Remarkable Creatures

  Colonel Birch went on a few paces, then stopped himself and came back. “What is it, Mary? Have you seen something?”

  Mary hesitated. Perhaps if she’d realized I was watching she wouldn’t have done what she did next. “No, sir,” she said. “Nothing. I just—” She let slip her hammer, which fell with a clang to rest. “Sorry, sir, I’ve come over a little dizzy. It must be the sun. Could you fetch my hammer for me?”

  “Of course.” Colonel Birch bent to pick it up, froze, then dropped to his knees. He glanced up at Mary, as if trying to read her face.

  “Have you found something, sir?”

  “Do you know, I think I have, Mary!”

  “That’s a dorsal vertebra, isn’t it? See, sir, if you measure it you can tell how long your creature is. For every inch in diameter the ichie is five feet in length. This is about an inch and a half in diameter, so the creature would be about eight feet long. Look round and see if you can uncover other parts of it in the ledge. Here, use my hammer.”

  She was giving the ichthyosaurus to him, and he knew it. I turned away, disgusted. While they excitedly traced the outline of the creature in the ledge, I busied myself knocking open random rocks just to keep myself busy, until they called to me to come and see Colonel Birch’s find. I could barely look at it, which was a shame, for it was perhaps the finest ichthyosaurus Mary ever found, and it is always an impressive sight to see one embedded in its natural environment before it is cut out of the stone. I had to put on a civil face and congratulate him. “Well done, Colonel Birch,” I said. “It will make a fascinating addition to your collection.” I allowed the slightest hint of sarcasm into my voice, but it was lost on them both, for Colonel Birch had taken Mary into his arms and was swinging her about as if they were at an Assembly Rooms ball.

  They spent the next two weeks having the Day brothers dig out the ichthyosaurus, and cleaning it back at the workshop, with Mary doing the delicate work to make it presentable. She worked so hard on it her eyes went red. I did not visit while she prepared it, for I did not want to be caught in the close quarters of the workshop with Colonel Birch. Indeed, I avoided him as best I could. Not well enough, however.

  One afternoon Margaret convinced me to play cards at the Assembly Rooms. I did not go often, for it was full of young ladies and men courting, and mothers watching the proceedings. The select friends I had made in Lyme were of a more cerebral nature, like young Henry De La Beche or Dr. Carpenter and his wife. We usually met at one another’s houses rather than at the Assembly Rooms. But Margaret wanted a partner and insisted.

  In the middle of a game Colonel Birch walked in. Of course I noticed him immediately, and he me—he caught my eye before I could look away, and came straight over. Trapped by my cards, I responded to his greeting with as little expression as possible, though that did not stop him from standing over me and chatting with onlookers. The other players looked at me with amused surprise, and I began to play badly. As soon as I was able I feigned a headache and got up from the table. I had hoped Colonel Birch would take my place, but instead he followed me to the bay window, where we both looked out to sea. A ship was sailing past, about to dock at the Cobb.

  “That is the Unity,” Colonel Birch said. “I am having the ichthyosaurus shipped on it to London when it leaves tomorrow.”

  Despite not wanting to engage in conversation, I could not help myself. “Has Mary done with her work on the specimen, then?”

  “It’s set in its frame, and just this afternoon she put a plaster skim around it to finish it. It should be dry later, and she’ll pack it up.”

  “But you are not going on the Unity yourself?” I was not sure if I wanted him to stay or go, but I had to know.

  “I will go up by coach, stopping first at Bath and Oxford to see friends.”

  “Now that you have what you came for, there is no reason to stay on.” Hard as I tried to keep it steady, my voice wavered. I did not add that his haste to depart after securing his treasure was in poor taste. Instead I kept my eyes on the waves that chopped and swayed under the window, for the tide was high. I could feel Colonel Birch’s eyes on me but I did not turn to face him. My cheeks were flushed.

  “I have very much enjoyed our conversations, Miss Philpot,” he said. “I shall miss them.”

  I turned then and looked at him direct.

  “Your eyes are very dark today,” he added. “Dark and honest.”

  “I am going to go home now,” I replied, as if he had asked. “No, don’t accompany me, Colonel Birch. I do not want you to.” I turned. It seemed the entire room was watching us. I went over to fetch my sister, and was truly relieved that he did not follow.

  I BELIEVE THE MONTHS after Colonel Birch’s departure were the hardest ever for the Annings—even harder than after Richard Anning died, for at least then they had the sympathy of the town. Now people simply thought they had brought on their misery.

  I first truly understood how much damage Colonel Birch had done to Mary’s reputation when, not long after, I heard for myself what people were saying. I went into the baker’s one day—Bessy had forgotten to, but refused to go down the hill once more. As I entered I overheard the wife of the baker—who was an Anning himself, and a distant cousin of Mary’s—say to a customer, “She spent every day on the beach with that gentleman. Let him take care of her.” She chuckled crudely but stopped when she saw me. Even though no names had been mentioned, I knew whom she was referring to: it was clear from the defiant tilt of her chin, as if she were daring me to chide her for being so judgmental and ungenerous.

