by Sarah Hall
Glad to hear it, Mr Wilson, she says. Where I’ve been living, there’s a trend for semi-automatics. Very messy. They like crossbows, too – no permits are needed. The amount of deer I’ve seen walking along with arrows sticking out of their backsides, you wouldn’t believe.
Neville Wilson laughs – the joke is on his level. Buried in the comment, were he clever enough to interpret it, is the accusation that he is the undergraduate, trumped by the bigger business of American sport. The polite rituals of British deer hunting, the stalk, the language, the weaponry, would seem laughable to the average Idahoan – something out of another age. Michael Stott remains silent, damned if he’ll be entertained by Rachel’s comments. She turns to him.
And no doubt you’ll be after a six-point antler, Mr Stott.
He leans back in the chair, reaches for the leather wallet. He unpops the stud, takes out the paper dispenser and a clod of tobacco.
I dare say. This going to bother you – or the babe?
He gestures to her swelling midriff.
People are awful fussy these days.
No. Go right ahead.
It is a power play. There are ashtrays on the table, there’s a faint aroma of cigar; they are in the gentlemen’s smoking room – probably requested by Michael. She has not tried to cover up her belly, apologetically – why should she? She won’t now issue a ban. The baby will be fine. Binny smoked during both her pregnancies. Michael rolls and lights the cigarette, cupping it inside his closed hand as if against a high wind. Black cherry tobacco drifts over – a man of sweeter vices, then. He offers the wallet to Neville Wilson, who declines, but looks longingly at the makings as if having recently quit. The man looks puffy and red, a candidate for heart disease. She watches Michael, who is weathered but healthy, thinks again that his hair is too dark and glossy for a man his age. It seems like an indicator of something corrupt, an unsavoury raw diet, some kind of deviancy. She has not yet seen his wife. She imagines her pressing napkins and boiling chutney, cowed and bird-like, in some dark village cottage.
Thing is, your pups probably won’t get the job done in time, he says. When are they let out?
End of September.
September. Yep.
He knows this very well. At least he understands there are limitations to the number of prey they can and will take – she would rather a knowledgeable enemy than an ignorant ally. Oblivious to the tension, or simply part of the charade, Neville Wilson issues a surprising invitation.
You’d be welcome on the stalk, Mrs Caine. We’re not fully signed up on numbers yet, are we, Stotty?
The gamekeeper’s eyes quickly curtsy down to Rachel’s bump and back up again.
That might be inconvenient for her, Nev. Lot of crawling about.
Thanks, Rachel says. But I’ll pass. Will Thomas be joining you?
She’s interested to know where her employer’s right-on sensibilities end.
He will, Michael says. The Earl always hunts. Leo, too, if he’s about. And Leo’s grandfather never missed a season. It’s in the blood. Shame it’ll all end.
She nods. She does understand the disgruntlement. The traditions of Annerdale go back hundreds of years; Michael is the last custodian, a hard position to be in. In his mind, wolves are no doubt faddish, indicative of Thomas Pennington’s contradictions, his liberalism and modernity, or worse, he is inadvertently sponsoring a return to the dark ages, to the primacy of the feral. The systems are cracking up. She understands, but holds no sympathy. And now it is her turn to lead the hand.
Can I ask, gentlemen, were you planning to use moderators?
Come again?
Moderators. Silencers. I’m wondering what the level of noise will be during the cull.
Got sensitive hearing, have they? Michael asks, sneering. Shall we fit them with ear mufflers?
Neville Wilson laughs again; anyone’s joke and any joke, it seems, amuses him. If he understood how much money the estate will save via predation he might soon sober, reassess his job, she thinks. Michael’s upper lip is hitched, revealing the pleated arch of gum above his front teeth.
Incredibly sensitive, she says. But you misunderstand me. I’d like there to be noise – as much as possible.
He stares at her. He does not know what she means.
It keeps them alert, she explains, prevents them from becoming habituated – you understand what I mean by habituated, Mr Stott. I don’t want them to get used to humans. So, can we agree you’ll be as noisy as you can be for me?
