A different man might have accepted this setback and resolved to put it behind him, but my grandfather’s pride was hurt and he refused to give up. The more skepticism he encountered, the more evangelical he became, and years of frustration ensued while he became almost a laughingstock in scientific circles: the man people avoided at parties, the man who was obsessed with peacocks.
Sitting by the Euston Road and looking at my notes about Miss B, I found myself feeling uneasy at the parallels. All I had was a picture, and I didn’t even know what it meant. Compared to that, my grandfather’s case was positively watertight. A little unsettled, I headed home to look for Katya, but when I got there she’d already gone. The only sign of her was a note pinned by the stairs: “City of Westminster Archives, 10 St Ann’s Street, SW1.”
We live in a society that is strangely superstitious about written records. Even while we’re content to countenance the tearing down of rain forests and the destruction of countless unknown organisms every day, we hold on grimly to our documents and papers. Few of us are immune to this. I keep notes about dead birds for a book I won’t write. Other people keep bills or bank statements or the unsolicited menus of long-closed takeouts. Our national archives bulge with ephemera that may one day transform themselves into history. The Victorian railway builders who demolished irreplaceable Tudor houses were careful to preserve for posterity the details of what they spent on iron and timber. And before that, when the enclosure of land was making an ancient landscape disappear without record, parish clerks were carefully detailing the beginnings and ends of lives that now exist only in their crumbling ledgers.
I found Katya in the research room of the Westminster archives, tucked away in a corner behind a large microfilm reader. At first I didn’t recognize her. Her hair was tied up tightly and her brow was furrowed with lines of concentration that made me hesitate. Around her the room was warm and smelled very faintly of damp coats. Along one side of the room stood a couple of rows of filing cabinets, and in the center of the room was a cluster of terminals where a group of elderly women with handbags had congregated and were comparing notes.
Katya scarcely looked up when I walked over to her corner and didn’t say hello. She just smiled and pointed to the chair next to her, then carried on, working rapidly with both hands on the reels of the microfilm viewer, spinning it deftly backward and forward.
“Am I interrupting something?” I asked, but she continued turning, and pages of old copperplate handwriting skidded across the screen. I glimpsed names, dates, places.
“Shit!” she said suddenly, and stopped turning the pages, her voice loud enough to make the elderly women turn and look. “You’ve made me miss what I was looking for.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and our eyes met and held for a moment. Abruptly she turned back to the screen and smiled to herself.
“So you should be. Leaving me to do all the work.” She began to wind the handles back in the other direction, much slower now, until she found the place she was looking for. “Here, look at this. Marylebone Parish rate books for 1774.”
Lit up in front of me were the pages of an old ledger, a photographic image of the time-stained, torn-edged original. The left-hand column was a list of addresses, and next to each was a name, a date, and a sum of money. Halfway down the page I saw the words “Orchard Street” and the date April 30, 1774. Each house number in the street had a name beside it except one. Next to Number 24 the space was blank.
“If the gossip is true, Orchard Street is where Miss B lived,” Katya reminded me, turning to see my reaction.
“So what does this mean?” I asked her, not sure of her point.
“Twenty-four Orchard Street is blank. That means the place was vacant when the collector called. Now look at this…”
She wound the microfilm through to the end, slid it out of the slot, and dropped in a different reel. She found the place she wanted with only a few turns of the wheel.
“Look. Orchard Street. Same set of addresses, one year earlier. This is June eighth, 1773.”
The writing was clear:
24 Orchard Street
Joseph Banks Esq
Katya turned to me again. “I started in 1772, just to be safe. In ’72 it was let to a Mr. Metcalfe. In June 1773 the place was taken by Banks, just like the gossip column said. And then by April 1774 the place is vacant.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means the affair was over by then.”
“He could just have moved her somewhere else.”
Katya shook her head. “She’s never mentioned again, is she? All the books we’ve read agree on that. Perhaps she went to another man. Or Banks might have got bored of her and paid her to leave town.”
“There is another option, you know.”
Katya grimaced. “I know. And that one’s the most likely. Death during childbirth. Or just after.”
“And her child. There’s no mention of Banks having children, not even illegitimate ones.”
We looked at each other a little somberly for a moment. Then Katya turned back to the screen and began to rewind the film. “At least there’s a way we can check.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How?”
“Easy.” She finished winding and lifted the microfilm out of the reader. “We check the Marylebone parish registers of births and deaths. I can do it tomorrow. I just go through all the deaths in 1773 and 1774 and look for any woman whose name begins with B and ends in n.”
“But you might find dozens.”
“Well, at least that would give us some real names to check out, wouldn’t it?”
I considered that. “Okay…So what if you don’t find any names that fit? What then?”
She shrugged and looked me very firmly in the eye.
“Then we look somewhere else. If your friend Hans Michaels can find a connection, so can we.”
