The Hunger Trace Read online

  Louisa did not speak.

  ‘Come on. Christopher’s out. Two hours. An hour. I’m buying. We need to get off this hill.’

  ‘I just bathed.’

  ‘And I just had a shower. Perfect. Sisters looking hot.’

  Louisa found that remark distasteful, in many ways. ‘No. Thank you. Anyway, I’d have thought you’d be staying at home in the evenings, after those break-ins.’

  Maggie nodded, squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Are you okay?’ she said.

  ‘Me? I’m fine,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Oh, that’s good. I’m not fine, to be honest. And I don’t much want to go down into the village and drink with those old buggers, but I quite fancied a drink with you.’

  Louisa had no time for emotional blackmail. ‘Listen. I don’t expect you’ve ever been turned down. I’ll put it down to inexperience, but you have this knack of only turning up here when you want something, so I can’t help feeling like the bottom of the barrel. It’s not a pleasant sensation, being scraped. I told your husband the same.’

  Maggie shook her head and choked back some tears. She pointed to her house. ‘I am in that . . . fucking place on my jacks, waiting to be broken into. And I don’t think my company is so poor that I’d be the only one to gain from us having a chat. And I know exactly what you told my husband. I just wonder what you tell your fucking self.’

  She walked away. Louisa made sure she slammed the door quickly. The bloodrush made her giddy. She shut the lights off and watched Maggie through the window. Sixty paces from the house she was nothing more than that red coat lit by the moon. Headless, legless. It was about then that Maggie screamed, ‘For fuck’s sake!’ She didn’t hold back on the volume.

  Sleep proved difficult that night. Apart from the adrenal pump of the argument, Louisa panicked over what David had told Maggie. Had he told her about the second day of their hunting challenge, back when they were teenagers? Their silent, breathless walk through the glades and fields? It was the last day of February, and the last moment of pure beauty that Louisa could remember experiencing with another human. It was more likely he had told her of the moments following the walk, their lives split in two like rotten wood. She thought of David stumbling away from the hedgerow. She drifted off, and woke to find the moon so strong she thought it was afternoon.

  At that moment, Louisa was truly aware of the exposed location of her cottage. And she could feel Maggie’s presence, too. The walls of their houses seemed irrelevant, flimsy. She thought of Maggie trembling on the doorstep. It had been a long time since Louisa had provoked anger in another person, a long time since she had elicited emotion of any kind.

  * * *

  Training a falcon is unlike training a dog because a falcon does not – and will never – care for its owner. That was always the first thing Louisa said at falconry displays. The falcon comes from a world beyond society or hierarchy, and depends upon nobody. When she first received a falcon, Louisa would watch it bate from the glove, so sickened by her proximity that it would rather die than look at her. In practice, this mentality rendered punishment and censure utterly useless as training tools. The only way to proceed was to reduce the weight of the bird until it relented to the falconer as a source of food. Louisa had seen overweight hawks take off, even after several seasons, never to return.

  People at the displays often asked Louisa what was in it for her. Falcons are so ungiving, they said. It’s a one-way relationship. She replied that they worked together. When they went out on the moor, and her dog was on point, and Diamond rose to his pitch – even if Louisa could not see him through the cloud or the glare – they knew each other. She gave the signal, the grouse were flushed, and there he was, head over feet, plummeting. It was a privilege.

  Diamond would come off the kill for her, and if that was because she was holding meat, then so what? If the respect was grudging, then it was earned. If you think human relationships aren’t based on power, Louisa told the doubters, then maybe it’s you who wants your head looking at. At least a falcon doesn’t lie about it.

  That week she received and trained a new lanner. On the Friday she looked down at the table in her kitchen, the needles and coping tools, the green stars of shit, the towels for swaddling, and the immature falcon. She realised she had not given the bird a name. There had been no need, for they were the only two beings in the house. If she was not talking to the lanner, she was talking to herself. Excepting those commands made to her dogs and birds, she had spoken perhaps forty words since the argument with Maggie on the doorstep almost a week ago. She read Maggie’s postcard again, and thought of the ibex’s neck, hot against her face. She picked up the phone and dialled.

