Remarkable Creatures

For Colonel Birch was a fraud. To be accurate, I should say, Lieutenant Colonel Birch was a fraud. That was one of his many petty ruses--leaving off the "Lieutenant" to promote himself higher than he was. Nor did he offer up that he was long retired from the Life Guards, though anyone who knew a bit about them could see he wore the old uniform of long coat and leather breeches rather than the shorter coat and blue-grey pantaloons of the current soldiers. He was happy to bask in the Life Guards' glory at Waterloo, without having taken part.

Worse, I discovered from those three days on the beach with him that he did not find fossils himself. He did not keep his eyes on the ground as Mary and I did, but searched our faces and followed our gazes so that as we stopped and leaned over, he reached out and picked up what we were looking at before we had time to do so ourselves. He only tried this method with me once before my glare stopped him. Mary was more tolerant, or blinded by her feelings, and let him rob her of many specimens and call them his own finds.

Colonel Birch's amateurism appalled me. For all his professed interest in fossils, and his supposedly robust military constitution ready for all hardships, he was not a scrabbler in the mud in search of specimens. He found his through his wallet, or his charm, or by picking them off others. He had a fine collection by the end of the summer, but Mary had found and given them to him, or nudged him towards those she had spotted.

Like Lord Henley and other men who came to Lyme, he was a collector rather than a hunter, buying his knowledge rather than seeking it with his own eyes and hands. I could not understand how Mary would find him appealing.

Yes, I could. I was a little in love with him myself. For all my complaints, I found him very attractive: not only physically, though there was that, but because his interest in fossils seemed genuine and penetrating. When he was not flirting with Mary, he was capable--and keen--to discuss the origins of the ichthyosaurus, and what it meant to be extinct. He was also clear about God's role, without seeming disrespectful or blasphemous. "I am sure God has better things to do than watch over every living creature on this earth," he said once when we were walking back to Lyme along the cliff path, the tide having cut us off. "He has done such amazing work to create what He has; surely now He needn't follow the progress of every worm and shark. His concern is with us, and He showed that by making us in His image and sending us His son." Colonel Birch made it sound so clear and sensible that I wished Reverend Jones could hear him.

Here, then, was a man who thought and talked about fossils, who encouraged us women to look for them, who would not mind that I regularly ruined my gloves. My anger at him stemmed not so much from irritation at his inability to be a hunter rather than a collector, but from indignation that he never for a moment considered me--closer to his age and of a similar class--as a lady he might court.

Whatever I thought of him, it was not for me to decide what Mary did or did not do with Colonel Birch. That was for Molly Anning to sort out. Over the years Molly and I had grown to understand each other, so that she was less suspicious and I less intimidated. While she had little education, and saw neither poetry nor philosophy in our discoveries, she accepted their importance to me and to others. That importance may have been measured in coins that kept her family fed, clothed and sheltered, but she did not ridicule their value. Fossils became an item to be sold, as significant as buttons or carrots or barrels or nails. If she thought it peculiar that I did not sell the specimens I found, she did not show it. After all, in her eyes I did not need to. Louise, Margaret and I could not be extravagant, but we were never fearful of the bailiff or the workhouse. The Annings, however, lived on the edge of starvation, and that can sharpen a mind. Molly Anning became quite a shrewd saleswoman, squeezing out extra shillings and pennies here and there.

She envied me my income and my position in society--what society there was in Lyme--but she pitied me too, for I had never known a man, never felt the security of marriage or the love of a baby in my arms. That rather balanced out the envy, and left her neutral and reasonably tolerant towards me. As for me, I admired her business sense and her ability to find her way through difficult circumstances. She did not complain much even though she had a right to, given her hard life.

Unfortunately, Molly Anning allowed herself to be carried away by Colonel Birch's charm almost as much as her daughter was. I had always thought she was a good judge of character, and would have thought she'd see Birch as the greedy schemer he was.

Perhaps like Mary she sensed he was the first real--and possibly the only--opportunity her daughter had to be lifted from the hard life of her own class into a kinder, more prosperous world.

I do not think Colonel Birch originally intended to court Mary. He was drawn to Lyme by a fever many have felt for finding treasure on the beach, where old bones with their hints of earlier worlds become as precious as silver. It is hard to stop looking once you have become infected. However, Colonel Birch was also presented with the unusual opportunity of passing whole days with an unaccompanied woman, and could not resist.

First, though, he had to win over her mother. He did so by flirting shamelessly with her, and for perhaps the only time in her life, Molly Anning lost her head. Ground down by poverty and loss, Molly had enjoyed little happiness in the years since Richard Anning's death, but suffered constant worry over money and fear of the prospect of being sent to the workhouse. Now a handsome retired soldier in a smart uniform was kissing her hand and complimenting her housekeeping and asking her leave to go along the beach with her daughter. She who had been so indignant at William Buckland innocently taking Mary out now threw away her caution for the price of a kiss on the hand and a kind word or two. Perhaps she was simply tired of saying no.

The shop where Molly Anning sold fossils to visitors began to run low on even basic specimens such as ammonites and belemnites, for Mary had stopped picking up other fossils, leaving nodules for others to break open, ignoring requests by other collectors for sea urchins or gryphaea or brittle stars. The good specimens she found she gave to Colonel Birch, or encouraged him to pick up himself. Molly did not complain to her daughter, however. I helped as best I could by donating what I found, for I primarily hunted for fossil fish and left other specimens to others. But the Annings were low on funds and running debts with the baker and the butcher, and would soon with the coal merchant once it grew cold. Still Molly Anning said nothing--perhaps seeing Mary's time with Colonel Birch as a future investment.

Since her mother wouldn't, I tried to talk to Mary about Colonel Birch. When the tide was high they could not go out, and he would stop in at the Three Cups, or attend the Assembly Rooms, where of course Mary did not go. Then she would help her mother, or clean Colonel Birch's specimens for him, or simply wander about Lyme in a daze. One day I met her as I was coming up Sherborne Lane, a small passage that led to Silver Street from the centre of town. I used it when I was not feeling sociable enough to greet everyone walking along Broad Street. Mary was drifting down the lane, her eyes on Golden Cap, a smile on her face, which shone with an appealing inner joy. For a moment I could almost believe Colonel Birch might seriously court her.

Seeing her so happy twisted my jealous heart, so that when she greeted me I did not restrain myself. "Mary," I said abruptly, without the small talk that eases such conversation, "is Colonel Birch paying you for your time?"

Mary gave her head a shake, as if trying to rouse herself, and met my eyes with all of her attention. "What do you mean?"

I shifted the basket I was carrying from one arm to the other. "He is taking up all of your hunting time. Is he paying you for it, or at least for the fossils you find him?"

Mary narrowed her eyes. "You never asked me that about Mr Buckland, or Henry De La Beche, or any of the other gentlemen I've taken out. Is Colonel Birch any different?"

"You know he is. For one thing, the others found their own fossils, or paid you for those you found for them. Is Colonel Birch paying you?"

Mary's eyes registered a flicker of doubt, which she covered up with scorn. "He finds his own curies. He don't need to pay me."

"Oh? And what have you found to sell, then?" When Mary didn't answer, I added,

"I've seen your mother's cury table in Cockmoile Square, Mary. There is little on it. She's selling broken ammonites you would have thrown back into the sea once."

Mary's elation had entirely disappeared. If that was my intention, I had been successful. "I'm helping Colonel Birch," she declared. "There's nothing wrong with that."

"And he should be paying you for it. Otherwise he is using you for his own gain and leaving you and your family the poorer." I should have left it there, where my words might have had a positive effect. But I could not resist pressing harder. "His behaviour does not speak well of his character, Mary. You would do better not to associate with such a man, for it will hurt you in the end. Already the town is talking, and it is worse than when you attended William Buckland."

Mary glared at me. "That's nonsense. You don't know him at all, not like I do.

You'd do better to stop listening to gossip, or you'll become a gossip yourself!" Pushing past me, she hurried down Sherborne Lane. Mary had never before been so rude to me. It was as if she had taken a great leap from deferring to me as a working girl to acting as my equal.

Afterwards I felt bad about what I had said and how I had said it, and decided as penance I would force myself to go out with Mary and Colonel Birch again, to blunt the sharp tongues of Lyme. Mary accepted my gesture easily, for love made her forgiving.

That was why I was with them out by Black Ven when they at last found the ichthyosaurus Colonel Birch was so keen to add to his collection. I was finding very little that day, for I was distracted by the behaviour of Mary and Colonel Birch, who were more openly affectionate than they had been weeks before: touching an arm to get the other's attention, whispering together, smiling at each other. For an awful moment I wondered if Mary had succumbed completely to him. But then I reasoned that if she had, she would not go to such lengths to seem accidentally to touch his arm. I did not know of married couples who caressed each other so eagerly. They did not need to.

I was pondering this when I saw Mary pause on a ledge and look down, the way I'd seen her do hundreds of times. It was the quality of her stillness that told me she'd found something.

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 realised 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.

However, 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 Doctor 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, I suppose 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 judgemental 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 brick-like 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 watch 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 himself.

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 memorising 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 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.

"Why don't you leave the letter to us and we'll have it sent to London?" Louise suggested.

Molly Anning and I both looked at her gratefully for this neat solution: Molly because responsibility for the letter reaching its destination was taken out of her hands, I because I could decide what to do without having to reveal to her that Colonel Birch had written to me. "And I shall take Mary out hunting," I added. "I'll keep an eye on her and encourage her." And put what fossils I find in her basket, until she has recovered her senses, I added to myself.

"Don't tell Mary about the letter," Molly ordered, pulling at her coat.

"Of course not."

Molly looked at me, her dark eyes moving back and forth over my face. "I weren't always sure of you Philpots," she said. "Now I am."

When she'd gone--seeming spryer now that she was no longer weighed down with the letter--I turned to Louise. "What shall we do?"

"Wait for Margaret," was her reply.

On our sister's return in the evening, we three sat by the fire and discussed Molly Anning's letter. Margaret was in her element. This was the sort of situation that she read about in the novels she favoured by authors such as Miss Jane Austen, whom Margaret was sure she'd met long ago at the Assembly Rooms the first time we visited Lyme. One of Miss Austen's books had even featured Lyme Regis, but I did not read fiction and could not be persuaded to try it. Life itself was far messier, and didn't end so tidily, with the heroine making the right match. We Philpot sisters were the very embodiment of that frayed life. I did not need novels to remind me of what I had missed.

Margaret held the letter in both hands. "What does it say? Is it really only about money?" She turned it over and over, as if it might magically open and reveal its contents.

"Molly Anning wouldn't waste the time to write about anything else," I said, knowing my sister was thinking about marriage. "And she wouldn't lie to us."

Margaret ran her fingers over Colonel Birch's name. "Still, Colonel Birch must see it. It may remind him of what he has left behind."

"He'll be reminded that I received his letter and never responded. For if I add to the address he'll know it's I who has been meddling--no one else in Lyme would have his address."

Margaret frowned. "This is not about you, Elizabeth, but about Mary. Don't you want him to get this letter? Or would you prefer he live in perfect ignorance of Mary's circumstances? Don't you want the best for both parties?"

"You sound like one of your lady author's novels," I snapped, then stopped. I was gripping a copy of the Geological Society Journal Mr Buckland had sent me. To calm myself I took a breath. "I believe Colonel Birch is not an honourable man. Sending the letter will just raise Molly Anning's hopes for the outcome."

"You and Louise have already done that very thing by taking the letter off her and promising to post it!"