The next couple of days did very little to reward her optimism. Katya and I spent a morning up near Farringdon checking the parish registers, but astonishingly there were no entries in the register of deaths that matched the name “B—n.” Which, as Katya pointed out, could just mean she’d died somewhere else. But even though we’d run out of ideas about what to do next, neither of us seemed able to give up the chase. Anderson had been right: the Ulieta bird was the great discovery I never made, the event that some part of me still seemed to be waiting for; it was useless now to pretend I didn’t care. I spent my time in the various London archives, flapping like a bird of ill omen over long lists of the dead. Katya would join me when she could, and we’d either squeeze together in front of one screen, or work side by side in companionable silence. But we still had no way of knowing how the picture of Miss B was linked with the bird, and there didn’t seem any obvious way of finding out. As to the bird itself, we simply had no idea.
Monday evening was stormy and the rain was lashing against the windows of my kitchen when I began to cook dinner. The ancient boiler was muttering throatily in response to the weather, making the kitchen warm and inviting. Katya came home just as the pots were beginning to bubble, and we ate together with the lights low and the rain pleasingly impotent against the windows. Neither of us had anything to report, so we opened a bottle of wine and didn’t talk about the bird at all. The warmth and the wine perked us up and brought a sort of release; soon we were chatting happily, and when the bottle was finished I got up to open a second. Instead of waiting, Katya came over and stood next to me.
“About the bird,” she began. “You’re going to have to do the searching without me for a day or two. I’ve got to go back to Sweden. Just for a few days; I won’t be gone very long. There’s a couple of things I need to do.” She took the bottle out of my hands and back to the table, where she started to pour.
“That’s a bit sudden, isn’t it?” I asked, watching her.
She glanced around at me. “It’s probably all a waste of time, but it’s stuff I’ve got to do. I’ll tell you all about it when I
get back.” I’d stayed standing, so she picked up both glasses and brought them over to me. “Come on, another drink to see me off.”
I sipped the wine and said something that made her laugh, but although the rest of the evening went well, the kitchen seemed a slightly sadder place. Searching for the bird by myself didn’t seem so appealing now. And when I woke up the next morning, Katya was already gone.
RICHMOND. FASHIONABLE and discreet, where an orphaned young lady staying with a respectable old woman could live a quiet and genteel existence. Where, if she did not seek attention, she would remain unattended. Where, correctly chaperoned, she could walk on the hill or draw in the woods to her heart’s content. Where an old friend from London could visit from time to time and take tea before returning home. Richmond, where in the summer of 1773 the arrival of quiet and unremarkable Miss Brown to live with elderly and deaf Mrs. Jenkins, widow of a Revesby pensioner, went largely and happily unnoticed.
She took Martha with her as maid and attendant. Between them they set out to learn the things they had to learn: the conventions to respect, the rules to obey, and the exercise of freedoms that neither had ever before encountered. They were given time to learn. Banks, determined to prove himself a disinterested benefactor, visited rarely but wrote often, anxious they should have all the things they needed. That was why, one morning three weeks after their arrival from Lincolnshire, five large packages arrived addressed to Miss Brown containing all manner of materials for drawing and painting. She spent a morning unpacking them, running her fingers over each one as it was removed from its paper, lost in awe that she should be the object of such fortune. Many years later, when she recalled those weeks, they always seemed to her to have happened to someone else, someone only a little like her. From the moment she stepped into the churchyard at Louth and saw him in front of her, the famous Joseph Banks kneeling as if she had somehow summoned him, none of it seemed quite real.
He had acted swiftly after their encounter in Lincolnshire, as if goaded by the thought of Ponsonby’s visits to the house in Louth. In casting around for a family where she could stay respectably, he had quickly thought of Mrs. Jenkins, aging widow of a long-serving steward to his father, whose small cottage on the edge of Richmond was paid for by the Revesby estate. She was neither a gossip nor a busybody, and as an invalid she was pleased to have genteel company. That settled, he set about arranging her carriage and funds for the journey. He spared neither time nor money, and Solander, who watched this act of philanthropy executed with the precision and urgency of a naval raid, began to wonder at the nature of its recipient. Within days Banks had sent word to Louth that all was arranged.
It was left to her to decide how she would manage her departure from the house where John Ponsonby had installed her. Unsure how to proceed, unsure what would happen, she decided to write to him, informing him that she was to leave for London. The tone of her note was formal, but he arrived within hours to shred that formality, shouting, questioning, pacing, begging her to tell him what she planned. This she would not do, and watching his angry gesticulations, she felt an overwhelming sadness at the thought of the intimacy she had shared with him—this flawed, confused stranger. Yes, she thought as she watched him, still a stranger despite everything, because a stranger was what she’d always needed him to be. She waited for him to threaten her, perhaps to forbid her to leave, to remind her of the debt she owed him. But after a time he became quiet and turned from her. She could hear him taking deep, slow breaths and she waited for him to speak, as she had once waited before, when she was fifteen. Only this time, she realized, everything was changed.
