The Beautiful Indifference

by Sarah Hall

  I rarely hunted. In truth I did not much enjoy it like my brothers, William and Jonah, who went out with the chase every Lady Day and Michaelmas. On occasion I’d been there when they’d baited badgers, but had never felt that gust of excitement when the dogs closed their pack and the jack of their jaws increased. The boys were surprised when I said I’d be coming. Our dogs were unused to smaller quarry, but the bitches were young and I knew they would dig at the banks in a fury when they caught the scent or the sound of a creature down in the earth. The other farmers would not be interested in selling pelts; even together there wouldn’t be enough of a quality to bundle up and send to Saville’s by way of Carlisle. These were not original Norfolk-bred mink, shiny and sleek and farmed above their natural size. The coasts and moors had worn the wild mink down, dulled its jet fur to caramel. All the parish wanted was to rid the dale of the nuisance and collect up good batches of eggs again.

  Doubtless they would have kept the heads for panel trophies. But I made an arrangement with the hunting families. I bartered buttermilk and preserves, the last of our honey, and I lied to old Lanty Farrow, with his beautiful otter hound and his Winchester, that I’d court his son, Calum. I told them all to shout the dogs off early for the purpose of saving the hides. In the weeks to come I went out in the evening with my brothers and a rifle, the reek of the kennels drifting behind us. Our lanterns hung soft moons over the river and their flames lit the gore of the berries in the briar.

  November passed by, leaving sleet on the ground and a brown rot to the moors. By the second Sunday of December I had five good pelts. Jonah and William, reading a personal keenness in my presence at the water’s edge, agreed to hunt further on downstream, into the next valley. We were an odd threesome, with our coats and our sacks, treading both sides of the river like a Viking party, and lighting damp bonfires between thistles to smoke the devils out. Jonah, who never spoke, would signal for us to pause, signal for us to walk on. The truth of death is a peculiar thing. For there was a fascination to these evenings that went past utility or sport. We were in the hinterlands, a wilding place, where the reign was ours entirely. We were the wolves. We were the lions.

  All day I looked forward to treading the banks, with the dogs sooling about in the undergrowth. And the night welcomed me, gave me senses. I was struck by the ability of the river to ferry odours on its back. It seemed to enhance everything it touched: the mineral stones of its bed, the wet shag of the dogs when they went swimming, the bark of sour thorn trees whose roots sipped at the shallows. Sometimes I imagined I could, like the dogs, detect the waft of mink through the ferns. I knew that binary scent of blood’s soft iron and glandy secretion. And when an animal blurted from its hole and the dogs took off, or there were pants and whines at the head of a rabbit warren, my heart banged up towards my throat, and my eye focused. As we passed through the twilight territory there were shrills and screeches in the trees – the nocturnal world engaged in its sharp procedures, just as we were.

  The lads got used to not looking back every so often to make sure I was keeping up. I managed fine and never complained of the chill against my forehead. I could set the dogs and call them to heel as well as my brothers. I carried our father’s leather harrier gloves to hoist up any bodies from between the tails. Twice I shot at mink as they fled, the blunt crack echoing up the fells. In the distance the guns of the Dickinsons and the Harrisons and the Farrows replied. And it was me who eventually shot Tan, the second eldest of our dogs, when she was bitten through her leg and the wound turned septic and she was dying, pity-eyed, unable to stand or take water. Jonah sat inside the house and wept, and his eyes pled, Dolly, I can’t. Will you?

  We hunted clear down to the Eamont, until the current slowed and great sandstone bluffs rose and there was nowhere for the animals to hide or burrow. Of the ones we caught we raised the slack bodies up on forked sticks, dangled them from their necks, like the terrible flags of returning mercenaries. The boys stripped to their waists in the frosty night air and wore mink round their shoulders and paraded home.

  It was a strange Advent for Magda, this beastly collection. She knew nothing of my plans and probably supposed me to be working extra hours at the estate, saving for a lavender cushion for her gift, or the coral brooch she’d admired in town. While others tied up mistletoe and stirred charms into suet pudding, I set half a dozen mink on the trestle in the woodshed and lopped off their legs and measured out a pattern. They were handsome creatures, but for those evilly slanting bottom fangs. I could see why graceful ladies the country over wanted the full-length affair.

  Skin them like a squirrel, my father instructed, and I did so, peeling the fur stiffly backwards as if husking unripe fruit, then scraping away the fat with a Bowie knife. The stripped pink bodies and the heads I left in a heap by the woodshed, where they looked grisly and withered, and I began to feel guilty, as if my mess was equal to that of the dreadful vermin. Eventually I passed them along in a bucket as fodder for the pigs up at High Hullock Howe.

  It would have been better to let the pelts air and dry before stitching them together; there were correct treatments I knew this cape would not enjoy in its making, but time was short. The weather was worsening, with two snowfalls in a week and a late Helm Wind off the Pennines, which had left the eastern villages cut off. Magda was confined to her bedroom, cramped and pale. The light in our cottage was poor. I worked early, from seven until nine, as soon as the sun supported any industry, before turning my hand to my other chores. It was a raw effort for the fingers, pulling the hide straight and piercing it with line. As soon as it began to take shape the garment became heavy to hold and stitch. My hands ached by the end of each sitting.

