by Sarah Hall
Ms Caine, if you’ve got a minute, can I have a word?
Before leaving Holyrood, she looks in on the main debating chamber – a cyclone of wood and glass, acres of air above the bisected seats. There is something medieval about it, too, redolent of cruick barns and meeting houses. She is impressed, far more than she thought she would be. The place did not exist when she was a child, is less than twenty years old, but in that time much has changed, the fabric of British politics, state definitions. It can be done, she thinks, if people want it badly enough, if they are tired, and hopeful. She stalls, wanders the hallway, reads a notice about the architect – a Catalan, controversially chosen at the time, though widely celebrated now. The result for the pack is good, as good as it can be, better even than their original situation, and yet she still feels conflicted, and as if she has been beaten. The others are waiting for her outside. It’s dark, but sails of light arc from the parliament building. Huib and Sylvia are chatting excitedly with Thomas; they are all laughing. They clap as she approaches.
Superbly handled, Rachel, Thomas says, putting a hand on her back. And good that you had a private word with Simon. No doubt he wants you as chief advisor up here.
She does not fill him in on the private conversation she has just had, but he is not widely off the mark and she must think carefully about the proposal.
I was just saying to Huib, Thomas continues, that you and he mustn’t worry about jobs and pay and accommodation or any such thing. This is absolutely unforeseen. We won’t be seeing you out in the cold. You’ve both done a terrific job.
She nods and says nothing.
Shall we go?
Thomas leads the way across the grounds.
I’ve got a taxi booked to take us back to the airport. Honor’s reserved rooms in the Sheridan. We’ll get an early start tomorrow, but tonight we should celebrate!
She remains quiet on the walk to the rank while the others discuss the events.
This will suit Douglas very nicely, Thomas says. A new icon for a new nation. I wouldn’t be surprised if the wolf ends up on the Scottish flag.
Sylvia laughs.
I’m glad they’ve gone to a good home. I think Mummy would have been so happy.
She would. I am, too, Soo-Bear. Very happy.
He kisses his daughter and opens the taxi door for her – Sylvia slides in. Their etiquette is flawless, as ever. Thomas Pennington is unfathomable, Rachel decides. He is not mad. Such a persona is a front that works well in the southern offices, and always will. The ebullient, boyish elite, which is anything but harmless, and masks, in fact, something very dangerous. He fits his position, or the position has created him to suit. But what is at the core, she cannot tell. Nothing, perhaps, a vacancy. Or the most ardent conviction – I am right, therefore I have the right. He is subject to different laws of gravity, that’s all. No doubt she will be offered a generous settlement, a payoff. Her silence radiates dissatisfaction, and she feels sorry for Huib, though he seems in no way worried. Zen acceptance; he will move on to another job, thinking it fortuitous and an adventure, which, by virtue of his temperament, it will be. As she is getting into the taxi, Thomas leans towards her, and speaks softly, with the sincerity of the damned.
It’s been super working with you on this, a privilege. I care very much about what happens to them, Rachel. That’s really all I’ve ever cared about. I hope you can see that.
She shakes her head.
I can see exactly what’s happened.
It is not a threat, and there’s nothing more she can say. No doubt he believes what he says, but his tone is so equitable that she wants to hit him. Or is he to be congratulated? She wonders. Has he achieved something unarguably worthwhile, no matter the means? No other individual in the country was in a position to do what he has done. He is an accelerant in the world. An environmentalist, a master tactician, and a spoilt child. She gets into the taxi, and he closes the door behind her.
They drive through the tall, steepled city, the castle spot-lit and looming above, the new trams sounding their bells. After a few minutes, she tells them to let her out, that she would prefer to get the train home tonight. It sounds churlish, but she has the excuse of needing to get back to Charlie. She does want to see the baby, but she also wants to sit alone, quietly, in a carriage, with the blacked-out landscape flushing by, and think – or not have to think. Huib offers to accompany her, his comrade spirit undented by her mood, but she tells him, no, stay, enjoy the evening and the flight tomorrow. The taxi detours and drops her at Waverley station.
