Blood Ties

by Crane, Ben;

  This is the first time I have been to his school, the first time I have participated in his education. As a teacher, I visited a lot of primary schools, took part in hundreds of workshops, plays and productions and met dozens of teachers. I knew primary schools inside out, was confident and in control. As a father, my role has changed significantly.

  When I first arrive at his school I stand with my son’s mother and watch the teachers rushing about, collecting fluorescent jackets for the pupils to wear on the walk to the church. I feel the stigma of being an absent father acutely. I know the conversations, classifications and how the reports are filled in. I know the social dishonour of absence and carry my self-created wound close to the surface. I am in a raw, nervous state as the parents, teachers and children group up and crowd together. I am deeply self-conscious about being here, have a fight-or-flight level of fear. I want to escape. I look for release, a way out.

  My son rushes up, his energy breaking my cycle of thoughts and feelings. On the walk to the church, adults smile inquisitively but remain silent. The children have no such reservations. This is the first time I have met his friends, the first time I have seen him interact with other children. ‘Who are you?’ ‘Is he your dad?’ ‘I didn’t know you had a dad.’ Their fearless, beautifully honest questioning continues. Holding my son’s hand, I listen to him explain with pride who I am. He lacks all anxiety, speaks and explains fluidly. I remain quiet and let him talk. He gives me my escape route, and I thank him in my mind.

  In the gap between dressing him and waiting for the nativity play to start, his grandparents arrive. I have not seen them for a long time and I feel deep embarrassment. Other parents take out their phones and start filming. The church is filling up. My mind begins spinning again. I feel the pressure of people close by, see bright colours and hear loud conversations.

  Twitching, nervous, I move right to the back, to a place of safety. The play starts and I am swept up. I forget about myself and escape into my son’s world once more. He sings and sways and dances, is freely artistic. His urge for creativity, for performance and for fun is mesmerizing. The children deliver their lines, overlapping and crashing into each other’s words. Hats slide from heads. My son is pinching and pushing Melchior. He catches my eye, and I pull a face. He misbehaves splendidly and is told off. In the half-hour it takes for Jesus to be born, I finally know what it feels like to live vicariously through my own child’s enthusiasm and lust for life.

  *

  In falconry, dogs are sacred. A hawk, a dog and a human coexist vicariously through their own separate senses. They work together through amplified sight, amplified smell and the conscious coordination of the human mind. A working dog, like a hawk, is a gift beyond mere companionship. They earn their place in spectacular ways.

  Etta is a pointer. Specifically, a Hungarian Vizsla. She has a russet-ginger and gold coat and a thin, sculpted face. First bred 2,000 years ago by the hunting Magyar tribes of Hungary, Vizslas are said to be the oldest pointing dogs used specifically to aid falconry.

  Etta is athletic and powerful, and her chest is deep; her lungs take up at least half of her body. Side on, she looks like the outline of a rasher of back bacon. She will run all day over tough ground searching for quarry, and her sense of smell is one of the most beautifully evolved adaptations in the whole of nature. When she detects a pheasant she turns, locks solid, stationary, and points at it with her nose. On command she will edge forward and flush it for the hawk. Dogs of Etta’s calibre deserve to have offspring.

  With winter fully upon us, Girl alive and recuperating in her aviary, and after sixty-five days of gestation, I help Etta give birth. Other than my son’s mother, this is the only other living creature I have seen giving birth.

  In the late evening on the due date, I close the curtains, stoke the fire and wait. Etta has been restless for several hours. She wanders upstairs then comes down again. She climbs into her whelping pen, tears at the soft layers with her paws and starts a low panting. She climbs out of the whelping pen. In an effort to get things moving, I take her for a walk up the lane and back. On her return, she hops back into the whelping pen, tears at the blankets once more, turns and sits down. I watch the sides of her body spasm and contract. I begin to panic. I realize how inexperienced I am. I am alone with her in the middle of the night. Streaking thoughts flow through my mind, horror stories of breech births, dead puppies and dead dogs.

