"Remarkable Creatures" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chevalier Tracy)

4. That is an abomination

There are several people I have met throughout my life whom I have regarded with disdain, but none has angered me more than Henry Hoste Henley. Lord Henley came to see me the day after the Days dug out the skull. He did not use the boot scraper, but trailed mud into our parlour. When Bessy announced him, Louise was out, Margaret was sewing and I was writing to our brother to tell him about the events on the beach the previous day. Margaret gave a little cry, bobbed at Lord Henley and excused herself, stumbling upstairs to her room. Although she often saw the Henleys at services at St Michael’s, she did not expect ever to find him breaching the safety of her own home, where she did not have to wear her brave, light-hearted public face.

Lord Henley looked so surprised at Margaret’s abrupt exit that it was clear he’d known nothing about what had gone on between her and his friend James Foot. Granted, that had taken place a few years before, and he might have expected Margaret to have got over it. Or he may have forgotten: he was not the sort of man to remember what women cared about.

Not Margaret, however. A spinster does not forget.

Nor, it appeared, had he noted our shunning of invitations to Colway Manor, or he would not have come to Morley Cottage. Lord Henley was a man of little imagination, who found it impossible to see the world through another’s eyes. It made his interest in fossils preposterous: truly to appreciate what fossils are requires a leap of imagination he was not capable of making.

“You must pardon my sister, sir,” I said now. “Just before you arrived she had been complaining of a cough. She would not want to inflict her illness on a visitor.”

Lord Henley nodded with an attempt at patience. Margaret’s health was clearly not why he was paying a visit. At my insistence he sat in the armchair by the fire, but on the edge, as if he would jump up at any moment. “Miss Philpot,” he said, “I have heard you discovered something extraordinary on the beach yesterday. A crocodile, is it? I should very much like to see it.” He looked about as if expecting it already to be on display in the room.

I wasn’t surprised that he knew about the Annings’ find. Though Lord Henley was rather grand to be included in Lyme’s circle of wagging tongues, he did often employ stone cutters, as he had land abutting the sea cliffs where he extracted stone for building. Indeed, he had obtained most of his best specimens from the quarrymen, who set aside finds for him from the stone they cut, knowing they would be paid extra. The Days must have told him of what they’d dug out for the Annings.

“Your information is almost accurate, Lord Henley,” I replied. “It was young Mary Anning who found it. I merely oversaw the extraction. The skull is at her house in Cockmoile Square.” Already I was leaving Joseph out of the story, as would happen for generations. Perhaps it was inevitable given his retiring nature, the very nature that would stop him correcting people when they spoke of the creature as solely Mary’s discovery.

Lord Henley knew of the Annings, for Richard Anning had sold him a few specimens. He was not the sort of man to go to their workshop, however, and he was clearly disappointed that the skull was not at Morley Cottage, which was a more acceptable house for him to visit. “Have them bring it to me so I can look at it,” he said, jumping to his feet, as if he suddenly realised he was wasting time with inconsequential people.

I stood as well. “It is rather heavy, sir. Did the Days tell you the skull is four feet long? They had enough to do to get it to Cockmoile Square from Church Cliffs. Certainly the Annings couldn’t manage the hill to Colway Manor.”

“Four feet? Splendid! I will send my coach for it tomorrow morning.”

“I am not sure-” I stopped myself. I did not know what Mary and Joseph planned to do with the skull, and decided it was best not to speak for them until I did know.

Lord Henley seemed to think the specimen was his to claim. Perhaps it was-the cliffs where it was found were on Henley ’s land. Yet he should pay the hunters for their work and their skill at finding and extracting the fossil. I did not appreciate this proprietary attitude of the collector, who pays for others to find specimens for him to display. As I noted the greedy glitter in Lord Henley’s eyes, I vowed to get Mary and Joseph a good price for the crocodile-for I knew he would want to deal with me rather than the Annings. “I will speak to the family and see what I can arrange, Lord Henley. You may be sure of it.”

When he had gone and Bessy was sweeping up the mud he’d left behind, Margaret came downstairs, her eyes red. She sat at the piano and began to play a melancholy song. I patted her shoulder and tried to comfort her. “You would not have been happy with that set.”

Margaret shrugged off my hand. “You don’t know how I would have felt. Just because it suits you not to marry doesn’t mean the rest of us feel the same way!”

“I never said I didn’t want to marry. It just didn’t happen-I am not the sort of lady a man chooses to marry, for I am too plain and too serious. Now I am reconciled to being on my own. I thought you were too.”

Margaret was crying again. I could not bear it, for she would make me cry as well, and I do not cry. I left her to take refuge in the dining room with my fossils. Let Louise comfort her when she returned.

Later that day I used Lord Henley’s visit as an excuse to go down to Cockmoile Square. I wanted to discuss with the Annings his interest in the skull, and also to hear about what Mary had found back on the beach, for she’d told me she was going to look for the crocodile’s body. When I arrived, I went first to the kitchen to speak to Mary’s mother. Molly Anning was a tall, gaunt woman wearing a mop cap and a grubby white apron. She stood at the range, stirring what smelled like oxtail broth, while a baby squalled without conviction in a drawer in the corner.

I set down a bundle. “Bessy made too many rock cakes and thought you might like some, Mrs Anning. There’s a round of cheese in there too, and part of a pork pie.” The kitchen was cold, with the fire in the range feeble. I should have brought coal as well. I did not tell her that Bessy had made the rock cakes only because I ordered her to. Whatever their hardships, Bessy did not like the Annings, feeling-like other good families in Lyme, I expect-that our association with them demeaned us.

Molly Anning murmured thanks but did not look up. I knew she did not think much of me, for I was the embodiment of what she did not want Mary to become: unmarried and obsessed with fossils. I understood her fears. My mother would not have wished my life on me either-nor would I, a few years back. Now I was living it, though, it was not so bad. In some ways I had more freedom than ladies who married.

The baby continued to wail. Of the ten children Molly Anning had borne, only three survived, and this one did not sound as if he would last his infancy. I looked around for a nurse or maid, but of course there was none. Forcing myself to go over to him, I gave the swaddled body a pat, which only made him cry harder. I have never known what to do with babies.

“Leave him, ma’am,” Molly Anning called. “Attention will only make him worse. He’ll settle in a bit.”

I stepped away from the drawer and looked about, trying not to reveal my dismay at the shabbiness of the room. Kitchens are normally the most welcoming part of a house, but the Annings’ lacked the basic warmth and well-stocked feeling that encourages lingering. There was a battered table with three chairs pulled up to it and a shelf holding a few chipped plates. No bread or pies or jugs of milk sat out as they did in our kitchen, and I felt a sudden fondness for Bessy. However much she grumbled, she kept the kitchen full of food, and that abundance was a comfort that spread through Morley Cottage. The security she created was what saw us Philpot sisters through the day. Not to have it must gnaw at the gut as much as real hunger did.

