Chapter 8

 

“So,” Paul asked, “how are the lemmings taking things?”

Jenny shrugged. “The guys in Lehman brothers are a bit upset, as you might expect—they haven’t been seen at a charity fundraiser or an adopt-a-student event in months. But the rest don’t seem to be taking to the cliffs, yet. I have a feeling some will try sticking it out. The government will keep the shirts on their backs.”

“Some have bought land, too,” James said.

“Yes?” Paul asked. “I’d hoped climate change would even the stakes between us and the vultures.”

Susan smirked. She wasn’t sure whether by that statement Paul meant the investment bankers and hedge fund managers, or everyone in the human race. Jenny put on a stern face, regardless. Paul liked to rub her up the wrong way; he was one of the few who could make Jenny rise up on her toes, much less keep her there.

Paul was happy with how things were going in their property buying in Canada. He estimated they’d already bought enough land to keep the clan supplied with food. If they did move there, it would become their own private town. “The Jews have their haven now,” he liked to say, “and we will have ours—without claiming statehood, of course.” The fate of his mother yet weighed heavily on him. He didn’t plan to ever let the clan’s numbers fall again.

“Speaking of which, I won’t be making much of a contribution this year,” James said. It was early December now. The families generally gave money towards the land purchasing at New Year.

“Taken a hit?” Susan asked. “I thought you’d given all your money to Paul? He was insistent enough.”

Jenny shook her head. “We do have some shares that are gone down with everything else, but I expect them to rebound before we ever have to worry about cashing them in. The main problem I have is that everyone hates bankers now.”

“I always hated you,” Paul said. “If that makes you feel any better.”

Jenny just smirked, but James grinned. “She’s giving all her money to me.”

“And you’re busy buying art?” Susan asked.

James nodded. “It’s going well, yes. The really rich still have plenty of money and are still buying—more than usual, in fact, so they can keep their investments out of the other markets. I’m getting my commission from them. However, since most people are selling paintings to pay the mortgage on their yachts, I’ve been able to pick up a few bargains that I’m keeping long term.”

Paul nodded, and Jenny said, “They think the price of gold won’t go much higher. Maybe you should think of cashing some in.”

Susan shrugged and looked at Paul. There were more than a few valuable paintings on the walls, but Edward had always bought gold. It was one of those things easy to keep at home under lock and key—and watchful eyes and noses and ears. It was also easy to transfer from generation to generation without worrying about inheritance tax, or showing death certificates. She knew Paul was waiting to see how far the price of gold would go before selling some to buy more land, and some houses he’d been told would be repossessed soon.

He nodded again. For all he liked to annoy Jenny, he took her advice as gospel, or what would be gospel if the Wilkez believed in a proper religion.

Samantha brought in the first course of glazed duck confit, and they ate sparingly while they talked, washing each mouthful down with organic red wine. The menu was mostly game, given the season; the excess animals that were hunted during autumn. The weather was blustery. There was no snow in the city yet, nor in the low hills overlooking it, but it wasn’t far off.

Conor’s birthday was next week. Jenny wanted to have a chat with her and Paul to get some idea of what he might expect when he joined Patrick—just to seem like she knew what she was talking about when she gave him advice.

Susan had been delighted when Jenny discovered she was pregnant just six months after she herself had—and accidentally as well. It was something they both should have seen coming, though. Jenny had run out of the pill during their trip to Hungary and couldn’t get a new prescription out there. She’d got pregnant that first full moon they’d returned, which had been an eye-opening experience for them both. What had initially surprised Susan most was how useless Paul was during the days of the full moon. She found herself changing her own schedule over the years: taking time off, sleeping in to stay up late, to be ready for him when he returned from his roamings around the estate. She had once tried to keep up with his drinking, but that was just counterproductive. Perhaps it was the small drop of clan blood she was supposed to have, but though she could not handle the alcohol, she found herself looking forward to the full moons.

Jenny liked the full moon as much as Susan did, though. It seemed most of the other wives from outside the clan did. It was a nice social circle. She and Jenny had been the go-to source of information and assurance for most of the pack’s wives. They’d formed good friendships. Susan also got along very well with Samantha. Usually she and Peter sat down with them when they’d company, but tonight the conversation was Conor’s first full moon.

Paul had been serious when he’d said the full moon took precedence over everything else on the calendar. Everything was organised around it; school exams, shopping trips, everybody’s job and family holidays. It was quite refreshing, actually. Once a month they all just put down tools and relaxed completely. It was kind of like a monthly three-day Sabbath, except they were allowed to do whatever the hell they pleased, and then some. Usually, a repairman or two of some description was called to the estate afterwards.