  A newborn puppy on the edge of the womb and world plops out like a soft-poached egg. When the first pup is born she remains motionless inside her cocoon, as if stillborn. I feel sick with disappointment. With a mounting sense of revulsion, I move to fetch a bucket to put the lifeless body in. As I do, Etta starts licking it vigorously and breaks the sack with delicate nibbles. The air hits the pup’s lungs and it twists alive, bending back on soft bones like a caterpillar unfolding after falling from a leaf. It is incredible. The little pup is blind but not helpless. Peeled clean and grunting, the furry orange piglet does not hang about but wriggles over the soft bedding and latches on to Etta’s nipples, supping life into its tiny stomach.

  Each little Vizsla arrives in the world the colour of a packet of Plasticine rolled together: an amorphous grey blob with blue veins and swirls of flesh tones. Each pup is small enough to fit in the palm of a hand, is broad bean shaped, and smells of warm mushrooms and damp earth. When the moisture evaporates, it draws tight on my hands and fingers like dried gelatine, and the smell changes to the tang of raw liver: a light, watery metallic oxide. It takes eight hours for all six puppies to arrive, and they do so with minimal fuss.

  When the last pup is born, cleaned up and feeding, it is close to dawn. Etta is exhausted. I hand-feed her small pieces of boiled chicken, give her some water and take her outside for a wee. When finished, she bolts back and scrapes at the door. She hops back into the whelping box, spins in a circle and flops down. A Grand National of pups squirm and roll across the blanket towards their mother. They are unforgiving and fight, climb and kick each other out of the way to get the best position. She gives them all a protective nudge, licks them clean and snoozes while they feed.

  I am tired too. I feel empty, a hollowed-out void. All thoughts and fears for their safety are now blown away, replaced by the soft wash of endorphin love. It is one of the most moving things I have ever seen. On the sofa, I drift between sleep and dreaming, the tiny squeaking sound of suckling mixing with the click and crackle of the fire. The cottage seems to swell around us, soft, warm and protective. I fall through my mind, slowly dropping off to sleep. When I wake, I count the pups. Etta has given birth to a seventh all by herself. Lil Titch is half the size of the others, the runt of the litter.

  Unable to keep up with his brothers and sisters, Lil Titch fails to feed and over two or three days becomes weak and floppy in my hands. I begin mixing formula and feeding the little orange grub by hand every few hours. My clothes and the chair take on a strange cheesy sour-milk smell which I find strangely comforting. It reminds me of my son. It is touch and go, but I save him. Lil Titch’s ability to bounce back is joyful: after a week he is happily kicking his brothers and sisters out of the way to feed.

  On the day Etta’s pups go to their new homes, my new puppy arrives. He is a little black Cocker Spaniel with a white stripe on his throat. Unlike Etta, he does not point. His job is to crash through bramble thickets, nettles and thick cover to find the pheasants she cannot. Prompted by his patterns, I toy with the name of Flash. I think it would suit him. Bold and confident, he wanders in through the front door, walks straight up to Etta and begins suckling what remains of her milk. She looks at me. In heartfelt response I say: ‘I guess it’s not over yet, my love.’

  *

  I tell my son about the new Cocker Spaniel. My son was raised around dogs, in particular a giant Alsatian called Stevie. Since Stevie passed away my son has been pestering his mother for a Golden Retriever. He has a natural proclivity for animals but, like all children, his level of co
mmitment and care wavers. So I bought him an electric dog, one that breathes, one that needs batteries, but does not need feeding or walking. Over time his Golden Retriever stopped breathing and my son failed to put new batteries in it. As a halfway house, a compromise, I tell him he can have the new Cocker Spaniel. It is his, and I’ll bring him down every time I visit, but I’ll look after him. I ask him to think of a name. My son comes up with two. Ironman and The Flash. For obvious reasons and with unconscious synchronicity, we both decide on Flash.

  *

  When spring arrives, just prior to removing Girl from her aviary I am allowed to collect a second rescue sparrowhawk. Taken as a thumb-sized chick from the wild, his tiny legs and underdeveloped feet allowed a breeder’s ring to be surreptitiously slipped over his foot. Whoever illegally stole him was attempting to give the impression he was registered. In fact, the printed numbers and letters around the aluminium band were for a kestrel, a deceptive ploy discovered only when he was found and handed to an experienced falconer and law-abiding breeder.