Poor Mary, I thought. To be on the cold beach all day and come back to this. “I’m here to see Mary and Joseph, Mrs Anning,” I said aloud. “Are they about?”

“Joe’s got work at the mill today. Mary’s downstairs.”

“Did you see the skull they brought back from the beach yesterday?” I couldn’t help asking. “It is quite exceptional.”

“Haven’t had the time.” Molly picked up a head of cabbage from a basket and began to chop at it savagely. She led with her hands, though not as Margaret did with frivolous gestures. Molly’s were always busy with work: stirring, wiping, clearing.

“It is just downstairs, though,” I persisted, “and well worth a look. It would only take a moment. You could do it now-I’ll look after the soup and the baby while you go.”

Molly Anning grunted. “You look after the baby, eh? I’d like to see that.” Her chuckle made me turn red.

“They’ll get a good price for the crocodile once they’ve cleaned it up.” I spoke of the skull in the one way I knew would interest her.

Indeed, Molly Anning looked up, but didn’t have a chance to reply before Mary came clattering up the stairs. “You here to see the croc, Miss Philpot?”

“And you as well, Mary.”

“Come down, then, ma’am.”

I had been in the Annings’ workshop a handful of times during the years we’d lived in Lyme, to order cabinets from Richard Anning, or to pick up or drop off specimens for Mary to clean, though most often she came to me. While Richard Anning worked as a cabinet maker, the room had been a battleground between the elements representing two parts of his life: the wood he made a living from and the stone that fed his interest in the natural world. Still stacked against the wall on one side of the room were sheets of wood planed fine, as well as smaller strips of veneer. Buckets of old varnish and tools littered the floor, which was strewn with wood shavings. Little had been touched on this side of the room in the months since Richard Anning’s death, though I suspected the Annings had sold some of the wood in order to eat, and would soon sell off the rest, as well as the tools.

On the other side of the room were long shelves crammed with chunks of rock containing specimens as yet unlocked by Mary’s hammer. Also on the shelves and on the floor, in no order that I could discern in the dim light, were crates of various sizes containing a jumble of broken bits of belemnites and ammonites, slivers of fossilised wood, stones carrying traces of fish scales, and many other examples of half-realised, incomplete, or inferior fossils that could never be sold.

Over all of the room, uniting wood and stone, there lay the finest coat of dust. Crumbled limestone and shale creates sticky clay and, when dry, a ubiquitous dust that is almost as soft and fine as talcum powder, gritty underfoot and drying to one’s skin. I knew this dust well, as did Bessy, who complained bitterly about having to clean up after me when I brought back specimens from the cliffs.

I shivered, partly from the cold of the cellar, where there was no fire, but also because the room’s disorder upset me. When out collecting I had learned to discipline myself and not pick up every bit of fossil I found, but look instead for whole specimens. Both Bessy and my sisters would rebel against the insistent creep of partial fossils over all available space. Morley Cottage was meant to be our refuge from the harsh outdoor world. If allowed indoors at all, fossils had to be tamed-cleaned, catalogued, labelled and placed in cabinets, where they could be looked at safely without threat to the order of our daily lives.

The chaos in the Annings’ workshop signalled to me something worse than poor housekeeping. Here was muddled thinking and moral disorder. I knew Richard Anning had been politically rebellious, with admiring stories still circulating years later about a riot he had led protesting over the price of bread. The family were Dissenters-not unusual in Lyme, perhaps, which because of its isolation seemed to be a haven for independent Christians. I had no ill feelings towards Dissenters. I wondered, though, if now her father was gone, Mary might benefit from a little more order in her life-physical if not spiritual.

However, I would put up with a great deal of dirt and confusion in order to see what had been laid out on a table in the middle of the room and surrounded by candles, like a pagan offering. There were not enough candles to light it properly, though. I vowed to have Bessy drop off some the next time she came down the hill.

On the beach with so many others about, I’d not had much chance to study the skull. Now, seen in full rather than in silhouette, it looked like a craggy, knobbly model of a mountainous landscape, with two hillocks bulging out like Bronze Age tumuli. The crocodile’s grin, now that I could see all of it, seemed otherworldly, especially in the flickering candlelight. It made me feel I was peering through a window into a deep past where such alien creatures lurked.

I looked for a long time in silence, circling the table to inspect the skull from every angle. It was still entrapped in stone, and would need much attention from Mary’s blades, needles and brushes-and a good bit of hammering too. “Take care you don’t break it when you clean it, Mary,” I said, to remind myself that this was work, not a scene from one of the gothic novels Margaret enjoyed scaring herself with.

Mary twisted her face up in indignation. “Course I won’t, ma’am.” Her confidence was just for show, however, for she hesitated. “It’ll be a long job, though, and I don’t know how best to go about it. I wish Pa were here to tell me what to do.” The importance of the task seemed to overwhelm her.

“I’ve brought you Cuvier as a guide, though I am not sure how much it will help.” I opened the book to the page with the drawing of a crocodile. I had studied it earlier, but now, standing next to the skull with the picture in hand, it was clear to me that this could be no crocodile-or not a species we were aware of. A crocodile’s snout is blunt, its jaw line bumpy, its teeth many different sizes, its eye a mere bead. This skull had a long, smooth jaw and uniform teeth. The eye sockets reminded me of pineapple rings I was served at the dinner at Lord Henley’s when I discovered how little he knew about fossils. The Henleys grew pineapples in their glass house, and it was a rare treat for me, which even my host’s ignorance could not sour.

If it was not a crocodile, what was it? I did not share my concern about the animal with Mary, however, as I had begun to on the beach, before thinking the better of it. She was too young for such uneasy questions. I had discovered from conversations I’d had about fossils with the people of Lyme that few wanted to delve into unknown territory, preferring to hold on to their superstitions and leave unanswerable questions to God’s will rather than find a reasonable explanation that might challenge previous thinking. Hence they would rather call this animal a crocodile than consider the alternative: that it was the body of a creature that no longer existed in the world.

This idea was too radical for most to contemplate. Even I, who considered myself open-minded, was a little shocked to be thinking it, for it implied that God did not plan out what He would do with all of the animals He created. If He was willing to sit back and let creatures die out, what did that mean for us? Were we going to die out too? Looking at that skull with its huge, ringed eyes, I felt as if I were standing on the edge of a cliff. It was not fair to bring Mary there with me.

I laid the book down next to the skull. “Did you have a look for the body this morning? Did you find anything?”