"That is true, and I am beginning to regret saying we would. I don't want to play a part in a fruitless, humiliating plea." I knew my arguments were swinging all about.

Margaret waved the letter at me. "You're jealous of Mary gaining his attention."

"I am not!" I said this so sharply that Margaret ducked her head. "That is ridiculous," I added, trying to soften my tone.

There was a long silence. Margaret set the letter down, then reached over and took my hand. "Elizabeth, you mustn't stand in Mary's way of getting something you were never able to."

I pulled my hand from her grasp. "That is not why I'm objecting."

"Why, then?" I sighed.

"Mary is a young working girl, uneducated apart from what little we and her church have taught her, and from a poor family. Colonel Birch is from a well-established Yorkshire family with an estate and a coat of arms. He would never seriously consider marrying Mary. Surely you know that. Molly Anning knows it--that is why she has only written about the money. Even Mary knows it, though she won't say it. You are only encouraging her. He has used her to enhance his collection--for free. That is all. She's lucky he didn't do worse. To ask him for money, or to reestablish the connection, just prolongs the Annings' agony. We mustn't do so just to please your and Mary's romantic notions."

Margaret glared at me.

"Your Miss Austen would never allow such a marriage to take place in her novels you so love," I went on. "If it can't happen in fiction, surely it won't happen in life."

At last I made myself understood. Margaret's face crumpled and she began to cry, great shuddering sobs that shook her entire body. Louise put her arms around her sister but said nothing, for she knew I was right. Margaret grasped on to the magic of novels because they held out hope that Mary--and she herself--might yet have a chance at marriage. While my own experience of life was limited, I knew such a thing would not happen. It hurt, but the truth often does.

"It's not fair," Margaret gasped as her sobs finally subsided. "He shouldn't have paid her the attention he did. Spending so much time with her and complimenting her, giving her the locket and kissing her--"

"He kissed her?" A dart of the jealousy I was trying so hard to hide even from myself shot through me.

Margaret

looked

chastened.

"I wasn't meant to tell you! I wasn't meant to tell anyone! Please don't say anything. Mary only told me because--well, it's just so delicious to talk it over with someone. It's as if you relive the moment." She fell silent, doubtless thinking about her own past kisses.

"I wouldn't know about that," I said, trying to limit the acid in my voice.

I did not sleep well that night. I was not used to having the power to affect someone's life so, and did not easily carry its weight, as a man might have done.

The next day, before taking the letter to Coombe Street to be posted, I added Colonel Birch's address to it. For all my arguments with Margaret against encouraging a continued link between Colonel Birch and Mary, I could not in the end act as if I were God, but had to let Molly Anning write what she would to him.

The postmistress glanced at the letter, then at me, her eyebrows raised, and I had to turn away before she could say anything. I am sure by the afternoon the gossip had gone all around town that desperate Miss Philpot had written to that cad Colonel Birch.

The Annings waited for an answer, but they received no letter.

I hoped that would be the end of our dealings with Colonel Birch, and that we would never see him again. He had his fossils--apart from the dapedium I would not send him--and could move on to another collecting fashion, such as insects or minerals. That is what gentlemen like Colonel Birch do.

It had never occurred to me that I might run into him in London. As Molly Anning had said, it is not Lyme. One million people lived in London compared to the 2000 in Lyme, and I rarely went to Chelsea, where I knew he lived, except to accompany Louise on her annual pilgrimage to the Physic Garden there. I never expected the tide would turn up two such different pebbles side by side.

We took our annual trip to London in the spring, eager to escape Lyme for a time, to see our family and make the usual rounds of visits to friends, shops, galleries and the-

?flatres. When the weather was not good we often went to the British Museum, housed in Montague Mansion close to our brother's house. Having regularly visited since we were children, we knew the collection intimately.

One particularly rainy day we had separated and were each in different rooms, with our own favourite exhibits. Margaret was in the Gallery, hovering over a collection of cameos and sealstones, while Louise was in the Upper Floor with Mary Delany's exquisite florilegium, a collection of pictures of plants made of cut paper. I was in the Saloon, where the Natural History collection ranged over several rooms--mostly displays of rocks and minerals, but now with four rooms of fossils that had recently been rearranged and added to. There were a fair number of specimens from the Lyme area, including a few more fish that I had donated.

Mary's first ichthyosaurus was also there, displayed in a long glass case of its own, thankfully without waistcoat or monocle, though there were still traces of plaster of Paris here and there on the specimen, the tail was still straight, and Lord Henley's name was still attached. I had already visited it several times, and written to the Annings to describe its new position.

It was quiet in the room, with just one other party of visitors wandering amongst the cases. I was studying the skull identified by Cuvier as a mammoth when I heard a familiar voice ringing out across the room. "Dear lady, once you have seen this ichthyosaurus you will understand just how superior my own specimen is." I closed my eyes for a moment to still my heart.

Colonel Birch had entered by the far door, dressed as usual in his outdated red soldier's coat, while a lady a bit older than I held his arm and walked alongside. From her sombre dress it seemed she was a widow. She wore a fixed, pleasant expression, and was one of those rare people who lead with no feature whatsoever.

I froze as the two went over to Mary's ichthyosaurus. Though close to them, my back was turned, and Colonel Birch did not notice me. I heard all of their conversation--or rather, all that Colonel Birch said, for his companion added little except to agree with him.

"Do you see what a jumble of bones this is compared to mine?" he declared.

"How the vertebrae and ribs have been squeezed into a mass? And how incomplete it is?

Look, do you see the discoloured plaster of Paris, in the ribs there, and along the spine?

That is where Mr Bullock filled it in. Mine, however, needs no filling in. It may be smaller than this one, but I found it intact, not a bone out of place."

"How fascinating," the widow murmured.

"And to think they thought this was a crocodile. I never did, of course. I always knew it was something different, and that I must find one myself."

"Of course you did."

"These ichthyosauri are some of the most important scientific finds ever."

"Are

they?"

"As far as we know, no ichthyosaurus exists now, and has not done for some time.

This means, dear lady, that learned men are charged with discovering how these creatures died out."

"What do they think?"

"Some have suggested they died in Noah's Flood; others that some other sort of catastrophe killed them, like a volcano or an earthquake. Whatever the cause, their existence affects our knowledge of the age of the world. We think it may be older than the 6000 years Bishop Ussher allotted it."

"I see. How interesting." The widow's voice trembled a little, as if Colonel Birch's suggestions disturbed her ordered thoughts, which were clearly slight and not used to being challenged.

"I have been reading about Cuvier's Doctrine of Catastrophes," Colonel Birch continued, showing off his knowledge. "Cuvier suggests that the world has been shaped over time by a series of terrible disasters, violence on such a great scale that it has created mountains and blasted seas and killed off species. Cuvier himself did not mention God's hand in this, though others have interpreted these catastrophes as systematic--God's regulation over His creation. The Flood would be simply the most recent of these events--which does make one wonder if another is on its way!"

"One does wonder," the widow said in a small voice, her uncertainty making me grit my teeth. For all he annoyed me, Colonel Birch was curious about the world. If I were at his side I would have said more than "One does wonder."

I might have kept my back to them and let Colonel Birch pass forever from our lives, but for what he said next. He couldn't resist boasting. "Seeing all of these specimens reminds me of last summer in Lyme Regis. I grew rather good at hunting fossils, you see. Not just the complete ichthyosaurus, but fragments of many others, and a large collection of pentacrinites--the sea lilies I showed you, do you remember?"

"I'm not sure."

Colonel Birch chuckled. "Of course not, dear lady. Ladies are not equipped to look at such things so carefully as men."

I turned around. "I should like Mary Anning to hear you say that, Colonel Birch!

She would not so easily agree, I think."

Colonel Birch started, though his military bearing prevented him from revealing too much astonishment. He bowed. "Miss Philpot! What a surprise--and a pleasure, of course--to find you here. When we last met we discussed my ichthyosaurus, did we not?

Now, may I present to you Mrs Taylor. Mrs Taylor, this is Miss Philpot, whom I met when I was staying in Lyme. We share an interest in fossils."

Mrs Taylor and I nodded to each other, and though her face didn't lose its pleasant expression, her features seemed to snap into place so that I noticed her lips were thin, with pursed lines along them like a drawstring bag.

"And how fares lovely Lyme?" Colonel Birch asked. "Do its residents still comb the shores daily in search of ancient treasure, of evidence of denizens of previous eras?"

I presumed this was an elaborate way of asking after Mary, couched in bad poetry. I did not have to respond with poetry, however. I preferred straightforward prose.

"Mary Anning still hunts for fossils, if that's what you're asking, sir. And her brother helps when he can. But in truth the family is doing poorly, for they have found little of value for many months."

As I spoke, Colonel Birch's eyes followed the other party of visitors heading into the next room. Perhaps he wished he could disappear with them.

"Nor have they been paid for their services to others, as you will be aware from correspondence," I added, raising my voice and allowing a needle into it that made Mrs Taylor's mouth pucker as if its strings were being pulled tight.

Just then Margaret and Louise entered from the far end of the room, in search of me, for we were expected home shortly. They stopped when they saw Colonel Birch, and Margaret turned pale.

"I should very much like to speak with you further about the Annings, Colonel Birch," I declared. It was bad enough to come face to face with him in all his smugness, showing off to his widow friend about fossils he had not found. But it was his dismissal of women's power of observation--thus denying Mary and me any credit for all that we had found over the years--which made me completely reverse my decision about keeping him out of the Annings' lives. He owed them a great deal, and I would tell him so. I had to speak up.

Before I could continue, however, Margaret hurried forward, pulling Louise with her. Introductions between my sisters and Mrs Taylor, as well as banal words to and from Colonel Birch, interrupted me--which is what Margaret intended, I am sure. I waited until the polite conversation was dying down before I repeated, "I should like to speak with you, sir."

"I am sure there is much to say," Colonel Birch replied with an uneasy smile, "and I would dearly love to call on all of you--" he nodded at my sisters--"but sadly I am shortly to travel to Yorkshire."

"Then it will have to be now. Shall we?" I gestured to another corner of the room, away from the others.

"Oh, I don't think Colonel Birch--" Margaret began, but was interrupted by Louise, who tucked her arm through Mrs Taylor's and said, "Do you like gardens, Mrs Taylor? If you do you must see Mrs Delany's florilegium--you will be enchanted. Come, both of you." It took all of Louise's good will to drag Mrs Taylor through the Saloon towards the exit, Margaret trailing behind them and throwing me warning looks. Her face was still white, but with two red spots in her cheeks.

When they were gone Colonel Birch and I faced each other alone in the long room, the high windows throwing a rainy grey light over us. He was no longer looking neutral, but concerned and a little annoyed. "Well, Miss Philpot."

"Well, Colonel Birch."

"Did you receive my letter about providing a dapedium for my collection?"

"Your letter?" I was thrown off guard, for I had not been thinking about that letter. "Yes, I did receive it."

"And you did not answer?"

I frowned. Colonel Birch was already steering the conversation away from where I had intended it to go, making it a criticism of my own behaviour rather than his. His tactics were low, and angered me, so that my response was direct as a dagger. "No, I didn't answer it. I do not respect you, and I will never let you have any of my fossil fish. I did not feel the need to put such sentiments in writing."

"I see." Colonel Birch reddened as if he had been slapped. I expect no one had ever told him to his face that they did not respect him. Indeed, it was a new experience for us both: unpleasant for him, frightening and thrilling for me. Over the years, living in Lyme had made me bolder in my thoughts and words, but I had never before been quite so reckless and rude. I lowered my eyes and unbuttoned and rebuttoned my gloves, to give my trembling hands something to do. They were new, from a haberdasher's in Soho.

