Remarkable Creatures. Tracy Chevalier

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СКАЧАТЬ going to admire the silliest of us. “What is it, Mary?” I did not mean to sound so short.

      Mary Anning turned to me, though her eyes kept darting back to Margaret. “Pa sent me to say he’ll make the cabinet for a pound.”

      “Will he, now?” I had gone off the idea of the cabinet if it was to be made by Richard Anning. “Tell him I will think on it.”

      “Who is our visitor, Elizabeth?” Louise asked, her fingers still in the elderflowers.

      “This is Mary Anning, the cabinet maker’s daughter.”

      At the name, Bessy turned from the table, where she was turning out a fruitcake she had left to cool. She gaped at Mary. “You the lightning girl?”

      Mary dropped her eyes and nodded.

      We all looked at her. Even Margaret stopped waltzing to stare. We had heard about the girl struck by lightning, for people still talked of it years later. It was one of those miracles small towns thrive on: children seeming drowned then spurting out water like a whale and reviving; men falling from cliffs and reappearing unscathed; boys run down by coaches and standing up with only a scratched cheek. Such everyday miracles knit communities together, giving them their legends to marvel at. It had never occurred to me when I first met her that Mary might be the lightning girl.

      “Do you remember being struck?” Margaret asked.

      Mary shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with our sudden interest.

      Louise never liked that sort of attention either, and made an effort to break up the scrutiny. “My name is Mary too. I was named after my grandmothers. But I didn’t like Grandmother Mary as much as Grandmother Louise.” She paused. “Would you like to help us?”

      “What do I do?” Mary stepped up to the table.

      “Wash your hands first,” I ordered. “Louise, look at her nails!” Mary’s nails were rimmed with grey clay, her blunt fingers puckered from limestone. It was a state I would become familiar with in my own fingers.

      Bessy was still staring at Mary. “Bessy, you can clean in the parlour while we’re working here,” I reminded her.

      She grunted and picked up her mop. “I wouldn’t have a girl who’s been struck by lightning in my kitchen.”

      I tutted. “Already you’re becoming as superstitious as the local people you like to look down on.”

      Bessy blew out her cheeks again as she banged her mop against the door jamb. I caught Louise’s eye and we smiled. Then Margaret began to waltz around the table again, humming.

      “For pity’s sake, Margaret, do your dancing elsewhere!” I cried. “Go and dance with Bessy’s mop.”

      Margaret laughed and pirouetted out of the door and down the hallway, to our young visitor’s disappointment. By then, Louise had Mary plucking stems from the flower heads, careful to shake the pollen into the pot rather than around the kitchen. Once she understood what she was to do, Mary worked steadily, pausing only when Margaret reappeared in a lime green turban. “One feather or two?” she asked, holding up one, then another ostrich feather to the band crossing her forehead.

      Mary watched Margaret with wide eyes. At that time turbans had not yet arrived in Lyme – though I can report now that Margaret pushed the fashion onto Lyme’s women, and within a few years, turbans were a common sight up and down Broad Street. I am not sure they complement empire-line gowns as well as other hats, and I believe some laughed behind their hands at the sight, but isn’t fashion meant to entertain?

      “Thank you for helping with the elderflowers,” Louise said when the flowers were soaking in hot water, sugar and lemon. “You may have a bottle of it when it’s ready.”

      Mary Anning nodded, then turned to me. “Can I look at your curies, miss? You didn’t show me the other day.”

      I hesitated, for I was a little shy now to reveal what I had found. She was remarkably self-possessed for a young girl. I suppose it was working from such an early age that did it, though it was tempting, too, to blame the lightning. However, I could not show my reluctance, and so I led Mary into the dining room. Most people when they enter the room remark on the impressive view of Golden Cap, but Mary did not even glance through the window. Instead she went straight to the sideboard, where I had laid out my finds, much to Bessy’s disgust. “What are those?” She gestured to the slips of paper beside each fossil.

      “Labels. They describe when and where I found the fossil, and in which layer of rock, as well as a guess at what they might be. That is what they do at the British Museum.”

      “You been there?” Mary was frowning at each label.

      “Of course. We grew up near it. Do you not keep track of where you find things?”

      Mary shrugged. “I don’t read nor write.”

      “Will you go to school?”

      She shrugged again. “Sunday school, maybe. They teach reading and writing there.”

      “At St Michael’s?”

      “No, we ain’t Church of England. We’re Congregationalists. Chapel’s on Coombe Street.” Mary picked up an ammonite I was especially proud of, for it was whole, not chipped or cracked, and had fine even ridges on its spiral. “You can get a shilling for this ammo, if you give it a good clean,” she said.

      “Oh, I’m not going to sell it. It’s for my collection.”

      Mary gave me a funny look. It occurred to me then that the Annings never collected to keep. A good specimen to them meant a good price.

      Mary set down the ammonite and picked up a brown stone about the length of her finger, but thicker, with faint spiral markings on it. “That’s an odd thing,” I said. “I’m not sure what it is. It could be just a stone, but it seems – different. I felt I had to pick it up.”

      “It’s a bezoar stone.”

      “Bezoar?” I frowned. “What’s that?”

      “A hair ball like you find in the stomachs of goats. Pa told me about them.” She put it down, then took up a bivalve shell called a gryphaea, which the locals likened to the Devil’s toenails. “You haven’t cleaned this gryphie yet, have you, miss?”

      “I scrubbed the mud off.”

      “But did you scrape it with a blade?”

      I frowned. “What kind of blade?”

      “Oh, a penknife will do, though a razor’s better. You scrape at the inside, to get the silt and such out, and give it a good shape. I could show you.”

      I sniffed. The idea of a child teaching me how to do something seemed ridiculous. And yet … “All right, Mary Anning. Come along tomorrow with your blades and show me. I’ll pay you a penny per fossil to clean them.”

      Mary brightened at the suggestion of payment. “Thank you, Miss Philpot.”

      “Off you go, now. Ask Bessy on the way out to give you a slice of her fruitcake.”

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