The Conjurer's Bird

by Martin Davies

  “In an academic sense. But that didn’t do the frogs much good.” I paused for a moment, not sure how much else to say. “I suppose that’s when things began to go wrong between me and Gabriella. We’d met out there, you know. We ended up working together, setting up rain-forest reserves. But after the frogs I began to wonder if we’d got it all wrong. All we were doing was treating the symptoms. The disease was so much bigger—population growth, consumer demand, that sort of thing. I began to tell people that reserves weren’t the solution at all; they were just Band-Aids for our consciences. We should have been putting all that funding into tackling the causes.”

  Katya was still looking at me from under her fringe of hair. One hand held her coat closed at her neck, the other was hugged tight around her body.

  “And that’s why you two fell out? Weren’t you really on the same side?”

  “It wasn’t only that. There were other things…” I thought of saying more, but I was too slow or too shy, or too out of practice. “There always are, aren’t there?” I concluded lamely. “Anyway, we went our separate ways. Gabby stayed in the rain forest and I set off with my notebooks to track down the surviving remains of all the birds that we’d already lost. I figured that if we were going to make things extinct, we owed it to the future to preserve the evidence, to show what they’d been like.” I smiled at her. “I was a bit manic really. It was a difficult time. After a couple of years I calmed down and came back here to sort myself out. It was all a long time ago now. And another country.”

  I smiled a little ruefully and then, before Katya could reply, the rain came on again and the wipers put an end to conversation.

  A substantial bite had already been taken out of lunchtime by the time we found our way into the center of Stamford. However, still fired with optimism, we found a pub near the station with a sign that read BAR MEALS, SNACKS, BED AND BREAKFAST. The woman in the pub seemed mildly surprised when we asked for two rooms, but it was hard to tell if that was speculation about our relationship or just astonishment that anyone wanted to stay there at all. Leaving our bags packed, we found a café for lunch and sat down to do some planning. Before eating I rang the university and told them where they could contact me in case Gabby tried to get in touch.

  Still buoyed by a flood tide of confidence and by two strong cups of coffee, we agreed to split up. Katya would try the local records office while I’d see if the tourist information office could point us toward the Old Manor. It was at the tourist office that things first began to look a bit more difficult. It was the sort of place I’d expected—lots of fake pine and the smell of polish and cheap carpet. Along one wall was the usual rack of leaflets and brochures, so I started there, half expecting to find the one I wanted straightaway. When my browsing failed to turn up anything useful, I waited politely until a would-be rail traveler finished monopolizing the woman behind the counter. She looked up and caught my eye as he let the door bang behind him.

  “I’m not supposed to do trains,” she said with a sad smile. “I was only trying to help.”

  She stopped smiling when I told her I was looking for a place called the Old Manor. Instead she looked at me as if I were trying to play some sort of trick.

  “What is all this?” she asked. “I had someone in here a couple of days ago asking about just the same place.”

  I felt a little stir of anxiety.

  “And is that unusual?”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be,” she replied, still a little wary, “except I’m not sure it exists.”

  I don’t know what disappointment she saw in my face, but it was enough to persuade her to tell me about the previous visitor. She illustrated her story with a succession of leaflets, and soon I was holding a dozen different pieces of advertising for old houses in the surrounding area.

  “This one seemed the best bet,” she told me, indicating one of them. “The Old Grange. Tudor, mostly. It’s just north of here.”

  I nodded politely. “And was this visitor a tall man? A Scandinavian?” I asked, pretty sure of the answer.

  “No, not at all,” she replied, looking at me strangely again. “He was an American. Very polite. Little round glasses. Getting on a bit. Now, are you going to tell me what all this is about?”

  I explained I was trying to trace a family named Ainsby, who had lived in the area in the early 1900s. The name didn’t ring any bells with her, but she told me how to find the Records Office. Which, she said, was the same thing she’d told the polite American.

