The Wolf Border(69)
There is the sound of crying, a pitch from a liminal realm, though she is sure she’s heard it before somewhere. She opens her eyes and lifts her head. There are surgeons at her waist, draped in blue, busy. The midwife is coming towards her holding a sheet in her arms; two tiny red fists are rising from the folds.
Here he is, the midwife says. He’s got a very good shout. He’s not sure about being in this world at all, are you?
She lowers the bundle towards Rachel, and Rachel lifts her hand and reaches out and touches the flailing arm. Blood warm. There is still blood on him, and the white vernix. His skin. His dark hair. His mouth is open – soft, asking tissue, like the gape of a bird. His eyes are tight shut as he wails, and there is a tremendous crease in his forehead.
You’ve got a little hero.
Rachel nods. She cannot stop looking, as if seeing him will confirm it.
Can I have him?
Just a few more bits to do, the midwife says, then I’ll bring him back to you for some skin to skin and we can really get going.
She moves away and Rachel rests her head back down. Don’t take him, she thinks. Give him to me, he’s mine. She watches as he is administered to. Is he alright? He must be alright. They are placing him on the scales, checking reflexes. She wants to get up and go over there, pick him up. The surgeons are at her waist, taking too long. She doesn’t care. There seems no need for anything else now. There is no wound. The only wound is life, recklessly creating it, knowing that it will never be safe, it will never last; it will only ever be real.
FOLLIES
December. She has become the servant of winter. The early darkness keeps her home, wrapped up warm by the fire, the lights blazing. She nurses the baby. There are colossal yellow clouds above Annerdale, loops of sleet, and serious snow on the fells. She does not go out. The last few months the world has come to her: deliveries of food and equipment, the midwife and healthcare worker, the men in her life, work. She nurses the baby; he takes an hour to feed, falling asleep halfway through, waking, continuing. She reads while he suckles. The cottage keens in the wind, the woods outside creak and rub. If it weren’t for the double-glazing, the wifi, and mobile signal, she might be in another century. Outside, too, there are wolves, no longer medieval – she can hear them calling occasionally from the enclosure, or imagines she can.
By 3.30 p.m., the sun has almost gone, its pale sump sinking on the horizon. Black wind at night, howling back, demonic almost. And rain, beginning to solidify. She worries about snow as she never worried before, worries about becoming trapped. She is unused to the long darkness – this first winter back in England is shocking, brutal, how could she have forgotten. Daylight feels incredibly valuable, if only she could access it. She leaves lamps on downstairs overnight. The baby sleeps in the Moses basket by her bed, within arm’s reach. At 4 a.m. she nurses him, while the darkness rolls past. It feels like the end of the world. Needles in her breasts and great pressure as the milk lets down. To have chosen love-enslavement to this little being means forfeiting everything.
He is Charles Caine, a family name, though no one knows it. To give a title to another human being is to acknowledge history, or to refute it – to say, we err, but forward we go, improving, hopeful. A full, dark head of hair. Long legs. One of his ears is folded over inside, like a shell, in some cultures lucky, in others, a bad omen. He is exceptional company; that is to say, he demands everything of her and is given it. She nurses him. She changes him. She nurses him again. He likes the firelight, turns his head towards the flames. He is beginning to differentiate colours now, beginning to smile, though many of his expressions remain less happy as he tries to absorb the world’s visceral information. He dreams, grimaces. She nurses him, at one hot breast, then the other. He is at his most immaculate afterwards: composed, bow-mouthed, his chest rising and falling, fists clenched as he sleeps. One in three hours given over to active care, she was told: a low estimate. She has buried the bellybutton stump next to the quince tree.
She can carry him for longer periods in the sling now, without the ache in her abdomen and back. He lies against her side like a warm, external organ. Below, the scar itches. A majestic scratch, still red, but unbelievably small given its yield; one buckled section where the suture alignment was off, or hurried, closed by a junior – it doesn’t matter. Now and then there are sharp electric jolts as something knits back together, or nerves resurrect. The memories of those first days are hazy. The limping, stooping walk, with a nurse on her arm, to the cot to change his nappy, down the ward corridor. Sitting on the toilet, terrified to shit. Cramps as she first tried to nurse him. Small bodily triumphs she could not have imagined to be so meaningful. In the kitchen drawer is the thin subcutaneous cord with its blue beads – a surgical trophy, removed by Jan, that she has not thrown out. Her flesh sags over the wound, but is retreating daily.
She nurses the baby by the fire and reads reports sent to her by Huib and Sylvia. Ra and Merle have found their range and are tracking the herds. They have denned; a good indicator for mating come February, the coordinates almost exactly central in the enclosure. She makes a note – the pups would then be due late April, perhaps early May at Britain’s latitude, a sixty-day gestation. The abandoned deer carcasses in the enclosure weigh less than a third of their original body weight; they are being stripped, efficiently. She reads but it is hard to concentrate. Charlie is mesmeric. He draws the eye, for no reason, like a newly unwrapped gift. Everything else retreats – there are no other stories. The story is the child. She puts her mouth on the soft fusing crown of his head. She wishes he would sleep so she could sleep. She wishes he would wake, prove that he is alive and animate, see how his eyes find and recognise her face.