The Tenderness of Wolves

by Stef Penney

  ‘Adam should be in the kitchen.’

  After Mackinley has gone, Knox hears raised voices from the drawing room. His daughters are quarrelling. He briefly considers intervening, as he used to when they were younger, but cannot raise the energy. Besides, they are grown women now. He listens to the familiar sounds: Susannah’s voice dissolving into tears, Maria’s lecturing tone, which makes him wince, a door slam, and then footsteps running up the stairs. Grown women is what they are.

  Sturrock has been talking with Mrs Scott, and she looks up at me with her habitual nervous air, presumably in case it is her husband come to find fault. I get an impression that they have been having quite an intimate conversation: when I walk into the store they subtly draw away from each other as if signalling the end of a confidence. I feel disgruntled; I had thought I was his co-conspirator. It seems Mr Sturrock makes a habit of holding whispered conversations with other people’s wives.

  He turns to me and smiles, bowing his silver head. ‘Mrs Ross. You have found the warmest and most welcoming place in Caulfield on this cold day.’

  I nod, a little stiffly. For some reason I was half-expecting him not to know me.

  ‘Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mrs Ross? On the house?’ Mrs Scott looks at me with unusual boldness. She seems to have taken a sort of courage from Sturrock’s presence to make free with her husband’s coffee.

  ‘Thank you. That would be welcome.’

  I would have had it even at their outrageous prices. I feel cold to the bone. Warehouse cold. Murder cold. Despite what I said to Knox, I have no idea whether Parker is a killer or not. My certainty that he did not know what had happened to Jammet faded as soon as Adam padlocked the door.

  ‘You did not tell me you were acquainted with Mr Knox,’

  I say, to get it over with, wishing I sounded less petulant.

  ‘I don’t believe I did. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You could have gone to him and asked about Jammet’s possessions. You didn’t have to sneak around like a thief.’

  Like me. I feel betrayed. I liked him more when he was as furtive as I was.

  ‘My acquaintance with Knox is an old one. I don’t believe he will know me now.’

  ‘Does he know you’re here?’

  ‘I think it would be hard for him not to know.’

  ‘I don’t mean to pry. I just feel rather … at a disadvantage.’

  We sip our coffee in silence for some moments.

  ‘I did not mean to mislead you the other evening, Mrs Ross, please believe me. Sometimes one is disappointed in one’s own part in things. We always want to be the hero, don’t we? The hero of the story or … nothing.’

  ‘I am sure you did your utmost.’

  He sighs. I am inclined to believe him, but am aware this is more to do with his charm than with any famously unerring judgement on my part.

  ‘If they were not there to be found, then nothing you could have done would have brought them back.’

  He smiles. ‘But some say, as I am sure you have heard, that I looked too long, and that I kept hope alive when it should have been dead and buried.’

  ‘If a parent chooses to hope, then nothing anyone else can say will stop them.’

  It comes out harsher than I meant it, and Sturrock looks at me with that look of eloquent compassion I saw on him before. The cynical part of me wonders how many families, tortured with worry, saw that look, and were comforted by it.

  Of course it is not compassion that is needed in my situation, but action. Something that has been turning over inside me, nameless and frightening, crystallises all of a sudden. And I know that I can no longer rely on other people, not on anyone. They only disappoint in the end.

  Knox finds Sturrock in residence at the Scotts’. He announces himself to the maid, and Scott comes to greet him. He looks at him with raw curiosity, but Knox says nothing about why he has come. Let them all gossip (they will anyway, whether he allows it or not), it is none of their concern. Perhaps they will think Sturrock another murder suspect.

  He is shown to the room at the back of the house that the Scotts let out to travelling salesmen. The servant knocks on the door and when Sturrock answers, Knox goes in.

  Thomas Sturrock has aged since he last saw him. But then it must be ten years–and the ten years between fifty and sixty can mark the difference between a man in the prime of life and his dotage. Knox wonders if he himself is as changed. Sturrock is as straight and elegant as ever, but seems thinner, drier, more fragile. He stands up when Knox comes in, masking his surprise, or whatever he feels, with an easy smile.

  ‘Mr Knox. I suppose I should not be surprised.’

