Thursday 14 February 2013

The uninvited guest (part 21)

Leo rummaged in his bag for the spare glove which he had put there earlier and handed it to her. She put it on and he showed how to hold her arm and her fingers and thumb. He coaxed Eegit onto her fist and dragged the jesses past her fingers and into her palm, winding the leash around her ring and little fingers. She closed her hand into a fist as he instructed, keeping a tight hold of the jesses.

As they walked back down the narrow pathway, side by side, she looked as happy as a sandboy might. She kept one eye on the path and one eye on the bird, so fascinated was she with the experience of having a live falcon sitting on her hand. They had crossed about three quarters of the distance to the weatherings when she suddenly stopped and turned to him.

"Would you like to, be able to, maybe, bring some of these birds to my school?" She asked. "I'm sure the kids would appreciate what I have seen, even if not so much, although perhaps even more so. The school has playing fields adjacent to a park not ten minutes walk from the school so there would enough space and the children could walk there, supervised by teachers of course. Would that, in any way, be possible?"

"It might be possible, I'll think about it," he said. "I am a shy retiring type, ill at ease in large groups especially of children, although much given to public performance in my youth. Give me a few weeks to mull it over and then drop me an email or call me. I also know a few people who do these kinds of demos, at game fairs and country shows, and who might be willing to do a freebie for the kids for a small painting of mine or a sheet of sketches of their birds."

They continued back to the weathering and transferred Eegit to her block, the usual perch for a captive falcon. Chani was fascinated by the falconer's knot, which is capable of being tied with only one hand, because, even though he had both hands free, Chani still had a firm grip on Eegit's jesses, he still tied the knot, or rather knots, there are two of the same on a leash attaching the leash to the block, with one hand. When asked why, with both hands free, he still tied it with only one hand, he had replied that the answer was quite simple; he had no idea of how to tie the knot using two hands! Eegit's remaining food from her day's ration was left on the gravel in front of her block.

They dropped Leo's bag and the gloves back on the chest in the Tea Party shed and were about to head off back to the house when Leo remembered the creance and Roy's guilty admission. Picking up a wooden dowel, about nine inches long, Chani was amazed at how Leo was able to wind so much twine so rapidly in figures of eight around the short rod; his arms and hands barely seemed to moved as yard after yard was wound.

"It takes a lot of practice to get this fast," he said, in answer to the unasked question that was written all over her face. "But it really is the best way of ensuring a tangle and knot-free creance every time. It's based around the cleats that sailors used to make in the days of sail and rigging but the earliest falconers provided a novel twist, just to make it harder to do. A sailor's cleat is all one sided because they don't move the dowel; the falconer twists his dowel one quarter turn with each winding which makes for a more balanced and even final product."

"It seems to me that your hobby, like your profession, entails an awful lot of practice," Chani remarked.

After a slow, leisurely walk back through the gardens, during which Chani spoke incessantly, obsessively about Eegit, the sheer joy of it all, asking all manner of questions about the falcon herself and falconry in general, they were back in the kitchen. While Chani went to pet Rory and her pups for a brief while, Leo had busied himself with loading the dishwasher with the detritus of that morning's breakfast crockery and making another round of espresso for them both. Leo called Chani to her coffee and they were, once again, sitting in their, now, habitual positions opposite each other. As they sipped the coffee, there was a strange, uncanny silence which was even more surprising after the exuberance of Chani's exhilaration during their walk back through the gardens; her excitement over what she had seen and the joy of having such a bird, not twelve inches away from her and resting on her hand, so close that she could touch it. Leo decided, eventually, that, as he was the host, he should break this silence.

"Will you be staying for lunch before you head on back," he asked. "Or would you rather leave sooner. It's a long and tiring drive, after all. It's just that I will need to think of what to do for lunch, if you are staying."

"No, you need not bother with lunch for me," she replied. "I should be getting home but, please, I cannot thank you enough for the last twenty four hours. Your unexpected hospitality; your time; your generosity; the food; the booze; your paintings; the garden, or should I say, gardens; Eegit, both the dog and the bird; even the fright I had this morning. I will remember them always, I can assure you of that! And it is, perhaps, time, at last, to be perfectly honest, or at least as honest as I can be." She paused, as if being honest was something she had had very little practice in and she needed to rehearse her lines before declaiming them, as if she were actively seeking the right words or phrases.

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