Mary shook her head. “Captain Cury was nosing about. Not for long, though-there was a landslip!” She shivered, and I noted that her hands were trembling. She picked up her hammer as if to give them something to do.

“Is he all right?” Although I did not care for William Lock, I would not have him killed, especially by the falling rocks that terrified me and other hunters.

Mary grunted. “Nothing wrong with him, but the croc’s body’s buried under a pile of rubble. We’ll be a time waiting for it.”

“That is a shame.” Behind this understatement I hid my disappointment. I had wanted to see the body of such a creature. It might provide some answers.

Mary tapped at the edge of the rock with her hammer, knocking off a sliver attached to the jaw. She seemed less bothered about this delay, perhaps because she was more used to having to wait to get even the most basic things: food, warmth, light.

“Mary, Lord Henley has paid me a visit and enquired after the skull,” I said. “He would like to see it, with a view to paying you for it.”

She looked up, her eyes bright. “He would? What will he pay?”

“I expect you could get five pounds for it. I can agree the terms for you. I think he rather expects me to. But…”

“What, Miss Elizabeth?”

“I know you need the money now. But if you wait until you find the body, and unite it with the head, I think you’ll be able to sell the whole specimen for more than if it’s in two parts. The skull is unusual as it is, but it would be spectacular if united with its body.” Even as I said it I knew this was too difficult a decision for Mary to make. What child can look beyond the bread that will fill her stomach now to the fields of wheat that may feed her for years to come? I would have to sit her mother down and discuss the matter.

“Mary, Mr Blackmore wants to see the croc!” Molly Anning shouted down the stairs.

“Tell him to come back in half an hour!” Mary called back. “Miss Philpot ain’t done yet.” She turned to me. “People been stopping by all day to see it,” she added proudly.

Molly’s feet appeared on the stairs. “Reverend Gleed from Chapel is waiting too. Tell your Miss Whatsit there be other folk wants a look. Anyone would think this were a shop with new frocks just come in,” she muttered.

That gave me an idea for a way the crocodile head could bring in a bit of money to the Annings if they were prepared to wait for the body. And they would not have to take the skull up to Colway Manor for Lord Henley to see it.

The next morning Mary and Joseph and two of his stronger friends carried the skull over to the Assembly Rooms in the main square, just around the corner from the Annings. The rooms were used little for much of the winter, to Margaret’s lasting despair. The main room had a large bay window that looked south out to sea and let in suf?cient light for the specimen to be clearly displayed. A steady stream of visitors paid a penny to look at it. When Lord Henley arrived-I had sent a boy with a message to invite him-Mary wanted to charge him a penny too, but I frowned at her and she lapsed into a sullen silence I fretted might put Lord Henley off an eventual sale.

I need not have worried. Lord Henley cared nothing about what Mary thought. Indeed, he hardly noticed her, instead making a show of examining the skull with a magnifying glass he had brought with him. Mary was so curious to use the glass herself that she came out of her sulk and hovered at Lord Henley’s shoulder. She did not dare ask him for the glass, but when he handed it to me to use I let her have a turn. Similarly, he directed questions about where the skull was found and how it was extracted to me, and I answered for Mary.

Only when he asked about the whereabouts of the body did she respond before I could. “We don’t know, sir. There were a landslip at the site, and if it’s there it’s buried. I’ll be watching for it. It just needs a good storm to wash it out.”

Lord Henley stared at Mary. I suppose he wondered why she was speaking; he had already forgotten she was involved. Then, too, she was not very presentable, to a gentleman or to anyone: her dark hair was matted from all of her time outdoors and the lack of a brush, her nails were ragged and rimmed with clay, and her shoes were caked with mud. She had grown tall in the last year without having a new dress, and the hem of her skirt was too high, and her wrists and hands shot out from her sleeves. At least her face was bright and keen, despite her wind-burned cheeks and the grubbiness of her skin. I was used to her looks, but seeing her from Lord Henley’s eyes made me flush with shame for her. If this was who was responsible for the specimen he was already claiming for his own, Lord Henley would indeed be concerned for its well-being.

“It is a splendid specimen, is it not, Lord Henley?” I interjected. “It just needs cleaning and preparing-which I shall oversee, of course. But think how striking it will look when reunited with its body one day!”

“How long will you require for the cleaning?”

I glanced at Mary. “A month at least,” I guessed. “Perhaps longer. No one has dealt with such a large creature before.”

Lord Henley grunted. He was eyeing the skull as if it were a haunch of venison dressed in port sauce. It was clear he wanted to take it back to Colway Manor immediately-he was the sort of man who made a decision and did not like to wait for the results. However, even he could see that the specimen needed attention-partly to present it in its best light, but also to preserve it. The skull had been pressed between layers of rock in the cliff, protecting it from exposure to air and keeping it damp. Now that it was free it would soon dry out and begin to crack as it shrank, unless Mary sealed it with the varnish her father had used on his cabinets. “All right, then,” he said. “A month to clean it, then bring it to me.”

“We ain’t giving up the skull till the body turns up,” Mary declared.

I frowned and shook my head at her. I was trying to lead Lord Henley gently to the notion of paying for the skull and body together, and Mary was blundering into my delicate negotiations. She ignored me, however, and added, “We’re keeping the head at Cockmoile Square.”

Lord Henley gazed at me. “Miss Philpot, why should this child have any say over what happens to the specimen?”

I coughed into my handkerchief. “Well, sir, she did find it-she and her brother-so I suppose her family has some claim on it.”

“Where is the father, then? I should be talking to him, not to a-” Lord Henley paused, as if saying “woman” or “girl” were too undignified for him.

“He died a few months ago.”

“The mother, then. Bring the mother here.” Lord Henley spoke as if commanding a groom to bring his horse.

It was hard to picture Molly Anning bargaining with Lord Henley. The day before she had agreed that I would try to convince Lord Henley to wait for a complete specimen. We had not discussed her doing the business dealings herself. I sighed. “Run and fetch your mother, Mary.”

We waited in awkward silence for them to come back, taking refuge in studying the skull. “Its eyes are rather large for a crocodile, do you not think, Lord Henley?” I ventured.

Lord Henley scuffed his boots on the floor. “It’s simple, Miss Philpot. This is one of God’s early models, and He decided to give the subsequent ones smaller eyes.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Do you mean God rejected it?”

“I mean God wanted a better version-the crocodile we know now-and replaced it.”

I had never heard of such a thing. I wanted to ask Lord Henley more about this idea, but he always stated things so baldly that there was no room for questions. He made me feel an idiot, even when I knew he was a bigger one than I.