  ‘Mr Sturrock.’ They shake hands. ‘I hope you are keeping well.’

  ‘I manage to find things to occupy me in my retirement.’

  ‘Good. I expect you know why I’ve come.’

  Sturrock shrugs extravagantly. Even with frayed cuffs and slightly stained trousers he gives the impression of being foppish. It has counted against him.

  Knox feels awkward. He had forgotten the effect of Sturrock’s presence and had almost managed to persuade himself that the accepted story going round Caulfield was true.

  ‘I’m sorry about … well, you know. I know how people talk. It can’t be pleasant.’

  Sturrock smiles. ‘I am not tempted to contradict them, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

  Knox nods, relieved. ‘It’s my wife I’m worried about. It would be a cause of such anguish to her, and my daughters … I’m sure you understand.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  He doesn’t agree, Knox realises; he can’t trust him. He wants his reputation back.

  ‘Anyway, what brings you to Caulfield? I have heard all sorts of strange stories.’

  ‘I expect they are true,’ Sturrock says with a smile.

  Just then Knox hears a creak outside the room. He gets up noiselessly and goes to open the door. John Scott is standing there with a tray, trying to look as if he has only just arrived.

  ‘I thought you might like a wee dram,’ he says with unconvincing heartiness.

  ‘Thank you.’ Knox takes the tray with a stern look. ‘Most thoughtful of you. I believe you need me to write in support of your application for compensation?’

  Scott’s face goes sullen and then, in an attempt to salvage the situation, conspiratorial. ‘He’s an interesting man,’ he whispers, jerking his head in the direction of Sturrock.

  Scott’s face is disturbingly pink and shiny in the lamplight. Knox is suddenly reminded of a pig on his parents’ land that used to snuffle coquettishly for titbits, its snout poked through the hedge at the bottom of the garden. He is so surprised at this collision of images that he merely nods and pushes the door shut with his foot.

  He puts the tray down on a table. ‘Mr Scott is not only our grocer, miller and entrepreneur, but also the local gazette.’ He pours a glass of whisky for Sturrock. ‘Can I be of any assistance to you, while you are here? Short of offering you a room in my house, which would be … inappropriate.’

  ‘Kind of you to ask.’ Sturrock appears to think the matter over, which he doesn’t need to do. He tells Knox the reason for his presence, and Knox promises to do his best, though privately bewildered by the request. Half an hour later and several dollars lighter, he makes his way out of the house and finds his feet taking him towards the warehouse that looms, a large, windowless monolith, apart from the illuminated houses.

  He pauses outside–the light has almost gone–listening for sounds from within. He can hear nothing, and takes out the second key, confident that Mackinley will have gone.

  Even before his eyes adjust to the darkness inside, he realises something has changed. The prisoner does not turn to face him.

  ‘Mr Parker? It is Mr Knox.’

  Now the man moves and reveals his face. For a moment his eyes do not understand what he sees–the face appears, as before, like a rough carving of a face, only one that has been left unfinis
hed, or spoilt by an unfortunate slip of the knife. With a shiver of recognition, Knox sees the swelling of brow and cheek, the blood darkening the skin.

  ‘Good God, what has happened?’ he cries out, before his brain catches up with his mouth and he bites his tongue.

  ‘Is it your turn?’ The man’s voice is harsh, but without obvious emotion.

  ‘What did he do?’ He should have insisted on accompanying Mackinley. He should have listened to his doubts. Damm the man! He has ruined everything.

  ‘He thought he could encourage me to confess. But I cannot confess to what I did not do.’

  Knox is pacing up and down in his agitation. He remembers Mrs Ross’s assurance that Parker was innocent, and is inclined to agree with her. Knox experiences the rising panic of a juggler who has suddenly found he has too many balls in the air, and realises that disaster, and attendant humiliation, are imminent.

  ‘I will … find you something for that.’

  ‘Nothing is broken.’

  ‘I … I apologise. This should never have happened.’

  ‘I will tell you something I would not tell the other.’

  Knox stares at the man in wild hope.

  ‘Laurent had enemies. And the worst of his enemies were in the Company. He was a threat to them, alive. Dead he is no threat.’

