The Snowfly (20 page)

The station in Penzance was small and old but brightly painted. We unloaded our bags and a woman came across the platform and presented her cheek to Charlie for a ceremonial kiss. She bent over and Charlie had to stand on tiptoes to reach her. She was dark skinned, Indian I guessed, and wearing Wellies and faded bell-bottom blue jeans. She was six-three, reed thin, with cascading black hair, intelligent eyes, and an enchanting smile.

“Anji,” Charlie said, pronouncing it Angie. “Meet Mister Bowie Rhodes. He's American.”

We shook hands and I felt her eyes appraising me.

“Anjali Toddywalla,” she said. “Welcome to Cornwall.”

We drove in her old dust-covered Land Rover for about thirty minutes along narrow lanes, first through forests and then into more barren land, and stopped at a two-track to lift an unadorned gate. Anjali drove through, Charlie shut the gate behind us, and we headed down into a valley, which I didn't see until we were in it. It was dark and I couldn't make out the landscape, but I saw lights ahead, some small ones in a cluster below and, high above them and beyond, a brightly lit sprawling house that dominated the side of the hill.

We parked in front of a thatched cottage stuck in a grove. The headlights shone on thick clusters of huge rhododendrons.

The cottage was that in name only. The interior was expansive, with a large foyer opening to a massive room decorated with paintings, bronze and porcelain statues, and framed photographs, mostly black and white. There were fly rods in a rack along one wall and a fly-tying bench cluttered with feathers and fur patches. The floors were dark green slate but covered with thick carpets. The furniture was soft and looked well used. No television in sight. No stereo. Built-in shelves overflowed with books.

Anjali brought us tea and a platter of cucumber sandwiches, which Charlie and I consumed ravenously.

“So,” she said, “what makes you mad for trout, Mister Rhodes? Charlie's always been that way.”

“I don't know,” I said. I had never really thought about my motivation for fishing.

“Pity,” she said.

“Don't mind her,” Charlie said with his mouth stuffed with tiny sandwiches. “She's got her own madness.”

“Piss off,” she said in a polite tone and Charlie laughed his laugh.

I wondered what their relationship was. They obviously knew each other well, but there were no physical signs of affection. Many Brits I had met were this way, but Charlie wasn't one of them. One night in a cab he undressed a woman he'd met in a bar and had her right there beside me. He was forever pawing and kissing women we met at various functions I covered. His attentions were rarely rebuffed.

“I feel like a bloody matador ready for the first bull of the season,” Charlie announced. “Shall we organize our gear for the morning?”

It took us about an hour. I noticed that he had an eight-foot rod like mine, what the Brits called a one-hander (as opposed to the much longer two-handed spey rods often used for salmon). Charlie had box after box filled with thousands of flies.

“Bit of a collector,” he said, grinning.

This was like calling John Paul Getty a little rich. “Got a snowfly?” I asked casually.

Charlie gave me a quizzical look. “Never heard of it.”

I briefly outlined the legend as I knew it and Charlie listened attentively. “Bleedin' hell,” he said. “Thought I'd heard everything. Got any Adamses?”

“Pretty good supply.”

“May I?” he asked. “Yanks tie them so much better.”

“We're going to use an Adams?”

“And Callibaetis, but I'm flush in those and my dressings are top of the line, what?”

Charlie and I were awake early the next morning and settled for coffee and dry toast before climbing into our waders.

“I thought Brits fished from the banks.”

“Only the rigid fools. I like to mix with the fish, but mind you, we've got to be bleedin' cautious, stay to the sides and remain low. These fish don't grow large, but they're born smart.”

The river was called the Drake.

“After the insect?” I asked.

Charlie laughed out loud. “Right, Sir Francis, he was certainly a right bleedin' pest to the Spaniards, eh?”

We were on the river a few moments before sunrise. Charlie said, “I release most of my fish.” I told him I did too. There was a hazy overcast and a forecast of showers later in the day. I tied on a small Adams and hit a fish immediately. It was a brown, a healthy ten inches, bright silver with dark markings and not a lot of yellow.

