He rose from the stool and started to load the already half-filled dishwasher, topping up the remains of the previous evening's cookery exercise. He dropped a tab of detergent into the machine and closed the door.
"Why don't we wrap up warm and walk off lunch in the garden while the dishwasher takes care of the washing up," he said. "There's a little trout stream right at the bottom of my land which makes a pleasant and relaxing excursion along its banks even when it's cold." She nodded and he flipped the switch on the dishwasher and strode to where her hat and coat hung on the stand. She followed him and stood in the doorway while he stretched out the mink for her. Slipping her arms in the sleeves, she began to fasten it and then pulled her hat firmly over her head and past her ears. He pulled on his own overcoat and his long woolen scarf from the same stand and wrapped himself against the cold. Taking a woollen beanie hat from the coat pocket and some woollen gloves, he made a move towards the far end of the long kitchen.
"I would have thought that you might have abandoned your granny's coat by now," he said as he unlocked the French doors which led onto the patio and thence to the garden. "It's scarcely the done thing to be seen wearing real fur nowadays, is it."
"True," she replied. "However, it is the only keepsake that I have from her and, besides, no-one believes that it is real; everyone thinks that is just a very good, and expensive, fake. You might be the only other person in the whole world who now knows its true nature; you should be honoured. It is so very warm, as you may still remember, and still so practical, although I had to have the lining replaced a couple of years ago. In some ways, it is as though my granny is not dead and, by extension, nor are my parents, my brother and we are just disembarking the plane at Heathrow in a cold winter's day, much like today."
Stepping off the patio, they made their way to the hedge at the end of the lawn. As they neared the tall and dense laurel, she could see that there was indeed a narrow opening which was not visible from the house; the hedge which ran at right angles behind this first barrier, created the illusion of a continuous hedge. As they stepped through, she found herself surrounded on all sides by rhododendron bushes, their leaves just starting to appear but devoid as yet of flower buds. Ambling across the small lawn on round slabs, like stepping stones in a river, she could discern another 'hidden' entrance to which the stones led. The lawn in this new garden filled the whole space but with scant patches under the laurel leaves to mark the areas too shady for the grass to grow. He led her with a gentle, guiding hand on her back to a space to the right of the lawn where there stood a stout wooden door. He opened it and ushered her in to a shed; sunlight flickered through the windows on the front of the wooden building, the far side, and she could make out a large teak table and a number of similar chairs. A large gas barbecue stood in the corner with plastic pitchers, cups and plates arrayed in the cupboards above it. There was a small chest with drawers, an old piece of bedroom furniture perhaps, on which a small canvas bag, a couple of thick leather gloves for the same hand and a set of scales, much like greengrocers used to use, together with a set of cast iron weights stacked neatly, one atop the other.
"You weren't joking when you mentioned the Mad Hatter's tea party earlier, were you?" She said. "However, you didn't have to lead me in here, just to prove a point." She laughed.
"Ah, but it is the quickest way to get to my babies," he replied.
They left the 'Tea Party store' behind and to the left she could see a number of low wooden sheds with gently sloping roofs; sheds however with no front wall. In place of a wall there was a wide gravel path. As she approached the first, she started and leapt back. In front of her, and seemingly appearing from nowhere, was a large, wildly flapping red and white bird. Leo began to laugh. The bird landed on the gravel path, at the limit of the rope-like leash attached to its legs by thin leather, looked around for a few seconds and calmly walked back to her perch which Chani could now see, no longer hidden by the side wall of the weathering.
"Meet Fjorgyn," he said. "'Morn, Morn, Fjorgyn!' She thinks that every time I walk down here, it's feeding time so she comes out to greet me. I am sure that she didn't intend to startle you. Well, not a lot!" He laughed again.
"She's so big," Chani said. "Big and so very, very beautiful. What is she? What type?"
"She's a ferruginous hawk, sometimes called a ferruginous buzzard; you can rest easy now, I have nothing else larger or so large. She's not native to Britain; comes from the US, although this one is, of course, captive bred. You cannot take birds from the wild either here or in the States."
As they passed along the path she looked at each different bird, indolently preening or dozing on their perches. As they passed each one, he helpfully provided a name and the species and whether it was a hawk or a falcon. 'Loki', the male Red-Tailed hawk and his one-time partner, 'Freyja', the female Red Tail; 'Eegit', the 'Eleanora's falcon'; 'Bright Eyes', the female Goshawk, whose eyes did indeed seem like maniacal headlights, the 'Bright Eyes' of the song from 'Watership Down'; 'Sneezewort', the female Harris hawk. There were two larger and taller wooden structures, about twenty feet along a side and at least twelve feet tall. These were aviaries he told her, although they were no longer in use; they were roofed with mesh but, if you wanted the birds to breed, you had to keep them enclosed by four walls without windows.
A concrete path continued on beyond the aviaries alongside the high hedge, which gave his garden such seclusion from the outside world, and onwards towards the trout stream. The path led to the left and she could see the gated rear entrance to his garden and the small, narrow bridge, made of wood with stone piers, which led over the stream. Crossing over, he finally summoned the courage to ask the one question which he had been eager to pose ever since her arrival and the one question to which he did not want to know the answer.
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