  ‘I want to invite you and Christopher over for a short display. No, no trouble. It won’t be anything special. He’ll be fine. Can’t be any crazier than me.’

  FOUR

  At that time of year, nature blended the boundaries. Leaves from the hilltop churchyard blew across the animal enclosures and onto Louisa’s land. Wasps crawled drunk from grounded apples in the acidic fizz of afternoon light.

  Louisa stood on the weathering lawn and watched Christopher and Maggie crossing the field towards her. Christopher wore a long waxed jacket which may have been his father’s, and marched with his usual forward lean. Maggie looked small, steadying herself against him in the mud. Her voice carried in shards. Louisa had arranged Diamond and the new lanner, hooded, on Arab perches on the lawn, and put the Harris hawks, Fred and Harold, out of the way on bow perches. The hawks turned their heads, one after the other, to watch Maggie and Christopher approach.

  ‘Well, hello there,’ Maggie said to the birds, before smiling at Louisa without a hint of animosity. Louisa had braced herself for tension after the other night’s rant, but there was none. Christopher sipped from a can of Fanta and eyed the hawks suspiciously.

  ‘I need your help with this one, Christopher,’ Louisa said, pointing to the lanner.

  ‘I’m not touching it,’ said Christopher.

  ‘You don’t have to. He doesn’t have a name, that’s all. I wondered if you could help me name him.’

  Christopher looked at the bird for a moment, and then at his feet. ‘Steve,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ said Louisa. ‘Steve it is.’

  Maggie laughed, and Christopher scowled at her until she stopped. ‘So what do you think of them?’ Maggie said.

  ‘Erm. They seem daemonic,’ he said.

  ‘Christopher!’ Maggie said. ‘Sorry, Louisa. He says that about everything at the moment.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’ve called them worse.’

  Christopher impersonated his stepmother: ‘It’s daemonic this, erm, daemonic that.’

  Louisa took Diamond on her fist, removed his hood and began her standard lecture. She saw no reason to personalise the display. ‘This is Diamond, a peregrine falcon,’ she said. ‘He’s male. Males are known as tiercels, because they are a third of the size of females.’

  Maggie nudged Christopher, who tutted.

  Louisa continued. ‘The world comes to Diamond differently. He sees polarised light. He sees ultraviolet. Most people know that a falcon’s vision is long-range and acute, but what they don’t know is that a peregrine sees the world slowed down.’

  Maggie raised her eyebrows and nodded. Louisa put her face close to Diamond, who looked away. ‘The rate of signals from his eye to his brain is many times higher than that of a human. If Diamond watched TV, he’d just see a collection of static images constantly turning from dark to light.’

  An insect buzzed around Christopher’s drink.

  ‘The wasp that just flew past your face in a blur,’ Louisa said to Christopher, ‘would not be a blur to Diamond. He would see it slowly passing by in perfect detail. He’d be able to see each beat of its little wings.’

  Christopher batted at the persistent wasp, and then looked up at Louisa. ‘So how fast is the wasp really, erm, going?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Louisa sai
d.

  ‘Well, if the wasp is going fast for me, and it’s going slow for the bird, how fast is it really going?’

  Louisa frowned. This is what happens when you ad-lib, she thought. She turned to Maggie, who was trying to suppress a smile. ‘Maggie, do you know anything about the nature of time as an entity independent of human perception?’

  Maggie laughed. ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘Life must be, erm, boring for them,’ Christopher said. ‘Even F1 would seem slow.’

  Louisa had forgotten about his obsession with motor racing. Perhaps she could use it. ‘Do you know anything about G-force, Christopher?’

  His eyes widened and he began to stammer. ‘Yes. Erm. Nigel Mansell sometimes underwent the force of up to two G during, erm, Grand Prix racing,’ he said. He put down his drink and pulled his skin taut across his face.

  ‘Pretty impressive,’ Louisa said. ‘How much G-force can a human stand, do you know?’

  Christopher was delighted. ‘Erm. That’s easy. Six G.’

  ‘God, well done you,’ said Maggie, slapping Christopher’s back.

  ‘That’s quite a lot, isn’t it?’ Louisa said.

