The Wolf Border(106)
She breaks onto the road a few hundred yards short of the car and walks up the track, a little breathless, relieved.
Look, Charlie, she says. We’re back. We made it.
Speaking more to sedate her own nerves than to calm the baby. A new moon hangs above the forest. Despite the modern shine of the paintwork, the car looks as if it has been parked in this place forever. An artifact or caravan left stranded in the Galt by some older tribe. She opens the boot and puts the aluminium case inside. She takes out a bundle of blankets. It is not very cold and she has slept in far less comfortable places.
Home sweet home, she says to Charlie. What shall we do now? Have some milk? Read a story?
She changes him again by the light of the open car door – there are three clean nappies in the supply bag. She talks to him, tells him the plan, trying to convince herself at the same time.
We’re going to camp. We’re going to snuggle up and have a nice time. You’ll see Uncle Lawrence tomorrow.
He resists being put in the car seat again, so she sits with him on her lap on the back seat, telling the same stories from the two books in the baby bag, over and over until he is asleep. She sits for a while thinking, then sleeps, upright, leaning against the door, with Charlie in the crook of her body – the rough, musty blankets drawn around them both. Outside, uniform blackness, the moon has gone and there are no stars. At 10 p.m. – which feels like the middle of the night – her phone flashes. Reception enough that a series of texts have arrived. Several more from Huib and Thomas. One from her brother, saying, No problem. Tell me where to be and when. One from Alexander: Saw on the news. Hope you catch them.
Dawn wakes her, cold legs, and stiffness through her back. The car is cool inside and the door moulding feels damp with condensation, but against her side Charlie is a little engine of heat. The windows have misted with their breathing; she wipes the nearest one, looks out at the misty citrine light filtering through the woods. Small flocks of birds break above the canopy and disperse. She reaches onto the parcel shelf for the handheld tracker and switches it on. The battery is on half charge. There’s no signal. She switches to Ra’s frequency, but it’s the same. They have moved on.
She slides carefully from underneath Charlie, inch by inch, as if he’s a bomb she doesn’t want to detonate, and lays him flat on the back seat in the blankets. He stirs but doesn’t wake. Several times in the night he came round, confused, and she had to coax him to slumber again. She opens the car door quietly and gets out, stretches, walks about. The air feels newly laundered, fresh and green. She eats a banana, walks about to find reception, and calls the police number on the card given to her by Sergeant Armstrong, asks to be put through to the officer manning the enquiry. There have been no more reported sightings.
She opens the OS map fully and lays it flat on the dewy ground, charts the position from Annerdale to the point in the Galt where the signal was strongest, then continues the trajectory on into farmland and the hills beyond. Their tendency to travel in straight lines might help her to find them. There are few settlements on the other side of the Galt, mostly small lanes and B roads, until the A66, and the town of Cockermouth. After that, they will have to traverse Bassenthwaite and the North Western Fells. The rural tracts between towns will suit them, might give them cover. They will continue through Greystoke and Hutton, towards the border and Carlisle, the county’s only city. At the Solway Firth, they would be forced to follow the estuary inland and cross by road, where the water narrows, or perhaps at a shallow swim. Then, Scotland.
She plots a route on the closest roads, waits again for the wandering phone reception, and texts Lawrence, gives him a rendezvous point to meet and pick up Charlie. He is already up and texts back. There in one hour. It’s an ambitious timescale, almost heroic; if he makes it, he will not have observed the speed limit.
She hears Charlie murmuring sleepily and lifts him out of the car, hugs him, and talks quietly to him. He is clingy in the morning these days. She wipes his crusty nose, gives him some formula, and changes him. She walks him around for a few minutes – he is still unsure on his feet, likes to make stumbling rushes towards her, then collapse into her arms. She tries not to hurry him – she will need cooperation for the ordeal of the car seat. They examine some notable things on the verge – curling bracken, a puffball, which she sets smoking with her foot, some spindling toadstools.
After ten minutes, they set off along the bumpy forestry road. It’s a brilliant October day, with a flawless sky. The summit of Galt Fell rises behind her, the north face of its crags dark and fissured. Charlie begins an invented song; a tuneless string of noise with emphatic peaks and murmuring rests. He’s in a good mood; he likes travelling. He reminds her of Kyle that way. She begins to feel hopeful. Perhaps it will all work out. She keeps the receiver next to her on the passenger seat. The ruts begin to even out, and she picks up speed. At the forestry commission gate there’s an official warning sign set up – Danger, Please Do Not Enter. Too late, she thinks.
The car breaks free of the trees; she turns onto the road and heads into rolling pastureland, a stretch of fallow fields surrounded by drystone walls. The receiver begins to sound. She notes the coordinates. She keeps checking the map, follows a series of single lanes, lonnings that all look the same, webbed with brambles on either side. As she passes a gate, she notices three horses gathered in the corner of a field. She stops and reverses, looks through the wooden bars. The creatures are visibly upset. Their heads nod up and down, and they push against each other and vie for wall space. One rears up, a white crescent cupping its dark eye. Something has spooked them, and not long ago. She dials Sergeant Armstrong’s number, but does not get through, then drives on. When her phone rings, she pulls over.