Remarkable Creatures (18 page)

“Oh, Mary!” he cried.

“Sir. Get me out, sir!”

“I—I—” Mr. Buckland pulled at the rocks and mud but could not move them. “It’s too heavy, Mary. I can’t get you out with no tools.” He was in a kind of daze, as if he couldn’t think straight.

We heard a cry then. We had forgot about Fanny. She was just a few feet from us, and weren’t so heavily buried as me, but there was blood on her face. She begun to scream, and Mr. Buckland jumped up and went to her. The clay was looser round her and he managed to shift it enough that he could pull her out. He wiped the blood from her face, and in doing so knocked the bonnet from her head, for he was scared and clumsy. It got caught up in a gust of wind and rolled away down the beach. Losing her bonnet seemed to upset Fanny more than anything else. “My bonnet!” she cried. “I need my bonnet. Mam will kill me if I lose it!” Then she screamed again as Mr. Buckland tried to move her.

“Her leg is broken,” Mr. Buckland panted. “I’m going to have to leave you to get help.”

At that moment part of the cliff farther along crumbled and crashed to the ground. Fanny screamed again. “Don’t leave me, sir, please don’t leave me in this godforsaken place!”

I did not want to be left either, but I did not cry out. “Best to carry her, sir, if you can. At least you can save one of us.”

Mr. Buckland looked horrified. “Oh, I don’t think I should do that. It wouldn’t be proper.” It seemed even he, who ate field mice and carried a bright blue sack and pissed in the sea, was uneasy about holding a girl in his arms. But now was not the time for worrying about what was proper.

“Put an arm round her shoulders and one under her knees and lift, sir,” I coached. “She’s a little thing—you should be able to carry her, even a scholar like you.”

Mr. Buckland did what I said and heaved Fanny into his arms. She screamed again, in pain and shame. Letting her arms flop wide, she turned her head away from him.

“For God’s sake, Fanny, put your arms round him!” I cried. “Help the man or he’ll never get you back.”

Fanny obeyed me, throwing her arms round his neck and burying her head against his chest.

“Take her to the bath house—that’s the closest place—and send people straight back with spades.” I wouldn’t normally direct a gentleman so, but Mr. Buckland seemed to have lost his wits. “Hurry, please, sir. I can’t bear being alone like this.”

As he nodded, another section of cliff fell away with a crash. Mr. Buckland flinched, terror written all over his face. I fastened my eyes on his. “Sir, pray for me. And if I die, tell Mam and Joe—”

“D-d-don’t say such a thing, Mary. I’ll be back shortly.” Mr. Buckland would not listen, but staggered away, Fanny gazing at me with glazed eyes over his shoulder. Now that she had surrendered to his arms, she was beyond care. Later Dr. Carpenter would set her leg, but the break was awkward and never healed properly, and left her with one leg shorter than the other. She could never walk far or stand for long, and could never again come out upon beach—not that she would want to. Whenever I saw her hobbling down Broad Street to the Three Cups, I ducked my head to avoid that fearful blue gaze.

Course I didn’t know any of that then, held fast in the landslip. I watched Mr. Buckland weaving down the beach with his burden, not going fast enough for me, and wondered why it was that the pretty ones were always rescued before the plain. That was how the world worked: With her big eyes and dainty features, Fanny did not get stuck, whereas I was caught in the mud, the cliff threatening to crumble on top of me.

There was a lot of time to think. I thought of Mr. Buckland and how odd it were that for an ordained man so interested in what God had been up to in the past, he hadn’t been much comfort with prayers but run away from them. I closed my eyes and said a long prayer myself, for God to spare me, to let me live on to help Mam and Joe, to find more crocs, to have enough to eat and coal to burn, even to have a husband and children one day. “And please, God, make Mr. Buckland a runner rather than a walker today. Make him find someone quick and come back.” Although Mr. Buckland was happy wandering miles along the cliff and regularly walked to Axminster and back while in Lyme, he did not hurry. He had a scholar’s belly on him, and I worried that with Fanny in his arms he would not get back quick enough to save me.

