The Wolf Border(42)
We want to speak to Lord Pennington, the woman declares.
Her tone is rightful, entitled, as if she is requesting an audience with her bank manager after the erroneous bouncing of a cheque.
I’m in charge of the project, Rachel repeats. How can I help?
The woman glares at her, sizes her up, and then looks around, as if Thomas Pennington might materialise, simply from her summons, not unlike the devil. She does not want a representative, no matter how expert, but the real thing, a tall poppy with a worthwhile head to scythe. Rachel decides to follow Huib’s lead – to explode rather than defuse the situation.
I take it you’re worried about your children getting into the enclosure by accident, perhaps? Or being curious and trying to break in?
From the corner of her eye she sees the photographer angling the lens, catching her in profile. She turns her head away.
No, the woman says. No! They wouldn’t do that. They’re good kids.
Yes, Rachel says. And they couldn’t get in, anyway. They’d need industrial cutting gear.
Behind her she can hear more wolf vocalisations; a large part of the crowd is also listening and watching with interest. But there’s only so long Huib will be able to manage things, she knows.
I mean if they get out, the spokeswoman continues. If they get out, what’s to stop them running riot and plundering!
Plundering?
Rachel tries not to laugh, though the rhetoric is in fact ridiculous. She talks the woman through the specifications of the fence: height, depth, impenetrability, inescapability. The woman’s scowl deepens. Construction measurements are not what she came for. Reality is not what she came for. Rachel knows exactly what she wants – to twitter on about her nightmarish fantasy: wolves that pass like fog through the wire and head unerringly and specifically to her house, nosing open the door, and creeping upstairs, howling at the moon before tearing apart her starched and overdressed children. She should try to be more understanding, but the hysteria, the desire for a bogeyman, is tiresome.
They really can’t get out.
But if they get out, the woman repeats. I can’t have my kids walking to school in the village. There isn’t even a siren to warn people. You’re a mother? Aren’t you anxious?
The woman gestures towards Rachel’s swelling belly. Rachel feels her modicum of patience ebbing. Don’t tar me with the same brush, she thinks.
Let’s think this through, she says. A siren might cause panic and would make no difference at all, because they wouldn’t want to interact with humans anyway. But I assure you, they really won’t get out.
The woman shakes her head in denial. She is desperate for tabloid disaster, desperate to mainline all the fear she can. She is thrusting her children out like sacrifices before her. They are slickly combed and ironed. No doubt the poor kids are stewarded hither and thither, to school, to clubs, to the houses of sanctioned friends – every precaution taken to keep them safe from paedophiles, the internet, fires, and floods. There is no reasonable argument Rachel can make.
The little girl comes over and stands in front of her again. Her cape is askew, her hair wildly tattered. She peers up intensely. She is disarmingly attractive, more so for the dishevelment, the corruption of all attempts to groom her. Let me have one like you, Rachel thinks. The girl holds out her meaty little hand, fist clenched, containing a gift.
Is that for me? Rachel asks.
Nancy, come away, please, her mother instructs.
The girl does not move.
Nancy. Come here, please. Nancy!
The fairytale dress hangs off one shoulder, a size too big, and soon to be ruined. Nancy holds her hand out towards Rachel, traitorously.
Nancy! I won’t tell you again! Must I count to ten? One –
A voice that suddenly means business. The hand snaps down. The girl turns and marches back to the region of her family. The mother gathers her in, recovering her form in response to being obeyed.
Tell us then. If they get out, what are we to do? Hide in our homes? Go and get a gun? Or is there going to be some kind of government helpline?
Behind Rachel, the wolf-headed man has begun a howl, saving her from fielding the question, or from calling the woman idiotic. She glances over at Huib. He shrugs apologetically. He has held the actor off valiantly but it was never going to last. The crowd refocuses its attention; even the spokeswoman shuts up. The costumed man gets down on his knees and tips his head back in baying parody. The howl sounds hollow and muffled inside the head. Crawling on all fours, he moves to the spot where he dropped his briefcase. The photographer is snapping away again, glad of some proper action. Nancy breaks free of her mother, roams forward, and watches the performance at close quarters. With deliberate theatricality, the man snaps open the briefcase clasps. He lifts the lid of the case and takes out a gun. There are murmurs in the crowd, then mild laughter – it is fake, a toy. The man puts the gun to his large, leering head and pulls the trigger. The cap pops loudly and the gun emits a wisp of smoke. Nancy jerks with shock at the noise but remains in the same position, watching the man tip over to the ground, twitch horribly, and then lie still. Rachel looks over at her mother, who is shouldering her way forward. One of the boys has started crying. The woman fetches Nancy away from the scene, roughly by the hand. The show is in poor taste with children present; the crowd knows it. A slow sarcastic handclap begins and then dies away – Huib.
Show’s over, he says. No encore.