The Wolf Border(66)
The paintings are small, furiously detailed landscape pieces, almost pre-Raphaelite in their hyper-focus, not Rachel’s kind of thing. They are hung discreetly around the Hall, mostly in the personal living spaces. Apropos of nothing, Sylvia points to the gable of the cottage.
There used to be a tawny owl up there. A juvenile. He’d come out in the daytime. He was always looking about as if he’d forgotten what the night was.
It sounds like the last line in a play. Sylvia smiles, a little sadly, and stands.
I’m going to fetch you that piece of fruit or Huib will be cross.
Could you make it an apple? Rachel asks. They’re in the fridge.
She watches Sylvia walk across the garden, sleek as a pike in her jeans. She has become used to her poetic, emotive language, her lack of inhibition, not unlike her father’s. On the surface she seems open and giving. But any intimacy soon dead-ends. The change of subject away from her family was graceful and deft. Maybe she would be a good lawyer after all, Rachel thinks.
*
The next ultrasound scan shows the baby back in the breech position, cross-legged, cramped, and Buddha-like. Rachel stares at the screen. There is no meaning to it, she knows; if there is meaning, it is anatomical, structural. Still, she cannot help wondering. An inherited stubbornness, perhaps: doing it my way. She discusses the situation with the doctor and Jan. A vaginal delivery is improbable; the hospital policy recommends a C-section. Jan, straight as ever, steers her in that direction.
Lord knows, she says, I like a good home video, but there’s really no point in risking it. They’re queuing up for a section these days.
Are they?
They are. Out through the sunroof. So long as you and baby are healthy, that’s all I care about.
Rachel can’t fathom it. Why anyone would want to have their abdomen voluntarily sliced open is beyond her. She had thought herself exempt, fitter, luckier. The date is scheduled for the surgery – three days after the release from the wolfery. Far too close for comfort. She will be given steroids, to bolster the baby’s lungs. Jan sends her away with an information sheet and a DVD to help her prepare, which she watches at home that night with a glass of wine. The video is short – thirty minutes, five of which it takes to get the baby out. In the theatre, the mood of the medical personnel and the mother is light. The woman talks to her partner; she is given a spinal block, screened at her lower half; she is calm, smiling, joking with the anaesthetist. The surgeon begins the procedure. The initial cut is vast, layers of yellows and pinks are latticed apart, an astonishing gulley made in the body. Less blood than one might have thought. The smeared gloves reach inside. An assisting surgeon pushes down on the top of the woman’s abdomen. Feels a bit odd, the patient says. A helmeted red mass is pulled out of the hole, not without force. The trailing creature is taken to one side, respirated and cleaned very quickly, then it is brought to the mother, whose face is all tenderness and joy, and tucked nakedly against her breast. The crying father supports it. The woman is emptied of placenta, suctioned, folded up, and stitched. There’s something macabre about the combination of the wound and the alertness of the patient. Something amazing, too. Afterwards, Rachel feels queasy and cannot drink the wine. She rings Alexander, but his phone goes through to messages. Come on, she thinks, get it together. Binny would never let you get away with such nerves.
The following day she rallies. Though she is not due in work, she gets up and goes down to the Hall, where the team is meeting with the BBC cameraman, Gregor Carr. They are all in the office, drinking tea when she arrives; she apologises for being late.
No bother, Gregor says to her. It’s a busy job you’ve got on there.
He gestures to her now magnificent bump, stands, and the two shake hands.
We’re delighted to have you here, she tells him.
Delighted to be here. I love this part of the Lakes.
He seems humble, though has every right not to be – the many awards he has won for his patient filming, and his remarkable location work. He is one of the most sought-after men in his profession. She is a fan. Even Huib, usually unruffled by fame and prestige, seems in awe. But the man in their midst emanates grace, is deferential, inclusive; he chats easily, asks questions about the wolves and the staff. Of late, he has been in the Himalayas, working with snow leopards – Rachel has seen the now famous clip of the fat-horned mountain goat being pursued along a near-vertical fissure, the big paws of the cat swatting its back legs from under it, the goat skittering downward in a hail of debris, being lunged upon, then dragged up and across the rockface to the leopard’s cave. All at a staggeringly high altitude; three months’ vigil, camping in a dizzying, sickness-inducing zone, a world above clouds. The Invisible Scot, as he is known among his associates. Animals behave as if he were not there, rutting, fighting, exhibiting moments of extreme gentleness. Gregor is smiling serenely at Rachel. He has not let go of her hand. He keeps glancing at her belly. Her condition seems to be giving her special status. There have been several men, over the course of the pregnancy, whom she has met and in whom she has noted a wildly enthusiastic streak for reproduction, a very attractive masculine feature it turns out – Gregor is clearly another. He is small and compact, in his mid-thirties, though his hair is completely white, as if exposure to the elements has taken its toll. His eyes are near to black, striking in contrast. He is both frail and hardy-looking, like the son of a vicar, or a free climber. The Annerdale wolves are a tame commission for him, almost a busman’s holiday, but he has taken the assignment and over the course of the coming year he will make visits to the valley to film the pair, and hopefully, in spring, their litter.