The Wolf Border (30 page)

He lives in America.

I assumed that was the case.

I didn't want to involve him.

And now you do?

The question is level-toned, and yet it cannot be that simple, so much depends on her answer. She shakes her head, sits up, and leans forward, away from the heat of his body.

I don't know. Not really. I just don't know if it's OK for him not to know he even exists.

Are you sure he doesn't? In this day and age –

He doesn't. He would have said something.

So you're still in touch?

Sometimes.

He places his large hand on her shoulder, pulls gently. She leans back against his chest and he puts an arm round her. For a while he is quiet.

Is he a prick? Is that why you didn't involve him?

It sounds foolish either way, she thinks. To have been involved with someone unappealing, or to have excluded a good man from a child's life.

No, he's not a prick. He's pretty great, actually. I worked with him at Chief Joseph. He was a friend.

Oh.

I just mean, that wasn't the reason. I was the reason. I'm not very good at any of this.

He puts his mouth to the side of her head, his words muffle in her hair.

You're very good at it.

He means the sex, or he is being overly kind about her level of effort. They do not ring each other regularly with news or for no reason at all, just to say hi, as lovers in the fast spiral do. It is Alexander who comes to her. She knows better than to assume, as she did for years, that men enjoy her casualness, her coolness, that it suits them better, or that they are less invested. It doesn't take
them long to sense that such an attitude stems from something else – a fear, a flaw, stuntedness. Finally, with Alexander, with the baby, or simply with her coordinates in life, the game seems up. She is exposed. Silence. She feels tension creeping in. The mood is still light, but something is slipping, spoiling. She tries to explain.

There was nothing really between us. There wasn't a relationship or even the possibility of one.

There was something, Alexander says.

No, she says.

But why should he believe her? There is, after all, a baby: irrefutable evidence.

It's alright, he says. Everyone has a past. I'd prefer Charlie's dad to be someone you liked, someone decent.

You'd prefer it, she says.

A small flare of anger. It is not really a question, or a reiteration of his point. She is about to say more, that he doesn't get to have a preference, that he is not in a position to choose, even theoretically, what kind of man he would like her baby to have been sired by, but she stops herself. He sighs.

Look, I think if you want to tell him, then you should tell him.

I haven't made up my mind.

OK.

His arm is now stiff about her shoulders, uncomfortable; it should not be there but is stranded. The baby begins to cry, a faint inquisitive wail, quickly escalating. She moves away and gets up.

Do you want me to go to him? Alexander offers.

Not unless you can express.

She sounds like a bitch; she knows. How easily the attitude comes, once the mood is active, even in the face of amelioration, attempts to restore good terms. She looks down at him. He says
nothing. His face has firmed, become slab-like. She goes next door, shuts the nursery door, leans over the crib, and picks up Charlie. Her heart is flurrying, the baby feels her unsettlement and struggles in her arms. It seemed unlikely she would ever argue with Alexander. No, not that: she has never really made it past a first argument with a man; argument always signifies her extraction. She has been happy these past months, and to imagine cross words and nastiness would have meant imagining the end.

She comforts the baby. She sits and tries to nurse him, but he screams louder. The wrong smell to her, perhaps – the residue of sex. Or Charles Caine is expanding his repertoire of mysterious complaints. He feels hot, tussles against her chest, spits out the milk. This is what happens, she thinks, when the embargoes are down. Things are said, stupid intimate dissembling things that do more harm than good. Perhaps Alexander will leave, she thinks. Of course he will leave; he is dressing right now, gathering up his phone and watch and wallet. Any moment she will hear the front door slam. Soon she becomes sure she has already heard it.

It's a long time before the baby will settle. She takes his temperature, changes him, strokes his hair, adjusts the blankets. By the time she's finished and returns to the bedroom, the desertion fantasy is complete and she is miserable. But Alexander is asleep in the bed. The lamp is still on. His glasses are on the bedside table, his legs splayed. She climbs in next to him. He stirs, turns, and puts an arm around her, the subconscious automatic of affection. She lies rigidly by his side, her hand barely daring to touch him, wanting to. I'm sorry, she thinks. I really am no good at this.