It was just as well that we were interrupted by Molly Anning. Mercifully she did not bring the crying baby, but arrived trailing Mary and the smell of cabbage. “I’m Molly Anning, sir,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron and looking around her, for she would never have been inside the Assembly Rooms. “I run our fossil shop. What was it you wanted?” She was the same height as Lord Henley, and her level gaze seemed to subdue him a little. She surprised me too. I had never heard of the workshop being called a shop, or of her having anything to do with it. But then, without a husband, she had to take on new tasks. Running a business appeared to be one of them.

“I want to take this specimen, Mrs Anning. If your daughter will allow it,” Lord Henley added with a touch of sarcasm. “But then, your daughter answers to you, does she not?”

“Course.” Molly Anning barely glanced at the skull. “How much you want to pay, then?”

“Three pounds.”

“That-” I began.

“I expect there be plenty of gentlemen prepared to pay more,” Molly Anning talked over me. “But we’ll take your money, if you like, as a deposit for the whole creature once Mary finds it.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Oh, she’ll find it all right. My Mary always finds things. She’s special like that-always has been, since she was struck by lightning. That were in your field, weren’t it, Lord Henley, where she was struck?”

Several things astonished me: that Molly Anning was talking so confidently to a member of the gentry; that she had rather cleverly allowed him to name his price, throwing him off balance and getting an idea of the worth of an object whose value she didn’t know; that she had the cunning to make the lightning strike seem to be his responsibility. Most surprising, though, she had actually complimented her daughter just when Mary needed it. I’d heard people say that Molly Anning was an original; now I understood what they meant.

Lord Henley hardly knew how to respond. I stepped in to help him out. “Of course, the Annings will give you the head for three pounds if the body isn’t found within, shall we say, two years?”

Lord Henley glanced from Molly Anning to me. “All right,” he replied at length, placing his hand again on his prize.

After encountering the skull, I found it difficult to sleep, dreaming of the eyes of animals I had looked into: horses, cats, seagulls, dogs. There was a flatness in them, the lack of a God-given spark, that frightened me into wakefulness.

On Sunday I remained behind after the service at St Michael’s, waving on Bessy and my sisters. “I will catch you up,” I said, and stood at the back of the church, waiting for the vicar to finish his goodbyes to the other parishioners. Reverend Jones was a plain man, with a boxy head and close-cropped hair, whose thin lips twisted and turned even when every other part of him was still. I had not spoken with him except to mouth pleasantries, for he was uninspiring during services, his voice reedy, his sermons lacklustre. However, he was a man of God, and I hoped he might be able to give me guidance.

At last only a girl remained behind, sweeping the floor. Reverend Jones was going up and down the pews, picking up hymn sheets and checking for gloves or prayer books left behind. He did not see me. Indeed, it felt as if he did not want to see me. His pastoral duties over for the day, he was doubtless thinking about the dinner he would soon sit down to and the sleep by the fire afterwards. When I cleared my throat and he looked up, he could not stop his mouth tightening into a brief grimace. “Miss Philpot, is this handkerchief yours?” He held out a ball of white cloth, probably hopeful that I could be easily dismissed.

“I’m afraid not, Reverend Jones.”

“Ah. You are looking for something else, perhaps? A purse? A button? A hair pin?”

“No, I wished to discuss a matter with you.”

“I see.” Reverend Jones pushed out his lips. “My dinner will be ready soon and I need to finish up here. You don’t mind…?” He continued along the pews, straightening cushions as I trailed behind. All the while I could hear the scratch of the girl’s broom on the floor.

“I wanted to ask you what you thought of fossils.” In trying to hold his attention, my voice came out louder than I had intended in the empty church. The sweeping stopped, but Reverend Jones continued up the aisle to the oak pulpit, where he picked up his own handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

“What do I think of fossils, Miss Philpot? I do not think of them.”

“But do you know what they are?”

“They are skeletons that have been compressed by rock over time to become stone themselves. Most educated people know that.”

“But the skeletons-are they of creatures that still exist today?”

Reverend Jones hurried to the altar and gathered up a set of candlesticks and the altar cloth. I felt like an idiot following him about.

“Of course they exist,” he said. “All of the creatures God made exist.” He opened a door in the aisle to the left of the altar, which led to a small back room where church bits and pieces were stored. Over his shoulder I spied a jug labelled “Holy Water” sitting on a table. I remained in the doorway while Reverend Jones shut the candlesticks and cloth in a cupboard. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your question, Miss Philpot,” he called over his shoulder.

I opened my purse and poured into my palm a few bits of fossils that had found their way there. Most of my pockets and purses held fossil pieces. Reverend Jones’ mouth twisted in disgust as he glanced at the contents: ammonites, belemnite shafts, a chunk of fossilised wood, a length of crinoid stem. He reacted as if I had trailed horse dung into the church on my shoes. “Why on earth are you carrying those about?”

Ignoring his question, I held out an ammonite. “I should like to know where the live versions of these are, Reverend Jones, for I have never seen one.” As we gazed at the fossil, I felt for a moment that I was being sucked into its spiral, farther and farther back in time until the past was lost in the centre.

Reverend Jones’ response to the ammonite was more prosaic. “Perhaps you haven’t seen them because they live out at sea, and their bodies only wash up after they die.” He turned away and, pulling the door shut, locked it with the deft turn of a key, a gesture he seemed to enjoy.

I stepped in front of him so that he could not hurry off to his dinner. Indeed, he could not move at all, but was pinned in the corner. Not being able to get away from me and my awkward questions seemed to disturb Reverend Jones even more than my bringing out the ammonite had. He whipped his head from side to side. “Fanny, have you done yet?” he called. There was no response, however. She must have gone outside to dump the sweepings.

“Have you heard about the crocodile head the Annings have found in the cliffs and are showing at the Assembly Rooms?” I asked.

Reverend Jones forced himself to look straight at me. He had narrow eyes that seemed to be seeking out a horizon even when they were set on mine. “I know of it, yes.”

“Have you seen it?”

“I have no desire to see it.”

I was not surprised. Reverend Jones showed no curiosity about anything other than what would soon be on his plate. “The specimen does not look like any creature that lives now,” I said.

“Miss Philpot-”

“Someone-a member of this congregation, in fact-has suggested that it is an animal that God rejected in favour of a better design.”

Reverend Jones looked aghast. “Who said that?”

“It is not important who said it. I just wondered if there was any truth in the theory.”

Reverend Jones brushed down the sleeves of his coat and pursed his lips.“Miss Philpot, I am surprised. I thought you and your sisters were well versed in the Bible.”

“We are-”

“Let me make it clear: you need only look to Scripture for answers to your questions. Come.” He led the way back to the pulpit, where the Bible he had read from lay.

As he began flipping through the pages, the girl approached. “Reverend Jones, sir, I done the sweeping.”

