The Conjurer's Bird

by Martin Davies

  “Of course, Miss Brown. So it shall be.” He touched the curl of loose hair. “I like the name for you.”

  She moved his hand away from her cheek and returned it to his side.

  “The other thing is harder for you. Someday you will marry…”

  “Why should I?”

  “You will. You will have to. I won’t remain as an encumbrance in your life when that happens. I have my pride. When the time comes that you no longer hold me the way you held me tonight, then I will take my leave and go.”

  “It will not come. But of course you should be free to leave whatever happens. I would not wish you caged. I shall make sure you have the means to act as you choose.”

  “And you will let me go? You will not pursue me, whatever your feelings?”

  “I begin to think you plan to abandon me.”

  “Perhaps,” she replied quietly. “If there must come a time of parting, then I want to prepare myself. That way it will hurt less. I have already hurt one man by leaving him; you encouraged me in that, urged me to put my own life to the fore. Perhaps one day one of us may have to apply that reasoning again.”

  “Ssssh,” he said, and touched her lips very softly with the tip of his finger. Then, when she tried to speak again, he kissed her.

  FROM THE window she watched him step into the darkness, his stride as light as a boy’s. Then she turned back to where Martha was waiting for her.

  “Are you all right, miss?”

  She blushed. “Yes, Martha. Very right.”

  “He’s a very charming young man, miss.”

  “He’s more than that. When he talks about what he might do with the world, he has more new ideas in ten minutes than in all those books of my father’s combined.”

  “That’s right, miss, it’s his ideas you like. It seems we’ll be in this house for a while, then.”

  “Yes, we’ll be staying here for now, Martha.”

  “It’s no odds to me.”

  “Is it not?” She hesitated, not sure what she wanted to say. “There’ll be a time when we go back, Martha. To Lincolnshire. You know that?”

  Martha looked up to the window, the direction of Banks’s departure.

  “Yes, I know that, miss. And things will turn out right. Even then.”

  That night she sat up until Martha had gone to bed, waiting so that she could go to her room alone. There she found everything just as she had left it, the air warm and scented, the lamp burning low, the bedclothes plowed into wild furrows. As she undressed she let herself remember every moment and movement that had passed between them there, and when she finally lay under the sheets, she found the scent of his body still lingered against hers.

  BANKS TRAVELED back to London alive with excitement. He felt he had stumbled on something he had never imagined, someone who asked the questions he needed to answer and knew better than he whether his answers were true. And now he found…He blushed to himself as he thought of how she had been with him that night, so alive and loving and challenging.

  At New Burlington Street he got down from the carriage and walked the few streets to Solander’s dwelling. There he shouted and knocked and rattled the locks in radiant humor until the door was opened for him and he could leap up the stairs three by three. As he burst into the study, he was already rehearsing the phrases he would use to tell Solander of his good fortune.

  When Banks tumbled through the door, Solander looked up from his desk and smiled as he had smiled more than once in the months before this one.

  “Which is it this time, Joseph?” he asked, turning and putting down his pen. “A new idea or a new woman? Whichever it is, it is a more than usually exciting one, by the look of it.”

  And then, looking at his most trusted friend, Banks felt a change in himself so sudden that it was like missing a step that had always been there. He could only shake his head and say, “Solander, I’m the most confounded fellow and I find I have completely forgotten why I called. No, please don’t move. I have drunk a good deal too much brandy. It is far, far better I should leave.”

  And Solander, to his astonishment, found himself looking at a closing door and listening to the sound of running feet descending his stairs.

  We arranged to meet that afternoon in a café near Queensway.

  Gabby’s choice of café wasn’t a random one. It was a place from our early days, back when we were setting up the project that later became her project. There was no denying that in those days we had been impossibly in love. Each step we took together seemed natural and automatic, from our very first meeting over the remains of the Spix’s macaw, to our times in London, lobbying and fund-raising and embracing a future together that even fifteen years later we had still not fully disentangled.

  That life seemed hard to imagine now, I reflected as I made my way up the Bayswater Road to meet her. When things went wrong between us, we’d discovered the sort of differences that made all the good things unimportant. I was the one who walked away, but it was Gabby who had been most deceived; she thought she was linking her life to one like her own. She only found out the truth when she discovered, devastatingly and beyond all doubt, that I simply didn’t share her singlemindedness. In fact I came to resent it with a fierce passion. I was emotional where she was professional, erratic where she was objective. By the time I began to question the work we were doing in the rain forest, the gap between us was already too wide to bridge.

  Even so, we had never managed to cut our ties completely. Gabby still wrote. I still thought of her. And I was thinking of her that morning when I arrived, slightly late, at the café where we used to meet. I had spent the morning shoveling my notes back into the trunk and trying to fix the broken window-catch, and now I wanted to know why.

  The café was a small place, a counter and a coffee machine and five or six small tables tucked away from the door. She was sitting at the far end, where we used to sit, and when she saw me she stood up.

  “Hello, John,” she said, and that was all, but when I made my way forward to where she was standing, she reached up and pressed her cheek against mine. I caught the scent of her hair, familiar and slightly disorienting.

