Palmer-Jones 01 - A Bird in the Hand (20 page)

“I’ll take you home,” he said to Molly. “I’m going to Scilly. I’ll go on my own.”

In the evenings Terry sat in his den and remembered his grandfather. He had never known his parents, but he could remember his grandfather well and all the things the old man had taught him. His grandfather had been good at running away—from fanners and keepers and the policeman in the village. He hadn’t mixed with the people in the village, although he had been born there. Terry knew that he had travelled a lot—to Canada and with the gypsies, picking fruit and vegetables. Grandfather had told him stories about the gypsies. When Terry lived with him, his home had still been a caravan, hidden from the road and the village by a small thicket and from the nearest farm by an enormous forest of bramble and gorse. The farmer, a drunken Welshman, had been mourning the death of a wife who had left him just enough money to allow him to grieve, and to let the farm grow derelict. Perhaps, at some time, he had given Terry’s grandfather permission to live in the rusty, filthy caravan, but he took no notice of his tenant.

Terry could remember his years with his grandfather more clearly than all his time in hospital. Sometimes they had done casual work for local farmers—his grandfather never sent him to school and Terry always worked with him. Some days his grandfather had stayed in bed until the afternoon. Terry was quite often left alone. He had learnt how to make snares and to cook rabbits, and the best farms and fields and gardens to steal from. The village children had laughed at him and the grown-ups had shouted at him. Sometimes he was hungry and quite often he was very cold.

His grandfather had frightened him with the stories of the Welfare Man. When the Welfare Man finally turned up, Terry was surprised because he was friendly. Terry liked him rather more than Grandfather and went with him quite happily. The children’s homes and the foster parents had been different, and he ran away from them.

Now, sitting in the evening sun, the farm seemed not much different. The caravan had gone and the house had been done up, but the thicket and the brambles and the gorse still made it a good place to hide. Terry was proud that he had found it again. He had walked from Skeffingham, and it had been evening when he had arrived. For a while the absence of the caravan had confused him; he expected everything to be the same. Then he had remembered the dens he made as a child and in the warm, still evening he had built a secret home, by tunnelling through the brambles, cutting out branches until he had cleared a space long and wide enough for him to lie in and just high enough for him to sit up.

Now, three days later, it was as if Mrs. Black and the White Lodge hotel had never existed. He never thought about them. He lived just as he had as a child. Since leaving Skeffingham he had seen nobody. The farmhouse was empty—perhaps it had been turned into a holiday home. As he had grown more adventurous he had explored first the outbuildings of the farm, then the house itself, breaking in through the kitchen window. Its pantry had been filled with tinned food and now he added tinned meat, cold baked beans and soup to his diet of stolen vegetables. He improved his home by making a roof from a sheet of corrugated iron taken from an outhouse, and by laying an empty fertilizer sack on the floor. He never thought about why he had run away or why he was there.

By the time they reached the place carefully marked on their map, it was too late for there to be any hope of seeing black stork. They had driven Peter’s hire car through a small, grey village, crossed a low bridge over a grey, shallow river and parked. It was not quite dark, but there was little colour left in the landscape. Gentle wooded hills rose out of a wide river valley. Even at the bridge at the base of the valley there was a sense of being high above sea level, a smell of peat and a cold wind. Following the detailed instructions given to Rob they walked along the shingle track which was all that remained of the railway line that had once followed the course of the river. All around it was very quiet—there were no cars on the road from the village—and the sound of their feet on the shingle filled the dusk, allowing no opportunity for speech. They had been told that there was a place to sleep and they found it, an old signal box, stripped now of its brass fittings and levers, but still sound and dry, its steps solid. Like a hide, its big window looked out across the woods and flood meadows. They made tea on a primus, and fried bacon and talked about twitching.

