It was Potts who began the real business of the evening, leaning back and pushing his thumbs very firmly into his waistcoat pockets.
“We’ve just been admiring your handiwork, Mr. Anderson.” He indicated the photocopied sheet that was still lying on the table. “You used the Stamford letters to get Ted Staest interested in your little expedition, but you wanted to make sure he couldn’t leak the information to anyone else. So you moved the names around on the envelope. Very neat. Simple, clever, effective. You must have had a good laugh at our expense.”
Anderson looked at the paper and smiled, but when he spoke it was with his usual calm politeness.
“On the contrary, I wouldn’t dream of laughing. It never pays to belittle the competition. But you’re right about me moving the names, even though it wasn’t as carefully planned as you seem to think. I knew Staest would be interested in the bird, but he knew the story about the pictures, too, and I couldn’t be sure he’d keep quiet about it. It’s amazing what you can do with tracing paper, an eraser, and a hotel photocopier. And then, when I heard someone had got hold of the photocopy I’d left with Staest…” He trailed off and gave us an apologetic shrug, leaving Potts to finish the sentence for him.
“When you heard that, you sent a man to Stamford so that I had someone to follow around. Nice touch.”
Anderson graced us all with his most charming smile. “Not strictly necessary, I think. By then I was already six months ahead of you.”
Potts was looking a little rueful, like an elderly chess player just beaten by his favorite grandson. He leaned back in his chair and raised his glass.
“I guess you’re right at that. To the victor the spoils.” He took a generous swig of red wine. “May I ask if you actually have the spoils yet?”
“Not today. But I’ve got a meeting tomorrow. I’m confident I’ll have the bird soon.”
“Pah! The bird. No one cares about the bird.” He looked up and corrected himself. “Except Mr. Fitzgerald here, of course. Now, what about the pictures? Have you found them?”
“The man I’m meeting tomorrow doesn’t know anything about the pictures. All he knows is that he has a very old stuffed bird. I know from my research that there’s a good chance it’s the right one.”
“So you haven’t mentioned to this guy that his bird might be sitting on a million dollars’ worth of art?”
Anderson clearly thought the question in poor taste and he looked up at the clock above the bar.
“Was there anything in particular you wanted to see me about tonight, Mr. Potts? Because if not…”
The American nodded. “Sure. No need to get touchy. Look, Anderson, if you find those pictures, who will you sell them to?”
“Twelve paintings by Roitelet? I don’t expect to be short of offers.”
“If you go public with them over here, you’ll find yourself in a lot of trouble. You may be an expert in your own area, but I know about art. Trust me, they’ll ban the export of those paintings quicker than you can call a lawyer. But if you had someone to deal with the formalities…Look, Anderson, I could get those pictures to the States in no time, complete with all the documents you need to show that they’ve been in an attic somewhere in Pennsylvania all these years. No costs to you, no delays, no lawyers’ fees. Only a modest commission.”
“I see.” Anderson exchanged a glance with Gabby. “But your offer’s premature. I’d like to wait until I actually have them in my hands before discussing anything like that.”
I watched them watching each other across the table, two men enjoying the games they played, and suddenly I felt weary. I looked over to Katya, but she wasn’t looking back. From her I turned to Gabby, but she was watching Anderson, her face strangely serene. A silence had fallen, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling.
I was seized then by an urge to get away from them all for a few hours, out of the hotel, out of Lincoln. Like my grandfather, I’d plunged into something without really understanding what I was doing and now I was getting lost in it. It was time to get out. Anderson would get his pictures; Gabby would get the money to keep her project going for a few more years, would carry on fighting a war she could only lose. Katya would go back to college and get on with things, and for her all this would become an intriguing anecdote. And the Ulieta bird—what would happen to that? It was an afterthought now, destined to end its story in a freezer in Ted Staest’s lab.
“There’s one thing I’d like to ask,” I said before I got up to go. “Finding the bird after all those years is quite an achievement. You could at least tell us how you did it.”
The warmth with which Anderson greeted the question surprised me. Beneath his smooth exterior, I could see he was excited by it, pleased at his own detective work. So while the remainder of the red wine was poured and drunk, Anderson told us what he’d been doing for the last six months. It was simplicity itself, really; all he’d needed was patience and money and, of course, the necessary luck. Most of it he’d done from the States, paying researchers over here to do his work for him. He’d quickly found out about the Stamford family.
“John Stamford was killed on the Western Front in 1917,” he told us. “He never had the homecoming he’d looked forward to. And by the end of the war, the family’s fortunes had collapsed. The house had to be broken up into lots and sold off, and that was the end of the Stamfords. It’s not clear what happened to his sister—probably she married and moved away. All we know for sure is that the contents of the Old Manor ended up under the auction-eer’s gavel.”
That sale had been Anderson’s real starting point. He obtained the catalog listing the various lots, and concentrated on all the ones including mounted birds and animals. From there he began to narrow down his search to the lots that could have contained the bird he wanted. The catalog recorded the purchaser of each lot, and Anderson set about tracing them. The trail could have gone cold at any time—should have gone cold, by rights. But somehow, miraculously, it hadn’t. With Anderson still in New York, his people over here managed to track the history of each of the lots he was interested in.
