by Sarah Hall
*
A week of suffering gigantism and soreness. Her abdomen aches. Her lower vertebrae feel displaced, and there’s a grinding feeling against her ligaments. Her bladder goes into overdrive. The sensible portion of her brain kicks in and she stays home, does not go to the wolfery or the office, or even try to get into the car. She reads, lies on the bed surrounded by a mountain of stacked pillows, or wallows in the bath. The delivery van brings groceries. She cannot stop eating apples, four or five a day, until her stomach gripes. She cancels the breakfast appointment with Thomas – now is not the time to tackle him – the fence has been mended, and she wants to concentrate on the release, be as fit and rested as possible. It feels almost like training for a marathon: the endurance, the daily limits, the stairs almost defeating her. She tells Alexander – kindly, she hopes – not to come. She is terrible company, she says. He still comes, after work; he brings fish and chips from town, cool and vinegary in the wrapper, delicious. They sit by the fire for an hour, not speaking much, watching the flames flickering in the grate, greenish from copper deposits in the wood. He fetches more logs in for her, hulking a great quantity in one go. She can’t say she isn’t grateful.
I don’t know why human gestation evolved like this, she says. If I were out there in the wild I’d get picked off in a minute.
You’d just have stayed in the cave, he says. On a pile of furs.
Two days later, Sylvia arrives with a basket of exotic fruit and best wishes from everyone on the project. There are pineapples and mangoes, dragon fruit – no apples. The arrangement looks like something out of a still-life painting.
I’m not ill, Rachel says.
I know. But Huib says you’re probably living on baked beans and toast. I’ve got to make sure you eat something good. I’ve got to report back. No arguments.
Rachel stands aside, and Sylvia carries the enormous basket into the cottage kitchen. They sit drinking tea outside in the garden, Sylvia in her expensive Karrimor jacket with the Annerdale project logo stitched on, Rachel wrapped in a tartan blanket, though she is if anything too warm these days, overheated by the extra weight and blood. It is the first insistently cold day of autumn, a true October day. Already there’s talk of a bad winter coming.
I do love this little cottage, Sylvia says, looking around. I’m so glad you stayed on.
Rachel is, too. She feels settled. There’s a brilliance to the woods around the cottage, as they fire up, deep reds and golds; the treetops frisk in the breeze. In the upper quadrant of sky are long wobbling Vs of migrating geese. They drink the pot of tea and talk about the release. Sylvia has been working hard with the press and liaising with the BBC, which is making a documentary on the wolves; one of the most respected cameramen in the country will be arriving the following week – a coup for the project. Overall the affair will remain low-key. Sylvia has displayed an impressive sensitivity towards the animals and their privacy, turning down requests to attend the event while maintaining goodwill with all the charm, grace, and wiles of one schooled in the art of diplomacy. A benign version of her father. The subject of law school raises itself again.
Honestly, I’m not sure I want to go. I don’t want to disappoint Daddy, but this year has been wonderful. It’s felt, I don’t know, worthwhile. I’d like to stay on.
Rachel nods, feeling a little wrong-footed by the confession, though it is not unexpected: Sylvia has been hinting as much for months. What can she say? Do as you feel, do as you like. This is the Earl’s daughter – is she really at liberty to choose her life’s path? The girl doesn’t have the look of a lawyer to her; she would surely have to activate some grade of occupational distain and cynicism that would ruin her best qualities.
I can’t really advise you, Rachel says. This is what I do, and I love it – everything I say will be biased.
It’s your calling, I know I’m just not sure what mine is. I suppose one day it’ll be this.
This being the estate, Rachel assumes. Sylvia’s enormous dollish eyes become wistful. There are tiny suggestions of lines at their corners, though she is no doubt protecting her complexion from the outdoor work with top-of-the-range products. She’s easy to like, easy to be around – even for Rachel, who has eschewed close female friends for most of her life. At worst she is an innocent, a naïf, unaware of the vast gap between her and the rest of the country; at best a romantic, good in the marrow, one might forgive her the privileges. But then, what presents, even genuinely, may not be truly authentic, as Rachel knows. She remains uncommitted to the friendship.
