The Painted Tent by Victor Canning Page A

to the police, Smiler was facing his own problems; some minor – like the way Sandra still hung around and foisted her company on him whenever she could; and one major – his disquiet over Fria who still sat on her beam and did little more than fly down to the shallows most days to bathe and was quite content to take food from the loft ledge.
    He talked his major problem over one day with Mr Samkin who had become, in a way, more of a confidant for him than the Duchess who seemed to go about the farm now preoccupied and – Smiler guessed – clearly worried about her rift with Jimmy.
    Mr Samkin said, ‘There’s nothing you can do but have patience, Samuel. In the wild state Fria would have been taught everything by her parents. Animals have to be taught. But she was taken before all that could happen. Now, if she wants to live free, she’s got to learn everything herself. Imagine if you woke up one day on a Pacific island beach – ten years old, and you couldn’t speak, knew no language, had never climbed a tree or peeled a banana, couldn’t swim. How would you feel?’
    â€˜Pretty lost.’
    â€˜Well, that’s Fria. She’s pretty lost. But she’s got food and water and shelter of a kind. No matter what kind of spirit she’s got she’s sensible enough to stay where she is. Would you take it on yourself to drive her away deliberately? To cut off her food supply?’
    â€˜I couldn’t, sir.’
    Mr Samkin smiled gently. ‘ Of course not. But something might. Some accident. If on your desert island you slipped and fell into the sea you’d make an instinctive effort to swim. If it came off – you’d have survived. If you were hungry you’d find yourself picking some fruit or other and trying it. If you didn’t like its taste you’d spit it out. If you liked it you’d eat it. Self-education forced on man or beast has only two ends – survival or death. Fria isn’t going to move from the safety of her beam until something too powerful for her to resist makes her.’
    â€˜And then she might die, sir.’
    Mr Samkin nodded gravely. ‘The odds are she will, Samuel. There’s no sentiment in Mother Nature.’
    Two days later the mild weather broke. The westerly breezes died and the wind moved round to the north-east. There was a night of bitter, sharp frost and the next day the wind freshened and with it came a hard, cold rain which swept down into the Taw valley in rolling, biting clouds and came racing up the Bullay brook in veil after veil of stinging, blinding squalls. In no time at all the woods and fields ran with water and the brook rose a foot before mid-day, swirling riverwards now in a brown flood carrying winter debris and litter with it. Birds and beasts hugged their shelters. The rooks clung to their wood and were tossed and drenched on their nests, sitting close to the first eggs which had been laid. In the fields the bullocks and sheep moved to sheltered corners and turned their backs on the icy downpour. In the farm-yard the only animals who enjoyed themselves were the few ducks the Duchess kept. They puddled about over the flooded cobbles and shovelled and dabbled their bills in the mud around the banks of the swollen shallows where Fria bathed.
    Fria had no temptation that day to bathe. She sat on her beam, well back under the little pent roof and faced the cold onslaught of rain. Had she been an entirely wild peregrine she would have crept into the shelter of some small cliff crevice or tree hole and hidden from the weather. She sat there all day until just before the light began to go. There was a lull in the cold rainstorms and she flew down to the loft ledge and ate, tearing at a small rabbit which Smiler had left for her. Over the months she had learned slowly and awkwardly now how to pluck and find the breasts of the pigeons she was given and how to tear at the skin of rabbits and