Despite himself Adam was content, carried along by the spirit of the trip. He had been surprised when the others had asked him to go with them and was too eager to get away from Rushy to consider the risk. He knew that he had offended Tina. She had come to Ella’s on her own at first, had tried to be friendly, but had asked too many questions. He had been surprised when she had returned with the others and the news of the black stork. She seemed to realize now that he had nothing to say. Perhaps, when it was all forgotten, they could be friendly again. He sat cross-legged on his sleeping bag and listened to the others, wishing occasionally that he had the confidence to join in.

Tina had been injured by Adam’s attitude to her. Her pride had been hurt. She had come to Rushy because she hoped to see him. She had even dressed up for him. She was determined now not to show that she had cared for him, and directed her conversation towards Rob and Peter. She no longer cared whether Adam thought he had slipped down the well or whether he thought that he had been pushed. He was a silly young boy who had no interest in ringing. She was arguing with Rob and Peter about the relative merits of ringing and twitching.

“At least ringing has some scientific value,” she said. “ There’s some purpose to it. We know far more about migration and population patterns because of the ringing scheme. Twitching is just a game.”

“You’re quite right,” Rob Earl said. “ It’s all just a game.”

“Why don’t you cheat?” she asked. “If you were out on your own you could claim to have seen anything and nobody would know.”

“I would know,” Peter said. “Twitching is very competitive, especially if you’re going for a year list, but it’s still seeing the thing that counts, enjoying it for yourself, not describing it to somebody else.”

“What’s so special about a year list?”

“There’s something exciting about seeing how many birds you can see in Britain in one year. It’s a challenge.”

Rob stretched. “I only believe in a world list. Nothing else is the same.”

“But don’t people cheat?” Tina persisted. “What about stringers?”

“Stringers aren’t usually cheats. They don’t purposely fabricate. They’re just bad birders. They’re too optimistic. If they see a bird which might be a rarity, they claim it anyway. It doesn’t do them any good. Once you get a reputation as a stringer no one believes anything you see.”

Rob Earl was lying on his back on the floor, his rucksack under his head, a roll-up between his lips. Did he try to look like that, Adam wondered. Did he cultivate that Bob Dylan image with his beard, dark eyes and strange clothes? Rob lit a match by striking it against his thumbnail, and Adam decided that he did. Adam sat forward and prepared to speak, but Rob continued:

“It’s all a matter of ethics,” he said. “Twitchers’ ethics. Tom was a great believer in twitchers’ ethics, wasn’t he? We were always taking the piss. He had a rule for every occasion and no one ever took any notice.”

“I didn’t know Tom very well once he gave up ringing,” Tina said. “He was a good ringer. He always handled the birds so carefully. What sort of a twitcher was he?”

“He had too many principles,” Rob said. “When he lived up to them he was boring and when he didn’t he was guilty.”

“That’s very cruel,” she said. “ Didn’t you like him?”

“Yes, I liked him. But I never felt relaxed with him. He was too kind, too generous. It was as if he had such a low opinion of himself that he had to buy your friendship. He was never rude or bad-tempered.”

Peter was sitting by the window. There was no moon, but the stars were sharp and bright.

“The last time I saw Tom,” he said, “ was at a party on St. Mary’s, the autumn before last. He’d rented a whole cottage for himself and he had a party. As you say, he liked to make big, generous gestures. But I don’t think that he was buying friendship, he genuinely wanted people to have a good time. Like lots of twitchers, he didn’t have any social life outside birding. It was one of those magic evenings when everyone you meet is interesting or beautiful and they make you feel the same, and you drink enough but not too much, and the music is good. I had to leave before everyone else to get back to St. Agnes, Barbara and the milking. I looked for Tom to say goodbye, but I couldn’t find him.”

He stared, unseeing, through the window and remembered the girl who had made the party magic. She had been possessed by a wild gaiety that night, which had been quite unusual, although she had drunk nothing. She had danced with him. They had never danced together before. He had said goodbye to her, not knowing that it would be for the last time. He wondered if he had been right to leave St. Agnes, and if it had all been worth while.

