The Painted Tent

by Victor Canning

  For the first two days after his return the tiercel hunted with Fria and, particularly when there was a good movement in the wind, would give his courtship displays. At other times he continued to creep into crevices of the roof structure of the ruined house and around the broken places in the brickwork of the tower, searching for a nesting-place and croaking and wailing at Fria to follow him.

  Fria remained uninterested. But as the days went by two things happened to her. The first was that by hunting with him she learned to make her stoops steeper and faster and, either from chance or imitation as she watched his killing, learned to extend her rear talons and strike a bird cleanly and quickly to death. As far as flying ability was concerned, although she improved her skills vastly, she never reached the high degree of mastery which the tiercel had, never quite seemed to have the effortless and exuberant mastery of the air which was his, especially when there was a strong wind blowing. The second thing was that the tiercel’s persistent, almost fussing, excitement around the tower and the house searching for a nesting-site eventually passed to her. She joined him, and the two of them spent long periods creeping and probing and testing likely places. Because these were few, there were times when the tiercel would fly off, perhaps hoping that Fria would follow him, to search for other places in the district. Fria showed no true interest, sliding away from him and turning back to Highford House after a while. She was tied to it, in memory possibly, as her true birthplace, her natural eyrie area, because it was here that she had become completely free and had made her first kills.

  Always the tiercel came back to her and, eventually, his excitement shared fully by her now, Fria picked her spot – which was the recess that for so long had been her refuge. She fussed around it, scratching at the brick dust and eroding brick faces on its floor, lowering her breast to the ground and working a slight hollow which it would fit. Now and again she would rest in the hollow in a brooding position. After a couple of days, the tiercel seemed to accept that this was her chosen spot. He gave up his search and would sit on the tower or the ruined house or sometimes on the top branch of the big oak on the wood’s edge and wail and croak to her. One morning, early, and seen only by Maxie, Fria came out of the recess and flew to the rooftop and there the two birds mated as they would do daily afterwards until there were eggs in the tower recess.

  Smiler missed their earlier matings but he saw later ones. The daylight was spreading further into the evenings now and on the days when he did not have to go to Mr Samkin he walked up to Highford for an hour before settling to his studies in his room. He was well used to seeing the tiercel now and slowly the tiercel was getting used to seeing him. But the peregrine never sat on the tower-roof when Smiler was in his place on the housetop opposite. He would fly off to the great oak or ring up into the air and disappear. Fria would seldom follow him. Mostly she sat in the recess hollow and Smiler could just see the top of her head through his glasses.

  One week-end towards the end of April Smiler carried a work-bag up to Highford with a kit of tools. In the close-grown fir plantation behind the shrubberies he found a fallen fir tree with a sound trunk. He stripped the branches from it with a billhook and saw, and then cut regularly spaced notches along its length. Into these he fitted split lengths of branches, screwed home firmly with three-inch screws to form ladder rungs along the spine of the trunk. Waiting for a time when both peregrines were away from the tower, he carried the ladder inside and manoeuvered it up the staircase until he came to the gap. He wedged the butt end into a corner of the stairs and then lowered the top of the ladder across the gap and against the beginning of the higher flight of stone steps. By angling the ladder over the gap diagonally he managed to wedge it securely and then climbed up. He had no intention of trusting himself to the upper portion of the stairs whose broken base projected out over the gap. He found, however, that from the second rung from the top of the ladder he could stand up, using his hands against the inner tower wall for support, and just look through the hole in the bricks into the recess. He stood there the first time, legs trembling, balancing himself and hoping that nothing would slip.

  The recess was far bigger inside than he had guessed it might be. The hollow that Fria had scooped for herself was clear to see. It was about two inches deep and completely bare. Scattered over the ground were a few dead twigs, a pigeon’s iron-grey tail feather which Fria had carried up and idly dropped, and the bleached, frail bones of the skeletal frame of a small bird which had been one of Fria’s very early kills.

