Imogen Robertson - Island of Bones

Mr Leathes’ home was only a few minutes’ stroll from his office and seemed just as neat and pleasant as his place of work. A modern villa of comfortable size set back from the road towards Crosthwaite Church, it had high hedges that defended his garden both from the winds of the valley, and the stares of his neighbours. He ushered them in through the wrought-iron gates, then found himself rather hampered in leading them further by the sudden embraces of two young children who came dashing down the path to meet him.

‘Yes, Tom, yes, Sally! I am glad to see you both. Now tell me, is your grandpa out reading in the garden?’ Somewhere in the burble of talk, the children confirmed it. ‘Thank you! Now away with you and tell your mother to bring us tea in the summerhouse. We have guests here, you little savages.’

The children noticed Harriet and Crowther for the first time and became still. They were sturdy-looking children, both of them, with a high colour in their cheeks and matched straw-coloured hair. ‘Go, go,’ their father chided them and they turned to race back into the house. Mr Leathes led his guests towards the side of the house where the garden ran long from neat beds into a little sort of wilderness that crouched below the greater wildness of ever-present Skiddaw. There was indeed a summerhouse there, and in it a man sat reading. He was dressed in dark brown and his shock of white hair looked like snow on a mountain top.

Harriet watched as the man looked up at them from his book and raised a hand in greeting, then stood and began to walk towards them. His steps were a little slow perhaps, but Harriet had been expecting a decrepit relic of extreme old age, swaddled in blankets and helpless as an infant. This man looked no more than sixty.

Mr Leathes perhaps noticed her amazement. ‘My father is eighty-five, Mrs Westerman. There is something in the air of this valley that preserves those who love it.’

Harriet looked between the faces of the old lawyer and Crowther as they came together. She saw her friend smile as he bowed and watched the old man pause, open his eyes wider, then step forward with renewed vigour and his hand outstretched.

‘Charles! My Lord! How many years has it been since I saw you last? You were a young man then. I knew of course that you were at Silverside, but did not know if I’d have the pleasure of meeting you.’

‘Mr Leathes, I am sure you know exactly how long it is since I and you last had sight of each other,’ Crowther said, and took the lawyer’s hand in his own. It was the first time Harriet had seen Crowther show any sign of warmth to those he had known in his youth. Old Mr Leathes chuckled into his neat cravat.

‘It is thirty-two years, three months and some odd days, I believe.’

Crowther turned to Harriet. ‘Mr Leathes, may I present Harriet Westerman?’

The old man bent over her hand in courtly style then looked at his son. ‘Are we to have tea, Mark? So these young people may keep their mouths from drying out while I tell them old stories?’ His son nodded. ‘Good, good. But first, my dear. .’ old Leathes continued as he drew Harriet’s arm under his own, ‘let me show you my birds. Lord Keswick must allow me to bore him with my experiments in their rearing and breeding at some other time, but I cannot let you sit down until you have had a chance to tell me how pretty they all are, and hear how charmingly they sing.’

Other men might have found that such an appeal to Harriet’s presumed female interests would be met with a cool response, but she had decided to be charmed by the old man so let him guide her steps with pleasure.

The aviary attached to the villa was more extensive than the one at the solicitor’s office. It was built out from the side of the house and half-formed of glass, with a number of walls constructed of a thin brass mesh. The floor was a mix of gravel and turf, studded with low bushes and tree branches. It was the sort of construction that Harriet might have expected to see in the grounds of one of the great country houses; to see it here was astonishing. The old man smiled and patted her hand.

‘We must all feed our souls as well as our bodies, I believe, Mrs Westerman. I have spent a great deal of money on these little singers in my years, but never regretted a penny of it.’ He opened a door to his right and led her into the aviary itself, took corn from his pocket and whistled. A gold and red canary fluttered down from the branches above them and settled on his finger. ‘Ah! She is a bold lady, this one. Most of the others are too timid to join me, you see, when there is a stranger by, but this creature’s fear is always outweighed by her curiosity.’

Without being quite sure what she expected, or hoped for, Harriet removed the glove from her right hand and lifted it close to where the bird perched on Mr Leathes’ finger. It put its head on one side and examined her for a moment, then hopped across onto her finger. She felt its thin claws like pin scratches on her skin; the lowest feathers on its belly brushed her as it puffed itself out and shook itself then trilled at her, holding its beak open as it did so like an opera singer.

‘I think she recognises a fellow spirit, Mrs Westerman,’ the lawyer said, then he glanced over his shoulder. ‘Ah! My daughter-in-law is bringing out the tea. I must leave my darlings for now. How is Charles?’ Harriet started at the question and realised Crowther and Mark Leathes had already turned back towards the summerhouse. Alarmed by her movement, the canary retreated onto one of the perches elsewhere in the aviary.

‘I have known him three years, Mr Leathes, yet still do not know how to answer the question.’

The old man laughed very softly. ‘Then I may assume he is not much altered.’

‘You knew him as a boy, sir?’

‘I did, and a strange and lonely child he was. But he would come and watch my birds with me, and when age or disease took one we would open up the body together. Is it not strange, madam, that here are creatures so unlike us, yet they have lungs to sing with, a heart to Island of Bones drive the blood through themselves and a brain much like our own, though what thoughts they have are a mystery. But then I suppose so are the thoughts of our fellow man.’

Mrs Leathes left them, pleading her domestic duties as soon as the tea was poured, and taking care to shepherd her children to a more distant part of the garden for their play, returned to the house. In the brief pause while they watched her cross the lawn, the sound of the canaries filled the air. Harriet had seldom heard such a range of song since her time in the Indies. Indeed, the weather reminded her of those regions as well as the birds, since the air was as close as ever, with the sun like a pewter disk through the haze.

Old Mr Leathes looked between Harriet and Crowther, and having taken a mouthful of tea, produced a long clay pipe from his pocket and began to fill it from his tobacco pouch.

‘Perhaps it is the lawyer in me,’ he said as he did so, ‘but I think you have come to make me talk about the past rather than hear about my birds. Now I have heard singing in the village about this body found on Saint Herbert’s Island. Do I assume too much in thinking your visit here is connected?’

‘You are correct, sir,’ Crowther replied.

‘Then with Mrs Westerman’s permission, I shall light my pipe,’ Leathes said, settling into his chair, ‘for you shall make me talk, and I talk better with a smoke to cool my lungs.’

Mrs Westerman’s permission was given and the pipe lit. Harriet could not help noticing the way that old Leathes gave his attention to them, quietly and with the air of a man prepared to wait them out. He wondered if Crowther realised how much he had benefited from his acquaintance with the lawyer.