  The rain continued most of the day, with only brief pauses to get its breath back. At six o’clock that evening Katya and I retreated to the bar at the Station Tavern. It looked a lot better after dark, with a gas-flame fire and lots of small red lampshades that made it harder to see the marks on the walls. But it was gloriously warm after the cold rain of a Lincolnshire evening and we even risked ordering food at the bar, then retired to the corner by the fire with a large glass of red wine and a pint of something dark and local.

  The Records Office had told Katya what I’d already begun to fear. There was no trace of any family called Ainsby in or around Stamford in 1914 or, as far as they could see, at any other time. It had taken Katya three hours and the urging of two different librarians to accept the fact. We had drawn the most emphatically featureless blank imaginable.

  Even so, we ate our meal quite happily, speculating furiously and trying to make things add up. Did this mean the letter we’d been sent was a fake? Neither of us wanted to believe that. Apart from Hans Michaels’s drawing, it was the only clue we had. We decided to try again the next day, to dig a little deeper. After that we suddenly grew a little awkward with each other, and when Katya opted for an early night I stayed behind for another pint. I was contemplating the possibility of a third when an unpleasant breath of cold air made me look up. A small, round man had come into the pub. Judging from the state of his raincoat, the weather outside was getting worse. The bar of the Station Tavern was beginning to seem a better place by the minute, and next to me the gas fire was still blazing away with a heartwarming hiss. I took out the collection of leaflets from the tourist office and spread them across the table.

  “No good, any of them,” said an American voice above me. The newcomer had made his way over to my table, where he was flapping the water off the sides of his coat.

  “I’m sorry?” I replied, as coldly as a man can when he’s just been caught reading a leaflet titled “The Pixie Glen and Elves’ Grotto, Fairbank.”

  “None of them is the place you’re looking for,” he replied, discarding his coat onto a neighboring stool. “You’re Fitzgerald,” he added. “Mind if I join you?”

  He was already pulling up a chair. The removal of his coat revealed a three-piece wool suit of the sort worn by country doctors in the 1930s. His hair was gray and slightly curly, and he wore thick glasses in old-fashioned frames. He looked absurdly un-American.

  “The name’s Potts,” he said, holding out his hand. “I called the university and they told me I’d find you here. I’m staying at the George on the High Street,” he added.

  While I was still registering this, he reached into a pocket and pulled out a pile of leaflets similar to my own. These he began to count out onto the table with a twinkle in his eye.

  “The Old Grange? No. Hawsley Manor? No. Thurley Hall? Definitely not. Radnors? Jeez, that was the place that makes cheese. No way. Pulkington Hall? No. As for the Pixie Glen place”—he gave a shudder—“well, you can go there if you like, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  I dropped my leaflets on top of his.

  “I think you’d better start again. Who are you?”

  “I’m Potts.” He practically winked at me, like an uncle sharing a secret. “I guess I’m here for the same reason you are.”

  “You’re looking for a lost bird?”

  “That’s the one.” He reached into his jacket and handed me a card. It didn’t give much away.

  “You’re an art dea
ler?” I asked him, looking at him more carefully.

  He pursed his lips as if to blow the idea away. “Not exactly. But you could say that art dealers are my business. I find the things they want to sell. Looking for a lost Van Dyck? Want a first-edition Ulysses? I’m your man.”

  I gave him back his card.

  “Isn’t this a little outside your normal line of work?”

  “Oh, I prefer to call it a natural diversification. After all, you could say taxidermy is just a continuation of sculpture by other means.”

  “So you know someone who wants to buy the Ulieta bird.”

  Potts looked pained. “Such directness, Mr. Fitzgerald. Let’s just say that I’m very interested in finding it. And people seem to think you’re the best person to help. I phoned you a few times in the last few days, but I guess you were always out.”

  I studied his face, not sure what to make of him.

  “So what are you doing here in Stamford? Not just looking for me, surely?”

  He reached into his pocket again and pulled out a folded piece of paper.

  “You’ve seen this?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I lied, recognizing instantly the photocopied sheet he placed in front of me. It was another copy of John Ainsby’s letter.

  “Of course you have.” He leaned back and placed the letter neatly in front of him. “I sent it to you myself.”

  I admit that took me by surprise, and my face must have shown it.