  ‘Six G is called, erm, G-LOC. The blood starts to drain from the eyes and consciousness is lost. It’s not at all promising.’

  Louisa nodded. ‘You want to know how many Gs Diamond can take?’

  Christopher stared at Diamond, who adjusted his feet on the glove. ‘How many?’ Christopher said.

  ‘About twenty-eight G,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Horseshit!’

  ‘Absolutely true.’

  ‘That thing?’

  ‘This very thing.’

  Louisa looked at Diamond. ‘He’s pretty mean in character, but there’s no way that Diamond could kill a grouse, which is almost three times his size, in a straight fight. So he pitches himself way up high – about a thousand feet – and then folds into this vertical dive, called a stoop. It’s just about the finest, most ingenious thing you can witness. You can actually hear it. In the stoop, Diamond has a peak speed of two hundred miles an hour, increasing his killing weight from two pounds to sixty.’

  ‘Jumping Jehosaphat,’ said Christopher. He did some calculations and turned to Maggie. ‘That’s like thirty of me landing on you,’ he said to her. ‘Imagine that.’

  ‘I’d rather not,’ said Maggie.

  ‘You’d be flattened,’ said Christopher, clapping his hands together.

  Louisa hooded Diamond, placed him back on his perch, and moved on to the Harris hawks. Fred was slightly larger, but they were both nearly chicken-sized, with big necks and chocolate feathers broken by rusty tones. Their feet and beaks were a strong yellow from the egg yolk she fed them. ‘We’re not going to fly Diamond today,’ she said, ‘We’ll fly these two. Harris hawks don’t mind people so much. You can bring them into your house, introduce them to the kids, sit them down at the dinner table, watch TV with them, or whatever it is you do of an evening . . .’ Louisa said, struggling a little for ideas.

  ‘I like family values,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Diamond would go crazy if I tried that shit with him,’ Louisa said. Maggie laughed again.

  Louisa took Fred from the bow perch onto her glove, and then cast him into the trees surrounding the garden. He watched everything: the movement of Maggie’s hand as she scratched her neck, the stone that Louisa kicked, the leaves. Louisa took out the rabbit lure – a strip of raw beef tied to a toy bunny, fixed to a length of string. She buried the lure in the undergrowth, and then whipped it out and ran with it. Fred descended from a nearby tree, gave a short chase, and crushed the toy. Maggie applauded, while Christopher tilted his head uneasily to watch Fred feed.

  ‘Anybody fancy a go?’ Louisa asked.

  Christopher remained silent, and eventually Maggie stepped up. Fred flew to the high branches of a beech, and Louisa took off her glove, which steamed a little. She passed it over Maggie’s long fingers and pulled it down. ‘Almost fits,’ Maggie said, squeezing a fist.

  ‘It’ll do,’ Louisa said.

  Louisa arranged Maggie’s body so that the younger woman stood side-on to the bird, her head turned and her left arm extended. Louisa took a day-old chick from the bag and popped the yolk sac, placed it in Maggie’s gloved hand, the blood and yolk darkening the worn leather. ‘Call him,’ Louisa said.

  ‘Fred. Come on, sweetie,’ Maggie said.

  The bird leaned forward, stopped, and came. The silence was heavy as the wings beat and then held, the bird coming lower, inches from the ground before rising to the glove. Louisa looked at Maggie, because it was her first time. Maggie stayed still and kept her eyes on the hawk. She did not flinch. Louisa felt a slight disappointment, although she could not have articulated the source.

  ‘Good boy,’ whispered Maggie. Louisa could see the shock of it in her, a woman who worked with animals but was nevertheless excited by the level of control, and the simultaneous lack of it. Fred picked at the flesh, and Maggie released a little more of the chick’s body.

  ‘Okay, let him go,’ Louisa said. Maggie cast Fred back into the air. He flew to the nearest tree and licked his feet.

  ‘Will you give it a try, Christopher?’ asked Maggie.

  ‘No,’ said Christopher. ‘There’s no point, now you’ve done it.’

  ‘Come on,’ Maggie said. ‘It’s another string to your bow.’

  Christopher considered the phrase carefully. It was one of his favourites. ‘Erm. Okay,’ he said. ‘One go.’