  If my family thought it a curious or silly occupation, they did not reveal it. They knew Magda was dear to me and ailing, so they paid me the courtesy of space to sew and hang the item. Sometimes Jonah watched me working through the window, with the look on his face of a man wistful for some previous vision beheld. One morning he knocked on the glass and I opened the window. He held a piece of polished horn up between his fingers, then passed it to me. He tapped his chest, pointed at the cape, and left to join our father in the paddock. I looked at the pretty little object he had made. There was a figure carved into the white tusk button, but I could not descry it. A sitting dog, perhaps. Or a woman’s face in cameo.

  The winter took hold. There were record snowfalls. The villages were blocked and paraffin ran low. Sugar was rationed at the store. And there was worse to come, the sky-watchers said. The cottage was bitter in the mornings before the range was up, and I put on extra woollens and stamped my feet as I sewed. I felt neither truly myself nor like any other person during this time, I was simply given to the occupation. If I ran a crooked hem and had to unpick a line then I imagined Magda’s brant collarbones. I remembered the lavish berries in the autumn hedgerows and thought of those telltale stains on her petties. With every prick I made I wished Magda well again. I wished it and I traded for it. And when the cotton snapped I grasped the bobbin and quickly tied the thread tight again. Each day I put my face against the soft fur and whispered into its darkness, God keep her.

  By Christmas Eve I was finished. I came late to mass from brushing the coat down and inspecting it a final time, with every lamp lit to illuminate the parlour, and I received a disapproving look from the seated congregation. But I did not care. I felt triumphant. And I sang the last carol as merrily as it was meant.

  Magda was delighted with the cape. She got glistery-eyed when she saw it the next morning and got up from her bed like a miracle-walker.

  She said, You hang the moon, Dolly Carter, you hang the moon!

  And she kissed my cheek and hugged me to her until I blushed scarlet. She had me put the garment over her shoulders and fasten the horn button, and then she curtsied like a proper dame. She looked like a silky portion of night before me, and I did wonder if I hadn’t reached down into some charmed well of pitch, contracting with a rabble of sp
irits to create the thing. The stole remained a little gamey, and it never looked entirely neat, but Magda wore it all through January and February and commented each time she did so how fine it felt.

  As warm as sotter loaf, she said.

  We buried her in May. She knew exactly what she wanted to be buried in, and though her father protested, the cape was put around her shoulders, over the white communion dress, which still fitted perfectly after all the years. I attended to her laces and brushed her hair. I gave her spring flowers and a stem of vervain. By then the bones had come so far through her she seemed carved from ivory, like the birds the mason set into her stone.

  I thought I would miss her and I did miss her prettiness and her mirth. I did miss her gentle candour. But my dreams were not of Magda. The truth of death is a peculiar thing. For when they leave us the beloved are as if they never were. They vanish from this earth and vanish from the air. What remains are moors and mountains, the solid world upon which we find ourselves, and in which we reign. We are the wolves. We are the lions. After so many nights treading the banks with the dogs and my brothers, intent on some mettlesome purpose I did not truly understand, night after night I dreamed of the river. I dream it now: a river of stolen perfumes, winding its way through our inverse Eden.

  Vuotjärvi

  She stood on the pontoon and watched him swim out. His head above the lake surface grew smaller and more distant. After a while he turned and looked to the shore. His face was white and featureless. It eclipsed as he turned away again and continued swimming. The water was sorrel-coloured, with ruddy patches where the sun lit its depth. When they’d arrived they had knelt on the wooden structure and examined cupped handfuls, trying to discern what its suspension of particles or dye might be. Peat perhaps. Some kind of mineral. The rich silt of the lake bed. Evergreens lined the edge of the glinting mass. Beyond was a vast Scandinavian sky that had, for the duration of their stay, failed to shed its light completely at night. The humidity had surprised them, this far north. The air was glutinous. The meadow grass and the barks glistened. Locals complained that it was the worst year ever for mosquitoes. Spring conditions had suited the larvae. They were everywhere now, whining in the air, their legs floating long and dusty behind them. In the outhouse there was no escaping. They seemed to rise invisibly from the walls, from the chaff and sawdust covering the silage container below the hole. She had rows of bites along her ankle bones, legs and arms. Each bite was raised into a welt, but was not itchy.

  Though there was electricity at the cottage, they had been carrying buckets of the orange water up to wash plates and cups. A natural well was being directed to the house, they had been informed, but the plumbing was not yet complete. Two other cottages were tucked into the strong greenery along the shoreline, painted red, shingled, their plots impeccable. There was a pleasing folk-art look about them. Their inhabitants had not been seen much. Wood smoke curled from the sauna sheds in the early evening. The second night, while they’d been standing at the water’s edge observing the start of a vague, ineffectual sunset, two forms had exited the nearest shed, made their way along a scythed path, and entered the lake. She had waved to them. The Finnish neighbours had waved back, then swum round a pine-covered promontory, out of sight. There was a correctness here, a sensual formality, which she liked very much. You must always take your shoes off inside, the friend whose cousin had lent the cottage had said to them. It’s a particular thing. Since arriving they had worn no shoes at all. Nor much clothing. The grass around the cottage had been softened by a rainstorm. She had woken during the first night to the purring of rain on the cottage roof.