Mummy would have said don’t let the idea of what you should do get in the way of what you want to do, Sylvia is saying. She didn’t like the idea of sacrificial duty.
How old were you when she died?
Twelve.
That’s tough.
Sylvia blinks, but there are no tears. Enough time, and perhaps counselling over the years, to have quashed – or at least checked – the grief. She tilts her head, rubs her ear on the shoulder of her jacket, keeps her hands wrapped around the warm mug of tea.
Leo had it much worse. He was a teenager. He was having a really bad time already – at school, and here. He saw the crash, poor thing.
Rachel is startled by the abrupt revelation.
You mean he saw the microlight go down?
Sylvia nods.
That must have been traumatic.
There is so little talk about Leo Pennington. He is the great unspoken subject of Annerdale – as if some pact has been made within the family. Only the staff gossip, speculating about whether he has been written out of the will. Rachel can’t say she isn’t curious. The tenor of the discussion now seems permissive – confidential, even. She risks a gentle line of enquiry.
He doesn’t come home much, does he?
No, Sylvia says. Not right now. He and Daddy quarrel a lot. And Leo isn’t very reasonable sometimes. He’s rather volatile.
Isn’t very reasonable. Rather volatile. It all sounds euphemistic to Rachel. The Pennington family is enlightened; from the old order, they have evolved into a new breed of aristocracy – integrated, liberal, positive investors in a floundering nation, but aren’t lunatic sons always stashed away? Personality disorders, gamblers, syphilitics, and cripples, stuck in expensive institutions, oubliettes? She wonders how aggrieved he is, whether he blames his father for the death.
So, where is he now? she asks.
South of France, I think. He moves about a lot. He crews a boat in the Mediterranean, so it’s hard to know exactly.
Sylvia flinches then, almost imperceptibly, but Rachel catches it, the tiny electrical pulse travelling up her body. She has said too much, stepped outside the bounds of loyalty and discretion.
But you still hear from him – or maybe see him?
Not much, Sylvia says briskly. Which is a great shame, really. He is my silly brother, after all.
Rachel searches Sylvia’s face for more information. It is a strange face – so beautiful that the beauty is almost moot, more concealing for its faultless surface. If she has been taught not to lie, then she has also been taught a set of different qualifiers to justify untruth. She has certainly been taught to remain level and polite, to protect her family from the damages of a problem son, or perhaps to protect her brother. The Pennington code. There are times when Rachel suspects the Earl’s daughter is the perfect weapon.
Mummy used to come and work here, Sylvia says. It was sort of a bolt-hole. She liked being in the woods.
Yes, I think I knew that.
She was a very good painter. She has a landscape in the Royal Academy. Have you seen the ones at home?
Yes, Rachel says.
The paintings are small, furiously detailed landscape pieces, almost pre-Raphaelite in their hyper-focus, not Rachel’s kind of thing. They are hung discreetly around the Hall, mostly in the personal living spaces. Apropos of nothing, Sylvia points to the gable of the cottage.
There used to be a tawny owl up there. A j
uvenile. He’d come out in the daytime. He was always looking about as if he’d forgotten what the night was.
It sounds like the last line in a play. Sylvia smiles, a little sadly, and stands.
I’m going to fetch you that piece of fruit or Huib will be cross.
Could you make it an apple? Rachel asks. They’re in the fridge.
She watches Sylvia walk across the garden, sleek as a pike in her jeans. She has become used to her poetic, emotive language, her lack of inhibition, not unlike her father’s. On the surface she seems open and giving. But any intimacy soon dead-ends. The change of subject away from her family was graceful and deft. Maybe she would be a good lawyer after all, Rachel thinks.