  When I meet him the little musket is fully grown and easily the most attractive bird of prey I have ever seen. Exactly like the trapped musket in Pakistan he is a third smaller than Girl, he’s less than a foot tall and his legs and toes are as thin as toothpicks. His eyes are crystal clear and the saturated colour of deep tangerine. As bright as a parrot’s plumage, his neck and cheeks are a delicate mixture of burnt earth, red clay, flecked carrot and iron ore. His back and shoulders are a gradation of dark blue to slate grey. In contrast to Girl’s pale white chest, his is the tone of double-thick clotted cream, with jagged, zigzagged, flashed bars of copper and tan. His chest feathers overlap in neat concentric ovals, like the paper-thin edges of a wasps’ nest. These distinct colours and patterns indicate he is old, at least three years, maybe more. A mature musket is an exceptionally rare creature. Only a handful of English falconers have ever seen one in the flesh, much less flown and released one.

  In the wild the little musket would be killed by a wide range of winged and four-legged predators. Consequently, he should be hard-wired to be highly fearful. On my return home, when he is removed from his travel box he displays a momentary wariness before quickly standing on my glove with surprising self-contained confidence. For an hour or more he remains calm as I walk about the cottage or sit on the sofa with the dogs. His behaviour transcends that of every other male sparrowhawk I have ever owned. In fact, he is the calmest of either gender I have experienced, a fantastic anomaly in the world of sparrowhawks.

  When turning him on the glove, I notice that a large proportion of his tail is smashed to broken stumps. I will also discover that he has never been allowed to fly free or hunted. Until meeting me his life had been curtailed and contained by an existence spent behind bars.

  Normally, a hawk has twelve perfect tail feathers. On closer inspection, two of this one’s outer tail feathers have their tips missing. Three quarters up, five of the inner feathers are snapped in half. His ability to twist and turn in flight is seriously diminished: his damaged tail is a large enough disability for all quarry to escape him. Very much like Girl, and even if he was the most proficient hunter in the world, in his present condition his starvation and slow death in the wild are certain.

  A fat and healthy hawk continuously regenerates broken feathers. A captive hawk does not have this option and new feathers can take up to six months to grow back. To circumvent this issue, falconers have developed methods to keep their hawks freshly feathered. Imping a new feather is a delicate process. A hawk needs to be held firmly without being suffocated or squashed. I gently fold my hand around the top of this musket’s legs and the bottom half of his wings. He tries to wriggle, then relaxes. I drape a tea towel around his shoulders, roll him up and wrap several turns of masking tape around the outside. I rest the feathery parcel chest down on a pillow and his little flat head pokes out one end and he turns to stare while I cut and discard the snapped ends of his old tail. Lined along the desk are seven freshly trimmed sparrowhawk feathers. In the hollow centre of each, a smoothed and sandpapered strip of soft plastic is glued in place. I pick up the first replacement feather, dip the plastic tip in glue and ‘imp’ it into the cut shaft of his tail. Working from left to right, tiling the seven feathers like slates on a roof, I twist to fit, layering one after another into position. When finished, I pinch up and sprinkle a small amount of chalk dust over the join. This stops excess glue seeping out and sticking his feathers together. While the glue sets I attach new anklets, jesses, a bell and a leash. With the hawk tied securely to my glove, I cut the masking tape and the discarded cloak of tea towel falls away. He briefly flaps, whips back around and stands resplendent on the glove. He ruffles his whole body, looks about, twists his neck over his shoulders and fans his new tail up towards his head. Nibbling, he delicately uses waterproofing oil from a sebaceous gland at the base of his tail, smearing it up the shaft of his feathers. He does this several times, pinging the end out of his beak each time. With skill beyond human competence, each feather is now arrow straight and glossed to perfection. I marvel at his ability to decide when his tail is finished. How does he know it is correct? Maybe he can feel his feathers like a tortoise does its shell or a human does its hair. I take him outside and place him on a low perch in a sunny part of the garden. From the perch he jumps straight into his bath. The liquid rattle of his submerged bell sounds as I tentatively walk towards Girl’s aviary. As I get to the door of her mews his name comes to me in a flash of logic.

  I name him Boy.