  ‘What sort of threat?’

  ‘He was a founder of the North America Company. But more than that, he was formerly one of them, as I was. The Company do not like those who turn against them.’

  ‘Who in the Company?’

  A long pause.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Knox feels a trickle of sweat making its way down his breastbone, despite the cold of the warehouse. Something has occurred to him, something stupid and reckless and insistent, something quite unlike anything he has ever done before–and he knows what he is about to do.

  All through dinner that evening, he watches Mackinley wax jovial under the influence of wine and female attention. His voice rises with his colour and he expounds the virtues of great Company men he has known. He discusses a Company factor who famously defused a quarrel between two Indian tribes, to the detriment of both, and then a particularly admired outdoorsman, who would think nothing of trekking hundreds of miles in the depths of winter. Apparently even the native guides admired his prowess at navigation and survival, thus proving that there is nothing innately superior about the natives’ wilderness craft; nothing that, given the right circumstances, the white man (especially a Scottish white man) will not excel at.

  Knox watches Mackinley talk, and if he does not take part in the conversation, he manages to hide his repulsion for the other man. Afterwards, his wife will ask him if he is quite well, and he will smile and say that he is tired, but that there is no need to worry.

  From now on he will be talked about; rumours will travel vast distances, telling of his incompetence, his unfitness. Fortunately he is retired. If his reputation is the price to pay for justice, then so be it.

  He has shut his mouth on the truth before. He can do it again.

  THE FIELDS OF HEAVEN

  He has failed. He has lain in silence in this room for some days now, with barely the strength to move. His left leg throbs intermittently, waking him at night. From the narrow bed he has studied the whitewashed walls, the painted wooden chairs, the curtainless window that shows only sky. If he lifts himself up on his elbows he can see a small church spire, painted dull red. Mostly, the sky has been grey, or white. Or black.

  The shaking has subsided. He knows now that he must have developed a fever after falling into the bog. He had crossed a still, peaty stream–the water so quiet it had oily rainbows on its surface–when on the far side he slipped and plunged into the quagmire. He was horrified by the speed with which he sank, grabbed at handfuls of reeds, spreading his upper body flat on the mud in an attempt to halt the slide. He could clearly see himself being sucked under the surface, the mud filling his mouth and nose, clotting his throat. He yelled out, more a statement of intent than a cry for help–there was no point in that, it was painfully clear. It took him what seemed like hours to haul himself out, and subsequently to crawl up the liver-coloured bank onto a patch of blueberry scrub. Blueberry was good, safe; its roots in firm and stony soil. He lay exhausted. Something bad had happened to his left leg; when he tried to stand it buckled under him and the pain in his knee made him retch, although nothing came up. He hadn’t eaten properly for three days–or was it more? He can’t remember. He doesn’t remember being found either, or brought here, wherever here is. He woke up in the white room and wondered whether this was what death looked like: a featureless white room where angels drifted to and fro, speaking in tongues.

  Then his fever lessened and he realised the room was not featureless, and the angels were earthbound and quite ordinary, although he still could not understand them.

  There are two women who tend to him, feeding him soup and doing things that he blushes to think about. Still, they must be his mother’s age, and he is being treated like one of their own children. They are brisk and no-nonsense: sponging him down, straightening sheets, stroking his hair. Yesterday–he thinks it was yesterday–a man came in, spoke with one of the women, and came to look down on him from what felt like a great height. The man was his father’s age; had a fair, full beard, very unfashionable, and prominent goaty eyes.

  ‘ Êtes-vous français?’ he asked in a peculiar accent. Francis was alarmed that the man knew his name before he recognised the French words. He wondered what to say. There is so much he doesn’t know. The man then turned to the woman and spoke in their guttural tongue for a moment.

  ‘Enk-lish?’

  Francis stared at the man and decided then that he would say nothing at all. It was probably best.

  The man and woman looked at each other. The man shrugged, and after a moment he folded his hands together and began to talk. After a minute Francis realised he was praying. The woman prayed too, but by listening to the man. Their clothing was very plain–rough materials in black and white and grey, like their sky.