Jenny had experienced this, yet letting her son go out into the city unsupervised—for what kind of supervision did Patrick pretend to provide, really, when it came to his best friend?—made her as worried and full of questions as the new brides marrying Paul’s peers had been over the last twenty years.

“So how is the city nowadays?”

Paul snorted. “Gentrified.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

Paul shrugged. “It’s still dirty, and the homeless haven’t disappeared—there’s more money in begging, in fact. One or two places have improved, though. Susan’s old neighbourhood, for example, is no longer the abode of drug dealers and junkies.”

Susan pricked up her ears. She hadn’t been back to her old flat since her lease had run out and she’d moved into Paul’s place—now Patrick’s wolf’s den of inequity—just a few months before they’d moved here for good. “Gone? How did that happen? The cops finally do something?”

James chuckled.

“Simple economics,” Jenny said. “The economics of gentrification: you can’t push people out, but you can make them have to leave.”

“Once the neighbourhood became fashionable, those without a decent income and with expensive habits could no longer afford the rent. They moved out to the new housing estates and the dealers went, too, following the customers,” Paul added.

“Conor and Patrick will stay in the centre, won’t they? There’s no reason for them to go out to the outskirts, so they’ll avoid any problems in that regard.”

Paul and James looked at one another. Neither seemed inclined to speak, but eventually James shrugged. “Maybe.”

Susan suppressed a smile. Jenny might understand economics, but it seemed she didn’t quite grasp the appetite for mischief of her family—though maybe James and Conor weren’t quite as bad as her own husband and sons.

The pregnant pause that followed such an inconclusive answer was filled by the sound of the door. Samantha cleared their plates and left another bottle of wine on the table for Paul to open. When Peter brought in a roasting dish of venison and potatoes, Jenny used it to introduce her next topic of concern. “I’m worried what they’ll eat.”

Susan nodded sympathetically. They were having dinner at home because the men were sceptical of the quality of food in restaurants. Susan missed eating out, but she and Jenny sometimes went out by themselves, or with Samantha and some of the other wives who weren’t as susceptible to free radicals as the clan were.

When Paul had first gone towards the locavore and slow-food movement, saying you didn’t feed racehorses on kitchen scraps, she hadn’t considered it important. He believed his generation were aging faster in part because of eating unhealthy food. “Normal humans might be like old tractors, chugging along, but you don’t fill a Formula One engine with any old farmer’s diesel and expect it to run smoothly.”

This was Paul’s exaggeration, but seeing what had happened to Gary and Sebastian—and also Simon—had changed her mind. She worried about Patrick, too, though she’d stocked his flat with homemade food. Besides, Patrick had eaten healthily almost all his life and was yet aging faster than Paul. Luke, the biochemist of the clan, had told her what he knew about epigenetics; how Patrick could in fact be influenced by factors affecting Susan’s mother when she was pregnant. Nevertheless, Susan believed her genetic influence would both protect Patrick from the damaging radicals and lower his life expectancy—if the Wilkez’s longevity was actually inherited.

“What would you have him do?” Paul asked. “He can’t take a packed lunch.”

James nodded. “That’s what I said. He has to eat something; eating in burger joints is better than swiftly killing off the ducks in St. Alphonse Park. Considering the shit those birds eat, they’re none too healthy. At least the boys can get bottled water.”

Because they suspected negative effects of aluminium in the water supply, they cooked with well water and drank Fiji water, which could apparently help eliminate the aluminium that had built up in the body. It wasn’t cheap, but considering Susan’s family history of Alzheimer’s, even she felt it was a prudent luxury—if that wasn’t an oxymoron.

“That’s it, James,” Paul said as he finished slicing and serving the venison. “The priority is calories.”

“Speaking of priorities,” Jenny said. “If it’s just for three days a month, then why can’t they carry phones?”

Paul and James both shook their heads emphatically.

“Send Conor off with a sandwich if you really want,” Paul said, “but phones are just tracking devices.”

“What if they get separated?”

“Then they can howl,” James said.

Susan swallowed hard on a piece of potato. She remembered well when Paul had howled in front of her twenty years before. It had brought the other werewolves to them within seconds as three men lay dead in the snow at her feet.

Jenny nodded and didn’t pursue the point. “So, how is Patrick getting on out there?" she asked. “Has he found his stride? No more accidents?”

