The Continuity Girl Part 13

"And day-old c.o.c.kerels are Harriet's favourite-aren't they, darling?" Barnaby stroked the bird's back with his ungloved hand.

Meredith watched his fingers, fascinated, surprised at herself. "She's awfully hungry."

"Yes, virtually always. Especially if you fly them every day, which I try to with this one. There's no workout like it. For her, I mean." Barnaby reached into his bag again, and for a split second Meredith was afraid he was going to perform some terrible trick-a twisted magician pulling a dead rabbit from his top hat. Instead, he revealed a tiny leather hood with a ta.s.sel on top. With his free hand he pulled the hood over the bird's head so that her eyes were covered.

"Hoodwinked," said Barnaby, and he stepped out of the pen with the bird perched on his glove. Attached to her ankle was a short braided leather leash, which he wrapped around his arm. "Tricks her into thinking it's nighttime. That's where the term comes from, you know."

As Portia circled their legs, huffing with antic.i.p.ation, Barnaby let them through the gate behind the barn and into the open country, or what he called "the quarry." Walking and brandishing the peregrine on his arm as if he were some sort of ancient woodsman, he seemed more at ease than Meredith had seen him yet. She worried aloud that Mish (who was napping) might wake up and not know where they were, but Barnaby insisted they carry on. Mauve pouches were gathering above the horizon, making the sky seem unnaturally close to dark. Meredith looked at her watch and was surprised to note that it was only four o'clock in the afternoon.

As they walked the moor, climbing over the uneven k.n.o.bs of soft gray gra.s.s, a landslide of trivia poured from Barnaby, and Meredith found herself wondering whether on a day-to-day basis he had much company-of the human variety at least.

"Peregrines like Harriet are the second-fastest birds of prey in the world," he said, "the fastest being the gyrfalcon-Latin name Falco rusticolus-which are terribly expensive and nearly impossible to breed. I saw one once while visiting my cousin in New Mexico. Amazing creatures. But Harriet here is one of the fastest birds in Britain. With the right wind conditions, I reckon, she can get up to one hundred and fifty kilos an hour."

"There, there, lovely," Barnaby soothed, running two fingers down her tail feathers, before continuing. "Peregrines are commonly known as the king-or in Harriet's case, queen-of all raptors. Which, of course, is another name for birds of prey-as well as being a basketball team in Toronto, or so I've noted on the Internet. At any rate, the problem for most British falconers is that in order to fly a peregrine properly, you need true open country. And to that extent, I've been blessed."

They climbed up the slope to the edge of a cliff. A gentle incline of rubble and wild gra.s.s sloped down before them, opening onto a vast expanse of countryside. Only a few unkempt cedar hedgerows and crumbling fieldstones delineated one meadow from the next. It was like an oil painting you might find at a small-town art fair.

Near the horizon was a small stone cottage that Meredith would not even have noticed if not for its smoking chimney, which cast an interrogative yellow swirl in the sky above it. She wondered what portion of this tiny island Barnaby's family actually owned. One percent? (Something told her it would be rude to ask.) The amount of uninhabited countryside before her seemed impossible, particularly after the frenetic crush of London. For an agoraphobic moment she envied Harriet, who perched calmly on Barnaby's gloved thumb, safe in the dark shelter of her hood.

Without warning, Barnaby pulled off the bird's headgear. The bird flapped her wings twice and pushed off her master's glove, bearing down with her claws to gain momentum and then springing up. In a blink Harriet was airborne. The higher she rose, the less energy she appeared to use, resting on air currents that carried her up and up as though on a rising tide.

"Will she come back?"

"Of course. She's well trained."

"Who trained her?"

"I did, of course. It's an awful lot of work, but rather rewarding in the end. I have the time after all."

"So that's mainly what you do with your days?"

"Training the birds? No. I also feed them and breed them, which is like another job in itself. Well, not a job exactly. To tell you the truth I've never really had one of those, so I wouldn't know."

"Never?" Meredith asked. "That's amazing."

"Really?" Barnaby looked pleased, and then frowned. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

Meredith shrugged. "Neither really. It's just unusual."

