The Wolf Border (37 page)

Is it absolutely necessary? he asks.

She again explains to him, as she did to his daughter, what the issues are.

Alright, he says. All I ask is that nothing happens too soon. You never know what the future might hold.

The sudden interference is annoying – it's a polite request but she senses the weight of the boss behind it. The future will hold exactly what I've outlined, she thinks. Unless he means expansion of the enclosure and the introduction of new males, separate packs, which will not be possible. He cannot encroach further into the national park – even he would be unable to acquire the land needed. She agrees to revisit the subject later in the year, but offers no further concession. A junior aid says something to the Earl and he nods and the call is finished.

There's a belated bloom of summer. The first weekend Alexander stays after Lawrence's departure, he walks around nude in the cottage and out into the garden, like a Scandinavian on holiday. The cottage windows are flung open, and giant white
moths flicker round the climbing honeysuckle. Charlie is pleased to have another man in the house; he's sociable, prattling, boyish already. Alexander hangs him by his chubby fists from the washing line, tips him upside down, makes him scream giddily, and vomit. He liquidises beef hearts for him, gives him a tiny, early taste of honey. She gets used to sharing the bed again. Alexander's back is a giant slab of muscle, disproportionate to his waist, his cock flops between his legs as he strides about. He likes sex in the mornings, before she is even properly awake, before the baby is.

There's been trouble with Chloe over the summer – hormones, early pubescence. He has not been sure how to handle it all, he confesses. She's been moody, embarrassed by the irregular show of blood, the flowery folded packages she must now keep in her bag, and the starter bra, which she refuses to wear. She's been fighting with her grandmother and staying at Alexander's house more. The previous month the family of her friend Lucy took her on holiday to Portugal for three weeks – on her return, she was sullen, did not go into detail but said she hated it, hated swimming, the sun, and hated her friend.

I don't know what went on, he says. I don't suppose you might want to see her for a bit? I think she thinks you're cool.

Me? Ha!

You are pretty cool.

She does not feel confident about her feminine communication skills, which are all but non-existent, but Alexander has been generous and supportive over the past year; she owes him the favour.

OK. Shall I take her to see the wolves again?

Yes! That would be great.

He kisses her.

I don't know, he says. I thought I was New Age. I thought I was a bloody feminist. All she wants to do is hang out with her horse and tell me I don't understand anything.

What should I say to her?

Nothing. Just talk shop. Just let her talk if she wants.

Rachel has not seen Chloe for several months, and the time has been transformative. When they go into the enclosure – only the two of them this time – the girl is less vivacious and uninhibited, though still sweet and clever. She has a layer of fat, proper, cupped breasts under her T-shirt; even her face is a different shape. Gone is the floral mac and crocheted animal jumper; she has on jeans, a white shirt, conservative high street items. She walks up the grassland slowly, as if aware of her body and its limitations.

It's nice of you to do this, she says. I know Dad asked you.

He did. But I thought you might want to see how they're getting on.

I do.

They take signal readings from the handheld device, locate Ra and Merle, and situate themselves on the hillside near the rendezvous point. Rachel sets up the portable telescope in the hope of getting a clear view. The juveniles are probably too big to interest a typical young girl, no longer puppyish and scruffy, getting on for two-thirds the size of their parents. They are now more guileful than playful. But Chloe is still interested, and not typical. The high definition of the telescope is enough to impress her – she can see their eyes, their whiskers. They do not remain in view for long, but run off, casting glances up at the hill.

I like how they move, she says. Sort of floppy but fast. Can they live without their parents yet?

It's perhaps a loaded question. Should the subtext –
I'm not getting on with my dad –
be addressed? Fall back on what you know, Rachel thinks. On the hike back to the car, she talks about the notion of intelligence and problem-solving. She tells Chloe about a wolf in the rescue centre in Romania that learnt to open its cage door by watching its caretakers.

How?

She pulled on the mechanism. A rope.

That's really clever.

Maybe. But how can we know it wasn't a reflex action? I mean, wolves and dogs tug on things. I bet you've seen them do it with slippers and anything dangling.

Yes. Our old sheepdog used to.