  Knowing now that with caution and by choosing his times he could observe the eyrie, Smiler started down the ladder. He was three feet down when its butt-hold gave way. The ladder slipped around a hundred and eighty degrees without losing its original slanting position. Smiler was spun round, his feet slipped from their rung and he just managed to hold on with his hands, hanging and swinging over a drop of thirty feet to the stone steps near the bottom of the tower. The moment of shock gone, he held tight with his hands and then found the strength in his back muscles and legs to draw his feet up under him and hook them over the nearest rung. He rested like that for a moment or two, the panic and fright easing from him, and then went slowly down the underside of the ladder, from rung to rung, dangling like a great sloth out for a leisurely excursion.

  He reached safety and stood breathing hard. ‘Let that, Samuel M.,’ he told himself, ‘be a sharp lesson to you. The next time you come up you bring a cold chisel and hammer and make a hole in the stonework for a proper footing for the ladder.’

  He carried the ladder out of the tower and hid it in the shrubbery among clumps of dead bracken.

  That evening while he was having supper the Duchess told him that she had met Mr Samkin who had told her that there had been a vast improvement in his Latin. He could, she said, consider his holiday as good as a certainty. In addition Mr Samkin would also let him off his study visits that week.

  Then, before Smiler could thank her, she went on, ‘And when your Laura’s gone you’ve got some serious thinking and deciding to do.’

  ‘I have, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, you have, Sammy.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, ma’am.’

  For a moment she eyed him severely, fondling the ears of Scampi who sat in her lap. Then she said, ‘ Oh, yes, you do, Sammy. Have you forgotten that so far as they’re concerned you’re in trouble with the police? Have you forgotten that somewhere off on the high seas you’ve got a father who most certainly would like to know what you’re up to? You tell me you write to your sister and her husband, but they don’t know where you are or much about what you’re doing. I think you ought to tell them – in confidence. They won’t let you down and they can write to your father –’

  ‘You don’t know my sister Ethel, ma’am, she –’

  ‘I think it more likely that you don’t know her. You approach her like a man and she’ll treat you like one. You’re not a small boy now whose ears she boxed for dirty hands and a runny nose and untidy habits.’ She grinned suddenly, and went running on, ‘Now don’t start to fidget. I’m going to say what I’m going to say. You’ve got to do some straight thinking for yourself. You’ve got yourself nicely placed here, we all like you, you’re working hard at your studies so you can get to take examinations, and you’ve got Laura coming, and if you can get a spare hour or so you’re off to Highford House after that blessed falcon of yours.’

  ‘Well, ma’am, I don’t see anything wrong in that.’

  ‘And there isn’t – except that it’s not enough because you’ve got a shadow over you. And let me tell you, Sammy, that a lot of people in this world have shadows over them and really can’t do anything about them. But you can.’

  ‘You mean about the police and all that?’

  ‘That’s what I mean.’

  ‘But I can’t do anything about that.’ Smiler paused and eyed her closely. ‘I’m waiting for that pebble to drop. You told me, ma’am, that –’

  ‘W
hatever I told you didn’t mean that you could sit on your bottom, do nothing and wait for it to drop. It’ll drop when you do the right thing.’

  ‘Which is what, ma’am?’

  The Duchess shook her head, her red curls bouncing. ‘You’re sixteen and a half. That’s old enough, Sammy, to figure out almost any problem for yourself. Let me say this, innocence is a light in the eyes which reasonable people can always recognize.’

  Smiler understood her perfectly, but he said despairingly, ‘But I couldn’t give myself up to the police now. Besides … it might get you into trouble for having me.’

  The Duchess chuckled. ‘ You freckle-faced, blue-eyed devil – you don’t twist me like that. You let me handle any troubles that might come to me. I’ll give you until Laura has gone to think it over. Now off with you and get your nose in your books – and begin to think about what I’ve said.’

  But after Smiler had gone the Duchess sat on and knew in her heart that she had been motivated by more than Smiler’s interests. She wanted him away from Highford House. Every time he went up to the place there was the risk of danger, of the odd turn of Fate’s dice which could alter the lives of many people.