She is throwing her weight around a little, being cocky, but he deserves it. Walk into the pen with ear mufflers, she thinks, and they would take your fucking arm off. Neville Wilson stands and gathers his jacket.
OK, that all sounds good. If we’re up to speed, I better be off, Stotty. Be in touch. Give my best to Lena and Barnaby.
They shake hands. Neville Wilson offers his hand to Rachel.
Nice to meet you, Mrs Caine. It’s been fairly educational.
He takes another piece of shortbread on his way out. Michael snips the smouldering end of the cigarette with his first and middle fingers to extinguish it, and puts the leather tobacco wallet in his coat pocket.
Are we all done? Rachel asks.
Reckon so.
Fine. See you at the next meeting.
She stands, gathers her things. Michael remains seated for a moment. He looks faintly smug, has one more card up his sleeve.
Good to have a vet on hand, he says. In case anything goes wrong.
He is looking down at the table, where one hand is resting over the box of matches, its fingers horned and crab-like, nicotine-stained. When he looks up, it is without direct accusation, a trace of lewd amusement, perhaps. He has been spying, or he is speculating, testing the waters. Alexander’s Land Rover was parked near the quarantine pen overnight; they are often seen together, maybe the attraction has been on display. Or he is making a dig at the wolves again – their high maintenance during quarantine. But Michael is too clever for the comment to be innocent. Rachel says nothing; her face remains neutral, unreadable. If he cannot undermine her professionally, there is of course the traditional realm of sexual disparagement. Michael is a misogynist, for all his sitting at the negotiating table with her. Her neck feels hot, as if colouring with annoyance. She bites her lip, says nothing. Binny comes careening into her thoughts. Her mother would have risen to a comment like this, given up information. Think of us like dogs, Mr Stott, like bitches that come into heat. But she is not her mother – there are more artful ways to fight. If she is not careful, the running conflict with Michael will make her careless and weak. Binny never learnt how not to fan the flames with her anger and indignation. She always admitted to her indiscretions when accused. Rachel moves to the door, opens it.
I very much doubt anything will go wrong at this stage, she says. Goodbye, Michael. Good luck with the cull.
Driving away from the Hall, her annoyance builds. She grips the steering wheel, imagines all the things she might have said, satisfyingly cutting. Even at Chief Joseph, with its seclusion and hothouse gossip, and the Reservation’s wider system of finding things out, she could maintain a degree of privacy. There is nothing Michael Stott can do, other than try to shame her with his knowledge. But she was not taught to feel ashamed, far from it; Binny was adamant on that front. Any time she got wind of an attempt, she would go into battle – marching down to the junior school to extract Rachel from bible studies, horrifying the vicar and baffling the other kids. You’re not filling her head with that rubbish, you tight old git. Original sin, my backside. Pick up your coat, my girl, we’re leaving. Heat prickling Rachel’s face as she followed her mother outside, to the school gate, where she was made to wait until the lesson was over and the vicar had fled past. The feeling that came after such exposure wasn’t shame, either – more like the flinting of aggravation, red filling the brain. Not unlike the feeling now.
She takes the long way home, over the moors. The baby kicks. She s
lows down a little and breathes, tries to let the anger disperse. The road is vividly blue against the yellow, friable grassland, the parched landscape. Haze vectors the distance. The heat is approaching American standards; it is being worried about on the radio, a brutal new climate. In the west the sky is darkening. A storm on the way. Meanwhile, the air conditioning in the Saab does little. She rolls the front windows down and aromatic moorland air buffets in. The heat feels land-made, furnace-like, as if some great portion of the island is burning, tracts of coppice and forest, a final solution.
When she pulls up at the cottage, Lawrence’s silver Audi is sitting outside, in the middle of the lane rather than parked in the garth. It is midweek; they have not arranged a visit, unless she has forgotten. She gets out of the car. The cottage is rarely locked, as her brother knows, but the gate to the garden is standing open. She goes in. Lawrence’s wife is sitting at the table under the quince tree. Rachel hasn’t seen her for several years, but the face is distinctive, wide, cattish, a plain kind of attractiveness.
Emily?
