Sarah Hall - The Wolf Border

But already she knows. The layers of sleep are falling away. The radio alarm is blaring, KIYE station, a rock song from the eighties. Her shoulder is cold outside the heavy covers. Her brain is restarting. That creature of the outer darkness — of geographic success, myth and horror, hunted with every age’s weapon, stone axe, spear, sprung-steel trap, and semi-automatic — was playing.

5 a.m., Mountain Time. Kyle will drive her to the airport before daylight to catch the hopper to Spokane. She lies under the blankets and listens to snow dispatching softly from the roof and the branches. Setterah Keep: a lost world. She had loved going there for birthdays as a child. Until, in 1981, the Licensing Act brought an end to many of the parks and it closed down. Even a century before, they must have known the enclosures were too small, pens, dementing places. After coffee and a shower, when she is properly awake, she phones Binny and reminds her what time she will be arriving. Yes, Thursday. Yes, by dinnertime, if the traffic isn’t bad . Then, unusually, she tells her mother about the dream. No , Binny says. No. That wasn’t a dream. There were wolves in the park for a while. Don’t you remember? You kids used to torment them. One of them got out, created havoc .

*

The Earl is not at home when Rachel arrives at Pennington Hall. She was warned by his secretary that he is unreliable, that he keeps only some of his appointments. The prerogative of wealth and eccentricity. The drive from London has taken eight hours: congestion around the airport and the north orbital, an accident south of Kendal, all lanes halted until the air ambulance could set down on the carriageway to collect the shattered motorcyclist. As ever, the county’s interior routes move sluggishly: compact dry-stone lanes and dawdling sightseers. A landslide on one of the mountain passes has resulted in road closure, so she must turn back at the barrier and take the longer lakeside road into the western valleys. The fells rise, carrying dead bracken on their slopes the colour of rust. Granite juts through, below gathering cloud. She sets the wipers to intermittent, but the rain is either too heavy or too fine; the rubber blades screech or the screen blurs. The GPS recalculates, asks her to turn round, go back the way she has come. She switches it off and buys a map from a village shop. This is not a part of the district she knows — her home village is on the other side of the mountains.

She is extremely tired by the time she reaches the gate into the estate, nauseous with jetlag and service station coffee. But she’s alert enough to notice the beauty of the place — September’s russet fading in the trees, wet, glistening light on the hills — and to note that the lake would be a good territorial boundary, were this still wilderness. It has not been wilderness since the primeval forest was felled. The gate into the estate is an elaborate wrought-iron affair, bearing a coat of arms. She pulls up next to the intercom, lowers the window, and inhales. Moorland, peat, ferns, water and whatever the water touches: the myrrh of autumn. She’s become used to spruce and sagebrush, the rancid vegetable smell of the paper mill downriver from the Reservation. Cumbria’s signature aroma is immediately recognisable: upland pheromones.

She reaches out to press the button, but the gate opens silently. She is being watched on the CCTV. The drive is long and newly gravelled, oak-lined. She passes a tree so old and obese with bark that its lower branches are sagging almost to the ground. Wooden struts have been built underneath to prop them up. Beside the drive a handful of roe deer graze. They raise their heads as she drives by and do not move. In the rain, the red-stone manor looks patched and bloody. Ivy is growing shaggily up the facade, but for a building of its size and age it is far from dereliction. The crenellations are intact; the windows expensively replaced. Thomas Pennington has not suffered hard times, death duties, or insurmountable taxes, it would seem. The building is clearly not a casualty of democratic change like so many of the countryside’s aristocratic behemoths. Perhaps the garden and house are open to the public, or a lucrative tearoom is hidden somewhere behind the maze, bulbs and plant cuttings for sale, wedding hire, the usual schemes. Or perhaps the Earl’s business portfolio has been skilfully updated and he has accounts offshore. Rachel parks at the side of the tower, next to a little blue MG and a utility van, gets out, and stretches. The air is damp and cool. Rooks clamour in the nearby trees. The mountains behind could have been built for aesthetic purposes — it is an incredibly beautiful view.

The main door of the hall is a dense medieval affair, shot through with bolts: siege-proof. On either side sit two stone lions, lichen mottling their manes. It seems wrong to use such an entrance, but there is no other way, no tradesman’s signpost. She pushes the bell and a ferrous donging sounds within. A woman answers: middle-aged, plump inside her navy suit. She is auburn-haired, unadorned by jewellery or cosmetics, with winter-rose skin. Extremely English-looking; from an England seventy years gone. She would suit a rabble of hounds at her feet, Rachel thinks, a shotgun crooked over her elbow — the complete incarnation has probably at some stage existed. The woman introduces herself as Honor Clark, the Earl’s secretary. Rachel shakes her hand.

Really sorry I’m late. The flight was delayed. Snow in Spokane. We were sitting on the runway too long — they had to re-spray the plane. I almost missed the connection. Then the drive up. . I hope he hasn’t been waiting long.

The apology is irrelevant. He isn’t here.

I don’t know where he is at the moment, Honor Clark tells her. The Land Rover’s gone, which doesn’t bode well, but it does mean he’s on the estate. I’m leaving in an hour. Do you want to come in?

Rachel checks her watch.

Ah. Yes, OK. Thank you.

She follows the woman across the threshold, into a large, temperate reception hall, then down a corridor hung with portraits of stags, Heaton Coopers, and a few tasteful abstracts. She is shown into a vast drawing room containing an elaborate suite of furniture, a Bauhaus chair, glassware cabinets, bookcases, and an immense stone fireplace. The grate is un-laid but the room is warm, free of medieval draughts. The secretary holds her hands up as if fending something away.

Look, I can’t offer you dinner, I’m afraid. Thomas has an event in Windermere tonight so he’s dining out. We don’t have guests this week — the chef’s off.

I’m fine.

As I say, I doubt he’ll be available before he has to go out.

OK. But I did have an appointment. I should probably wait.

The secretary nods and lowers her hands.

You said you didn’t need a hotel so I haven’t booked one.

No. I’m staying with family.

You’re local? I don’t hear an accent.

I’ve been away quite a while.

I see.

Honor Clark ushers her across the room, and Rachel sits on the chaise longue near the empty fire. Lambent Chinese silk, in near-perfect condition. Her trousers are badly creased. The sales tag inside the waistband is irritating her lower back but she has failed during the course of the flight or the drive to tear it out. She has not worn slacks for over a year, not since the Minnesota conference, at which she delivered the keynote speech, drank too much in the hotel bar with Kyle and Oran, argued with the chairman of the IWC, slept with Oran again, and left a day early. Not disgraced exactly, but en route. In the bars and restaurants of Kamiah, which the centre workers frequent at weekends, the dress code for both men and women extends no further than boots and jeans. She hasn’t showered since leaving the centre; any trace of deodorant has gone. She has never been received at this level of society before, in any country. Even beyond the warp of altered time zones and the déjà vu of coming home, the event feels deeply uncanny. Honor Clark moves to the sideboard.