The Wolf Border(67)
Rachel asks about the Himalayas. He answers politely, but would rather talk about her pregnancy. Is she feeling well? She must be due soon? Does she know what she is having? She tells him her due date; it’s odd now knowing it. His wife had twins last year, he says – Bonnie and Clyde, traditional Scottish names – Rachel assumes he is joking – also by Caesarean; she was up and about and nursing the very same evening. He speaks of his wife reverently; also a very attractive feature. It’ll be great, he says. It is the greatest thing, in fact, having children, certainly the best thing he has ever done. This surprises Rachel, given his CV, and she feels suddenly reassured, or endorsed, or as if – perhaps it is the white hair, curiously celestial – she has received a blessing of some kind.
Would you like to see the enclosure? she asks.
Perfect. But I’ll make you a cup of tea first, then we can go and take a look.
Gregor Carr, three times recipient of the Calder Lee prize, moves to the office kettle, puts a teabag into a cup. He asks if she wants sugar, tells her sugar is a great energiser, she must have sugar, or better still, honey, and proceeds to carefully make the brew, while she sits, spoiled and embarrassed, at the table with her colleagues.
Later, when she looks at the film footage of herself from this time, she will barely recognise the woman she has become. A strange, lumbering version, whose belly is enormous and shelf-like, defies gravity. Her hair has grown around her ears and neck, almost down to her shoulders, her face is full, soft. She walks leaning backward, her arms swinging at her sides. She is almost mythical, a creature hostage to maternity. She crosses the moorland grass in the main enclosure with Sylvia, towards the gate of the wolfery. Gregor has set up his rig fifty feet or so away from the gate, and has disappeared under a drape of camouflage netting and twigs.
Beautiful day for it, he’d said earlier that morning when they’d convened, somebody approves of our plan.
Sure enough, there is a high blueness to the sky, rich colours on the heath, and long, slanting light. A resurgence of warmth during the last few days has seen a late flurry of insects; they flit about the dying grasses. It is beatific weather, unhoped for.
Higher up on the moorland, behind a raft of yellow gorse, Thomas, Huib, and Alexander wait in the Land Rover with binoculars and the handheld receiver. The Earl is allowing his daughter the royal privilege of setting his wolves loose. She’s earned it, as far as Rachel is concerned, and the project has come to mean a great deal to her. No doubt the honour would have been Carolyn’s, had she lived. The paperwork is signed: quarantine is finished, and their formal immigration is complete. All that remains is to let them out.
In the wolfery, they remain hidden from view. The scare tactics of the last few weeks, the blaring horns and firework bangs, have worked well – they are far less willing to interact and be seen by humans. But they will be close by, sensing something, smelling the adrenalin, intuiting a change or event of some kind. Prescient experts of biological codes. Their movements will be monitored for the first few weeks – the explorations, the preferred routes, rendezvous points, and hunting strategy, how they begin to dominate the territory. Huib will conduct a focused follow, using the tracking system, while Rachel is in hospital; Gregor will spend a few more days filming; and Sylvia will gather samples and data from the abandoned wolfery.
Sylvia types the code into the digital lock. Perthshire, 1680: the date of the last reported wolf killed in the old kingdom. It registers, beeps, and the gate slides open. She and Rachel move slowly away, back up the hill towards the others. Rachel breathes hard on the incline, stops several times and turns to look back – there’s extraordinary pressure on her spine, her ribs, her heel bones. At any moment she feels she will rupture.
Are you alright? Sylvia asks.
Yes. Just about.
She struggles on, and they make their way to the Land Rover.
Below, the wolves are assessing the opportunity, she knows, looking beyond the wolfery at the new horizons, the heather still burning with flower, burrows, the citadels of rock, smelling the stag musk, rowan and mountain streams. It will not take them long to be restored, she thinks. Their unbelonging, reversed. Nothing of history will matter to them; land is land, articulate, informative; soon they will dominate Annerdale. Wherever they are released, the world over, their geomorphic evolution is remarkably swift.
Rachel does not join the others, but stands to the side – old habits, the desire for privacy during moments of significance. The mood is reverent, contained. No one speaks. Thomas has a hamper of champagne on the back seat, of course. There are no extra guests, though there were many requests, from the Mammal Society, the British Wolf Society, even politicians like Vaughan Andrews. Rachel takes up binoculars, looks towards the open enclosure gate, and waits.
This time it is Merle who leads the pair out of confinement. She slips through the gate, lifts her nose high to scent the surroundings, lopes a few feet along the fence, and then she runs. Soon she is at full tilt, flooding across the moorland. Within moments there is a large white wolf alongside her. The pair veer away from the gorse-covered hillside, divide, and make for the nearest cover – a gathering of thorn woods on the hill, spindled and bent by the wind. Rachel watches them go. They cover the open moor in less than a minute. One dark, one light, stellar and obverse, their hind muscles working sumptuously under their coats. The months of docile quarantine are shaken off in seconds; power always lay just underneath. She watches the unmistakable motion of their running – the hard, short bowing of their heads, like swimmers ducking under the surface. They climb the gradient of the hill opposite without slowing, then disappear from sight in the broken terrain.