The Continuity Girl (19 page)

“Do you let her keep it?”

“God, no. What would be the point of training her to kill her own food? The point is for her to hunt down food for
us
and
then we feed her, thus ensuring her dependence. They aren’t stupid, these birds, and they’re not particularly social animals
either. Birds don’t get attached the way dogs do.” He glanced down at Portia, who flicked her tail from side to side and gazed
back at him with dumbstruck love. “The thing is, it’s not possible ever to entirely tame a raptor. You can only convince them,
through training, that you are the best and most efficient food source around. Even then you’re only appealing to their survival
instinct.” Barnaby shaded his eyes from the glare, watching Harriet wing her way toward the crest of the hill and curve back
again like a self-propelled boomerang.

“The main point is, no matter how devoted you are, a bird of prey will never love you back. She’ll work for you, certainly.
But there has to be something in it for her.” Barnaby reached into his hip satchel and pulled out a furry swatch that looked
to Meredith like a shred of fur coat. “Once she’s caught something, then we chase her down and make the trade with this.”

“What is that?”

“It’s called a dummy-bunny. You wrap some raw beef inside when you call in the bird, and then take the quarry from her.”

Meredith didn’t think that sounded fair at all.

In the sky, Harriet began a leisurely loop back toward the slope they had just descended.

“That’s odd.”

“What?” Meredith wiped the damp from her eyes.

“She seems to be circling back to the field we just came from, which is unusual.”

“Maybe she just wants to go home and have a hot bath before dinner,” Meredith hinted, but Barnaby and Portia were already
halfway up the hill, following the bird, which had flown out of sight. Meredith mucked along, cursing herself for not bringing
rubber boots. Not that she owned any.

Harriet was still out of sight when they heard the scream.

“What the devil...” Barnaby gasped.

By the time they reached the crest of the hill, the shrieks had stopped and there was Mish, standing in the middle of the
moor dressed in a long oilskin coat and knee-high leather riding boots, holding her head and moaning. Meredith, who had thought
she was too exhausted to go on, broke into a sprint and ran ahead of Barnaby. When she got close enough, she threw her arms
around her friend.

“Are you okay?” she asked, prying Mish’s hands away from her face and checking her eyes.

“I’m
fine,
” Mish said in a manner that suggested she was anything but. “This insane bird appeared out of nowhere and stole
my hat. I was just coming out to find you guys and I was wearing my new beaver hat I got at the January sale at Holt’s in
Montreal—
Aaah!
” She began flapping her hands around her head and whirling around. “Is it back? It’s back?”

Meredith looked up but saw nothing but sky. By this time Barnaby had made it beside them. Portia greeted Mish with a push
of her snout, but her efforts, or maybe something about the proximity of fur, only amplified Mish’s hysteria. Meredith pulled
the dog out of the way by her collar and tried to calm down her friend while explaining the situation to Barnaby.

“Extraordinary behaviour for a falcon,” he said, pulling at his hair. “Certain larger owls—particularly the great horned and
the snowy—have been known to be aggressive to the point of attacking humans, but not—”

“Oh, will you shut the fuck up?” said Mish.

Meredith winced and continued to soothe her friend by stroking her back. She gave Barnaby a look as if to say,
Don’t take
it personally,
but he didn’t see it. His head was thrown back, eyes searching the sky. Without looking down, he pulled from
his pouch a fan of black feathers attached to a string, and whistled twice. Tossing the fan in the air, he swung it around,
where it caught the breeze and sailed for a few moments like a small kite. Seeing the wings, Mish dove facedown into a patch
of longer grass, covered her head with her hands and began screaming all over again.

“What the hell are you doing?” Meredith demanded. “Can’t you see she’s terrified?”

“Oh God, of course. Terribly sorry.” Barnaby reeled in the feathers. “Magpie wings—to lure her back.” He slipped them back
into his bag, looking like a chastised dog.

Meredith looked down at Mish, who was now flat on the ground, her face pressed into a patch of wet heather.

“Perhaps it’s best if you two go back and have a drink at the cottage,” Barnaby said after a silence. “I’ll call Harriet in
and meet you there before we carry on to the main house for dinner. Again, I’m awfully sorry. This sort of thing never happens.”