He stooped down slightly and kissed her on the mouth. His lips were thin, but dry and soft. He touched her waist and increased the pressure of his kiss. As their faces drew apart, she could feel Barnaby tilting his head up slightly to keep an eye on Harriet.

"We'd better tramp down the hill a bit, if you don't mind. She's moving east."

Once they got off the path, the terrain was harder going. He took her hand again as they climbed down the hill, guiding her over every fallen log and hole.

Meredith felt she could get used to this man, with his soft skin and old-fashioned manners. She looked at the back of the hand that held hers. Strong, full of blood. She felt her spine unfurling at its base.

Yes, she could get used to him. Not as a boyfriend, of course-but to his characteristics, genetically speaking.

"So you follow the bird-and then what?" The spitting rain had started to soak through Meredith's tweed coat (why had she not bought something waterproof instead?). Her knees ached. They had been out for over an hour.

"Eventually she spies something she wants for tea."

"Then she dive-bombs it."

"In a manner of speaking, yes. When she sees something tasty-looking in the gra.s.s-sometimes a rabbit, or a snake, or maybe a grouse-she swoops down and grabs it with her talons. If the prey isn't killed instantly by the speed of the stoop-that's what it's called when she, what did you call it?-when she 'dive-bombs' it-she has a special tooth on her beak called a tomial tooth, which she uses to break the neck of her quarry."

"Do you let her keep it?"

"G.o.d, no. What would be the point of training her to kill her own food? The point is for her to hunt down food for us and then we feed her, thus ensuring her dependence. They aren't stupid, these birds, and they're not particularly social animals either. Birds don't get attached the way dogs do." He glanced down at Portia, who flicked her tail from side to side and gazed back at him with dumbstruck love. "The thing is, it's not possible ever to entirely tame a raptor. You can only convince them, through training, that you are the best and most efficient food source around. Even then you're only appealing to their survival instinct." Barnaby shaded his eyes from the glare, watching Harriet wing her way toward the crest of the hill and curve back again like a self-propelled boomerang.

"The main point is, no matter how devoted you are, a bird of prey will never love you back. She'll work for you, certainly. But there has to be something in it for her." Barnaby reached into his hip satchel and pulled out a furry swatch that looked to Meredith like a shred of fur coat. "Once she's caught something, then we chase her down and make the trade with this."

"What is that?"

"It's called a dummy-bunny. You wrap some raw beef inside when you call in the bird, and then take the quarry from her."

Meredith didn't think that sounded fair at all.

In the sky, Harriet began a leisurely loop back toward the slope they had just descended.

"That's odd."

"What?" Meredith wiped the damp from her eyes.

"She seems to be circling back to the field we just came from, which is unusual."

"Maybe she just wants to go home and have a hot bath before dinner," Meredith hinted, but Barnaby and Portia were already halfway up the hill, following the bird, which had flown out of sight. Meredith mucked along, cursing herself for not bringing rubber boots. Not that she owned any.

Harriet was still out of sight when they heard the scream.

"What the devil..." Barnaby gasped.

By the time they reached the crest of the hill, the shrieks had stopped and there was Mish, standing in the middle of the moor dressed in a long oilskin coat and knee-high leather riding boots, holding her head and moaning. Meredith, who had thought she was too exhausted to go on, broke into a sprint and ran ahead of Barnaby. When she got close enough, she threw her arms around her friend.

"Are you okay?" she asked, prying Mish's hands away from her face and checking her eyes.

"I'm fine," Mish said in a manner that suggested she was anything but. "This insane bird appeared out of nowhere and stole my hat. I was just coming out to find you guys and I was wearing my new beaver hat I got at the January sale at Holt's in Montreal-Aaah!" She began flapping her hands around her head and whirling around. "Is it back? It's back?"

Meredith looked up but saw nothing but sky. By this time Barnaby had made it beside them. Portia greeted Mish with a push of her snout, but her efforts, or maybe something about the proximity of fur, only amplified Mish's hysteria. Meredith pulled the dog out of the way by her collar and tried to calm down her friend while explaining the situation to Barnaby.

"Extraordinary behaviour for a falcon," he said, pulling at his hair. "Certain larger owls-particularly the great horned and the snowy-have been known to be aggressive to the point of attacking humans, but not-"

"Oh, will you shut the f.u.c.k up?" said Mish.

