The Wolf Border (20 page)

No.

Please tell me if you have.

I haven't.

Then Emily does begin to cry. She lets herself go, her body shaking, leaning forward, her sobs loose and repetitive, as if the appeal for help was some kind of emotional emetic. Rachel looks at her, mortified. After their years of antagonism and contraspective dislike, the bitterness, to see an adversary so reduced, submissive even, is unnerving. There is no pleasure in it whatsoever. Emily fights to speak.

Then he'll be – he'll be. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I don't know where he is.

Her shoulders hunch. Tears drip to the ground from beneath her hands. Moments of paralysed excruciation pass before something kicks in and Rachel steps forward.

Hey. Come on, she says, gently. Let's sit down. Over here.

She puts a hand on Emily's elbow, turns, and steers her towards the bench. They sit. She waits while the woman gets it out of her system. The weeping begins to taper off. Emily wipes her face, runs her fingertips along the soils of black make-up under her lashes.

I haven't heard from him, Rachel says again. Is he with a friend in Leeds, maybe?

It seems an obvious suggestion – stupid, in fact. She wants to know more about the extent of the argument, which has come as a surprise, but there's no way to ask. Simultaneously, the thought of knowing their intimate business is off-putting. Emily shakes her head.

He might be with Sara. I used to think there couldn't be anything worse than that, but there is.

Rachel doesn't recognise the name, or really understand the comment – is Emily alluding to an affair? she wonders. There's still so much about her brother's life she does not know. Emily looks up at Rachel, as if wanting confirmation, or admission, perhaps thinking she is withholding information about Lawrence. But Rachel is at a loss. She shrugs. It's odd. In her suffering, his wife seems far more attractive than Rachel realised – beautiful, even.

I said awful things about you, and your mother, Emily says, looking Rachel directly in the eye. I said he was brought up in a
household where bad behaviour was normal. I told him he was too fucked up to be a father and we should stop trying.

What did you mean, he has problems? Is he seeing someone?

Emily does not answer, but continues to look at Rachel, reading, assessing. Then, as if making a conscious decision, she recoils from the details of confession.

It's nothing. Just that he goes through these bad times. He comes a bit unwound.

It's a vague thing to say, but the tone is too factual to be simple deflection or a lie about her husband. What does coming unwound mean? Rachel cannot imagine her brother fucking around or otherwise acting up. But then, she has seen little of him as a grown man. And all men are capable of straying. Most women, too. Lawrence was brought up a certain way; if not instructed in the school, then
let to see
the possibilities, the methods, as was Rachel. What is laid down in childhood is difficult to reverse; one might spend a lifetime trying. Suddenly Rachel does want to know more, never mind the awkwardness.

Who is Sara?

Just someone he works with. A friend in the office.

What did you mean, being with her isn't the worst thing?

It was just a stupid argument. We've been very stressed.

Emily wipes her face again, composes herself. It's too late. The guard is going back up.

Whatever it is your family's got, she says, I don't have it.

What do you mean?

You're so autonomous. So defended.

Is that a good thing?

Emily shrugs. Criticism or not, Rachel is out of her depth. She feels incapable of psychologising a brother she knows so little,
or consoling a woman with whom she has frequently warred. Whatever window of insight into their troubles his wife might have provided has closed. Emily holds her hands tightly together on her lap.

Wait here a second, Rachel says.

She walks to the back door of the cottage and goes inside. In the kitchen she stands for a moment and tries to gather her wits. It seems bizarre that Emily has come all this way – on a whim, and to a former foe – asking for help. It makes no sense. And yet Rachel does want to help, or at least to understand. The idea of a marital rift, of her brother cracking at the seams, is unsettling. There's certainly more to it than Emily is letting on; that much is clear. Once, she might not have cared; now, she cannot turn a blind eye. She goes into the downstairs bathroom, gathers a wad of toilet roll, collects a glass of water from the kitchen, and goes back into the garden. She hands them to Emily. After blowing her nose and taking a sip, Emily rallies a little, sits straighter. She combs her hair behind her ears.

I apologise. This really isn't on.

There's no need.

No, there is. And I'm sorry for everything this last year.