And with that he set off across the moors, leaving Mish and Meredith to return to the cottage on their own.

Two hours later Barnaby stood with his guests on the front step of Hawkpen Manor. At the third rap the door swung in with
an anguished
creak.
Meredith shivered. Was it possible the door had opened itself? Before she could process the thought, a
thin, formally dressed man with a receding widow’s peak slipped out from behind the door and welcomed them in with a sweep
of his hand.

“Master Barnaby,” he said, taking in their damp clothes with an expression of unconcealed disdain.

“Didier,” Barnaby said, pulling one can of Double Diamond off a plastic web and handing the man the remaining three.

Meredith raised her hand to be introduced and the Frenchman stepped back as though she had pulled a pistol on him. Then he
sniffed the air and walked away without a word.

“Didier’s our butler,” said Barnaby. “He’s French.”

They were standing in an enormous foyer with wood-paneled walls and gleaming floors that reminded Meredith of a particularly
grand government office. She fought the urge to take a number and wait for someone to stamp her form.

“When was it built?”

Barnaby shrugged, cracked open the can of beer and drank deeply. “I’ll let my brother explain it all to you, if you don’t
mind. He loves to bore new people with the history of the house, and I can never remember any of the relevant dates and architectural
terms anyway.”

Soon a pair of black high heels descended the staircase. Attached to them was an extremely pregnant woman wearing a smile
so large and forced that Meredith was afraid her face might unhinge at the jaw.

“Darling!” She kissed Barnaby on each cheek but avoided touching his jacket, which was flecked with mud. The hostess then
turned to Mish and Meredith. “How lovely you could come. I’m Chubby, Barnaby’s sister-in-law. We so rarely have guests, this
is such a treat. Now come into the drawing room and have a drink, and then Nigel can take you on his tour. He absolutely lives
to show off the house. It’s appalling, really. You must stop him the minute you get bored. I’m afraid all we have is cream
sherry for you ladies tonight—we’re not really trendy vodka people—but the sherry
is
rather good.”

Meredith was offered a seat beside Barnaby on a stiff-backed antique sofa covered in slippery upholstery. It was about the
size and dimensions of the piece North Americans would call a love seat, but there was nothing loving about the design. With
backrests at opposite ends of the narrow seat, it ensured the bodies of its sitters were as far apart from each other as possible.

This was just as well, as Barnaby had fallen into a sulk upon entering the house. Meredith watched him suckle his beer can,
while Chubby interrogated Mish with the enthusiasm of a young police constable. Judging by her hostess’s interest level, Meredith
could tell she assumed Mish was the one in whom Barnaby was interested, not herself. Maybe it was the minidress, she thought.
Or the blond highlights (“buttery chunks,” Mish called them). Either way, Meredith didn’t mind. She was used to Mish getting
more attention than she did. Not just from men, but from the world in general.

“So now, Trish,” Chubby was saying while pouring sherry from a cut-crystal decanter. It was the kind with a huge glass stopper,
which Meredith had thought existed only in television adaptations of old murder mystery novels.

“Actually, it’s Mish,” she said, vanishing her sherry in one go.

“Oh gosh, terribly sorry.
Mish.
That’s an interesting name, isn’t it?”

“It’s short for Michelle.”

“Is your family French Canadian, then?”

“No. Just plain old Canadian Canadian. Jewish Canadian really.”

“Really? I’d never have known you were Jewish.” Chubby had an unnerving way of looking to the left and slightly above the
head of whomever she was addressing.

“It’s probably the nose job,” said Mish. “I got it for my sixteenth birthday. Family tradition.”

Barnaby doubled over and began to cough. Meredith pounded him on the back, even though she knew you weren’t really supposed
to. Across the room Chubby located a pair of large wrought-iron tongs.

“So tell me,” Chubby went on, “what does your father do in Canada?”

“Mostly golf and fight with my mother. He’s retired.”

“And what did he do
before
retiring?” Chubby seemed to remember to smile and then forgot again just as quickly. She traded
the tongs for a poker and began stabbing at the coals of the fire.

“He worked a lot. And golfed less. And fought with my mother.”

Seeing she was getting nowhere, Chubby switched the line of questioning. “And so how do the two of you ladies know each other?”

