The Wolf Border (4 page)

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 be 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.

People here don't care about the countryside in any deep way, she says. They just want nice walks, nice views, and a tearoom.

That may be, he says. But I have an exciting vision. Sometimes a country just needs to be presented with the fact of an animal, not the myth.

Now there is pathos in his argument; he knows he has failed to win her over. Still, he seems hopeful. The eleventh Earl of Annerdale. He could almost be another species. Specialist cologne. No wallet carried in his back pocket. Regardless of democracy, the greater schemes are led by those in the upper echelons, the moneyed, she knows that. Perhaps he will do it. For a moment she thinks about the possibilities. She looks ahead, through the misty smirr, towards the lake, which would, she thinks again, be a good territorial boundary, if this were wilderness. The rain lisps and taps on the Land Rover roof, old and sensual, an influence long before language. The smell of it – so familiar – iron and minerals, the basis of the world. But she is not ready to come back, and may never be.

She faces him, holds out her hand, and after a moment Thomas Pennington takes it. They shake.

I'm sorry, she says. But best of luck.

The Earl smiles.

I hope we can still count you as a friend of the project.

Of course, she says.

*

After their meeting she is offered lunch at the hall, which she declines. It seems unnecessary to linger. Her host is, in any case, leaving to go south – there's a helicopter standing on a hardpad near the back of the hall, its blades bowed, the helmeted pilot sitting in the cockpit. Leaving the estate, she tries to spot finished sections of the enclosure barrier, but the trees have yet to lose their leaves fully and it's cleverly hidden from view. The cost must have been astronomical: millions, perhaps. There are other estates in the country with small wildlife parks, housing bison, boar, and wildcats, but they are not free-ranging, they are fed, cared for – glorified zoos. Nothing as ambitious as Annerdale exists.

The gate opens to allow her exit and closes slowly behind her, and though it's her choice, she feels expelled. She picks up the western road, which is narrow, unwalled, and crosses the high moors. There are few properties on the way; no working farms remain, and the stretch is not popular for second homes. On the near horizon is Hinsey Knot. She decides to stop and take a walk. In a stony layby, she changes into jeans and boots, zips up her jacket. The grass underfoot is springy and dun coloured, the path wending up the fell made of shattered rock. She ascends, without haste but swiftly – it is not a taxing climb. She puts up her hood against a sudden squall, her thighs dampening. She passes no one. The mountain is more of a grassy mound, the path barely steepening past thirty degrees. The sun emerges, still with warmth in it. Two buzzards turn loops on the currents of air above. A rabbit darts across the slope and is granted amnesty. When she
reaches the cairn she sits and looks at the view, land graduating towards the unspectacular brown sea, belts of cloud moving in from Ireland and strobing light on the ground between. A stiff breeze tugs at her sleeves and rattles her hood. She calls Kyle. It's still early in Idaho, but he answers.