“Look,” she said, “there is a slight upturn of its mouth where it seems to be smiling. Do you recall that in the drawing I showed you of the crocodile in Cuvier’s book?”
“Yes, ma’am. But look at its eye!” I used my hammer to tap carefully and reveal more of the ring of bones that overlapped like giant fish scales round an empty centre where the eyeball must have been once.
Miss Elizabeth stared. “Are you sure that is the eye?” She seemed disturbed by it.
“Don’t know what else it could be,” Joe said.
“That is not how the eye looked in Cuvier’s drawing.”
“Maybe this one had a problem with its eye,” I suggested. “Like a disease. Or maybe the Frenchman drew it wrong.”
Miss Elizabeth snorted. “Only a girl like you would dare question the work of the world’s finest zoological anatomist.”
I frowned. I didn’t like this Cuvier.
Thankfully Miss Elizabeth didn’t dwell on my stupidity, nor on the croc’s eye. She was more concerned with practical matters. “How are you going to get this out of the cliff? It must be four feet long at least.”
“It’ll take digging like we’ve never done before, won’t it, Joe?”
Joe shrugged.
“But four feet of rock – won’t that be too heavy for you? What you need are men to help you. Strong men.” Miss Elizabeth thought for a moment. “What about the men building the walkway along the beach to the Cobb? They know how to cut rock, and they’re strong. Perhaps they could do it for you.”
“Perhaps they could, ma’am,” I said, “but we haven’t the money to pay ’em.”
“I will advance you the money, and you can pay me back when you have sold the specimen.”
I brightened. “Oh, could you, Miss Elizabeth? We would be so grateful, wouldn’t we, Joe?”
But Joe weren’t listening. “Mary, Miss Philpot, step away from it!” he hissed. “It’s Captain Cury!”
I looked back. Clambering round the bend that hid Lyme from us was the only other fossil hunter who might consider trying to get at our croc. While most respected other’s finds, Captain Cury didn’t care who had spotted something first. Once he took a giant ammonite Joe and me had begun digging out from a cliff on Monmouth Beach, and laughed in our faces when we told him it was ours. “Shouldn’t have left it, then, should you? It were me finished the digging, so it’s me as gets it,” he’d said. Even when Pa went to talk to him about it, he swore he’d already seen it and marked it out, and that it were Joe and me that was wrong to do the digging when it was his.
Captain Cury mustn’t see the croc. If he did, we would have to guard it all the time. I stepped back from the skull, picked up a likely nodule and moved down towards the water’s edge where there was a flat stone good for hammering on. Joe headed in the Charmouth direction, then stopped fifty feet away to scrabble amongst small chunks of fool’s gold, looking for a pyritised ammo. Golden serpents, we called them. Miss Philpot took several steps and begun studying the ground, then kneeled to pick up a stone. From under my bonnet rim I watched as Captain Cury approached the croc in the cliff face, his spade over one shoulder. Now that I had exposed its eye more clearly, the skull seemed to be staring and grinning to attract attention. Captain Cury’s eyes skimmed the cliff, and he paused right where we had been standing. Joe’s feet on the stones went quiet, and I stopped hammering.
Captain Cury bent over and picked up something. When he straightened, his face was just inches from the monster’s eye. My heart begun to pound. Then he held out a glove. “Miss Philpot, is this yours? It’s too fine for Mary.”
“I expect it is mine, Mr Lock,” Miss Elizabeth answered. She never called him Captain Cury, but used his real name, the way she called Joe Joseph, and ammos ammonites, and not snakestones, and bellies belemnites rather than thunderbolts. She was formal like that. “Bring it here, please.”
He went over and handed it to her. I could breathe again, now he were away from the croc. “Found anything?” he asked when she’d thanked him.
“Just a gryphaea. Devil’s toenail to you.”
“Let’s see it.” Captain Cury squatted next to her. Fossil hunting does that to people – it breaks down the rules. On the beach a hostler can speak to a lady in a way he wouldn’t dream of doing anywhere else.
I hurried over to rescue her. “What are you doing here, Captain Cury?” I demanded.
He chuckled. “Same as you, Mary – looking out for curies to bring in a few pennies. Mind you, you need ’em more’n I do now, don’t you, the way your father left you fixed. Here.” He tossed something to me. It was a golden serpent.
“This is what I think of your curies, Captain Cury.” I turned and threw it as hard as I could. Though the tide was out, I got it to land in the water.
“Hey, now!” Captain Cury glared at me. No one likes to have their curies wasted like that. It’s like throwing coins in the sea. “What a nasty girl you become,” he said. “Must’ve been that lightning shook you up and made you that way. You should’ve carried a thunderbolt to keep from getting hit. Instead you’re so mean you’ll grow up into a sour old spinster no man will look at.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Miss Elizabeth got there before me. “It’s time you moved on, Mr Lock,” she said.
Captain Cury’s glittery eyes shifted from me to her. “Next time I won’t bother to pick up your glove, ma’am,” he sneered. By now Joe had come back, so he said no more, but swung his spade onto his shoulder and carried on down the beach towards Charmouth, glancing back now and then.
“Mary, you were very rude to him,” Miss Elizabeth said. “I’m ashamed of you.”
“He was ruder to me! And to you!”
“Nevertheless, you should show respect to your elders, else they will think the worse of you.”
“Sorry, Miss Philpot.” I didn’t feel at all sorry.
“You two stay here until the tide comes in,” Miss Elizabeth commanded, “in sight of the creature, to make sure William Lock doesn’t come back and discover it. I will go to the Cobb to see about engaging the men to dig out the crocodile tomorrow – if it is a crocodile. Though what else could it be?”
I shrugged. Her question made me uneasy, though I couldn’t say why.
“It be one of God’s creatures, of course,” Joe said.
“Sometimes I wonder …”
“Wonder what, ma’am?” I asked.
Miss Elizabeth looked at me and Joe and seemed to come to her senses, like she just realised it was us she was with. She shook her head. “Nothing. It is just an odd-looking crocodile.” She glanced at the skull once more before she left.
Twin brothers, Davy and Billy Day, come the next afternoon to dig. It was a shame the tide was lowest in the early afternoon, for it was a busier time upon the beach than the early
