The Conjurer's Bird

by Martin Davies

  Gabby’s attitude toward my grandfather had always intrigued me. On paper he was the sort of person she most despised, a wealthy, rather arrogant Anglo-Saxon who treated the rest of the world as an adventure park and plundered it for specimens as a kind of game. It’s hard to imagine him having any time for Gabby’s painstakingly correct brand of conservation. Yet I always sensed in Gabby a sort of grudging respect for him. I suppose both of them were prepared to put aside their lives in pursuit of their dreams.

  My grandfather, Hugh Fitzgerald, acquired a wife quite early in his career. The war had forced him to put his plans for the African peacock on hold, and after surviving four years on the Western Front he met my grandmother, a rather shy seventeen-year-old, a dozen years his junior. If children did not follow as soon as was expected in those days, it’s probably because he was largely an absentee husband. After the wedding he installed her in his mother’s house in Devon and then went abroad almost immediately, part of an expedition to Central America that lasted nearly two years. When he came back he based himself in London, staying at his club, trying to arrange his next venture.

  Unfortunately for him, that routine began to change. During his spells in London he would talk long and often to anyone who would listen about his belief in the existence of African peacocks, and gradually he began to get something of a reputation. The establishment was wary of eccentrics, but my grandfather couldn’t see what he was becoming. The impression of fanaticism was strengthened in 1926 when he was asked to lead a party of mining engineers to West Africa. His main task was to escort them safely into the interior and out again, and by all accounts he managed it competently enough. However, at the end of the expedition, instead of returning to London, he stayed on and retraced his steps into the jungle with only a couple of local guides as support. Even though he was hundreds of miles from where Chapin had found the mysterious feather, it seems his idea was to continue the search.

  He remained out of contact for almost ten months, and when he eventually emerged from the jungle he was ragged with fever. For a time it was uncertain that he’d live, but he was brought home to Devon, where his wife nursed him patiently. Under her care he pulled through the crisis, though it’s doubtful whether he ever fully recovered his strength. It was nearly three years before he was back in London again, and by then things had changed significantly. His unplanned foray into the West African jungle was widely known about and was taken as proof that he was no longer reliable, and by then the rather gung-ho Victorian tradition of exploration that he represented was out of fashion.

  If there were any lessons for me in all that, the prospect of an evening with Gabby was enough to push them to one side. We met in a smart French restaurant in Soho amid a lot of stripped pine, where we sat behind some very large menus and talked about things that had nothing to do with Karl Anderson. Gabby had always been good company, and that night she was at her most entertaining. We drank white wine and as the evening mellowed around us she became quite daring, telling me a series of scandalous and probably slanderous tales about acquaintances we had in common. Even when we talked about conservation, the mood of the evening stayed the same. Gabby leaned forward and spun her dreams, and as she talked I found the sounds and the colors of the rain forest coming back to me. The wine must have made me sentimental, and I found myself missing them.

  Gabby shimmered that evening. There were still difficult things between us, but that night they didn’t seem to matter. The old warmth flowed between us without friction. At the end of the evening, outside the Mecklenburg Hotel, there was a moment as we said good-bye that I couldn’t define, a pause when an unasked question seemed to pass between us. I hesitated, and Gabby smiled a little sadly, then reached up and kissed me on the cheek.

  “Good night, Fitz,” she said, and stepped away. I stood in the dark and watched her disappear behind the inviting lights of the waiting hotel.

  Katya came home the following day. She didn’t call ahead, so I had no idea she was coming until that evening, when I heard the key in the lock. She looked tired and a little worn, and older, too—dressed differently, in a skirt and blouse with her hair pinned up into a tight knot. She looked so unlike the person I knew that I blinked when I saw her.

  “What?” she asked, looking up and seeing my expression. “Oh, these. My father thinks you’re not fit to be introduced to his friends unless you look like this.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, a little embarrassed. “Come and sit down and I’ll get you a beer.”

  “That sounds good.” She reached up and untied her hair so that it fell around her face. Then she caught a few strands between her fingers and held them up so she could peer at them. “The clothes were bad enough, but I had to listen to him go on about my hair. I color it black. Really it’s just a very plain brown.”

  In the kitchen she dropped into a chair and was watching me open bottles of lager when she noticed the twisted window-catch. She was on her feet immediately, peering at it.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Things have moved on a little. I’ll tell you all about it in a moment.”

  “Someone’s broken in again? Did they take anything?”

  I shook my head and smiled. “Nothing to steal.”

  “But why?”

  “It turns out that finding our bird might be worth rather more than we thought. It’s a long story. But don’t worry. Everything’s fine. First I want you to tell me what you’ve been up to. Here, drink this. Unless you’re too smartly dressed to drink from the bottle.”

  She laughed then, like the Katya I recognized.

  “Okay, I’ll go first.” She stretched and looked happy. “In fact you know the good bit already. The stuff I told you over the phone. After that I thought I’d find a lot more and I got really excited. But I don’t think there’s anything else in those papers we need to know. That’s why I didn’t call again. I was waiting till I found something stupendous. But there was nothing.”

