She’d collect him from school and walk him home along the river. Every rabbit warren and culvert and pile of leaves delayed their return. Will Jonno be gone when we get back? Will Derrick have finished mending the car? She’d let him linger, prodding dead birds and dumped badgers; she’d watch him from a distance. Will there be anyone home except Mum? I don’t know, maybe. He was pitiful, that’s how she’d felt then. Stupid. Only when he was a teenager and some girl showed him, or some friend revealed the details, did everything become clear. The atrocity of what they’d all been doing to his mother. The fact that she was complicit. Two years later he left home.
Rachel sips the coffee. It tastes too acidic. She needs to call the surgery back — the doctor has rung twice and left messages. Instead, she sits and watches the sky. The day and the weather feel split, still and mild at ground level, but the clouds above are moving fast and dark on currents of strong air. Her phone pings. She opens a text from Stephan Dalakis. A picture of the male, as promised, running in the enclosure. Since being found in the illegal trap in North Moravia by the Hnuti Olomouc patrol and the subsequent leg surgery, he has made a full recovery. He is pale, with almost white fur, perhaps three years old. She texts back. Magnificent.
Her thoughts drift back to Lawrence. They’ll walk; try to get along, build some bridges. Either something will take, or it won’t: these things can’t be forced. Emily will have to be dealt with later. Rachel and her brother have spent so little time together as adults, but maybe they’ll have more in common than she thinks. With Binny mediating affairs, nothing was ever straightforward. With their mother gone, perhaps there’s a chance. The only way forward is to try. After another bitter sip, her throat stinging, she tips the coffee out onto the grass.
*
All week, rain. Big splashing drops on every surface like a child’s illustration of rain. Blue vanishing light and winds from nowhere, bringing slant, destructive showers, or fine drizzle. At night there is rain that exists only as sound on the cottage roof, leaving doused grass in the morning and pools in the rutted lane. The streams and rivers on the estate swell. Spawn clings to submerged rocks and reeds as the current tugs. The lake accepts the extra volume indifferently. And then, when it seems the rain will never end, there’s an explosion of sunshine, the startling heat of it through the cool spring air. Within days a green wildness takes over Annerdale. Dandelions come up, early meadow flowers; the moorland ripens, sphagnum, cotton grass, the white filament heads turning in the breeze. Rachel settles in. The fire in the cottage draws well, the place is cosy. A delivery van comes to the estate every few days with food — all she needs to do is supply an order. She hangs the Kwakwaka’wakw wolf carving over the mantelpiece. Her practical life seems simple. She gets into the habit of leaving the front door unlocked — it is a safe corner of the estate, and there have been no more lurking visitors. There’s less to secure than at Chief Joseph — no bear-proof lids on the bins, no summer mosquito plugs.
The surgery calls again. She arranges to have the scan and combined screening. It is not deferment exactly, not a decision. She does not know what it means. She tries to hold it all loosely in her mind, tells herself she can still go back, undo it. Things begin to come together on the project. The importation paperwork is completed, freight flights confirmed. She interviews candidates for the position of full-time assistant. Eleven in total, after a ruthless CV cull. The interviews are held in a room at Abbot Museum in Kendal — Thomas Pennington is chairman and sponsor there, naturally, and it is not far from Oxenholme station. The job goes to an earnest — and, she suspects, Buddhist — South African, who has cut his teeth in the game parks of KwaZulu-Natal, worked with jackals and other predators. A PhD in the UK, time in India. His credentials are excellent, an expansive mind, calm-natured. He arrives at the museum on a bicycle, which seems fitting. Twenty-four hours later he is invited to take up residency at the estate. She agrees to let Sylvia work on the project. The girl will have to muck in, get used to the order of things. She will have access to the quarantine pen, will be inoculated; she will be fully one of the team.
Rachel walks the estate, gets to know its broad rises, the woods, the lake circumference. The distance to the Horse and Farrier and the village Co-op is not far. She carries a stash of granola bars, and a plastic sick-bag when she drives, though she doesn’t need to use the bag. She thinks about calling Kyle, but doesn’t. It is better to give herself some distance, never mind the blossoming sense of guilt.
A few days later she is summoned again to Pennington Hall to be introduced to staff members. Among them is the gamekeeper, Michael Stott — the man, she is fairly sure, who was watching the cottage the day of her arrival. His frame and gait are familiar — the tipped shoulder, the rightful stride. He is lean, with carved cheeks and a sore mouth, hair so full and dark it seems false, given his age; he must be pushing seventy. His trousers look as if they’ve been made from tar. There is an immediate hostile crackle between them. He does not meet her eyes when she says hello, and the handshake is cursory, patronisingly soft. Within minutes, everything becomes clear, and she has the measure of him. Louveterie.
Much to our relief, Michael’s decided to stay on, Thomas says, standing between the two of them. He’s been here a very long time. His father worked with my father. He knows the country here like the back of his hand, don’t you, Michael.
Worked with not for, she notices. The modern sensitivities of class. Michael Stott sniffs and nods and says nothing. Behind the Earl’s statement is the question of whether and why he might have left. He does not look the type to retire — ever. A mutineer, then, who does not approve of the radical new project. And why would he, if he is the herdsman?
I’ll leave you two to get acquainted, Thomas says. Michael will be able to assist you with anything you need, Rachel.
He closes the door behind him, leaving the two of them alone. She’ll be damned if she’ll make small talk. No doubt Michael will want to stake his claim, assert his authority. Sure enough, after a moment he clears his throat, and offers her some advice.
Now then, Mrs Caine. You might want to park the car round the back of Seldom Seen. It’s hard getting anything through with it left so casual.
She doesn’t bother to correct his mistake. But she won’t have him think she’s town-bred and insensible.
I intend to. Once the ground’s dried out a little — don’t want to get stuck, Mr Stott, and have to be towed. That would waste everyone’s time.
Right. When is it your pups get here, then?
Pups. She holds his gaze.
Two weeks.
Michael takes a leather tobacco pouch from his inside pocket, removes but does not light a pre-rolled cigarette. He is housebroken, she can see, enough to shake her hand in front of the master and abide by the rules of the house. But it is clear that he is not happy. Not happy about being displaced in the chain of command, for she now holds a lateral position, perhaps even a higher position. Certainly not happy about the reconstitution of Annerdale, with its new apex predator. She, and they, represents dire competition, beyond his experience. The beloved deer, previously targets for the noble shotgun, are to become glorified dog food. Over the years her sensibilities have been honed. Michael is a king’s soldier: good at tradition and old orders. If he’d lived twelve centuries earlier, he’d have made substantial money for their pelts from Charlemagne.