Curiosity (24 page)

“I had a close look at the spine and fins this morning,” Henry says. “If you would like me to, sir, I dare say I could make a reasonably accurate sketch from memory.”

“Oh, you are most kind,” says Buckland, distracted. “Most generous indeed. I do have a fair idea of the creature’s anatomy. I’m able to extrapolate from the head.”

It appears that when the French revolutionary army occupied Maastricht in 1794, they found a similar gigantic skeleton enshrined there, and shipped it off home as a trophy of war. It ended up at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where the great Georges Cuvier examined it. Cuvier knew it for a saurian. Not,
contrary to appearances, a fish. The professor paces and points. He will salvage what he can from this occasion, Henry thinks, by knowing more about the creature than the people who actually saw it. He talks at length about the bones around the eye, a structure found only in certain turtles and lizards and in birds. These bones are used to increase or diminish the curvature of the cornea, he explains, thus increasing or diminishing its magnifying power, performing the office of a telescope. Henry’s mother listens for a while and then sinks down on a blue upholstered divan, lifting a serene, vacant face towards the professor. “Thus could it pursue its prey into the blackness of the sea,” cries the professor. “Thus was it marvellously equipped by its Maker to bear, on an eye so large, the vast weight of the deep.” On the table, the great eye stares blankly and the great beak grins.

Squire Henley and his wife bring an awkward exactitude to their hospitality, avid hosts unaccustomed to entertaining. The table would nicely seat twelve and they’re confronted with a party of six. Mr. Aveline and his wife sit opposite each other towards the Squire’s end of the table, and Henry and Mr. Buckland are stranded at the dimmer end of the dining room with Mrs. Henley, who has come to the table armed with a list of suitable conversational topics, resolute in her effort to calm Mr. Buckland. “And what is your opinion of Lyme Regis?” she inquires of Henry. “There are many who remark that it has the air of a Turkish town!”

“I’ve never been to Turkey,” Henry says, beginning to shake with laughter. His mother darts a cautioning hand across the gulf between them.

“But I am not surprised at this opinion,” Mr. Aveline calls down to the Squire’s wife. “I have always thought the Lyme Regis climate more like Italy than like England.”

“We have had great success with hibiscus from the Bahamas. You may demur at Turkey, Mr. De la Beche, but there are those enthusiastic visitors who compare our climate to the tropics. Mrs. Aveline may wish to comment on that.”

Mrs. Aveline touches her hair and gives her hostess an elaborate smile. “It’s a decade since we were in the West Indies. But no, I don’t find Lyme Regis quite tropical.”

The Squire frowns uncertainly and turns his efforts to the suckling pig lying on a board before them. As he carves, he offers the news that a certain Mr. England is building warm-water baths near the Assembly Rooms. Lyme Regis is destined to be the next Brighton, he tells them, deftly running the point of his knife around the piglet’s neck. The carving proceeds, a wicket of ghostly ribs is laid bare. The skeleton of the suckling pig lies exposed for their examination. The tourism prospects of Lyme Regis falter; they are recalled by bones to the irresistible topic of the day.

Buckland is the one who finds a graceful segue. “To Lyme Regis!” he cries, lifting his wine. “To the blue lias of Lyme Regis, where lie treasures richer than the pyramids of Egypt.” They raise their goblets to the blue lias and then, prompted by Mr. Aveline, jump to their feet to toast the creature listening from the library.

“What a shame the creature’s body was carried away before you had the opportunity to view it.” Henry’s mother says charmingly to Buckland, lowering herself back to her chair. “But from reports, I can tell you that its mother was certainly a fish and its father a crocodile.”

“Perhaps fishes took a different form in ages past,” Henry ventures. “Perhaps fishes have changed.”

Buckland leans forward in his chair, galvanized into professorial mode, and the Squire’s wife lunges towards him to snatch goblets and pitchers out of the way. A scientific gentleman in
France has proposed just such a notion, that species have changed over time. Consider the camelopard, a long-necked creature reaching to eat leaves from high trees. As the lower leaves are consumed, it must needs stretch its neck. Perhaps its offspring were obligingly born with a longer neck. “So goes the theory of the Continental gentleman,” Mr. Buckland intones.

“The great Georges Cuvier,” explains the Squire helpfully.