Paul sighed loudly and sat back. “No more that I know of. He’s settled down a bit, but he thinks he can tell the first woman he meets what he is—that girls think we’re frigging teddy bears. I don’t know what crap he watches, but he’d better snap out of it.”

Jenny chuckled now. “Don’t you read about yourself?”

Susan smiled, too.

“No.” Paul peered at her and leaned forward, as if scrutinizing her expression to determine whether she was taking the piss. “Jenny, I don’t wish to depress myself. I must admit I find myself bemused. Do you read it?”

“Yes. I have a book club. Sometimes they suggest one of these new books about werewolves and vampires that are so popular.”

“Don’t get me talking about vampires,” Paul said.

Jenny frowned. “They’re not real, though.”

“Oh, aren’t they? I wish they weren’t.”

Jenny looked at James. He nodded, as Susan thought he would. “They’re real, but you don’t want to know.”

“Let’s stick to werewolves, shall we?” Susan said and shuddered. She didn’t want to hear the vampire stories again; not even a glossed-over version. She wasn’t surprised Jenny hadn’t heard the stories. She’d only heard herself because she spent too much time with Edward. Since Angela, Jenny’s mother-in-law was alive and well, James and Jenny had not moved into the family estate, and only went there for full moon.

Jenny was curious, though. “You’re not having me on? There are real live vampires in the world?”

“Hopefully not anymore,” Paul said.

James continued, “Let’s just say it would be better for all concerned if the bloodsuckers were killed by the Nazis, or the Russians, or their own villagers in the sixty years since the last of us left the old country.” He seemed pained to have to tell Jenny, and Susan wished he didn’t.

Jenny was silent. She kept glancing at each of them and blinking, as if expecting them to grin and tell her they were kidding.

“You seem surprised, Jennifer,” Paul said, smiling now. “But I am astonished by the fact you’re in a book club.”

She smirked. “Yes, I know it’s hard to imagine, with the busy social life this family has—celebrating birthdays every second day—but I still do have a few friends outside the circle. Besides, I like to read, and I was always interested in the myth.”

Paul raised an eyebrow and glanced at Susan. She nodded. She’d never told him; it wasn’t her business.

“So, what do these books say?” Paul asked.

“That there’s a lot of internal conflict and some violence between the pack members but only between them—the general population are pretty much Muggles.”

“What’s a Muggle?”

“You’ve not read Harry Potter?”

Paul shook his head. “Do you think I have time for children’s books? I have a library of law texts and leather-bound classics I’ll never get through—and I have an advantage over the majority of mankind.”

“You mean over me.”

“Yes. It just occurred to me that I thought you were carefully managing my money, and in fact you are reading about wizards and whatnot.”

“So you know about Harry Potter?”

“I do exist, Jennifer.”

James chuckled and helped himself to more venison.

“Okay,” Jenny continued. “So the Muggles are the non-wizards; us.”

“You,” Paul corrected.

“You’re a Muppet, not a Muggle, Paul,” Susan said, and James laughed again.

“Okay,” Paul said after smirking at her, “so the world at large knows nothing, as is best for everyone concerned. But don’t the wolves kill the Muggles in the books?”

Jenny shook her head. “No. None. Not anymore. That’s not sexy. Not so long ago one member of the group criticized a book because the characters in it damaged property.”

Paul laughed and looked at James. James was ever the gentleman, and merely grinned.

“It’s all very well that literature has changed werewolves from dangerous monsters that kill indiscriminately, but it’s going too far to expect them to be upright citizens, all good and true. I don’t think we can stop the pack leaving a little destruction in their wake. If I can make sure they don’t leave dead bodies, I’ll be happy.”

Jenny’s eyes widened and she shot a look at James. “My son isn’t going to kill people, is he?”

“No,” he told her.

“If anyone does the killing, it won’t be Conor,” Paul said. “Patrick might have to, but it’ll probably be someone else.”

Jenny narrowed her eyes; she wasn’t always sure when Paul was joking, Susan knew. He said nothing, letting her imagine he just might be.

Susan wasn’t sure, herself. Even Paul admitted he didn’t know what would happen out there on the streets, despite leaving her alone during half the full moon nights. It was a different city to the one he and James had roamed. She decided to jump in to stop Jenny asking outright. She could find out from James later. “Tell us, Jenny, are the heroes of modern literature as hairy as our men?”