  Louisa set him up. She had not been so close to the boy for some time. She found the blue lenses strange, but more troubling was his silhouette, dark against the dropping light behind him. It was almost the same as David’s, the paunch already thick, the legs strong, the shoulders sloping down. He was a little older than David had been when he and Louisa had gone hunting together that day.

  Louisa placed another chick on the glove. ‘Gross,’ said Christopher. He bobbed the dead head against his fist. ‘Call him in,’ said Louisa.

  ‘You do it,’ said Christopher. Louisa tapped Christopher’s glove and called out for Fred, who had the taste and required no second ask. He dropped from the tree.

  Christopher’s frown appeared to be inquisitive, nothing more, but when the hawk rose up through the last metre, Christopher screamed and hit the ground, flinging the chick away in a spinning spray of yolk and blood. Fred rose steeply and flew over to the roof of the old aviary, where he bristled. Louisa stood back and looked at Christopher.

  ‘Bloody thing tried to kill me,’ Christopher shouted, still on the ground, his arms over his head.

  ‘Hey, what happened, sweetie?’ said Maggie, walking over.

  ‘Don’t you come anywhere near me!’ Christopher said, peering out from behind his hands. Maggie froze. ‘And don’t call me sweetie. I hate it. This is all your doing. You forced me to come here.’ He was almost crying.

  ‘Christopher, it’s okay. It’s a perfectly natural reaction,’ said Maggie.

  Louisa wasn’t listening. She looked over at Fred, who seemed undisturbed, now, although he would make her pay later, for letting that boy snatch his food away. She took a guess at what a normal person would do. She crouched down to check on Christopher, who was still curled up in a ball. ‘You’re okay,’ she said. She took him by the elbow, which he ripped around sharply into her face, knocking her over. She would later confess – though only to herself – to a feeling of exhilaration as she lay there on the grass.

  ‘Jesus, Christopher, what are you doing?’ said Maggie, running to Louisa.

  ‘You can shut up,’ Christopher said, standing. ‘That bloody thing tried to, erm, kill me.’

  ‘You can’t just fucking hit people,’ Maggie said.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Louisa said quietly, sitting up.

  ‘It’s your doing,’ said Christopher again, pointing his big crooked finger at Maggie, dirt in the wrinkles. ‘I never wanted to come here, and I never asked for you.’

&nb
sp; He made a gesture of contrite protest to Louisa. ‘I’m alright,’ she said. ‘Just taking five.’ But he was quickly on his way, head down, shaking the glove onto the ground.

  ‘I’m going to get completely inebriated,’ he called back.

  Maggie looked distraught. ‘Well, he can make a good decision when he tries,’ she said. She offered her arm to Louisa, who said she felt happy sitting down for a while. Maggie’s eyes, swirling and opaque like a stick-stirred brook, gradually took their focus on Louisa, and then widened. ‘He’s cut you,’ she said. Louisa dabbed at her lip, saw fresh blood on her fingers. ‘Nah, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It was just the shock that knocked me over.’

  ‘That and the sixteen stone he weighs,’ said Maggie.

  After a few minutes, Louisa got to her feet, still shaky. She called Fred down from the roof, put the hawks in the weatherings, and knew she was done for the day.

  Maggie took disinfectants and medical equipment from the weighing room, and ignored Louisa’s insistence that she would treat herself. She made her go into the cottage and lie on the sofa. Louisa was secretly pleased, because she felt suddenly shattered.

  She knew from her touch that Maggie was getting used to working with animals. The securing grip on the neck gave it away. Maggie washed the wound and stemmed the blood flow with cotton wool and petroleum jelly.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘I’m sorry you had to witness that domestic scene, too.’

  ‘Sounded pretty hurtful.’

  ‘I’m used to it.’

  Louisa thought back to how disagreeable she herself had been when Maggie first moved in.

  ‘I appreciate what you did today,’ Maggie said. ‘I thought it was outstanding. When I called that hawk out of the tree, it felt like the first clear space I’ve had in my head for months. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Big old beak and talons headed for you – tends to focus the mind.’

  ‘I loved it.’

  ‘I know you did.’