“Thank you, Fanny.” Reverend Jones regarded her for a moment, then said, “There is something else I would like you to do for me, child. Come over to the Bible. I want you to read something out to Miss Philpot. There’s another penny in it for you.” He turned to me. “Fanny Miller and her family joined St Michael’s a few years ago from the Congregationalists, for they were deeply disturbed by the Annings’ fossil hunting. The Church of England is clearer in its biblical interpretation than some of the Dissenters’ churches. You have found much comfort here, haven’t you, Fanny?”

Fanny nodded. She had wide, crystal blue eyes topped with smooth, dark eyebrows that contrasted with her fair hair. She would never lead with her eyes, though they were her best feature, but with her brow, which was wrinkled with apprehension as she gazed at the Bible.

“Don’t be frightened, Fanny,” Reverend Jones said to soothe her. “You are a very good reader. I have heard you at Sunday school. Start here.” He laid a finger on a passage.

She read in a halting whisper:

“And God said, ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.’ And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind; and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.’ And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

“Excellent, Fanny, you may stop there.”

I thought he had finished patronising me by having an ignorant girl read out from Genesis, but Reverend Jones himself continued, “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind,’ and it was so.”

I stopped listening after a few lines. I knew them anyway, and couldn’t bear his oboe voice, which lacked the depth one expected of a man in his position. I actually preferred Fanny’s unschooled recitation. While he read I let my eye rest on the page. To the left of the Biblical words were annotations in red of Bishop Ussher’s chronological calculations of the Bible. According to him, God created Heaven and Earth on the night preceding the 23rd October 4004 BC. I had always wondered at his precision.

“…And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”

When Reverend Jones finished we were silent.

“You see, Miss Philpot, it really is very simple,” Reverend Jones said. He seemed much more confident now that he had the Bible with him. “All that you see about you is as God set it out in the beginning. He did not create beasts and then get rid of them. That would suggest He had made a mistake, and of course God is all-knowing and incapable of error, is He not?”

“I suppose not,” I conceded.

Reverend Jones’ mouth writhed. “You suppose not?”

“Of course not,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry; it’s just that I am confused. You are saying that everything we see around us is exactly as God created it, are you not? The mountains and seas and rocks and hills-the landscape is as it was at the beginning?”

“Of course.” Reverend Jones looked around at his church, tidy and quiet. “We are done here, aren’t we, Fanny?”

“Yes, Reverend Jones.”

But I was not done. “So every rock we see is as God created it at the beginning,” I persisted. “And the rocks came first, as it says in Genesis, before the animals.”

“Yes, yes.” Reverend Jones was becoming impatient, his mouth chewing an imaginary straw.

“If that is the case, then how did the skeletons of animals get inside rocks and become fossils? If the rocks were already created by God before the animals, how is it that there are bodies in the rocks?”

Reverend Jones stared at me, his mouth at last stilled into a tight straight line. Fanny Miller’s forehead was a field of furrows. One of the pews creaked in the stillness.

“God placed the fossils there when He created the rocks, to test our faith,” he responded at last. “As He is clearly testing yours, Miss Philpot.”

It is my faith in you that is being tested, I thought.

“Now, I really am very late for my dinner,” Reverend Jones continued. He picked up the Bible, a gesture that seemed to suggest he thought I might steal it. “Do not ask me difficult questions,” he might as well have said.

I never again mentioned fossils to Reverend Jones.

Lord Henley had to wait almost the agreed two years for the crocodile body to emerge. At first when I saw him at church or the Assembly Rooms or on the street, he would shout each time, “Where’s the body? Have you dug it out yet?” I would have to explain that the landslip was still blocking it and could not easily be shifted. He seemed not to understand until Mary and Joseph Anning and I took him one day to see the landslip for himself. He was startled, and also angry. “No one told me there was this much rock blocking it,” he claimed, stomping at a bubble of clay. “You’ve misled me, Miss Philpot, you and the Annings.”

“Indeed no, Lord Henley,” I replied. “Remember, we said it may take up to two years to clear, and if the body isn’t uncovered by then you will get the skull regardless.”

He was still angry, and would not listen, but mounted the grey horse he rode everywhere and galloped back up the beach, spraying water.

It was Molly Anning who reined in Lord Henley. She did little but let him rant. When he had run out of words and breath, she said, “You want your three pounds back, I’ll give it you now. There be plenty of others lined up to buy that skull, and for a better price too. Here, take your money.” She reached into her apron pocket as if she had anything other than air in it, the money being long spent. Of course Lord Henley backed down. I envied Molly her confidence with such a man, though I didn’t tell her, for she would have responded with a scornful, “And I envy you your one hundred and fifty pounds per year.”

Eventually Lord Henley’s pursuit of the crocodile died down. It requires patience to look for fossils. Only Mary and William Lock and I remained attentive, checking the landslip after every storm and spring tide. Mary tried to get there first, but sometimes William Lock slipped in before her.

Mercifully, a fever kept the hostler abed and got Mary and me out early the day she found it. A huge storm had lasted two days, and was too fierce for anyone to venture out during it. On the third morning I woke at dawn to a strange quiet, and knew. I left my warm bed, dressed quickly, threw on my cloak and bonnet and hurried out.

The sun was just a sliver off Portland, and the beach was empty but for a familiar figure in the distance. As I got to the end of Church Cliffs I could see the landslip was gone, the storm having scrubbed clean the beach as if expecting a special guest. Mary had climbed up onto the ledge the hole made and was hammering at the cliff. When I called to her she turned. “It’s here, Miss Philpot! I found it!” she cried, jumping from the ledge. We smiled at each other. For this brief moment, before all the fuss began, we savoured the solitude of the dawn, and the purity of finding treasure together.

It took the Day brothers three days to extract the body, working around the tides. As they got out each slab and laid it on the beach, it was like watching a mosaic being put together before us. As when the skull had been dug out, a crowd gathered to watch the Days and inspect the crocodile. A few were fascinated and keen to speculate on its origins. Others enjoyed the spectacle but threw dark looks at it. “It be a monster, is what it be,” a man muttered. “Watch the croc’ll come and eat you in your bed if you’re bad!” a mother called after her children. “Lord, it be ugly,” another said. “Let Lord Henley come and lock it away in the Manor!”

Lord Henley also came to see it, though he did not even dismount from his horse. “Excellent,” he declared, the horse jogging sideways as if to keep its distance from the stone slabs. “I will send my coach as soon as it’s ready.” He seemed to have forgotten that cleaning and mounting the specimen would take several weeks. And he still had to agree a price before the Annings would give it up.