Meredith winced and continued to soothe her friend by stroking her back. She gave Barnaby a look as if to say, Don't take it personally, but he didn't see it. His head was thrown back, eyes searching the sky. Without looking down, he pulled from his pouch a fan of black feathers attached to a string, and whistled twice. Tossing the fan in the air, he swung it around, where it caught the breeze and sailed for a few moments like a small kite. Seeing the wings, Mish dove facedown into a patch of longer gra.s.s, covered her head with her hands and began screaming all over again.

"What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" Meredith demanded. "Can't you see she's terrified?"

"Oh G.o.d, of course. Terribly sorry." Barnaby reeled in the feathers. "Magpie wings-to lure her back." He slipped them back into his bag, looking like a chastised dog.

Meredith looked down at Mish, who was now flat on the ground, her face pressed into a patch of wet heather.

"Perhaps it's best if you two go back and have a drink at the cottage," Barnaby said after a silence. "I'll call Harriet in and meet you there before we carry on to the main house for dinner. Again, I'm awfully sorry. This sort of thing never happens."

And with that he set off across the moors, leaving Mish and Meredith to return to the cottage on their own.

Two hours later Barnaby stood with his guests on the front step of Hawkpen Manor. At the third rap the door swung in with an anguished creak. Meredith shivered. Was it possible the door had opened itself? Before she could process the thought, a thin, formally dressed man with a receding widow's peak slipped out from behind the door and welcomed them in with a sweep of his hand.

"Master Barnaby," he said, taking in their damp clothes with an expression of unconcealed disdain.

"Didier," Barnaby said, pulling one can of Double Diamond off a plastic web and handing the man the remaining three.

Meredith raised her hand to be introduced and the Frenchman stepped back as though she had pulled a pistol on him. Then he sniffed the air and walked away without a word.

"Didier's our butler," said Barnaby. "He's French."

They were standing in an enormous foyer with wood-paneled walls and gleaming floors that reminded Meredith of a particularly grand government office. She fought the urge to take a number and wait for someone to stamp her form.

"When was it built?"

Barnaby shrugged, cracked open the can of beer and drank deeply. "I'll let my brother explain it all to you, if you don't mind. He loves to bore new people with the history of the house, and I can never remember any of the relevant dates and architectural terms anyway."

Soon a pair of black high heels descended the staircase. Attached to them was an extremely pregnant woman wearing a smile so large and forced that Meredith was afraid her face might unhinge at the jaw.

"Darling!" She kissed Barnaby on each cheek but avoided touching his jacket, which was flecked with mud. The hostess then turned to Mish and Meredith. "How lovely you could come. I'm Chubby, Barnaby's sister-in-law. We so rarely have guests, this is such a treat. Now come into the drawing room and have a drink, and then Nigel can take you on his tour. He absolutely lives to show off the house. It's appalling, really. You must stop him the minute you get bored. I'm afraid all we have is cream sherry for you ladies tonight-we're not really trendy vodka people-but the sherry is rather good."

Meredith was offered a seat beside Barnaby on a stiff-backed antique sofa covered in slippery upholstery. It was about the size and dimensions of the piece North Americans would call a love seat, but there was nothing loving about the design. With backrests at opposite ends of the narrow seat, it ensured the bodies of its sitters were as far apart from each other as possible.

This was just as well, as Barnaby had fallen into a sulk upon entering the house. Meredith watched him suckle his beer can, while Chubby interrogated Mish with the enthusiasm of a young police constable. Judging by her hostess's interest level, Meredith could tell she a.s.sumed Mish was the one in whom Barnaby was interested, not herself. Maybe it was the minidress, she thought. Or the blond highlights ("b.u.t.tery chunks," Mish called them). Either way, Meredith didn't mind. She was used to Mish getting more attention than she did. Not just from men, but from the world in general.

"So now, Trish," Chubby was saying while pouring sherry from a cut-crystal decanter. It was the kind with a huge gla.s.s stopper, which Meredith had thought existed only in television adaptations of old murder mystery novels.

"Actually, it's Mish," she said, vanishing her sherry in one go.

"Oh gosh, terribly sorry. Mish. That's an interesting name, isn't it?"

