Sarah Hall - The Wolf Border

A wolf between stools, Thomas exclaims. Preposterous!

He takes a sip of wine, then unfolds his napkin, composes himself.

Hopefully it’ll be moot, anyway. Douglas will play ball. The Scots have a new environmental policy to uphold — they can’t be seen to be conservative on this. No, don’t worry, darling. The Highland estate owners are so worried about losing their subsidies, they’ll do as they’re told. There won’t be any more shootings, I promise.

That’s quite a difficult promise to make, Rachel says quietly.

Thomas helps himself to another large glass of red wine, adjusts the napkin across his lap, takes up his silverware, and tidily cuts the cold piece of meat.

Well, Rachel, you know better than I how the money works. You’ve already published a splendidly compelling paper on cull savings and tourist revenue for a potential reintroduction in Scotland, haven’t you?

He glances at her and smiles. Rachel sets down her glass.

That article’s ten years old.

Yes, but not much has really changed. Except that Westminster can’t prevent anything, and now our free Caledonian cousins may actually have to put the theory into practice.

She frowns, says nothing, annoyed to have her work used as part of his presumptuous political argument.

So, what’s your best guess, then? he asks her.

About what?

About our refugees seeking asylum in the newest European nation. Will they continue north, as planned, over the border?

She looks at him for a moment. As planned , she thinks. By who? He is forking up the veal, eating with relish. He is not concerned — in fact, he seems very sure of himself, speaking as if the damage control is effortless, assessing the odds. Real politic. She wants to take out her phone, put it on his plate, so he can see the picture of the carcass in the grass, the bullet hole. He glances up. She catches his eye.

Is that what you’re gambling on? she asks.

Is it a gamble?

They’ll go to Scotland, she says, stonily. Unless we catch them. Or they’re killed.

He nods, and continues to eat.

Excellent.

In that moment she hates him. His calculation. His certainty, which is almost childish. And in that moment she is also sure that it was he who opened the gate. Though he was elsewhere, though he may never have keyed in the code; he was the one. He has not once mentioned recapture, reinstallation of the pack, for all the expensive aerial pursuit. The worthy investment, the millions spent building a trophic Eden, it is simply another grand scheme that he can choose to dismantle again, if he so wishes. There is a bigger, more exciting game — testing beyond the cage, wolves in the real world. You godly fuck, she thinks, you absolute maniac, this is what you wanted all along. She cannot bear to look at him. She looks instead at her dessert — created by the best chef in the best restaurant in the North. It all feels like a mockery. Her appetite has gone. The others continue with their meal, oblivious. Are they really so blind? she wonders. Sylvia, protecting her father, complicit in his scheme by virtue of her institutionalisation. Huib is reconciled, co-opted, too white of heart to suspect anything nefarious. She begins to feels sick. There is a conspiracy around the table, and they don’t even realise they are taking part. Even she is implicated. Thomas knows she won’t walk away, not now, not while the wolves are out and in danger, which amounts to capitulation. She stands, undramatically, and lays her napkin over her food.

Excuse me. I have to ring my brother.

The next morning, rain. The surface of the lake is stippled; its reflections hover and break apart. They stand in the lounge after breakfast, drinking coffee, looking out at the grey sky. On the helipad, the bowed rotor blades of the helicopter drip. Huib liaises with the police, checks the weather app, sits cross-legged, and waits for the cue — less a stooge than a sophist. Sylvia reads on her iPad in a plush armchair by the fire. She tracks through the papers and the blogs — there is a huge public outcry over the dead wolf; the picture is being widely circulated. So like the English, Rachel thinks: object, ignore, and then, late in the day, after a tragedy, rally. She has a strong urge to leave the hotel, get a taxi to her car, and continue with the search alone. At least she would feel useful, authentic, perhaps less like she had been played.

Thomas makes a series of private phone calls, and afterwards seems pleased, more humble than the previous evening, though his humility is in all likelihood due to success, things going his way. The desire to take him aside and accuse him has faded overnight. She can prove nothing; will probably never be able to prove anything. She will not give him the satisfaction of sounding like a paranoid hysteric. She speaks with Lawrence, and then with Charlie, who recognises her voice and exclaims loudly, but doesn’t understand that she is not there in the room. He begins to cry, and she feels it like a barb in the chest. She speaks with Alexander, who is en route back from the conference, sitting in the airport waiting for a flight himself.

I’ve been thinking, she says. Maybe we can go on holiday.

On holiday?

Yes. I mean, all of us. Chloe and Charlie, too. Maybe even Lawrence. Can we?

It is a strange request out of the blue, and a strange time to be making it.

Are you alright? he asks.

Yeah.

She isn’t, of course. She is weary, though she slept surprisingly well in the plush bed and without Charlie to attend to; she did not lie awake grinding over everything in the small hours, as she feared she might. When she woke, there was a sense of powerlessness, of it all being over. The Annerdale pack. The cottage in the woods. She got up, brushed her teeth, and sat on the bed, watching the sun rise and the rain on the lake, feeling the light of day translate notions of what is right and wrong — or expand those notions.

By mid-afternoon, the weather clears — breaks appear in the clouds and hard, wet sunlight glints through. There is a moderate wind, not ideal but not prohibitive for flight. They prepare to leave. In the interim there have been two more sightings, both in the farmland between Aspatria and Wigton. A woman riding on a bridleway, whose horse bolted with her clinging on to it, and a child on a school bus, disbelieved by everyone at first, the boyish fantasy of seeing White Fang running alongside. It means they have left the Lake District national park and are nearing the metropolis, with its heavy traffic and intersections. If they keep to the salt marsh and estuary belt to the north of the city, they will be OK, she thinks.

They walk through Sharrow’s lakeside gardens to the Gazelle. The last thing she wants is to be flown anywhere by Thomas Pennington, but she gives herself over to his methods. What else can she do? Her duty is to the pack. It is galling, and she dislikes herself for the surrender. But what matters, matters by degrees. That they make it past the city of Carlisle. That they are not vilified for their instincts and appetites. That Scotland, if it is the beacon of progression that Thomas challenges it to be, does the right thing.

There is no careful plan to get them back; she knows that now. She has the case of darts in her hand, but it’s redundant. She will not get the chance to sedate them, she’s sure of that, even if they are found. From the position of a deity, she will simply bear witness to their true, illegal release. She follows the others out to the helicopter, favourite words of Binny’s trumpeting in her head: It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission, my girl . Her mother’s excuse for doing as she pleased, living as she pleased, selfishly, perhaps better than most.

There’s a provisional meeting scheduled later in Edinburgh, Thomas tells them, should it be necessary. She knows what the arguments will be, what Thomas is currently negotiating with his Scottish peers and what she, too, will be required to say, expertly, in a roomful of law-makers. That study, conservation, and protection in the natural habitat are of utmost benefit to the public. That wolves are not only economically beneficial, but environmentally curative. That in the far reaches there are tracts of suitable land and Scotland should embrace them, cherish them. The truth will not be hard to speak. If they are harmed, she thinks, in between, anywhere, she will find a way of making Thomas Pennington suffer for the heedless experiment. No one is invulnerable. Not even him. But such a thing is fantasy, she knows.