Stef Penney - The Tenderness of Wolves

‘Perhaps it is lack of certainty that is so hard to bear.’

‘Which enables the unscrupulous to prey upon your hope, until you are sucked dry.’

Donald is surprised again by the things she says. He dimly hears his father’s voice, saying in that lecturing tone of his, ‘The desire to shock is an infantile trait that should disappear with maturity.’ Yet Maria seems anything but immature. He reminds himself that he doesn’t need to agree with his father any more; they are on different continents.

‘Mr Sturrock does not appear to be a rich man,’ Donald says, in a sort of defence.

Maria looks past Donald down the street, then looks at him with a smile. Her eyes, unlike Susannah’s, are blue. ‘Just because you like someone, doesn’t mean that you can trust them.’ And with a bob of the head–almost a mockery of a curtsey–she walks away from him.

Donald spends the rest of the afternoon and evening combing through Jammet’s possessions, but, like others before him, he can find nothing that seems of relevance to his death. The Frenchman’s worldly possessions are stacked in a dry part of the stables, and he and Jacob, who supervised the emptying of the cabin in the interests of security, have sorted them into boxes and piles. It all adds up to surprisingly little. Donald tries not to think about how little his colleagues would be sifting through if he were suddenly swept off this mortal coil. There would be nothing at all to indicate these new but enormously significant feelings for Susannah, for instance. He vows to himself to write to her the instant he leaves Caulfield–absurdly, since they are still in the same house, and since Donald has taken the decision to wait until Mackinley and Knox have returned before setting out on what is probably a wild goose chase, he could be here for another day or two.

He will ask for a picture of her, or a keepsake. Not that he is planning on getting himself killed, of course. Just in case.

When I was a girl, while my parents still lived, I was troubled by what were termed ‘difficulties’. I was seized with paralysing fears that rendered me incapable of movement, even of speech. I felt that the earth was sliding away from under me, and that I could not trust the ground beneath my feet–a terrifying feeling. Doctors took my pulse and stared into my eyes before saying that whatever it was, it would probably disappear with the onset of adulthood (by which I think they meant marriage). However, before this theory could be tested, my mother died in unclear circumstances. I believe she took her own life, although my father denied it. She had been taking laudanum, and an overdose killed her, whether intended or not. I was increasingly plagued by fears until my father could stand it no longer and had me placed in a–not to put too fine a point on it–mental asylum, although it had a fancy name to do with exhausted gentlefolk. Then he too died, leaving me at the mercy of the unscrupulous superintendent, and I ended up in a public asylum, which was at least honest enough to call itself what it was.

In the public asylum laudanum was freely available. First prescribed for the crippling panics, it became the thing I relied on, taking the place of parents or friends. It was widely applied to quieten troublesome patients, but I soon realised that I preferred to be in charge of administering it myself, and had to resort to guile to get it. I found it easy to persuade male members of staff to do things for me, and the superintendent–an idealistic young man called Watson–I could wrap around my little finger. Once you become accustomed to a thing, you forget why you wanted it in the first place.

Later, when my husband decided that my habit was a barrier to real intimacy, I gave it up. Or rather, he took my supply of laudanum and threw it away, leaving me no choice but to do without. He was the only person who thought this a trouble worth taking. It was like being sober again after a prolonged period of drunkenness, and that sobriety seemed wonderful for a while. But sobriety makes you remember things you had forgotten–for example, why you felt the need to take the drug in the first place. When, in years since, times have been hard, I know exactly why I became habituated, and in the past few days I have thought about laudanum almost as much as I have thought about Francis. I know that I could go to the store and buy some. I know that every minute of the day and half the night. The only thing that stops me is that I am the one person in the world Francis can rely on for help. And so far I am not being any help at all.

It is five days since Francis left, and I am walking down the path to Jammet’s cabin when I hear a noise up ahead. A dog runs across my path and whines: a dog I don’t know, large, shaggy and wild-looking–a sled dog. I pause: there is someone at the cabin.

On the rise behind the building, I creep behind a bush with the stealth of practice and wait. A disgruntled insect sinks its jaws into my wrist. Eventually a man comes out of the cabin and whistles. Two dogs run up to him, including the one that was on the path earlier. In my hiding place I hold my breath, and as his face turns towards me I feel a cold tremor down my spine. He is tall for an Indian, strongly built and dressed in blue capote and skin trousers. But it is his face that makes me think of the story of the artificial man. He has a low, broad forehead, high cheekbones, and a nose and mouth that turn downwards like a raptor’s beak and give a powerful impression of wildness and cruelty. Deep lines are incised in the copper skin on either side of the mouth. His hair is black and tangled. I have never seen anyone quite so ugly in my life–a face that could have been hacked out of wood with a blunt axe. If Miss Shelley had needed a pattern for her terrifying monster, this man would have been perfect inspiration.

I wait, hardly daring to breathe until he has gone back inside the cabin, then I ease backwards out of my hiding place. I debate for a moment the best course of action–find Angus on the farm and tell him, or ride straight down to Caulfield and tell Knox? Today I decide not to confront the man myself, because, I reason, he is clearly dangerous. Despite myself, I find it hard to believe that anyone could have a face like that and not have a fierce and cruel disposition. In the end I go and find Angus. He listens to me in silence, then takes his rifle and walks down the path.

I found out later that he walked up to the cabin and went straight in. The stranger was surprised while searching the room upstairs. Angus called to him, and told him, very politely I’m sure, that he would have to escort him down to Caulfield, since this was the scene of a crime and he had no right to be there. The man hesitated but put up no resistance. He picked up his rifle and walked ahead of him the three miles down to the Bay. Angus marched him up to the Knoxes’ back door. While they waited, the stranger stared at the bay with a proud, distant look, as though he didn’t care what anyone might do to him. By the time Angus left to come home, the stranger had been arrested and imprisoned. Angus took pity on the two dogs, which Knox refused to let into his yard, and brought them home, claiming they would be no bother. I thought he must have found something to like in the stranger, to go to the trouble.

Andrew Knox sits across from Mackinley and smokes his pipe. The firelight turns their faces a warm shade of orange–even the whey-faced Mackinley loses his sallowness. Knox cannot share the other’s blatant satisfaction. They questioned the man for over an hour and had discovered nothing concrete other than his name, William Parker, and that he was a trapper who had traded with Jammet before. He claimed he had not known Jammet was dead, but had called on him in passing and found the cabin empty. He had searched the house to find some clue as to what had happened.