No, no, nothing of the sort! Mr. Buckland is seized with hysteria at the notion, he’s in danger of choking. Mrs. Henley passes him the goblet she’s taken under her protection. It is the theory of one Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Buckland says when he’s able to speak, a professor of insects and worms at the great Paris Museum. A mischievous fellow – he endeavoured to interest Napoleon in his ideas, but Cuvier advised Napoleon to refuse a copy of his scientific paper. And rightly so, for Cuvier had explicitly
refuted
the suggestion that species can change; he refuted it absolutely and forever. Monsieur Cuvier had the opportunity to study animals found by Napoleon in the Egyptian tombs and carried back to Paris. Cats. Dogs. Crocodiles. He made his usual immaculate measurements. He compared them to creatures living today. These animals had not changed one iota. Not in four thousand years! The notion of transmutation is discredited,
fully
discredited! Mr. Buckland takes another drink of wine. He digresses into a story about Georges Cuvier, the clever master foiling a student prank. It is not, Henry thinks, quite to the point, but Mr. Buckland has lost his point, he is struggling to batter back a hurricane of emotions. Finally the rising water floods the banks and spills from his eyes. It’s the mention of Monsieur Cuvier that has done it. In a broken voice, he confesses his distress that he will not be able to present a scientific description of today’s discovery to the great anatomist.

“I summoned Sir Everard Home,” says the Squire into the
silence that Mr. Buckland’s tears provoke. “He’s a surgeon from the naval hospital at Plymouth. He was on the cliffs with me last week and spent an hour looking at the specimen and noting down his observations. He can be trusted absolutely to write a faithful description.”

“Sir Everard Home,” groans Buckland into his handkerchief.

“But my dear Buckland, we had no idea where you were. In any case, you are free now to study the skeleton in London. I shall provide you with a letter of introduction to the proprietor.”

“Tell me again the name of the carnival where it is to be displayed.”

Even from this distance, Henry can see that the Squire is regretting he so kindly accommodated Professor Buckland today. “It is the London Museum, popularly known as the Egyptian Hall. The proprietor is a Mr. Bullock. Not a carnival at all, a very scientific endeavour.”

“Mr. Bullock,” Henry says eagerly. “He is a friend of my uncle’s. I was in London last year when he was opening his hall. He had acquired artifacts from the voyages of Captain Cook – they were to be the first exhibit.” Henry’s mother’s smile encompasses the whole long table.
My clever son!

“There, you see,” says the Squire gratefully.

“My son will accompany you,” Mrs. Aveline offers brightly. “Henry is a highly skilled artist.”

Buckland inclines his flushed face towards her. “I would be much obliged,” he says mournfully.

“But we are neglecting your gift, sir,” trills their hostess. It has been roasted and lies on a platter beside the principal dish, like the suckling pig’s unnatural offspring. A guinea pig, it is called. It is found in South America. Big-headed like a pig, but with the bleared face of a baked cat. “It is not quite a pig, I believe?” asks the Squire’s wife delicately.

“
Cavia porcellus
,” says the professor. “
Porcellus
you will know, having been Latin scholars. But
cavia
?” He shoves his hand kerchief away and rallies himself to the parody of a schoolmaster. “Come, come. You there, with the spectacles!” Mr. Aveline, he means. They gaze at the professor, dull students all. The word is Portuguese, he tells them finally. For
rat
. The creature is in fact a rodent, and very high in protein. It’s a scientific experiment! Mr. Buckland is eating his way through the animal kingdom. He has tasted shark. Rat. Ostrich!
Hyena!
A nasty flavour, as you might imagine. Why would he choose to eat his way through the animal kingdom, will no one pose the question?

Mr. Aveline declines to pose the question. He likewise declines a slice of guinea pig. “I have had rather more of the
Porcellus domesticus
than is good for me,” he says. He leans in Henry’s direction. “Henry, do you realize that the ammonite your mother gave you was found by the very maiden who came across the specimen we saw today? You remember, darling, when we met her in the churchyard.”

Indeed she remembers. She raises a hand to her bosom. In honour of the occasion, she wears a brooch purchased in the maiden’s shop. An impression of a sea lily, polished in its matrix. The Squire is telling how the maiden came to his door, to his front door, all drabble-tailed in the rain and her boots caked in black marl. They sent her around back to the kitchen, but still she insisted on speaking to the Squire himself. He was away for the morning and she refused to leave.
I wish to sell a dragon
were her words when he finally came down.