It was quiet now. The wind had died down, and a fine misty rain sprayed my face. Now and then I heard the faint skitter of more debris tumbling down the cliff to the ground. I couldn’t see it because it were behind me and I couldn’t turn my head all the way round. That was the worst, hearing it and not knowing how close it was, or if it would bury me.

The mud that held me was cold and heavy and pressing on my chest, making it hard to breathe. I closed my eyes for a bit, thinking that sleep might make the time go faster. But I couldn’t sleep, so instead I followed Mr. Buckland in my mind as he went back to Lyme. Now he’s passing where we found the first croc, I thought. Now he’s passing the ledge with the ammo impressions. Now he’s reached the bend where the path starts. Now he’s in sight of Jefferd’s Baths. Maybe Mr. Jefferd is there and will come running, faster than Mr. Buckland. I traced the path there and back again—and it was not so far back to Lyme—but no one come.

I opened my eyes. Mr. Buckland was a dot along Church Cliffs. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t got farther. But then, it was hard to say how much time had passed—it could have been ten minutes or hours. I looked the other way, down the beach towards Charmouth. There were no boats out, or fishermen checking crab pots, for it was too rough. There was no one at all. And the tide had turned, and was slowly creeping up.

I gave up looking for help, and begun to notice things closer to me. The landslip had caused a churning up of rocks caught in an ooze of blue-gray clay. My eyes flicked over the stones near to me and come to rest on a familiar shape about four feet from me: a ring of overlapping bony scales the size of my fist. A croc’s eye. It were like it was staring straight at me. I cried out with the surprise of seeing it. Then, several feet past the eye, there was a movement. It was only tiny, but I cried out again, and it moved again. It was just a little pink spot sticking out of the clay, and with the rain in my eyes it was hard to see what it was. I wondered if it were a crab, scrabbling about in the mud.

“Hey!” I called, and it moved. It was not a crab, but a finger. I felt so relieved and sick at the same time that I think I fainted. When I come to I looked at the spot again, and it wasn’t moving. I cleared my throat.

“Who’s that?” I said, but not loud enough. “Who’s that?” I repeated, as loud as I could. The finger moved. I was so happy not to be alone that I laughed aloud.

“Joe? Is it Joe?”

The finger didn’t move.

“Mam? Miss Philpot?”

No movement. I knew it wouldn’t have been any of them, for I would have known they were upon beach. But who else would be out in such weather? I supposed it could have been one of the children from Lyme, come to spy on Mary Anning and the man she attended, hoping to see something scandalous that they could report back on. But it seemed unlikely. We would have spotted them if they were upon beach. Unless they’d been up on the cliff—which meant they’d come down with the slip. It was a miracle they was alive.

It was thinking of the cliff and landslips that made me realize who it must be. “Captain Cury?” I remembered now that I had seen him earlier.

Even as the finger wriggled, I saw the handle of his spade, poking out of the clay that had buried him. I was so glad he was there that any spite I felt towards him vanished. “Captain Cury! Mr. Buckland’s gone to get help. They’ll be back to dig us out.”

The finger moved, but less than before.

“Was you up on the cliff and come down with the slip?”

The finger didn’t move.

“Captain Cury, can you hear me? Are your bones broke? Fanny’s leg is broke, I think. Mr. Buckland’s taken her with him. He’ll come back soon.” I was chattering on to mask my terror.

The finger stayed stiff, pointing up at the sky. I knew what that meant, and begun to cry. “Don’t go! Stay with me! Please stay, Captain Cury!”

Between me and Captain Cury the croc eye watched us both. Captain Cury and I are going to be like the croc, I thought. We will become fossils, trapped upon beach forever.

After a while I stopped looking at Captain Cury’s finger, now as still as any rock caught in the clay. I couldn’t bear to watch the tide steadily rising. Instead I gazed up into the flat white sky, a few pewter clouds swimming about in it. After spending so much of my life looking down at stones, it was strange to look up into emptiness. I spotted a gull circling high above. It seemed it would never get closer, but would always be a dot hovering far away. I kept my eyes fixed on it, and did not look at the finger or the croc again.

