Part 25 (1/2)

'Chickens are birds.'

'Well, ordinary birds?'

'Pigeons? Four and twenty blackbirds? You eat anything if you're hungry enough. All our ancestors lived on whatever they could get hold of. It was normal, once.'

Normal for him was a freezer full of pizzas. He had no idea what it was like to be primevally alone with nature, and it was unlikely he would ever find out, for all his present interest.

I'd spent a month once on an island without any kit or anything modern at all, knowing only that there was water and that I would be collected at the end, and even with those certainties and all the craft I'd ever learned, I'd had a hard job lasting out; and it was then that I'd discovered for myself that survival was a matter of mind rather than body.

The travel agency, on my urgent advice, had decided against offering holidays of that sort.

'What about a group?' they said. 'Not one alone.'

'A group eats more,' I pointed out. 'The tensions are terrible. You'd have a murder.'

'All right. Full camping kit then, with essential stores and radios.'

'And choose the leader before they set out.'

Even so, few of the 'marooned' holidays had pa.s.sed off without trouble, and in the end the agency had abandoned them.

Gareth replaced the coil of fine wire in the tin and said, 'I suppose this wire is for all the traps in the books?'

'Only the simplest ones.'

'Some of the traps are really sneaky.'

'I'm afraid so.'

'There you are, a harmless rabbit, hopping along about your business and you don't see the wire hidden in dead leaves and you trip over it and suddenly pow! you're all tied up in a net or squashed under logs. Have you done all that?'

'Yes, lots of times.'

'I like the idea of the bow and arrows better,' he said.

'Yes, well, I put in the instructions of how to make them effectively because our ancestors had them, but it's not easy to hit anything if it's moving. Impossible, if it's small. It's not the same as using a custom-made bow shooting metal arrows at a nice round stationary target, like in archery compet.i.tions. I've always preferred traps.'

'Didn't you ever hit anything with a bow and arrow?'

I smiled. 'I shot an apple off a tree in our garden once when I was small because I was only allowed to eat windfalls, and there weren't any. Bad luck that my mother was looking out of the window.'

'Mothers!'

'Tremayne says you see yours sometimes.'

'Yes, I do.' He glanced up at me quickly and down again. 'Did Dad tell you my mother isn't Perkin's mother?'

'No,' I said slowly. 'I guess we haven't come to that bit yet'

'Perkin and Jane's mother died yonks ago. Jane's my sister - well, half-sister really. She's married to a French trainer and they live in Chantilly, which is a sort of French Newmarket. It's good fun, staying with Jane. I go summers. Couple of weeks.'