  Under her feet, against the tambour of pontoon planks, the lake slapped and knocked. He was three hundred yards out or so. She could see that he was swimming breaststroke. His feet and hands barely broke the surface. He did not turn round again and his movements were slow and regular. His head grew smaller. He had decided to swim to an island in the middle of the lake and back again. It was perhaps a mile and a half altogether. He was a strong swimmer and she was not concerned. At home he went a long way up the rivers. She did not want to join him. She liked swimming, but not any great distance. She was happy to float on her back, her head submerged, listening to the somatic echo. Or she would crouch and unfold in the water, crouch and unfold. Or look down at her hands – two moon-white creatures in the rippling copper.

  The lake was deep, but it was not cold. They had already rowed out in the little boat belonging to the cottage and dropped anchor and gone in where the shadows were expansive, the bottom no more than a black imagining. The temperature seemed almost indistinguishable from that of her blood, a degree or two cooler. He had held her waist as they kicked their legs, bringing her gently to him. His shoulders under the surface looked stained, tones of surgical disinfectant. His face was wet. There was a taste of iron when they kissed. Suddenly she had become breathless, from exertion, from the eroticism of their bodies drifting together, the memory of that morning’s lovemaking, on their sides, discovering the fit of him behind her, that she should lean away slightly and tip her pelvis as if pouring water from it. That feeling of rapture, of flood, like being suspended.

  Her fears had begun to coalesce. The lake depth was unknown and the pressure against her limbs was a trick: it felt no greater than in the shallows. Underneath was vestigial territory. Rotting vegetation. Benthic silence. The scale of her body in this place was terribly wrong. Something was reaching up, pulling down. Urgency to get out made her kick away to the boat, haul against the side and scramble over its rim. Once inside she had rested her head on the oarlock, breathing away the panic, amazed by the direness of the impulse. Are you OK? he’d called. Oh God, for some reason I thought I should feel imperilled, and then I did, she said. What an idiot. Look at you. Calm as anything in there. He acted out a frantic drowning, and she laughed.

  She had rowed the boat back to the cottage while he lay against the prow and sunbathed, getting used to the rotation of the long thin oars, the lunge and drag. Soon the vessel began to skim through the water, and was easier to steer. They’d beached the boat, pulling it high up into the trees and looping the rope around a trunk, taking the bung out so the hull wouldn’t fill if it rained again. Then they’d walked through the meadow to the cottage, through blooms of airborne pollen and ferrying insects, their shoulders sunburnt, hungry, in no rush to eat. The midday sky was an immense shale. When she lifted her arm her skin smelled of the lake, almost sexual, eel-like. All she had been able to think about was having him move behind her again, fractionally, his hand on her hip, until it was too much, or not enough, and he had to turn her against the bed, rest his weight on her, take hold of her neck, her hair, move harder.

  A eucalypt scent. Pine resin. Spruce. The reeds behind her rustled. A breeze combed the lake surface, left it smooth for a moment, then came again. The pontoon rose and sank, instinctively, like a diaphragm. The pages of the book he had left next to his sunglasses and camera flickered. She picked it up. It was a speculative text about humanity’s chances of extinction within the century. All the ways it might happen. Plague. Bio-terror. Asteroid impact. Finland is the right place to read a book like this, he’d joked as he began it on the plane. They’re such great survivalists. There’s some kind of seed bank there, just in case we mess everything up. I think that’s in Norway, she had said. They had read dreadful sections out to each other over the last few days. The twelve-day incubation period for smallpox means it could spread globally before an epidemic is declared, or contained. Aerosolising sarin is the terrorist’s main challenge. Most unpredictable were the colliders, the super-viruses, strangelets. Dark matter.

  She rocked up on her toes and strained to see his head, which was now a tiny brown spot, difficult to identify between the onshore waves. He must be two-thirds of the way to the island. Soon she would see him climb the rocky skirt in front of the huddle of trees, and stand upright. Even at this distance, even minute, she would surely see him, once he
was out. Her eyesight was good. He was tall. And he was naked. His pale form would contrast with the dark green hub of the island. He would probably rest for a time then set off back. She put the book down, under the camera.

  He had decided to make the swim after they’d taken a sauna. The sauna hut was traditional in design, beautifully crafted. He’d prepared it, checked the tank, cleared away the old ashes and built a new fire under the stones, as instructed by the cousin. They had waited for the heat to intensify, then lain on the benches in the cedary fug, listening to the interior wood panelling click and creak. The heat was so dense they were immobilised, robbed of energy. They became soaked with perspiration, reaching out to touch each other with extreme effort. Finally, the situation felt forced, the environment unendurable. They bathed in the lake afterwards, and emerged refreshed. Then he said he would try for the island. I think it’ll take about forty-five minutes, or an hour. Photograph me coming back victorious.