The Wolf Border(8)

I worked in a rescue centre in Romania first. Then Belarus. There were problems with industrialisation and the packs coming into town. They ended up scavenging, getting bad press. Then I volunteered in Yellowstone, and then the Nez Perce job opened up. I didn’t think I’d get it.

Of course you got it! Aberystwyth’s premier zoologist!

Thomas Pennington slaps the dashboard with a palm, a flamboyant, almost fey action. She glances at him again. Is he mocking her? Or is it a campaign of flattery? He is, she supposes, likeable, or at least enthusiastic, a positivist. Perhaps rich as he is and influential, he has a social duty to be so. In profile, there’s a boyish brilliance to him, a Pan-like yaw. He has probably played all his life, despite the expectations, the serious nature of privilege, and the obligations of sitting in the House.

I mean there are employment protocols on the Reservation.

Of course. And Idaho. Do you enjoy it there?

The first test as to her availability.

Yes. I do.

I’ve never been up that way. I’ve been to Seattle, of course – my father used to do business with Boeing. But that corner is rather a blind spot for me. I do know those casinos were a bad idea. No routed nation ever did well trying to win money back using alcohol and algorithm. I voted against the supercasinos here. The last thing this country needs in the middle of a recession is more gambling.

She does not disagree, though the revenue streams on the Reservation and in Britain follow very different courses. She watches the estate roll by. Oak trees, damson, and birch coppices, newly planted. Between them, the yellow swards of moorland, patched darkly by gorse, reefed by flowering gold, and purple heather. Thomas Pennington slows the Land Rover, then stops, and points.

Look over there, Rachel.

Standing thirty feet from a stretch of woodland is an area of construction – a long, deep trench, gently curving. The foundation of the enclosure barrier.

Not much more to do now, he says. We’re on the final few miles.

Must have been tricky to negotiate. Isn’t this inside the national park?

Oh, he says, evasively, we managed.

The disputes are ongoing, she knows, but the new legislation has allowed him scope. She does not push him; he would probably deny any negative aspects to the project anyway.

Above the moorland and trees, the Lakeland mountains castle. Above the crags, sky, occluded clouds. As a child, the territory seemed so wild that anything might be possible. The moors were endless, haunting; they hid everything and gave up secrets only intermittently – an orchid fluting in a bog, a flash of blue wing, some phantom, long-boned creature, caught for a moment against the horizon before disappearing. Only the ubiquitous sheep tamed the landscape. She did not know it then, but in reality it was a kempt place, cultivated, even the high grassland covering the fells was manmade. Though it formed her notions of beauty, true wilderness lay elsewhere. Strange to be sitting next to the man who owns all that she can see, almost to the summits, perhaps the summits. It is his, by some ancient decree, an accident of birth and entitlement – the new forestation, the unfarmed tracts and salt marshes towards the edge of the Irish Sea. She could applaud the project without reserve, were it not for the hegemony, the unsettling feeling of imbalance. Still, it is England; a country particularly owned.

She can see, between hills, the glint of grey water – the west coast, where once rum-runners came ashore and where nuclear cargo now ghosts along railway lines at night. The Earl is talking again, about reparation debates, the law-making powers of the Reservations – the cultural respect for the land, by which he is deeply inspired. Isn’t she? he asks. He is better informed than most, but still romanticising. Yes, she thinks. If you’d been fighting for decades over broken treaties, and had, only within the last presidency, been invited into the White House, if you were overseeing class-action settlements worth billions, the buying back of territory and compensation for mismanaged trusts, you would respect the land, you would know its worth. But the track record of some of the First Nations is nothing exemplary.

The redistribution of power is always complicated, she says.

He unbuttons his jacket and leans back in his seat, and she notices the supporting brace underneath, waistcoat-like, perhaps a daily fixture since the microlight crash and subsequent spinal surgeries. He turns slightly towards her. She is aware her sceptical tone has been noted.

I can certainly take criticism, he says. This isn’t the democratic republic of Annerdale. Our system is very antiquated – I’ve campaigned for reform along with my party. Meanwhile, I consider myself a custodian of sorts. The plans we have here are very sound. I don’t need to tell you the benefits of reintroducing a level-five predator. The whole region will be affected. It’ll be a much healthier place, right down to the rivers.

Rachel nods.

Yes, it will.

She looks towards a small, brown, unextraordinary hill with a winding path and a conical cairn at its summit. He follows her gaze.

That’s Hinsey Knot. You can see the Isle of Man from the top on a clear day.

He turns the engine over and they drive back, towards the hall. On the way they pass a ruined cottage, almost a bothy, and an old fence wire strung with black-jacketed moles. Thomas Pennington slows the vehicle and peers at the bodies.

Oh, Michael, he murmurs. Is that really necessary?

Some old-school farmhand or estate worker, Rachel assumes. She remembers the tradition from her village. She and Lawrence would see rows of the creatures on the way home from school, splayed open, pinned like lab specimens. The wind seems to have gone a little from her host’s sails. He points out the occasional landmark, but chats less. He must sense her resistance. Who will he approach next, she wonders. With the barrier fence almost complete, approaches must already have been made. She is glad of the quiet and takes in the landscape, which she has missed. The river is slate-rimmed, flashing, much clearer than the peat-steeped water of the eastern district. Near the lake, in a walled plot, is a church with a round tower, where the Earl’s ancestors and relatives are probably buried, including his wife, Carolyn. Rachel’s knowledge of her death extends no further than the tabloid reports. A freak air-disaster, the microlight stalling too low, half-gliding half-plummeting to Earth. The Earl was in traction for months. His wife was killed on impact. The church roof looks new, the graves well-tended.