  “I think what you’ve found is pretty stupendous. It proves the bird survived Banks’s collection. And it gives us a good idea about where to look.”

  She was keen to talk, and she told me all about Fabricius’s papers. As she talked the tiredness left her and she became animated. Most of the correspondence she’d been through had been about scientific issues. Very little of it concerned Fabricius’s time in England—it seemed to be a part of his life he didn’t much write about—and none of it mentioned Banks. As well as the letter mentioning the Ulieta bird, there were two others from the same man, a Frenchman called Martin, both about drawings Fabricius wanted to buy, but neither of them mentioned the Ulieta bird.

  “Do you mind me doing all that?” Katya asked when her account was over.

  “No, of course not.”

  “I felt a bit embarrassed about it. This is your search, really. I felt a bit as though I was barging in…” She looked at me for a moment. “Anyway, tell me what’s been going on here.”

  “Hard to know where to start. I suppose the real discovery came yesterday, when I met up with Gabby.”

  “Oh?” She took a swig from her beer but didn’t look at me.

  “But before that, I’d been up to Lincolnshire. And guess who I found there?”

  Katya sat quietly while I told her how I’d ended up in Lincoln, and about my discovery of Karl Anderson’s whereabouts. She listened politely, but she didn’t seem as interested as I’d expected.

  “Anyway,” I concluded, “in the end I didn’t come up with anything amazing.” I reached into the jacket on the back of my chair. “But for a moment I thought I had. Here, take a look at these. They’re the lists I made of women born in Revesby whose names began with B.”

  I spread the papers on the table.

  Jan. 1, 1750 Mary, bastard daughter of—

  Sept. 29, 1752 Mary, daughter of Richard Burnett & Elizabeth his wife

  April 18, 1756 Mary, daughter of James Browne & Susanna his wife

  Feb. 20, 175
7 Mary, daughter of William Burton & Anne his wife

  Jan. 18, 1761 Elizabeth, daughter of James Browne & Susanna his wife

  “I got quite excited by Mary Burton, even though she was born a little later than I’d hoped. When I found her father had died while Banks was away, I really thought I was onto something…”

  I looked up and realized that Katya wasn’t listening. Her air of detachment had evaporated and she was staring at the sheet of paper, her lips moving as if she was calculating something.

  “Here, Fitz. Look here.” Her tone was urgent. She pointed at the second name on the list. “That’s about the right year, isn’t it? That would make her sixteen when Banks left, nineteen when he got back?”

  “Yes…” I wasn’t sure where this was leading.

  “Mary Burnett. You see?”

  “But Burnett doesn’t end in an n.”

  “That letter…” She looked around helplessly. “Which book was it in? The letter written by Captain Cook at the start of his second voyage. About a woman pretending to be a man. Remember?”

  I remembered the letter but I still didn’t see the connection.

  “Burnett. I’m sure that’s what the woman was calling herself. Mr. Burnett.”

  In the end we had to go upstairs and find the right book before I was convinced. But Katya was right.

  Three days before we arrived a person left the Island who went by the name of Burnett. He had been waiting for Mr Banks arrival about three months, at first he said he came here for the recovery of his health, but afterwards said his intention was to go with Mr Banks, to some he said he was unknown to this Gentleman, to others he said it was by his appointment he came here as he could not be receiv’d on board in England. At last when he heard that Mr Banks did not go with us, he took the very first opportunity to get off the Island. He was in appearance rather ordinary than otherwise and employ’d his time in Botanizing &ca—Every part of Mr Burnetts behaviour and every action tended to prove that he was a Woman, I have not met with a person that entertains a doubt of a contrary nature.

  “What do you think?” she asked triumphantly.

  “It’s hard to tell. It could just be a coincidence.”

  “And look here.” Katya picked up the other paper that I’d laid out on the table. “Her father died while Banks was abroad. What if she and Banks were being discreet when she became his mistress and used a name that wasn’t hers? That would make sense. And Burnett isn’t too far from Brown, is it? Burnett, brunette, brune, brown…”

  I sat back and looked at her before replying. “They’re not going to like this at the university,” I told her. “We need to go back to Lincoln. How soon can you leave?”

  We drove north through the gray light of a day that never seemed to get started. The flat Lincolnshire plain slipped past in various shades of ocher and brown, and for the most part we were silent beneath the throaty straining of the engine, comfortable enough with each other to retreat into separate places. As we drove, I wondered how much time there was before we’d have to give up this unlikely chase and go back to our real lives. I was already burning bridges that I’d probably need later, but while this strange interlude lasted, it was easier not to think about the practicalities I’d left behind. Katya must have been thinking something similar because at one point, after a long silence, she laughed and turned to me.

  “It’s quite hard to believe this is real, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re as mad as each other.”

  She smiled in reply, then reached out and touched my forearm. But when I turned and looked at her, she was already back in her own thoughts, her head turned to the wide-open fields.

  We arrived in the middle of the afternoon but it felt later. The hotel lights were already on, and inside there was warmth and the immediate promise of comfort. A dreamy trickle of piano music came from the wood-paneled bar, and somewhere close we could smell a wood fire. Katya looked around her. “Wow,” she said. “Very nice. And very English. Can I afford it?”