  We ordered coffee and sat down, then looked at each other across the little round table. She was as neat as ever and today her hair was tied back, making her eyes seem bigger. When neither of us spoke she tilted her head a little to one side and gave me that familiar half-smile.

  “It feels strange to see you again so soon. After so long not seeing each other.”

  It didn’t feel strange to me. If anything, it seemed frighteningly normal to be sitting with her again. Everything had changed since the days we were together, but somehow there remained this instinctive, uninvited familiarity.

  She looked well and I told her so, though what I really meant to say was that she hadn’t changed.

  Her eyes conducted a quick survey of my face. “You look well, too. More relaxed.”

  “Well, I’ve had fifteen years to work out what I want from life.”

  She nodded. I was glad she didn’t ask me what.

  In fact she didn’t say anything for a second or two, and when she looked up her expression had changed.

  “I wanted to ask…” she began, and I could see her struggling for the right words. “Do you still think of…?”

  It was the subject that was always between us. Would always be between us. The electric fan, the crumpled bed, Gabby’s voice downstairs…

  “Yes,” I said slowly. “I think of her all the time.”

  She looked away for a moment. Outside I could see cars and buses splashing through the December gloom.

  “I know how much she meant to you,” she said softly, and we both paused for a moment, awkwardly. “It’s been a long time since then, John. We should have sorted things out before this. You’ve never met anyone since then?”

  “I suppose I haven’t wanted to. What about you?”

  She looked down at her coffee and shrugged. “I’ve been
busy.”

  “Karl Anderson seems to like you.”

  “He does.” Her voice was hard, defensive, but then she caught hold of herself and began to relax again. “He’s a good man, Fitz. Oh, I know he’s gone commercial and that’s unforgivable to some people. But they made that happen—all those academics who wouldn’t give him a chance. Underneath, he still cares. He just can’t afford to let it show.”

  “Does he want to marry you?”

  She shrugged again. “It isn’t an issue.”

  “For him?”

  “For either of us.”

  I put down my coffee cup and looked at her. “Look, Gabby, I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

  “What do you mean? Between me and Karl?”

  “I mean about the Ulieta bird. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  She blew onto the top of her coffee. “I don’t know what you mean. Karl just wants to find it.”

  I stared at her, hard. “Someone broke into my house the night we met. And someone broke in again yesterday and rifled through my notes. Someone’s going to a lot of trouble to find that bird. Why? What’s it really worth? I can’t work it out, but I’d be an idiot not to realize it’s worth a lot more than anyone’s telling me.”

  Gabby shook her head, returning my gaze unwaveringly. “No, Fitz. It’s true what Karl told you. That specimen’s worth a lot, but not much more than Karl offered you.”

  “So why does everyone seem to want it so badly?” I could feel myself growing angry. “Look, I’m not just going to sit here feeling like a fool. I want to know what’s going on. There must be something about that bird that makes it valuable, and I want to know what. Otherwise…”

  She raised her eyebrows, deliberately provocative.

  “Otherwise I go to the papers. The scientific press. I can make sure everyone knows Anderson’s hunting for the single specimen of the Ulieta bird. Then if the thing really does exist, he won’t be selling it to anyone. Not for a long time, at any rate. They’ll slap an export order on it before you can blink, and it will be staying here for years while they wrangle over it. Something tells me that isn’t part of Anderson’s plan.”

  I don’t know how I’d expected Gabby to react to that, but instead of anxiety or defiance, she leaned forward and took my hand.

  “Oh, Fitz, you really don’t get it, do you?” She was shaking her head now. “Can’t you see? This is about more than just your precious bird. No one really cares about that. Oh, I know you do, and it’s true that Ted Staest will pay a few thousand dollars for it. Perhaps more, who knows? It’s a good enough news story. But Karl isn’t stuck over here in the middle of winter for that. Don’t you see? It isn’t the bird he’s after.”

  “Then what?” I was blinking at her now, feeling foolish, and embarrassed at showing it. “What is he after?”

  Gabby reached out and uncurled my fingers from my cup, then took them between hers. I thought about moving them away, but in the end I let them stay.

  “I shouldn’t tell you,” she said. “I promised not to. Only Karl knows, and perhaps a couple of other people who’ve got wind of it.”

  “What?” I tightened my fingers around hers.

  “It’s a bit of a tale. Have you ever heard of a French artist called Roitelet?”

  Something stirred in my memory.

  “Vaguely. It rings a bell.”

  “Don’t worry, no one knows much about him. He was a botanical artist in the last half of the eighteenth century, but that’s about all anyone knows. He isn’t recorded as being on any of the major expeditions, but we know he traveled because he came back with a collection of amazing botanical paintings. Twenty-four of them. Fruit, flowers. Brilliant, bright, wonderfully observed. Apparently they were something special. Just then botanical art was flourishing, but Roitelet’s was the finest anywhere.”

  “What do you mean, ‘apparently’? What happened?”