  “Who did you think sent it, Mr. Fitzgerald? Karl Anderson?”

  “No. Well, I mean…”

  He chuckled softly to himself. “Well, it’s Anderson’s letter, all right. This is what brought him over here in a hurry to try to find the thing.”

  “He told me he was coming over anyway. Something to do with botanical paintings. The Ulieta bird is just a sideline to him.”

  Potts was still smiling affably, but I felt that he was studying me carefully from behind his glasses.

  “He told you that, did he? Well, who’s to say?” And with that he took his glasses off and began to polish them on his waistcoat, apparently with no further interest in Anderson and his motives. But I couldn’t let him stop there.

  “I’m sorry, this doesn’t make sense. Why would you send me that letter?”

  He shrugged in a way that suggested the answer was obvious.

  “I thought I’d put it under your nose to see what happened. You’re the expert, Mr. Fitzgerald. And I’m told that finding something like this would mean a lot to you. So I figured that when you saw John Ainsby’s letter, either you’d ignore it, in which case I’d know it’s a dead end, or you’d come running up here, in which case we might be onto something. And here you are.”

  He was clearly a man who liked to talk. As he warmed up in front of the fire, and with no prompting from me, he began to tell me a lot more about the Ainsby letter. Apparently Anderson had been put onto it by an academic doing research into the First World War. Extinct birds may not have been Anderson’s main area of expertise, but he knew about the Ulieta bird, and he grasped the letter’s significance at once. His first step was to take a copy to Ted Staest, and the two men came to some sort of agreement about the bird’s value—though exactly what they agreed was something Potts seemed rather vague about. It wasn’t until rumors about the bird began to leak out that Potts got hold of his own copy of the letter.

  “Not through official channels, you understand, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

  “You mean you bribed someone?”

  He looked offended. “Please, Mr. Fitzgerald, there’s no need for us to go into the details. Suffice it to say that I have a copy. And now, so do you.”

  He indicated the piece of paper in front of him. “It’s an intriguing letter, isn’t it, Mr. Fitzgerald? The references to Cook and Banks, the unique specimen. And of course it’s addressed to Lincolnshire, Banks’s own county. All very promising. There’s one bit, though—‘I don’t want to return and find that young Vulpes of yours has snatched it from my grasp.’ What do you make of that? A rival for the bird?”

  I shrugged. “Vulpes means fox, so I expect he means someone cunning and a bit predatory. The way he uses it sounds affectionate, though, doesn’t it? I wondered if it was a suitor of hers—someone prowling around while her brother’s away.”

  “A suitor. A lover…” He played with the idea. “Yes, I can see that. Interesting…” Behind his glasses, his eyes seemed to cloud with thought, but a second later his unflappable exterior was back in place and he was telling me how the Ainsby letter had brought him first to London and then to Stamford. But in Stamford he’d drawn a blank. No trace of the Ainsbys, no trace of the Old Manor, no stuffed bird. No trace of Anderson, either.

  “That was beginning to worry me most,” he confided. “I figured if I wasn’t where Anderson was, I was in the wrong place. Then on my fourth day here I noticed a guy in the George.” He took a card from his wallet. Edward Smith, Discretion Guaranteed, 63 North Hill Road, London N17.

  “This guy Smith is working for Anderson. He admitted it quickly enough when pressed. He has a pretty confident air about him. Seemed to be hinting it was pretty much all over. Even so, I was happier once I’d found him. I’d be happier still if I knew where Anderson was.”

  “What’s Smith actually doing?” I asked.

  Potts shrugged. “Goes out early, comes back late. Takes his car. I tried tailing him one day but he must have spotted me. We drove around the county for six and a half hours. Jeez, the roads here are really something, you know that?”

  He sat back in his seat and looked at me pleasantly.

  “You know, if it wasn’t for noticing Smith, I’d have quit by now—if there’s anything here to find, I can’t find it, and the weather stinks. So that’s where you come in. Listen, we may as well be straight with each other.” He leaned forward, almost self-consciously conspiratorial. “You’re right that this isn’t my line, Mr. Fitzgerald. But I’m very, very keen to find that bird before Anderson does. Here’s the deal. You find me that bird and we can go to Staest together. You can deal with him directly. All I ask is a small cut, say five percent. Call it an introduction fee, if you like.”

