. Oh, she goes upon beach every day, but she don’t bring back curies. When I ask her why not she says there’s nothing to find. Times I go with her, just to see, and what I see is that something’s changed about her.”

I had noticed it too when I was out with Mary. She seemed less able to concentrate. I would look up and catch her eyes wandering over the horizon or across the outline of Golden Cap or the distant hump of Portland, and knew her mind was on Colonel Birch rather than on fossils. When I questioned her she simply said, “I haven’t got the eye today.” I knew what it was: Mary had found something to care about other than the bones on the beach.

“What can we do to get her finding curies again, Miss Philpot?” Molly Anning said, running her hands over her lap to smooth out her worn skirt. “That’s what I come to ask-that and how to get the letter to Colonel Birch. I thought if I wrote and he sent money, that would make Mary happy and she would do better upon beach.” She paused. “I’ve wrote plenty of begging letters these last years-they take their time paying up at the British Museum-but I never thought I would have to write one to a gentleman like Colonel Birch.” She took up her cup and gulped the rest of her tea. I suspect she was thinking about him kissing her hand, and cursing herself for being taken in.