By the end of the year they too would be ruined by Lyme clay and sea water.

Colonel Birch laid his hand on the glass case nearest him, as if to steady himself.

It contained a variety of bivalves, which in other circumstances he might have studied.

Now he looked at them as if he had never seen one before.

"Since you left," I began, "Mary has not found one specimen of value, and the family has little stock on hand to sell, for she gave everything she found last summer to you."

Colonel Birch looked up. "That is unjust, Miss Philpot. I found my specimens."

"You did not, sir. You did not." I held up my hand to stop him as he tried to interrupt. "You may think you found all of those jaw fragments and ribs and shark teeth and sea lilies, but it was Mary who directed you to them. She located them and then led you to find them. You are no hunter. You are a gatherer, a collector. There is a difference."

"I--"

"I have seen you on the beach, sir, and that is what you do. You did not find the ichthyosaurus. Mary did, and dropped her hammer by it so that you would pick it up and see the specimen. I was there. I saw you. It is her ichthyosaurus, and you have taken it from her. I am ashamed of you."

Colonel Birch stopped trying to interrupt me, but remained still, his head bowed, his lips in a pout.

"Perhaps you did not realise she was doing this," I continued more gently. "Mary is a generous soul. She is always giving away when she cannot afford to. Did you pay her for any of the specimens?"

For the first time Colonel Birch looked contrite. "She insisted they were already mine, not hers."

"Did you pay for her time, as her mother requested in a letter a few months back?

I know of the letter because I added your address for her. I am surprised, sir, that you chide me for not answering your letter when you have not answered one that is about far more important matters than collecting a fossil fish."

Colonel Birch was silent.

"Do you know, Colonel Birch, this winter I discovered the Annings about to sell their table and chairs to pay the rent? Their table and chairs! They would have had to sit on the floor to eat."

"I--I had no idea they were suffering so much."

"I only convinced them not to sell their furniture by advancing them the money against future fossil fish Mary finds for me. I would have preferred just to give them the money--in general I find specimens myself rather than pay for them. But the Annings will not take charity from me."

"I do not have the money to pay them."

His words were so stark that I could not think of a reply. We were both silent then. Two women wandered arm in arm into the room, caught sight of us, glanced at each other, and hurried out again. It must have looked to them as if we were having a lovers'

quarrel.

Colonel Birch ran a hand over the glass of the case. "Why did you write to me, Miss Philpot?"

I frowned. "I did not. We have already established that."

"You wrote to me about Mary. The letter was anonymous, but the writer was articulate, and said she knew Mary well, so I thought it must be from you. It was signed 'a well wisher who only wants the best for both parties', and it encouraged me to consider--marrying Mary."

I stared at him, the words he had quoted reminding me of something Margaret had said about "both parties". I thought of her bright cheeks as she left the room, of her memorising Colonel Birch's address on the letter, and of her discussing Colonel Birch with Mary. She had taken it upon herself to write to him on Mary's behalf. Molly's letter about money was not enough; Margaret wanted marriage to be part of the discussion as well. Damn her meddling, I thought. Damn her novel reading.

I sighed. "I did not write that letter, though I know now who did. Let us leave aside the thought of marriage. Of course that is an impossibility." I tried now to be clear, as this was my chance to help Mary. "But, sir, you must understand that you have robbed the Annings of their livelihood, and Mary of her reputation. It is because of you that they are selling their furniture."

Colonel Birch frowned. "What would you have me do, Miss Philpot?"

"Give her back what she found--at least the ichthyosaurus, which will bring them in enough money to pay their debts. It is the least you can do, whatever your own financial difficulties."

"I do not--I am very fond of Mary, you know. I think of her a great deal."

I snorted. "Don't be ridiculous." I could not bear his foolishness. "Such sentiments are completely inappropriate."

"That may be. But she is a remarkable young woman."

It was hard to say it, but I forced myself. "You would do better to consider someone closer to your age, and of your class. Someone..." We stared at each other.

At that moment Mrs Taylor entered at the far end of the room, pursued by my sisters and looking as if she hoped Colonel Birch would rescue her. As she hurried over to take his arm, I could only finish in a whisper, "You must do what is honourable, Colonel Birch."

"I believe we are expected elsewhere," Mrs Taylor announced, firm at last and leading with her mouth. They left us then, with promises to visit us in Montague Street another time. I knew that would not happen, but I simply nodded and waved goodbye.

The moment they were gone, Margaret burst into tears. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should never have written that letter! I regretted it the moment I posted it!" Louise looked at me, bewildered. I did not take Margaret in my arms in a sisterly embrace of forgiveness, however. That would take several days, for meddling deserves punishment.

Leaving the British Museum I felt lighter, as if I had transferred a burden I'd been carrying over to Colonel Birch. At least I had spoken out for the Annings, if not completely for myself. I had no idea if it would make a difference.

I found out soon enough.

It was my brother who saw the notice of the auction. John came home from his chambers one evening and joined us in the drawing room--an over-decorated room on the first floor with large windows looking out onto the street. A crowd was there to greet him: apart from us Lyme sisters and our sister-in-law, our other sister, Frances, was visiting from Essex with her two children, eight-year-old Elizabeth, named after me, and three-year-old Francis. They were running after Johnny, now a proud eleven year old who suffered the adoration of his cousins. The children were toasting tea cakes over the fire, which had been lit only for that purpose since it was a warm May evening. Johnny relished dangling the cakes so close that they caught fire, with the younger ones following suit, and in the chaos of putting out the flames and scolding the children about the danger and the waste, I didn't notice the peculiar look on my brother's face until the children had settled down.

"I saw something in the newspaper today that I know will interest you," John said to me, his brow furrowed. He handed me the paper, folded so that a boxed advertisement was in view. As I scanned it, my face went red. I looked up, and the eyes of all my siblings rested on me. Even Johnny was gazing intently. It can be unnerving to have so many Philpots give you their attention.

I cleared my throat. "It appears Colonel Birch is selling his fossil collection," I announced. "At Bullock's, next week."

Margaret gasped, while Louise gave me a sympathetic look and reached for the newspaper to study the notice.

I turned the news over in my mind. Had Colonel Birch known when we met at the British Museum that he was selling his collection? I doubted it, given the possessive pride with which he spoke of his ichthyosaurus to Mrs Taylor. Moreover, surely he would have told me? On other hand, I had made so plain my dissatisfaction with his conduct that perhaps he was unlikely to have told me he was planning to turn his fossils into cash.

All of the specimens Mary had given him would now go towards lining his empty pockets. My words to him had had no effect at all. This stark evidence of my impotence brought tears of anger to my eyes.

Louise handed back the paper. "There are previews of the sale," she said.

"I'm not going anywhere near Bullock's," I snapped, taking out a handkerchief and blowing my nose. "I know exactly what is in that collection. I don't need to inspect it."

But later, when John and I were on our own in his study, discussing the Lyme sisters' finances, I interrupted his dry discourse on numbers. "Will you accompany me to Bullock's?" I did not look at him as I asked, but kept my eyes on the smooth nautilus I had found on Monmouth Beach and given him to use as a paperweight. "Just you and I, not a large party to make an outing of it. I only want to slip in and have a quick look, that's all. The others needn't know. I don't want them to fuss."

I thought I saw a look of pity cross his face, but he quickly hid it with the bland expression he often used as a solicitor. "Leave it with me," he said.

John made no mention of a visit for several days, but I knew my brother, and had faith that he would arrange things. One evening at supper he announced that he would need the Lyme sisters to come to his chambers later in the week to look over certain documents he had drawn up for us.

Margaret made a face. "Can't you bring the papers home?"

"It needs to be at chambers, as a colleague must be present to witness it," John explained.

Margaret groaned, and Louise pushed a bit of haddock around her plate. All of us found the law chambers dull. Indeed, though I loved and respected him, I found my brother dull too at times--perhaps more so since we'd lived in Lyme, for there people were many things, but rarely dull.

"Of course," John added, with a glance towards me, "you needn't all come. One could represent the others."

Margaret and Louise looked at each other and at me, each hoping for a volunteer.

I waited a suitable interval, then sighed. "I will do it."

John nodded. "To sweeten the pill, we shall dine at my club after. Would Thursday suit?"

Thursday was the first day of the preview, and John's club was in the Mall, not far from Bullock's.

By Thursday John had managed to have some sort of paper drawn up that I could sign, so that his ruse was not a lie. And we did dine at his club, but briefly, just one course, so that we arrived at the Egyptian Hall in good time. I shuddered as we entered the yellow building, still with its statues of Isis and Osiris keeping watch over the entrance. After seeing Mary's ichthyosaurus there several years before, I had vowed never to go back, no matter how tempting the exhibits. Now I was choking on that vow.

Colonel Birch's fossils were displayed in one of the Hall's smaller rooms.

Although set out like a museum collection, and divided into sets of similar specimens--pentacrinites, fragments of ichthyosauri, ammonites and so on--the fossils were not behind glass, but laid out on tables. The complete ichthyosaurus was on show in the middle of the room, and it was just as breath-taking as it had been in the Annings'

workshop.

What surprised me more than Lyme fossils transplanted to London--for I had already witnessed that phenomenon at the British Museum--was seeing just how crowded the room was. Everywhere men were picking up fossils, studying them, and discussing them with others. The room with vibrant with interest, and I picked up the thrum. There were no other women there, however, and I clutched my brother's arm, feeling awkward and conspicuous.

After a few minutes I began to recognise people, mainly men who had made fossil trips to Lyme and stopped in at Morley Cottage to see my displays. The British Museum Keeper, Charles Konig, was with the complete ichthyosaurus; perhaps comparing it to the specimen he had bought the year before from Bullock. He gazed about the room, perplexed. I am sure he would have been thrilled to have so many visitors to the Museum's fossil rooms. But his collection was not for sale, and it was the possibility of ownership that made the room buzz.

I noted Henry De La Beche across the room, and was just making my way to him when I heard my name called. I started, fearing it was Colonel Birch come to justify himself. When I turned, however, I was relieved to see a friendly face. "Mr Buckland, how very good to see you, sir," I said. "I believe you have not met my brother: may I present John Philpot. This is the Reverend William Buckland, who is often at Lyme and shares my passion for fossils."

My brother bowed. "I have certainly heard a great deal about you, sir. You lecture at Oxford, I believe?"

William Buckland beamed. "I do, indeed. It is a pleasure to meet the brother of a lady I hold in such high regard. Did you know, sir, that your sister knows more about fossil fish than just about anyone? What a clever creature she is. Even Cuvier could learn from her!"

I flushed with the rare praise, coming from such a man. My brother too seemed surprised, and glanced at me sideways, as if looking for evidence of the special quality William Buckland spoke of that I had hidden from him. Like many, John thought my fascination with fossil fish peculiar and indulgent, and so I had never discussed in any depth the knowledge I had gained over the years. John wasn't expecting support of me from so lofty a quarter. Nor was I. It reminded me that I had once briefly considered William Buckland as a potential suitor. While Colonel Birch brought pain, the thought of William Buckland as a husband now made me want to chuckle.

"It seems the whole of the scientific world is gathering for this auction," Mr Buckland continued. "Cumberland is here, and Sowerby, and Greenough, and your own Henry De la Beche. And did you ever meet Reverend Conybeare when he visited Lyme?"

He indicated a man standing at his elbow. "He wants to make a study of the ichthyosaurus and present his findings to the Geological Society."

