The Specimen (7 page)

“I know I promised to send the poems to you by post, but I wanted to give them to you myself.” He presented the book wrapped in paper to her. She opened it.

“Thank you.”

“I hope you haven’t minded the wait too much.”

“It’s a very handsome volume.” In fact, it was a very tiny volume covered in a loud, blue-and-green tartan silk; it slipped into her pocket very easily.

Edward was relieved and sighed through his nose as he opened up his knapsack and began to spread out on the beach a lunch better prepared than their first picnic. The giving and the receiving of
the gift was over. It had troubled them both, and they were both glad that it been done. The pebble containing the ammonite was still there in the bottom of his bag; he took it out and tossed it up
and caught it, before putting it down next to the bottle of wine and the corkscrew. Gwen picked it up and ran her finger over the ridges.

He opened the wine and unwrapped wine glasses from newspaper. Gwen was touched by the effort he had gone to. He had brought delicacies and silver cutlery and starched fine linen serviettes.

“Tell me why you like fossils so much, Mr Scales.”

“They intrigue me. They are a conundrum. And I like to discover them, to uncover a creature never before seen . . . At Lyme, in Dorset, it was possible to pick up glorious specimens from
almost any random part of the cliff or the beach. Yet, here in Cornwall there seem to be no fossils at all.”

What he had really wanted to say was that he believed he could find something new, and that he constantly hoped for this because he wanted to name a creature himself. He’d even gone so far
as to write out invented names of half-imagined curiosities. They came out as badly as the shapes he couldn’t quite fix in his mind’s eye, always ending with ‘scalesii’. He
burned the scraps of paper afterwards. It would be as mortifying to be found out at that as—no, not today. He concentrated instead on Miss Carrick’s voice, the pleasant breaking of the
waves, the sun on her skin.

“Yes, they
are
very rare so far to the west,” she said, “though not entirely absent. It is possible to find trilobites, for instance, at a place further west from
here, but I would be surprised if you were able to find one after six months of searching. But, surely, it isn’t so much of a conundrum, Mr Scales, since the geology of Dorset is quite
different to that of Cornwall.”

“Now you have stoked my attention, Miss Carrick. I was under the impression that your area of interest was the live flora and fauna of the region.”

“But one specialism cannot exist without its complementary subjects, Mr Scales.”

“Although, a creature like the ammonite, long since made extinct by the Great Flood, surely has but a slight connection to the live creatures with which we now inhabit the
world.”

“Mr Scales, I do hope you are being deliberately provocative.”

“I am not insincere, Miss Carrick. I am impressed by your scope.”

“You misunderstand me. I meant that I hope you don’t really believe that Noah’s Flood was the agent responsible for the distribution of fossils?”

“I take it you do not.”

“Mr Scales! Good heavens. People once believed that the earth was flat and that the sun moved around the earth. Scientific thought, experiment and deduction always bring us closer to the
truth. Have you not read Mr Smith’s
Strata
?”

“I have not. I wish that I had.”

“I would lend you my own copy, if my library had not recently suffered fire damage.” Gwen had not been able to stop herself. She was aghast to find that Mr Scales’ interest was
based on the assumptions she so despised in her own sister.

“I’m sorry to hear about that. I hope no one was hurt.”

“The damage was limited to a small area. It was caught in time.”

“But, still, it must grieve you.”

“It does. Books may be replaced, though. And you may find a copy, I am sure, quite easily in London.”

“And when I do, I shall send it to you immediately.”

“There’s no need, Mr Scales, though your offer is very kind. I would rather you read the book for yourself. It is a revelatory volume.”

“I will make it my priority, Miss Carrick.”

“I’m glad. But, Mr Scales, you must have had cause to wonder about the geology of this place, as opposed to that of Dorset.”

“Your knowledge of rocks is superior to mine. I must confess that, before this year, I have never had reason to study them in the way you obviously do.”

“I have lived with these rocks all my life, Mr Scales. Perhaps my advantage is unfair.”

“But I think life cast you an unfair disadvantage, Miss Carrick. I have thought about what you said to me about the beetles you study and paint. If you had been born male, you would have
been sent to university. You would have had an even greater advantage. Yet, that also would have been to my great loss.”

“I wouldn’t wish to be a man, Mr Scales. Only that I should have the freedom to expand my knowledge of the world at first hand without attracting derision from all sides.”

“All but one, Miss Carrick. I admire you a great deal.”

“Thank you, Mr Scales.”

“One very rarely meets a person like yourself. I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate.”

Gwen could think of nothing to say to this. She was annoyed with herself for having been harsh with Edward. His ignorance was perhaps not his fault. Why should a man have cause to stop and
wonder about the strata of rocks when he had, as she assumed Edward must have, spent his life in the city. And now that she had told him he would be unlikely to find any more fossils in Cornwall,
he would have no reason to visit again. He said he was glad to have met her, but she knew that he must have a life of some kind outside her own world and that he would not be able to accommodate a
passing interest at the expense of his other commitments, whatever they may be.

All of the food and most of the wine had been consumed. Gwen was drunk. She let Edward pour her a last half glass of wine.

