Sarah Hall - The Wolf Border

I take it you’re worried about your children getting into the enclosure by accident, perhaps? Or being curious and trying to break in?

From the corner of her eye she sees the photographer angling the lens, catching her in profile. She turns her head away.

No, the woman says. No! They wouldn’t do that. They’re good kids.

Yes, Rachel says. And they couldn’t get in, anyway. They’d need industrial cutting gear.

Behind her she can hear more wolf vocalisations; a large part of the crowd is also listening and watching with interest. But there’s only so long Huib will be able to manage things, she knows.

I mean if they get out, the spokeswoman continues. If they get out, what’s to stop them running riot and plundering!

Plundering?

Rachel tries not to laugh, though the rhetoric is in fact ridiculous. She talks the woman through the specifications of the fence: height, depth, impenetrability, inescapability. The woman’s scowl deepens. Construction measurements are not what she came for. Reality is not what she came for. Rachel knows exactly what she wants — to twitter on about her nightmarish fantasy: wolves that pass like fog through the wire and head unerringly and specifically to her house, nosing open the door, and creeping upstairs, howling at the moon before tearing apart her starched and overdressed children. She should try to be more understanding, but the hysteria, the desire for a bogeyman, is tiresome.

They really can’t get out.

But if they get out, the woman repeats. I can’t have my kids walking to school in the village. There isn’t even a siren to warn people. You’re a mother? Aren’t you anxious?

The woman gestures towards Rachel’s swelling belly. Rachel feels her modicum of patience ebbing. Don’t tar me with the same brush, she thinks.

Let’s think this through, she says. A siren might cause panic and would make no difference at all, because they wouldn’t want to interact with humans anyway. But I assure you, they really won’t get out.

The woman shakes her head in denial. She is desperate for tabloid disaster, desperate to mainline all the fear she can. She is thrusting her children out like sacrifices before her. They are slickly combed and ironed. No doubt the poor kids are stewarded hither and thither, to school, to clubs, to the houses of sanctioned friends — every precaution taken to keep them safe from paedophiles, the internet, fires, and floods. There is no reasonable argument Rachel can make.

The little girl comes over and stands in front of her again. Her cape is askew, her hair wildly tattered. She peers up intensely. She is disarmingly attractive, more so for the dishevelment, the corruption of all attempts to groom her. Let me have one like you, Rachel thinks. The girl holds out her meaty little hand, fist clenched, containing a gift.

Is that for me? Rachel asks.

Nancy, come away, please, her mother instructs.

The girl does not move.

Nancy. Come here, please. Nancy!

The fairytale dress hangs off one shoulder, a size too big, and soon to be ruined. Nancy holds her hand out towards Rachel, traitorously.

Nancy! I won’t tell you again! Must I count to ten? One –

A voice that suddenly means business. The hand snaps down. The girl turns and marches back to the region of her family. The mother gathers her in, recovering her form in response to being obeyed.

Tell us then. If they get out, what are we to do? Hide in our homes? Go and get a gun? Or is there going to be some kind of government helpline?

Behind Rachel, the wolf-headed man has begun a howl, saving her from fielding the question, or from calling the woman idiotic. She glances over at Huib. He shrugs apologetically. He has held the actor off valiantly but it was never going to last. The crowd refocuses its attention; even the spokeswoman shuts up. The costumed man gets down on his knees and tips his head back in baying parody. The howl sounds hollow and muffled inside the head. Crawling on all fours, he moves to the spot where he dropped his briefcase. The photographer is snapping away again, glad of some proper action. Nancy breaks free of her mother, roams forward, and watches the performance at close quarters. With deliberate theatricality, the man snaps open the briefcase clasps. He lifts the lid of the case and takes out a gun. There are murmurs in the crowd, then mild laughter — it is fake, a toy. The man puts the gun to his large, leering head and pulls the trigger. The cap pops loudly and the gun emits a wisp of smoke. Nancy jerks with shock at the noise but remains in the same position, watching the man tip over to the ground, twitch horribly, and then lie still. Rachel looks over at her mother, who is shouldering her way forward. One of the boys has started crying. The woman fetches Nancy away from the scene, roughly by the hand. The show is in poor taste with children present; the crowd knows it. A slow sarcastic handclap begins and then dies away — Huib.

Show’s over, he says. No encore.

He’s not with us, someone in the crowd says.

Huib moves to intercede, but the man suddenly stands. He swiftly gathers the gun and the briefcase and starts away. The role is over, but he does not unmask. He walks past Huib, towards Rachel. As he passes, she tries to see inside the cut-out eye holes. Blue eyes, maybe, impossible to distinguish. He says something as he passes — a threat, perhaps — but the head obscures the words. Then he is gone, down the road, past the parked vehicles and into the trees.

A feeling of unease is left behind. The amateur dramatics of the day have gone wrong. No harm has been done, but the incident has derailed everything. The crowd is dispersing; people are lowering placards and heading to their cars. The little velvet-suited boy is still wailing, louder now, committed to the act, while his mother checks Nancy over and Nancy strains to get away. The photographer is packing up his gear.

Let’s go, Rachel says to Huib.

She tells the remaining protesters that she can be reached by email or phone. They walk back to the Saab.

Who do you think he was? Huib asks. Some kind of activist?

No, she says. Well, maybe. I don’t know. He let that toddler get a bit close for comfort.

That made me uncomfortable, too. And he didn’t have a car, did you notice?

She starts the engine and pulls away.

Right. No way of tracing him by number plates.

As she drives down the road, she glances in the rear-view mirror, half expecting to see the man materialise from the trees again, suited and waving at them, the red tongue of the wolf’s head lolling out.

It’s interesting, though, Huib says.

What is?

You can just pull a gun out here and nobody goes crazy. Back home, that guy would have been taken out.

In America, too, she says.

I don’t know whether it’s a good thing.

No. I’m not sure it’s worth coming down here any more, she says. These people’s minds are made up.

She decides she will not come back to meet the protesters again, not even for a show of diplomacy. The fearful will always be afraid; the ideological will believe until the last shred of evidence is offered. Only time will prove them wrong. The unrest will peak and end, she gauges. There will be the inevitable entropy of energy, and the swing of anxiety towards a new inflammatory source will put paid to the gatherings. Or the Lakeland weather will.

*

Why didn’t you tell me earlier? Lawrence asks.

Why?

I don’t know. I would have helped or something.

Rachel shrugs.

Helped with what?

Her brother is vexed, and a little upset, but not angry. He frowns gently, looking down at her.

I don’t know.

Rachel shuts the front door of the cottage and they stand in the lane outside, facing each other. It is a hot May day. She still feels a little awkward being in his company, but she’s glad he came, and glad to have finally broken the news. She has undone the belt of her cardigan so that her small bump is visible, pushing against her T-shirt. Lawrence starts to say something, stops. Then he says,