Early the next morning, while the moon still hung suspended in the sky, a nightingale sang very close to them. Jack was asleep and Clive looked at the boy’s lips, which were sharply outlined in the moonlight. He wanted to reach out and touch Jack. At that moment, Jack turned over in his sleep and was now facing Clive. Clive could smell his breath; it was strong and alien, and he was hit by an unfamiliar surge of arousal. Not like the feeling he got when he thought about Jack’s mother or the girls from college, but something infinitely deeper, as if unbridled lust had risen in him like an atoll from the sea. Clive struggled to breathe calmly and inched himself closer toward Jack’s warm, sleeping body.
Jack jerked upright and moved away.
“What is it?” he murmured. “What’s wrong?”
The light inside the tree house was still gray. Clive said nothing and pretended to be asleep. He was wide awake, but it wasn’t until it was daylight, at least an hour later, that he stretched out and said he hadn’t slept this well in a long time. Jack was already sitting on the walkway surveying the forest. They made oatmeal on the stove before they packed up and walked home. They said good-bye to each other by the garden gate outside Clive’s house, and Clive could feel his legs shake. Jack moved in to hug Clive, like they always did, a brief meeting of their chests and a friendly pat on each other’s back meant thanks for today and see you later. Clive shot out his hand to stop him. A surprised Jack shook it.
“You’re a man now,” Clive said. “Thirteen years old.”
Jack beamed with delight, and his surprise evaporated. Clive picked up his backpack and walked down the path.
“See you,” he called out over his shoulder.
Clive couldn’t sleep that night. Breathless, he lay in his bed, his body throbbing.
Three months later, Jack’s mother got a job in another city and they moved. Clive stood behind the window, watching the moving van being loaded. He heard the doorbell ring, he heard his landlady call out for him, and he watched a disappointed Jack walk back to the waiting van. When the van had disappeared around the corner, Clive uttered a deep cry of despair. Then he thought: it’s better this way. Jack had changed recently, the little boy had gone completely. Clive missed him and had no idea what to do with the new Jack. Since the birthday camp out in the forest, Jack had canceled their Saturday arrangement twice, and the previous Saturday he had failed to show. He hadn’t appeared until later that morning, his hair crumpled with sleep and a pimple on his cheek. Clive was sitting on the steps, carving a stick.
“Sorry, overslept,” Jack mumbled. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and no shirt and stretched languidly. Clive muttered something and carried on carving. He felt as if Jack had died. The boy Clive had protected and looked after was gone, and a young man had taken his place. Jack glanced at him from under his curly bangs, and his downy upper lip pointed at Clive.
It’s better this way, Clive told himself again long after the moving van had left. The way he felt about the new Jack was forbidden.
The next time Clive saw Jack, he could hardly believe his own eyes. It was 1993. Clive had married Kay, they had two children, and he had been appointed the youngest ever professor of the department of Bird Evolution, Paleobiology, and Systematics. Clive recognized Jack immediately. He was standing to the left of the entrance, glancing at his watch, a worn briefcase by his feet. He was tall with very dark hair, and he had the face of a grown man, but Clive recognized the sharp line of his upper lip. His eyes were still guarded, and the movement with which he swept aside his hair was the same it had always been. Clive felt flushed all over as he held out his hand to Jack. At first, Jack failed to recognize him, but then his eyes penetrated the soft beard Clive had grown and his face lit up.
“Clive, right?” he exclaimed, smiling. Jack was taller than Clive and, for a few seconds, they simply looked at each other.
“What are you doing here?” Clive said, at last.
“It’s my first day,” Jack said, smiling shyly. It was frightening how much he resembled his younger self. Clive couldn’t help feeling proud. This was his reward.
“You taught me everything about nature,” Jack said. “Everything I know. I’ll never forget that.”
“Don’t mention it,” Clive said. “You’ll find a way to pay me back one day,” he added, laughing.
Jack completed his biology degree and went on to do a PhD. He focused on the communication of natural science from the Renaissance up to the present day. Clive reviewed Jack’s PhD and felt edgy about it. He had hoped Jack would specialize in ornithology, and he didn’t regard the history of science as a proper subject. However, Jack was determined, and, shortly after his PhD had been accepted, he launched a new Canadian journal, Scientific Today, which quickly became the best-selling natural science journal in North America and soon also in Europe.
Eight years had passed since Clive and Jack had bumped into each other at the university, and they still met for lunch at regular intervals. They talked about science, they discussed recent university initiatives, they assessed scientific conferences, but they skillfully avoided ever mentioning their private lives, as though by tacit agreement. Sometimes they happened to stay in the same hotel during an out-of-town conference and, after the conference, they might dine together alone or with other colleagues. But it was never like the old days. It didn’t even come close. Clive wondered why he didn’t simply invite Jack and his wife, Molly, to his home for dinner. Kay would love it. She often remarked that they never entertained. But something inside him fought it. What would happen if the easy mood of a social setting loosened Jack’s tongue? Might he tell Kay that Clive had played with him every weekend for years, even though he had been fifteen years older than Jack? That Clive hadn’t had a single friend his own age? That Clive had taught Jack to kill and dissect animals but had never killed or dissected a single one himself? And what precisely did Jack remember about the night in the tree house? Clive shuddered. He had suffered beyond measure when Jack left, but it was all in the past now, and there it would stay.
In 2001 Clive published his life’s work, The Birds. The day the book came out, he spent a long time sniffing it. He had worked on it for four years, and every single one of his arguments was solid. Soon his opponents—Darren in New York, Chang and Laam in China, Gordon at the University of Sydney, and Clark and his team in South Africa—would be convinced that birds were a sister group to dinosaurs and not their descendants. Most of all, he was anticipating the reaction of Lars Helland in Denmark. The Danish vertebrate morphologist was the opponent who tormented Clive more than anyone else. Helland never attended any of the ornithology symposia held around the world, so Clive had never met him in person, but Helland’s papers were always meticulous and vicious. Every time Clive had published something on the evolution of birds, Helland could be relied on to provide an instant refutation, stating the exact opposite, as though he had nothing better to do than annoy Clive. However, Clive was convinced The Birds would silence Helland. Clive knew the Dane nearly always relied on the evolution of the manus, the bird’s hand, to illustrate the relationship between birds and dinosaurs, and neither Helland nor Clive’s other opponents had given much thought to the evolution of the feather. Consequently, Clive had decided the feather would be his trump card. He had studied the evolution of the feather for years. From now on, no one would be able to argue that feathers on present-day birds had anything to do with the feather-like structures found on dinosaurs.