Keep your train receipt, Thomas tells her as she gets out.
The next train to Penrith is not for an hour; she has just missed the previous one. She finds a bench at the far end of the platform, away from the travelling throngs. She calls Lawrence and lets him know what has happened, what time she will be back, and that she will be coming north again the next day. A light aircraft has been arranged for her to monitor the progress of the wolves as they make their way up the country, and then she will be required to liaise with various local groups, smooth the way for Scotland’s new hunter. The contract offered is temporary, with moderate government pay, but suitable, more in keeping with what she is used to earning, and she is not yet ready to let them go. First she must pick up her car, and her son, speak to her brother and to Alexander, explain what she has to do.
The station rattles and clanks with trains arriving and departing; the tannoy announces which are late, or boarding, or cancelled. Pigeons coo from the roof, flurrying between wrought-iron rafters, swapping positions between the metal spikes designed to deter them. She stares at the ground. A pile of feathers near the bench where a hawk has been at work. Sweet wrappers, crushed cans, the grey boles of chewing gum trodden flat. The wind on the platform is blissfully cold, and bears the consoling thought of winter, an end, or a beginning. She takes out her phone and dials the number of the office at Chief Joseph.
*
After takeoff, when the seatbelt sign has been extinguished, she unbuckles herself and Charlie and walks him down the aisle, past all the passengers he has offended with his yelling for the last fifteen minutes. He has stopped screaming and thrashing, his ears probably having equalised, but his cheeks are still flushed and damp. She tries not to feel impatient. It will be a long flight in a confined space, shortcutting over the polar cap, but still another nine hours to endure. She’ll need to keep him occupied as much as possible, or try to get him to sleep. The plane tilts as it banks west. He parades gamely on down the aisle, stopping to look at various passengers, a large man already snoring, head back, a girl with a brightly tattooed arm. Rachel steers him onward, thinking about the chalky little pills Binny used to give her when they were driving any great distance. To stop you being sick, her mother always said, though Rachel was never travel-sick. The thought does appeal now, of doping her son. Perhaps it’s cruel to subject a fourteen-month-old to such physical discomforts and tedium, she thinks, but the same might be said of the terms of existence.
A steward makes his way towards them and smiles as he passes by, shaking his head.
You were the one making all that noise, were you?
Charlie looks up at the man, all innocence and big dark eyes, and continues walking unsteadily towards the back of the plane.
We don’t care, do we? Rachel says. We’re doing our own thing.
If Binny taught her anything, it was exactly that. Don’t be cowed. Live singularly, and without regret. Not always the best creed, but maybe now Rachel can put it to good use. It’s going to be a very difficult, very strange visit. What will Kyle say when he sees her, and – more to the point – when he sees Charlie and learns who he is? Her phone call explained very little, just that she was coming with some friends to visit the Reservation and to say hi. He could be struck dumb. He may never forgive her. She would not blame him.
Well, he’s probably not going to stove your head in, Alexander had assured her at the airport when he dropped them off
. He doesn’t sound the type.
I know. But still.
Hey, don’t worry. Men love children. The more the better, scattered all round the world.
Oh shut up, she’d said, pushing him gently.
He’d grinned and kissed her, then leant down and kissed Charlie.
Go on, then. You get to board on the plane first with this one, you know. See you in a week.
Don’t forget to do your visas online, she reminds him, and tell Chloe to bring some warm gear – it’ll get very cold. I’ll pick you up in Spokane. OK?
OK. Hey, Kyle might stove my head in. Men love that possessive stuff, too.
She’d laughed and wheeled her bag to the front of the security check, Charlie heavy on her hip.
Maybe.
She walks Charlie to the back of the plane, where he takes extreme interest in the handles of the cabin storage drawers, trying to open them one by one. She disengages him, wends him round the toilets, and down the other aisle. He stops to yank on the trailing wire of someone’s headphones, drawn to pull-able things with almost narcotic intensity.
