Sarah Hall - The Wolf Border

Huib, there used to be an eel, Sylvia says, sitting on a flat rock next to the pool. An ancient one, six hundred years old. I could always make it come out. It’s down here.

She points into the water below. She slips back in, submerses, skims along the bottom of the pool, and takes hold of his ankle. Huib kicks away and she chases after. They lark about and Rachel enjoys their silliness. The camaraderie reminds her of Chief Joseph.

She lies back against a rock, lets her feet float up. Her T-shirt sticks to her bump. The water feels terrifically supportive, soothing. The baby kicks softly, then seems to sleep. Is this how it feels to be floating in amniotic? she wonders. Her body relaxes; her mind drifts. Who would not be glad of coming here? She has not left Annerdale in weeks. Skimming over the river, less than a wingspan from the pool’s surface, are giant dragonflies, striped yellow and black, or vein-thin and green. One lands for a moment on the rock next to her, bonded, forewing and hind wing flickering, such delicate mesh it seems evolution can go no further.

She suddenly wishes Alexander were with them, imagines him arriving and stripping off down to nothing, his pale bull flesh, cock draped between his legs, leaping in and a tremendous splash washing through the pool. The erotic invitations of summer. Or perhaps Lawrence, though he was never a great swimmer; he and Emily are in Spain for two weeks, unnecessarily — England is almost as hot. She is glad to have these new companions in her life. She gets out and dries off. The sun burns her shoulders. Her skin smells of the river, a fragrance that is intimate somehow, reminds her of sex.

Back at the cottage she sits out in the garden with an enormous salad. She cannot stop eating avocados, radishes. House martins spurt into the mud nests under the eaves, folding their crescent wings only at the last moment. In the evening, forest bees bump against windowpanes, get into the house, and have to be put out under tumblers. She applies cream to her sore shoulders and thinks of Binny, almost fondly: summers in her damp cheesecloth blouses, and the big blue pot of Nivea cream that she and Lawrence were savagely coated with when sunburnt.

The heat continues and builds. The protesters at the gate of Pennington Hall wilt, put up makeshift screens and parasols, bring handheld, battery-operated fans. Their numbers dwindle. It is not the season to campaign: the children are off school, holidays have been booked — who wants to indulge in antagonism? Honor Clark has water delivered to the remaining few, a kind of humanitarian intervention on the part of the regime, which they leave in the box, then open, and drink. Rachel and Huib watch the CCTV footage. There is nothing alarming. The wolf-headed man does not return. It is as she predicted: things are beginning to gutter out. Another garbled email arrives from Nigh. She wonders again who he is — a tame maniac, or someone who poses a more serious threat? The latter seems improbable. Perhaps it is a woman — though she doubts it. Occasionally the wolves howl at night; she hears faint, exploratory calls, which are and will remain unanswered. Good, she thinks, at least they haven’t forgotten everything.

Alexander drops by to see the pair twice a week, more often than is strictly necessary now. Afterwards he accompanies the group to the pub. He stays late, drinks a pint or two more than the driving limit, to no ill effect. Sylvia remains polite and careful, though always marginally guarded, and occasionally must join her father for a regional dinner party, a wedding in London. Once or twice Rachel has seen her getting out of the helicopter with Thomas — her other life. There seems to be no boyfriend, or she is very discreet. They are all celibate, as far as Rachel can tell, like a band of secular monks. A strange group, too, almost the beginning of a joke: the vet, the Earl’s daughter, the Buddhist South African, and the pregnant wolf-keeper. As for Rachel, she is enjoying the second trimester, the energy, people telling her she is looking well — radiant, even. The extra blood and the weather act like aphrodisiacs. Her libido is high. At night, in the soft-boiled heat of the cottage bedroom, lying on top of the sheet, she imagines all manner of scenarios. The man in the pub in the village near Willowbrook, or Huib’s tent, conveniently located. Idle thoughts, nothing serious in them. It is Alexander who watches her across the table in the pub. It is he who, if she is honest with herself, she fantasises about most often. Her desirable type. Broad, swinging. His reading glasses unnatural on his large face when he signs the quarantine paperwork, a Mallen streak in his hair behind his right ear. He unearths memories of her first times — the unabashed northern lovers of her teenage years. What are the rules now? She is single, though clearly her status is not so simple.

And what of him, his life? He is unsentimental. His wife has been dead three years, of ovarian cancer; he speaks of it intermittently: a two-year decline, the drives to get chemotherapy a county over. Awful, but endured; he is still here, and life rolls on. There is a daughter, who lives with him part-time, and also with a relative nearby — the maternal grandmother. He watches Rachel, sees the obvious, but sees the rest too. His work and war stories are directed at her.

It’s all specialist cattle now on the farms. Belted Galloways. They look very chic in the pasture, but they topple over in the heat like Victorian ladies.

Everyone laughs.

How do you treat them? Sylvia asks gamely.

A tincture of lavender and a nosegay, he says.

More laughter. Rachel returns his gaze. He drains his pint glass and stands.

Right, that’s me. The Westmorland Show starts tomorrow. Ribbons and hats and enormous bollocks. Anyone want a lift home?

You alright to drive? Huib asks.

I surely am.

He is six foot four, substantial, built for it: an agricultural drinker, as they used to say. Rachel stands, too.

I’ll call it a night as well.

Shall I drop you?

I’ll walk.

You sure?

It’s a nice night.

OK. Night, all.

Not disappointment in his tone, nothing so obvious. The opportunity passes.

But the next week, having parked near the enclosure for a legitimate quarantine visit and opting to walk with them to The Horse and Farrier, he is at liberty to accompany Rachel back. Another warm, rusk-scented night. Bats careen in and out of the trees as they walk the wood-lined mile, missing them by inches. The leaves are sibilant in the breeze, and the head of the moon looms on the horizon like an alien silo. It is luxurious walking without coats, without jumpers, as if in another country. At the pub there is a debate about Scottish independence. The polls have tipped — for the first time the majority lies with the yes camp. Austerity measures and healthcare mismanagement have left Mellor, and his government, weak. Surprisingly, Sylvia defends the nationalists; Rachel had assumed her conservative, or at least part of the old order, not a devolutionist.

I’d like to see a shift to more regional power, too, she says. A lot of Cumbria’s needs are not London’s, or Cornwall’s. My concern is what happens in England if they go. Daddy’s party is really struggling as it is.

There’ll definitely be a Tory apocalypse, Alexander says.

Huib, who has been unusually quiet during the conversation, finally comments.

Freedom is exciting — the idea of it. It becomes a force in itself. In South Africa we were really excited about the election in ’94. It’s what happens next that counts. I’m not sure the born-free generation understands what the original plan was when they vote.

The windows of the pub are open; warm night air circulates in. Rachel has never seen Huib look so serious. But neither has she met a South African who is blasé about politics.