The Wolf Border(12)

She arrives back at Willowbrook a little after 1 a.m. She enters the apartment quietly, opens the windows, lets the dense, airless heat flood out into the night. There’s a note on the coffee table in her mother’s appalling handwriting. Lawrence here for dinner. Where were you? Gone back to Leeds – he’s your brother! She sighs, crumples up the note. Typical of Binny to have planned this without telling her. And typical of Rachel not to have been there.

*

Binny will die soon; of this everyone seems certain. Willowbrook’s manager speaks to Rachel softly when they meet, with excessive pronunciation and compassion, as if in fact death had already happened. The young visiting doctor, who Rachel has a quiet discussion with in the corridor outside Binny’s apartment on his rounds, says they just need to keep her comfortable. And Milka, who attends to Binny’s intimate needs most days, informs Rachel quite straightforwardly that her mother is ready. It’s in the eyes. Nie jasne – no light. Even Lawrence’s intermittent emails have talked of there not being much time, if you want to reconnect. But upon questioning, the various care-givers have no definite information, there seems to be no fatal disease. Binny will no doubt set her own schedule. She will go on for as long as she cares to. Though she is clearly fed up with the incapacitation, if the days still prove interesting enough her heart will jab on, her systems will sluice away. Now, in the sitting room of the apartment, while Rachel pours tea into standard-issue china cups and rattles biscuits from their plastic sleeve – something of an afternoon ritual, Binny holds forth.

It’s all about choice, you see. Everything is, except birth – no one chooses to be born. Get off the bus when you know it’s your stop I say. I cannot abide this poor-me attitude. Didn’t get me out of Wandsworth. Didn’t help me after your father left.

She strains to speak, is lazy over her vowels. Her head nods intermittently. She still has her faculties but there are fissures in her memory, and in her stories.

I thought you were the one who turfed him out, Rachel says.

Binny grunts, but lets the comment pass. The skin on her forearms looks so frail, the veins so knotted, she might bruise simply from the press of a finger. Rachel slides a cup of tea towards her mother.

Women always have a choice, Binny says. I taught you that, I hope, if nothing else.

You did. You were Socratic.

With surprising force, her mother bangs a hand on the top of the coffee table.

Don’t get smart with me, my girl! Can’t we just have a conversation? You are such a clever beggar sometimes.

Am I? Right.

Rachel sits, and holds her temper. One more day before she flies back to America. The tension has been mounting all week. She is annoyed with Binny for, among other things, simply growing old. They have worked in their own ruthless, autonomous way for decades, orbiting each other only if it suited them, not required to show love or compassion. She will be obedient for the next few hours, she will be civil. Tomorrow she will bid her mother goodbye, for who knows how long. Meanwhile, she will try to behave as a good daughter. She will sit through another interminable meal and shuffle around the flower garden listening to Binny stammer, being polite to the other residents. She will help her mother fit pink orthopaedic bandages around her arched, horned toes and fasten her thick-soled shoes, as if readying a toddler for the outdoors. They will attempt to discuss Lawrence’s marital situation again, as any close female relations might: meaning Binny will complain and Rachel will listen and try to reason.

I can’t bear that woman. He should never have proposed to her, she wasn’t even pregnant!

He likes doing things properly, Mum – he’s conservative.

Well, he didn’t get it from me!

She will try to make a success of the visit, somehow. Each morning during her stay she has walked up the small hill next to Willowbrook and looked over the hills to the strip of silverish estuary beyond. She is not sorry she came, but she feels no closer to reunion of any kind, at least, not with her mother. Binny, too, is clearly not satisfied. Her daughter is beyond her understanding. Idaho seems to her a nest of right-wing extremists, which she cannot parse.

What do you mean no one pays tax? Are these Indians bloody Republicans, too? I blame Thatcher. You’re all her children.

Rachel tries to explain, again. She goes where the work is, she goes where there are wolves. Her mother wants something from her, something she cannot ask, or does not understand. Binny keeps trying to speak, in her brusque way, to open up and get at the meat of things.

Now she spills tea into the saucer as she manoeuvres the cup onto her lap. She spills sugar from not one, but two heaped spoonfuls – Tate and Lyle, pure refined white, the real thing, Binny remains a Londoner to the bone. One stroke, one cancer, and dodgy waterworks, versus years of smoking and bacon fat, sugar and salt. Is that such a bad equation, Rachel wonders. It is not. Though damaged, Binny’s tremendous body prevails; she still enjoys. The spoon clatters round the edges of the cup as she stirs. A good daughter, what is that, Rachel wonders. She might not be able to unearth any tenderness towards her mother, but she can at least be companionable.

Actually, I agree with you, she says. The female of the species usually chooses the male, and you could argue true power lies with the decision-maker.

Comments such as this have, in the past, resulted in exasperation. You’re always on about science. Why don’t you talk about people more? Where’s all your blood going, my girl? Upstairs is where. Occasionally her mother takes credit for Rachel’s intellect, for producing a smart, go-getting daughter. Today, rather surprisingly, she simply asks a question.