  In his diary that night, Smiler wrote:

  At supper tonight the Duchess gave me a blowing up about things. I can see why in a way. Fact, I suppose she’s right, but I’m darned if I’m going to think about it until Laura’s gone. Might ask her about it. Blimey – walking into the police and giving myself up! Funny about the Duchess. I think she’s missing Jimmy a lot or got something on her mind.

  Nearly killed myself on the tower ladder today. Saved by a Tarzan act. Me Tarzan – you Laura. Ha-ha!

  On the Monday of the last week in April the falcon Fria laid her first egg. Its shell was a dull white marked with reddy-brown and some violet blotches. The next day she laid another, and a third on the following day. After that she laid no more and started to brood and, at first, she was content to share some of this task with the tiercel. By this time, too, Smiler had made his ladder fastening secure. When he managed to slip up to Highford on the Tuesday for half an hour before supper he put the ladder in position while the two peregrines were away from the tower. When he saw the eggs he nearly fell off the ladder again with delighted surprise. But as he put the ladder away amongst the bracken he decided firmly that he would not use it again for fear of disturbing Fria or the tiercel until there were young birds in the nest. He knew from his reading that once the full clutch was laid and the falcon began to brood in earnest that it would take twenty-eight or a few more days for the incubatory period to be completed. So the ladder lay in the bracken and the new growths raised their green crozier heads around it.

  A week before Laura arrived Fria was sitting steadily. At first the tiercel had shared some of the brooding with her so that she could go off and hunt, but as the days went by Fria sat more and more tight on the eggs. The tiercel began to kill for her. Twice a day, in the early morning and late evening, he would come back from his forays and, hanging high over the great oak at the wood’s edge, would call to her. Fria would come out and catch the kill which he dropped. Sometimes she would eat it on the oak branch but more often as the days went by would take it to the tower-top where, standing on the leads, she could eat without being seen because she was hidden by the brickwork of the crenellated parapet that decorated the summit of the tower. At first, too, she would sometimes fly down to the river to drink and bathe. But later she was content to fly down to the edge of Maxie’s water-tank and drink from that, and her bathing became very rare.

  With Fria sitting steadily, the tiercel often left her for long periods after he had fed her. In time he knew the river valley and its surroundings for miles north and south of Eggesford. And quite a few people came to know him. The water bailiff, standing quietly and hidden under the overhang of some trees, saw him come down one day over a stretch of reed and iris-thick swamp and take a mallard drake as it was planing down to the marsh. The tiercel carried it to a gravel spit in the middle of a fast, shallow run of the river not twenty yards from him. He stood like a statue for half an hour watching the peregrine feed. A few visitors to the Fox and Hounds Hotel saw the tiercel flying high but a lot of them failed to recognize his breed. But some of them did and most of them kept quiet about what they had seen. But the presence of the peregrines inevitably became more remarked and the rumour of their whereabouts began to spread slowly … a little trickle of news and speculation amongst local people and visitors, a trickle which, blocked here, would seep along some new channel.

  Away from Eggesford the tiercel was shot at twice. Once by a young man from Barnstaple – who had driven out for a day’s poaching with an unlicensed shotgun – as the tiercel swooped round a corner of a wood chasing a pigeon; and another time by a farmer, walking gun in hand along the edge of a field of young corn. The tiercel who had been feeding at the foot of the hedge flew up as the man crested the rounded swell of the field and came into view. Instinctively he had brought up the gun and fired. A few pellets from the outer spread of the shot pattern rattled against the tiercel’s left wing harmlessly. The farmer, who was not by nature an intolerant man, watched the tiercel fly away, recognized the bird late for what it was, and was thankful that he had missed it.

  Luckily, so far, no one had discovered that there was a pair of peregrines in the district and that their eyrie was in the red brick tower at Highford House.

  Laura arrived on the late afternoon train from Exeter at Eggesford Station. Smiler had been waiting for half an hour. Not because the train was late but because he had arrived early. With his own money he had hired a car from a local garage, and the garage proprietor sat in it now outside the station, grinning to himself at the excitement which Smiler – whom he knew – had been unable to suppress. Jerking up and down on his seat as though t’were full of pins, he thought. Must be a girl. Can’t be nothin’ else but a girl.