I had expected to be involved in this negotiation, but discovered soon after the specimen had been brought back to the workshop that Molly Anning had already done the business, and Lord Henley paid them twenty-three pounds for it. Moreover, she shrewdly got him to waive any rights to other fossils they found on his property. She had even written it out in a note he signed, when I had assumed she couldn’t write. I could not have done better myself.

It was only when the body had been cleaned and placed next to the skull that we could at last see the creature for what it was: an impressive, eighteen-foot stone monster unlike anything we had ever heard of. It was not a crocodile. It was not just the huge eyes, the long smooth snout and the even teeth. It also had paddles rather than legs, and its torso was an elongated barrel woven of ribs along a strong spine. It ended in a long tail, with a kink partway along the vertebrae. It made me think a bit of a dolphin, of a turtle, or a lizard, and yet none of these was quite right.

I couldn’t help thinking of what Lord Henley had said about the creature being one of God’s rejected models, and of Reverend Jones’ response. I did not know what to make of it. Most who came to look at the specimen called it a crocodile, as did the Annings themselves. It was easier to think that was what it was, perhaps an unusual species that lived somewhere else in the world- Africa, perhaps. But I knew it was something different, and after I saw it complete, I stopped referring to it as a crocodile, instead calling it simply Mary’s creature.

Joseph Anning built a wooden frame, and once Mary had cleaned and varnished the bones, they cemented into the frame the limestone slabs that held the creatures. Then she added a skim of lime plaster around the specimen to set off the bones and give the whole thing a smooth, finished appearance. She was pleased with her handiwork, but once it disappeared to Colway Manor she heard nothing from Lord Henley, who seemed to have lost interest in the specimen, like a hunter not bothering to eat the deer he has slain. Though of course, Lord Henley was no hunter, but a collector.

Collectors have a list of items to be obtained, a cabinet of curiosities to be filled by others’ work. They might go out onto the beach sometimes and walk along, frowning at the cliffs as if looking at an exhibition of dull paintings. They cannot concentrate, for the rocks all look the same to them: quartz looks like flint, beef like bones. They find little more than a few bits of broken ammonite and belemnite and call themselves experts. Then they buy from the hunters what they need to make up their list. They have little true understanding of what they collect, or even that much interest. They know it is fashionable, and that is enough for them.

Hunters spend hour after hour, day after day out in all weather, our faces sunburned, our hair tangled by the wind, our eyes in a permanent squint, our nails ragged and our fingertips torn, our hands chapped. Our boots are trimmed with mud and stained with sea water. Our clothes are filthy by the end of the day. Often we find nothing, but we are patient and hard-working and not put off by coming back empty-handed. We may have our special interest-an intact brittle star, a belemnite with its sac attached, a fossil fish with every scale in place-but we pick up other things too, and are open to what the cliffs and beach offer us. Some, like Mary, sell what they find. Others, like me, keep our finds. We label the specimens, recording where and when we found them, and display them in cases with glass tops. We study and compare specimens, and we draw conclusions. The men write up their theories and publish them in journals, which I read but may not contribute to myself.

Lord Henley stopped collecting other fossils once he had Mary’s creature. Perhaps he considered it the pinnacle of his collecting achievement. Those more serious about fossils know their search is never over. There will always be more specimens to discover and study, for, as with people, each fossil is unique. There can never be too many.

Unfortunately, that would not be the last of my dealings with Lord Henley. Though we occasionally nodded at each other on the street or across church pews, I had little real contact with him for some time. When I next did, it was vehement.

It began in London. We visited annually, each spring, once the roads were clear enough to travel. It was our treat for getting through another winter in Lyme. I didn’t mind so much the storms and the isolation, for these were good conditions in which to find fossils. Louise, however, could not garden, and became frustrated and silent. Worse, though, was watching Margaret grow grey and melancholic. She was a summer person, needing warmth and light and variety to stimulate her. She hated the cold, and Morley Cottage was a prison she felt trapped in, with the Assembly Rooms quiet now the season was finished and no new visitors were arriving to be entertained. Winter months gave her too much time to think about the years passing and the loss of her prospects and, bit by bit, her looks. She no longer had the fresh roundness of youth, but was becoming lined and thin. By March Margaret had always faded like a threadbare nightgown worn for too long.

London was her tonic. It gave all of us a dose of old friends and new fashions, of parties and fine food, of new novels for Margaret and natural history journals for me, and of the joy of having a child in the house, our young nephew Johnny providing welcome distraction from the onset of middle age. We went at the end of March, and generally stayed a month to six weeks, depending upon how irritated we became with our sister-in-law, and she with us. While too timid to show it outright, our brother’s wife grew more and more brittle as the weeks went on, and found excuses to remain in her bedroom, or in the nursery with Johnny. I believe she thought we had grown coarse from living in Lyme, while we found her too concerned with how things might look to others. Lyme had fostered an independent spirit in us that surprised more conservative Londoners.

We went out a good deal-to visit friends, to plays, to the Royal Academy, and of course to the British Museum, which was so close to our brother’s house that it could be seen from the drawing room windows on the first floor. I was always keen to lean over the cases containing the museum’s fossil collection, fogging the glass with my breath till the guards frowned. I even donated a fine complete specimen of a dapedium, a fossil fish I was particularly fond of. In thanks, Charles Konig, the Keeper of the Natural History Department, waived the museum’s entrance fee for the month I was visiting. On the label the collector was called simply Philpot, neatly sidestepping the question of my sex.

One spring during our stay in London, we began to hear excellent reports of William Bullock’s Museum in the newly built Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly. His expanding collection contained art, antiquities, artefacts from all over the world, and a natural history collection. My brother took all of us there one day. The exterior was in the Egyptian style, with huge windows and doors with slanted sides, like the entrance to a tomb, fluted columns topped with papyrus scrolls, and statues of Isis and Osiris looking out over Piccadilly from their perches on the cornice above the door. The building’s façade was painted a startling yellow, with MUSEUM trumpeted from a large sign. I thought it overly dramatic in amongst the otherwise sober brick buildings; but then, that was the point.

Perhaps it was just that, having become used to the simple whitewashed houses of Lyme, I found such novelty jarring. The collection in the Egyptian Hall was even more startling. Displayed in the oval entrance hall were a variety of curious pieces from all over the world. There were African masks and feathered totems from Pacific islands; tiny warrior figures in clay and decorated with beads; stone weapons and fur-lined cloaks from northern climates; a long, thin boat called a kayak, that could hold just one person, with carved paddles decorated with designs burnt into the wood. An Egyptian mummy was displayed in an open sarcophagus painted with gold leaf.

The next room was much larger and housed a collection of unconvincing paintings “by the Old Masters”, we were told, though they looked to me to be copies done by indifferent Royal Academy students. More interesting were the cases of stuffed and mounted birds, from the plain English blue tit to the exotic red-footed booby brought back by Captain Cook from the Maldives. Margaret, Louise and I were content to study them, as from living in Lyme we had all become more aware of birds than we had been in London.