“I consider myself fortunate, too, Mr Scales. I hope you will write to me again when you return to London.”

“I have no need to return to London for a good while, Miss Carrick, though that shall not prevent me from looking for the title you recommend.”

“I expect that you shall return to Dorset and continue your search there.”

“Indeed not. I believe I have finished my search for fossils, at least for the time being. There are only so many one may find room for in a cabinet.”

“But your collection from the south coast of England will be incomplete. Perhaps I can help.”

“Miss Carrick, you have already inspired me more than you can know.”

“Rubbish. I have told you to read a book. Anyone could have done the same, and you would probably have found Mr Smith’s
Strata
without my help.”

“It is by no means a certainty. What I have been trying to say, Miss Carrick, is that my interest in fossils has been supplanted by a much greater passion.”

“Then you must pursue it, as fully as is possible. There is nothing worse than a pursuit for knowledge left to wither and atrophy. I think it sinful.”

“I wouldn’t dream of letting it happen.”

“That is good to know, Mr Scales.”

“Please understand me, it is my passion for you which overshadows everything else.”

Gwen stood up; Edward scrambled to his feet.

“Stay a while longer,” he said. “I have wanted to tell you this—please don’t reject me. I want so much to prove to you that I can be more than the person you must
think I am.”

“I’m not leaving yet. The tide is coming in, we must move further back up the beach or we shall be cut off here and have to climb the cliff, which I wouldn’t recommend, the
topsoil of the overhang is—”

The energy contained in his kiss, the taste of his wine-tainted saliva on her tongue and the force of his grip as Edward put one hand behind her neck and the other around her waist pulling her
close to his body so that she smelled his sweat—wasn’t this what she had tried and failed to imagine after she had seen him in the summerhouse that morning? His own lungs seemed to be
sucking the air from hers. His eyes were closed, and the image of his left hand working away at himself flooded her mind. The vivid colour of it. She found herself fighting for her breath, and he
stopped the kiss but did not release her.

“Will you reject me, Gwen? Will you tell me to go away and leave you alone?”

“No, I don’t want that. But my feet are getting wet, and so are yours.”

Edward picked up his knapsack, which was also wet, and put it over his shoulder, carrying the two wine glasses in one hand. Gwen lurched up the beach, hauling herself in sodden skirts, trying to
gather them all in one hand, Edward holding her by the other. The wine bottle, the corkscrew and the empty caviar pot and serviettes were all left to the incoming tide.

Edward and Gwen collapsed side by side onto the pebbles beyond the high tide mark. They watched the advance and retreat of the abandoned picnic articles. The waves churned the serviettes into
the seaweed and they were lost from sight.

“I’m sorry about your dress, and your good shoes. The salt will have ruined them.”

“Yours, too.”

“Yes, never mind it.”

Edward’s second kiss threw Gwen off balance, and he clasped her so hard that she could do nothing to stop herself from being made to lie on her back. Edward’s mouth pressed to hers
as the mussels stuck to crevices in the rocks. It did not frighten her. She felt that she was somewhere above her body, looking down at what they were doing. Just as suddenly as the kiss had begun,
Edward finished it. He kept his face close to hers, so close that she was unable to focus, and after a minute she pushed him away, smiling at him. Her bottom lip had split and she tasted her
blood.

“I’ve made you bleed. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter. But talk to me now.”

“What shall I tell you?”

“A secret.”

“I have none worth the telling.”

“Everyone has a secret. Don’t be miserable about it. Tell me something about your distant past if you like. Then it won’t matter.”

Edward looked at her and was stumped. He didn’t want her to become bored but what on earth could he tell her? He cleared his throat.

“When I was nine, perhaps ten, my father took me on an expedition. Days of travelling. I was quite ill by the end of it all—the suspension of the carriage, the rocking and jolting.
It was almost this time of year. There was hawthorn blossom in every direction. The scent of it; such a simple thing, but in such profusion. My father was a keen angler. He had a box of the most
exquisite flies, which he made himself from feathers. I was clumsy as a child. Nervous. I wanted to please him. My feet were unused to the loose pebbles at the riverside, and my boots slid. I upset
the box, almost crushing it, and the flies were scattered amongst the pebbles. I ran away down the riverbank after he had chastised me. He did not strike me. I ran away to the shade of some alder
trees and brooded there.

“And my eye came to rest on a strange thing: an insect, quite large, but almost completely transparent in a pool of sunlight, clinging to the overhang of a large rock by the water. I
leaned down to look. It did not move. I don’t know how long I was like that, watching it. Eventually, I put out my finger to touch it, and it partly came away from the rock. I realised that
it was not alive. I bent closer, and saw that it had an opening on its back. For some reason the thing frightened me.”

Gwen sat up straighter. “You had found the empty skin of the mayfly.”

“Yes, I understood that much later.” He had been about to tell her the rest and then held back how he had taken the thing between his fingers and crushed it. Over the years, Edward
had remodelled this memory; telling it now with only his father and himself in the frame made the recollection easier to live with.

“I don’t think I would recognise you if I were to meet you as you were then,” said Gwen. “Children can be so strange, can’t they?”