The Conjurer's Bird

by Martin Davies

  In New Burlington Street that night he listened to the hours strike and thought of her. It was a night they had planned to spend together and, finding himself alone, he slept poorly. In the ragged margin between sleep and wakefulness, images of her at sea swayed in and out of his mind: first on deck, held straight by her male clothing, rain and saltwater lashing her face; then in the darkness of her cabin, undressing by candlelight, button by button. The thought of her arriving in Madeira and waiting for him there in the lush tropic heat began to stir him. The thought of greeting the quiet male figure in a public place, of going through the rituals of reacquaintance, of agreeing to share a bottle somewhere private, in her room perhaps, where with the door closed he would hold a finger to his lips, then linger over each button and lace until he felt her skin naked under his fingers. He thought of the cabin reserved for her on board the Resolution and vowed again to make it work.

  But with the morning came word that changed the course of his life. The Navy Board had challenged the seaworthiness of the Resolution. The pilot charged with taking her out of the Thames had been so alarmed at her handling he had refused to take her beyond the Nore. She was branded crank and unseaworthy and the Admiralty had accepted those claims. The changes made to accommodate Banks’s party were to be reversed. The extra cabins were to be ripped out. His dreams of the night before were shown in daylight to be the fantasies they were. By the time he next saw the Resolution, the dark cabin of which he had thought so often was no more than frayed timber piled untidily on an estuary dock.

  NOTHING HAD prepared her for the strangeness of it. She knew nothing of the sea, nothing of ships and very little of the men who crewed them. Worse, she realized, she knew nothing of the way men were with other men. Their manners were rougher and their language coarser, but it was the physicality that alarmed her. It was as if an invisible cordon that had surrounded her all her life had been torn away, allowing strangers to brush against her or to touch her as a matter of course. The bumping and barging as she made her way aboard seemed a deliberate provocation and it was all she could do to fight back a wave of panic. It was only when she observed the same men step wide around a woman that she began to understand.

  She was certain it was only the pressures of departure that saved her from discovery. No one on board the Robin had time for her, no one cared. She was able to flee to her cabin like a rabbit to earth and once there she stayed, heart racing, her panic turning to despair and desolation. The shock of it all inflicted on her a sort of paralysis and for a full eight hours she clung to her refuge, declining the calls for food and jumping at every footstep that approached her door. She wanted only to be left alone and for the journey she had so coveted to be over. She longed for land.

  As a prisoner in her own cabin she saw nothing of their departure, but she felt it and heard it and knew there was no escape. The thought made her want to weep. The sounds of the ship were totally foreign to her. Even the language spoken there was unfamiliar and threatening. That first night she lay unable to sleep as boards groaned and creaked and the shouts of men were answered with other shouts, none of which she understood in either tone or meaning. She fell asleep still dressed, curled tightly under a blanket. Her last waking emotion was a longing for him to come.

  When she awoke it seemed the vessel was in trouble. All around her the ship moaned and grunted and planks squealed under pressure of the sea. Her wooden walls tilted dangerously, then paused, and rolled back with a sickening lurch. A new panic surged up inside her and she was out from under her blanket in a moment, just as the cabin began to pitch again, faster and farther than before. This new fear was enough to force her from her burrow. Opening the door enough to peer outside, she expected to hear the cries of a panicked crew, but there was nothing but the creaking of the ship. Slipping out and venturing a little farther, she met a small boy carrying a huge bucket and she inquired faintly as to how the ship fared.

  “First time at sea, is it?” he replied with a knowing grin. “You’re the third to ask me that this last half hour. These waves is nothing, sir. Just a breeze in the Channel. Gets worse than this for sure.”

  Reassured more by his calm than by his grim prophecy, she reached into an unfamiliar pocket and gave him a coin, asking if he would be able to find her some food. Looking at the coin, he almost dropped the bucket and promised not only food but his attention for the duration of the journey.

  “I shall keep to my cabin a great deal,” she told him.