“The listings in the ledger weren’t scientific,” he explained. “It just gave descriptions. Things like ‘a collection of songbirds’ or ‘four doves and pigeons.’ Even so, once I’d discounted the items it couldn’t have been, I was left with seven. Gradually we’ve tracked them down to where they are now. All seven of them. Can you imagine the odds against that? That’s when I decided to come over. My only concern then was that someone might beat me to it, someone who had already done some of the work.” He looked across the table at me. “But it seems I needn’t have worried.”
There was a general rearranging of focus as everyone looked at me, but I just looked back at Anderson and nodded and let the attention swing back to him. He paused for a moment, like a magician waiting for his moment.
“Now we’ve seen six of them, and none of them is the bird we’re looking for. Tomorrow I’m getting photographs of the final one. I’ll have an answer then.”
“Photographs?” Potts sounded wounded. “Photographs? Why not the real thing?”
Anderson raised an eyebrow. “The last specimen has ended up quite a long way from Lincolnshire. My researcher saw it today and he’s bringing over the Polaroids tomorrow.”
Potts frowned. “With all due respect, Mr. Anderson, it seems to me that you’re not much better off than the rest of us. You can’t be sure the bird was ever in that sale.”
Anderson nodded, but there was no anxiety in his face. “The war left the Stamford family in very great debt, Mr. Potts, and their creditors were extremely demanding. Martha Stamford was allowed to retain only her personal effects. The legal documents are very clear about it. Everything else was sold.”
“But it could easily have been given away before that. Couldn’t it?”
“Of course,” Anderson replied. “But I’m looking at the percentages. She might have given it away, but
why would she? She might have sold it privately, but it would have been hard for her to get away with that, and there’s no record of such a sale. There’s a possibility the bird disappeared from the Old Manor before the sale. But there’s a greater probability it did not. And if it did not, and if I’ve found it…Well, we all know that those paintings by Roitelet have never been found.”
“And if the photos you see tomorrow are not the Ulieta bird?” I asked.
He looked at me steadily. “Then it is lost. Searching any further would be impractical. Random search of the nation’s attics is not an economically viable option, Mr. Fitzgerald. Unless you have any ideas how to narrow the search?”
Everyone looked at me again. I turned to Katya and found her eyes on mine. I looked down at my lap, where my fingers were laced around each other.
“No,” I concluded. “You’re right. If it wasn’t part of the sale, it could be anywhere.”
And for some reason that thought made me feel much happier.
EVEN MORE than she feared the storm, she feared the ordeal of arriving. Yet when it came, she found such beauty there that fear was impossible. From her first glimpse of land, from the first scent of it unannounced on the breeze, the sheer wonder of it entranced her. As the Robin drew nearer and she began to make out the details of trees and farms, an unfamiliar joy began to seize her. She knew as she looked that she was being touched by something so profound that she would never be the same again.
For the last mile or so, the Robin hugged the coast and she let the parade of shore and straggling houses roll past her, always with green, sloping mountains behind them. On reaching port she expected to be overwhelmed with panic. Instead she disembarked almost in a trance, the bustling crowds barely noticed as she looked beyond them to the places from where they had appeared. The town seemed to her brilliant and exhilarating, though the accounts she’d read had called it neither. The houses that clustered around the harbor were either bright white squares or haphazard compilations of weather-worn timber. The sounds of the town were completely new, and even familiar noises were accompanied by exhortations in tumbling foreign tongues. She had read of the dirt and squalor of foreign ports, but the smell that reached her as the harbor enclosed them seemed right for the place—tar and heat and humans, mixed with the stench of mud and floating waste. She watched a fellow passenger put a handkerchief to his nose, but she was happy to breathe in the smell, to catch it and record it in her memory. The hills above the town, still green and hazy, were a promise of freshness that made her smile again.
The boy from the Robin saw her bags unloaded and another boy, from the house where she was to stay, was there to greet her. “Senhor Burnett?” he asked, looking not at her face but at her bags. “You are to come.” He led her through the crowd to a waiting carriage, then leapt up behind her. “Your bags, they come,” he told her very earnestly before the driver picked up the reins and began to maneuver them through the chaotic traffic of the port.
The driver was a man of around fifty, his face creased by the sun into a smile. Did he look at her too carefully? Was there a flash of curiosity in his eyes as he nodded his greeting? Did anyone note the slimness of her figure? She didn’t care. She simply didn’t care. She was busy taking in a whole new world.
As they left the waterfront, the driver began to point out sights in broken words of English. “Igreja,” he told her. “Church. Santa Clara.” Following the line of his arm, she glimpsed roofs and a tower between trees and then the carriage moved forward and the sight was lost. As they drew away from the sea, buildings became fewer and she was lost in the lush greenery of an unfamiliar landscape. There seemed to be trees everywhere of every kind, and above them, clearer now, she could see the mountains. With a surge of exhilaration she realized that tomorrow she could walk among them. It seemed miraculous.
