Remarkable Creatures. Tracy Chevalier
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than what Joe found that day, though. That brought the lightning straight through me, as if waking me from a long sleep. I was glad to see it. I just wished I had discovered it rather than Joe. It was a surprise to everyone that Joe found such an unusual specimen, for it weren’t in his nature to look out for something new. That was what I was good at. I tried not to be jealous, but it was hard. Soon enough, people forgot it was Joe who found the croc, and made it my croc. I didn’t stop them, and Joe didn’t seem to mind. He was happy to step back from it and just be plain Joe Anning rather than a hunter who could find a monster. It was hard for him, being part of a family so talked about and judged. If he could have stopped being an Anning, I think he would have. Since he couldn’t, he kept his thoughts to himself.
Next morning we took Miss Elizabeth to see the skull. It were one of those clear cold days that makes all the rocks look crisp, though it didn’t last long, the winter sun just skimming the horizon past Lyme Bay. Despite the cold, Miss Elizabeth needed no convincing, but come out straightaway, though their servant Bessy muttered and Miss Margaret twittered that they had guests coming soon. Now I was getting older I’d begun to find Miss Margaret a little silly, preferring the quietness of Miss Louise or the tartness of Miss Elizabeth. Miss Elizabeth didn’t care about guests, but wanted to see the monster.
When we reached the end of Church Cliffs, I almost gasped at how clear its peculiar outline was in the cliff face. Miss Elizabeth was silent. She took off her nice gloves and put on the work gloves with the tips cut off so that she could run her fingers along its long, pointy snout and its great jumble of teeth. At the end where the jaws were hinged, she prised off a flake of stone. “Look,” she said, “there is a slight upturn of its mouth where it seems to be smiling. Do you recall that in the drawing I showed you of the crocodile in Cuvier’s book?”
“Yes, ma’am. But look at its eye!” I used my hammer to tap carefully and reveal more of the ring of bones that overlapped like giant fish scales round an empty centre where the eyeball must have been once.
Miss Elizabeth stared. “Are you sure that is the eye?” She seemed disturbed by it.
“Don’t know what else it could be,” Joe said.
“That is not how the eye looked in Cuvier’s drawing.”
“Maybe this one had a problem with its eye,” I suggested. “Like a disease. Or maybe the Frenchman drew it wrong.”
Miss Elizabeth snorted. “Only a girl like you would dare question the work of the world’s finest zoological anatomist.”
I frowned. I didn’t like this Cuvier.
Thankfully Miss Elizabeth didn’t dwell on my stupidity, nor on the croc’s eye. She was more concerned with practical matters. “How are you going to get this out of the cliff? It must be four feet long at least.”
“It’ll take digging like we’ve never done before, won’t it, Joe?”
Joe shrugged.
“But four feet of rock – won’t that be too heavy for you? What you need are men to help you. Strong men.” Miss Elizabeth thought for a moment. “What about the men building the walkway along the beach to the Cobb? They know how to cut rock, and they’re strong. Perhaps they could do it for you.”
“Perhaps they could, ma’am,” I said, “but we haven’t the money to pay ’em.”
“I will advance you the money, and you can pay me back when you have sold the specimen.”
I brightened. “Oh, could you, Miss Elizabeth? We would be so grateful, wouldn’t we, Joe?”
But Joe weren’t listening. “Mary, Miss Philpot, step away from it!” he hissed. “It’s Captain Cury!”
I looked back. Clambering round the bend that hid Lyme from us was the only other fossil hunter who might consider trying to get at our croc. While most respected other’s finds, Captain Cury didn’t care who had spotted something first. Once he took a giant ammonite Joe and me had begun digging out from a cliff on Monmouth Beach, and laughed in our faces when we told him it was ours. “Shouldn’t have left it, then, should you? It were me finished the digging, so it’s me as gets it,” he’d said. Even when Pa went to talk to him about it, he swore he’d already seen it and marked it out, and that it were Joe and me that was wrong to do the digging when it was his.
Captain Cury mustn’t see the croc. If he did, we would have to guard it all the time. I stepped back from the skull, picked up a likely nodule and moved down towards the water’s edge where there was a flat stone good for hammering on. Joe headed in the Charmouth direction, then stopped fifty feet away to scrabble amongst small chunks of fool’s gold, looking for a pyritised ammo. Golden serpents, we called them. Miss Philpot took several steps and begun studying the ground, then kneeled to pick up a stone. From under my bonnet rim I watched as Captain Cury approached the croc in the cliff face, his spade over one shoulder. Now that I had exposed its eye more clearly, the skull seemed to be staring and grinning to attract attention. Captain Cury’s eyes skimmed the cliff, and he paused right where we had been standing. Joe’s feet on the stones went quiet, and I stopped hammering.
Captain Cury bent over and picked up something. When he straightened, his face was just inches from the monster’s eye. My heart begun to pound. Then he held out a glove. “Miss Philpot, is this yours? It’s too fine for Mary.”
“I expect it is mine, Mr Lock,” Miss Elizabeth answered. She never called him Captain Cury, but used his real name, the way she called Joe Joseph, and ammos ammonites, and not snakestones, and bellies belemnites rather than thunderbolts. She was formal like that. “Bring it here, please.”
He went over and handed it to her. I could breathe again, now he were away from the croc. “Found anything?” he asked when she’d thanked him.
“Just a gryphaea. Devil’s toenail to you.”
“Let’s see it.” Captain Cury squatted next to her. Fossil hunting does that to people – it breaks down the rules. On the beach a hostler can speak to a lady in a way he wouldn’t dream of doing anywhere else.
I hurried over to rescue her. “What are you doing here, Captain Cury?” I demanded.
He chuckled. “Same as you, Mary – looking out for curies to bring in a few pennies. Mind you, you need ’em more’n I do now, don’t you, the way your father left you fixed. Here.” He tossed something to me. It was a golden serpent.
“This is what I think of your curies, Captain Cury.” I turned and threw it as hard as I could. Though the tide was out, I got it to land in the water.
“Hey, now!” Captain Cury glared at me. No one likes to have their curies wasted like that. It’s like throwing coins in the sea. “What a nasty girl you become,” he said. “Must’ve been that lightning shook you up and made you that way. You should’ve carried a thunderbolt to keep from getting hit. Instead you’re so mean you’ll grow up into a sour old spinster no man will look at.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Miss Elizabeth got there before me. “It’s time you moved on, Mr Lock,” she said.
Captain Cury’s glittery eyes shifted from me to her. “Next time I won’t bother to pick up your glove, ma’am,” he sneered. By now Joe had come back, so he said no more, but swung his spade onto his shoulder and carried on down the beach towards Charmouth, glancing back now and then.
“Mary, you were very rude to him,” Miss Elizabeth said. “I’m ashamed of you.”
“He was ruder to me! And to you!”
“Nevertheless, you should show respect to your elders, else they will think the worse of you.”
“Sorry, Miss Philpot.” I didn’t feel at all sorry.
“You two stay here until the tide comes in,” Miss Elizabeth commanded, “in sight of the creature, to make sure William Lock doesn’t come back and discover it. I will go to the Cobb to see about engaging the men to dig out the