  *

  Just recently–in the last hour or so–he has started to remember things: he remembers trudging mile after mile along the banks of the river as it cut through the forest, further than he had ever gone in his life, following the trail of the man. He hadn’t seen him again since that night at the cabin, and it had stretched his skills as a tracker to their limit to follow the signs. But the land had been kind to him. Every time he thought he must have gone wrong–after walking for hours, scanning and searching and finding nothing printed on the ground, just when he thought he must have missed the man’s turning–he would come across another signal: the blunt press of a moccasin in leaves, piss-melted frost in a hollow. He saw the man’s spoor and the scanty trace of his fires, hurriedly swept over. He did not know when he ate. He had never known anyone move so fast.

  Francis had only dared light a fire once, and had failed to sleep afterwards, terrified the man was going to realise he was being followed, and find him. But nothing happened. He had taken care not to get too close, always looking ahead in case of a trap. In the end, his caution was his undoing. On the fourth day he lost the trail. It left the forest for higher ground and swung north-west into a desolate, treeless landscape–a scrubby, swampy plateau where bogs slowed him down and a north wind knifed through the wolfskin coat. He went slowly, grown used to the shelter of trees, nervous of being seen in the open. After several hours of this he had almost fallen into another, smaller river that carved itself a channel through oily mudbanks. The water was opaque and he could find no signs of passage. Then he floundered, trapped. This was where he became, for the first time, truly scared. He had been scared all along, of course, but now he realised that the country had him in its grip, and was going to let him die, never to be found. His bones would lie under the sky, bleached and scoured like the skeletons of deer that lay scattered around him. He struggled, waist-deep, until a
fter dark. He even called out, in case the man was nearby–at least death at his hands would be swift. At least it would be human. But somehow, somehow, he had got himself out. This was where his strength failed him altogether.

  In the end it was all the same: he had passed out by that river, exhausted, weak and frozen. He has failed.

  He thinks it is afternoon: he ate some soup an hour ago, and then had to suffer the embarrassment of using a bedpan with one of the women, the dark-haired one. He turned his eyes from her, and she laughed as though she found him really amusing, and she seemed not embarrassed at all.

  He cannot see his clothes anywhere, but is unsure whether to ask about them, and if so, how. He could ask the man if he came back. But somehow thinks he won’t, in either French or English. The prospect of not speaking is appealing. If he doesn’t speak, then maybe no one will ask him anything. He regrets his failure, but at a distance–he did what he could. His reasons for leaving now seem very far away, from a different world. A painful world, and not one he is anxious to go back to. Of more immediate concern is the whereabouts of the bone tablet.

  When one of the women comes back later–the one with dry fair hair and the loud laugh–he tries out some mime. She reminds him of Ida’s mother–she has the same earthy practicality. As she busies herself around him, tucking in the blankets and feeling his forehead, he catches her eye and holds it, then sweeps both hands along his opposite arms and mimes the putting on of a jacket, lifting his hands in question. She understands, plucking at her own skirt in answer, and unleashing a torrent of angular words. He smiles, wanting someone on his side. Then he mimes scribbling on his palm, and draws the shape of the tablet in the air. She frowns at this, then seems to realise what he is referring to. She looks at him with disapproval, but leaves the room.

  One evening, months ago, Laurent had taken the piece of bone out of his hiding place (he was drunk at the time) and showed it to Francis, and together they had studied the little stick figures and the angular marks that looked like writing. Laurent thought Francis might know what it was. Francis thought back to school and Egyptian hieroglyphics, ancient Greek, the pictures in his mother’s books, but could not remember anything that corresponded to these marks. The only way you could establish which way up they went was from the stick men who trooped round the edge. Laurent said he had got it from a trader in the States; said he had met a gentleman in Toronto who would pay a lot of money for it. They laughed at the folly of rich men. Then, later, he had said Francis could have it. Francis refused, nervous in part of something he could not understand. Who knew–maybe it was a curse? But Laurent had offered it to him, so when he took it, it wasn’t really stealing. As for the other things, he had to take them to survive. He would have taken the gun too, if he had seen it. Another part of him–the part that echoes the boys he endured through the long years at the village school–says, what would you have done with it if you had? You can’t even bring yourself to shoot a rabbit.