The Snow Falcon (17 page)

Jamie and then peered inside the gloomy hallway. The air smelled faintly musty from the place having being shut up so long. A staircase straight ahead led up to a landing and turned the corner, vanishing out of view.

“Hello? Anybody home?” There was no answer. She went along the porch and peered in the windows, feeling nosy but also curious now that she was here. The house had been empty for as long as she’d lived across the way, and she’d never given it much thought, but now as she saw the old furniture inside, the heavy dark wood, she wondered about Michael Somers having grown up here, about what his parents had been like. With no sign of anybody being home, she turned to tell Jamie they’d come back again in the morning. Jamie, however, had gone. She looked around, wondering for a second if he’d wandered into the house, thinking, great, now she would have to go in and fetch him and then Michael Somers was going to come back from wherever he’s been and find them inside his house and how was she going to explain that? Her eye fell to tracks in the snow, obviously adult-size, leading around the house, and beside them were Jamie’s. She called out as she followed them around.

“Hey, where are you?”

Jamie was standing at the doorway to a shed around back, and when she reached him and looked inside, the first thing she saw was Michael crouched in the gloom; next she saw the dim, pale shape of the falcon. Michael heard them and turned to see who it was. Their eyes met for a second and Susan saw the deep worry lines around his eyes, then she pulled Jamie back out of the way. A moment later, Michael stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

“We didn’t mean to intrude,” Susan said. “I knocked at the door around the front, but nobody answered.”

He nodded. “That’s okay.” His eye fell to Jamie, then came back to her.

“Is that a hawk you’ve got in there?”

“She’s a gyr falcon. I found her up there.” He gestured back to the mountains. “She’s injured.”

Susan saw again the deep worry lines around his eyes. “Is she going to be okay?”

“I don’t know. She’s not eating.” He paused as if wondering whether to go on. “She needs fresh meat, rabbit or something like that.”

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“There’re plenty of those in the woods.”

“I don’t have a gun. I’m not allowed to own a weapon.”

He met her eye as he spoke, then looked away, and for some reason she felt as if he were accusing her of something. She didn’t know how to respond; his expression had become hard and sort of distant. Involuntarily, her hand fell to Jamie’s shoulder, reminding her of why she was here. The situation was awkward now, as if Michael too was recalling their last meeting.

“I came over to apologize,” Susan said. She faltered when he didn’t say anything, just looked at her. “About the other day, I mean. I heard what happened. I’m grateful for what you did, I guess I was just worried, I didn’t know what to think…” Her voice trailed away. She thought she should just shut up before she dug herself in any deeper. “I just wanted to thank you.”

Silence hung over them for a moment, then she made a move to leave. He hadn’t accepted her apology or acknowledged it, and she couldn’t blame him. In a way, he looked as if he hadn’t really heard her, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. “I hope your falcon is okay,” she said. They were at the corner of the house when he said something she couldn’t quite hear; she turned around.

“Thanks for coming over,” he repeated, then turned and went back inside the shed without another word.

When she and Jamie got back to the house, he went to turn on the TV and she stood thinking in the kitchen for a while, then she went out to the hall and to the door that led down into the basement. Flicking on the switch, she made her way down the steps, keeping her hand on the wall to guide her. The bulb cast a dim yellow light that barely reached the back corners of the room, and in the corner where the locked cupboard stood against the wall it was gloomy and cold. Susan hesitated, feeling her heart beat and a tightness around her chest. She hadn’t been down here for almost a year and a half, and reaching out to grope on the top of the cupboard among the cobwebs and dust, she could feel a tremor in her hand. She felt the cold metal of the key and clasped it, then put it in the lock and took a breath before she turned it. It moved smoothly, with a sharp click, then the door swung open a little and she reached to pull it wide, letting the faint light illuminate the inside.

David’s rifle was inside, buckled into its case, with two boxes of ammunition on the shelf. She’d put the gun there the day of his

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funeral, when her mind was still numb, and had never looked at it since. Once or twice she’d thought about giving it away, but the idea of coming down here had been too much, and instead she’d simply left it. Now, as she reached out for it, she couldn’t help but feel a shudder as she felt its weight, knowing that this gun had killed the man she loved. Briefly she was seized with an impulse to slam the door and go back upstairs, just leave it there, but taking another deep breath, she took it out and put it under her arm, then placed one of the boxes of ammunition in her pocket. She went back up the stairs and turned off the light.