Bored with birds, however, little Johnny had gone on with his mother to the Pantherion, the museum’s biggest room. He was gone but a moment before he came running back. “Auntie Margaret, come, you must see the enormous elephant!” He grabbed his aunt’s hand and pulled her into the next room. The rest of us followed, bemused.

Indeed, the elephant was enormous. I had never seen one before, nor a hippopotamus, an ostrich, a zebra, a hyena or a camel. All were stuffed and grouped under a domed skylight in the centre of the room, in a grassy enclosure dotted with palm trees, depicting their habitat. We stood and stared, for these were rare sights indeed.

Being young and not appreciating rarity, Johnny did not look for long, but raced around the room. He ran up as I was inspecting a boa constrictor that had been wound around a palm tree above my head. “It’s your crocodilly, Auntie Elizabeth! Come and see it!” He tugged my arm and gestured at an exhibit at the far end of the room. My nephew knew about the Lyme beast which he, like others, persisted in calling a crocodile. For his birthday I had done two watercolours of it for him, one of the fossil itself, the other of how I imagined the creature to have looked when it was alive. I went with Johnny now, curious to see a real crocodile and compare it to what Mary had found.

Johnny was not wrong, however: it was indeed “my” crocodile. I gaped at the display. Mary’s creature lay on a gravel beach next to a pool of water with reeds poking out along the edges. When Mary first uncovered it, it had been flattened, its bones jumbled, but she had felt that she should leave it as she found it, rather than try to reconstruct it. Apparently William Bullock felt no such constraint, having prised the whole body away from the slabs that held it, rearranged the bones so the paddles had clear forms, stacked the vertebrae in a straight line, and even added what were probably plaster of Paris ribs added where some had gone missing. Worse, they’d put a waistcoat around its chest, with the paddles sticking out of the arm holes, and perched an oversize monocle by one of its prominent eyes. Near its snout was spread a tempting array of animals a crocodile might feed on: rabbits, frogs, fish. At least they had not managed to prise open the mouth and stuff prey into its craw.

The label read:

STONE CROCODILE

Found by Henry Hoste Henley

In the wilds of Dorsetshire

I had always assumed the specimen was still in one of the many rooms at Colway Manor, mounted on a wall or set on a table. To see it in an exhibition in London, laid out in a dramatic tableau so alien to what I knew of it, and claimed by Lord Henley as his own discovery, was a shock that froze me.

It was Louise who spoke for me when the rest of the family joined Johnny and me. “That is an abomination,” she said.

“Why did Lord Henley buy it if he was just going to pass it on to this-circus?” I looked around and shuddered.

“I expect he made a pretty profit,” my brother said.

“How could he do that to Mary’s specimen? Look, Louise, they’ve straightened out its tail she worked so hard to preserve as she found it.” I gestured to the tail, which no longer had a kink three-quarters of the way along.

Perhaps the most upsetting thing about Mary’s creature being presented in this vulgar way was how much it cheapened the experience of seeing it. In Lyme people were impressed by its strangeness, and gave it hushed respect. At Bullock’s Museum it was just another display amongst many, and not even the most awe-inspiring. Though I hated seeing it laid out and dressed so ludicrously, I grew angry at visitors who gave it just a quick glance before hurrying back to the flashier elephant or hippo.

John had a word with one of the attendants and discovered that the specimen had been on display since the previous autumn, meaning Lord Henley had only owned it for a few months before selling it on.

I was so angry that I could not enjoy the rest of the museum. Johnny grew bored with my mood, as indeed did everyone but Louise, who took me off to Fortnum’s for a cup of tea so that I could rant without disturbing the rest of the family. “How could he sell it?” I repeated, stirring my tea violently with a tiny spoon. “How could he take something so unusual, so remarkable, so linked to Lyme and to Mary, and sell it to a man who dresses it up like a doll and shows it off as if it is something to be laughed at! How dare he?”

Louise laid her hand over mine to stop me doing damage to one of Fortnum’s cups. I dropped the spoon and leaned forward. “Do you know, Louise,” I began, “I think-I think it’s not a crocodile at all. It doesn’t have the anatomy of a crocodile, but no one wants to say so publicly.”

Louise’s grey eyes remained clear and steady. “What is it, if not a crocodile?”

“A creature that no longer exists.” I waited for a moment, to see if God would bring the ceiling crashing down on me. Nothing happened, however, except for the waiter arriving to refill our cups.

“How can that be?”

“Do you know of the concept of extinction?”

“You mentioned it when you were reading Cuvier, but Margaret made you stop, for it upset her.”

I nodded. “Cuvier has suggested that animal species sometimes die out when they are no longer suited to survive in the world. The idea is troubling to people because it suggests that God does not have a hand in it, that He created animals and then sat back and let them die. Then there are those like Lord Henley, who say the creature is an early model for a crocodile, that God made it and rejected it. Some think God used the Flood to rid the world of animals He didn’t want. But these theories imply God could make mistakes and need to correct Himself. Do you see? All of these ideas upset someone. Many people, like our Reverend Jones at St Michael’s, find it easiest to accept the Bible literally and say God created the world and all its creatures in six days, and it is still exactly as it was then, with all of the animals still existing somewhere. And they find Bishop Ussher’s calculation of the world’s age as six thousand years comforting rather than limiting and a little absurd.” I picked up a langue de chat from the plate of biscuits between us and snapped it in two, thinking of my conversation with Reverend Jones.

“How does he explain Mary’s creature, then?”

“He thinks they are swimming about off the coast of South America, and we haven’t yet discovered them.”

“Could that be true?”

I shook my head. “Sailors would have seen them. We have been sailing around the world for hundreds of years and never had a sighting of such a creature.”

“And so you believe that what we were looking at in Bullock’s Museum is a fossilised body of an animal that no longer exists. It died out, for reasons that may or may not be God’s intention.” Louise said this carefully, as if to make it crystal clear to herself and to me.

“Yes.”

Louise chuckled and took a biscuit. “That would certainly surprise some members of the congregation at St Michael’s. Reverend Jones might have to ask you to leave and join a Dissenting church!”

I finished the langue de chat. “I don’t know that Dissenters are any different, really. They may differ doctrinally from the Church of England, but the Dissenters I know in Lyme interpret the Bible just as literally as Reverend Jones does. They would never accept the idea of extinction.” I sighed. “Mary’s creature needs studying, by anatomists, like Cuvier in Paris, or geologists from Oxford or Cambridge. They might be able to provide persuasive answers. But that will never happen while it is masquerading as an exotic Dorset croc at Bullock’s!”