In the morning, Alexander brings her tea, as usual. She lies quiet and unmoving, as if asleep, still troubled, unable to fully embrace the reversal of disaster. Alexander goes to the bathroom
to shower. She hears him coughing, blowing his nose clear under the stream of water, singing a few lines of a song – one of Chloe's favourites, maybe. The baby sleeps on, exhausted by the night's huge fit. She examines herself. You're programmed to backstep, she thinks, to make them come forward, then to break fully away. She understands the dance – it has served her well, as it served her mother. But she cannot keep blaming Binny, not for the habits of a lifetime, not when she knows exactly what she is doing.

Alexander comes into the room, dripping wet, towelling his hair. He drops the towel on the floor and begins to dress. His body is familiar now, the vast chest with its dark central cavern, the long legs, and small buttocks. She does not love him. That is, she does not feel love as described by others, the high and low arts, not in relation to the person here in her room. But all that is misnomer, poetry, an unproved chemical; he has survived her tendencies; he releases something in her, if only a feeling of wanting another day, a feeling that the day with him is better than ordinary. She sits up, reaches for the mug of tea, and takes a sip.

Are you coming back later? she asks. After work?

He pauses in the lacing of his shoes and looks at her quizzically.

*

The weather deteriorates. There are days and days of snow, unlike anything the district has seen for decades. The condition feels eternal; in reality it is just three weeks of chaos. There's a fast fall at the end of January – sticky, dense, a substance perfectly manufactured to mask the fields and fells, to stack against walls, blocking roads, and upholstering buildings. On the roof of the cottage hang precarious cornices that collapse with little
warning. The garden is arctic, a lost world. On the estate, tractors cut through the drifts, leaving deep chasms in their wake, still impassable by car. The Penningtons' helicopter is grounded, flights across the entire nation are grounded, and the Pendolinos south run at half speed, then are cancelled. More snow follows. Thomas misses the second vote on currency union. Supermarkets begin to run out of food. Then, the clouds disperse, the sky is as clear and dangerous as burning oxygen. Plummeting temperatures. The thermometer reaches minus thirteen at night. In the Highlands: minus nineteen. Petrol freezes in tanks. The death rate of pensioners soars; there's talk of a flu pandemic, a deadly new variety.

In Annerdale, it is too cold even for river fog; the rivers freeze over, the lake begins to solidify – even the Irish Sea crisps at the edges. Pipes in the converted outbuildings of the Hall burst, and the staff, including Huib, decamp to the main building, like evacuees brought into the big house during a war. But they are guests, and are made to feel like guests. Every morning they are served eggs in the giant kitchen, from copper pans. Poached haddock. Fresh bread. Chopped herbs. The larders of Pennington Hall are well stocked. Huib texts Rachel –
On holiday, come and join us
. But the tyre ruts in the road are now glaciers, the snow is too deep and hard to walk across. She cannot get out of the woods, even for Charlie's next immunisation appointment.

She takes the baby outside to look at the world. They stand wrapped in coats and scarves. Cumbria is a whiteout, as far as the eye can see. The mountains are brightly coated and seem bigger, amplified. At night, the stars are exceptional, with the lustre of old cracked diamonds. Charlie will remember nothing of it, she knows. She wonders, though, if it is laying something down in him,
forming some sensibility? Will he always seek colder places, the beauty of frozen massifs, blue locked into white, the immaculate?

She keeps the heating high – she is not paying the bills and she does not want to risk a plumbing catastrophe. 1847, the date stone of Seldom Seen reads. The place has been upgraded, and well insulated, but gelid air still makes its way around the windows and under the doors, radiates through the walls. Rachel sleeps with the baby in her bed, against the advice, but she does not want to leave him in the bassinet. She tries to get the Saab out again, but the undercarriage scrapes and grinds; the back end swings out. Finally, it beaches itself at an angle and the wheels spin uselessly. The engine protests. She abandons the car in the lane, takes the baby out of the travel seat, and carries him back to the house. That night, another snowfall: lesser, but substantial enough to cover the treacherous layer of ice. Michael arrives on a quad bike, clad in woollens, Gore-Tex, and agricultural boots. The lurcher is balanced on the seat behind him, tongue out, its breath steaming in the air. He knocks on the door, says nothing about her car blocking the lane, and asks if she needs anything. A lone woman and a baby cannot be abandoned in such conditions, never mind who they are.