When she reached Michael’s house, the front door was slightly open, the way she’d left it, so she went straight around back. The door to the shed was closed, so she tapped on it and waited. Michael seemed surprised to see her when he opened it, and even more so when she held out the gun.

“Take it,” she said, and perhaps he detected some quality in her voice that made him realize this was an effort for her, if not why, and he reached out and took the gun. She gave him the ammunition too. “It’s been locked away for a while, but I think it should be okay. You might want to clean it first.”

She didn’t wait for him to thank her, just turned around and went back to her house as quickly as she could. Later, sitting at the kitchen table hunched over a coffee cup, her mind full of memories, she flinched when she heard the distant crack of a rifle shot.

MICHAEL WATCHED SUSAN as she vanished around the house, walking quickly, her hands thrust deep into her pockets, shoulders set, not hearing him thank her. He looked down at the rifle in his hands, a perplexed expression marking his features, then back again to the now empty space between the woodshed and the side of the house.

He took the rifle into the woods across the clearing. After a short walk he came to the banks of the river, where smooth gray rocks lined the shore. He practiced until he’d got the feel of the rifle and could hit a small fist-size target from fifty yards. With the gun loaded, he walked along the riverbank until he came to the bridge, where he crossed the gray-green water flowing beneath him.

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After twenty minutes on the far bank he found a rabbit nibbling at a patch of green in the woods. As a boy he’d owned a slug gun briefly, and with it he’d once shot a squirrel that had been feeding on the high branch of a tree. He’d taken careful aim at the little animal as it sat up on its hind feet eating a nut, then fired. It had dropped like a stone. For about ten seconds he’d experienced a rush, and then he’d crouched down and looked carefully at the small, still warm body with a patch of blood on the breast. The eyes had retained a glimmer of brightness, though already they’d seemed glassy. He wished then that he hadn’t killed it, because there had been no purpose to killing it. After that he’d only ever shot at targets he made from rocks or marked on the trunks of trees. Now he justified shooting the rabbit by reasoning that though he wasn’t killing it for himself, he was taking it for food, and that in the wild the falcon would have killed prey anyway.

He took aim and fired, and when the animal dropped where it stood, he experienced a mixture of triumph and remorse. When he approached, it lay perfectly still, its eyes open and staring, a bloody stain in the fur behind its neck. He picked it up and carried it back to the woodshed, where he gutted and dismembered the carcass and cut pieces of still warm meat for the falcon.

She watched him from the far end of her perch when he showed her the meat, which he dangled in front of her to be sure she could see what it was. She showed no interest, so he left it beside her, and for a while he crouched by the door, hugging himself in the cold, watching her, willing her to eat. After half an hour she hadn’t moved. The more his eyes became accustomed to the dim light, the more clearly he could see her shivering. He found himself talking to her, quietly and soothingly. He spoke of her need to eat, to regain her strength so that her wing could heal. He hardly knew what he was saying, but the quiet flow of his words seemed to soothe them both.

“I saved you,” he told her. “You can trust me.”

Though he knew she didn’t understand what he was saying, he felt that the spirit of his intent might pass to her in the sound of his voice. He made a pact with her that if she would eat and regain her strength, he would return her to the freedom of the skies, and as he spoke, she watched with what seemed a slightly altered posture, her dark eyes intent on him.

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Eventually he fell silent. An hour later, he left her, not sure if she would survive the night. He decided to go back and check before he went to bed. If she still hadn’t eaten, he would take her into the warmth of the house in the hope that would at least give him another day.

Inside, he made a quick meal and sat by the fire and tried to read. His thoughts turned to his neighbor. He couldn’t work her out. He pictured the deep ocean green of her eyes and held her image in his mind until it dissolved slowly, re-formed, became Louise. She was smiling, and then her features twisted and her eyes grew wide with fear as he saw her hugging Holly against the wall. He wondered what his daughter looked like now, how tall she was, the color of her hair. Mostly he wondered if she was happy. The only thing he’d ever wanted was her happiness, but he’d discovered that was something it was beyond his power to give.

