The Wolf Border(65)

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 na?f, 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.