The Wolf Border(31)
The surgery calls again. She arranges to have the scan and combined screening. It is not deferment exactly, not a decision. She does not know what it means. She tries to hold it all loosely in her mind, tells herself she can still go back, undo it. Things begin to come together on the project. The importation paperwork is completed, freight flights confirmed. She interviews candidates for the position of full-time assistant. Eleven in total, after a ruthless CV cull. The interviews are held in a room at Abbot Museum in Kendal – Thomas Pennington is chairman and sponsor there, naturally, and it is not far from Oxenholme station. The job goes to an earnest – and, she suspects, Buddhist – South African, who has cut his teeth in the game parks of KwaZulu-Natal, worked with jackals and other predators. A PhD in the UK, time in India. His credentials are excellent, an expansive mind, calm-natured. He arrives at the museum on a bicycle, which seems fitting. Twenty-four hours later he is invited to take up residency at the estate. She agrees to let Sylvia work on the project. The girl will have to muck in, get used to the order of things. She will have access to the quarantine pen, will be inoculated; she will be fully one of the team.
Rachel walks the estate, gets to know its broad rises, the woods, the lake circumference. The distance to the Horse and Farrier and the village Co-op is not far. She carries a stash of granola bars, and a plastic sick-bag when she drives, though she doesn’t need to use the bag. She thinks about calling Kyle, but doesn’t. It is better to give herself some distance, never mind the blossoming sense of guilt.
A few days later she is summoned again to Pennington Hall to be introduced to staff members. Among them is the gamekeeper, Michael Stott – the man, she is fairly sure, who was watching the cottage the day of her arrival. His frame and gait are familiar – the tipped shoulder, the rightful stride. He is lean, with carved cheeks and a sore mouth, hair so full and dark it seems false, given his age; he must be pushing seventy. His trousers look as if they’ve been made from tar. There is an immediate hostile crackle between them. He does not meet her eyes when she says hello, and the handshake is cursory, patronisingly soft. Within minutes, everything becomes clear, and she has the measure of him. Louveterie.
Much to our relief, Michael’s decided to stay on, Thomas says, standing between the two of them. He’s been here a very long time. His father worked with my father. He knows the country here like the back of his hand, don’t you, Michael.
Worked with not for, she notices. The modern sensitivities of class. Michael Stott sniffs and nods and says nothing. Behind the Earl’s statement is the question of whether and why he might have left. He does not look the type to retire – ever. A mutineer, then, who does not approve of the radical new project. And why would he, if he is the herdsman?
I’ll leave you two to get acquainted, Thomas says. Michael will be able to assist you with anything you need, Rachel.
He closes the door behind him, leaving the two of them alone. She’ll be damned if she’ll make small talk. No doubt Michael will want to stake his claim, assert his authority. Sure enough, after a moment he clears his throat, and offers her some advice.
Now then, Mrs Caine. You might want to park the car round the back of Seldom Seen. It’s hard getting anything through with it left so casual.
She doesn’t bother to correct his mistake. But she won’t have him think she’s town-bred and insensible.
I intend to. Once the ground’s dried out a little – don’t want to get stuck, Mr Stott, and have to be towed. That would waste everyone’s time.
Right. When is it your pups get here, then?
Pups. She holds his gaze.
Two weeks.
Michael takes a leather tobacco pouch from his inside pocket, removes but does not light a pre-rolled cigarette. He is housebroken, she can see, enough to shake her hand in front of the master and abide by the rules of the house. But it is clear that he is not happy. Not happy about being displaced in the chain of command, for she now holds a lateral position, perhaps even a higher position. Certainly not happy about the reconstitution of Annerdale, with its new apex predator. She, and they, represents dire competition, beyond his experience. The beloved deer, previously targets for the noble shotgun, are to become glorified dog food. Over the years her sensibilities have been honed. Michael is a king’s soldier: good at tradition and old orders. If he’d lived twelve centuries earlier, he’d have made substantial money for their pelts from Charlemagne.
She looks at his hair – real, unnatural, something oddly lusty about it. Good genes. They will have to find a way to work together.
We should talk about the health of the herds, she suggests. Next week suit you, Mr Stott?
Fine.
They do not fix a specific time or date.
The next day she sets up the office in the carriage house and for the following two days she answers letters and emails from locals, tries to educate and placate. There is more livestock in the east and north of the region; the correspondence is mostly from paranoid west Lakeland smallholders foreseeing escape and slaughter on an almost gothic scale. Concerned mothers. Photographs taken by French shepherds of bloody-necked flocks are forwarded to her. We do not want this type of thing in our country. She sends back links to EU collaboration projects. There are queries about compensation – how much will the estate offer per head for a kill if they get out? Despite the campaign the estate has tried to run, there is much ignorance and fear, much education needed. To each reply she attaches the project’s mission statement and an information sheet.