The Hunger Trace

by Edward Hogan

  Louisa saw herself as if from the outside. She felt, as she often did, disconnected from reality and consequence. What did it matter what she said?

  ‘I think you need to get away from all this,’ Louisa said. ‘I think that’s what you need to do.’

  Cynthia was gone by Christmas. In public they cited ‘mutual distance’, a strange phrase. Most people suspected that she could not handle life at the park. The divorce was amicable because David bowed easily to her demands, gave her everything she wanted and took everything she didn’t. Despite their low opinion of her maternal attributes, the villagers were stunned that Christopher remained on the hill. Such a thing was unheard of. Even Louisa thought that Cynthia would take the boy.

  News came back, many years later, that Cynthia had done well on her second chance. She had kicked the drink. According to Bill Wicks she had even ‘got herself therapised’ and was an all-round calmer woman. David raised his glass to the news, said he didn’t even mind paying for such a philanthropic act. ‘Think of all the bartenders, waiters, shop assistants and service staff I’ve saved from her wrath,’ he said.

  Nothing to do with me, Louisa thought, happy to have another little secret.

  When Cynthia left, Louisa felt the sort of manic joy sometimes associated with grief. Since living on Drum Hill, she had had several half-hearted affairs, mainly in an attempt to make David jealous. Now, she finally saw an opening.

  On New Year’s Eve, she was done up to dine at the country club. She knew David would be there. She wore a two-tone blue dress, darker and more sophisticated than the one she had worn to the Pony Club Ball all those years before.

  Despite the schedule she had been devising for weeks, Louisa froze in the afternoon and ended up rushing her preparations. At the last moment, she remembered that she had not yet fed her young steppe eagle, Iroquois. She struggled outside on heels, and cast Iroquois into the wind. Iroquois did not come down on the meat she held, but on the exposed flesh of Louisa’s forearm. She locked her claws into the soft underside, and hung upside down before flying over the house.

  Louisa was bemused. Such attacks were rare, and it was rarer still that a talon broke the skin. Perhaps the shimmer of her bracelet had momentarily aroused the memory of light in a vermin eye. ‘Surely I don’t look that bad in a dress,’ she said, when Iroquois eventually came to the fist. ‘You’re probably right,’ she said, applying pressure to the puncture marks, and walking back to the weighing room. ‘Mutton.’

  She may have been in shock. The moonless evening did not help matters. She dressed her wounds absent-mindedly and drove to the country club through the dark lanes.

  As soon as she stepped into the reception area, she knew the night was over. The concierge stooped as if to catch a dropping glass, and the other guests turned. In the poor light of the weighing room she had mistaken the blood, which had sprayed quite liberally from the original penetrations, for the darker shades of her two-tone dress. Now, standing beneath the bright lanterns of the club, it was quite clear that Iroquois had hit a vein. Blood speckled her cleavage. It had leaked through the bandage and dripped onto her lap while she was driving.

  The guests were called to the tables. David, thankfully, had already taken his seat, out of sight. Louisa stood in the lobby for a moment, alone but for the receptionist, who busied herself with papers. ‘That’ll teach me to dress up,’ Louisa said, spinning on her short heel.

  * * *

  A few months later, Louisa’s father called. ‘I’ve just spoken to David Bryant,’ he said, uttering the words with a certain ceremony. She closed her eyes, and sat down. After all these years.

  ‘What did he say?’ she asked, looking at her glove splayed on the kitchen table. She imagined the words, not for the first time: your hand. He wants your hand.

  ‘He said he shot that boy,’ her father said. ‘Not you.’

  Louisa waited for the plates of her mind to shift. When she failed to respond, her father continued. ‘He said he was never brave enough to confess. That you made a massive sacrifice. Now that your life is ruined, of course, he’s come forward, which is big of him. He’s told Lawrence, too. Nice little boost for a widower on his deathbed. Hello?’

  Louisa cleared her throat, to indicate her continued presence.

  ‘When he said it, I thought, yes, I know. Typical me, you’re probably thinking. Typical know-it-all Daddy. But there you have it. If you took the blame to spite me, it worked, I suppose. And if you did it to test me, I failed. Either way it’s been a bloody waste, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Louisa, to her father’s surprise.