  “There’s many that do, sir, though you may like some air, perhaps, when the wind gets up.”

  Both his first and second predictions were soon proved true. She first began to feel it three days out to sea. By then she had come through the darkness of that first evening and was beginning to feel, if not confidence, at least a little pride in her achievement. She had come thus far largely unnoticed, had a willing servant to see to any needs, and had begun to feel more at ease in her clothes, partly because she had not yet removed any. Yet when the Robin met rough seas for the first time, her instinct again was to fear imminent disaster. This time she succeeded in damping down her panic, only to have it replaced by a dull churning in the pit of her stomach. After a few minutes of musing on this she suddenly straightened, reached for her cloak, and stumbled outside. Her voyage was beginning in earnest.

  THE DAYS before the Resolution sailed were among the worst of Banks’s life. They seemed to pass in staccato bursts, time accelerating in the daylight hours while he cried out for a pause, then hanging heavy as he paced whole nights away, too fraught and frustrated for sleep. He blamed a host of different people for the ruin of his plans, and the bitterness began to consume him. Cook had been against him from the start. The Navy Board was made up of his enemies, people jealous of his success and resentful that a civilian should have any say in maritime matters. Lord Sandwich at the Admiralty was stubborn or misguided or ill-advised. All his raging seemed unable to sway them. Nevertheless, he spent those days restating his case in the strongest terms. Indeed his temper became so out of check that each interview, each letter, began to teeter on the brink of angry confrontation.

  Unsurprisingly, Cook’s views prevailed. Banks was rich, famous, and well connected, with prominent friends and a good deal of influence, all things that undoubtedly had weight with the Admiralty. But when it came to dispatching an expensive expedition to the other side of the world, the opinions of the professional seafarer held sway. Banks fumed.

  Later—many years later—he was better able to understand the emotions that gripped him in those few days. At the time, however, nothing was clear. Banks had spent his money and his time putting together a team of unparalleled talents to advance the course of human learning, and now he was to be thwarted by stubbornness and ignorance. He felt deeply let down, hurt on the most personal level that his opinion had been so easily set aside. And when he thought of how this slight would appear to others—so blatant, so public—the humiliation of it boiled into rage and threatened to overwhelm him. He could never again sail with Cook after such an act of perfidy.

  And underneath it all was the thought of that slim figure sailing to Madeira. How could he arrive and tell her she was to return alone while he went on? How admit to her that he had been so publicly humiliated in his attempt to secure her quarters? And what would it say of him if he were to accept his disappointment and meekly sail regardless? Their meeting in Madeira had been one he anticipated with a sensual thrill. Now it simply tasted bitter.

  He continued to reason and rage right to the brink of departure, but there were to be no more changes of heart. A letter to the Admiralty from the Navy Board dismissed his objections out of hand. It implied that Banks was not fit to comment on naval matters. Furthermore, the Board argued, even after the alterations had been reversed, Banks’s accommodation on the Resolution was very nearly everything he had asked for. The only changes were a small reduction of the Great Cabin and the loss of one other small cabin.

  One cabin
! Banks found it impossible to describe his emotions. That cabin meant everything. White-faced with anger, he wrote to the Admiralty at the end of May. The treatment he had received made it impossible for him to achieve the goals he had set himself. He had no alternative but to withdraw. At the same time he wrote to Cook and asked that all his equipment and effects be removed from the ship.

  The letters dispatched, Banks remained in his study, still quivering with anger. There he paced in short, uneven lines until finally he came to a stop facing the window. He had been humiliated. He had had no alternative. It was a matter of honor. She would understand. He thought of her at sea, traveling ahead of him. She would arrive there soon. God, how happy that arrival would make her! He remained at the window until the light faded from the room and the papers on his desk became meaningless in the darkness.