“It could be worse, tucked away in Colway Manor,” Louise countered. “At least here more people will see it. And if the right people-your learned geologists-see it and recognise its worth, they may think it worth studying.”

I had not thought of that. Louise was always more sensible than I. It was a relief to talk to her, and gave me a little comfort, but not enough to stem my fury at Lord Henley.

When we returned to Lyme the following month, I went to confront him, even before I saw Mary Anning. I did not announce my visit, nor tell my sisters where I was going, but strode across the fields between Morley Cottage and Colway Manor, ignoring the wildflowers and blooming hedgerows I’d missed while in London. Lord Henley was not at home, but I was directed to one of the boundaries of his property, where he was overseeing the digging of a drainage ditch. It had been a rainy spring while we were away, and my shoes and the hem of my dress were sodden and muddy by the time I reached him.

Lord Henley was sitting on his grey horse, watching his men work. It annoyed me that he did not get down and stand amongst them. By then, anything he did would have made me cross, for I’d had a whole month during which to fuel my anger. He did dismount for me, however, bowing and welcoming me back to Lyme. “How was your stay in London?” As he spoke, Lord Henley eyed my muddy skirt, probably thinking his wife would never be seen publicly in such dirty clothes.

“It was very good, thank you, Lord Henley. I was astonished, however, by something I saw at Bullock’s Museum. I thought the specimen you bought from the Annings was still at Colway Manor, but I discovered you sold it on to Mr Bullock.”

Lord Henley’s face lit up. “Ah, the crocodile is on display, then? How does it look? I trust they spelled my name correctly.”

“Your name was there, yes. I was rather surprised not to see Mary Anning named, however, nor even Lyme Regis.”

Lord Henley looked blank. “Why would Mary Anning be named? She didn’t own it.”

“Mary found it, sir. Have you forgotten that?”

Lord Henley snorted. “Mary Anning is a worker. She found the crocodile on my land-Church Cliffs are part of my property, you know. Do you think these men-” he nodded at the men shifting mud “-do they own what is on this land simply because they dig it up? Of course not! It belongs to me. Besides which, Mary Anning is a female. She is a spare part. I have to represent her, as indeed I do many Lyme residents who cannot represent themselves.”

For a moment the air seemed to crackle and buzz, and Lord Henley’s piggish face bulged at me. It was my anger distorting everything. “Why did you make such a fuss to obtain the specimen if you were only going to sell it on?” I demanded when I had finally mastered my emotions.

Lord Henley’s horse was becoming restless, and he stroked its neck to calm it. “It was cluttering up my library. It’s much better where it is.”

“Indeed it is, if that is the casual attitude you took towards it. I did not expect such fickle behaviour from you, Lord Henley. It demeans you. Good day, sir.” I turned before I could see the effect of my feeble words on him, but as I stumbled away across the field I heard his bark of laughter. He did not call out to me, as other men might have. Doubtless he was glad to see the back of me, a bedraggled spinster scattering mud and bile.

As I walked I cursed under my breath, and then began to out loud, for there was no one about to hear me. “God damn you, you bloody idiot” I had never said such words aloud, nor even thought them, but I was so angry that I had to do something out of the ordinary. I was furious at Lord Henley for riding roughshod over scientific discovery; for turning a mystery of the world into something banal and foolish; for throwing my sex back at me as something to be ashamed of. A spare part, indeed.

But I was angrier at myself. I had lived nine years in Lyme Regis by then, and had come to value my independence and forthrightness. However, I had not learned to stand up to the Lord Henleys of the world. I could not tell him what I thought of his selling Mary’s creature in a way that he understood. Instead he ridiculed me and made me feel it was I who had done something wrong. “Idiot. Bloody idiot!” I repeated.

“Oh!”

I looked up. I was crossing a small bridge over the river just as Fanny Miller was coming along the path that led down to the centre of town. She had clearly heard me, for her cheeks were bright red and her brow wrinkled, and her girlish eyes were wide, like shallow puddles with no depth.

I glared at her, and did not apologise. Fanny hurried away, glancing back now and then as if she feared I might follow her and swear some more. Though horrified, she was doubtless also keen to tell family and friends what the queer Miss Philpot had said.

Although I dreaded having to tell Mary about her creature, I have never been one to put off bad news-the wait only makes it worse. I went that afternoon to Cockmoile Square. Molly Anning directed me to Pinhay Bay, to the west of Monmouth Beach, where Mary had been commissioned by a visitor to extract a giant ammonite. “They want it for a garden feature,” Molly Anning added with a chuckle. “Daft.”

I flinched. In the Morley Cottage garden there was a giant ammonite with a one-foot diameter that Mary had helped me to dig out; I had given it to Louise for Christmas. Molly Anning probably didn’t know that, as she had never come up Silver Street to see us. “Why climb a hill if there’s no need to?” she often said.

Molly Anning would be glad for the money from that ammonite, however. Since selling the monster to Lord Henley, Mary had been hunting without success for another complete specimen. She had only found tantalising pieces-jawbones, fused vertebrae, a fan of small paddle bones-which brought in a little money, but far less than if she had discovered them all together.

I found her near the Snakes’ Graveyard-I now called it the Ammonite Graveyard-which had attracted me to Lyme years before. She had managed to cut out the ammonite from a ledge, and was wrapping it in a sack to drag back along the beach-hard work for a girl, even one used to it.

Mary greeted me with joy, for she often said she missed me when I was making my London visit. She told me about all that she had found while I was away, and what they had managed to sell, and who else had been out hunting. “And how was London, Miss Elizabeth?” she asked finally. “Did you buy any new gowns? I see you’ve a new bonnet.”

“Yes, I have. How observant you are, Mary. Now, I have to tell you about something I saw in London.” I took a deep breath and told her about going to Bullock’s and discovering her creature, describing in frank terms the state of it, down to its waistcoat and monocle. “Lord Henley should not have sold it to someone who would treat it so irresponsibly, no matter how many people got to see it,” I finished. “I hope you won’t be approaching him with any future finds.” I did not tell her I had just been to see Lord Henley and been laughed at.

Mary listened, her brown eyes widening only when I mentioned that the creature’s tail had been straightened. Apart from that her reaction was not what I had expected. I thought she would be angry that Lord Henley had profited from her find, but for the moment she was more interested in the attention being given to it.

“Was lots of people looking at it?” she asked.

“A fair number.” I didn’t add that other exhibits were more popular.

“Lots and lots? More even than the number of people living in Lyme?”

“Far more. It has been on show for several months, so I expect thousands have seen it.”

“All them people seeing my croc.” Mary smiled, her eyes bright as she looked out to sea, as if spying a queue of spectators on the horizon, waiting to see what she would find next.