“Heaven forbid!” Jenny laughed. “That would be horrific. At least the werewolves of fiction have the common decency to get rid of their hair before they try to bed their damsels.”

James pretended to flick a piece of potato at her. Jenny pretended to duck, and ate the last of her own meal. “Which makes me wonder,” she said when she’d finished. “If all the hair is because of a load of testosterone, why don’t you lose the hair on your head, like most hairy men?”

Paul laughed, as did James. Susan leaned forward. She’d never thought to ask before, either.

“Well, to put it simply,” James said, “we don’t have the gene for baldness in our population.”

Jenny frowned, glancing from one to the other. “But how is that possible?”

Paul shrugged. “He’s just telling you what Luke and Alex tell us. I trust them to know toxicology and I trust them with this.”

“But I read that the gene is carried on the X chromosome.”

“Yes, that’s right,” James said.

“So, it’s possible that now some of you have married outside your population, your children might carry the gene.”

To Susan’s delight, Paul swallowed hard on a piece of venison and James raised his eyebrows somewhat disconcertedly.

“Uh, well, I checked the photograph of Susan’s father before I asked her out on a second date. I don’t know about James.”

James looked at Jenny and she shook her head. “Not my father. I only knew my grandfathers when they were already old, and bald.”

“But you are right, Jennifer,” Paul said. “I think in future we’ll have to vet prospective mates—have a full DNA profile done.”

“That’s monstrous, Paul,” Susan said.

“Not as monstrous as a bald werewolf. That’s what I call horrific.”

As Peter cleared the dishes, Susan changed the subject. “What are our plans for Christmas?”

In scheduling events around the full moons, Christmas did sometimes present a problem. It was not as great a headache nowadays, because Susan’s cousins were all married and her aunt had Christmas dinner with them. Susan visited her at some point over the holidays. Her mother had died a few years after Patrick was born. She’d not lived to see any of her other grandchildren.

Susan and Paul usually shared Christmas with James and Jenny. Sometimes, though, they had to postpone Christmas lunch, and once had put it forward, because the men were simply unable to stay awake for it.

“Going north,” James said.

“Need a little bit of extreme sports…”

Jenny looked sternly at the two men. “No going off-piste, or up in a helicopter.”

“You know how I feel about mountains,” Susan told them. Not long after they’d gotten married, Jenny had taken them rock climbing in the old granite quarry. Susan had been climbing with Jenny before, and though her father had died on Mont Blanc, she’d never felt uncomfortable. Paul and James had gotten competitive, however, and decided to ditch the ropes and harnesses, free climbing over one hundred feet. After watching them for fifty, Susan had walked away and refused to go climbing with them again. They’d apologised afterwards, but Susan still stayed away from Paul when skiing—it wasn’t worth the emotional strain to watch him taking risks all the time.

“Of course,” Paul said.

“Absolutely not,” James said.

“Strictly a fact-finding mission to see our new land, and check whether the water and soil is as clean as it’s supposed to be.”

Paul’s law firm had set up an investment company to buy land for the family. Jenny handled their transactions. They seemed like any other company investing in land—they just didn’t expect to ever sell it.

“But we might have to go up to the headwaters of course, to the snow pack—test the pollution coming in on the wind.”

“Which will require some skiing, or snow-shoeing.”

“Or snowmobiling.”

“No snowmobiles. Look what happened to Patrick when he raced with a vehicle.”

“How long are we staying?” Jenny asked. “I’d like to stay a couple of weeks.”

Susan giggled. “Yes. Me too. I think we should stay until the middle of January, really.”

Paul and James both smirked.

The New Year’s Eve party continued to be the social event of the year, regardless of the lunar calendar. Since it was a night-time event, nothing needed to be worked around when it did coincide with the moon. The crowd had to be ejected more forcefully before dawn, however, and if someone didn’t get to bed by sunrise, they tended to crash out in the stables or curl up on the lawn, despite the weather. Next New Year’s would fall during the full moon, and it would be extra special because that would be the first New Year’s full moon with a new pack.

Paul already planned to hunt some of the pretend aurochs he bred. The young bulls weren’t castrated. Instead, they were separated from the breeding bull and once in a while the pack did a little bullfighting. Mostly they merely played with the bull, dodging and leaping it as it tried to catch them. This year, however, the bull would be hunted for real, and Susan was determined to stay indoors. It wasn’t a full-grown bull; they would keep those for next year. Paul wanted what he called a trial run, when the pack wasn’t hyped up from the full moon.