by Sarah Hall
*
Thomas Pennington drives himself, but only around Annerdale, he tells Rachel as they tour the estate, not on public roads. What with all the functions, he can never be sure he isn’t over the limit. Doesn’t want to shunt anyone. Or take out a horse. Or roll the Landy. The Land Rover bumps across fields, alongside hawthorn hedges, over hummocks and ditches, at a fair speed. Rachel holds the strap above the passenger door, rocks in her seat, and listens as he regales her. Besides, he can get a lot of work done on the train – wifi – and the Pendolino from Oxenholme now gets in to London in a matter of a few hours – extraordinary, when he was a boy it took six or seven.
You probably remember, he says, everything went through Crewe.
She nods. Many of his questions are rhetorical. It is hard to know whether a reply is necessary. He is a tall man, as elegant as she expected despite his informal attire, corduroy breeches, plaid shirt, and jacket – his knees jut upward as he drives. She gauges his age; late fifties, sixty, perhaps, with slightly greying hair, though a full, gusting crown of it, envied among men of his generation, no doubt. His face is temperate, devoid of obvious stress, like the south side of a mountain. Hazel eyes, dark brows, a long, straight nose with wide nasal vaults – somehow French colouring, Rachel thinks. He is not unattractive, quite handsome in fact, but exhibits no trace of sexuality – the neutering of British private schooling, or he has been docked by high-level politics.
She clutches the hand-grip as they veer over the brow of a hill and tip forward on the descent towards the river. The lane they are driving along is narrow. Undergrowth thrashes against the wheels and doors. Ahead, fallow fields, young woods, and the broad rippling shallows of the ford. The Earl prefers a safari route rather than the tarred roads latticing his land. The vehicle is stripped down and lacks comforts, an ex-army model, Rachel guesses, something of a toy.
I read about you in Geographic a few years ago, he is saying. Thought, there’s a good local lass; hasn’t she gone far. But people from here do, don’t they – they range out around the globe – into all sorts of bother sometimes. And success, equally. You’re from Keld? Parents still there?
No. My mother moved out a few years ago.
Lovely little parish, Keld. Cromwell’s Army holed up in the church, you know, on the way to sort out those troublesome Scots. Oh, dear. Seems like we’re back to all that again, aren’t we? Have you read the white paper?
No, I haven’t. I thought it was only released today?
Don’t bother. It contains quite a lot of fantasy and nothing of a business plan. Interesting thoughts on ecology, though I suspect Caleb Douglas hasn’t the courage, nor will he have the cash, to follow through.
Rachel nods again and says nothing. British politics have been off her radar for a long time. But she is aware of the reform plans across the border – public acquisition of private land, recalibration of resources – a notion that must make the likes of Thomas Pennington more than a little uncomfortable. The BBC is full of debate about independence and the forthcoming referendum; she’s been surprised by how close the polls are, how troublesome the matter is proving for Westminster. Perhaps sensing her reticence, the Earl continues his historical rhapsody of her home village.
The font in Keld church is medieval – a splendid piece. And there’s a Viking hogback in the graveyard in excellent condition. What a lovely place to be brought up; how lucky you were. So, give me the potted history of Rachel Caine. You went to the grammar school, no doubt, then read biology, at Cambridge?
Zoology. I studied at Aberystwyth.
She does not mention the postgraduate work at Oxford, or the honorary fellowship. Let him assume.
Ah, Cymru! Excellent! Well, our future king is one of your alumni.
Not by choice, I imagine.
Thomas Pennington laughs, though she intended no humour.
Quite! Did you enjoy it? Must be a jolly good course if it produced you.
The Land Rover chassis clangs against a boulder. The river is fast approaching.
It was fine. It’s a good department. I’ve gone back and given lectures there. We’ve taken one or two volunteers at Chief Joseph – sort of an exchange programme.
Marvellous! Yes, we must make opportunities for the young.
