‘Yeah, um, yeah.’ A pause. ‘It’s gone.’
I looked at my inbox. It was there. ‘OK, Stig, thanks. Better go.’
‘Nae bother. See you, Cally’.
‘Yeah, thanks, Stig.’
‘Take it easy.’
I pressed the red button with a stiff finger and sat looking at the phone, then opened the new message. I froze as I saw what Stig had omitted to mention. The message to him was not from Yuri, at least not directly. The original message had been forwarded to a substantial list of people with the question ‘Can anyone shed any light on this?’ I checked and double-checked that I was not included in the list of addressees. It was gossip deliberately sent behind my back. The sender: Dr Peter Harsel. Yuri chose his accomplices with skill. I looked at the list of people who had received it: Sudbury, Thin and several other Scottish Land Institute addresses. It was all, apart from Thin, in house. I scoured it for the other people in the reference group, but I was spared. He had stopped short of including the farmers’ union, thank goodness, or the landowners in the site assessments, at least on this message. But who knew who else would have been blind-copied?
The attached message from Yuri was curt.
I believe you are currently involved in a project with Dr Callis MacArthur. You may find the attached of interest.
How many people would be too busy to bother opening the attachment? Too few, no doubt.
A shiver shook me out of myself. I put the phone to sleep and got up. My gloves were damp now so I stuffed them in my coat pocket and tucked my hands up my sleeves. Dusk was pouring out of the forest. The loch retained an eerie, almost purple glow. I turned my back on it and set off, watching my feet, back into the shadows of the trees.
Easter arrived at last. I managed to wheedle a place for Stig at the release of the bears as Anja Eldegard eventually agreed that his experience with the lynx releases in Scotland, coupled with his role on the Scotland Bear Project, meant that he might actually be useful, quite aside from the signals of good co-operation it would send to the EU funders.
The six bears were being released in two bursts, three at a time, each in different locations, to give them a bit of peace and quiet. It was also safer to deal with one animal at a time.
‘If one gets into difficulties, you don’t want two more dozy bears blundering around with hangovers while you try to revive it,’ as Anja had put it.
The first bear had been set free on the previous day. I was sorry to have missed day one of the show, but they had done the first release by helicopter so numbers were kept to a strict minimum. The minister had to be present for the symbolic first bear reintroduced to Norway, and I had lost my place to a photojournalist whom the minister had insisted accompany her.
Today’s two releases were happening from a truck. Anja oversaw the crate handling, setting a slow but efficient pace, thinking ahead, smoothing the way. She and Stig seemed to have an instant rapport and Sorn, the Jotunheimen park manager, a stout man in khaki fatigues with a rifle over one shoulder, showed clear respect for her, falling in behind all her suggestions.
When I had met Sorn previously he had talked about ‘my park’ and ‘my staff’ with an arrogance I had found unpleasant, but today I saw a different side to the man. He deferred to Anja’s leadership without question, co-operating as the four of us heaved the crate on to a trolley and slid it up the path into a clearing.
In a beige lamb’s wool sweater and freshly laundered cream slacks, Anja seemed somehow to possess both bulk enough to help with the heavy work yet also the delicacy to avoid the merest smudge on her clothes. She looked just as comfortable in the forest as she did in the Storting. Bare eyed, she pointed out a woodpecker at the far side of the clearing that I had a struggle catching sight of with binoculars. I felt scrawny and inelegant by her side, but was charmed as ever with her breathless smile of anticipation.
‘I’m so happy about this!’ she whispered to me. ‘To be actually here, releasing the bears! It’s so exciting.’
I nodded and shared her glee. The bears brought out the best in all of us.
As we watched her poking fearlessly into the opened crate containing the tranquilised bear, it transpired that among Anja’s many skills and qualifications, before becoming Professor of Natural Resource Management at Oslo University, she had been a large carnivore vet and had held down the top job at one of the country’s biggest wildlife parks. ‘Yes,’ she winked, ‘when I was your age I was a high flyer, too.’
There was a viewing hide on stilts where we were going to wait while the bear came round. We all crammed together inside the tiny wooden structure.