  *

  At the side of Girl’s aviary, I slide the feed hatch open and catch a sudden flash of wing. There is another momentary blur, then a soft thudding from inside. I can see Girl’s feet through the small spy-hole. I count eight talons. A full set. Slipping on my glove, I step inside. The smell of a hawk ready to be released permeates the air, a whiffy salted-caramel taste of moist meat and carrion. I breathe in deeply, taste yeast and the umami scoop of Marmite on chewy bread. Girl bounces from perch to perch and dust swirls in shafts of the sunlight streaming through the window. She hits my shoulder, flies up into the netting then falls at my feet. I reach down to grab her firmly. After eight months in seclusion any bond we had has long since dissipated. She is highly fearful and aggressive. In my hands her beak opens, she breathes heavily, her muscles twang taut, strong, flexed, and she tries to wriggle free. I struggle to tie her to my glove. When we step outside the sun hits her body and she opens up her wings defensively, puffs up her feathers, spreads her tail, doubles, triples in size, and hisses like a serpent. She repeatedly pumps and powers down on the glove, trying to inflict as much pain as possible. She went into her aviary broken and immature but has now undergone a startling change. As well as two new talons, she is resplendent in full adult plumage. No longer muted brown, or indeed the usual sparrowhawk slate grey, Girl is strangely pale and her feathers glow in off-white silvery blue, as if covered in a fine film of chalk powder. Her eyes are peculiar. Offset in a weird combination, one a deep butter yellow, the other a flooded luminescent fire orange. As a whole entity, Girl is magnificently skewed, a pale ghost, a dangerous devil in miniature.

  I inspect her talons. The surface of each is bluish grey to Bakelite black. Thin ridges – growth lines – extend from the root of each toe and emerge straight and parallel to one another. I see no cross-cut stress cracks, marks or weakness. The back one is the right length but has a bulbous lump on the tip. The other is a fraction of an inch shorter than it should be. Both are blunt. No matter, the curve of each new talon is correct. They are easily able to trap feathers. Girl can hunt.

  In the kitchen of the cottage I cast her up, using the same method as I did when imping Boy. Using a thin file, I sharpen each new talon to a serviceable point and gently snip off the old leather anklets. When trying to refit new ones, I find the pattern is too small. If attached, they will lift scales, rub her legs and cause blisters which, if they become infected, will mean another trip to t
he vet. I fetch a new sheet of leather from the tool shed. On my return, Girl has escaped, slipping free of her casting like wet soap springing through fingers. I panic. I hope to God I have closed the windows. I find her perched on the door of the bathroom, glaring down at my intrusion. I chase her through the cottage and she flies towards the light and hits a window. I wince. She could have broken her neck. When I have reclaimed and bound her once more, I find the new anklets fit perfectly. I cut and punch two new leather jesses and push them through the brass holes on the back of her anklets. Without warning, Girl grabs both the leather and my hand. The flesh of my thumb rips on the tip of the talon I have just sharpened. I pull away. She struggles violently, is furious. I hold her down with my uninjured hand. Each time I reach forward or move Girl’s feet twitch and clap like the claws of a crab. Her speed and accuracy are unearthly. Over the next ten minutes she manages to foot me a further three times. When secured by her leash on my glove and at last released, she launches at my face, pendulums through the air, slicing, scything, grabs her own tail and spins insanely off the glove. Girl may be astonishingly beautiful, but she is also a little bit scary.

  It takes fifteen minutes for her to calm down. I move with slow steps, like a broken, decrepit falconer, inching up through the garden as if I suffered from a muscle-wasting disease. Any faster and Girl resumes her swinging fighting stance. Fifty feet away, one foot tucked up under his chest, relaxed and calm, Boy watches us intently.

  When we reach her designated area of the lawn, Girl refuses to be placed on her perch and repeatedly and ferociously leaps and bates to the floor. Two long trenches are quickly carved in the lawn. For a wild hawk, behaviour like this is fairly normal, but it can be tolerated only for a short time. Usually, a hawk will calm itself down, but Girl seems to know no such rules. The degree of her aggressive fear is beyond safe. She is relentless. Left any longer, she could break a leg or snap her feathers. The changes of the last few hours have been too much, leaving her on the lawn in this state will lead only to disaster.