  She went straight to David, confronted him in his office. ‘You’ve made a liar of me,’ she told him.

  He sucked in his lips, as if he knew this was coming. ‘I told them what you did for me,’ he said. ‘How amazing you were. I couldn’t get straight with myself, Louisa. I couldn’t have gone on with it any longer.’

  ‘I could,’ she said.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but they heard Christopher running through the hallway towards them. Louisa saw David smile, saw the new freedom in him, as he turned to welcome the boy.

  It was as though they had one vial of strength between them, and they could not share it equally. It was the boy who completed David’s recovery. Philip Cassidy stepped up his hours on the park, David committed himself to looking after Christopher, and they managed. He took single-parenthood on with humour and imagination. Louisa retreated, feeling the sharp stab of her redundancy.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Two weeks after she had called Adam, Maggie was driving towards Detton when she spotted Louisa’s van in the car park of the Strutt Arms. The kidney colour was difficult to miss. Maggie pulled in beside it. She could hear the weir crashing below, and see the spume rolling in the late afternoon darkness.

  The Strutt was a chain pub, and a good deal brighter than the White Hart. Through the big glass windows Maggie could see young families eating at the tables, and a group of boys gathered at the fruit machine. There were people, everywhere, in configurations she recognised from another life. And yet she was only four miles from the lonely house on the hill. She got out of the Land Rover and crossed the car park.

  As she passed the Transit, Maggie saw Louisa leaning against the door. Louisa was smiling ruefully, her arms folded. When she saw Maggie approaching, Louisa’s expression changed considerably. She became rigid, and her face began to flush.

  ‘Hey!’ Maggie said. ‘I saw the van, so I pulled in.’ She turned to Louisa’s companion – she hadn’t registered him at first, nor how strange it was for Louisa to have company. ‘Oh, God,’ Maggie said, and gave a startled laugh. ‘Hi. Hello.’

  ‘Alright,’ said Adam.

  Maggie turned to Louisa and tried to act naturally. ‘So, how’s things?’

  ‘Fine,’ Louisa said.

  There was a silence.

  ‘I’ve got to be off,’ Adam said. He leaned towards Louisa and then stopped, put a hand on her arm.

  ‘See you,’ Maggie said.

  He nodded and strode off to his car. Maggie waited until he had driven past, and then turned back to Louisa with a wide-eyed smile. She noticed that Louisa was wearing mascara.

  ‘How’s Diamond?’ Maggie said.

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘Hey listen, I hope I wasn’t intruding on you and . . .’

  Louisa let the silence continue for a moment. ‘You know who he is,’ Louisa said eventually, with some irritation.

  ‘What, he told you we . . . ? I didn’t think he was supposed to talk about other . . .’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘Well. It was a while ago, really,’ Maggie said, choosing not to count the more recent brief visit. She smiled mischievously, but when she saw Louisa’s reaction – a few stern deep breaths – she reined in the conspiratorial good cheer. ‘Lou, I hope you don’t feel weird about it. I certainly don’t. These kind of services—’

  ‘Do we have to talk ab
out this?’ Louisa said. ‘I mean, are you finished with this bloody talk? I know exactly what you’re thinking because everything’s about sex for you, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wish,’ said Maggie. ‘Look, Louisa, it’s okay. It’s nothing to be . . . you’re a woman, you’ve got needs.’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ Louisa said. ‘It’s not like that. You don’t know anything about me and him. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I wish you’d mind your own bloody business.’

  Louisa got into her van, and slammed the door. Maggie stepped back and waited. Louisa reversed and then drove away, leaving Maggie alone with the sibilance of the weir.

  After a moment, Maggie went back to the Land Rover. Climbing in, she remembered Adam’s face when he had come to the house last week. He had looked disapproving, almost repulsed. Maggie had been drunk but surely such a situation was nothing new to a man like him. So the question loomed: why was he unable to sleep with Maggie, when he was clearly capable of keeping his appointment with Louisa? Maggie studied her own face in the rear-view mirror. She had not been sleeping, and tender patches of dark skin swelled beneath each eye. The radio told of flash floods in the North-East; a man last seen alive trying to cross a submerged car park had washed up a day later by the cathedral five miles away. The weather was heading south.