*
The next ultrasound scan shows the baby back in the breech position, cross-legged, cramped, and Buddha-like. Rachel stares at the screen. There is no meaning to it, she knows; if there is meaning, it is anatomical, structural. Still, she cannot help wondering. An inherited stubbornness, perhaps: doing it my way. She discusses the situation with the doctor and Jan. A vaginal delivery is improbable; the hospital policy recommends a C-section. Jan, straight as ever, steers her in that direction.
Lord knows, she says, I like a good home video, but there’s really no point in risking it. They’re queuing up for a section these days.
Are they?
They are. Out through the sunroof. So long as you and baby are healthy, that’s all I care about.
Rachel can’t fathom it. Why anyone would want to have their abdomen voluntarily sliced open is beyond her. She had thought herself exempt, fitter, luckier. The date is scheduled for the surgery – three days after the release from the wolfery. Far too close for comfort. She will be given steroids, to bolster the baby’s lungs. Jan sends her away with an information sheet and a DVD to help her prepare, which she watches at home that night with a glass of wine. The video is short – thirty minutes, five of which it takes to get the baby out. In the theatre, the mood of the medical personnel and the mother is light. The woman talks to her partner; she is given a spinal block, screened at her lower half; she is calm, smiling, joking with the anaesthetist. The surgeon begins the procedure. The initial cut is vast, layers of yellows and pinks are latticed apart, an astonishing gulley made in the body. Less blood than one might have thought. The smeared gloves reach inside. An assisting surgeon pushes down on the top of the woman’s abdomen. Feels a bit odd, the patient says. A helmeted red mass is pulled out of the hole, not without force. The trailing creature is taken to one side, respirated and cleaned very quickly, then it is brought to the mother, whose face is all tenderness and joy, and tucked nakedly against her breast. The crying father supports it. The woman is emptied of placenta, suctioned, folded up, and stitched. There’s something macabre about the combination of the wound and the alertness of the patient. Something amazing, too. Afterwards, Rachel feels queasy and cannot drink the wine. She rings Alexander, but his phone goes through to messages. Come on, she thinks, get it together. Binny would never let you get away with such nerves.
The following day she rallies. Though she is not due in work, she gets up and goes down to the Hall, where the team is meeting with the BBC cameraman, Gregor Carr. They are all in the office, drinking tea when she arrives; she apologises for being late.
No bother, Gregor says to her. It’s a busy job you’ve got on there.
He gestures to her now magnificent bump, stands, and the two shake hands.
We’re delighted to have you here, she tells him.
Delighted to be here. I love this part of the Lakes.
He seems humble, though has every right not to be – the many awards he has won for his patient filming, and his remarkable location work. He is one of the most sought-after men in his profession. She is a fan. Even Huib, usually unruffled by fame and prestige, seems in awe. But the man in their midst emanates grace, is deferential, inclusive; he chats easily, asks questions about the wolves and the staff. Of late, he has been in the Himalayas, working with snow leopards – Rachel has seen the now famous clip of the fat-horned mountain goat being pursued along a near-vertical fissure, the big paws of the cat swatting its back legs from under it, the goat skittering downward in a hail of debris, being lunged upon, then dragged up and across the rockface to the leopard’s cave. All at a staggeringly high altitude; three months’ vigil, camping in a dizzying, sickness-inducing zone, a world above clouds. The Invisible Scot, as he is known among his associates. Animals behave as if he were not there, rutting, fighting, exhibiting moments of extreme gentleness. Gregor is smiling serenely at Rachel. He has not let go of her hand. He keeps glancing at her belly. Her condition seems to be giving her special status. There have been several men, over the course of the pregnancy, whom she has met and in whom she has noted a wildly enthusiastic streak for reproduction, a very attractive masculine feature it turns out – Gregor is clearly another. He is small and compact, in his mid-thirties, though his hair is completely white, as if exposure to the elements has taken its toll. His eyes are near to black, striking in contrast. He is both frail and hardy-looking, like the son of a vicar, or a free climber. The Annerdale wolves are a tame commission for him, almost a busman’s holiday, but he has taken the assignment and over the course of the coming year he will make visits to the valley to film the pair, and hopefully, in spring, their litter.