Chloe pauses, thinks for a moment.

But just because they do that doesn't mean it isn't clever to do it right then, on the lock. It doesn't really sound like an accident. She figured it out.

Rachel nods and smiles.

I think so too. It's called application. Some people think intelligence is learning to do new things using acquired skills. Do you still want to be a geneticist? she asks.

Chloe shrugs.

Maybe. I don't know. I'd quite like to be a singer.

Ah, right.

I'm not very poppy, though. I don't really look like a pop star. No sex appeal.

I've heard you sing. You have a great voice.

Thanks.

Don't, Rachel thinks. Don't succumb. She gets the sense Chloe would talk to her, intimately – that the grandmother has been
somewhat practical on the subjects troubling her granddaughter, but has fallen short: the generational gap. She feels for the girl, for her predicament. She is ahead of her school friends physically, the boys are commenting on her figure, there are embarrassing things going on she cannot control. It is a stormy, lonely place to be. She tries to remember what Binny did. Noticed the row of rinsed underwear on the washing line, bought a box of Tampax, and left Rachel to her own devices, probably. There were no heart-to-hearts. They walk in silence, and then Chloe asks, out of the blue,

Are you going to marry Dad?

Whoa! Well, I don't know.

There is, of course, no other answer. Rachel panics internally, tries to formulate a better explanation, but Chloe doesn't ask anything more on the subject and Rachel has no idea whether such a thing would be considered good or bad. They walk back to the car and drive to meet Alexander in The Horse and Farrier, where the girl orders salad for lunch and looks longingly at her father's plate of chips.

After come cool days, and glazed white skies. The swifts, late-leaving, migrate to other continents. Enormous spiders come into the cottage – a couple of times she gets to Charlie only just before they are inserted into his mouth, their legs thrashing in his little fist. The wind gets up, hurricanes over the Atlantic that disperse before reaching the edge of Europe. Autumn crackles in the air in the mornings and evenings, and the canopy of the woods begins to smoulder, yellowish.

The Annerdale project is officially a year old, as is her son. She throws a birthday party for Charlie, attended mostly by
adults – Lawrence, Alexander and Chloe, Huib, a few similarly aged children from the area whose mothers she is linked to but rarely sees. Rachel tells herself she must do better at finding playmates for Charlie: a local crèche, a baby swim group, something. She must do better at making friends herself, with mothers who are at a similar stage, wrestling similar problems. But the times when she has met them the conversations always seem awkward; once the subject of babies is finished, there is little in common. She doesn't watch television, she has no husband, her work is bizarre. She watches Charlie smear chocolate cake across his mouth, his heels pounding against his high chair, mumbling some kind of happy eating song, eyes huge. They have each other – is that enough? It's hard to remember a time when he wasn't hers, the central part of her life. At other moments she looks at him and he seems like an alien, randomly dropped from the sky – unrecognisable and incredible.

The weather finally breaks. A week of proper rain and wind, thunder. The lull is over. With the blusters and the change of pressure comes a strange cycle of dreams. She dreams of the baby, worming on the blanket when he was first born and she barely knew how to hold him, and a world after catastrophe; she is looking for his buried hand in the rubble. Then she dreams she is still pregnant, she feels him moving in her, the slippery jutting of his legs. The next night, a dream where she cannot stop the white, surprising milk, litres of it, soaking through her shirt, though she is old and grey-haired and her breasts are atrophied. She wakes, goes back to sleep, and has a nightmare: her abdomen is gaping open like a damp red purse – she cannot find the surgeon to stitch her, she limps around holding it closed. Alexander shakes her awake.

Hey, it's alright, it's alright.

What time is it?

Little after three.

Is he crying?

No.

Wind in the branches outside. She sleeps again and dreams of wolves. There are dozens, loping across the fields, not Merle and Ra and the Annerdale litter, but wolves of the past – Tungsten, Left Paw, Caligula, the Belarus scavengers. They are part of an impossible number, a super-pack, like a modern fable. The fields are full of black water. The body of a cow floats, its ribs lathed raw, like the beams of a boat. Then they are in a town, running through deserted buildings, scrambling over walls and fences and tables. The dream becomes tortured. There are snarling fights; they inflict terrible injuries.