‘How long before she will wake?’ Sorn asked Anja.
‘I gave her a shot of Temazepam at around nine; it should wear off after maybe ninety minutes. If there’s no sign by 10.25, I’ll go and see how she’s doing.’ She tapped her watch, which said 10.16.
I was restless with anticipation, shifting in my seat, toes twitching.
‘Relax,’ Stig smiled at me.
‘I can’t, I’m too nervous.’
‘Here she comes,’ said Anja.
Sure enough, a snout was emerging from the crate, sniffing warily, followed by the rest of a head, ears up, twisting like furry satellite dishes. Her eyes seemed glazed, though that could have been my imagination. Her step was definitely drunken, as she stumbled out of the wooden container she’d been trapped in for the duration of her journey from Slovakia, from the sanctuary where she had been reared since being found as a cub. Would she have the instinctive knowledge to survive here? Only time would tell.
She shambled away from the box and plumped down. Her long tongue licked at her face and she scratched the slightly bald patch on her right shoulder with her left paw.
‘Don’t scratch too hard there, Bjorna,’ Anja whispered. ‘It’s not quite grown over. I hope… perhaps we should have waited longer.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘It’s the chip, for satellite tracking.’
She gestured with her fancy GPS, flicking the screen into tighter zoom, pointing to a pulsing yellow bear icon. ‘It’ll go green when she’s fully awake, yellow when her heart slows, like when she’s asleep in winter, and red if it stops. It’s going green.’
Bjorna rubbed her face in a clump of grass in front of her, then lifted her head and yawned a huge cartoon yawn. We all ah’ed like happy children with a new puppy. With murmurs of ‘she’s lovely’ we watched as she rolled on the forest floor, crushing the flowers and moss.
‘She’s happy to be out of the box,’ I said.
‘Welcome to Norway,’ Anja said, gravely, tipping back a silver flask, which she passed to Sorn.
‘Welcome to Jotunheimen.’ He took a swig then handed it to Stig.
‘Slainte Mhath.’
And finally, me. ‘Good luck, Bjorna.’
The bear gave another yawn and got to her feet. She moved towards a patch of wild garlic, tearing a few leaves off and munching. Anja nodded.
‘She’ll be OK,’ she said. ‘She’s coming round now.’
‘Bet she’s got a headache,’ Stig said. He nudged me. ‘You’re very quiet.’
‘Me? I’m gobsmacked.’
It had really happened. The bear, less wobbly now, explored the vegetation in the clearing and then headed towards the stream that ran past the right side of the hide. We all shuffled as smoothly as we could to that window, hoping our movement would not spook the bear. At the stream, she drank copiously, smacking her lips as if getting rid of a nasty taste.
‘I feel just the same with a hangover,’ I murmured.
‘That’s pretty close to what she’s feeling,’ Anja said. ‘She’ll come out of it soon.’
‘Where’s Ono?’ Sorn asked.
She zoomed out on the GPS and showed us the map. A second bear, green this time, pulsed on the screen. It was the animal from the previous day’s release. We all peered in towards it.
‘About a kilometre away, a bit mor
e. And the third release will be 2K upriver.’
‘Do we need to get going?’ Sorn said. ‘I’m worried about the bear out there in the crate.’
‘As soon as I’m happy with Bjorna, we’ll go.’
The bear had emerged from the stream, dripping, and continued to bumble off, soon shifting out of view of the front and side of the hide. Sorn opened the door a fraction, peered out and exclaimed, ‘Faen!’
‘What?’ Anja joined him, peered out of the crack and shook her head.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘She’s going to check out the vehicle,’ Anja whispered. ‘There she goes.’ She swore under her breath in Norwegian.
‘She can smell the other bear, maybe?’ I asked.
Anja nodded. ‘I’ll have to scare her away. She’s going to trash the truck.’ I hunkered down and looked out of the door between Anja and Sorn’s legs. Sure enough, the bear was up on her hind legs, pushing the truck and rocking it.