  THE STORM that lashed the Robin lasted through the night. When she first stepped out on the open deck, there was a violet light in the sky above the horizon and the rain was driving horizontally on the wind, but she had no thoughts for the storm. Reaching the rail, she leaned out and vomited uncontrollably, one pulse of nausea following another until her stomach clenched with pain. She seemed to be there forever, utterly unconcerned about anything but the feelings inside her. At one point, waiting to retch, she looked along the rail and saw other passengers similarly affected, but then her stomach began to contract again and she leaned forward, not caring.

  After twenty minutes she was cold and sodden but found she felt a little better. The light in the sky began to deepen into black and the ship seemed to roll less. Returning to her cabin to wash and change, she found she missed the wind on her face, and after a few minutes she returned to the deck. It seemed deserted now. She stepped away from the hatch and looked around. The rain had stopped and the storm was dying away. The wind against her skin was cold but fresh and she felt better. More than that. She felt well. And happy. Yes, she was happy, there on the cold, empty deck. Behind her the dawn was beginning to re-color the sky. Pulling her dry cloak tight, she smiled in greeting. She had survived the night. In little more than a week she would reach Madeira.

  Most successful expeditions get lucky at some point, and that night, on the bus back to the center of Lincoln, I wondered if Bert Fox was my bit of luck. If so, there seemed a nasty possibility that he’d arrived a bit late in the day. Which on reflection shouldn’t have been a surprise—it was a feeling my grandfather would have recognized.

  It isn’t clear why Myerson was prepared to believe in the African peacock when no one else would, but it seems he was willing to sink a considerable amount of cash into an expedition to the Congo. Whatever his reasoning, my grandfather’s life was transformed by it, and he rediscovered energy that had seemed lost since his long illness. Myerson’s offer didn’t cover all the costs, so, with a determination that verged on desperation, my grandfather set about raising the rest. By the time he had mortgaged his house and borrowed against his wife’s inheritance, he had enough to get his expedition off the ground.

  At some point around that time, possibly carried there by his new euphoria, my grandfather visited Devon, and by the time he set sail his wife was pregnant. It isn’t clear whether he knew this, or whether knowing it would have made much difference. However, it does seem pretty obvious from most contemporary accounts that he wasn’t in the best state to lead an expedition: his objectivity was down to zero and his goal had become an obsession. In mountaineers they call it summit fever. It is something I’ve felt myself.

  The bus got me back to the center of Lincoln a little after seven, and Katya was already waiting for me in the hotel bar. I’d dreaded finding Anderson there, too, but the room was nearly empty: only Katya in one corner and an elderly couple quarreling in undertones. I think Katya knew something had happened when I didn’t even stop at the bar, but just went straight to her and sat down, placing two pieces of paper in front of her.

  “We’ve been very stupid,” I said.

  She peered forward to look at the things I’d brought, then she looked up, her eyes bright with curiosity.

  “These are the photocopies we were sent,” she said. “The letter to the woman in Stamford.”

  “That’s right. And where does it say in the letter that she was living in Stamford?”

  She scanned the paper again. I could sense her mind already working, leaping ahead. “Nothing in the letter,” she concluded. “Only on the envelope.”

  “Exactly.” I pushed forward the photocopy of the envelope that had arrived at the same time.

  Miss Martha Ainsby,

  The Old Manor,

  Stamford,

  Lincs

  “We never saw the original,” I went on. “The document Potts found was a photocopy. Now, what if I tell you there’s a place called Ainsby in Lincolnshire?”

  She hesitated for a moment. “You mean it’s a local name? I don’t see…” She went on peering at the envelope as if for inspiration, and then suddenly it seemed to fall into place. “Of course! Someone swapped the names!” She looked across at the paper again, her mind still working through it. “The writing on the envelope looks genuine because it is genuine—it just had two words changed around. That would be easy to do. Just a bit of cutting and pasting. Especially if you knew that people were only going to see photocopies.”

  She was looking at me, her eyes wide with discovery.

  “And both of them are really gray, grainy copies that would hide a lot of mischief,” I agreed.

