The Wolf Border(64)

Three. Four, maybe.

He ticks a box – some kind of survey or study project. Then he offers to sit next to her, like a substitute partner. She shakes her head. Alexander had offered to come that morning, too, but she’d declined.

Either he turns or he doesn’t, she’d said.

He, is it? Reckon I could do it, and save you the trip.

She’d smiled at that, thinking he probably could. All the cows’ cervixes he’d manipulated, reaching in to find the struggling hooves and ankles, then deeper, to the sloppy, upside-down head. The brute force of calving.

What at first feels like a deep massage becomes more like a rearrangement of abdominal wall and organs. Dr Nirmal pushes and rolls, pushes and rolls, inch by inch, concentrating, checking the position with the ultrasound. Rachel tries to relinquish control. She thinks of Binny, swearing as she tried to locate, by touch and stretch, the recoiled elastic in the waist of Rachel’s school trousers. Bloody thing! It’s gone all the way. Here, madam, you try! You’re the one who snapped it! It is frustrating and bewildering, that at these times she can’t stop thinking of her mother, who would have been a grandmother, and no doubt amazed by the prospect.

You’re doing really well, the doctor says. Almost there.

Rachel breathes. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The baby’s heart rate increases as the procedure continues, healthily, perhaps even indignantly. It is moved, to the transverse position. Then at an upright angle. Finally, after twenty-five minutes, the head is down. Dr Nirmal finishes and removes the expensive gloves.

Feeling alright? she asks.

Yes. I think so. A bit –

Like a loaf of bread?

Yes, actually.

Rachel is helped to sit up slowly. The obstetrician writes in the maternity notes and then leaves. The medical student asks a few more questions, then leaves too. The cannula begins to itch in the back of her hand. She and the baby will be monitored for an hour or so then allowed to go home. After a while, Jan knocks and comes halfway into the room, leaning round the door.

Success?

Seems so, Rachel says.

Jan jabs her thumb up, like a teenage boy.

Good one. Now, just stay that way, little one. No cartwheels, please.

How about you? Rachel asks. Success?

Yes, I better get back in; she’s nearly on the go now. See you next week, luvvie. We’ll talk about our options then.

The door closes. The building radiates quiet, though is discreetly busy, departments bustling in other wings. Her mother’s final hours were spent here, in the AMU of the same hospital, while the medics did everything but resuscitate. Binny was not cogent, Rachel was told by the care home manager; she probably saw nothing beyond the thick walls of her unconsciousness. She wonders if Lawrence feels easier about their mother’s decision to end her life – they have not talked about it. She imagines Binny lying on a trolley, the tubes, the report of machines, the final call made. An old woman in her eighties, no one knowing anything about the life she has lived. Lawrence arrived an hour after she was declared dead; she struck out alone, which would not have scared her. Now, Rachel will probably give birth in the same hospital, and a little piece of Binny will continue on. The prosaic event of birth, being replicated millions of times the world over, every minute of the day, except that it is happening to her, and it feels extraordinary, rare, nearly impossible, now that it is so close.

*

A week of suffering gigantism and soreness. Her abdomen aches. Her lower vertebrae feel displaced, and there’s a grinding feeling against her ligaments. Her bladder goes into overdrive. The sensible portion of her brain kicks in and she stays home, does not go to the wolfery or the office, or even try to get into the car. She reads, lies on the bed surrounded by a mountain of stacked pillows, or wallows in the bath. The delivery van brings groceries. She cannot stop eating apples, four or five a day, until her stomach gripes. She cancels the breakfast appointment with Thomas – now is not the time to tackle him – the fence has been mended, and she wants to concentrate on the release, be as fit and rested as possible. It feels almost like training for a marathon: the endurance, the daily limits, the stairs almost defeating her. She tells Alexander – kindly, she hopes – not to come. She is terrible company, she says. He still comes, after work; he brings fish and chips from town, cool and vinegary in the wrapper, delicious. They sit by the fire for an hour, not speaking much, watching the flames flickering in the grate, greenish from copper deposits in the wood. He fetches more logs in for her, hulking a great quantity in one go. She can’t say she isn’t grateful.

I don’t know why human gestation evolved like this, she says. If I were out there in the wild I’d get picked off in a minute.

You’d just have stayed in the cave, he says. On a pile of furs.

Two days later, Sylvia arrives with a basket of exotic fruit and best wishes from everyone on the project. There are pineapples and mangoes, dragon fruit – no apples. The arrangement looks like something out of a still-life painting.

I’m not ill, Rachel says.

I know. But Huib says you’re probably living on baked beans and toast. I’ve got to make sure you eat something good. I’ve got to report back. No arguments.

Rachel stands aside, and Sylvia carries the enormous basket into the cottage kitchen. They sit drinking tea outside in the garden, Sylvia in her expensive Karrimor jacket with the Annerdale project logo stitched on, Rachel wrapped in a tartan blanket, though she is if anything too warm these days, overheated by the extra weight and blood. It is the first insistently cold day of autumn, a true October day. Already there’s talk of a bad winter coming.