  Inside the station Smiler walked up and down the platform restlessly. He wore a new pair of trousers, a freshly ironed blue shirt with a bold red tie, and a slightly over-sized green and blue-checked jacket which Bob – who did a little second-hand trading on the side – had sold him at a bargain price, pointing out, ‘Never mind the fit, lad, you’ll grow to it in a month. Look at the material. Genuine West of England cloth and a bargain at a quid.’ His fair hair was bound down close to his scalp with a liberal anointment of some violet-smelling hair lotion which had been left behind by Jimmy Jago. ‘From the days,’ had said the Duchess, ‘when he found it in his fancy to do a little serious courting but soon thought better of it.’

  The sparrows and starlings quarrelled on the station roof as Smiler paced up and down. Across the tracks below the bank a man was fly-fishing in the pool under the bridge. Smiler watched him, relishing the smooth parabolas of the line’s movement, and remembered the one and only time that he had caught a salmon on a fly and how he would never have landed it but for Laura’s advice1

  He heard the rattle of the train when it was a quarter of a mile away and then the challenging, bugle-like notes as it hooted for the level crossing and the station. As the train rolled to a stop alongside the platform Smiler stood rooted to the spot with a sudden trembling in his legs and a hard dry lump in his throat, watching the few passengers descend.

  Dismay swept over him as they all disembarked and moved towards the station exit. Laura was not with them. Loose brown hair, brown eyes and a sun-tanned skin … Gosh, he thought, perhaps after all this time I’ve forgotten what she looks like. Panic rose slowly in him.

  A voice from behind him said, ‘ Well, you dafty, aren’t you going to give me welcome?’

  Smiler turned. Standing beside him, case in hand, was a tallish young woman, her long brown hair tied in a pony-tail, wearing a red trouser suit that fitted her slim body as though it were another skin, a flash of white silk scarf at her throat, white, wedge-heeled shoes on her feet, and a smile on her lips which were made up with dark red lipstick.
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  ‘Laura! Gosh, I didn’t recognize you!’ He grabbed at her hand and began to work it like a pump handle.

  ‘Well, thanks, Sammy. That’s aye a gay welcome to Devon. And did you think, you loon, that I’d come wearing my farm or boat clothes? And when you’ve finished with my hand I’ll have it back and you can give me a kiss. It’s all right – don’t fret – the stuff’s kiss-proof.’ Her eyes shining, she leaned forward and Smiler kissed her, his head swimming so much that for a moment Laura put up a hand to stop him pushing her backwards.

  ‘Oh, Laura,’ cried Smiler, ‘you look super! You’re so grown up!’

  ‘It’s a thing that happens – but you don’t have to shout it to the whole world. And you’ve not done so bad yourself. You’ve filled out and you’re taller. And, my goodness, laddie, have you become a smart dresser. Where did you get all this gear?’ She fingered the loose sleeve of his jacket.

  ‘From one of the Ancients.’

  Laura laughed, leaned forward and kissed his cheek, saying, ‘That doesn’t surprise me. Never mind, things will seem different when we get into jeans.’ Then, spontaneously, she hugged his arm and went on, ‘Oh, it’s good to see you, Sammy!’

  ‘And me, you, too. Here, give me that.’ He grabbed her case and, hurrying her along the platform, went on, ‘I’ve got a car waiting, hired it myself, and the driver’s the garageman, and he says he grows the most marvellous dahlias and he’s got a cat that keeps biting out its own fur and eating it so I said I’d look it up in one of my vet books and see what I could do about it, and – Crikeys! I forgot to ask. Are your mother and father well?’

  ‘Aye, they send their love. And my father’s a few pounds poorer by way of my rail fare and so’s my mother because of this.’ Laura fingered her red suit.

  And the car driver, seeing them coming, hopped out of the car quickly to take the case and stow it away, and said to himself that although he had known it must be a girl, this was a girl that could make both a man’s eyes pop out on first meeting unless he blinked fast to keep them in.