The Wolf Border(76)

The daughter seems nice, though, Emily says. She’s working with you?

Yes. I had my doubts about her but she’s proving me wrong.

She was very enthusiastic. She’s extremely beautiful, isn’t she? Sort of off the chart.

Then to Lawrence –

You must have noticed that?

Emily’s tone is not jealous, neither is it aggressive, but there is an undercurrent. Beautiful women are always on another woman’s radar, but perhaps Emily is more sensitive now, reading their allure like radiation. They walk on in silence for a while, crossing the stone bridge into the woodland. The air is colder inside the trees, frost climbing the trunks. Rachel adjusts Charlie’s fur hood. He is fast asleep, oblivious. Lawrence’s curiosity gets the better of him.

How much do you think it costs to run a house like that? I mean, how does he manage it – so many of these places are going under and being taken over by the National Trust.

I don’t know, Rachel says. He seems to have a lot of business interests. He’s the lead donor of his party.

Christ – that’s a waste of money, Emily says.

I’m sure there are tax breaks, Lawrence says. There always are. He’s probably got registered companies overseas.

The political echo of Binny in her brother. Rachel begins to feel a little uncomfortable, part of the machinery of segregation, which always enables the elite. It cannot be completely divorced from her role on the project. After the Reservation’s system of land ownership, its allocated plots and council management, Annerdale is essentially feudal, a realm so antiquated it seems impossible that it has survived the reformist centuries. An English estate still owned by an English earl; Lawrence is right: it is rare. Across the border, great swathes of foreign-owned land is being recovered, taxes levied on the distilleries, the salmon farms. She doubts such radicalism will be imported here.

The afternoon is glorious. Charlie is still asleep, and they are not eating until later that evening. She suggests they visit a Neolithic site nearby, only a small detour. There is a way of aligning the winter solstice sun with the central stone, she tells them.

We’re only a few days late.

Shouldn’t we get back? Lawrence says. We’ve been gone a while. I could do with getting back.

Her brother’s lack of desire to be outside, away from the cottage, seems uncustomary. But again, Emily expresses a preference to visit the stone circle, and Lawrence concedes. They walk half a mile, onto an open rise. The mountains appear built like a stadium, encircling them, the summits recognisable – a geological alphabet. Round the base of the stones, the grass is long and ragged. There are sixty or so monoliths, slanted in all directions, some tipped over completely and impacted in the earth. A single sandstone pillar stands twenty metres off, exiled from the ring, a vast exotic geode hauled west across a nameless country, like the red stone of the Hall, millennia later. They tread around it. Emily examines the spirals carved into its body, unknowable symbols. There is a deep groove sculpted on top. She and Rachel speculate about the type of machinery required to get it there and upright: wooden rollers, piers and joists, excavation. Lawrence is quiet and a little agitated; his patience seems forced. They stand between two portal stones in the circle – the setting sun is close to the pillar’s groove, but off-centre. Thousands of years of astronomical bustle. If ever the planetary cogs were accurate, they have now slipped.

It reminds me of Skara Brae, Emily says.

Lawrence looks at her, and then at Rachel.

In Orkney, he says. I proposed there.

There were huge hailstones, Emily says. Like golf balls.

He puts his hand against his wife’s back. The moment might be tender, but there seems no tenderness in the gesture. His hand lingers and then drops. It is not Emily punishing Lawrence, Rachel realises. Emily is pushing ahead, gamely, trying to be positive, trying to reconnect and fix. The husband routine is automatic, and Lawrence knows he must kneel for forgiveness before the one he has hurt, but something in her brother seems to have switched off. Rachel turns away and begins down the slope towards Seldom Seen. It is painful to see the withdrawal, like having a mirror held up before her, or her former life, revealing her incapacity.

Later, in the cottage, Lawrence seems more content and at ease. The Christmas dinner is a success, and they exchange gifts, turn the tree lights on. He gives the baby a fluffy toy lion. He stalks it along the carpet, growling, much to Charlie’s delight. They christen the lion Roary. For the moment, all seems well.

*

A few weeks later, in the office, Rachel watches an early preview of Gregor’s film footage with Charlie on her knee. The camera closes in on each wolf, on the wolves together, their candid moments. They work in unison to bring down a young deer, closing in from either side, trapping it in a narrow granite gulley. It tries to cut back, spins about as they attach themselves to its neck, and drops. They open it up, work at the red flesh, and afterwards lick each other. Sleet drives across the moor, catches on their longer fur, lines their backs. Blood, snow, their immunity; they are in their element. She has missed seeing them.

There’s footage of Ra emerging from the den, which has been dug in the broad root system of an oak tree, on a mound not too far from the stream where the sighting with Chloe was made. Gregor has managed to stow himself in a position close enough not to unsettle them. Above the dugout, the oak trunk is immensely solid, spreading widely and guarding against collapse. The loose soil underneath has been moved. There are two entrances. The hollow openings are large, distinctive. Freshwater, a vantage point, a stronghold. The herds range on all sides. There’s a wonderful stretch of film of Ra clearing the site – flares of earth from his back paws as he digs the den run.