Think I'm OK, she tells him. I stocked up.

Anything for the little one?

No. Thanks, though. Incredible weather.

Expect another good week of it, he says.

Small talk, about that most English of subjects: weather. It feels like a temporary ceasefire between them. He climbs back on the quad, and she watches him drive away – the dog riding pillion, adjusting its paws as the bike tips and wallows over the polar rifts, at one point springing off into the new snow, then mounting
itself up front between Michael's legs. She doesn't need anything, not yet. Her cupboards are full. There is ample baby formula, nappies, medicine. There's still meat in the freezer, unlabelled purple and red packages now mysterious with permafrost, bags of summer berries and green beans. If she was in danger of forgetting the practicalities of a rural Cumbrian childhood, the Pacific Northwest continued her education – and seriously. There is dry wood for the fire. She has cans and jars stacked deep. They will sit it out.

She keeps the radio on for updates, a lifeline. All over the country airports have closed, schools, hospitals are running skeleton crews; the economy is haemorrhaging. Every day there's a debate about why England can't cope with extreme weather conditions, while in Berlin and Kiev and Japan flights leave on time, the workforce remains productive. The government has ordered salt from abroad, which will arrive by tanker ship in May. Not so across the border. Calling in to the morning programme, the new transport minister says Scotland is equipped and faring well. The ploughs are out; the roads are gritted. Glasgow airport is open for business, flights to Heathrow are being redirected there.

Charlie burbles over the sound of the radio. He wants her attention. She learns to become verbose, to blether. He likes her voice, understands something about it, if not language. She reads to him, all kinds of books when repeating the same baby prose begins to send her crazy, a gory thriller – she stops when the serial killer begins to dismember a victim. His eyes are huge and preverbal. He makes long, purring, grating sounds, trying to talk back. She reads her own book chapter to him, edits it a little as she does so. She even sings, her voice flat, tuneless, but does she not owe him disinhibition, rhymes, the silliness of the nursery?
One two, buckle
my shoe, three four, open the door
. . . If she stops, he protests. She is desperately in need of sensible conversation. She calls Lawrence, but there is no answer. She calls Alexander. Chloe answers.

Carrick 205, hello, Chloe Graham speaking.

As if she is answering the phone in the 1950s. The vintage chic of landlines.

Hi, Chloe; it's Rachel.

Hi, Rachel.

Are you off school?

There is no school.

They speak in a friendly fashion for a minute and then Alexander takes the receiver.

Do you need rescuing?

No, I'm alright. How's it there?

One catastrophe after another. Some idiot crashed through the bridge into the river, had the first responders out with the defibrillator paddles. The pub's run out of ale. There'll be a civil war any moment. How's Charlie?

He's fine. He's driving me nuts. He wants me to talk all the time. I could read the phone book to him and he wouldn't care.

There's laughter down the line.

Yeah, I remember that stage.

Shit. He's awake. I have to go.

Alright. Call me back if you need rescuing. Or if you want to talk dirty.

The snow begins to melt and the ice beneath reveals itself like broken glass, the weapons in a Saxon hoard, instruments of havoc. The country begins to move slowly, to right itself again. Then, more snow. Huge white floes, like a nineteenth-century
dreamscape. Everything stops.

In the middle of it, away from the malady of humans, the wolves sit watching the red deer moving across the moor, high-stepping daintily, testing each foothold. They assess the prospects of the hunt, judge the expenditure of energy, the resistance, the lack of traction. The herds keep to the best routes, ground where the snow is thinnest, where they will not have to flounder to escape. Since autumn, their behaviour has changed rapidly. A new nervousness has arrived; the running past has caught up with them. Ra and Merle watch from a high vantage point, ready to accelerate down the slopes and across the valley bottom, muscling through the drifts, bipartisan hunters of the mountains and the plains. But there is a refractory quality to their watching. Below, the deer pass by, single file, ears twitching, eyes glimmering black. They move safely on. A carcass lies close to the entrance of the den; another hunt is not yet necessary. Several times during the month they've been locked in a tie, rear to rear: their season of cold union.