  Katya looked back at the papers. “So we were looking for the wrong person in the wrong place. We should have been asking about a family called Stamford that lived in Ainsby.”

  “That’s right. That’s why there was no place called the Old Manor in Stamford. But I bet you anything you like that we’ll find one in Ainsby.”

  “I’m afraid not, Mr. Fitzgerald.” The voice came from behind me. “The Old Manor in Ainsby burned down during the last war.”

  We’d been too engrossed in the papers in front of us to notice anyone else coming into the bar. Now I looked up to see the rotund figure of Potts approaching us. His voice as he introduced himself to Katya was full of its usual lazy drawl.

  “I’m Potts,” he told her, offering his hand. “We didn’t meet before, but I saw you around the place in Stamford. When we were all being made fools of.”

  Katya told him her name and he twinkled back merrily, a slightly flirtatious favorite uncle. He was still wearing tweeds, still looked like a 1930s country doctor, and was still rather beguiling.

  “I didn’t mean to overhear,” he told us, “but I take it you two have just gotten as far as figuring it out about Ainsby village. Give me a moment to go to the bar and we’ll drink to that.” We watched him patter to the bar and return with a bottle of red wine and three glasses. “Now, don’t get the idea I’m ahead of you,” he explained mildly as he poured the drinks. “I only got it yesterday. Do you believe in coincidence? I’d been sitting around in London for a couple of days with no ideas and no inspiration. Then, just as I was about to pack it in and go back to the States, I found myself outside a shop in your Covent Garden district that sells maps and stuff. It’s called Stamford’s. You know it?”

  I nodded. “It’s quite a famous shop. It’s called Stanford’s. With an n.”

  “It is? Well, it was close enough to give me the push I needed. There I was with people pushing by me wondering why this fat old American was standing in the street slapping his forehead. You see, as soon as I saw the name above the shop, I realized what a fool I was. I blushed, I can tell you. It must be time for me to retire.”

  He raised his drink to us and smiled over the top of his glasses. “Anyway, since it happened to be a map shop, I went in and checked some maps. Sure enough, there it was: Ainsby, Lincolnshire.” He shook his head ruefully. “Anderson must still be laughing.”

  I watched him for a moment, not sure how much of what he said I should believe. “So what brought you to this hot
el?” I asked. “You’re not telling us that’s coincidence, too?”

  “Oh no. Not at all. I know Anderson’s taste in hotels. I just phoned all the most expensive ones in Lincolnshire until I found him. Does he know that you two are here as well?”

  “We met him last night. He expects to have the bird in his hands sometime today.”

  “Does he indeed?” Potts looked a little pensive at this. “Well, we can ask him all about it in a moment. I called him late last night and arranged to meet him here at eight.” He pulled a pocket watch out of his waistcoat pocket and flicked it open. “While we wait for him, we can all have another drink and you can tell me about this place. This must be where the Lincoln green comes from, I guess…”

  It was another strange evening. Anderson arrived twenty minutes later with Gabby in tow and I think they were both a little surprised at the committee assembled to greet them. Anderson responded with typical unruffled ease and insisted on ordering more wine—French and expensive. Gabby and I exchanged smiles but I found it difficult to catch her eye as the conversation circulated around the table.

  We were a curious group. First there was Anderson, finely honed and immaculately dressed, and next to him Gabby, who couldn’t help but challenge the popular image of a conservationist. She was too perfectly at home in a cocktail dress, too instinctively chic, to be imagined sweating and dirty in a makeshift field lab, and she’d always been that way, even in the hottest and dirtiest of times, always somehow cooler and neater than the rest of us. I knew at least one researcher who had stuck with her even when the salaries weren’t being paid, purely because of the whiff of glamour she brought to the work. Next to those two, Katya looked younger and less confident. Potts, sitting beside her, looked vaguely cherubic. What people would have made of me, I couldn’t guess. I wasn’t sure I knew myself.