“Give us a look,” Anjali Toddywalla said from the bank behind me, startling me. She had two cameras around her neck and was carrying a small tripod.

I showed her the fish, careful to not take it out of the water.

“Lovely,” she said, “but the light's not quite right. Mind if I follow along?”

“Of course not.”

The river flowed down a slope, forming a series of terraced drops. We were in a narrow gorge with growling water and some pools under the shadows of large gray boulders. There were undercut banks in places and man-made stone walls on some bends. There wasn't an abundance of aquatic vegetation, but enough to provide cover for fish and insects. Ancient oaks towered above us. The water wasn't deep, but it had a firm and steady flow. The rocks were a combination of sandstone and granite, the latter covered with multicolored lichens. It was a lovely setting for trout fishing.

The fish weren't as spooky as Charlie had made them out to be. They were mostly small, but fought valiantly and stubbornly.

At midmorning I came around a bend and, out of the corner of my eye, caught a silver flash to my right. It was a trailer, what the Brits called a caravan, set back from the bank, built up on a wooden platform. A porch with a railing of barkless wood had been built along the side facing the river.

Anjali, who had followed me in silence, announced it was time for tea; I got out of the river and followed her into the place. The furnishings were spartan: a table and chairs, stove, small refrigerator, and stone fireplace built into one side, where the metal had been cut away. There were three small shadow boxes on one wall, filled with displays of flies, mostly naturals. Several spare drawings of trout looked almost alive.

Charlie came in as Anjali began to brew tea.

“My dears are skittish wee things, aren't they?”

I said, “Not bad.”

“Howjado?”

“A few,” I said. In fact, I had not been counting. I had been concentrating too hard on figuring out where they were.

“Twenty-six,” Anjali announced from the stove.

Charlie's mouth hung open. “Kiss my glorious goolies,” he said.

“Truly,” Anjali said. “I counted them all. And you, Charles?”

“Four,” he said, “and I can tell you I was bleedin' well pleased with that. Thought I'd have to console Bowie. You're a cheeky bastard, Rhodes! Catchin' my brownies so easily.”

“He casts beautifully,” Anjali said. “Pinpoint radar in his arm. He might give you a lesson or two, Charles.”

“Might he?” Charlie said, laughing.

I wished Anjali would stop needling him. “Lucky morning,” I said.

“Yes,” our water boiler said, “the sort of luck you have with birds, Charles.”

Charlie reddened and grinned with embarrassment. “Rather have the bleedin' browns,” he muttered.

The three of us drank tea and ate fresh honey-oat muffins, which Anjali pulled from her rucksack.

“I didn't see another fisherman all morning,” I told Charlie.

“And shan't,” Charlie said. “This is mine.”

“His aunt's,” Anjali said, interrupting. “To be accurate.”

Charlie ignored her. “Auntie bought this back in the nineteen-forties, right after the war. Nobody fished the river back then. Too small, not enough flow, fish too small. But she bought it and had some chaps down from Wales and they did this and did that. Never planted a fish; the natives prospered.”

“Your aunt fishes?”

“Whole bloody family,” he said. “What's left of us.”

“She's quite famous,” Anjali said.

“
Infamous
would be more to the point,” Charlie said.

“Women's rights,” Anjali said.

“You name it,” Charlie added. “My mother's sister. My father and mother were killed in 1948, in India, soon after independence.”

I wondered if this was his connection to Anjali.

“Auntie took me in,” Charlie continued. “Of course, she was gone knockabout most of the time, shedding her knickers for peers and pals. When I showed promise at football at public school she had them remove me from the team. Wouldn't tolerate her nephew playin' a ‘gutter' sport. Naturally, I told her to piss off, left school, joined Arsenal, and you know the rest.”

“They didn't speak for years,” Anjali said in a scolding tone. “Charles refused to apologize and she insisted
she
had been right. It was a frightful contest of misdirected wills.”

“She
was
wrong!” Charlie said, his face flashing anger. “Why would I apologize?”

“For being a cheeky, self-absorbed wowser,” she said.

He lowered his eyebrows. “Besides that?”