Reverend Conybeare bowed. He had a severe, knowing face, with a long nose that seemed to point like a finger at me.

William Buckland lowered his voice. "I myself have been commissioned by Baron Cuvier to bid on a number of specimens. In particular, he wants an ichthyosaurus skull for his museum in Paris. I have my eye on one. Shall I show you?"

As he spoke I spied Colonel Birch across the room, holding up a jawbone for a group of men gathered around him. I shuddered with the pain of seeing him.

"Elizabeth, are you all right?" my brother asked.

"Fine." Before I could step sideways to escape Colonel Birch's eyes, he looked past the jawbone he held and saw me. "Miss Philpot!" he called. Setting down the jawbone, he began to push his way through the crowd.

"Do you know, John," I said, "I am feeling faint. There are so many people here and it is warm. Could we step outside for some air?" Without awaiting an answer I hurried towards the door. Luckily a wall of visitors separated me from Colonel Birch, and I was able to escape before he could get to me. On the street I turned down a rubbish-strewn passage that would normally have terrified me, preferring it to having to speak civilly to the man who both repelled and attracted me.

When we emerged onto Jermyn Street next to a shop where John usually bought his shirts, he took my hand and threaded it through his elbow. "You are a funny little thing, Elizabeth."

"I expect I am."

John said no more, but found a cab to take us back to Montague Street, discussing business and not mentioning where we had been. For once I was pleased my brother took little interest in the drama of human emotion.

At breakfast the next morning, however, I was looking at a paper William Buckland had sent over to me called "The Connection between Geology and Religion Explained" when John casually tucked inside it a catalogue for the auction listing all the specimens Colonel Birch intended to sell. I pored over it while pretending to read Mr Buckland's article.

Going to Bullock's that once should have been enough to satisfy my curiosity about the auction. I did not need to see the fossils again, or the excited buyers. I certainly did not need to see Colonel Birch and have to hear his justi?cation for his actions. I did not want to hear it.

On the morning of the auction I woke early. If we had been in Lyme I would have got up and sat at the window with the view towards Golden Cap, but in London I did not feel comfortable prowling about early in my brother's house. And so I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and trying not to wake Louise with my fidgeting.

Later I sat in the drawing room with my sisters, going over a list of purchases we had made and what was still needed, for we were returning home later that week. We always shopped in London for things we couldn't get in Lyme: good gloves and hats, well-made boots, books, art supplies, quality paper. I was twitchy and nervous, as if waiting for guests to arrive. My niece and nephews were with us, and their childish games grated on my nerves, until I snapped at Francis for laughing loudly. Everyone looked at me. "Are you feeling unwell?" my sister-in-law asked.

"I have a headache. I think I will go and rest." I stood up, ignoring concerned murmurs. "I'll be fine with a bit of sleep. Please don't wake me for dinner or if you go out. I will come down later."

Upstairs in my room I sat for a few minutes, allowing my head to catch up with what my heart had already decided. Then I drew the curtains to dim the room, and arranged cushions under my bedclothes so that anyone peeking in would think they were seeing my sleeping form. I doubted sharp-eyed Louise would be fooled, but she might take pity on me and say nothing.

I fastened my bonnet and cloak, then crept downstairs to the ground floor. I could hear the banging of pots and the cook's voice from the kitchen below, and the children's laughter above, and felt guilty--as well as a little silly--for stealing away. I had never done such a thing in my life, and it seemed ludicrous to do so now, at the age of forty-one. I should have simply announced that I was going to the auction, arranging for an appropriate chaperone such as Henry De La Beche. But I could not face the questions, the explanations and justifications I would have to give. I was not sure I could explain why I had to attend the auction. I was not planning to bid on any specimens--the few fossil fish Colonel Birch had managed to collect were inferior to mine--and it was sure to upset me to see Mary's hard work callously distributed. Yet I felt I had to witness this momentous event. After all, it seemed even the great Cuvier might soon own one of Mary's specimens, even if he did not know she found it. For Mary's sake, I had to be there.

As I pulled open the heavy front door, I heard a sound behind me and froze.

Having created such a clear excuse as a headache, what could I say to the servants or my sisters if they caught me now?

My nephew Johnny was staring at me from the stairs. After a moment I raised a finger to my lips. Johnny's eyes widened, but he nodded. He crept down the rest of the stairs. "Where are you going, Auntie Elizabeth?" he whispered.

"I have an errand to run. A secret one. I will tell you about it later, Johnny. I promise to, as long as you promise not to tell the others I have gone out. Will you keep our secret?"

Johnny

nodded.

"Good. Now, what are you doing down here?"

"I'm to give cook a message about the soup."

"Go, then, and I'll see you later."

Johnny went to the stairs leading down to the kitchen, then stopped and watched as I slipped through the front door. I was not sure if he could keep the secret, but I would have to trust him.

I clicked the door shut behind me, tapped down the steps, and hurried away without looking back to see if anyone was at one of the windows. I did not slow down until I had turned the corner and my brother's house was out of sight. Then I stopped, pressed my handkerchief to my mouth and took a deep breath. I was free.

Or so I thought. As I started along Great Russell Street past the British Museum, I became aware of other women walking in clumps, in couples or groups, with maids or husbands or fathers or friends. Except for the occasional servant, only men walked on their own. While I did so often enough in Lyme, I had never actually walked down a London street alone; I had always been with my sisters or brother or friends or a servant.

In Lyme there was less concern over such conventions, but here a lady of my station was expected to be accompanied. I found myself being stared at by men and women alike, as the odd one out. Suddenly I felt exposed, the air around me cold and still and empty, as if I were walking with my eyes shut and might bump into something. I passed a man who looked at me with glittering black eyes, and another who appeared eager to bid me good day until he saw my plain, middleaged face and backed away.

I had intended to walk to Bullock's, but it became clear from the reception I received on a reasonably tame, familiar road such as Great Russell Street that I could not walk through Soho to Piccadilly on my own. I looked around for a passing cab, but there were none, or none stopped when I raised my hand. Perhaps they were not looking out for a lady to do such a thing.

I considered asking a man for help, but they all stared so much that I was put off.

Finally I stopped a boy running along behind horses to pick up the dung, and promised him a penny to find me a cab. Waiting for him was almost worse than walking, though, for I drew even more attention by standing still. Men sidled past, eyeing me and whispering. One man asked if I were lost; another offered to share a carriage with me.

Both may have genuinely meant to help, but by then they all seemed sinister. I have never hated being a lady and yet at the same time hated men as much as I did during those minutes alone on the London streets.

The boy returned at last with a cab, and I was so relieved I gave him two pennies.

Inside it was stuffy and smelly, but it was also dark and quiet and empty; I sat back and closed my eyes. Now I really did have a headache.

What with my late decision to go out and the delay in finding a cab, when I arrived at Bullock's the auction was well under way. The room was packed, with all the seats taken and people standing two deep at the back. Now I benefitted from my sex, for no man would sit and leave a lady standing. I was offered several seats, and took one in the back row. The man I sat next to nodded at me congenially, acknowledging a shared interest. Though alone this time rather than accompanied by my brother, I felt less conspicuous, for everyone was intent on the front of the room, where the sale was taking place.

Mr Bullock, a stocky man with a broad neck, stood at a lectern. He played the part of auctioneer as if it were a role on a stage, drawing out his words and accompanying them with theatrical flourishes of his arms. He stoked up the excitement in the room, even for Colonel Birch's endless supply of pentacrinites. I had been surprised to see so many of them listed in the catalogue, for I knew Colonel Birch was keen on them. He must truly be deep in debt to part with them, as well as with the ichthyosaurus.

"You thought the last specimen was fine?" Mr Bullock cried, holding up another pentacrinite. "Well, then, have a look at this beauty. See? Not a crack or chip anywhere, the form in all its mysterious perfection. Who can resist its feminine charms? Not I, ladies and gentlemen, not I. Indeed, I am going to do something highly unusual and start the bidding myself, at two guineas. For what is two guineas if I can give my wife and myself such a fine example of the beauty of nature? Will anyone deprive me of my beauty? What? You will, sir? How dare you! It will have to be for two pounds ten shillings, sir. It is? And yours is three pounds, sir? So be it. I cannot compete for such beauty as these gentlemen can. I can only hope my wife forgives me. At least we know it is for a worthy cause. Let us not forget why we are here."

His auctioning approach was irregular--I was used to the smoother, quieter, understated tone of the auctioneers who came to sell the contents of Lyme houses. But then, they were auctioning off china plates and mahogany side tables, not the bones of ancient animals. Perhaps a different tone was necessary. And his style worked. Mr Bullock sold every pentacrinite, every shark's tooth, every ammonite, for more than I expected. Indeed, bidders were surprisingly generous, especially when ichthyosaurus parts began to be sold--jaws, snouts, vertebrae. It was then that men I knew joined the bidding. Reverend Conybeare bought four large fused vertebrae. Charles Konig bought a jaw for the British Museum. William Buckland fulfilled his mission and bought part of an ichthyosaurus skull for Baron Cuvier's collection at the Natural History Museum in Paris, as well as a femur. And the prices were quite high--two guineas, five guineas, ten pounds.

Twice more Mr Bullock drew attention to the worthiness of the auction, making me shift in my seat. To call Colonel Birch's pocket a worthy cause infuriated me, and the high regard in which he was held made me want to flee. However, standing up and pushing through the wall of men behind would have brought more attention than I could withstand, and it had taken so much effort to get here that I remained seated, and fumed.

"Quite remarkable what Colonel Birch has done," the man next to me whispered when there was a pause in the proceedings.

I nodded. Though I did not share his admiration, I did not want to argue with a stranger over Colonel Birch's character.

"So generous of him," the man continued.

"What do you mean, sir?" I asked, but my words were lost as Mr Bullock bellowed like a circus ringmaster, "And now, the finest and most unusual specimen in all of Colonel Birch's collection. A most mysterious animal has arrived at Bullock's. Indeed, its brother graced Bullock's Museum for several years to an enormous admiring audience.

Then we called it a crocodile, but some of the finest British minds have studied it carefully and confirmed it is a different animal, not yet found in the world. You have already seen parts of it sold today--vertebrae, ribs, jaws, skulls. Now you will see how all of those parts fit together, in one complete, perfect, glorious specimen. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: the Birch ichthyosaurus!"

The crowd rose to its feet as the mounted specimen was carried in. Even I stood and craned my neck to look, though I had already thoroughly studied it in the Anning workshop. Such was the power of Mr Bullock's flagrant, effective showmanship. It was not just me. William Buckland craned his neck too, as did Charles Konig and Henry De La Beche and Reverend Conybeare. We were all drawn in by the spell the beast cast.

It did look very fine. As with the other specimens sold, the artificial London setting, in a brightly painted, finely furnished room so different from Lyme's raw sea air and natural rough tones, made the ichthyosaurus look even odder and more out of place, as if from another world altogether--older and harsher and more alien. It was difficult to imagine such a creature ever having lived in the world of people, or taking a place in Aristotle's Great Chain of Being.

Bidding was brisk, and resulted in the Royal College of Surgeons buying it for one hundred pounds. Mary would be pleased, I thought, if she weren't more likely to be furious at being robbed of such a fee.

The ichthyosaurus was the final lot of the sale. I had been missing from Montague Street for an hour and a half; if I got a cab quickly I might yet manage to get back to my bedroom without anyone noticing my absence. I stood, preparing to slip out so that the men I knew in the room wouldn't see me. It was at that moment, however, that Colonel Birch chose also to detach himself from the front row. He moved to the lectern and called out over the hubbub, "Gentlemen! Gentlemen--and ladies," for he had spied me. I froze.