Nope, she says, untangling his hands, and to the lady whose film has suddenly gone silent, says, Sorry about that, he’s a little monkey.
Oh, no, the woman says. He’s a little angel.
The great debate, Rachel thinks, I’ll go with monkey. Charlie steps forward. She is glad she’s travelling ahead of Alexander; she owes Kyle that much, the courtesy of private explanation and some time alone with his son. She will plan what to say on the flight. Or maybe she won’t. The subject is not going to be gentle on the palate: human beings are strong meat. Maybe she’ll arrive at the centre and present the baby as a given, a thing that simply is, a boon – which he is. Perhaps there won’t be too much shock. The world is used to reproduction, after all. Nothing seems to stop it – not war, not science, not humanity’s own incalculable stupidity.
Lawrence’s advice was just that – hold Charlie up, introduce him, and don’t worry about the rest. Her brother’s advice is usually simply put these days, often revolving around truth, exposing the root, squeezing out the poison. Fear of re-entering the labyrinth of self-deception, perhaps, and getting sick again. He did not want to come on the American trip, though she asked him several times, assured him there was no intrusion: he would be one of the gang.
No, no, you guys need to do this by yourselves, he’d said.
Meaning, perhaps, that he needs to do things by himself now, be confident of his borders again. He needs not to rely on her so much, not to call her drunk from the hillside above Kendal, crying, lamenting his past, his mistakes, all that has been lost: as far as she knows, his sole insobriety since he gave it all up. She did not mind the late-night call, was glad there was nothing worse happening; it was simply a boozy evening with work colleagues that had gone too far and knocked out a section of his carefully built scaffolding. At the end of the conversation, he’d told her that without her he would not have made it, would have given in.
Lawrence, she said, you’re forgetting who you are. What would we have done without you, you dope?
Poor choice of words, but he’d laughed. She has, she knows, come to rely on him more and more, for support, and for solidarity, which is not fraternal, not sororal, but the curiously unnamed relationship of brother and sister.
Go and enjoy each other, he’d said. Send me a postcard.
He did come to Scotland. He was there to see the wolves reach the moors of Rannoch. He sat in the little plane with her, as it pitched and bounced, breathing hard, his hands gripping the seat. She’d not known he was phobic until then. But he’d known how much the moment meant to her – a victory amid all the exhaustion and chaos of the last few weeks. The outcome had never been certain. The pack had struggled through the Scottish heartland, another of the juveniles lost a few days after her return, this time to the motorways north of Glasgow. A miracle the others made it; just be thankful, is what she’d told herself, what she had to tell herself. It was the smaller grey that had been hit, the runt, the one she’d kept a soft spot for, and rooted for, against her better judgement. Mercifully quick, its death. The body had been handed in at the local police station – the lorry driver was mortified, she was told, he had been following the story and wanted them to make it all the way to Nevis; he was for them, a Yes voter, he’d tried to swerve but it was under the wheels before he knew it. A burly man from Aberdeenshire, weeping over a wolf pup.
Then the pack seemed to be veering too far east, and she had met with the environment minister again, the Wildlife Trust, and chairman of Wildwoods, the radical new group sponsoring the re-homing enterprise, to discuss intervention – tranquillisation and transporting them to the chosen location. In the end they’d resisted, held out, and hoped instinct would prevail.
It had. The wolves had doubled back, after three weeks’ hard negotiations in the rich farmlands of the central belt, emergency cooperation projects with the farmers, and makeshift electric fences put up around flocks. Easy prey – there were days of excessive predation, slaughter, and outcry; the tide of opinion began to turn. It looked at one point as if they might have to be destroyed. But they’d finally gone west, towards the deer herds.
