The Wolf Border(73)
Rachel checks her phone for messages. There’s nothing from Sylvia. Her plan was to be an incautious, trusting mother, able to come and go without obsessive monitoring. In practice, it seems harder. They walk over the rough, gingery moorland, between granite slabs and patches of bog. Chloe has fallen back in a state of hyper-awareness, not speaking, scanning the terrain. Rachel leans towards her and speaks softly.
What we’d like at this stage is for them to want to have a litter. To be nuzzling up to each other and sleeping really close, that kind of thing.
Chloe turns and nods. Yes, she mouths.
They walk for an hour or so, looping round towards the lower bields. The signals are strong; they are close, but remain out of sight.
We might do better staying put and seeing if they make an appearance, Huib suggests. Let’s go over there. We don’t want to go too high, Chloe – they don’t like you being higher up than them.
Because it’s an advantage for watching things? Chloe suggests.
Exactly. And ambushing.
On a shallow rise, near a brisk upland stream, they sit and eat sandwiches. Huib and Chloe swap halves – ham for hummus – like bosom friends. For her age, the girl has an impressively high degree of patience. She does not fiddle with her phone and seem bored. Every once in a while she lifts her binoculars and scans the terrain, replaces them against her chest. They wait – forty-five minutes, an hour. The wind flushes past them, freezing, hinting at more snow. Chloe’s sleeves are dark with wet patches where she has wiped her nose. Her sniffs are regular and adenoidal. The light is fading. Rachel is about to suggest they leave – the ache in her breast is intense now, and it is not feeling like a lucky day. Then, a text from Gregor arrives. Wolf coming over Caston Bield. He must be close to where they are sitting, stowed like a sniper in the moorland grass. They raise their binoculars. Chloe tugs Rachel’s arm. She points.
Is that one? I think that’s one.
On the horizon, bracketed between two trees, Ra is standing looking towards them.
Bingo, Huib says. You have good eyes.
Chloe rests her elbows on her bent knees to hold the glasses steady. Merle walks up behind Ra. Her coat ripples in the wind. The pair take stock of the intruders, then begin along the hill, laterally, cutting down towards the river, picking their way past boulders and trees. They move mostly in plain view, disappearing for a time behind roods of stone, Merle smoking through the brown bracken. Ra’s pale coat glows in the winter gloom like halogen. They disappear into a grove of trees beside the river. The group keeps watching for a time, but they do not reappear. Rachel hopes it was worth it for Chloe – less than a minute’s payoff for half a day’s investment. But when she looks at the girl, she can see the excitement and delight. She is the first child in England to see wild wolves at large – surely there will be kudos for it at school. Huib holds up a hand and they high-five.
Let’s have those rhubarbs and custards, he says.
Chloe rustles around in her bag and brings out a handful of old-fashioned yellow and red sweets. Rachel hasn’t seen them in years, not since Binny sold them in the post office in big, dusty plastic jars. The thought makes her anxious to see Charlie. They walk back to the Land Rover. Huib and Chloe chat casually on the ride back to the office – it becomes clear the child is excessively bright, interacts well with adults who are essentially strangers. Rachel tries to ignore the burning discomfort in the glands of her chest, the wet feeling against her T-shirt and creeping unwellness. Mastitis. When they arrive back at the Hall, the baby is crying, an acute pitch of great distress. Sylvia is walking him in her arms backward and forward across the office.
He wouldn’t take the bottle, she says. I’m so sorry.
Rachel sits with him and nurses him. He latches, tugs hungrily – a savage pain passes through the swollen nipple, like broken glass crackling through ducts. She winces and adjusts position; all she can do is let him draw the milk. Chloe calmly tells Sylvia about the sighting. They avoided us mostly, she says, but when Alexander arrives, his daughter leaps all around him like a salmon up a weir, her chest skimming off him, completely shedding the afternoon’s guise of adulthood.
I saw them, Dad! I saw them!
*
Her brother and his wife arrive on Christmas Eve, bringing with them heavy bags from an expensive supermarket, masses of gifts for the baby. There is still a strain between them – perhaps it will never be fully corrected – but they are together, and it is Christmas, and Rachel can’t help feeling a minor miracle has occurred, simply because they are all together. Emily sets about baking, dusting the kitchen counters white; the savoury smell of mincemeat drifting from the oven. She seems to want to keep busy, task after task, wiping, washing up, making a clove orange for the mantelpiece. Rachel does not pity her. She has chosen to remain Lawrence’s wife, chosen to stick it out, and there is something honourable in that. She’d hesitated before inviting them up, but in the end there was the feeling that, with the baby, they should be together.
While Emily bathes Charlie, Rachel and Lawrence go hollying, taking with them a hemp sack, like old-timers. It is cold, cold enough to snow – the eaves of soil between the tree roots are whitening. The trees ring glassily with birdcalls. In the bare upper branches, the black rooks look almost like spawn. Down by the lake there are three very productive holly trees, haemorrhaging berries. A few of the lower branches have freshly clipped stumps; someone has beaten them to it. But there is plenty to go round. Rachel snips off reachable sprigs, while Lawrence shins up the trunks boyishly. Boughs come rustling down, stick halfway; he shakes them free with a foot.