"I am overwhelmed by your interest and by your generosity. As I announced earlier," he continued, his eyes reaching out and pinning me to my place so that I would at last listen to what he had to say, "I have auctioned off my collection to raise money for a very worthy Lyme family--the Annings."

I shied like a nervous horse, but managed not to gasp.

"You have kindly responded in a most generous fashion." Colonel Birch kept his eyes on my face, as if to calm me. "What I did not tell you before, ladies and gentlemen, is that it was the daughter of this family--Mary Anning--who discovered the majority of the specimens that make up my collection, including the fine ichthyosaurus just sold. She is--" he paused "--possibly the most remarkable young woman I have had the privilege to meet in the fossil world. She has helped me, and she may well help you in future. When you admire the specimens you have bought today, remember it was she who found them.

Thank you."

As a wave of murmurs swept the room, Colonel Birch nodded at me, then stepped aside and was engulfed by a mob of coats and top hats. I began to push my way towards the exit. All about me men were looking me over--not as they had done on the street, but with a more cerebral curiosity. "Pardon me, are you Miss Anning?" asked one.

"Oh no, no." I shook my head vigorously. "I'm not." He looked disappointed, and I felt a thread of anger tug at me. "I am Elizabeth Philpot," I declared, "and I collect fossil fish."

Not everyone heard my answer, for there were murmurs of "Mary Anning" all around me. Feeling a hand on my shoulder, I did not turn, but shoved my way between the men in front of me until I reached the street. I managed to control myself until I was safe inside a cab heading up Piccadilly and no one could see me. Then I--who never cry--began to weep. Not for Mary, but for myself.

7

Like the tide making its

highest mark on the beach

and then retreating

Istill remember the date his letter arrived: the 12th of May, 1820. Joe wrote it in the catalogue, but I would have remembered anyway.

By then I weren't expecting a letter any more. It had been months since he'd left. I had begun to forget what he looked like, how his voice sounded, the way he walked, the things he said. I no longer talked to Margaret Philpot about him, nor asked Miss Elizabeth if she had heard of him from the other fossil gentlemen. I didn't wear the locket, but put it away and didn't take it out to look at and finger the lock of his thick hair.

I didn't go upon beach either. Something had happened to me. I couldn't find curies. I went out and it was like I was blind. Nothing glittered; there were no tiny jolts of lightning, no pattern popping out from the random shapes.

They tried to help--Mam, Miss Philpot. Even Joe left his upholstering to come out hunting with me when I knew he'd rather be inside covering chairs. And when he come to Lyme, Mr Buckland, who never noticed anything about other people, was gentle with me, guiding me to specimens he found, showing me where he thought we should look, staying at my side more than usual--in fact, doing all the things I normally done for him upon beach. He also entertained me with stories of his travels to the Continent with Reverend Conybeare, and with his antics at Oxford, how he kept a tame bear as a pet, and dressed it up and introduced it to the other Oxford dons. And how a friend brought back a crocodile in brine from a voyage, and Mr Buckland got to add a new member of the animal kingdom to his tasting list. I couldn't help smiling at his stories.

He was the only one who got through the fog even briefly. He begun talking to me about things we'd found over the years that didn't seem to belong to the ichie: verteberries wider and chunkier, paddle bones flatter than they should be. One day he showed me a verteberry with a piece of rib that was attached lower than on an ichie's verteberry. "Do you know, Mary, I think there may be another creature out there," he said. "Something with a spine and ribs and paddles like the ichthyosaurus, but with anatomy rather more like a crocodile's. Wouldn't that be something, to find another of God's creatures?"

For a moment my mind went clear. I studied Mr Buckland's kindly face, even rounder and pudgier than when I first knew him, his eyes bright and his brow bulging with ideas, and I almost said, "Yes, I think so too. I been wondering about a new monster for years." I didn't say it. Before I could, my mind sank down again like a leaf settling to the bottom of a pond.

Mam and Joe went hunting while I stayed back and minded the shop. It was a surprise the first time Mam went out with Joe to Black Ven. She give me a funny look as they left, but she said nothing. She had been out with me now and then, but always as company, not to hunt herself. She was good at the business side--writing letters to collectors, chasing up what we was owed and describing specimens for sale, convincing visitors to buy more than they'd meant to at the shop. She never went looking for curies.

She didn't have the eye, or the patience. Or so I'd thought. I was amazed when they come back hours later and Mam, all smug, handed me a basket heavy with finds. It was mostly ammos and bellies--the easiest curies for a beginner to see since their even lines stand out from the rocks. But she'd also managed to find some pentacrinites, a damaged sea urchin, and, most surprising of all, part of the shoulder bone of an ichie. We could get three shillings for that bone alone, and eat for a week.

When she was in the privy I accused Joe of putting what he found in her basket and saying it were hers. He shook his head. "She did it herself. I don't know how she manages it, she's so haphazard in her hunting. But she finds things."

Mam later told me she'd made a bargain with God: if He showed her where the curies were, she would never again question His judgment, which she had done many times over the years with all the death and debt she had to suffer. "He must have listened," Mam said, "for I didn't have to look hard to find 'em. They were just there upon beach, waiting for me to pick up. I don't know why you fussed so much when you went out looking, needing all that time day after day. It ain't so hard to find curies."

I wanted to argue with her but was in no position to since I weren't going hunting any more. And it was true that when Mam went out she always filled her basket. She had the eye all right, she just didn't want to admit it.

All of that changed on the 12th of May, 1820. I was behind our table in Cockmoile Square, showing sea lilies to a Bristol couple, when a boy come by with a packet for Joe. He wanted a shilling to pay for it, as it was bigger than your average letter. I didn't have a shilling, and was about to send the boy away again when I saw the handwriting I had been waiting for these months. I knew his hand because, just as Miss Elizabeth had taught me, I'd shown him how to write labels of each specimen he found--a description of it, the Linnaean name if known, where and when found, in which layer of rock, and any other information that might be useful.

I snatched the packet from the boy and stared at it. Why were it addressed to Joe?

They weren't ever over friendly together. Why wouldn't he write to me?

"You can't have that unless you pay, Mary." The boy pulled at the packet.

"I haven't the shilling yet, but I'll get it somehow. Can't you let me have it and I'll owe you?"

In answer he pulled at the packet again. I hugged it to my chest. "I'm not giving it up. I been waiting for this letter for months."

The boy sneered. "That be from your sweetheart, eh? The old man you went round with who left you, didn't he?"

"You shut your gob, boy!" I turned to the gentleman, knowing such a fuss in front of customers would sell no curies. "Sorry, sir. Have you decided what you want?"

"Indeed," the lady answered for her husband. "We shall take a shilling's worth of crinoids." She smiled as she held out a coin.

"Oh, thank you, ma'am, thank you!" I handed the shilling to the boy. "You get out now, you!"

He made a rude gesture as he left, and I apologised again to the couple. Though the lady had been so understanding about the letter, she took her time about choosing her crinoids, and I had to swallow my impatience. Then I had to wrap them up in paper, and the man wanted extra string, and I got it all in knots, and thought I would go mad with fixing it. At last it was done and they left, the lady whispering, "I hope there is good news in your letter."

I went inside then and sat in the dusty workshop, the packet in my lap. I read the address again: "Joseph Anning, Esq., The Fossil Shop, Cockmoile Square, Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire." Why had he written to my brother? And why was it a packet wrapped in brown paper rather than a letter? What could Colonel Birch want to send to my brother?

Why hadn't he sent it to me?

I knew from the incoming tide that Joe and Mam would be back in half an hour. I didn't know how I could sit there with the letter and wait even that little while for them to return. I couldn't bear it.

I looked at the packet. Then I turned it over, counted to three, and broke the seal.

Joe would be angry, but I could-n't help it. I was sure it was really meant for me.

Along with a folded letter there was a pamphlet the size of the exercise books I used to practise my letters in at Sunday school. On the front page it read: A Catalogue of a small but very fine Collection of

Organised Fossils,

from the Blue Lias Formation

at Lyme and Charmouth, in Dorsetshire

consisting principally of Bones,

illustrating the

Osteology of the Ichthio-Saurus, or Proteo-Saurus,

and of Specimens of

the Zoophyte, called Pentacrinite,

the Genuine Property of Colonel Birch,

collected at a considerable Expense,

which will be sold at Auction,

by Mr Bullock,

at his Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly

on Monday, the 15th Day of May, 1820

Punctually at one o'clock

I studied this page without really taking it in. Only when I turned the pages of the catalogue and read the list of specimens, each of which I could picture and name where it had been found, did I begin to understand. He was selling it, every last cury I had worked so hard to add to his collection just for the satisfaction of knowing he would be handling it. All the pentacrinites he loved so, the ammos and parts of lobsters, the fish I should really have given to Elizabeth Philpot, the strange crustaceous insect I had never seen before and would have studied more carefully with the Philpots' magnifying glass, but that he wanted it. All the fragments of ichies, jaws and teeth and eye sockets and verteberries, all about to be scattered.

And of course the ichie, the most perfect specimen I'd ever seen, that I'd stayed up night after night to finish cleaning and mounting the very best I could. I did it all for him, and now he was going to sell it, just like Lord Henley sold my first ichie. And Mr Bullock was in the middle of it again. My head buzzed so that I thought it would explode.

I held the catalogue tight in my hands, wanting to rip it apart. I would have done so if it had been sent to me rather than Joe. I would have torn it all apart and thrown it in the fire, catalogue and letter alike.

The letter. I had not read it yet. I had such an ache behind my eyes I weren't sure I could read anything now. But I unfolded it, smoothed it out, rubbed my eyes, and let them rest on his words. Then I begun to read.

When I finished, my throat was that tight I couldn't swallow, and I'd gone hot in the face like I'd run all the way up Broad Street. By the time Mam and Joe come in, I was sobbing so hard my heart was sure to come out of my mouth.

There were three coaches a week from London, and each one brought me another piece of the puzzle of what had gone on there.

The newspaper account arrived first. Normally there was no money for newspapers, but Mam come home with one. "We has to find out if we can afford this newspaper," was her logic. I could hardly turn the pages, my hands were trembling so.

On page three I found the following notice and read it out to Mam and Joe:An auction yesterday by Mr. Bullock at his Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly of the fossil collection of Lt.-

Col. Thomas Birch, late of the Life Guards, has raised in excess of PS400. The collection included a fine and rare specimen of the ichthyosaurus, which was sold to the Royal College of Surgeons for PS100. Lt.-Col. Birch announced that the funds raised would be given to the Anning family of Lyme Regis, who helped him to assemble the collection.

It was brief, but it was enough. To see it in print like that made my hands go cold.

Mam was usually cautious with money, making no plans for it until she held it in her hands. Seeing word of it in the newspaper, though, was as good as proof to her that it was coming, and she begun discussing with Joe what to do with it. "We'll pay off our debts," Joe said. "Then we'll think about buying a house further uphill, away from the floods." Cockmoile Square was regularly flooded, by the river or the sea.

"I'm in no hurry to move," Mam replied, "but we do need new furniture. And then you'll need money to set up a proper upholstery business." They talked on and on, with plans they'd never dared to dream of a week ago, relaxing in the luxury of being able to fart in the face of the workhouse, as Mam put it. It was comical how quick they went from being poor to thinking rich. I didn't say anything as they talked, nor did they expect me to. We all knew we were getting the money because of me. I had done my part, and it were like I was a queen and could sit back and let my courtiers arrange things.