For all her companion’s levity and volubility, the conversation is not easy. His enthusiasm borders on tyrannical, is giddying. She feels artless, unpractised; there are social mores at which she has become deskilled, if ever she was adequate. She cannot forget who he is. Still, her required input seems minimal. Thomas Pennington is blithely able to cant and hold forth, despite the lack of reciprocity. She glances over at him. He is smiling broadly and seems very pleased.
And then it was off to America? Now, Rachel, have you noticed there are quite a few presidents with Reiver surnames? What do we make of that?
She does not reply. The Land Rover tips gamely over the riverbank. Rachel braces. Thomas Pennington pushes the accelerator hard and the engine roars. He leans over the steering wheel. She notices he is not wearing a safety belt. The vehicle dashes across the shingle bed, pebbles gouging up and growling in the wheel arches. River-water splatters the windscreen and streams away.
Geronimo!
On the far bank he brakes and throws the Land Rover into climbing gear. They grind up the steep thistle-covered slope, crushing the stalks underneath, the fronds rustling and squeaking. Rachel looks to the hills, and the dark creases between. Just talk, she thinks. Tell him what he wants to hear.
I worked in a rescue centre in Romania first. Then Belarus. There were problems with industrialisation and the packs coming into town. They ended up scavenging, getting bad press. Then I volunteered in Yellowstone, and then the Nez Perce job opened up. I didn’t think I’d get it.
Of course you got it! Aberystwyth’s premier zoologist!
Thomas Pennington slaps the dashboard with a palm, a flamboyant, almost fey action. She glances at him again. Is he mocking her? Or is it a campaign of flattery? He is, she supposes, likeable, or at least enthusiastic, a positivist. Perhaps rich as he is and influential, he has a social duty to be so. In profile, there’s a boyish brilliance to him, a Pan-like yaw. He has probably played all his life, despite the expectations, the serious nature of privilege, and the obligations of sitting in the House.
I mean there are employment protocols on the Reservation.
Of course. And Idaho. Do you enjoy it there?
The first test as to her availability.
Yes. I do.
I’ve never been up that way. I’ve been to Seattle, of course – my father used to do business with Boeing. But that corner is rather a blind spot for me. I do know those casinos were a bad idea. No routed nation ever did well trying to win money back using alcohol and algorithm. I voted against the supercasinos here. The last thing this country needs in the middle of a recession is more gambling.
She does not disagree, though the revenue streams on the Reservation and in Britain follow very different courses. She watches the estate roll by. Oak trees, damson, and birch coppices, newly planted. Between them, the yellow swards of moorland, patched darkly by gorse, reefed by flowering gold, and purple heather. Thomas Pennington slows the Land Rover, then stops, and points.
Look over there, Rachel.
Standing thirty feet from a stretch of woodland is an area of construction – a long, deep trench, gently curving. The foundation of the enclosure barrier.
Not much more to do now, he says. We’re on the final few miles.
Must have been tricky to negotiate. Isn’t this inside the national park?
Oh, he says, evasively, we managed.
The disputes are ongoing, she knows, but the new legislation has allowed him scope. She does not push him; he would probably deny any negative aspects to the project anyway.
Above the moorland and trees, the Lakeland mountains castle. Above the crags, sky, occluded clouds. As a child, the territory seemed so wild that anything might b
e possible. The moors were endless, haunting; they hid everything and gave up secrets only intermittently – an orchid fluting in a bog, a flash of blue wing, some phantom, long-boned creature, caught for a moment against the horizon before disappearing. Only the ubiquitous sheep tamed the landscape. She did not know it then, but in reality it was a kempt place, cultivated, even the high grassland covering the fells was manmade. Though it formed her notions of beauty, true wilderness lay elsewhere. Strange to be sitting next to the man who owns all that she can see, almost to the summits, perhaps the summits. It is his, by some ancient decree, an accident of birth and entitlement – the new forestation, the unfarmed tracts and salt marshes towards the edge of the Irish Sea. She could applaud the project without reserve, were it not for the hegemony, the unsettling feeling of imbalance. Still, it is England; a country particularly owned.