  It was then I began to understand the real value of Potts’s avuncular demeanor. For the next twenty minutes or so, very gently and with the greatest politeness, he interrogated me about the whereabouts of the Ulieta bird. Of course, it shouldn’t have taken him half that long, but, like Anderson, he seemed reluctant to believe how little I knew. Even my empty glass wasn’t enough to stop the questions, until finally I insisted on going to the bar to buy myself another pint. He declined a drink himself, and when I came back he was squeezing himself into his raincoat. He paused to shake my hand.

  “Remember what I’ve said tonight, Mr. Fitzgerald. My job here is to find that bird before Anderson. But if you get to it before either of us, remember that I’ll be happy to help you get the best price for it.”

  When he’d gone, I drank my pint in silence, feeling sure there was something going on that I wasn’t quite grasping. Potts seemed eager enough to get hold of the bird, but, like Anderson, he didn’t seem too bothered about making money out of it. Was this really all about pleasing Ted Staest? How much is the goodwill of a Canadian billionaire worth? Or was that the wrong tack? Was the actual value of the bird so immense that they were happy to let me name my price, knowing that I’d never dream up a value even close to the real one? I examined that theory for a while and then discarded it. There was no way the bird could be worth that much. At least not unless this DNA business was a lot more lucrative than I imagined.

  In front of me on the table were the two sets of tourist leaflets, Potts’s and mine. Eventually I picked them up and began to go through them again. After all, I had no other clues to follow.

  It was only much later, when I tried to put the leaflets back in my pocket, that I found the photocopies I’d made for Katya at the Natural History Museum, the two bits of paper about Joseph
Banks’s mistress. I looked around. The bar was still warm and still serving. It seemed a shame to go to bed. So I settled down again and started to read them properly for the first time.

  DEATH SEEMED to stalk the Endeavour when she finally turned for home. After leaving Batavia the air seemed full of fever and they lost men almost daily. Banks himself was almost among them, and Solander’s health also suffered. Twenty-three men died between Batavia and the Cape; by the time the Endeavour reached Atlantic waters, Parkinson, Monkhouse, and Molineux were all dead and about a third of the crew with them. The survivors turned their faces north and hoped for home.

  But the last days of a journey can be the hardest. At sea every one of them had an order to live by, and clear duties to perform. They knew their routine and their orders and at all times they had a destination ahead of them. With the approach of land these certainties began to dissolve, and for many the return would be a hard one. As the Channel drew nearer, men paused in their work to scan the horizon. Banks was one of them. He knew even then, long before they arrived in London, that their return would be momentous. They had seen and recorded things beyond the imaginations of the people who had sent them. He brought back with him a collection—specimens, plants, and artifacts—that was unlike anything ever seen before. He was too young not to enjoy the anticipation of their triumph. And too human not to be a little changed by it.

  Nevertheless, he was nervous and found himself envying Cook. Banks knew that the Yorkshireman’s reputation was made, and he found that he envied him his wife at home and his sturdy sense of belonging. For himself, Banks discovered that the aspects of home he had cherished in the South Seas began to seem subtly different as he edged nearer to the reality.

  He found it easy to imagine himself in the salons of London, recounting his voyage and meeting the great philosophers of the day on equal terms. It was perhaps an image he had carried with him all along, hidden deep so that not even he could look at it until he was sure of success. But when he tried to imagine Harriet with him in that world, the picture he formed would begin to fade. She seemed to him to sit uneasily beside those men of serious science, and he was ashamed to find that when he remembered her, instead of recalling her face, he found his pulse quickening at the recollection of a neck as smooth as pale china, of his fingertips trailing gently down the line of soft, bare shoulders. These images returned to him over and over, as he tried instead to remember her voice or her smile. Disconcerted, he swept such thoughts away until the time came when he would meet her in person.