After a while, he rubbed his eyes. A tiny throb had begun at his temples, which slowly eased when he massaged it. The hands on his watch marked the passage of time. An unwelcome image periodically flashed in his mind of discovering the falcon dead beneath her perch, and he thought he would lose something of himself if that happened, though he was unsure why he should feel that way. When he’d glimpsed her in the clearing at twilight, there had been a tremor in the air, a vibration that he’d tuned to for an instant, which had linked them together. He thought that somehow this was meant to be.

At eleven he took a flashlight and went outside to the woodshed. It was bitterly cold and pitch-black, with no moon to light the way. With trepidation in his heart, he opened the door a fraction. The falcon stood on her perch, feathers ruffled so that she seemed even bigger than normal, one foot raised and clenched to her breast. She blinked at him sleepily over a bulging crop stuffed with rabbit, and when he shone the flashlight at her perch, he saw a few scraps of fur and nothing more remaining of what he’d left her.

OUTSIDE, THE MOON appeared through misty cloud, and for an instant the snow reflected back its pale gray light and the clearing was empty. Fresh snow that had fallen during the evening made a smooth unblemished world: untouched, unspoiled. Michael stood on the porch

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in the darkness drinking a shot of whiskey. He drained his glass, raising it in a silent toast; then, as the breeze rattled the undergrowth among the hemlocks and poplars in the woods, he went inside and closed the door.

1 FEBRUARY HAD GIVEN WAY TO MARCH, AND two weeks had passed since Michael had first brought the falcon home from the vet. During that time he’d confined her to the woodshed while she gained weight and recovered from the shock and stress of her injury. After that first evening, when she’d eaten part of the rabbit he’d shot for her, she’d never looked back. Michael’s time had been occupied with keeping her supplied with fresh food, shooting rabbits and dissecting them. When he wasn’t roaming the woods with a rifle, he was often in the woodshed, sitting quietly by the door at first to allow her to get used to his presence, then standing and moving around a little as she began to accept him.

When Michael had called the number Tom Waters had given him, he’d spoken to Frank Dobson and explained the situation. Frank had told him he was about to go away for ten days, but that when he got back, Michael was welcome to come over and Frank would give him what help he could.

“In the meantime, what you need to do is keep her somewhere dry and sheltered, and feed her plenty of fresh food,” Frank had advised. “Spend some time with her so she gets used to having you around, but don’t pet her like a dog or crowd her. Just give her time.”

He’d asked Michael for his address, and two days later a package had arrived containing two books and a handwritten note. One of the books was a slim tattered-looking paperback novel called The Goshawk, by somebody called T. . White, and the other was a newish-looking hardback written by an American that explained how to keep

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and train a falcon. Frank’s note said that he thought Michael might find the novel interesting; the other book, he wrote, was a practical guide he might like to flick through. His advice was to read the novel first. Also in the package was a pair of leather thongs, a swivel, and a two-foot length of nylon cord with a thick knot tied at one end. A postscript at the bottom of the note told Michael that he would understand their purpose after he’d read the books.

Michael followed Frank’s advice and read the novel first. The author, he discovered, an Englishman, had been a schoolteacher in the years before the Second World War. He’d given up his profession and retreated to a country cottage, where he’d virtually shunned the world and all that was happening in it to train a goshawk he’d had sent from Scandinavia. The novel was first published in 1951 and described an England that Michael was certain no longer existed. It was a place where rural life followed the rhythms of nature, where fields were bordered by hedgerows and woods, where what little traffic passed on the narrow country lanes was as often as not a bicycle. Agriculture had not yet become a highly mechanized affair where fertilizers and chemical sprays ensured that the land is worked year-round, one crop planted the moment another is harvested, where hedgerows are torn out to transform the landscape into barren prairies for the overproduction of unwanted subsidized crops, where wildlife becomes extinct because its habitat has vanished—except for small pockets where reserves have been set up or tradition prevails in the face of great odds.