The Wolf Border(79)
No, he’s not a prick. He’s pretty great, actually. I worked with him at Chief Joseph. He was a friend.
Oh.
I just mean, that wasn’t the reason. I was the reason. I’m not very good at any of this.
He puts his mouth to the side of her head, his words muffle in her hair.
You’re very good at it.
He means the sex, or he is being overly kind about her level of effort. They do not ring each other regularly with news or for no reason at all, just to say hi, as lovers in the fast spiral do. It is Alexander who comes to her. She knows better than to assume, as she did for years, that men enjoy her casualness, her coolness, that it suits them better, or that they are less invested. It doesn’t take them long to sense that such an attitude stems from something else – a fear, a flaw, stuntedness. Finally, with Alexander, with the baby, or simply with her coordinates in life, the game seems up. She is exposed. Silence. She feels tension creeping in. The mood is still light, but something is slipping, spoiling. She tries to explain.
There was nothing really between us. There wasn’t a relationship or even the possibility of one.
There was something, Alexander says.
No, she says.
But why should he believe her? There is, after all, a baby: irrefutable evidence.
It’s alright, he says. Everyone has a past. I’d prefer Charlie’s dad to be someone you liked, someone decent.
You’d prefer it, she says.
A small flare of anger. It is not really a question, or a reiteration of his point. She is about to say more, that he doesn’t get to have a preference, that he is not in a position to choose, even theoretically, what kind of man he would like her baby to have been sired by, but she stops herself. He sighs.
Look, I think if you want to tell him, then you should tell him.
I haven’t made up my mind.
OK.
His arm is now stiff about her shoulders, uncomfortable; it should not be there but is stranded. The baby begins to cry, a faint inquisitive wail, quickly escalating. She moves away and gets up.
Do you want me to go to him? Alexander offers.
Not unless you can express.
She sounds like a bitch; she knows. How easily the attitude comes, once the mood is active, even in the face of amelioration, attempts to restore good terms. She looks down at him. He says nothing. His face has firmed, become slab-like. She goes next door, shuts the nursery door, leans over the crib, and picks up Charlie. Her heart is flurrying, the baby feels her unsettlement and struggles in her arms. It seemed unlikely she would ever argue with Alexander. No, not that: she has never really made it past a first argument with a man; argument always signifies her extraction. She has been happy these past months, and to imagine cross words and nastiness would have meant imagining the end.
She comforts the baby. She sits and tries to nurse him, but he screams louder. The wrong smell to her, perhaps – the residue of sex. Or Charles Caine is expanding his repertoire of mysterious complaints. He feels hot, tussles against her chest, spits out the milk. This is what happens, she thinks, when the embargoes are down. Things are said, stupid intimate dissembling things that do more harm than good. Perhaps Alexander will leave, she thinks. Of course he will leave; he is dressing right now, gathering up his phone and watch and wallet. Any moment she will hear the front door slam. Soon she becomes sure she has already heard it.
It’s a long time before the baby will settle. She takes his temperature, changes him, strokes his hair, adjusts the blankets. By the time she’s finished and returns to the bedroom, the desertion fantasy is complete and she is miserable. But Alexander is asleep in the bed. The lamp is still on. His glasses are on the bedside table, his legs splayed. She climbs in next to him. He stirs, turns, and puts an arm around her, the subconscious automatic of affection. She lies rigidly by his side, her hand barely daring to touch him, wanting to. I’m sorry, she thinks. I really am no good at this.
In the morning, Alexander brings her tea, as usual. She lies quiet and unmoving, as if asleep, still troubled, unable to fully embrace the reversal of disaster. Alexander goes to the bathroom to shower. She hears him coughing, blowing his nose clear under the stream of water, singing a few lines of a song – one of Chloe’s favourites, maybe. The baby sleeps on, exhausted by the night’s huge fit. She examines herself. You’re programmed to backstep, she thinks, to make them come forward, then to break fully away. She understands the dance – it has served her well, as it served her mother. But she cannot keep blaming Binny, not for the habits of a lifetime, not when she knows exactly what she is doing.
Alexander comes into the room, dripping wet, towelling his hair. He drops the towel on the floor and begins to dress. His body is familiar now, the vast chest with its dark central cavern, the long legs, and small buttocks. She does not love him. That is, she does not feel love as described by others, the high and low arts, not in relation to the person here in her room. But all that is misnomer, poetry, an unproved chemical; he has survived her tendencies; he releases something in her, if only a feeling of wanting another day, a feeling that the day with him is better than ordinary. She sits up, reaches for the mug of tea, and takes a sip.
Are you coming back later? she asks. After work?
He pauses in the lacing of his shoes and looks at her quizzically.
*
The weather deteriorates. There are days and days of snow, unlike anything the district has seen for decades. The condition feels eternal; in reality it is just three weeks of chaos. There’s a fast fall at the end of January – sticky, dense, a substance perfectly manufactured to mask the fields and fells, to stack against walls, blocking roads, and upholstering buildings. On the roof of the cottage hang precarious cornices that collapse with little warning. The garden is arctic, a lost world. On the estate, tractors cut through the drifts, leaving deep chasms in their wake, still impassable by car. The Penningtons’ helicopter is grounded, flights across the entire nation are grounded, and the Pendolinos south run at half speed, then are cancelled. More snow follows. Thomas misses the second vote on currency union. Supermarkets begin to run out of food. Then, the clouds disperse, the sky is as clear and dangerous as burning oxygen. Plummeting temperatures. The thermometer reaches minus thirteen at night. In the Highlands: minus nineteen. Petrol freezes in tanks. The death rate of pensioners soars; there’s talk of a flu pandemic, a deadly new variety.