Page 13 of The Rewilding

When Steph awoke, she found a note under her door: an invitation to breakfast from Daniel. He seemed to have taken it upon himself to help Steph integrate into the house. He gave her another guided tour of the rooms used for living as well as the dining room which was attached to a large kitchen. There was the freedom to cook what you wanted with groceries delivered weekly. There had been a chef, but he had fallen out with Kelvin when he wouldn’t let him hunt one of the bison intended to feed the bears and the wolves. It didn’t help that he had killed one of the two moose. They were meant to breed. Daniel then admitted he hadn’t really come across the other moose for a while either.

It seemed crazy to Steph that such a place, which generated no money, could be kept up and running at such great expense. It was, in her mind, the ultimate vanity project. Not the worst. There had definitely been worse. However, it was the supreme.

Having eaten a small bowl of porridge and drunk half a coffee, Steph made a list of notes: a plan for the day. Then she scribbled half of it out. It would be impossible to do everything she wished. She supposed she should first consider her contract to Kelvin and, secondly, continue to conduct her own business.

The largest part of her, along with Daniel’s enthusiasm, wanted to focus on the hybrids, the animals brought back from the ever-distant past. But then she stopped and thought. She scrapped that idea. It was self-indulgent. It made sense first to get a grip on the environment. She needed to go walking.

Nobody had really explained to her what the rules were regarding walking amongst the wildlife. She had been given some key cards and codes by Davey, so she assumed that she was free to make her own choices, that there was a level of trust once the contract was signed. Kelvin had come to her after all. Sort of. After she’d come to him. Anyway, he had offered her the job without any application from her. She supposed he must trust her. Trust her enough anyway.

What Steph wanted to do was head out for a couple of days. Camp overnight. Make the most of her time before coming back, consider her findings and then plan further. Without a tent or a good enough knowledge of the hybrids – she had settled on calling them that in her head as she did not deem them genuine pre-historic relics – she thought it would be sensible to return to the house for the night after the walk. Camping could wait.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

came Davey’s voice as Steph opened the front door, her backpack over one shoulder.

“Walking!”

she replied.

Davey sighed, swore and then told her to wait two minutes.

It was thus that Steph found that she would have an unwanted companion on the walk.

“I don’t need you with me,”

she said as they walked through the woodland that patched the land, noticing the tell-tale signs of wild boar on the ground.

“You do need me,”

Davey replied.

“Or Michael. Michael would have been better, to be honest, but he has the day off. He’s gone to Edinburgh to look at the castle or something. Whatever these Americans like to do when they’re over here.”

“What do I need you for?”

Steph asked.

“I know what I’m doing. I know what precautions to take and when to be sensible.”

“But do you?”

Davey sneered.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, here you are, suddenly wrapped up in the experiment of someone who has more money than he knows what to do with, when all you intended was to research how a boy died and whether there was anything unnatural and untoward. Or at the very least, allow your readers to feel that there could have been.”

Steph stopped walking and narrowed her eyes. Davey also stopped and looked disinterestedly at his feet before quickly scanning the area.

“So you did look through my stuff!”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean ‘not exactly’? Either you did or you didn’t!”

“You left a copy of one of your books on the side in your hotel room,”

Davey shrugged.

“I borrowed it. Had a quick scan through – I didn’t feel the need to read it properly. I just wanted the gist of your type of material and what you do.”

“You stole from me?”

“It was interesting, with the Tasmanian tiger, how you mention land space, the credibility of individuals and their sightings, length of extinction, etcetera.”

Steph pushed past Davey, which made him laugh. She could hear him walk after her. She tried to ignore him.

“All of what I said was true,”

Steph said after a while.

“I didn’t make anything up. I merely reported on what had happened and gave my take on the possibilities.”

“I never said you didn’t,”

Davey said, putting an arm across Steph’s chest for a moment, studying the ground and then, once satisfied, moving off again. Steph tried to look at what had grabbed his attention but saw nothing. Then again, he’d seen nothing. Probably didn’t even know what he was looking for.

“If it’s so wrong for me to have been ‘wrapped up in here’, why are you here?”

Steph asked after a few minutes more of silence.

“Because I, unlike you, was not earning as much before, so when I was offered a good payday, I took it,”

Davey replied.

“Took it to do what exactly?”

“Whatever I need to do. Primarily I was hired to look after the land as I have a background in forestry, but I will turn my hand to most things. I’m a quick enough learner.”