  “On me,” I said. “When we find the bird I’ll dock it from your share.”

  She looked at me but didn’t argue. It was just another thing I was happy to let go, another reckoning to be dealt with later.

  We checked in and dropped our bags in our rooms, then returned to the streets so Katya could get her bearings. It was a Sunday evening and the town was quiet, but it was bitterly cold now that the light had faded. After the dreary winter daylight the night was almost a relief. Old-fashioned lamps lit the narrow streets around the cathedral, and the places still open—a café, a bookshop, a restaurant—threw welcoming glances onto the cobbles. Looking up, we could see the cathedral outlined against the sky, and behind it the clouds, now broken into fragments and giving way to stars. There would be a frost.

  When we reached the cathedral we could hear organ music.

  “Do you want to go in and listen?” I asked Katya.

  “Not my thing, I think.” Katya put her hand on my shoulder. “But you go if you want to. I’ll head back and have a shower to warm up. I’ll meet you in the bar.”

  So I went alone and sat in the shadows of the dimly lit cathedral and let the music envelop me. There was no service, just the organist practicing for Evensong. By the time I left I felt relaxed and soothed and found myself looking forward to a glass of wine in the hotel bar. What I wasn’t anticipating, though, was what I found when I got there. In one corner, near the fireplace, Karl Anderson was lounging comfortably in one of the big leather armchairs. Opposite him, sleek and perfect in a slim red dress, was Gabby. And between them, almost casually, a bottle of champagne poking its head out of a large silver bucket.

  IT WAS a winter of dreams and forgetting. Snow fell in Richmond in late November and lingered until February, a white cloak drawn over their past and muffling the present. He would arrive on horseback, a dark figure against the white, the snow turning to ice in the folds of his cloak; inside he’d find the fires crackling noisily and the smell of hot wine and spices thick in the air. Even when he traveled at dusk he would find the lamps burning for him, the windows glowing red with welcome, and always in the green bedroom a single lamp and a fire that turned the russet drapes to amber. The place seemed timeless, wrapped in winter and wood-smoke as if nothing that happened in the rest of the world would ever change it. The ride there from the city was slow, the roads deep in snow, his hands numb on the reins, and yet it was a journey he relished. He would arrive feeling clean and pure, fit for the welcome that awaited him. When he traveled through days of sunshine and dazzling whiteness, he would see children skating on frozen ponds and old women collecting firewood, and he would feel a sort of intoxication, as if every face he saw he loved a little.

  She never watched for his coming but came to recognize the sound of his approach. First the chimes of a harness, a boy running to take his horse, then footsteps, a firm knock, and Jenny, the maid, scampering eagerly to answer. Then she would hear his voice—always indistinct but low and merry. She would continue with what she was doing until that moment, and then would begin to put down her things so that when he entered she was free to rise and welcome him. But best of all was his arrival in the winter darkness when the house had settled for the night. Those were the times, always unexpected, when he had suddenly risen in the middle of a London evening and, making his excuses, had returned to his house, there to cause consternation amongst his ostlers by calling for a horse. Sometimes he reached Richmond to find the whole house asleep, her fire no more than an orange glow at the window. She would hear Martha plod to the door with grumbling reluctance and hush him when he tried to speak, and she would stir and smile at the sound, only to sleep again until she heard her bedroom door squeak open. Then with her eyes still closed she would pull back one corner of the blankets and wait half-dreaming while he warmed his hands at the fire. Often on those evenings she would wake in the deep of the night to find him sleeping curled against her, and then she would sleep again, smiling,
happy at the thought of waking.

  When he arrived in daylight, she put away all thoughts of her work and they spent the afternoons by the fire or walking through the frozen woods, talking of things that mattered less than the fact of their talking. Sometimes their conversation was brilliant—ideas imagined beyond every bound of reality. Sometimes they talked of things that made them laugh for reasons they could never afterwards explain. And as they talked, the trees and the fields around them, even the cart-pocked tracks, seemed to lie unconscious, waiting for spring to restart their clocks. In that solstitial pause, she would forget the past that had brought her there, and any fears for the future. The end of the week seemed an unimaginable distance.

  For him the snow seemed to obliterate the stains of the past, all the things that marred his perfect happiness. At night they would lull themselves by the fire and dream of a world where everything, including themselves, could be anything they wished.

  “You would stay here and grow plants,” she said, “and devise a way to farm pineapples on your precious Fens.”

  “Too cold,” he said.

  “You would heat the water with underground pipes and people would come from Brazil to bathe there.”

  He mused on the thought. “In that case, you would tour the shires of England and produce the definitive work on mosses and lichen. And you would learn how to grow moss on the inside walls of all our great buildings so that it might be studied in greater comfort by all who visited. And for your pains, of course, you would be elected unanimously to the Royal Society.”

  “Too young and a woman.”

  “You would write under the name of Tom Brown the Elder.”

  “Ah! And am I only ever to paint lichen?”

  “Very well, you would travel with me around the world and you would draw while I collect. Between us we would create a collection that would be the wonder of the world.”