I didn't want to talk anyway, for I could not put my head to plans. All I wanted was to run off to the cliffs to be alone and think of Colonel Birch and what his actions meant. I wanted to relive the kiss he gave me, and go over every feature of his face, and recall his voice, and all the things he said to me, and all the ways he looked at me, and all the days we spent together. That is what I wanted to do, sitting at our only table. Not for long, it seemed--if Mam had her way we'd be buying a mahogany dining set to rival Lord Henley's.

I got out the locket and begun to wear it again, under my clothes. I didn't want to talk about Colonel Birch to Mam or Joe, for I didn't know his intentions towards me. He'd not said in the letter, which was after all addressed to Joe as man of the family, and so was formal rather than loving. He wanted to do things proper. But what man would give a family four hundred pounds and not have real intentions?

When the next coach come from London I was at Charmouth, waiting for it. I'd begun to go upon beach again, to hunt curies. When the coach were due I went up the lane to meet it, even though I'd said nothing to Mam or Joe about going, and hadn't even thought through what I would do when I saw Colonel Birch. I just went, and sat outside the Queen's Arms, where others were waiting as well, to meet passengers or take the coach on to Exeter. I got funny looks, which was nothing new, except instead of sneers there was wonder and respect, which I hadn't felt since first discovering the ichthyosaurus. The news of our fortune had spread.

When the coach appeared, my stomach flip-flopped like a fish in the bottom of a boat. It seemed to take a year to drive up the long hill through the village. When at last it stopped and the door opened, I closed my eyes and tried to calm my heart, which had joined my stomach--two fish now flopping.

Then Margaret Philpot stepped down, and then Miss Louise, and finally Miss Elizabeth. I had not expected the Philpots. Normally Miss Elizabeth wrote to tell me which coach they would be on, but I'd had no letter. I did wonder if Colonel Birch might come out as well, but I knew Miss Elizabeth would never ride in the same coach as him.

I was never so disappointed as at that moment.

But they were my friends, and I went up to greet them. "Oh, Mary," Miss Margaret cried, hanging on my neck, "what news we have for you! It is so overwhelming I almost can't speak!" She clutched a handkerchief to her mouth.

Laughing, I freed myself from her embrace. "I know, Miss Margaret. I know about the auction. Colonel Birch wrote to Joe. And we saw the newspaper account."

Miss Margaret's face fell, and I felt a little bad to have robbed her of the pleasure of giving me such dramatic good news. But she soon recovered. "Oh, Mary," she said,

"how your fortunes have changed. I am so glad for you!"

Miss Louise too beamed at me, but Miss Elizabeth merely said, "It is good to see you, Mary," and pecked at the air near my cheek. As usual she smelled of rosemary, even after two days in a coach.

When the Philpots and their things had been transferred to a cart to go on to Lyme, Miss Margaret called out, "Won't you come with us, Mary?"

"Can't." I gestured towards the beach. "I've curies to pick up."

"Come and see us tomorrow, then!" With a wave they left me alone at Charmouth. It was then the disappointment that Colonel Birch had not been on the coach struck me, and I went back upon beach feeling low and not at all like a girl whose family was coming into four hundred pounds. "He'll be on the next one," I said aloud to comfort myself. "He'll come and I'll have him to myself."

Normally when the Philpots suggested I visit them, I went straightaway. I always liked Morley Cottage, for it was warm and clean and full of food and the good smells from Bessy's baking--even if she liked to scowl at me. There were views of Golden Cap and the coast to lift the heart, and Miss Elizabeth's fish to look at. Miss Margaret played the piano to entertain us and Miss Louise gave me flowers to bring home. Best of all, Miss Elizabeth and I talked about fossils, and looked over books and articles together.

Now, though, I didn't want to see Miss Elizabeth. She had kept an eye on me for most of my life, and had become my friend even when others wouldn't, but when she stepped off the coach in Charmouth I sensed disapproval from her rather than any happiness at seeing me again. Maybe she was not thinking of me, though. Maybe she was ashamed of herself. And she should be--her judgement of Colonel Birch had been completely wrong, and she must feel bad about it, though she wouldn't say so. I could afford to be generous and ignore her foul mood, for I loved a man who would pull me from my poverty and make me happy, while she had no one. But I would not seek her out to sour my happiness.

I found reasons why I couldn't go up Silver Street. I needed to hunt curies to make up for the months when I hadn't. Or I insisted on cleaning the house to prepare for Colonel Birch coming to see us. Or I went out to Pinhay Bay to find him a pentacrinite since he had sold all of his. Then I went to meet each coach from London, though three came and went without him stepping off.

I was on my way back from the third coach, cutting through St Michael's from the cliff path, when I met Miss Elizabeth coming the other way. Both of us jumped a little, startled, like we wished we'd seen the other first and had held back so we wouldn't have to stop and greet each other.

Miss Elizabeth asked if I had been upon beach, and I had to admit I'd gone to Charmouth without hunting. She knew it were the day the coach arrived--I could see it in her face, working out why I had been there, and trying to hide her displeasure. She changed the subject, and we talked a little of Lyme and its doings while she had been gone. It was awkward, though, not the way we usually were with each other, and after a time we fell silent. I felt stiff, as if I'd sat too long on a leg and it had gone to sleep. It made me stand funny. Miss Elizabeth too held her head at an angle, like her neck still had a crick in it from all that riding in the London coach.

I was about to make an excuse and set off for Cockmoile Square when Miss Elizabeth seemed to reach a decision. When she is going to say something important she sticks out her chin and tightens her jaw. "I want to tell you about what happened in London, Mary. You are not to tell anyone I told you. Not your mother or brother, nor particularly my sisters, for they do not know what I witnessed." Then she told me all about the auction, describing in detail what was sold and who was there and what they bought, how even the Frenchman Cuvier wanted a specimen for Paris. She said how Colonel Birch made his announcement about me at the end, naming me as the hunter. All the time she was talking I felt I were listening to a lecture about someone else, a Mary Anning who lived in another town, in another country, on the other side of the world, who collected something other than fossils--butterflies or old coins.

Miss Elizabeth frowned. "Are you listening, Mary?"

"I am, ma'am, but I'm not sure I'm hearing right."

Miss Elizabeth gazed at me, her grey eyes pinched and serious. "Colonel Birch has named you in public, Mary. He has told some of the most interested fossil collectors in the country to seek you out. They will be coming here to ask you to take them out as you have done Colonel Birch. You must prepare yourself, and take care that you don't...com-promise your character further." She said the last with such a pursed mouth it were a marvel any words come out at all.

I fingered some lichen on the gravestone I stood next to. "I am not worried for my character, ma'am, nor what others think of me. I love Colonel Birch, and am waiting for him to come back."

"Oh, Mary." A whole set of emotions crossed Miss Elizabeth's face--it was like watching playing cards being dealt one after the other--but mostly there was anger and sadness. Those two combined make jealousy, and it come over me then that Elizabeth Philpot was jealous of the attention Colonel Birch paid me. She shouldn't be. She never had to sell or burn her furniture to keep a roof over her head and stay warm. She had plenty of tables rather than just the one. She didn't go out every day no matter the weather or her health and stay out for hours hunting curies till her head swam. She didn't have chilblains on her hands and feet, and fingertips cut and torn and grey with embedded clay. She didn't have neighbours talking about her behind her back. She should pity me, and yet she envied me.

I shut my eyes for a moment, steadying myself with the gravestone. "Why can't you be glad for me?" I said. "Why can't you say, 'I hope you will be very happy'?"

"I--" Miss Elizabeth gulped as if words were choking her. "I do hope that," she finally managed to say, though it come out all strangled. "But I don't want you to make a fool of yourself. I want you to think sensibly about what is possible for your life."

I ripped the lichen off the stone. "You're jealous of me."

"I'm

not!"

"Yes, you are. You're jealous of Colonel Birch because he courted me. You loved him and he paid no attention to you."

Miss Elizabeth looked stricken, like I'd hit her. "Stop, please."

But it was as if a river had risen in me and broken its banks. "He never even looked at you. It was me he wanted! And why shouldn't he? I'm young, and I've got the eye! All your education and your one hundred and fifty pounds a year and your elderflower champagne and your silly tonics, and your silly sisters with their turbans and roses. And your fish! Who cares about fish when there are monsters in the cliffs to be found? But you won't find them because you haven't got the eye. You're a dried up old spinster who will never get a man or a monster. And I will." It felt so good and so horrible to say these things aloud that I thought I might be sick.

Miss Elizabeth stood very still. It were like she was waiting for a gust of wind to blow itself out. When it had and I was finished, she took a deep breath, though what come out were almost a whisper, with no force behind it. "I saved your life once. I dug you out of the clay. And this is how you repay me, with the unkindest thoughts."

The wind come back like a gale. I cried out in such rage Miss Elizabeth stepped back. "Yes, you saved my life! And I'll feel the burden of being grateful to you for always. I'll never be equal to you, no matter what I do. Whatever monsters I find, however much money I earn, it will never equal your place. So why can't you leave Colonel Birch to me? Please." I was crying now.

Miss Elizabeth watched me with her level grey eyes until I had used up my tears.

"I release you of the burden of your gratitude, Mary," she said. "I can at least do that. I dug you out that day as I would have done for anyone, and as anyone else passing would have done for you too." She paused, and I could see her deciding what to say next. "But I must tell you something," she continued, "not to hurt you, but to warn you. If you are expecting anything from Colonel Birch you will be disappointed. I had occasion to meet him before the auction. We ran into each other at the British Museum." She paused. "He was accompanying a lady. A widow. They seemed to have an understanding. I'm telling you this so that you will not have your expectations raised. You are a working girl, and you cannot expect more than you have. Mary, don't go."

But I had already turned and begun to run, as fast and far from her words as I could.

I was not there to meet the next London coach when it come to Charmouth. It was a soft afternoon, with plenty of visitors out, and I was behind the table outside our house, selling curies to passersby.

I am not a superstitious person, but I knew he would come, for though he did not know it, it was my birthday. I had never had a birthday present, and was due one. Mam would say his auction money was the present, but to me he was the gift.

When the clock on the Shambles bell-tower struck five I begun to follow Colonel Birch's progress in my mind even as I was selling. I saw him alight from the coach and hire a horse from the stables, then ride along the road till he could cut across one of Lord Henley's fields above Black Ven to Charmouth Lane. He would follow that to Church Street, then down past St Michael's and into Butter Market. There all he had to do was to go right round the corner and he'd come into Cockmoile Square.

When I looked up, he appeared just as I knew he would, riding up on his borrowed chestnut horse and looking down at me. "Mary," he said.

"Colonel Birch," I replied, and curtseyed very low, as if I were a lady.

Colonel Birch dismounted, reached for my hand and kissed it in front of all the visitors rummaging through the curies and the villagers walking past. I didn't care. When he looked up at me, still bent over my hand, I spied behind his gladness uncertainty, and I knew then that Elizabeth Philpot had not been lying about the widow lady. As much as I had wanted to disbelieve her, she was not the sort to lie. As gently as I could I pulled my hand from Colonel Birch's grasp. Then the shadow of uncertainty become a true flame of sorrow, and we stood looking at each other without speaking.

Over Colonel Birch's shoulder there was a movement that distracted me from his sad eyes, and I saw a couple come arm in arm along Bridge Street, he stocky and strong, she bobbing up and down at his side like a boat in rough water. It was Fanny Miller, who had lately married Billy Day, one of the quarrymen who helped me dig out monsters.

Even the quarrymen were taken, then. Fanny stared at us. When she met my eye she clutched her husband's arm and hurried away along the street as fast as her game leg would let her.