Emily turns and stands. Her hair is shorter than it was, cut along the line of her jaw and thatched with expensive highlights: middle-age, chic. She is wearing a cream linen trouser suit, out of place and yet somehow fitting here in the garden, a modern Edwardian look, were she to be holding a wooden tennis racquet or a china teacup. Emily greets her quietly, blinks, and looks away; her eyes are very bright against the black mascara.
Is Lawrence inside? Rachel asks. I can’t remember him saying anything about visiting today.
He isn’t here, Emily says. He didn’t come.
Oh?
It’s just me.
Oh.
What’s going on? Rachel wonders. Retribution time? Please let’s not have it all out today, she thinks, not after Michael. Emily remains standing, shifting her position on the lawn slightly, touching the back of her neck. Something is stirring beneath the surface of her face.
You look well, she says. Pregnancy suits you.
Rachel frowns, geared now for argument. The last thing she expects is a compliment – the same one Alexander made not twenty-four hours ago. Alexander, she thinks, dinner; I haven’t called him. Emily looks at her again and then away, struggling to start saying what she wants to say. Rachel notices the mascara has been smudged and reapplied around her eyes, the lashes are clotted together. Pinkness to the rims, which is why the irises look so green. Emily has been crying. She looks to the side, sighs, and seems to take hold of herself. Something is definitely not right.
I should have called you, I know, Emily says. It’s just that Lawrence and I had an argument, a bad one. I got in the car and started driving and I ended up here. I don’t know why. I wanted to see you.
Her voice breaks a little. Rachel doesn’t know what to say. She cannot quite believe her sister-in-law is here, by herself, for any reason.
Is Lawrence OK? she asks.
No, not really. He’s – got some problems. I accused him of terrible things, of not really wanting a baby. He left. He took his keys and wallet and walked out.
She makes a noise, a partial choke, as if about to weep, and puts her hand to her forehead, knuckling between the brows. Rachel stares at her. Six months ago you accused me of emotional retardation, she thinks. You cut me off from my brother. Now, this. What am I supposed to do?
I thought he’d maybe have called you, Emily says. I know you’re closer now. You haven’t heard from him?
No.
Please tell me if you have.
I haven’t.
Then Emily does begin to cry. She lets herself go, her body shaking, leaning forward, her sobs loose and repetitive, as if the appeal for help was some kind of emotional emetic. Rachel looks at her, mortified. After their years of antagonism and contraspective dislike, the bitterness, to see an adversary so reduced, submissive even, is unnerving. There is no pleasure in it whatsoever. Emily fights to speak.
Then he’ll be – he’ll be. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t know where he is.
Her shoulders hunch. Tears drip to the ground from beneath her hands. Moments of paralysed excruciation pass before something kicks in and Rachel steps forward.
Hey. Come on, she says, gently. Let’s sit down. Over here.
She puts a hand on Emily’s elbow, turns, and steers her towards the bench. They sit. She waits while the woman gets it out of her system. The weeping begins to taper off. Emily wipes her face, runs her fingertips along the soils of black make-up under her lashes.
I haven’t heard from him, Rachel says again. Is he with a friend in Leeds, maybe?
It seems an obvious suggestion – stupid, in fact. She wants to know more about the extent of the argument, which has come as a surprise, but there’s no way to ask. Simultaneously, the thought of knowing their intimate business is off-putting. Emily shakes her head.
He might be with Sara. I used to think there couldn’t be anything worse than that, but there is.
Rachel doesn’t recognise the name, or really understand the comment – is Emily alluding to an affair? she wonders. There’s still so much about her brother’s life she does not know. Emily looks up at Rachel, as if wanting confirmation, or admission, perhaps thinking she is withholding information about Lawrence. But Rachel is at a loss. She shrugs. It’s odd. In her suffering, his wife seems far more attractive than Rachel realised – beautiful, even.
I said awful things about you, and your mother, Emily says, looking Rachel directly in the eye. I said he was brought up in a household where bad behaviour was normal. I told him he was too fucked up to be a father and we should stop trying.
What did you mean, he has problems? Is he seeing someone?