She can see, between hills, the glint of grey water – the west coast, where once rum-runners came ashore and where nuclear cargo now ghosts along railway lines at night. The Earl is talking again, about reparation debates, the law-making powers of the Reservations – the cultural respect for the land, by which he is deeply inspired. Isn’t she? he asks. He is better informed than most, but still romanticising. Yes, she thinks. If you’d been fighting for decades over broken treaties, and had, only within the last presidency, been invited into the White House, if you were overseeing class-action settlements worth billions, the buying back of territory and compensation for mismanaged trusts, you would respect the land, you would know its worth. But the track record of some of the First Nations is nothing exemplary.
The redistribution of power is always complicated, she says.
He unbuttons his jacket and leans back in his seat, and she notices the supporting brace underneath, waistcoat-like, perhaps a daily fixture since the microlight crash and subsequent spinal surgeries. He turns slightly towards her. She is aware her sceptical tone has been noted.
I can certainly take criticism, he says. This isn’t the democratic republic of Annerdale. Our system is very antiquated – I’ve campaigned for reform along with my party. Meanwhile, I consider myself a custodian of sorts. The plans we have here are very sound. I don’t need to tell you the benefits of reintroducing a level-five predator. The whole region will be affected. It’ll be a much healthier place, right down to the rivers.
Rachel nods.
Yes, it will.
She looks towards a small, brown, unextraordinary hill with a winding path and a conical cairn at its summit. He follows her gaze.
That’s Hinsey Knot. You can see the Isle of Man from the top on a clear day.
He turns the engine over and they drive back, towards the hall. On the way they pass a ruined cottage, almost a bothy, and an old fence wire strung with black-jacketed moles. Thomas Pennington slows the vehicle and peers at the bodies.
Oh, Michael, he murmurs. Is that really necessary?
Some old-school farmhand or estate worker, Rachel assumes. She remembers the tradition from her village. She and Lawrence would see rows of the creatures on the way home from school, splayed open, pinned like lab specimens. The wind seems to have gone a little from her host’s sails. He points out the occasional landmark, but chats less. He must sense her resistance. Who will he approach next, she wonders. With the barrier fence almost complete, approaches must already have been made. She is glad of the quiet and takes in the landscape, which she has missed. The river is slate-rimmed, flashing, much clearer than the peat-steeped water of the eastern district. Near the lake, in a walled plot, is a church with a round tower, where the Earl’s ancestors and relatives are probably buried, including his wife, Carolyn. Rachel’s knowledge of her death extends no further than the tabloid reports. A freak air-disaster, the microlight stalling too low, half-gliding half-plummeting to Earth. The Earl was in traction for months. His wife was killed on impact. The church roof looks new, the graves well-tended.
The Land Rover clears another bracken-covered ridge. Thomas Pennington pulls over and croaks the handbrake on, kills the ignition. He rolls the window down. Wind stirs the yellow grass. Below is the lake, six intricate miles of it, pewtered at its head as clouds move over from the Atlantic.
So, Rachel. I appreciate your time and I’m very glad you’ve visited Annerdale. May I ask your thoughts?
She looks towards the central peaks. There are grand and celebrated elevations among them, but after the Pacific-Northwest, the Rockies, and the arboreal plains, they seem diminutive.
Well, she begins. Thank you for the opportunity to see the project.
She has planned what to say. All she needs to do is stick to the speech. She knows he will be convincing, and the money hinted at is unusually generous. Nevertheless.
I have a good team at Joseph, she says, and reliable funding. Our new visitor centre opened last year – we’ve got quite a few educational programmes. But with the amount of hunting now in the state, we have to be more vigilant. It’s not a good time to be a wolf in Idaho. The scheme here – well, it’s captivity, for all its merits. It would be a step backwards for me.
This is more than she has said all morning and the speech is delivered without pause. She looks at him, hoping to avoid awkwardness. There were no guarantees; he knew that. He returns her gaze, considers what she has said, nods.
Of course. England lags terribly in terms of ecology. We’ve barely got our ‘toad crossing’ signs up. But it’s an exciting time, things are changing; we’ve already changed them.
