“Sorry to bother you, Mary,” he said, “but there be something Billy and me need to show you, back by Gun Cliff.” As he spoke he glanced down at the ichie, checking my work, I expect. I’d got much better over the years at chiselling out a specimen from the rock, and didn’t need the Days to help so much, except sometimes to carry slabs of rock back to the workshop.
Their opinion mattered to me, though, and I was glad to see he looked satisfied with what I’d done so far. “What have you found?”
Davy Day scratched his head. “Don’t know. One of them turtles, maybe.”
“A plesie?” I said. “Are you sure?”
Davy shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, it could be a crocodilly. I never knowed the difference.” Recently the Days had begun sea-quarrying in the Blue Lias, and often found things in the ledges off Lyme. They never wanted to understand what they dug up. They knew it made me and them money, and that was all they cared about. People often come to me to help them with what they found. Usually it was a small bit of ichie-a jaw bone, some teeth, a few verteberries fused together.
I picked up my hammer and basket. “Tray, stay,” I commanded, snapping my fingers and pointing. Tray come running up from the water’s edge, where he had been chasing the waves. He curled his black and white body into a ball and lay his chin on a rock next to the ichie. He was a gentle little dog, but he growled when anyone come near one of my specimens.
I followed Davy Day round the bend that hid Lyme. The sun lit the houses piling up the hill, and the sea was silvery like a mirror. The boats moored in the harbour were strewn about like sticks, abandoned however the water set them on the sea bed at low tide. My heart brimmed with fondness for these sights. “Mary Anning, you are the most famous person in this town,” I said to myself. I knew very well I was too full of pride, and would have to go to Chapel and pray to be forgiven my sin. But I couldn’t help it: I had come such a long way since Miss Elizabeth first hired the Days for us so many years before, when I was young and poor and ignorant. Now people come to visit me, and wrote about what I found. It was hard not to get a big head. Even the people of Lyme were nicer to me, if only because I brought in visitors and more trade.
One thing did keep me from swelling too much, though, and were a little needle in my heart. Whatever I found, whatever was said of me, Elizabeth Philpot was no longer in Lyme to share it with.
“It be here.” Davy Day gestured to where his brother was sitting, holding a wedge of pork pie in his big paw. Near him was a load of cut stone on a wooden frame they were using to carry it. Billy Day looked up, his mouth full, and nodded.
I always felt a little awkward with Billy, now he was married to Fanny Miller. He never said anything, but I often wondered if Fanny spoke harsh words about me to him. I weren’t exactly jealous of her-quarrymen are not considered suitable for any but the most desperate women. But their marriage reminded me that I was at the very bottom of the heap, and would never marry. Fanny was getting all the time what I experienced only the once with Colonel Birch in the orchard. I had my fame to comfort me, and the money it brought in, but that only went so far. I could not hate Fanny, for it were my fault she was crippled. But I could not ever feel friendly towards her, nor comfortable round her.
That was the case with many people in Lyme. I had come unstuck. I would never be a lady like the Philpots-no one would ever call me Miss Mary. I would be plain Mary Anning. Yet I weren’t like other working people either. I was caught in between, and always would be. That brought freedom, but it was lonely too.
Luckily the ledges gave me plenty of things to think about other than myself. Davy Day pointed at a ridge of rock, and I leaned over and made out a very clear line of vertebrae about three feet long. It seemed so obvious I chuckled. I had been over these ledges hundreds of times and not seen it. It always surprised me what could be found here. There were hundreds of bodies surrounding us, waiting for a pair of keen eyes to find them.
“We was carrying a load to Charmouth and Billy tripped over the ridge,” Davy explained.
“You tripped over it, not me,” Billy declared.
“It were you, you dolt.”
“Not me-you.”
I let the brothers argue and studied the vertebrae with growing excitement. They were longer and fatter than an ichie’s. I followed the line to where the paddles would be and saw there enough evidence of long phalanges to convince me. “It’s a plesiosaurus,” I announced. The Days stopped arguing. “A turtle,” I conceded, for they would never learn that long, strange word.
Davy and Billy looked at each other and then at me. “That be the first monster we ever found,” Billy said.
“So it is,” I agreed. The Days had uncovered giant ammonites, but never an ichie or plesie. “You’ve become fossil hunters.”
In unison the Days took a step back, as if distancing themselves from my words. “Oh no, we be quarrymen,” Billy said. “We deal in stone, not monsters.” He nodded at the blocks of stone awaiting their delivery to Charmouth.
I was astonished at my own luck. There was probably a whole specimen here, and the Days didn’t want it! “Then I’ll pay you for your time in digging it out for me, and will take it off your hands,” I suggested.
“Don’t know. We got the stone to deliver.”
“After that, then. I can’t get this out myself-as you saw, I am working on an ich-a crocodile.” I wondered if I were imagining it, but it seemed that for once the Days weren’t in complete agreement. Billy was more uneasy about having anything to do with the plesie. I took a chance then at guessing the matter. “Are you going to let Fanny rule what you do, then, Billy Day? Does she think a turtle or crocodile will turn round and bite you?”
Billy hung his head while Davy laughed. “You got the measure of him!” He turned to his brother. “Now, are we going to dig this out for Mary or are you going to sit with your wife while she holds your balls in her claws?”
Billy bunched up his mouth like a wad of paper. “How much you pay us?”
“A guinea,” I answered promptly, feeling generous, and also hoping such a fee would stop Fanny’s complaints.
“We got to take this load to Charmouth first,” Davy said. That were his way of saying yes.
There were so many people upon beach now looking for fossils, especially on a sunny day like this one, that I had to get Mam to come and sit with the plesie so no one else would claim it as theirs. Summers were like that now, and it was partly my fault, for making Lyme beaches so famous. It was only in winter that the shore cleared of people, driven away by the bitter wind and rain. That was when I could go out all day and not meet another soul.
The Days worked fast, and got the plesie out in two days, about the same time I finished with my ichie. As I was just round the corner from them, I could go back and forth between the two sites and give them instructions. It weren’t a bad specimen, though it had no head. Plesies seem to lose their heads easily.
We had just got both specimens back to the workshop when Mam called from her table out in the square, “Two strangers come to see you, Mary!”
“Lord help us, it’s too crowded here,” I muttered. I thanked the Days and sent them out to be paid by Mam, and called for the visitors to come in. What a sight met them! Two monster specimens laid out in slabs on the floor-indeed, covering so much of it the men couldn’t even step inside, but hung in the doorway, their eyes wide. I felt a little jolt of lightning run through me, one I couldn’t explain, and knew then that they could not be ordinary visitors.
“My apologies for the mess, gentlemen,” I said, “but I’ve just brung in two animals and not had a chance to sort them out yet. Were there something I can help you with?” I knew I must look a sight, with Blue Lias mud all over my face and my eyes flaming red from working so hard to get the ichie out.