Lawrence got away from work as soon as he could, called upon once again in her hour of need. She had not liked leaving Charlie with the childminder at first, nor enjoyed the series of hotels, the hours spent apart, late evenings when her son would already be bathed and asleep in the travel cot when she came in, but it could have been worse. She’d felt like she was on the run, too – the cottage in the Lakes half packed up, promissory messages left for her boyfriend.
By the time her brother arrived, the situation was looking less bleak, she was feeling optimistic, and the pack was in the Highland corridor. She did not want to lumber Lawrence with childcare duties, though she knew that’s why he’d come. Instead, she’d urged him into the tiny four-seater with her, introduced him to Rob, the Hebridean pilot, with whom she had developed a silent rapport over the weeks, not noticing her brother’s pallor, until he confessed.
Fuck it, Rachel. I’m usually high when I get on a plane.
Oh, God! I’m sorry, Lawrence, she said. Do you want to go back to the hotel?
No, no way.
He got in. He clenched his knees and gripped the seat as they took off, and tried not to panic as the choppy air of the mountains rocked them, the plane dropped like a stone, then bucked upward. Rachel had put a steadying hand on his shoulder.
You’re doing great.
Am I?
At reconnaissance altitude the view was spectacular, distracting him from his fear. Snow on the Grampians, rank after rank of hard white peaks stretching out, a serious version of the Cumbrian uplands, steel-blue tarns and lochs, trout and salmon burns. Here and there, tucked-away settlements, a miniature white palace with towers, the old Glencoe ski lift looping up and over to the runs, and the winding roads made famous by song.
The transmitters were still working; the telemetry signal started beeping ten minutes into the flight and they were quickly found, cutting through a narrow valley, strung one behind the other. Dark-backed and long-legged, their tails shaggy. The plane flew over, looped round, following their trajectory. She and Lawrence watched as the four wolves loped onto the outskirts of Rannoch, its turf still bloody from autumn, as if battle-worn; the red bracken beginning to disappear under the first low-lying drifts. The pilot had looked over his shoulder and put his thumb up.
Fàilte, he’d said.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks for assistance with research to the following: Andy Wightman, Land Matters – for helpful speculation about reintroduction and political scenarios north of the border. George Monbiot’s book Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding was also informative and inspiring. Vicky Allison Hughes, formerly of The UK Wolf Conservation Trust, for all things wolf-related and the tour of the sanctuary near Reading. Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Con
servation, edited by L David Mech and Luigi Boitani, was vital reading. Stan Tomkiewicz, for advice about telemetry and transmitter implants. The Rosenwoods, Mike, Linda and Erik, for travels in Idaho. Olivia Pinkney, Deputy Chief Constable for Sussex Police, for procedural information and worst-case-scenario advice. Alan Bissett and Kirstin Innes, for some excellent introductions. Mairi MacPherson, for civil service and governmental information. Tony and Hilary Renkin, for their early recollections. Dr Frances Astley-Jones, for medical advice, and Dr Richard Thwaites, for psychology and Cumbrian advice. Anna Tristram, for linguistics. Stephen Brown, for architectural references.
Thanks for editorial feedback to the following: Lee Brackstone, Hannah Griffiths, Kate Nintzel, John Freeman and Ellah Allfrey. And for general literary discussions, aesthetic, poetic and metaphoric, to: Owen Sheers, Jarred McGinnis, Katja Sutela, Joanna Harma and Henna Silvennoinen.
Special thanks to Clare Conville and James Garvey, the fiercest of supporters.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SARAH HALL was born in Cumbria in 1974. She is the author of Haweswater, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize. In 2004, her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region) and the Prix Femina Étranger, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Carhullan Army, was published in 2007 and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction and longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award. The Carhullan Army was listed as one of The Times 100 Best Books of the Decade. Her fourth novel, How to Paint a Dead Man, was published in 2009 and was longlisted for the Man Booker prize and won the Portico Prize for Fiction 2010. Her work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her first collection of short stories, The Beautiful Indifference, was published by HarperCollins in 2013. The Beautiful Indifference won the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award.