‘Hey Bjorna, stop that!’ Anja shouted. The bear stopped, like a naughty child, then carried on rocking the vehicle. She nodded to Sorn, who stepped out of the door on to the narrow porch at the back of the hide at the top of the steps, flicked the safety catch on his gun, pointed it skywards and let it off. The crack reverberated around the clearing. The bear went scampering for cover, high-tailing it into a scrubby willow and bramble thicket. Trampled vegetation snapped a round of applause as she charged off.
‘Sorry,’ Anja said, whether to us or the bear, I wasn’t sure, but I thought it likely it was the bear.
‘OK, we have to move fast now,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
We obeyed, filing down the steps of the hide and marching to the truck. Anja jumped up and peered into the crate. ‘She’s OK, still asleep.’
‘She’ll be dreaming of a stormy night on a boat,’ Stig said, as he opened the back door of the king cab to let me get in first. I clambered up. Sorn was driving. Anja secured the tailgate, then took the other front seat. All in the cab, we began jolting and juddering our way up the track along the edge of the park to the third release point.
‘She’s following the truck,’ Anja said, anxiously watching the flashing bear icon on the GPS. ‘Damn. We were assured they were not habituated.’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Often bears that have been been captive learn to associate vehicles, sometimes just a particular kind of vehicle, with food. That can obviously cause problems when they’re released.’
‘Maybe she’s just following the other bear, now she knows she’s there. Maybe she wants to release the other bear prisoner.’
Anja smiled at me indulgently.
‘Better that than an Isuzu fetish,’ she said.
‘She’s dropping back,’ She said after a while, and a little later, confirmed it. ‘She seems to have stopped. Fingers crossed.’
As Sorn pressed on up the track, I hung on to the handle above the door, swinging as we picked a way over ruts and splashed through puddles. We pulled up in a grassy spot beside the river. Anja told me to stay in the truck while the others got out and manoeuvred the crate off the back, then Sorn and Stig returned.
Anja opened the door of the crate, undoing the clasps, lifting the wood and wire gauze up and back, lowering the bottom section of the door flat to the ground. She reached into the box to check eyes and pulse, then got to her feet, and retreated to the truck.
‘OK, let’s back off.’
Sorn pulled the truck away to the edge of the grass, and turned round, ready to drive back down the track.
‘A few minutes to wait, I think. She’s still quite heavily sedated.’
‘Let’s hope she’s awake before Bjorna turns up,’ Stig said with a grim smile.
‘Is she still coming this way?’ I asked. Anja nodded.
It was a pensive wait, but eventually a head blinked out from the crate and a sleepy bear lumbered out into the sunshine. Anja’s flask did the round again and we toasted this new arrival with another nip.
This one was called Ra. She was smaller than Bjorna and had much darker fur. She had a deep scar on her right side from an attack by a big male that had happened in captivity. ‘A mating scar,’ Anja explained. ‘They’re quite common.’
‘She’s much more timid than Bjorna,’ I said. She appeared to be very cautious, sniffing and standing to survey the clearing, shifting rapidly into the cover of trees.
‘Good,’ said Anja. ‘Their fear of people is going to be their best self-defence.’
Ra rubbed her face in vegetation, rolled and drank from the river, then headed off out of sight. She was much less entertaining than Bjorna, but Anja appeared to be happier about this. Once her icon on the GPS had turned a healthy green, Anja said, ‘Right, let’s be off.’
‘What about the crates?’ Stig asked.
‘I’d planned to leave them till tomorrow, but I suppose, since she has headed off…’
The four of us got out again and cleared the crate back on to the truck. As the tail went up, Anja said, ‘Quick, in the truck. She’s here.’
Sure enough, Bjorna lumbered into view on the track and headed for the vehicle, apparently not only unafraid of it, but attracted.
‘Trouble,’ Anja said.
We sat and watched as she strolled up to the truck, ignoring us inside. She put her front paws on the tailgate and gave it a good rattle.
‘What does she do if you start the engine?’ Anja asked Sorn.
Sorn fired it up.
Bjorna bolted for cover, scampering with surprising speed into the shelter of trees.
‘Good,’ Anja nodded. ‘OK, let’s get out of here.’
