The Wolf Border(57)
Very good, Thomas nods. Is there anything else on the agenda?
Rachel considers updating him on the levels of protest, the regular occult letters from Nigh, and the more organised legal correspondence from The Ramblers, though his lawyers will surely be keeping him in the loop on the latter. She decides against it. He has been successfully distanced from the public face of the project, and she wishes to keep it that way.
No. We’re in good shape, overall.
Excellent.
He claps his hands together.
And have they fallen in love yet?
He raises an eyebrow, begins to hum a tune. Love is in the air. Rachel smiles tolerantly, but does not find him funny. The spontaneous foolery of her employer, his hop-skip-and-jump attitude, still leaves her feeling awkward. She wonders if this is his persona in the House of Lords, too, whether he gets away with flamboyance and buffoonery, whether he prospers because of it in a climate of old schoolboys, all of whom aspire to or claim eccentricity in some degree. She thinks back to their original meeting, his studied attempt to win her over to the project. Since then, it seems his knowledge on the subject has gone into serious decline. But now that he has Rachel running things, perhaps he can afford to be less invested. It is perhaps his habit, to surround himself with experts, then dislocate.
They’re bonding, she says. I’m hopeful they’ll mate in the winter.
In fact, all the signs in the run-up to the release are good. The health reports are reassuring. The implants have proved negligible. They have been vaccinated. They are acclimated to the terrain, its hard carapaces and grasslands, via the microcosm of their acre. All that remains is for their human aversion to prevail.
And how are you, Rachel? Thomas asks. Not long to go now. We’re all very excited about our other new addition to Annerdale.
She has no wish to discuss the details of the pregnancy with him, especially in front of the group. But the tenor of estate membership is such that almost familial interest is taken in the workers’ lives, like a factory town, or Ford’s empire. The baby is being regarded as part of the fabric, part of the community – she knows, an idea both securing and suffocating.
I’m fine, thanks. Everything’s fine.
Wonderful. Anything you need, please just ask. Right, I better go. I’ve a tedious meeting across the border.
The Scottish referendum is in a few weeks and the Earl is part of the monetary committee. Rachel has heard him on the radio a few times; his position on independence withheld, talking about the cost of setting up new nations. Everything has overheated, politically; most days the news features fresh accusations and tactics, business leaders switching sides, spokespeople from the military, the judiciary, European representatives speculating on continued EU membership. Thomas leans down to kiss his daughter.
See you in Edinburgh, darling.
In the days that follow, the heat of summer lifts, and the sun becomes less concentrated. September. Rachel walks in the cool early mornings. Sometimes there is a text from Alexander first thing – he seems oblivious to any withholding on her part. They have spent a few more nights together – the arrangement practical, but affectionate and enjoyable. The trees fluoresce, as if in a final bid to stay green. There is already a tint of autumn about the roads, leaves beginning to gather and flutter along the verges, field-stumps rotting in the drizzle after haying. In the sky, a more complicated portfolio of colours: lilacs, yellows, like a warning – bad weather brewing in the Atlantic. In the hedges hang early sloes, unripened black drupes pinned to the spiny trees. She remembers Binny making gin with them; her mother could turn any berry into lethal poteen. The parties in the post office cottage were torrid, involved villagers with only the strongest constitutions, the pub diehards, the dancers. Binny would have gone down well at the Reservation parties, she had entirely the right constitution.
In Seldom Seen’s garden, the quince fruit is also immature, grey-white; the birds check on it regularly, covetously. Rachel begins to feel more like staying home, holing up, nesting, though she is unwilling to admit that’s what it is. She can feel little jointed limbs flailing under the skin of her belly, elbows, feet, the odd somersault as the baby spins. It’s extraordinary – the feeling of a life force breeching, trying to break the surface.
A different kind of weariness arrives, broken sleep, she has to sit up fully to turn over, and her pelvic bone aches, her hips go numb if she lies on either one too long. She manages two or three hours at most, a deathly unconsciousness when it finally arrives. Her dreams are incredibly vivid. Of Lawrence, lost on the moors: searchers looking for him on horseback, and she is one of them. She rides between the gorse bushes, calling his name. She has talked to Lawrence a few times since Emily’s visit, but the true nature of the incident is no clearer. The background static of anxiety remains; she is unused to worrying about her brother and does not know what to do. She dreams of her son, sometimes her daughter, in jeopardy, falling from branches, afloat on the lake like a burr of weed, or simply there, naked and kicking, in need of care. In one dream she gives the baby to a madman to mind while she goes to work, some cannibal from a ludicrous horror film. Then the madman becomes Nigh, who wears a wolf head and is in a wheelchair, IV tubing on a rack next to him. It will be OK, she tells herself, nothing terrible will befall the baby. She wakes breathless and furious with herself. The absurdity of it. But the good dreams of Binny persist, too, of a younger, helpful mother who never really existed. Is it forgiveness, or reconciliation of some kind? The dreams, so full of people. Perhaps the cottage is too lonely, she thinks. She has not made friends with any of the other expectant mothers in the district, has in fact only attended one antenatal class and missed the following two. She thinks about getting a dog, decides against it.