Rob was thinking about Tom French. He had told Tina that he had liked him. That, of course, was untrue. Tom had been pompous. He had told Rob once about a rare bird he had found on some private land. Rob put it out on the grapevine, and Tom had been furious. There had not been much damage—ahedge had been a little dented in places—but Tom had lectured him about ethics and responsibility, and the image of the birdwatcher in the community. It had made him sick. He wondered if Tina would have understood if he had told her the truth. She was a strange girl. He had thought that she had been close to Tom at one time, but she seemed quite detached now. Perhaps she was just very honest. Not a hypocrite like most other people, like him. He wondered how many people were really sorry that Tom was dead.

Adam quietly said goodnight to the others and climbed into his sleeping bag. He wished he could be more like them, more relaxed, more extrovert. He hoped desperately that he was not spoiling the trip for them. He slept fitfully, troubled occasionally by a nightmare of water and claustrophobia.

Tina did not lie near to Adam, but she slept lightly and when he cried out in his sleep she woke up. She began to devise a weird and complicated trap to catch a black stork and soon drifted back towards sleep. After all, she thought as she dozed, men were only a distraction. Since meeting Adam at Scardrift Flat she had not been able to concentrate on her ringing. Neither had she been able to give full attention to her university work and that was important. She wanted to be a professional ornithologist, not to play at it like these twitchers. She should have realized that it would not work with Adam, should be grateful that she had come to her senses so quickly. She should have learnt her lesson from Tom. She had been infatuated with him when she was sitting O-levels and she hadn’t got the grades she had hoped for. She hadn’t resented it. Not then. Not until Tom gave up ringing, gave up serious birdwatching and became a twitcher. Twitching was a distraction too. She should never have come on this trip. She was missing an important lecture, but she had wanted to see the bird. She hoped that they would see the stork early the next day, so that she could return to Southampton to her work and the ringing group. She slept again and dreamed happily of cannon-netting thousands of waders, many with foreign rings.

Peter sat all night, by the window.

Only Rob slept soundly.

George caught the overnight train to Penzance. Watching the lights of Bridgewater station flash past, he tried to convince himself that the journey was necessary. The train was warm and comfortable and nearly empty. He wanted to sleep. Only guilt kept him awake, the sense that he was playing truant, and an overwhelming anxiety for Adam’s safety. He began to read his notes and lists, a ritual gesture in an attempt to relieve his guilt, but he could not concentrate, and fell asleep, still holding his briefcase on his knee.

Alone, in her bed, Sally cried herself to sleep.

In Scilly it was already high summer, too late for flowers, too late to avoid holidaymakers. The helicopter was crowded, there was no pleasure in the flight, none of the usual anticipation at the first sight of the islands. George was in a hurry. He wanted to complete his inquiries in a day, knowing his haste to be as illogical as his journey, and he found in the packed streets, the lingering, scantily dressed people, a target for his anger and frustration. As he reached the harbour a tripper boat was just about to leave for Tresco and he took it, although he had planned to visit St. Agnes first. He could not contemplate waiting. It was hot, even on the water, and the flat, open boat seemed alive with pink-fleshed teenage girls, as a bait box is with maggots.

He had never liked Tresco. There was something obscene about its fertility; there were too many green shiny plants, too much green altogether. The abundance of its vegetation was reflected by the affluence of its residents. It was the rich person‘s island and perhaps it was this rather than the geography of Tresco which coloured his attitude to it. The cloying smell of exotic shrubs and the expensive scent of the women drinking gin in the lounge bar of the pub had become confused in his mind, and he did not know which he disliked the most.

George had already telephoned the hotel, and one of the under-managers was expecting him. The man’s obsequious distaste did nothing to improve his temper.

“As I explained, I want to speak to one of your staff who knew Sally Johnson. You employed her here two seasons ago.”

“Yes, sir, and your reason for wanting to know?” He never asked a question directly, as if it were more delicate to seek information only by inflection, by a gentle wheedling. “ I don’t think you said you were a policeman?”

“It’s a Home Office matter,” Palmer-Jones said, and thought: If he wants to know any more let him ask me directly. But the man seemed satisfied. Perhaps he didn’t want to show his ignorance about the sphere of influence of the Home Office.