Rachel asks about the Himalayas. He answers politely, but would rather talk about her pregnancy. Is she feeling well? She must be due soon? Does she know what she is having? She tells him her due date; it’s odd now knowing it. His wife had twins last year, he says – Bonnie and Clyde, traditional Scottish names – Rachel assumes he is joking – also by Caesarean; she was up and about and nursing the very same evening. He speaks of his wife reverently; also a very attractive feature. It’ll be great, he says. It is the greatest thing, in fact, having children, certainly the best thing he has ever done. This surprises Rachel, given his CV, and she feels suddenly reassured, or endorsed, or as if – perhaps it is the white hair, curiously celestial – she has received a blessing of some kind.
Would you like to see the enclosure? she asks.
Perfect. But I’ll make you a cup of tea first, then we can go and take a look.
Gregor Carr, three times recipient of the Calder Lee prize, moves to the office kettle, puts a teabag into a cup. He asks if she wants sugar, tells her sugar is a great energiser, she must have sugar, or better still, honey, and proceeds to carefully make the brew, while she sits, spoiled and embarrassed, at the table with her colleagues.
Later, when she looks at the film footage of herself from this time, she will barely recognise the woman she has become. A strange, lumbering version, whose belly is enormous and shelf-like, defies gravity. Her hair has grown around her ears and neck, almost down to her shoulders, her face is full, soft. She walks leaning backward, her arms swinging at her sides. She is almost mythical, a creature hostage to maternity. She crosses the moorland grass in the main enclosure with Sylvia, towards the gate of the wolfery. Gregor has set up his rig fifty feet or so away from the gate, and has disappeared under a drape of camouflage netting and twigs.
Beautiful day for it, he’d said earlier that morning when they’d convened, somebody approves of our plan.
Sure enough, there is a high blueness to the sky, rich colours on the heath, and long, slanting light. A resurgence of warmth during the last few days has seen a late flurry of insects; they flit about the dying grasses. It is beatific weather, unhoped for.
Higher up on the moorland, behind a raft of yellow gorse, Thomas, Huib, and Alexander wait in the Land Rover with binoculars and the handheld receiver. The Earl is allowing his daughter the royal privilege of setting his wolves loose. She’s earned it, as far as Rachel is concerned, and the project has come to mean a great deal to her. No doubt the honour would have been Carolyn’s, had she lived. The paperwork is signed: quarantine is finished, and their formal immigration is complete. All that remains is to let them out.
In the wolfery, they remain hidden from view. The scare tactics of the last few weeks, the blaring horns and firework bangs, have worked well – they are far less willing to interact and be seen by humans. But they will be close by, sensing something, smelling the adrenalin, intuiting a change or event of some kind. Prescient experts of biological codes. Their movements will be monitored for the first few weeks – the explorations, the preferred routes, rendezvous points, and hunting strategy, how they begin to dominate the territory. Huib will conduct a focused follow, using the tracking system, while Rachel is in hospital; Gregor will spend a few more days filming; and Sylvia will gather samples and data from the abandoned wolfery.
Sylvia types the code into the digital lock. Perthshire, 1680: the date of the last reported wolf killed in the old kingdom. It registers, beeps, and the gate slides open. She and Rachel move slowly away, back up the hill towards the others. Rachel breathes hard on the incline, stops several times and turns to look back – there’s extraordinary pressure on her spine, her ribs, her heel bones. At any moment she feels she will rupture.
Are you alright? Sylvia asks.
Yes. Just about.
She struggles on, and they make their way to the Land Rover.
Below, the wolves are assessing the opportunity, she knows, looking beyond the wolfery at the new horizons, the heather still burning with flower, burrows, the citadels of rock, smelling the stag musk, rowan and mountain streams. It will not take them long to be restored, she thinks. Their unbelonging, reversed. Nothing of history will matter to them; land is land, articulate, informative; soon they will dominate Annerdale. Wherever they are released, the world over, their geomorphic evolution is remarkably swift.
