The Wolf Border(6)

Here you go, present from the Reservation. I think it belonged to a hawk owl.

At dinner, the cogent residents make a fuss over Rachel, asking about her work and her life. It is apparent they think she is some kind of veterinarian, though her mother is perfectly capable of explaining. They ask whether she is married or has any children. No and no, she says. Oh well, she’s still young, someone comments. Binny snorts.

Nearly forty!

Rachel carefully lays her knife down and reaches for the salt.

Isn’t that how old you were when you had Lawrence? Elderly primagravida?

Laughter from the other ladies at the repartee, the mother–daughter spat. Does she have a boyfriend?, they ask. Rachel shrugs. No. She thinks of the centre workers’ jokes about relationships: ‘Pissing in tandem’, like the urinary markings of the breeding pairs. But she holds her tongue. Despite the residents’ enjoyment of that which is mildly risqué, such an observation would not be appropriate at the dinner table. Among these leached, desiccated beings, she is already feeling too burlesque, too live. The woman to her right – Dora – a tiny wobbling creature, takes hold of her wrist and informs her that Binny is a very popular member of the Willowbrook community, one of the fun personalities, a good card player, a huge flirt. Dora maintains a lucid flow of conversation, pats Rachel’s arm, and name-drops as if she will recognise the people being spoken about, as if Binny keeps her in the loop. While the ladies cluck and gossip, her mother remains silent, scowling, pushing apart a piece of fish, trying to lift the grey skin away. There’s the soft clicking of dentures and the scrape of cutlery. The meal progresses interminably. The food is boiled and blanched, easy to digest, but the exercise of eating still seems too rigorous for most. Almost every resident has a box of pills next to their place setting. Statins, anticoagulants, pain-killers, steroids. Her mother’s medication is for high blood pressure and the ruined bladder. She hasn’t taken Herceptin for fifteen years; is deemed no longer at risk. Her left breast is whole; the right was never reconstructed. The surgery heralded the end of an era for her mother; either she lost interest in men, or they in her. Rachel notices very few men at the home, but then longevity is not their strong suit. Opposite her is a woman in a gaping blouse, her chest furrowed and crêped, her face vacant. She is helped from time to time by an orderly. There are a couple of empty chairs at the tables and the health of whomever is missing is openly discussed. Such-and-such has fallen, broken a hip, been hospitalised, has a bowel obstruction, infection, isn’t expected to return.

Rachel is past hunger and so tired that cruelty begins to creep in. The knotty hands and flaccid jowls, the drooping and slippage of body parts, begins to look grotesque. The tablecloth is garish with sauce stains. They spill. They tremble. They are ghouls that have passed over the borders of worthwhile existence into demented limbo. Such life-support isn’t natural, she thinks. They should be assisted. Last year she and Kyle performed an autopsy on Nab, the oldest male in the Chief Joseph pack, who was killed by a young adoptee, Tungsten. The collar was still signalling; they got to his body quickly, so he was fresh on the slab, slack, his hind legs gristle-edged, the penis retracted. On his forelegs were old battle scars. The bite marks in his neck were not survivable. But humanity’s demise, she thinks, is dreadful. We eke it out, limp on, medicate, become expensively compromised. For humans there will be no final status fights, no usurping, no healthy death. Decay continues, on and on. Only merciful ends come quickly or during sleep.

After dinner, she and Binny get ready for bed and squabble about who will use the bathroom first. Though a shadow of herself, her mother will not relinquish authority.

You look like shit. Black circles under your eyes and everything. Just get to bed.

I’m fine. I have to spend days on end awake, when I’m in the field.

You’re my guest and you’ll go when I say, my girl.

My girl. Rachel is too tired to fight – why stymie what little control Binny still has? She showers and cleans her teeth. She can hear her mother bickering with Milka, the Polish orderly, in the living room.

The folding cot is hard and narrow, bowed in the middle, but after a moment or two the room stops kiltering, the static in her ears quietens, and she is unconscious. All night, she barely moves, waking only once in confusion, not knowing where she is. In the morning she is woken properly by light through the unclosed curtains, and Milka, getting her mother up.

Not much on the sheets today, Binny. That’s better. Well done.

Get that leg out of the way, Milka. Must you poke me about?

Rachel lies on the cot, looking out the window at the flat grey sky. She checks her phone. There is no news from Kyle, which isn’t a bad thing. The transmitters fail; sometimes they are pulled off; sometimes they give out. She imagines Left Paw climbing over boulders, bounding up off his powerful back legs, crossing the plains and forests, covering miles in search of a mate. Then she pictures him splayed in the undergrowth, muzzle open, eyes slit, blood around the entry wounds. Since the harvest quota was increased, the workers are never without worry, even on the Reservation where they are protected. The hunters still come for them in planes, or on foot, using electric calls and giving false coordinates when they turn in their tags.

The grey unobstructed sky seems unreal. England is unreal, a forgotten version, with only a few pieces of evidence to validate it – and Rachel’s memories. Even her mother can’t be identified. In an hour, the Earl will be taking t’ai chi, like a new-age prince, some kind of attempt to revolutionise a decrepit system. She can’t help but feel she shouldn’t have come back, even as a courtesy. She watches the sky and listens to her mother bossing the orderly. Don’t yank me, Milka! Do they do it this way in Krakow? Rachel gets up, stumbles through to the living room. On the radio the news headlines are being broadcast – the search for a missing child in the Midlands, release of the much-anticipated Scottish national white paper, the wettest autumn on record. There is only instant coffee in the tiny kitchenette. She makes a strong cup, adds sugar, waits for the bathroom. Her mind drifts back to Chief Joseph and the pack. By now they might have covered a hundred miles. Tungsten will be leading the others after the migrating deer, through the high snowdrifts, each using the same efficient track. The further north they go, the safer they will be.