“Here we go again!” Joe objected. “More animal torment. But—birds? This is a new one.”
“Not new, in fact. Douglas Spalding was working on it sixty years ago. Oskar Heinroth took it up. But don’t interrupt. When they’re ready to fly, they have to be shown how to do it or they’d remain forever earth-bound. If an experimenter runs about in front of the baby birds, waving his arms up and down like wings, they catch on straight away and do the same. They follow him about flapping and squawking, copying him with the clear conviction that he is the parent bird. He takes the process further and by even more energetic flapping and leaping into the air, or off a cliff perhaps, convinces them that they can take off. They actually learn to fly by human example. It’s not perfect but it works.”
Joe stayed silent, sensing she was getting to her point.
“The thing is, they grow up believing that the scientist is their parent, totally devoted to him and disregarding any other attentions, even that of their genuine parents. The same results have been recorded from creatures closer to humans—dogs, chimpanzees. It has been suggested, though not yet proven, that a similar process may take place in children. The theory is that at a particular moment in their development, a moment of change and need, they imprint on an adult or older child and follow and copy and revere this chosen one.”
“You’re saying Dorcas may, at a low point in her life, and finding herself without any other adult she could respect, have imprinted on me?”
“Think about it. It’s not a very long step from ‘imprinting’ to ‘falling in love,’ which is the label we stick on a badly understood and otherwise unaccountable impulse. That’s something every fourteen-year-old girl does understand. And if the chap she has in her sights is every girl’s idea of a dashing hero—good-looking, energetic, chest full of medals, romantically scarred—well, poor love, she didn’t stand a chance. If everything else had been normal or supportive in her background, what she felt for you would have been nothing more than a crush, soon outgrown. Poor Dorcas! I wonder if she has any idea?”
Joe longed to point out that he was suffering, too. If this psychological gobbledegook, which in spite of himself he had listened to in fascination, were halfway true, he had a worse situation on his hands than he’d realised.
“That’s a very alarming condition you describe,” he mumbled.
“It gets worse. It would seem that the imprinter himself,” she poked Joe playfully in the ribs, “that’s you—is not unaffected. His own behaviour changes, adjusting, through a desire for scientific knowledge (we’ll rule that out) or a sense of duty and a kind nature (more likely), to what he perceives to be the needs of the creatures he is imprinting. He strives to see the world through the eyes of his subjects and modifies his own responses accordingly.”
“Are you saying I’ve been flapping and quacking and leaping off cliffs all these years to chime with Dorcas’s needs?”
“Something like that,” she said, shaking with suppressed laughter.
“Am I destined to go on doing bird imitations for the rest of my life or is there a cure?” was the only thing he could think of to ask.
“No. Shouldn’t think so. But you could change the condition, having recognised it for what it is. Yes. Accept it, understand it and change it for something else. I’ve known old gents swap their gout for arthritis—or the other way around—when it suited them. Listen to Adam. Take her for a new person. Make a fresh beginning. Flirt with her, ask her about her life—her present life—and don’t rake up the past. None of that ‘Do you remember when you were in pigtails?’ stuff. And, above all, don’t leap in and slap down a proposal of marriage at her feet. You’ve so far avoided this and I’m quite sure your instinct has been guiding you well. In fact, knowingly or unknowingly, I’d say your Dorcas had already started on the road back to normality by distancing herself from you for the past few years. You must hope she can love the man you are now, not the one she imagined you were when she first came running after you.”
“Hmmph. Flirt and hope? You make it sound rather straightforward, Adelaide. It’s not. I had rather thought my flirting days were over. There comes a moment when audacious charm begins to look like geriatric seduction. A boyish smile turns into a suggestive leer overnight.”
She peered at him. “Oh, I think you’re quite safe. Not grey yet and no moustache. You have all your teeth. Very nice teeth. Yes—you could get away with a well-directed leer still, I reckon.”