Emily does not answer, but continues to look at Rachel, reading, assessing. Then, as if making a conscious decision, she recoils from the details of confession.
It’s nothing. Just that he goes through these bad times. He comes a bit unwound.
It’s a vague thing to say, but the tone is too factual to be simple deflection or a lie about her husband. What does coming unwound mean? Rachel cannot imagine her brother fucking around or otherwise acting up. But then, she has seen little of him as a grown man. And all men are capable of straying. Most women, too. Lawrence was brought up a certain way; if not instructed in the school, then let to see the possibilities, the methods, as was Rachel. What is laid down in childhood is difficult to reverse; one might spend a lifetime trying. Suddenly Rachel does want to know more, never mind the awkwardness.
Who is Sara?
Just someone he works with. A friend in the office.
What did you mean, being with her isn’t the worst thing?
It was just a stupid argument. We’ve been very stressed.
Emily wipes her face again, composes herself. It’s too late. The guard is going back up.
Whatever it is your family’s got, she says, I don’t have it.
What do you mean?
You’re so autonomous. So defended.
Is that a good thing?
Emily shrugs. Criticism or not, Rachel is out of her depth. She feels incapable of psychologising a brother she knows so little, or consoling a woman with whom she has frequently warred. Whatever window of insight into their troubles his wife might have provided has closed. Emily holds her hands tightly together on her lap.
Wait here a second, Rachel says.
She walks to the back door of the cottage and goes inside. In the kitchen she stands for a moment and tries to gather her wits. It seems bizarre that Emily has come all this way – on a whim, and to a former foe – asking for help. It makes no sense. And yet Rachel does want to help, or at least to understand. The idea of a marital rift, of her brother cracking at the seams, is unsettling. There’s certainly more to it than Emily is letting on; that much is clear. Once, she might not have cared; now, she cannot turn a blind eye. She goes into the downstairs bathroom, gathers a wad of toilet roll, collects a glass of water from the kitchen, and goes back i
nto the garden. She hands them to Emily. After blowing her nose and taking a sip, Emily rallies a little, sits straighter. She combs her hair behind her ears.
I apologise. This really isn’t on.
There’s no need.
No, there is. And I’m sorry for everything this last year.
In fact, the last thing Rachel wants is an apology – the hollow, unendurable victory of that. This declawed version of her sister-in-law still seems wrong. Shadows have begun to spool into the garden and the light is suddenly murky. To the portentous west, the sound of thunder, a long, deep tear, and there’s a distinctive smell: wet herbs, cordite, the precursor of rain. Something big is about to unleash. She cannot, in all good conscience, send Emily away.
We should go inside, she says. I’m going to make some pasta. It’s about all I want to eat these days. You can have some with me.
She stands. Emily nods and stands also.
You look really well, she says again.
In the kitchen Rachel pours Emily a glass of wine, and quickly throws together a meal. The two do not speak much but there is a tenuous accord – enough to get through the evening. The rain begins, not with torrid, dehumidifying power, but a slow, intermittent shower, dysuric. Then the battering downpour comes, drenching everything. Emily catches Rachel looking at the clock.
I’ve ruined your evening, she says.
No, you haven’t, Rachel assures her, but I do have to phone someone. And I think you should stay – you don’t want to drive back in this.
After a quiet, reflective dinner, with limited conversation, they retire to bed. Emily does not expand on Lawrence’s problems and Rachel does not push, nor are they keen to stray into the mined territory of the past. Emily borrows a T-shirt to sleep in, bids Rachel goodnight, and heads into the spare room. She seems less distraught, more resolved, though her frame of mind is hard to gauge. Although tired from the night before, Rachel cannot sleep. The house seems to ring with the presence of her brother’s wife, but when Rachel goes to the bathroom, the spare room is silent and no lamp light filters under the doorway into the hallway. It occurs to her that her brother might be far less together than she’d always assumed, his proclivities far darker. Sara. Can it be true he has a mistress? The word, the idea, seems ridiculous. And what is the worse scenario Emily alluded to? Her mind shifts though fantastic, disturbing images: sex workers in the backstreets of Leeds, STD clinics.