In fact, the last thing Rachel wants is an apology – the hollow, unendurable victory of that. This declawed version of her sister-in-law still seems wrong. Shadows have begun to spool into the garden and the light is suddenly murky. To the portentous west, the sound of thunder, a long, deep tear, and there's a distinctive smell: wet herbs, cordite, the precursor of rain. Something big is about to unleash. She cannot, in all good conscience, send Emily away.

We should go inside, she says. I'm going to make some pasta.
It's about all I want to eat these days. You can have some with me.

She stands. Emily nods and stands also.

You look really well, she says again.

In the kitchen Rachel pours Emily a glass of wine, and quickly throws together a meal. The two do not speak much but there is a tenuous accord – enough to get through the evening. The rain begins, not with torrid, dehumidifying power, but a slow, intermittent shower, dysuric. Then the battering downpour comes, drenching everything. Emily catches Rachel looking at the clock.

I've ruined your evening, she says.

No, you haven't, Rachel assures her, but I do have to phone someone. And I think you should stay – you don't want to drive back in this.

After a quiet, reflective dinner, with limited conversation, they retire to bed. Emily does not expand on Lawrence's problems and Rachel does not push, nor are they keen to stray into the mined territory of the past. Emily borrows a T-shirt to sleep in, bids Rachel goodnight, and heads into the spare room. She seems less distraught, more resolved, though her frame of mind is hard to gauge. Although tired from the night before, Rachel cannot sleep. The house seems to ring with the presence of her brother's wife, but when Rachel goes to the bathroom, the spare room is silent and no lamp light filters under the doorway into the hallway. It occurs to her that her brother might be far less together than she'd always assumed, his proclivities far darker. Sara. Can it be true he has a mistress? The word, the idea, seems ridiculous. And what is the
worse
scenario Emily alluded to? Her mind shifts though fantastic, disturbing images: sex workers in the backstreets of Leeds, STD clinics.

She fidgets under the sheets. They smell of Alexander: oniony, a man's sweat and fluids. It was past eight when she called him – the phone went straight to voicemail and she left a brief, poorly explained message. She did not mention Emily. He has not called back. It is likely that he thinks her uninterested – God knows, she has perfected the impression over the years. After an hour or two's restlessness, she gets up, dresses, lets herself out of the cottage quietly, and walks to the wolfery. The rain is easing off. Between the clouds is a giant, tallow lobe of moon. The woods are still, giving nothing up, not a whisper. She walks carefully, so as not to trip, though the path is easy to see in the whitish moonlight.

When she arrives at the quarantine pen, she goes into the hide and looks through one of the night-vision cameras. They are at the bottom, by the fence, nosing through the grass and chewing. They are likely searching for large insects, mice, a toad, any living thing to kill, such is the boredom of being fed. Or perhaps they have found early mushrooms. After a while, they move up towards the hide, into plain view, their coats strangely highlighted, eyes eerie bulbs of light. Darkness is liberty for them, but what comes in darkness to challenge their dominance is the worst thing they face. Another pack, ambushing. Humans. Juggernauts on the highway. Tonight they are playful. Ra trots alongside and then passes Merle, falls back, passes her again. He rises on his hind legs, circles his head, like a boxer. He tugs at her ruff. The day's languid canine is gone. He is a night hunter, like the legend. Though he is big, he is agile, and will be good at taking rabbits, she thinks, if he can learn to chicane through the heather. Their feed is being carefully weighed and given just once a week, but they are still well bulked. There is fat under their skin, around their hearts, kidneys, and in the marrow of their leg bones.
Once they are released and have to go to work, the stores will be reabsorbed. Ra rolls on his back, rubbing the top of his head backward and forward on the ground, his legs kicking, dopey, submissive. Merle stands over him. Rachel smiles. It is at night that they give up their secrets, that they seem most sacred to her: ghost-like, elegant, and frivolous.

She leans back against the hide wall and watches them until she begins to feels better, less anxious. They pad soundlessly, even when they are within thirty metres of her. They do not howl. The nightly border tests of the first few weeks have lapsed into occasional bouts, their heads tilted back, throats perfectly straight to a funnelled point. Kyle had a trick for setting them off, if they were close by on the Reservation – he would howl mournfully until they howled back. Acceptable human interference, he called it. She is thinking of him less now. Their communication has been polite, but infrequent. The moral question still hangs over her, but time and distance are making it easier.