She wakes hot under the covers and with a headache – the heating has kicked in overnight with the sudden drop in temperature. Alexander has left for a conference in Northern Ireland. A cold cup of tea sits on the bedside table. Someone is banging on the front door. She glances at the bedside clock. Six-thirty: dawn is barely firing and the cottage is murky.

The banging continues. She gets up, pulls on her jeans and a T-shirt from a pile on the chair, looks in on Charlie. He is gripping the toy lion and sucking his thumb, asleep. She goes downstairs and opens the door to a neon-jacketed police officer.

Miss Caine?

His high-visibility jacket is garish against the grey trees. His features are hooked and hollowed by shadow. Parked in the lane behind him is a police Land Rover, the top light silently flashing, sending blue arcs wheeling into the woods. In the passenger seat another police officer is talking on the radio.

Rachel Caine?

Yes.

After the turbulent night, the morning seems oddly weatherless. Stillness ascends skyward. The day does not feel cold. Lawrence, she thinks. Lawrence is dead. He's overdosed.

I'm Sergeant Armstrong. Sorry for the early hour. We were hoping you could come with us. There's been an incident.

She doesn't brace, though her arms cross automatically over her chest. I wasn't expecting it, she thinks, I'm not ready – though in part she was and is. She begins, in those few seconds, to try to un-love her brother. She didn't love him once, as a child, and it was easy then. The police officer waits for her to respond. Under his hat, shadows, she can't see his face. He has no eyes. The surrounding stillness is immense, as if they are both standing at the bottom of a vast structure. She didn't love Lawrence once. She can un-love him now. But it's too late. There are ectopic beats in her heart and her throat is clenching. On the kitchen table, her phone is ringing, vibrating against the wooden surface.

Yes, she says. OK.

Can you come down to Pennington Hall?

To the Hall? Why the Hall?

You are in charge of the wolf enclosure?

She shakes her head, then nods.

Yes, I am. Is Lawrence alright?

Lawrence?

My brother Lawrence. Sorry. I'm not really awake. Is he OK?

The officer nods, slightly baffled; he is also tired – the end of a night shift, or the beginning of an early one. Now, after all, there is movement, in the branches nearby, a fluttering, a fast wing. She still cannot see the man's face properly. She reaches out and
turns on the porch light, and he appears, an ordinary man in his late forties.

Miss Caine, are you alright?

Yes. I'm sorry, I thought you were – What's happened?

Are you in charge of the wolves?

Yes.

We received a report last night. A man near Sawrey driving home said he saw a wolf crossing the road in front of him.

OK, she says. There have been a few of those kinds of sightings, since they were released last year. It's usually a big dog off a lead. Was this person drunk?

Not to my knowledge. We might not have been so concerned, but there was another separate report this morning. Near the Galt Forest.

The feeling of weakness is still in her legs, but her heart has levelled, and the meaning of the officer's presence is registering. Upstairs the baby begins shouting from his cot. He can hear her voice; he knows she's up.

Right. You're taking the calls seriously?

We're following up. At this stage, we don't believe they're hoaxes. We need you to verify the location of the wolves. The Animal Protection Officer is on standby in case, he says.

Her phone is ringing again. Charlie is shouting louder.

Yes, fine. Come in. I've got to see to my son.

The police officer follows her into the cottage, bending under the low doorframe. He removes his hat. He is tall, has straight grey hair like a heron, and is beginning to develop jowls. One eye sits a fraction higher than the other. The uniform does not suit him, though he must have worn it for decades.

I won't be a minute, she says, heading for the stairs.

She goes up to Charlie. He is standing holding the edges of the cot, his sleep-suit askew, Roary turfed onto the floor. The tone of his crying changes when he sees her, downgrades. She stands for a moment within arm range, looking at him as he reaches out. She steadies herself, breathes. Not Lawrence. Lawrence is alive. She lifts the baby. She dresses him, then sets him back into the cot, at which he protests loudly. She goes into the bedroom and quickly puts on a bra under her T-shirt. Sergeant Armstrong is standing in the hallway, waiting, when they come downstairs.