“Seems odd,”

Steph replied.

“What is?”

“That you felt the need to say that you were a quick enough learner. Insecure?”

Davey laughed again.

“In this place? Definitely!”

They carried on walking. Steph decided, after some thought, that she couldn’t spend the whole day trying to ignore Davey except for when she felt the desire to be petty. Instead she chose to make the most of his presence. Make the best out of… well, not a bad situation but an unfortunate one. It had come to her attention that there were a number of plant species alien to the natural surroundings. Davey explained that Daniel had suggested that there would need to be enough to satisfy the cave bear’s omnivorous appetite, in addition to the number of prey animals.

“So what exactly does Kelvin think will happen with all of this?”

Steph asked as they made their way from a treeline and up a gentle slope.

“What is the point in it all?”

Davey stopped, which forced Steph to stop. She watched him quickly scan the open space as well as the ridgeline up ahead, his bottom lip screwed under his upper jaw.

“He said something about bringing about a kinder world. Roughly along those lines. He believes that for the planet to survive, it needs to find a new balance… or revisit an old one. Whilst some rich people work on greener energy or space travel, Kelvin works in a different area. He thinks there is no need to work on something someone is already doing unless you know you can do it a thousand times better, or so he says. What he is actually picturing in his head, I am unsure of, to be honest. Although in my opinion, all these rich folk work on some sort of mental shit when they pass a certain wealth threshold.”

“But what do you mean by ‘a new balance’?”

Davey pondered this, panting slightly but not as much as Steph. Her bag suddenly felt very heavy.

“I think a new balance between humans and the natural world. He thinks people are already developing what is needed for a greener future in terms of energy and climate – although he appears frustrated at their lack of implementation, he seems to predict something more.”

“What?”

“Well – and I am not saying I buy into this although I can see his point – what correlates strongly with most countries and a rise in education?”

“All sorts,”

Steph puffed.

“Yes, true, one being a fall in birth rates.”

“OK?”

“Well, that means a lot of things,”

Davey continued, pausing just before the ridgeline.

“There’s a problem for the economists about a top-heavy population and how they might sustain the elderly with the age of death rising. However, Kelvin is interested in something else. An opportunity, as he sees it – I am not completely sure myself. We have encroached onto the wilderness in different countries for years. Our population has exploded like algae on a pond. We have built on it and put in place the infrastructure to deal with it all. Yet if the population decreases significantly – which it is already showing signs of in many countries – what happens to it all?”

Steph thought about this. She supposed the answer was obvious, but she didn’t want to appear stupid by saying so and yet proved to be wrong – at least in Davey’s eyes.

“It gets left?”

“Exactly,”

Davey said.

“And it gets reclaimed by the wild. Wildlife is incredibly resilient; it has gone through mass extinctions before and always bounced back. It’ll reclaim areas we abandon in the blink of an eye.”

“What’s your point?”

Steph replied, looking around.

“I don’t see what this has to do with anything going on here.”

“Of course you don’t,”

Davey scowled.

“Kelvin believes that the mood of people is changing to one of more cooperation and coexistence with animals, rewilding in other countries, the replanting of forests, people eating far less meat and people looking for alternatives to fur and leather.”

“And so… so this is just an example of what Kelvin thinks life could be like in the future?”

Steph frowned.

“But with a dash of dangerous prehistoric predation thrown in for good measure?”

“I wouldn’t say the predation itself is prehistoric,”

Davey replied, itching his arm.

Steph grimaced.

“Sounds a bit pointless to me, crossing a bridge we haven’t reached and might not even arrive at. Anyway, even if he does prove a point somehow, what does it matter? What use is it to him to demonstrate that people can live amongst the wild?”

“That I am not quite sure of,”

Davey said.

“Although men like Kelvin know how to pivot. I think that’s why he got the prehistoric animals in. They were his insurance.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if Kelvin is wrong about humans eventually getting closer to nature again, he can at least offer the opportunity to live amongst wildlife as a sort of holiday-type thing. With the extinct animals thrown in, he could make a bit of money back. Not to mention the rights he has to Martina’s research.”

Steph did not think much of his explanation. It felt weak. The only part that seemed to her to have any clout was the part about genetics. But why buy all the land? Was it pure vanity?

“Surely he won’t regain the cost of the land with a simple holiday park?”

Davey was about to reply but put a finger to his lips instead.