This daze of wonder and excitement helped her through the arrival at the English house where she was to stay. Long before they had reached the house, the road had become rutted and uneven, and she was alarmed when the driver pulled sharply off it, down a narrower track to where a neat stone villa stood shaded by trees. In front of it a plump woman was waiting, wiping her hands on her apron, before bobbing a quick salute and advancing with a smile. This was Mrs. Drake, the widow of a Bristol wine agent, her hostess during her stay on the island. Still wiping her hands, Mrs. Drake launched into a complicated speech of welcome as the carriage drew to a halt. When she saw the face of the figure that was handed down to greet her, she seemed to pause for a moment.
BANKS’S DECISION to withdraw from Cook’s expedition caused a sensation. On hearing it, his entire party—Solander, Zoffany, and the rest—had little alternative but to stand down, too. What had promised to become the greatest scientific expedition ever mounted was suddenly reduced to a series of empty berths. Not even the hasty recruitment of a replacement naturalist named Forster and his son, an artist, was sufficient to disguise the fact that things had changed considerably from the original conception. To Banks’s critics it was confirmation of something they had begun to maintain—that Banks was overconfident in his opinions and had too little respect for his seniors. For his friends it was baffling. They knew Banks could be volatile, but they also knew of his determination and ambition, of the towering hopes he had for the voyage of the Resolution. It seemed inexplicable that he would sacrifice it entirely over a few feet of cabin space. Even if the issue had become a matter of pride, it seemed unlike him to be so deadly inflexible. For all of those who were due to go with him, the decision meant the loss of valuable future income, and for many there was the prospect of considerable financial loss. They met in low-voiced groups and shook their heads.
They were equally confused by Banks’s reaction to his own decision. They had expected him to be defiant, resilient, full of alternative schemes. The stores and equipment were all assembled and ready to go. Surely something could yet be salvaged? Instead Banks seemed lifeless and enervated. He was bitter toward the Admiralty and vengeful toward the Navy Board, but at all other times he seemed subdued and detached. As his associates waited for him to outline a plan for the future of his party, he seemed reluctant to think about alternatives.
Eventually it was Solander who challenged him and insisted that he act. He found Banks in the study at New Burlington Street, looking silently out of the window. It was only by stubborn persistence that Solander persuaded him to pay attention.
“Come, Joseph, these last weeks have seen great setbacks to your plans, but it is unbecoming to let them affect you so. The South Seas are not the only places of interest in the world. You have an expedition ready to depart, your equipment assembled at considerable expense. Many of your friends have made a great sacrifice to stand beside you in this matter. They are asking what you intend to do.”
“Do?” The word seemed to puzzle him.
“For instance, Wainwright tells me of a ship available to us bound for the West Indies. There is a great deal of work still to be done in collecting and identifying the flora and fauna there. You might consider that a possibility.”
“The West Indies?” Banks looked away as if unable to concentrate on his friend’s words. “No, it’s not to be thought of. For it to be of any value, we would be away a year.”
“We had planned to be away three.”
“I’m sorry, Solander, it’s out of the question.”
Solander paused and for a moment seemed at a loss.
“The Royal Society will think it most surprising if after all your promises, and with a party assembled, you choose to do nothing at all.”
Banks turned and looked at him. “The Royal Society be damned. I shall do as I please.”
Solander tried another tack. “Inactivity at this time is going to invite a great deal of speculation. A lot of people will wonder what it is that keeps you here, what is more important to you than the increase in knowledge which you have made such a public show of advocating.”
The two men watched eac
h other for a moment. Eventually Solander continued. “The important thing is to do something, Joseph. You have to prove that this dispute with the Admiralty is their loss, not yours. To divert the resources you have assembled into an expedition of your own will underline your own seriousness.”
Banks nodded slowly. “Yes, I can see that. Even so…”
“Such an expedition need not be a long one. I can understand that there may be matters here that require your attention. Perhaps just a few months away.”
“You have somewhere in mind?”
“If a short expedition is the thing, one could do worse than Iceland. It’s a comparatively short voyage, yet the island still demands considerable study. It would be a fitting object for your attentions.”
Banks turned back to the window. “When would we depart?”
“As soon as we could. The Icelandic winter arrives early. We should try to move things along as quickly as we can.”
Banks began to calculate. It would take perhaps twenty days for his letter to reach Madeira. What would she do then? She would have to make arrangements, book a passage back to England. Then another twenty days before she could reach London. He must be waiting for her on her arrival. He must, or never look her in the eye again.
He turned back to Solander. “Two months,” he said.
“Impossible. Our supplies are ready now. If we wait two months we may as well not go at all. There are men here who have given up the opportunity of a lifetime out of loyalty to you. You have a duty to them, Joseph.”
Banks flinched at the word.
“Besides,” Solander continued, “it will smack of vacillation to delay that long, and you must avoid that at all costs. If we go now, quickly, we can be back in three months’ time. Whatever business it is that has arisen to unsettle you will have to wait that extra month or you will fail the friends who have trusted you. On my honor, you have no choice.”
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