"It's short for Mich.e.l.le."

"Is your family French Canadian, then?"

"No. Just plain old Canadian Canadian. Jewish Canadian really."

"Really? I'd never have known you were Jewish." Chubby had an unnerving way of looking to the left and slightly above the head of whomever she was addressing.

"It's probably the nose job," said Mish. "I got it for my sixteenth birthday. Family tradition."

Barnaby doubled over and began to cough. Meredith pounded him on the back, even though she knew you weren't really supposed to. Across the room Chubby located a pair of large wrought-iron tongs.

"So tell me," Chubby went on, "what does your father do in Canada?"

"Mostly golf and fight with my mother. He's retired."

"And what did he do before retiring?" Chubby seemed to remember to smile and then forgot again just as quickly. She traded the tongs for a poker and began stabbing at the coals of the fire.

"He worked a lot. And golfed less. And fought with my mother."

Seeing she was getting nowhere, Chubby switched the line of questioning. "And so how do the two of you ladies know each other?"

"From school. We were both in the knitting club." Mish looked over and winked.

Meredith tensed. She could see the devil coming out in her friend.

"And what school was that?"

"Oh, just a school in Toronto-you wouldn't have heard of it."

"A public school?" Chubby gave up looking for whatever it was she wanted and began blowing into the fire to stoke the flames. It didn't do much good because she couldn't bend down properly.

"G.o.d, no," said Mish. "The public school system in Canada is terrible."

"Really?" Chubby righted herself and placed a hand at the small of her back.

"Oh, yes, total c.r.a.p. Burgeoning cla.s.s sizes, no extracurricular activities, teachers who barely know how to read themselves. It's like crowd control."

"That's awful," said Chubby. "The English public school system is one of the only good things left in this country. That and the fact we still have our own currency-but who knows how long that will last with this EU nonsense. At this rate we won't have a monarchy in ten years. Organic lemons imported daily from Italy in every corner store? Not a problem. But the Queen? Ridiculous! It makes me miserable just to think of it. Now, Barnaby, would you please come over here and do something about the fire." She gave the face-splitting smile again. "We have central heating in the back wing, where we spend most of our time, but I'm afraid my husband is dead set against it in the rest of the house. He's ridiculously old-fashioned in some ways. Well, speak of the devil."

Nigel Shakespeare appeared in a flying leap that landed him in the center of the room on top of a large Oriental rug that slid for a couple of feet before coming to a rest. Three Yorkshire terriers yipped at his ankles and narrowly escaped being crushed beneath his dancing feet. "Hallo, foreign guests! Hallo, beautiful wife! Hallo, prodigal sib!" He went around the room shaking hands and telling everybody not to get up. The dogs, upon seeing Chubby, began yelping and squeaking and did a flea-circus performance of rolls and prances in exchange for handfuls of heart-shaped gingersnaps she pulled from a silver box on the mantel.

"Ooh, c'est tres bien, mes pet.i.ts poo-poo bijoux! Vous etes tres, tres chouettes, n'est-ce pas? Maman vous aime, oui? Oui, oui, oui?"

When Nigel reached Barnaby, he paused and ruffled his brother's hair. Barnaby neither flinched nor smiled; he stood stock-still like a wax figure of himself. "Marvellous to see you, old chap. Well then, how are the birds holding up?"

"Fine. Well, actually today there were some problems-"

But before Barnaby could finish, Nigel took Mish and Meredith each by the arm and proceeded to steer them toward the double doors. "I hope you don't mind if I steal your womenfolk for a tour of the house," he said. "It is so refreshing to have visitors. We so rarely do." And then, turning to Mish, he winked. "We've been busy restoring the frescoes in the ballroom and I was hoping I might have a dance."

Seeing the movement toward the door, the Yorkies abandoned their floor show and ran over to follow.

"Your dogs are so cute!" Mish loosened her arm from Nigel's grip, squatted down in her mini and scooped up two of the terriers-one in each hand. The remaining creature began to whine pathetically.

Meredith, who wasn't keen on small dogs, bent down and picked it up. "What are their names?" she asked.

"John, Paul and George," Nigel said.

"What!" Mish laughed. "Why no Ringo?"

"I'm afraid only my wife can answer that particular question."