They both laughed. It was obviously an old joke.

“They've only recently reconciled,” Anjali said to me.

“Who finally surrendered?” I asked.

Charlie rolled his eyes. “I did. The old girl wasn't gettin' any younger and maybe I'd grown up a bit.”

“Not all that much,” Anjali Toddywalla said dryly.

“Ever hear of Sir Thomas Oxley?” I asked.

Charlie rolled his eyes. “
Heard
of him? I should think so. The man was a giant. Not that the other Lordships appreciated his single-minded dedication to spreadin' trout. They felt he ought to concentrate on bleedin' old England and bugger the rest of the world. His offspring did not inherit his love for fish, which is somewhat of a tragedy.”

“Trust went under,” Anjali announced.

Charlie gaped at her in disbelief. “You must be joking.”

“It's true,” I added. “A very recent event.”

“How do you know that?” Anjali asked. “It's not been publicized.”

“I had business with St. John Wonbrow, the Trust's former managing director.”

“Dreadful man,” Anjali said.

“You know him?”

“His reputation,” Anji said.

“My dear Bowie,” Charlie said, “in certain social circles in England everyone knows everybody. It can get quite tiresome. I simply can't believe the Oxley Trust has gone under.”

“It was Ozzie's fault,” Anji said.

She seemed quite well informed and I decided to listen rather than talk.

“Ozzie!” Charlie said. “Complete bleedin' idiot.” He looked over at me. “Oswald Oxley, the great man's great-great-grandson or some such thing. Couldn't manage a half quid. The Oxley fortune has been pissed away for generations. The truth is that it's a miracle the patriarch himself ever accumulated anything. The old boy reputedly had a terrible head for business.”

Anjali interrupted. “The National Trust tried like the dickens to get hold of the Oxley properties, but the trustees felt they could make more on the open market.”

“Nothing remains?” I asked.

“Dribs and drabs,” Charlie said. “What's the name of that awful place in Hampshire?” he asked Anjali.

“Greavy House,” she said.

Greavy!
The word startled me. In his article on cryptography M. J. Key had talked about Irish monks at a place called Greavy. And now I was finding that Oxley had a place called Greavy House? A connection between Key and Oxley? This was not only a weird coincidence, it was scary. I couldn't speak.

“Right you are. That's the place. Ozzie's now,” Charlie said, “if he's alive. Last I heard he was into the psychedelic scene and taking constant trips to Morocco, hash-with-trash and all that.” Charlie suddenly stopped talking and stared at me. “What business would you have with the Oxley Trust?”

“Sir Thomas collected fishing books. I was at his Trout House on the River of Trout on the Vietnam border with Cambodia.”

“Bugger off!” Charlie said incredulously. “His
what?
”

“The name of his place in Vietnam. Seriously, there were trout in Vietnam, planted by Oxley. And some of his books. I saw a manuscript called
The Legend of the Snowfly
but never got to read it.”

Charlie was grinning in disbelief. “And why's that, old chum?”

“It got blown up and burned.”

Anjali said, “My God.”

“While you held it?” Charlie asked, still not believing me.

“No, a few seconds after I put it down.” I told the two of them about the North Vietnamese attack and Tet and Gillian and the books and what had happened and how the place had been destroyed and they listened politely until I was done.

When I finished, they were silent and exchanged glances until Anjali said, “How absolutely dreadful.”

Charlie poured us more tea and stared out the caravan at the river. “Who was the author of the manuscript?”

“M. J. Key.”

Charlie looked at me. “The snowfly bloke you mentioned last night?”

“The same.”

“You said he wrote other books?”

I provided dates and brief descriptions.

Charlie nodded. “Long interval, eh?”

“Fifty-one years,” I said.

Charlie asked, “Manuscript dated?”

I shook my head. “Estimated late nineteen-thirties to mid-nineteen-­forties, but I'm only guessing.”

“Only the one copy?”

“Again, I don't really know.”

“Snowfly, eh?” He looked at Anjali Toddywalla. “Something, eh?”

“Worth a look,” she said with an even voice. “We could drop in on Ozzie sometime.”