She arrives home a little after 5 a.m. It is already light. The Audi is gone. Inside there is a note on the kitchen table.
Thank you and sorry again
. She screws the paper up and puts it in the bin. She is tired now, even though the day is brightening and the birds are singing. Upstairs, the spare bed is made, as if never slept in, the T-shirt left folded neatly on top. She thinks about calling Lawrence, but the hour is too early and the fight – whatever it was really about – is not her business. What would she say?
Don't upset your wife
. No. She goes to her bedroom and lies down on her side, puts a pillow under her belly. An hour's rest, and then she will get up and go to work.

*

The midwife is a woman in her mid-sixties, with ash-grey curls and a stiff hip, past retirement age but not, it seems, retiring anytime soon. Her name is Jan. She is from Workington and sounds fractionally Irish, like many of the older residents along the west coast. She sits at her desk, one leg held straight out in front of her to relieve the pinch in the joint. On the desk is a lumpen, hardwood sculpture, a souvenir from her time working in the Botswanan clinics. Her uniform is deeply unflattering: brown, waist-less, almost a military tunic. But her manner is that of a jovial, life-worn aunt, someone who has seen and countenanced much, and has managed, through sheer will or remarkable fortitude, not to become jaded. She laughs frequently, chides the baby for hiding behind the placenta when she is trying to listen to the heartbeat.

Come out, you little beggar.

She moves the device.

No, now that's coming through the cord.

Finally she finds a clear sound and is pleased. Rachel's growth is measured. More blood is taken. They discuss a birth plan – birth wish list, as Jan prefers to call it, since plans often have to be altered. She expresses mild concern about a home birth – Annerdale is a fair distance from the hospital, it is a first birth – but is not unconfident about Rachel's choice, her health. She is used to rural deliveries. She is nurse-trained, able to catheterise and perform episiotomies. Twenty-eight weeks: the baby is viable.

You've got the main centre number and delivery suite number, Jan says, but I'm going to give you my mobile. I've got NHS enhanced reception, so you can get me anytime. Anything at all, you just pick up the phone to me, luvvie. Now, tell me how you're getting on generally.

Rachel lists the discomforts, the pelvic pains, the heartburn, all standard. Walking to the enclosure takes an extra ten minutes, and often she feels winded. She can hear her own heart banging away when her right ear is on the pillow. Jan is sympathetic.

Let's see about getting you a support belt. Not the swishest fashion item, I'm afraid, but they do help.

The session overruns; all Jan's sessions overrun. Most interesting to Rachel during their time together is hearing about the strange phenomena of the job. The anecdotes, the decades of observed behaviour.

Don't be surprised if you find yourself wanting to be in the smallest room in the house when you're in labour. Box room. Downstairs lav. I've had women do the coal shed.

They have a conversation about the risks of the quarantine pen, but it seems belated. In any case, Jan is not the cotton wool and antibacterial type. Her area covers the west coast farmers. There is the issue of lambing; she has had one or two cases of Q fever, but if every pregnant lady in the county stopped associating with her husband's livestock, farms would shut every week up and down the district, she says.

She flexes her sore leg in and out.

I might draw the line at coming in with those wolves, luvvie.

Her smile is all uppercase: a row of tiny, identical teeth sitting on her bottom lip. She will be a good person to have at the delivery, Rachel thinks. Her patients, bellowing and begging for pain relief, punching their partners in the face during the ring of fire, the associated fluids – what else is there to do but see the funny side? She reminds Rachel a little of Binny, a benign version of Binny. Or is it just that she has begun seeing her mother in strange and unexpected places, in women of a certain age, straight-talkers,
grand dames. She has started seeing Binny in restless dreams, too, in a capacity not wholly unwelcome or unhelpful. Swimming in the river, gloriously naked, her missing breast restored. Showing Rachel how to squeeze and palpitate to make the milk come. Making jam! The madness of gestation, strange chemicals and hormones, the other side of the brain's looking glass.