  She turned off towards Drum Hill, thinking of Louisa’s smirk and slouch by the van. In the moment before she had seen Maggie, she had looked so at ease. It had taken a long time for Louisa to relax into such a posture, and Maggie knew she could take some of the credit. She tried to feel good about that.

  * * *

  That night, Louisa tried her best to pick a fight with Adam. They dined in a huge, virtually empty curry house on a back road out of town. The heavy pink curtains remained open, leaving the vast night sky visible.

  ‘I’m sick of hiding out in holes like this,’ she said, looking at the ceiling. ‘We’re like lepers.’

  ‘You suggested the place. God knows I’ve got nothing left to hide. Why don’t we go on back to Detton? Eh? The White Hart,’ said Adam, leaning back in his chair.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said.

  ‘I’m serious,’ Adam said, smiling. ‘I mean, you’re not ashamed of me, are you?’

  ‘You know that’s got nothing to do with it,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Besides. There’s no point sneaking around, now.’

  Louisa looked up from her food. ‘Now what? What’s changed?’

  ‘Well. Your neighbour knows.’

  ‘You think she was the only person I was keeping it from?’ Louisa said.

  ‘Yes,’ Adam said.

  ‘How dare you?’ Louisa said, but she lacked conviction. She thought of Maggie’s look of bewilderment outside the Strutt.

  ‘She was always going to find out eventually, wasn’t she?’ Adam said.

  ‘Only because she’s always prying,’ Louisa said.

  Adam laughed. ‘She pulled in to the pub because she saw your van, and she wanted to see you. It’s probably because she likes you or something.’

  ‘Why are you sticking up for her?’

  ‘I’m not. There’s no need to. She hasn’t done anything wrong. What’s she done wrong?’

  ‘All these questions she asks,’ Louisa said, trying to stoke the memories of earlier in the day. ‘She doesn’t know what’s going on between you and me. She thinks she does but she doesn’t.’

  ‘And why doesn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, it’s my fault is it?’ Louisa drained her lager and threw down her pink napkin.

  ‘Why does it have to be someone’s fault?’ Adam said. ‘Why is it all about vendettas for you? It’s not the mafia. You both live up there on that hill and it seems a bloody shame to do so alone. For both of you. Don’t you want to be happy?’

  She turned away and looked out of the window.

  The next morning Louisa woke to the percolating sound of rain. She could not remember the last dry day; the sleeves of her coat were constantly damp inside. When the shower subsided, she dressed, tied beef to the lure and went out to fly Diamond. He was reluctant in the wet, and she kept the session short. She stood for a while with him on her fist. He shook his feathers and looked to the sky.

  She remembered the day that Roy Ogden – of all people – had brought Diamond to her. Louisa had been in her early thirties. Maggie’s age. It was the first time she had seen Ogden since that night in his underground garage. Eighteen years had passed. He had tried to send messages through Nelly and Baz, but she cut them off as soon as they mentioned his name. Until Ogden arrived at her house, Louisa had not considered the reality of the years gone by – it was just a smooth stretch of bitterness for her. But there he was, an old man. He wore a long sports coat bought from the market and he carried a box.

  ‘What do you want?’ she said, stepping out of her cottage and closing the door behind her.

  ‘Nothing. But before you boot me off your property, I’ve got a hawk for you.’

  She looked down at the box, and then away, but she could not resist. She opened it, and – with some difficulty – took out a first season tiercel peregrine in terrible condition. Louisa examined him: swollen feet, fed-up, stunted feathers, the works. She shot a mean glance at Ogden, who looked down. ‘Did you find this falcon?’ she asked.

  ‘No. He’s mine. Pure perry.’

  ‘You mean you let him get like this?’

  Ogden winced. ‘I’ve not the puff for him any more. I can barely walk dog.’