We, she thinks. Who is this we? This is his dominion, his private Eden. She looks away. Greyer clouds are heading up the valley on a brisk wind. The ground darkens beneath them. She can smell the rain coming, like tonic in the air.
You must like being home again, he says. It’s such a special place, isn’t it? It’s somehow gloriously in us.
What do you mean?
His question feels too intimate, inappropriate. Again she feels peculiar being so close to a man of such power – even the tribal councils, with their elders of utmost gravitas and authority, do not disarm her as much. She suddenly wishes she could get out of the Land Rover and walk back to Pennington Hall.
I mean it has a resonance, he says, and sighs. I used to dislike being away, even as a young man, and I was away a lot, boarding and London and whatnot. I still dislike being away, when the House is in session. This is a unique area. ‘The form remains, the function never dies.’ We are so very lucky, you and I, to belong here, Rachel.
She has no inclination to enter into a sentimental discussion. She tries to remain focused.
I’m not sure what that has to do with it.
Thomas Pennington smiles. His teeth are capped and polished. He is gearing up to make his case; she can see the signs, the poise, the mental garnering of argument. Let him say his piece, she thinks. He’s paid you.
I know you’re a woman of honesty – I admire that. So let’s be honest. This is a real chance for environmental restoration in a country that desperately needs it. The whole process has been incredibly bureaucratic. All the things one has to prove about wolves: previous inhabitation, suitable territory. God forbid they should be able to hunt their own prey! Government has become extremely adept at legislating its urban squeamishness – my chaps too, I’m afraid to say. Anyway, we got there.
He makes a dismissive, swatting gesture, as if cutting through and casting aside the opposition.
If we were going to be anything less than a self-sustaining enclosure, I wouldn’t have prevailed upon you. I wouldn’t have wasted your time, Rachel. Or mine.
He turns his hands over, palms facing upward. Behavioural assay of state, she thinks: humility. He is appealing to her dominant position. He is not without guile, nor lacking sincerity – the consummate politician, perhaps.
I know getting you back would be a coup. America has everything you need. But, if I may say it, America isn’t the real challenge. America has wolves walking back down from Canada of their own volition. Aren’t you
just overseeing what already exists? Here, even behind my ridiculous fence, they will be able to hunt and breed; they will be able to do what they do, and for the first time in centuries! Isn’t that extraordinary? Imagine what it all might lead to. Perhaps even full reintroduction.
It is raining lightly now. The windscreen begins to speckle. The shadow of the clouds arrives, darkening the Land Rover’s interior. The Earl’s eyes are greenish-brown. There’s Huguenot in him. His nails are manicured; his eyebrows shaped. The tweed in his coat is probably customised. Yes, she thinks, it is extraordinary. But there’s something about him, something about his energy, that she does not trust. The waxing and waning – the peaks and troughs. Almost bipolar, and she is familiar with that condition. The mania. The terrible aftermath. They are a convincing breed, made charismatic by ideas and self-belief, with plans so persuasive that it’s hard not to be swayed. Hard too when the life gust is vented and the black mask slides down. Oran. The day she and Kyle found him sitting by the Clearwater River in his pick-up, a loaded gun on his lap, the radio blaring. Just watching the steelheads swimming, he said.
Full reintroduction. In thirty years maybe, and not in England. She shakes her head. She has not come professionally unprepared.
The Highland studies are speculative – I know, I advised on one them. This country isn’t ready for an apex predator yet, won’t be for quite a while. The Caledonian Park took ten years to get off the ground, and then it was dismantled. The issue is just too divisive for Britain.
Eight years, the Earl says, quickly. But Campbell messed it up. He didn’t spend the money. You have to spend the money.
She shakes her head again.
I don’t want money. No one in my line of work does it for money.
No. That’s not what I meant.
Thomas Pennington’s smile broadens, becomes enigmatic. Does he mean a bribe? Or perhaps he is alluding to the returns he might make if he offers wolf-watching tours in the enclosure. He is determined; she can see that. And he has excessive confidence.