  I didn’t rise to the challenge. It would have been like trying to damn a flood. Instead I fingered a loaf of bread, raised my eyebrows, and said in a ringing voice, “I don’t really need stale bread today. I’ll come another day when I do.” It gave me only momentary satisfaction, though—for Simeon Anning was the only baker in Lyme, and we would have to continue to buy from his wife if we wanted bread we could actually eat, as opposed to Bessy’s bricklike attempts. Besides, my words were weak and petty, and did little to help Mary. I left the shop red-faced, and it was made worse by the laughter that followed me. I wondered if I would ever be able to speak up for myself without feeling an idiot.

  While Molly and Joseph Anning suffered materially that winter, with many days of weak soup and weaker fires, Mary barely noticed how little she was eating or the chilblains on her hands and feet. She was suffering inside.

  She still came to Morley Cottage but preferred to visit Margaret, for my sister could provide her with the empathy that Louise and I lacked. We had not lost a man the way Mary and Margaret had, and it was not in our natures to dissemble. Not that Mary felt she had lost Colonel Birch at that point. For a long time she was hopeful, and simply missed him and the constant presence he had been in her life all summer. She wanted to talk about him with someone who knew him and approved of him, or at least didn’t express the sour criticism of his character that I had. Margaret had met Colonel Birch several times at the Assembly Rooms, had played cards with him, and even danced with him twice. While I worked on my fossils at the dining room table, I could hear Mary with Margaret next door, making her describe again and again the dances, what Colonel Birch had worn, what his gait and touch had been like, what they had chatted about as they went through their motions. Then she wanted to know about the cards, what they had played and whether he won or lost, and what he had said. Margaret had not noticed such details, for Colonel Birch had not been a memorable companion to her. His vanity and confidence were too much even for Margaret. However, for Mary she made up details to add to the little she did remember, until a fulsome picture emerged of Colonel Birch in his leisure moments. Mary drank in every detail, to store and pore over later.

  I wanted to order Margaret to stop, for the pathos of a girl feeding on another’s scraps of polite dances and indifferent card games upset me, bringing to mind an image of Mary standing outside the Assembly Rooms and pressing her face to the cold glass to watc
h the dancers. Though I had never seen her do so, I would not have been surprised to learn that she had. I held my tongue, however, for I knew Margaret meant well and was providing the little comfort Mary had in her life at the time. I was grateful too that Margaret never told Mary I had briefly been with Colonel Birch at the Assembly Rooms, for Mary would have wanted me to recall every detail of that afternoon.

  Though it would not be proper to initiate correspondence herself, Mary hoped and expected to hear from Colonel Birch. She and Molly Anning occasionally received letters, from William Buckland asking after a specimen, or Henry De La Beche telling them where he was, or other collectors they’d met and who wanted something from them. Molly Anning was even corresponding with Charles Konig at the British Museum, who had bought Mary’s first ichthyosaurus from William Bullock and was interested in buying others. All of these letters continued to arrive, but in amongst them there was never the flash of Colonel Birch’s bold, scrawling hand. For I knew his hand.

  I could not tell Mary that it was I who heard from Colonel Birch, a month after he’d left Lyme. Of course it was not a letter declaring himself, though as I opened it my hands trembled. Instead he asked if I would kindly look out for a dapedium specimen, of the sort I had donated to the British Museum, as he was hoping to add choice fossil fish to his collection. I read it out to Margaret and Louise. “The cheek of it!” I cried. “After his scorn of my fish, to go and ask me for one, and one so difficult to find!” As angry as I sounded, I was also secretly pleased that Colonel Birch had discovered the value of my fish enough to want one for his own.

  Still, I made to throw the letter on the fire. Margaret stopped me. “Don’t,” she pleaded, reaching for it. “Are you sure there’s nothing about Mary? No postscript, or a coded message to her or about her?” She looked over the letter but could find nothing. “At least keep it so that you’ll know where he lives.” As she said this Margaret was reading the address—a street in Chelsea—doubtless memorizing it in case I burned the letter later.

  “All right, I will put it away,” I promised. “But I will not answer it. He doesn’t deserve an answer. And he will never get his hands on any of my fish!”

  We did not tell Mary Colonel Birch had written to me. It would have devastated her. I had never expected such a strong character as Mary’s to be so fragile. But we are all vulnerable at times. So she continued to wait, and talk, and ask Margaret to describe Colonel Birch’s conduct at the Assembly Rooms, and Margaret did it, though it pained her to lie. And slowly the bloom left Mary’s cheeks, the bright light in her eyes dimmed, her shoulders took on their habitual hunch, and her jaw hardened. It made me want to weep, to see her joining the ranks of us spinsters at such a young age.

  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 rosebushes 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 watercolor 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 judgment. 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 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 judgment 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 watercolor, 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 c
lothes, 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 across the horizon or over 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.