  ‘You should have brought him in earlier,’ she said.

  ‘Aye. Happen I should,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to accept though. He had me bound, did Diamond. Right bound.’

  Ogden stood, head bowed, as if waiting.

  ‘Okay. I’ve said I’ll take him,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Right. Ta.’

  Still he did not leave. ‘What do you want, money? Here.’ She took a few notes from her pocket.

  ‘I don’t want none of that,’ Ogden said, meeting her eye. ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘Cheerio.’

  She watched him hobble away. He left the box.

  Later that day she gave the bird a thorough health check, coped the beak, and filed the talons. So, she thought, Oggie had become the thing he most despised – a neglectful falconer. It was hardly surprising – hadn’t he neglected her when she most needed him?

  One thing was certain: Diamond’s story was written on his feathers – nothing sentimental or pretentious about that claim. When a falcon is undernourished, the feathers cannot grow properly. A fault line appears, even if the bird is fed again. The fault is called a hunger trace. Louisa could calculate, from the growth of the feathers, how long Oggie had neglected Diamond for. She was furious with him.

  A few weeks later, she saw the notice in the newspaper. Shirland R. Ogden, 1928–1994. Known as Roy. Finally at peace after a long and painful illness. The words stretched back over their last meeting. His physical appearance came rushing back to her. He had looked twenty years older than he should have. His skin had darkened, especially around the eyes, and she could see in her memory the rigging of his neck as it fed down into his coat, the papery palpitations of baggy skin. She recalled now that his moustache had gone, revealing the crooked line of his lip.

  She put down the newspaper and went out to the weathering, took Diamond to the weighing room. In that cold white space she saw the hunger traces for what they really were – the flaring of Roy Ogden’s illness, recorded on his bird, every half-grown feather a mark of his decline. Diamond had not eaten because Oggie had not eaten; Diamond had not flown because Oggie could not rise from his bed.

  She sewed the moulted feathers of her other peregrines into Diamond’s faults. She treated his bumblefoot with Preparation H. It was the last time she would share a bottle of anything until Maggie visited, a decade and a half later, with a litre of scrumpy.

  Diamond had always been dominated by his body – its wild needs and marvels. The falcon with its leg
snapped in half can breathe through the hollow bone. Its hormones descend before the mind can catch up. A peregrine will kill a bird in the morning and nudge it, confused, until the blood starts to flow. Louisa first noticed that with Diamond. It was as though there was another living thing within him, innocent of the body and its will. Louisa had heard people make such remarks about animals before, and always thought it to be bullshit.

  If Diamond was helpless before his desires, they made him do the most incredible things. He gave Louisa the best flights of her career, the ancient whistle of his stoops arriving before his forked frozen self. He had rare wisdom: most peregrines will chase grouse into cover, allowing the quarry to escape while the falcon becomes entangled in the bush. When Diamond put a grouse into the bracken, he pulled up to his pitch, as though borne by water, thousands of feet in the air, and waited for the reflush, waited for Louisa, while the rain of his killing stink settled on the cover like a rumour.

  Louisa could feel what he was doing even when she could not see him. That penitent second in the thin atmosphere before he fell backwards: suicidal, cannibalistic, self-enveloping and hungry, the transparent membrane slipping horizontally to sheath the giant eyes against the debris.

  Moments later she would sit beside him with the kill, dig out the tiny heart and feed him the rich meat, which he loved.

  Looking at him, now, the missing talon, the weak leg bones, the grey abrasions on the feet, she knew she would have to act fast to preserve his qualities for another generation. That’s where Caroline was supposed to come in. It would be another year or so before Caroline could breed, and Louisa had already designed the dual chamber with the viewing window so the two birds could get to know each other. Caroline would be bigger than Diamond by then. If left together without protection before a relationship had developed, she might try to kill him. Eventually, if everything went well, he would court her by plucking a small bird and leaving it at the window.

  These plans for the expensive dual skylight breeding chamber, with its nesting sites and courting spaces, were sketched on the back of a utility bill Louisa could not pay. Any thoughts she might have had about pooling finances with Maggie were now forgotten.