“You can thank me for that,” says Mr. Aveline through their laughter. Earlier, Mary Anning had approached
him
in the butter market. “Please, sir, can you tell me who owns Black Ven?” she’d asked.

But having lost possession of the dragon, Professor Buckland will not be denied possession of Mary Anning. In full command of his emotions now, he outlines their intimate acquaintance. The morning excursions under his tutelage, her fearless and perspicacious questions. The letters he wrote to her, the visits to their humble kitchen, his charge to her and her father to contact him with just such a find. He has been away, on a geological tour in Scotland; that explains everything. He would have called at her workshop this very afternoon, but he chanced to call on the Squire first, just as they carried the saurian head up the drive. The girl on the cliffs comes into Henry’s mind: black hair and eyes and ruddy, healthy cheeks – a Celtic face, the face of the region (it would seem from the people he’s encountered on the streets), a very distinct physiognomy.

“She dresses so plainly,” he says to his mother.

“Why, she’s a Dissenter. They see colour as vanity, poor thing. Remember Susan St. Ives, when she married that dreadful Congregationalist, all those grey gowns done up at the neck.” Standing by the coach in the afternoon sun, he’d remarked his mother’s own gown, the rich purple of a plum. Now, in the candlelight, it’s the crimson-purple of the plum’s flesh when you bite into it. “Or the girl may be in mourning,” she says. “Perhaps she’s both: a Dissenter in mourning.” Her cheeks and bosom are flushed from the wine. She laughs, the stones in her earrings catching the candlelight.

“Come, tell us,” Buckland is calling up the table to his host. “How much did you pay the maiden?”

“Twenty-three pounds,” says the Squire after a pause, and his wife’s head flies up.

“
Twenty
pounds I promised the father!” cries Mr. Buckland. “That explains it, the shrewd little dealer. That explains why she didn’t wait for me. And what did you manage to extract from
this Bullock fellow?” The Squire declines to say. “You turned a tidy profit, I have no doubt,” says Buckland.

“Twenty-three pounds!” says the Squire’s wife, dabbing at her chin with her napkin. “It’s more than they’ll know what to do with.”

It is beeswax the Henleys are burning in three small iron chandeliers hanging over the table, wooden dripping-dishes overflowing under each candle. The smell floats over the long table, the incense of a country home. An amber drop falls beside Henry’s fork and he picks it from the table and presses it between his thumb and finger, feeling its warmth, fingering the hardening impression of his thumbprint in the wax. In his reverie, he slides a chair into the gap between Mr. Aveline and Professor Buckland. It’s for Mary Anning, who materializes sitting up very straight in a plain black dress with a white collar. Her dark hair is caught loosely up at the nape of her neck. She turns her head from one party to the other, listening gravely to both conversations. Then she catches sight of the mutilated carcass of the guinea pig and leans forward, touching it with her fingertips, seeming to count its frail ribs.

The next afternoon, Henry finds the girl in the flesh standing behind a round table in front of one of the cottages clinging to the seawall. The weekly coach from Bath has just arrived and the square is full of hawkers and travellers and townspeople idling about. Eight or ten customers crowd around her table, most of them men. A boy tries to crawl between his legs and Henry delivers a sharp kick. He waits till everyone’s gone but him. He’s clutching the casket of bird bones, having brought it with him on impulse.

On the table are stones in the shape of vertebrae, long pointed grey rods, curled mollusc shells. But her best trade seems to be in ammonites. He looks with interest at the range of matter in
which they are formed: some made of ochre sandstone, others of grey limestone, some like gooseberry jelly embedded in grey rock. The finest, like his, are iron infused with fool’s gold. He’s carrying his in his pocket, a better specimen than anything she has just now on the table.

“What is your shop called?” he asks her bent head.

“The Fossil Depot, sir,” she says without looking up. The last customer paid her with a handful of brass and she’s counting coins.

“You need to hang a sign out,” he says. “I came by this morning, and it was not apparent to me which house was yours, and so I went away again.”

Then she does look at him with her black eyes. “This were my father’s shop, sir,” she says. She has the vowels of the shepherd he spoke with at the excavation. “He scorned a sign. His trade came from his good name in the district.”