“I have always told you that you are free to go,” he said at last. “I will not break my word now. I would consider it a kindness if you were to tell me of any requirements you have, anything you need to ease your journey.”
Then his voice sank low, became a voice she scarcely recognized.
“To lose you so suddenly is hard to comprehend. But I have always been waiting for this. I have tried to pretend otherwise, for both our sakes, but I know you have never chosen to be here with me. I told you once you were wasted on Revesby; I never dared to tell you how much you were wasted on me. It was only a matter of time before someone saw that, as I once saw it. I hope he knows your worth. He should know that one day you might find someone more deserving of your attention than he.”
He turned and tried to smile, but she saw he was not able. There were tears in his eyes as he spoke.
“You owe me nothing—and I owe you a great deal. Two years of your company I have never deserved and will not forget.”
She looked at him as he stood, suddenly small and unhappy in front of her, and part of the great barrier of reserve she had held so firmly between them began to tremble at its edges. Her body felt her own again. There were so many things for which she would never forgive him but, at the last, so much more forgiveness than she had ever thought possible.
The next day she left Lincolnshire.
BANKS SAW her deliverance from Louth as something shining and noble that he had achieved. In the euphoria of those days of fame and advancement he was prepared to ignore the innuendoes of his friends in return for the knowledge that he had acted selflessly to right a wrong, and while he was busy on London business it was convenient to think of her as little more than a vehicle for his own good nature, a curiosity he had discovered and befriended. But when he was with her, that simplicity became a great deal more complicated.
Each time he visited Richmond he planned to play the part of the modest benefactor, cutting short with proper grace any unbecoming shows of gratitude. But that was never how things were. The second time he called on her, she had already been in Richmond seven weeks, and a very young maid he didn’t recognize answered the door and showed him into a small front parlor. There he waited, and he continued to wait for what seemed an unpardonable amount of time, his rehearsed speech of solicitude fading from his thoughts, until he heard the sound of female laughter from the corridor beyond. Just as he recognized her voice, the door opened enough for a head to fit around it.
“I’m afraid, sir, you are the victim of a misunderstanding,” she laughed. “Have you been waiting here a very long time?”
He attempted to muster the dignity of a slighted benefactor. “A full ten minutes, I believe.”
She laughed again, apparently unconcerned by his manner. “That was stupid of me. I’m sorry. I told Jenny I was working and would be down shortly, and then I lost myself in what I was doing. I had intended her to tell you I was working.”
“And if she had?” he asked. “Ten minutes would still be ten minutes.” By now they were looking each other in the eye and he was beginning to find his own stiffness ridiculous.
“Really, sir.” She came into the room properly now, and he saw she was dressed formally in a way he had not yet grown to expect. Her hair was drawn up like that of every lady he knew, and yet she still looked different. “Really, if you were told I was working, I thought after a time you would find your way up. You have watched me draw before, as I recall. And I give you full license to interrupt me without invitation.”
“I should never dream—”
“Of course not,” she interrupted him, laughter in her voice but her face formed into an expression of seriousness. “That would be to take advantage of your position. I should have understood that you would never do that. But truly, sir,” she said, her voice now bright again, “I release you from that scruple. If I am to draw well, I cannot always be running down here to make conversation.”
He hesitated, the inner young man wrestling with the wise benefactor. Then he smiled and his whole face changed.
“I would very much like to see your work,” he said.
She seemed a whole new person to him, as if the shell he had once noticed about her had been dramatically cast off. Beneath it he found laughter he had not seen before and a sort of wildness he had never guessed at.
She showed him th
e upstairs room where she had laid out her material. She explained that Mrs. Jenkins used little more than one room at the back of the house, where she very largely kept to her bed. “Having me here gives her license to be an invalid,” she explained. “I spend much of the morning sitting with her and running errands, but she sleeps at this time of the afternoon, so it is a good time to work. And she has no objection to my using this room. Which is good because it has by far the best light.”
That afternoon they discussed some drawings of oak leaves and acorns that she had been working on. The drawings seemed very fine to him, very fresh but very correct, intricate in their detail. But she kept pressing him to comment, as if she wanted him to go further. Finally she turned to him, her head angled as if in thought.
“But why do you think I have chosen this subject to draw?”
He hesitated, distracted by her face close to his and determined not to be distracted.
“The oak is a very good subject. And widespread in the park, of course…” He trailed off, aware of an impatient twitch in her eyebrow.
With a little skip she moved away from him, away from the picture, until she stood behind it.
“It is good of you to comment on my work,” she said, “but if the work does not draw your attention to its subject, then it is not a success.”
He looked again at the image she had created, his eyes flicking from the picture in front of him to the woman behind it.
“Very well. You have drawn a collection of oak leaves and acorns. The leaves and acorns are both brown, but that is because they are last year’s. Perhaps it is surprising to find a twig with both acorns and leaves still intact at this point in the year?”
She shook her head. “No, there’s still a lot of last year’s fall on the ground.”
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