For the first time in her life, work is not the primary concern; work is not in full possession of her soul, as it has been for more than a decade. She cannot hide in it. All those years in which she was safe and exempt, focused on the management of another species. Now, a different sphere has ascended. The qualities of human reward and failure rest with her. There’s more to life, Binny had said on the last day Rachel saw her alive, even as she was plotting to end her own existence. And Rachel had thought, But you’ve never seen a wolf, standing against the skyline in profile, you’ve never seen a wolf running alongside an elk, seeing through the flurry of back legs to the single, perfect moment of the strike. There is no greater beauty.
She wants to get back to the cottage. She wants to hold Charlie, feel his warm skin, or look at him in the cot. She wants to tell her brother she is proud — of his days, his weeks of sobriety, his determination. She might forgive the journalists for their callow versions and enquiries, because she too is looking away, at this other self, at her own kind. Ahead, the steel gate drips with rain. There is no going back. She starts the car and reverses off the verge, follows the lane through the woods to home.
THE HUNTING SCHOOL
Spring gives way early to summer, the foliage thickening, the light over the western mountains shedding its dullness. Six wolves are silhouetted against the Cumbrian fells. They are no longer aliens: they never were. She is nameless to them. They have everything they need. The herds swell with the arrival of the calves, so spindle-legged and spastic it seems they are defunct, tamping and flailing on the ground in an effort to stand, but capable of running within minutes, leaving their wet sacs strung behind them on the grass. And they do run — the deer no longer linger on the moorland or in the long valleys; they avoid areas where entrapment is possible, where many of their number have already fallen. They have been fully reprogrammed and obey the laws. Their sentries sniff the wind and scan the horizon. There is a form ghosting between the trees, skirting round the heather, perhaps nothing, or there is simply a scent drifting, with menacing association. They graze and quickly move on. When it happens, it happens like an explosion: a fuse lit at the corner of the herd, a burst of fear across their number. The closest kicks hard, for it has likely been chosen and senses it, setting the herd in motion, a terrestrial murmuration. They flush across the lowland, pursued without full exertion, but with a terrible evolved stamina, and are driven up a gradient. Degrees of weariness, the victim begins to struggle slightly and slow. The wolf closes, closes. Even after the pursuit is over and the calf is brought down, rump-first, back legs skittled, the herd still runs. Only its mother pauses to look back, then runs on with the rest. Merle has made the kill, independently, as if on principle.
From the top of a hill, the pups watch. Two females and two males. It will not be long before they begin to chase after their parents, part of the hunting squadron. They grow in radical bursts, quarrying small prey in the grass around the den, mouse-pouncing, venturing further into the enclosure as their endurance grows. Despite the distinguishing features — one with a striped grey back like a marsupial, one with a tipping ear, one honey furred, and the smallest darker than the others — they remain unnamed. This is Rachel’s idea, but the team has agreed. There’s some kind of wish fulfilment to it, she suspects — that they should remain as far from domestication as possible, because they are so close to it.
She comes into the office twice a week, works remotely otherwise. In her absence, Huib is a reliable project manager, updating her on any developments: the court case with The Ramblers, another email from Nigh, observations from the fieldwork, and any new film footage. Sylvia leads a team of four new volunteers. In the autumn she will start law school.
In the cottage, they coexist surprisingly welclass="underline" Rachel, her rehabilitating brother, and the little master of the household. She concentrates on the baby, aware that this time will be irrecoverable, gone in an instant. She tries to savour the moments but everything rolls forward at an alarming pace. Some amazing, nuclear energy blazes in the baby, not related to food or diurnality, but simply of its own source. One might worship it easily. He is a learning machine. He meets her gaze, dark-eyed, wants to know what she knows, wants to converse. He is aggrieved that she will not fully, fluently learn his language, though her understanding of his inchoate English is adequate. The phenomenology of another human — there is so much shared, so much they will never share. Days of tossed bowls and food up the wall, and it is she who feels inarticulate, a foreign traveller in her son’s realm.
What is it? What do you want? I don’t know what you want.
He points: that, or more, or Roary, or Lawrence. His muscles get him into trouble, powerful as they are without the refined technology to walk or balance. Heaving himself up on the coffee table, on chairs. Pitching over. He moves impressively quickly across the floor on all fours, like some species fallen out of the canopy, disabled, but extremely dexterous on its secondary parts, and determined to escape. Lawrence hoists him up by the waistband of his little jeans, inches from the door. He squeals, flails. Outside is what he wants: the vibrant colours of the garden, the cacophony in the woods around the cottage, and the wind, the wind, which he adores, which he tries to qualify, hands held out to grasp and hold it, unable to, vexed. If only Rachel were as tolerable an element. He is frequently angry with her, for reasons unknown. His tantrums are galactic, often inexplicable; purple and glossy and howling, he throws himself against the chair back, or skulls her in the face, splits her lip open. She takes a deep breath, holds him away from her, licks the blood.
Don’t take it personally, Lawrence says. He freaks out with me, too.
He doesn’t. Not like this.
Well, you’re the one he thinks of as the boss, when he wants to rebel.
Nice try, she says.
Here, give him to me. Go and take five.
They are a good team. Lawrence is patient, willing to give up an inordinate amount of time on childcare. She is aware that the baby is in part therapy, is giving him a reason to be sober. He goes to the meetings in Workington twice a week. Mitch, the group leader, is his personal sponsor; Lawrence speaks about him with enormous respect, though he is an ex-dealer, spent seven years in prison, beat up his wife. Her brother does not linger in the town after the sessions, where there might be temptation. He follows the steps. He has a checklist of danger signs, things to avoid.
And every day, he walks. Since his hike with Huib — she does not know what occurred or what was said on the trip — he has become obsessed. He walks before breakfast, even before dawn some days, if he cannot sleep. He arrives back at the cottage famished and eats an entire pan of porridge. Then he makes boiled eggs for Charlie. Some days he will be out until dusk, fasting for fifteen or twenty miles, like a pilgrim. He walks regardless of the weather conditions, lashing showers, brooding skies. The porch floor is mucky with smears and divots of dirt from his boots, pools of water from his dripping anorak. His fleece jacket and gloves wilt like pelts on the radiator.