It was so quiet I wanted to make a noise to break the spell. I wanted the lightning to pass through me and jolt me into life, for I was feeling the opposite of that sensation—a slow darkness was creeping through my body.

There had been plenty of deaths in our family—Pa and all the children. I spent most of my time collecting what were dead bodies of animals. But I had not thought much of my own death before. Even when I had been visiting Lady Jackson I’d really thought more of her passing than mine, and treating death as a drama to revel in. But dying was no drama. Dying was cold and hard and painful, and dull. It went on too long. I was exhausted and growing bored with it. Now I had too much time to think about whether I was going to die from the tide coming in and drowning me like Lady Jackson, or the mud pressing the air out of me as it had Captain Cury, or a falling rock striking me. I couldn’t think for long or it hurt too much, like touching a piece of ice. I tried to think of God instead and how He would help me through it.

I never told anyone this, but thinking of Him then didn’t make me less scared.

It was hard to breathe now with the mud so heavy. My breathing got slower, and so did the beat of my heart, and I closed my eyes.

When I come to, someone was digging at the clay round me. I opened my eyes and smiled. “Thank you. I knew you would come. Oh, thank you for coming to me.”

SIX

A little in love with him myself

You might think saving someone’s life would bind you ever after. That is not what happened with Mary and me. I am not blaming her but digging her out of the landslip that day, using Captain Cury’s spade and racing against the tide and the rocks that rained down on either side of us, seemed to drive us apart rather than bring us closer.

It was a miracle Mary survived, and intact as well, especially given Captain Cury’s terrible suffocating death just a few feet from her. She had bad bruising up and down her body, but only a few broken bones—some ribs and her collarbone. This kept her in bed a few weeks—not long enough to satisfy Dr. Carpenter, but she refused to convalesce any longer, and soon reappeared on the beach, bound up tightly to keep the bones in place.

I was amazed she was willing to go out hunting again after what she’d been through. Not only that—she did not change her habits, but went back to pacing along the base of the cliffs, where landslips could come down. When I suggested that Molly and Joseph Anning would understand if she did not want to go back to hunting, Mary declared, “I been struck by lightning and buried in a landslip and survived both. God must have other plans for me. Besides,” she added, “I can’t afford to stop.”

On top of her father’s debts, which years later the family was still struggling to clear, they now owed Dr. Carpenter. He was fond of Mary because of their shared interest in fossils, as well as for the pleasure he took from knowing his advice had saved her from the lightning strike. However, he still had to be paid for his care of Mary and of Fanny Miller as well, as insisted on by her family. The Annings did not challenge this demand. More surprising, they did not expect William Buckland to pay for Fanny’s care; nor would Molly Anning let me write to him about it on their behalf. “He can afford it more than you,” I reasoned when I was visiting Mary to lend her a Bible she wanted to read while she was still in bed. “And it is because of him that Fanny was out on the beach at all.”

Molly Anning did not pause while she counted a pile of pennies from the fossil table sales. “If Mr. Buckland felt he ought to pay, he would have offered to before he went back to Oxford. I ain’t going to chase after him for his money.”

“I don’t think he has thought about it one way or the other,” I said. “He is a scholar, not a practical man. If put to him, though, I am sure he would honor the debt and pay Dr. Carpenter—for Mary’s treatment as well as Fanny’s.”

“No.” Molly Anning’s stubbornness revealed a certain pride I had not realized she possessed. She measured most things by the coins they represented and the distance they put between the Annings and the workhouse, but in this instance I believe she understood that money was not the issue. Whether or not William Buckland was involved, the Annings had placed an innocent girl in danger and effectively crippled her. Fanny could not now expect to marry well, or at all. Her fair looks might make up for a great deal, but most husbands at that working level of society would need a wife who was able to walk a mile. No amount of money could make up for what Fanny had lost. Molly Anning took on the debt as a sort of punishment.