  “The owner kept the collection in his town house in Paris, and the place was ransacked during one of the Paris uprisings. Only three paintings by Roitelet survived. They’re incredibly sought after. One of them was auctioned last year in New York. It made over one hundred thousand dollars.”

  It sounded like a healthy sum, but surely not one to get so completely overexcited about.

  “Okay…So what’s that got to do with the Ulieta bird?”

  Gabby smiled. “This is where it all gets complicated. You see, all through the nineteenth century there were rumors about another collection of Roitelet paintings, a whole second portfolio that had somehow ended up in England. There are various different sources for the rumors, but the main one is a letter written by a man called Finchley in the middle of the century. This Finchley was a landed gentleman with estates in the Midlands, but he was also something of a scholar. In about 1850 he wrote a letter to a friend of his, a man who made a hobby of collecting botanical paintings.”

  She paused and unlaced her fingers from mine so she could take a sip of coffee.

  “Go on,” I said, still not sure where we were going.

  “It’s a jokey letter about something that happened when he was touring Lincolnshire. He heard tell of a local man who was reputed to own a preserved specimen of a rare bird, and out of curiosity he made sure to find the man and see the specimen for himself. From his description, and from what he was told about it, it seems almost certain that this was the Ulieta bird—and still apparently in one piece. But that wasn’t what the letter was really about. The incident that intrigued Finchley happened just as his inspection of the bird was drawing to an end. The owner of the specimen insisted on opening up the glass case the bird was kept in, and showed Finchley a collection of papers that had been hidden under the green cloth the bird was standing on. To Finchley’s amazement, the papers were a collection of paintings by Roitelet—twelve of them, pristine condition, all studies of English wildflowers. The man who owned them apparently had no idea what they were worth, and apparently wasn’t very interested when Finchley told him. He insisted that the bird was a family heirloom, and the pictures with it, and they could happily stay where they’d been put. Judging by his letter, Finchley found the whole thing rather amusing, assuring his friend that the stubbornness of the old man had been more than a match for the generous offers he had made for the paintings, and stating pretty clearly that he thought it was unlikely any wealth in the world would be enough to move the pictures from the spot.”

  “I see…” I murmured, but although she was telling me what I wanted to know, I wasn’t finding it very satisfying. “But isn’t that all too tenuous for words? Even if we believe in a collection of French paintings turning up in some backwoods part of Lincolnshire, surely there’s no way they’d still be there? And not still with the bird. There’s been generations of people since then who’ve had the opportunity to sell them off. Anything could have happened to them. Wouldn’t someone who heard about them through Finchley have made sure they got their hands on them in the end?”

  Gabby nodded, still cradling her coffee. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the thing is that no other Roitelets have ever come to light. There are only the rumors. And if a collector had got hold of them, then the art world would expect to know about it. Also, Finchley’s letter gave no details of where he’d found the bird or who owned it. It’s almost as if he was deliberately teasing his friend by not telling. So there’s still the possibility that the paintings are out there somewhere. And one way of finding them would be to find the bird.”

  “So they wanted to use me to find the pictures.” It made sense, and I didn’t much like it.

  “Not use you, Fitz. Karl knew you’d be interested in finding the bird, and he was happy to let you have the money for it. He’s found a clue that he thinks points him to where the bird might be.”

  “I know. A letter.” I looked at her. “All this stuff you’ve told me, these rumors of missing paintings. It’s all a bit vague, isn’t it? Anderson’s a businessman. I ca
n’t see him spending money on something like that. His chances of finding anything at all must be tiny.”

  “Twelve paintings by Roitelet, Fitz. If they were only half as good as the ones we know about, they’d still cause a sensation. And if each of them went for one hundred thousand dollars…well, you can do the sums. And that portfolio together, as a collection, would probably be worth even more. There’s just one snag.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Karl’s having problems finding the bird.”

  My heart gave a little leap. “What sort of problems?”

  “He’s having a few setbacks.” Gabby leaned a little closer to me, earnest and intense, beautiful in a way not usually found in Bayswater coffee shops. “It was all to do with a house sale. Karl has traced the bird to a big house somewhere that was broken up after the war. He thought it was all sorted. But apparently the bird wasn’t where he expected it to be. Now his people are going through all the sale records again, trying to find out what they’ve missed.”

  “Interesting. Do you know where this house was?”

  “No. Karl didn’t say. But I know he’s in Lincolnshire at the moment.” She paused, looking down at her hands in front of her. “Tell me, have you thought of anything at all that might help?”

  I decided to trust her. “Look, Gabby, I’m not pretending I know anything useful, but I’ve got an idea I’m going to follow. It’s about a woman Joseph Banks knew when he was young. I don’t know what she’s got to do with the bird, but I think there’s a connection. It may come to nothing, but I’ll see what happens.”

  “And if you find it?”

  I looked down for a moment. “Let’s find it first. We can talk about it then.”

  She leaned back and raised an eyebrow. “Who knows, John, perhaps there’s a bit of your grandfather in you after all.” Then she reached behind her head and began to rearrange the pinning of her hair, flashing me a warm, affectionate smile. “And seeing as there’s no one in your life to be jealous, I think you could buy me dinner tonight.”