As we bumped back out of the park, Anja watched the GPS anxiously.
‘Is she following?’ I asked.
‘No, doesn’t seem to be.’
Anja handed me the tool and we passed it between us on the back seat.
‘Ah well, maybe it was just the other bear,’ I attempted to reassure Anja.
‘Let’s hope so.’ She nodded but her frown suggested it had not gone as well as she had wished.
‘When does the male bear come from Romania?’ I asked.
‘A week today.’
‘I wish I could be here,’ I said. ‘But there’s a debate in the Scottish Parliament about the Habitat Directive and our reintroduction programme. I need to be there.’
‘The release will be the same routine,’ Anja said. ‘With the added excitement of three bears already wandering around out there. Hopefully the language barrier won’t be a problem between the Slovakian females and the Swedish and Romanian males. I think your friend Petr Scazia may be coming with them. If he can’t sort out any romantic problems, no one can.’
I blinked. ‘Sorry I won’t be here.’ I stared out of the window and we fell quiet for a mile. I was relieved to be spared the awkwardness of having to see Petr. I still owed him a response to his letter. Despite trying to ignore it, his words haunted me. I am less frightened of being strange than of being forgotten. No chance of that. But when you looked at me, all I saw was fear. Spot on, Petr, if a bit too close to the bone.
I forced my mind back into the present and, with a grin, elbowed Stig. ‘We did it! We really did, we brought back the bears!’
Anja turned an elated smile on us. ‘Yes. Let’s hope we look after them better this time.’
When Malcolm swept me up at the ferry terminal, he was sexy in black jeans and white Hard Farmer shirt. The drive from the ferry terminal to the croft at Ben Mor was more than three hours, even in the Jaguar – not quite the convenient forty minutes of the trip to Dad’s house. I felt a bit guilty about not going there first, but it had been ages since I had seen Malcolm.
As we drove, I watched the landscape go by. After miles of farmland and woods, we emerged on to the open Sutherland moor. I understood why Assynt is called ‘God’s Own Country’. The mountains were still tipped with snow, the deep claret birches blurring to green on the lower slopes, a first flush o
n the limestone grasslands. The lochs reflected a perfect blue sky. Malcolm’s hand occasionally reached over from the steering wheel to touch my leg or hand. My shoulders and thighs unclenched as if I had been physically holding myself together not to be overwhelmed by the ache of missing him.
‘There’s a surprise waiting for you at the croft,’ he said.
‘Oooh.’
He grinned.
‘Don’t give it away. I like surprises.’
It was a chainsaw sculpture of a bear, life size, on its hind legs, like a sentinel at the end of the track down to the croft. I hugged it. ‘It’s so beautiful, I’m going to cry.’
He was pleased I liked it so much. I could tell by the small grin, the smug look that reminded me of how he had been in Mrs Cameron’s geography classes, with his hand up, full of the right answers.
He had been working hard on the croft. The track in was levelled and gravelled and the area we had picked out for a possible future house site had been transformed from a stand of Sitka spruce to several dozen stumps and an impressive woodstack.
‘Was there any decent timber in it?’ I asked.
‘Hardly. A couple of trunks were OK. Jason has taken them, the rest’s rubbish, just firewood. There’s some good stuff down the slope there. We could take some of it out for the sawmill one day but we’d need to set up a winch to get it out.’
‘Have all the crofts been allocated now?’
‘Aye, all twenty. We’re officially a community. And the outline planning permission came through.’
‘Already? Wow, that was fast.’
‘Aye, it’s green lights all the way.’
We wandered around the site, talking sewage soakaways, solar panels, garden, trying to visualise what the clearing in the forest would look like as a home. ‘It’s easier to picture now the trees are down and the space is made,’ I said, but it still seemed unreal. Was my time in Norway over? Now bears roamed free again, was my work finished there? Was it time to shift my centre of gravity back to Scotland, focus my attentions on this thing with Malcolm and put my efforts into the real issue, bringing bears back here? The totem pole bear was a kind of symbol, a lucky charm.
Bear Witness Page 21
