Remarkable Creatures (2010) by Chevalier Tracy

Author:Chevalier, Tracy [Tracy, Chevalier,]
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-01-14T19:18:33.046000+00:00

Colonel Birch was to stay for several weeks to build up his collection, taking rooms in Charmouth but coming to Lyme daily. His claim on Mary’s time was sudden and absolute. She went out with him every day. To start with I accompanied them, for even if Mary didn’t, I worried what the town would think. When we three were together I tried to find the comfortable rhythm I had when I was out only with Mary, where we each concentrated on our own hunting and yet felt the reassuring presence of a companion close by. That rhythm was ruined by Colonel Birch, who liked to remain with Mary and talk. It is a testament to her hunting skills that she was able to find anything at all that summer with him babbling at her side. Yet she toler-?flated him. More than tolerated—she doted on him. There was no place for me on the beach with them. I might as well have been an empty crab shell. I went out three times with them, and that was enough.

For Colonel Birch was a fraud. To be accurate, I should say, Lieutenant Colonel Birch was a fraud. That was one of his many petty ruses—leaving off the “Lieutenant” to promote himself higher than he was. Nor did he offer up that he was long retired from the Life Guards, though anyone who knew a bit about them could see he wore the old uniform of long coat and leather breeches rather than the shorter coat and blue-grey pantaloons of the current soldiers. He was happy to bask in the Life Guards’ glory at Waterloo, without having taken part.

Worse, I discovered from those three days on the beach with him that he did not find fossils himself. He did not keep his eyes on the ground as Mary and I did, but searched our faces and followed our gazes so that as we stopped and leaned over, he reached out and picked up what we were looking at before we had time to do so ourselves. He only tried this method with me once before my glare stopped him. Mary was more tolerant, or blinded by her feelings, and let him rob her of many specimens and call them his own finds.

Colonel Birch’s amateurism appalled me. For all his professed interest in fossils, and his supposedly robust military constitution ready for all hardships, he was not a scrabbler in the mud in search of specimens. He found his through his wallet, or his charm, or by picking them off others. He had a fine collection by the end of the summer, but Mary had found and given them to him, or nudged him towards those she had spotted. Like Lord Henley and other men who came to Lyme, he was a collector rather than a hunter, buying his knowledge rather than seeking it with his own eyes and hands. I could not understand how Mary would find him appealing.

Yes, I could. I was a little in love with him myself.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.