Then I knew what I would do with Colonel Birch, widow lady or no. It would be my present to myself, for I was not likely to have another chance. I nodded at him. "Go and see Mam, sir. She's been expecting you. I'll find you after."

I did not want to watch him hand over the money. Though I was grateful for it, I did not want to see it. I only wanted to see him. When he had tied up the horse and gone inside, I packed away the curies, then went quick up Butter Market and followed Colonel Birch's path in reverse. I knew he would lodge as he always did at the Queen's Arms in Charmouth, and so would pass this way again. When I got to Lord Henley's field off Charmouth Lane I crossed to a stile and sat on it to wait.

Colonel Birch held his back so straight as he rode he looked like a tin soldier.

With the sun low behind him and casting a long shadow before, I could not see his face until he pulled up alongside me. As I climbed to the top rung of the stile and balanced there, he took my hand so that I would not fall.

"Mary, I cannot marry you," he said.

"I know, sir. It don't matter."

"You are sure?"

"I am. It is my birthday today. I am twenty-one years old and this is what I want."

I was not a horse rider, but that day I had no fear as I reached over and swung into the space between his arms.

He took me inland. Colonel Birch knew the surrounding countryside better than I did, for I never normally went into the fields, but spent all of my time on the shore. We rode through dusk's shadows lit here and there with panes of sunlight, up to the main road to Exeter. Once across we headed down darkening fields. Along the way we did not murmur sweet words to each other like courting couples, for we were not courting. Nor did I relax in his arms, for the horse swayed and the saddle pushed hard against me and I had to concentrate so I wouldn't fall off. But I was where I wanted to be and did not mind.

An orchard at the bottom of the field waited for us. When I lay down with Colonel Birch it was on a sheet of apple blossom petals covering the ground like snow.

There I found out that lightning can come from deep inside the body. I have no regret discovering that.

I learned something else that evening, which come to me afterwards. I was lying in his arms looking up at the sky, where I counted four stars, when he asked, "What will you do with the money I have given your family, Mary?"

"Pay off our debts and buy a new table."

Colonel Birch chuckled. "That is very practical of you. Will you not do something for yourself?"

"I suppose I could buy a new bonnet." Mine had just been crushed under our coupling.

"What about something more ambitious?"

I was silent.

"For example," Colonel Birch continued, "you could move to a house with a bigger shop. Up Broad Street, for example, to where there's a good shop front, with a big window and more light in which to display your fossils. That way you would get more trade."

"So you're expecting me to keep on finding and selling curies, are you, sir? That I'll never marry, but run a shop."

"I did not say that."

"It's all right, sir. I know I won't marry. No one wants someone like me for a wife."

"That is not what I meant, Mary. You misunderstand me."

"Do I, sir?" I rolled off his shoulder and lay flat on the ground. Even since we had been talking it seemed the sky had got darker, and more and more stars had joined the first scattering.

Colonel Birch sat up stiffly, for he was old, and lying on the ground must hurt him. He looked down at me. It was too dark to see his expression. "I was thinking about your future as a fossil hunter, not as a wife. There are many women--most women, in fact--who can be perfectly good wives. But there is only one of you. Do you know, when I set up the auction in London I met many people who professed to know a great deal about fossils: what they are, how they came to be here, what they mean. But none of them knows even half of what you understand."

"Mr Buckland does. And Henry De La Beche. And what about Cuvier? They say that Frenchman knows more than any of us."

"That may be. But the others don't have the instinct for it that you do, Mary. Your knowledge may be self-taught and come from experience rather than from books, but it is no less valuable for that. You have spent a great deal of time with specimens; you have studied their anatomies and seen their variations and subtleties. You recognise the uniqueness of the ichthyosaurus, for example, that it is not like anything we have ever imagined."

But I didn't want to talk about me, or about curies. There were so many stars now that I couldn't count them. I felt very small, pinned to the ground under the knowledge of them all. They were beginning to hollow me out. "How far away do you think those stars are?"

Colonel Birch turned his face upward. "Very far. Farther than we can even imagine."

Perhaps it was because of what had just happened to me, of the lightning that come from inside, which made me open up to larger, stranger thoughts. Looking up at the stars so far away, I begun to feel there was a thread running between the earth and them.

Another thread was strung out too, connecting the past to the future, with the ichie at one end, dying all that long time ago and waiting for me to find it. I didn't know what was at the other end of the thread. These two threads were so long I couldn't even begin to measure them, and where one met the other, there was me. My life led up to that moment, then led away again, like the tide making its highest mark on the beach and then retreating.

"Everything is so big and old and far away," I said, sitting up with the force of it.

"God help me, for it does scare me."

Colonel Birch put his hand on my head and stroked my hair, which was all matted from my lying on the ground. "There is no need to fear," he said, "for you are here with me."

"Only now," I said. "Just for this moment, and then I will be alone again in the world. It is hard when there's no one to hold on to."

He had no answer to that, and I knew he never would. I lay back down and looked at the stars until I had to close my eyes.

8

An adventure in

an unadventurous life

It is rare for anything reported in the Western Flying Post to surprise me. Most are predictable stories: a description of a livestock auction in Bridport, or an account of a public meeting on the widening of a Weymouth road, or warnings of pickpockets at the Frome Fair. Even the stories of more unusual events where lives are changed--a man transported for stealing a silver watch, a fire burning down half a village--I still read with a sense of distance, for they have little effect on me. Of course if the man had stolen my watch, or half of Lyme burned down, I would be more interested. Still, I read the paper dutifully, for it makes me at least aware of the wider region, rather than trapped in an inward-looking town.

Bessy brought me the paper as I rested by the fire one mid-December afternoon. I did not often fall ill, and my weakness irritated me so that I had become as grumpy as Bessy normally was. I sighed as she set it on a small table next to me along with a cup of tea. Still, it was some diversion, for my sisters were busy in the kitchen, making up a batch of Margaret's salve to go in Christmas baskets, along with jars of rosehip jelly. I had wanted to include an ammonite in each basket, but Margaret felt they did not invoke a festive spirit and insisted on pretty shells instead. I forget sometimes that people see fossils as the bones of the dead. Indeed, they are, though I tend to view them more as works of art reminding us of what the world was once like.

I paid little attention to what I read until I came across a short notice, wedged between news of two fires, one burning down a barn, the other the premises of a pastry cook. It read:On Wednesday evening Mary Anning, the well-known fossilist, whose labours have enriched the British and Bristol Museums, as well as the private collections of many geologists, found, east of town, and immediately under the celebrated Black Ven Cliff, some remains, which were removed on that night and the succeeding morning, to undergo an examination, the result of which is, that this specimen appears to differ widely from any which have before been discovered at Lyme, either of the Ichthyosaurus or Plesiosaurus, while it approaches nearly to the structure of the Turtle. The whole osteology has not yet been satisfactorily disclosed, owing to its very recent removal.It will be for the great geologists to determine by what term this creature is to be known.

The great Cuvier will be informed when the bones are completely disclosed, but probably it will be christened at Oxford or London, after an account has been accurately furnished.

No doubt the Directors of the British or Bristol Museums will be anxious to possess this relic of the "great Herculaneum".

Mary had found it at last. She had found the new monster that she and William Buckland had speculated must exist, and I had to find out about her discovery in the newspaper, as if I were just anyone and had no claim on her. Even the men producing the Western Flying Post knew about it before me.

It is difficult to have a falling-out in a town the size of Lyme Regis. I had first learned that when we Philpots stopped seeing Lord Henley: we then managed to run into him everywhere, so that it became almost a game dodging him on Broad Street, along the path by the river, at St Michael's. We provided the town with years of gossip and amusement, for which we ought to have been thanked.

With Mary the severing was far more painful, because she was so close to my heart. After our fight in the churchyard, I regretted what I'd said to her almost immediately, wishing I had let her find out from Colonel Birch himself about the widow he might marry. I shall never forget the look of betrayal and despair on her face. On the other hand, I felt the sting of her comments about my jealousy and my sisters and my fish like a whipping that lingered.

I was too proud to go and apologise, though, and I expect she was too. I longed to have Bessy come into the parlour with a telltale grimace and announce that I had a visitor. But it didn't happen, and once the time for such a rapprochement had passed, it became impossible to regain our old standing.

It is not easy to let someone go, even when they have said unforgivable things to you. For at least a year it cut me deeply to see her, out on the beach, or on Broad Street, or by the Cobb. I began to avoid Cockmoile Square, taking back-lanes to St Michael's, and the path by the church to the beach. I no longer went to Black Ven, where Mary usually hunted, instead heading in the opposite direction, past the Cobb and onto Monmouth Beach. There were not so many fossil fish there, and so I collected less, but at least I was not so likely to run into her.

It was lonely, though. Over the years Mary and I had spent a great deal of time together out hunting. Some days we wouldn't speak for hours, but her presence near by, bent over the ground, scrabbling in the mud or splitting open rocks, was a familiar comfort. Now I would glance around and still be surprised to find there was only me on the deserted beach. Such solitude brought on a self-indulgent melancholy that I detested, and I would make cutting remarks to jolt myself out of it. Margaret began to complain that I had grown more prickly, and Bessy threatened to give notice when I was sharp with her.

It wasn't only on the beach that I missed Mary. I also longed for the company of her sitting at my dining table while I unpacked my basket and showed off what I had found. I could only do so the rare times when Henry De La Beche or William Buckland or Doctor Carpenter was about, or when someone occasionally came to see my collection and showed more than simply a fashionable interest in fossils. Without Mary's knowledge and encouragement, I felt my own studies slacken.

At the same time I had to watch her become more popular with outsiders. They actively sought her out, and she began taking visitors on fossil walks to Black Ven. With Colonel Birch's auction money and Mary's growing fame, the Annings were at last freeing themselves from the debt Richard Anning had put them into many years before.

Mary and Molly Anning had new dresses, and they bought proper furniture again, and coal to warm themselves. Molly Anning stopped taking in laundry and began running the fossil shop properly, and it became a busy place. I should have been glad for them.

Instead I was envious.

For a short time I even considered leaving Lyme and going to live with my sister Frances and her family, who had recently moved to Brighton. When I casually mentioned the possibility to Louise and Margaret, they both reacted with horror. "How can you think of leaving us?" Margaret cried, and Louise was pale and silent. I even found Bessy sniffling into her pastry dough, and had to reassure them all that Morley Cottage would always remain my home.

It took a long time, but eventually I did grow used to not having Mary's company or her friendship. It became as if she lived in Charmouth or Seatown or Eype. It was surprising that in such a small town she and I were able to avoid each other so well. But then, she was so busy with new collectors that I would have seen less of her even if I hadn't been trying to. While I accommodated her absence, a dull ache in my heart remained, like a fracture that, though healed, ever after flares up during damp weather.

I did run into her once where I couldn't get away. I was with my sisters, heading along the Walk, when Mary came from the opposite direction, a small black and white dog at her heels. It happened too quickly for me to duck aside. Mary started when she saw us, but continued towards us, as if determined not to be deterred. Margaret and Louise said hello to her, and she to them. She and I carefully avoided meeting each other's eyes.

"What a lovely little dog!" Margaret cried, kneeling to pet it. "What is his name?"

"Tray."

"Where did you get him?"

"A friend give him to me, to keep me company upon beach." Mary turned red, which told us who the friend was. "If he likes you, he lets you pet him. If he don't, he growls."

Tray sniffed at Louise's dress, then mine. I stiffened, expecting him to growl, but he looked up at me and panted. I had always assumed pets did not like those their owners did not like.