“From school. We were both in the knitting club.” Mish looked over and winked.

Meredith tensed. She could see the devil coming out in her friend.

“And what school was that?”

“Oh, just a school in Toronto—you wouldn’t have heard of it.”

“A public school?” Chubby gave up looking for whatever it was she wanted and began blowing into the fire to stoke the flames.
It didn’t do much good because she couldn’t bend down properly.

“God, no,” said Mish. “The public school system in Canada is terrible.”

“Really?” Chubby righted herself and placed a hand at the small of her back.

“Oh, yes, total crap. Burgeoning class sizes, no extracurricular activities, teachers who barely know how to read themselves.
It’s like crowd control.”

“That’s awful,” said Chubby. “The English public school system is one of the only good things left in this country. That and
the fact we still have our own currency—but who knows how long that will last with this EU nonsense. At this rate we won’t
have a monarchy in ten years. Organic lemons imported daily from Italy in every corner store? Not a problem. But the
Queen
?
Ridiculous! It makes me miserable just to think of it. Now, Barnaby, would you please come over here and do something about
the fire.” She gave the face-splitting smile again. “We have central heating in the back wing, where we spend most of our
time, but I’m afraid my husband is dead set against it in the rest of the house. He’s ridiculously old-fashioned in some ways.
Well, speak of the devil.”

Nigel Shakespeare appeared in a flying leap that landed him in the center of the room on top of a large Oriental rug that
slid for a couple of feet before coming to a rest. Three Yorkshire terriers yipped at his ankles and narrowly escaped being
crushed beneath his dancing feet. “Hallo, foreign guests! Hallo, beautiful wife! Hallo, prodigal sib!” He went around the
room shaking hands and telling everybody not to get up. The dogs, upon seeing Chubby, began yelping and squeaking and did
a flea-circus performance of rolls and prances in exchange for handfuls of heart-shaped gingersnaps she pulled from a silver
box on the mantel.

“
Ooh, c’est très bien, mes petits poo-poo bijoux! Vous êtes très, très chouettes, n’est-ce pas? Maman vous aime, oui? Oui,
oui, oui?”

When Nigel reached Barnaby, he paused and ruffled his brother’s hair. Barnaby neither flinched nor smiled; he stood stock-still
like a wax figure of himself. “Marvellous to see you, old chap. Well then, how are the birds holding up?”

“Fine. Well, actually today there were some problems—”

But before Barnaby could finish, Nigel took Mish and Meredith each by the arm and proceeded to steer them toward the double
doors. “I hope you don’t mind if I steal your womenfolk for a tour of the house,” he said. “It is so refreshing to have visitors.
We so rarely do.” And then, turning to Mish, he winked. “We’ve been busy restoring the frescoes in the ballroom and I was
hoping I might have a dance.”

Seeing the movement toward the door, the Yorkies abandoned their floor show and ran over to follow.

“Your dogs are so cute!” Mish loosened her arm from Nigel’s grip, squatted down in her mini and scooped up two of the terriers—one
in each hand. The remaining creature began to whine pathetically.

Meredith, who wasn’t keen on small dogs, bent down and picked it up. “What are their names?” she asked.

“John, Paul and George,” Nigel said.

“What!” Mish laughed. “Why no Ringo?”

“I’m afraid only my wife can answer that particular question.”

“Oh
God,
” said Barnaby, who had clearly heard this particular tale before.

Chubby sighed as if under duress, then launched into the story. “When I was a small girl of six or seven, my oldest sister
took me to London to meet the Beatles. It was my first trip to the city. She knew them through a cousin of ours who ran a
famous gallery in Chelsea at the time. Anyway, we ended up back at the Savoy—where they were staying, of course—and...oh God,
I remember it like it was yesterday.” Chubby pressed a hand to her throat as her eyes fluttered to the ceiling.

“Go on,” Mish prompted.

“You must understand I was a sheltered thing. Not at all like six-year-olds today.”

“Her parents kept her locked up in the nursery with a German nanny,” said Nigel, squeezing Meredith around the waist and pinching
a bit of back fat between his thumb and fingers.

“Yes, they essentially did.” Chubby took a slow sip of sherry.