Other than that meeting, I was able to avoid her, though I sometimes saw her in the distance, Tray following, on the beach or in town.

There was one moment when I was briefly tempted to try to restore our friendship. A few months after our fight, I heard that Mary had discovered a loose jumble of bones, which she pieced together in a speculative fashion, though the specimen was without a skull. I wanted to see it, but the Annings sold it to Colonel Birch and shipped it to him before I got up the courage to visit Cockmoile Square. I was only able to read about it in papers Henry De La Beche and Reverend Conybeare published, in which they named this notional creature a plesiosaurus, a "near lizard". It had a very long neck and huge paddles, and William Buckland likened it to a serpent threaded through the shell of a turtle.

Now, according to the newspaper, she had found another specimen, and I was once again being tempted to visit Cockmoile Square. After reading the brief notice, questions popped into my head that I wanted to ask Mary. What did she find first? How big was the specimen, and in what sort of condition? How complete? Did this one have a skull? Why did she stay out all night to work on it? Whom did they expect to sell it to: the British or Bristol Museums, or to Colonel Birch once more?

My desire to see it was so strong that I went so far as to get up to fetch my cloak.

At that moment, however, Bessy appeared with another cup of tea for me. "What are you doing, Miss Elizabeth? Surely you're not going out in the cold?"

"I--" As I looked into Bessy's broad face, her cheeks red and accusing, I knew I couldn't tell her where I wanted to go. Bessy had been pleased that Mary and I were no longer friends, and would now have plenty of opinions about my desire to visit Cockmoile Square which I didn't have the energy to fight. Nor could I explain to Margaret and Louise, who had both encouraged me to make amends with Mary and then, when I wouldn't, let the matter drop and never mentioned her.

"I was just going to the door to see if I could see the post coming," I said. "But do you know, I'm feeling a little dizzy. I think I'll go to bed."

"You do that, Miss Elizabeth. You don't want to go anywhere."

It is rare that I feel Bessy's caution is sound.

William Buckland arrived two days later. Margaret and Louise had gone to deliver the Christmas baskets to various deserving persons, but I was still ill enough to stay behind. Louise had looked envious as they left; such visits were tedious for her--as they were for me. Only Margaret enjoyed social calls.

It seemed I had only just allowed my eyes to close when Bessy came in to announce that a gentleman had arrived to see me. I sat up, rubbed my face and smoothed my hair.

William Buckland bounded in. "Miss Philpot!" he cried. "Don't get up--you look so comfortable there by the fire. I didn't mean to disturb you. I can come back." He looked about him with every intention of remaining, however, and I got to my feet and gave him my hand. "Mr Buckland, what a pleasure to see you. It has been such a long time." I waved at the chair opposite. "Please sit and tell me all of your news. Bessy, some tea for Mr Buckland, please. Have you just come from Oxford?"

"I arrived a few hours ago." William Buckland sat. "Thankfully the term has just ended, and I was able to set out almost as soon as I received Mary's letter." He jumped up again--he was never good at sitting for long--and paced up and down. His forehead was growing larger as his hairline receded, and it gleamed in the firelight. "It really is remarkable, isn't it? Bless Mary, she has found the most spectacular specimen! We have now incontrovertible evidence of another new creature without having to guess at its anatomy as we did before. How many more ancient animals might we find?" Mr Buckland picked up a sea urchin from the mantelpiece. "You are very quiet, Miss Philpot," he said as he examined it. "What do you think? Is it not magnificent?"

"I have not seen the specimen," I confessed. "I've only read about it--though there is little enough in the newspaper account."

Mr Buckland stared at me. "What? You've not been to see it? Why ever not? I've just come like lightning all the way from Oxford, and yet you can simply stroll down the hill. Would you like to go now? I am going back again and can accompany you." He set down the sea urchin and held out his elbow for me to take.

I sighed. It had been impossible to get Mr Buckland to understand that Mary and I no longer had anything to do with each other. Though I counted him as a friend, he was not the sort of man who was sensitive to others' feelings. To Mr Buckland life was about the pursuit of knowledge rather than the expression of emotions. Almost forty years old, he showed no sign of marrying, to no one's surprise, for what lady could put up with his erratic behaviour and profound interest in the dead rather than the living?

"I'm afraid I cannot go with you, Mr Buckland," I said now. "I have a chesty cough and have been ordered by my sisters to stay by the fire." This much at least was true.

"A pity!" Mr Buckland sat down again.

"The newspaper says Mary's find is unlike either the ichthyosaurus or the plesiosaurus--what has been guessed at about the latter, anyway."

"Oh no, it is a plesiosaurus," Mr Buckland declared. "This one has a head, and it is just as we'd imagined--so small compared to the rest of the body. And the paddles! I have made Mary promise to clean them first. But I have not told you why I have come to see you, Miss Philpot. It is this: I want you to convince the Annings not to sell this specimen to Colonel Birch as they did the last one. He sold that on to the Royal College of Surgeons, and we would rather this one not go there as well."

"He sold it on? Why would he do that?" I gripped the arms of my chair. Any mention of Colonel Birch made me tense with nerves.

Mr Buckland shrugged. "Perhaps he needed the money. It is no bad thing for it to be on public display, but the College is full of men keen to exploit plesiosauri without the intelligence behind it. Conybeare is much more reliable in studying the specimen. He may want it brought to the Geological Society so that he can lecture on it as he did previously. I should think such a meeting would be very well attended. Did you know, Miss Philpot, that I am to become the Society's President in February? Perhaps I can combine his lecture with my inauguration."

"According

to

the

Post the Annings are considering the Bristol or the British Museums." I was a little humiliated to be quoting the newspaper account to someone who had seen the specimen for himself. It was like describing London from a guidebook to someone who has lived there.

"That is an indication of the newspaper's inclination rather than the Annings',"

William Buckland said. "No, Molly Anning mentioned Colonel Birch to me just now, and wouldn't consider my suggestions."

"Did you tell her that Colonel Birch sold on the first specimen, and probably for a pretty profit?"

"She wouldn't listen to me. That is why I have come to you."

I studied my hands. Despite my wearing fingerless gloves and applying Margaret's salve daily, they were rough and scarred, with puckered fingers and a rim of blue clay under each nail. "I have little influence over the Annings and whom they choose to sell to. They run their own business now, and would not welcome my interference."

"But will you try, Miss Philpot? Talk to her. She is certain to respect your judgement--as do we all."

I sighed. "Really, Mr Buckland, if you want Molly Anning to sit up and take note, you must speak in the language she understands. Not museums and scientific papers, but money. Find her a collector who will pay her substantially more than Colonel Birch and she will gladly sell to them."

Mr Buckland looked startled, as if the thought of money had not occurred to him.

"Now," I continued, determined to change the subject, "I've a case of fish on the landing you haven't seen before, including the dorsal fin of a Hybodus that will amaze you, for the ridges along the spine truly resemble teeth! Come, I'll show you."

When he was gone, I sat again by the fire and thought. Now William Buckland had enthused about the plesiosaurus, I wanted more than ever to see it. If I didn't while it was still in Lyme, I might never get another chance, especially if he found a private buyer who would keep it in his house, inaccessible to someone like me.

Mary would be cleaning and preparing the specimen for the next several weeks, rarely leaving it, and not at predictable moments. I did not know how I could get to it without seeing her. However, I could not face her. I had grown used to not facing her, to not thinking about the superiority she felt to me. I did not want to open that wound again.

On Sunday, however, I got an unexpected chance. We were walking along Coombe Street towards St Michael's when I saw ahead of us all three Annings enter the Congregationalist Chapel. I was used to seeing Mary in the distance. It no longer made me want to bolt, for she was doing her best to ignore me too.

Once inside St Michael's, I sat with my sisters and Bessy, and while Reverend Jones led us in prayer, I thought about the Annings' empty house just around the corner.

I began to cough, first a stray one here and there, then building up so that it sounded as if I had a persistent tickle in my throat I could not get rid of. Neighbours shifted in their seats and glanced around, and Margaret and Louise looked at me with concern.

"The cold is bothering my throat," I whispered to Louise. "I'd best go home. But you stay--I'll be fine." I slipped into the aisle before she could argue. Reverend Jones gazed at me as I hurried away, and I swear he knew that I was putting fossils before church.

Outside, I discovered that Bessy had followed me. "Oh Bessy, you needn't come with me," I said. "Go back inside." Bessy shook her head stubbornly. "No, ma'am, I has to relight the fire for you."

"I am perfectly capable of lighting the fire myself. Some days I do, when I get up before you, as you well know."

Bessy frowned, displeased to be reminded that I sometimes caught her out. "Miss Margaret told me to come with you," she muttered.

"Well, go back in and tell Margaret I sent you back. Surely you'd rather stay so that you can say hello to your friends after?" Post-church gossip amongst servants was lively, I had noticed.

I could see Bessy was tempted, but her natural suspicion made her study me with narrowed eyes. "You ain't going out on the beach, are you, Miss Elizabeth? I won't allow it, not after your cold. And it's Sunday!"

"Of course not. The tide is high." I had no idea what the tide was doing.

"Oh." Although she had now lived in Lyme almost twenty years, Bessy still had little sense of the tides. With a few more words of encouragement, I convinced her to return to the church.

Cockmoile Square and Bridge Street were deserted, as most of the town was at church or asleep. I could not hesitate or I would be caught or lose my nerve. Hurrying down the steps to Mary's workshop, I got out the spare key I had seen Molly Anning hide under a loose stone, unlocked the door and let myself in. I knew I should not do it, that it was far worse than my sneaking out to the auction at Bullock's in London. But I could not help it.

There was a whining, and Tray came up to me, sniffing my feet and wagging his tail. I hesitated, then reached down and petted him. His fur was coarse like coir, and he was covered in Blue Lias dust, a true Anning dog.

I stepped around him to look at the plesiosaurus laid out in slabs on the floor. It was about nine feet long, and half that width, which accommodated the span of its massive diamond-shaped paddles. Much of its length was made up of its swan-like neck, and at the end was a surprisingly small skull perhaps five inches long. The neck was so very long it didn't make sense. Could an animal have a neck longer than the rest of its body? I wished I had my Cuvier volume on anatomy with me. The body was a barrel-shaped mass of ribs, completed by a tail far shorter than the neck. All in all it was as unlikely looking as the ichthyosaurus with its enormous eye had been. It made me shiver and smile all at once. It also made me enormously proud of Mary. Whatever anger there was between us, I was delighted that she had found something no one ever had before.

I walked around it, looking and looking, getting my fill, for I was unlikely to see it again. Then I looked around the workshop, which I had once spent so much time in and now hadn't seen in a few years. It hadn't changed. There was still little furniture, a great deal of dust, and crates overflowing with fossils that awaited attention. On top of one such pile there was a sheaf of papers in Mary's hand. I glanced at the top sheet, then picked up the bundle and leafed through it. It was a copy of an article Reverend Conybeare had written for the Geological Society about Mary's beasts. There were twenty-nine pages of text, as well as eight pages of illustrations, all of which Mary had painstakingly copied out. She must have spent weeks doing this, night after night. I myself had not seen the article, and found myself drawn in to reading parts of it and wishing I could borrow the copy from her.

I could not stand in the workshop all day reading it, however. I flipped to the end to read the conclusion, and there discovered a note in small writing at the bottom of the last page. It read: "When I write a paper there shall not be but one preface."

It appeared Mary felt confident enough to criticise Reverend Conybeare's wordiness. Moreover, she had plans to write her own scientific paper. Her boldness made me smile.