Sarah Hall - The Wolf Border

Lost a bit of weight, too. You’re not living on hamburgers and chips, then.

Most of the time I am.

I did teach you to cook.

There’s a slur when Binny speaks, a glistening collection in one corner of her mouth. The stroke, three years ago. Somehow Rachel has managed not to register the impediment fully during their phone calls. Binny is trying to look her daughter in the eye, but her vision is shot, and she’s lost her height. You taught me to cook , Rachel thinks, because you never lifted a pan, and Lawrence was always hungry .

I hate cooking. You know that.

I suppose you just drive through those places in your car.

Sometimes. And I’m an expert with a can opener.

Oh, Lord.

Her mother appears to be stalled, as if she wants to turn round and re-enter the room but her body won’t cooperate. Or perhaps she is not quite sure whether to invite her guest in. Rachel looks down at her. This can’t really be Binny — the toxic, striking Londoner who charmed and upset the northern villagers with her brassy left-wing talk and fashionable looks. Binny — the woman who broke up several marriages, casting aside the borrowed men as soon as they were hers, or keeping them as lodgers. The woman who ran the little post office as if it were a social club, giving out cups of tea and sexual advice, stacking the tiny entrance hall with controversial items — frosted cornflakes, condoms, the Guardian . Who raised a young daughter alone. Or, rather, let that daughter raise herself. Communist in the Tory heartland. Self-declared red-blooded sensualist, whose second child, Rachel’s half-brother Lawrence, left home at fourteen rather than argue with the men frequenting the house.

And now this — an impotent, leaking ruin. The reality is more shocking than anything Rachel had anticipated. And the feeling filling her is dire. Pity. Regret. The desire to return this sick-smelling woman to those years of virility and concomitant notoriety. Return her to the postal cottage, to the hoo-ha and scandal in the village, the old blue Jaguar always breaking down on the road to town, and the caravanner’s wardrobe. Restore her, even though it would mean all the rest, too. The arguments. The name-calling in school. Other women banging on the door. Not bringing boyfriends home because they would stare, and stammer through Binny’s flirtation, then be ardent upstairs in Rachel’s bedroom and not understand why.

Finally her mother turns, without catastrophe, and shuffles inside.

Come in then. Hope you’ve eaten. Dinner will be an atrocity. They think we can’t tell sirloin from slop. Most can’t, mind you. You’ll want to sit next to Dora — she’s the only one with any noodle left.

The same wit. The same vim. The bad old personality locked in the mortal tomb, struggling to get out. But it sounds like a practised line.

Dora. Got it.

Rachel picks up her bag and follows her mother into a small sitting room, the temperature of which is subtropical. A green leather armchair — her mother’s chair from the post office kitchen — is the only recognisable item from the past. Rachel has never been to Willowbrook before. It’s nice, as such things go, converted from an old hospital. Lawrence moved Binny in and cleared out the cottage. Lawrence takes care of things financially and does not ask Rachel for a contribution, much to his wife’s chagrin. She has not arranged to see her brother. She has not emailed him for a while, in fact, though Binny has probably kept him in the loop about her visit. Now her mother is struggling to get out of the quilted gown, inching it down over her shoulders, her hands more an incapacity than a useful tool. Rachel steps in to help.

No. Get off. I can manage. You have a seat. You look knackered.

Binny shuffles into the bedroom and comes back a few minutes later wearing a blue winged jacket, an astoundingly conservative garment. She has on a matt smear of burgundy lipstick and a string of beads. Is this the usual effort for dinner, Rachel wonders, or is it being made for the prodigal’s return and introduction? Binny moves slowly towards the chair, leans over it, positions herself, and sits. She sighs with the effort.

You better get changed. They’ll be serving in a minute. Then you can tell me what Lord Muck wanted. And who you’re on with these days. Not that wet one who works with you, I hope. He sounds like a prevaricator. The other’s far better — Carl, is it? You can put your stuff in there.

She gestures towards a door on the other side of the room.

Kyle. And he’s just a friend. I’m wearing this.

Right. Well, do something with your hair. It’s sticking up like a loo brush. Why did you cut it all off anyway? You look like a lesbian.

Rachel doesn’t rise to it; she has made a pact with herself not to for the duration of her stay. In the small adjoining room, a narrow cot has been made up. Willowbrook allows guests to stay for seven days, free of charge. She puts her bag on the bed. When she goes into the bathroom the smell of urine is overwhelming. There’s a grey wig with improbable nylon curls in a wicker basket on top of the toilet cistern. The towels on the rail are stained with talcum. The walk-in shower has a seat and a safety handle; an alarm bell is nearby. There are boxes of incontinence napkins. Flags of Rachel’s future, perhaps, if it’s all laid in the genes. Come on, she thinks, you can do this — one week. Back in the little spare room, she unzips the side pocket of her bag and takes out a mottled feather, which has survived the trip uncrushed. Her mother is hunched awkwardly on the edge of the armchair, waiting. Rachel holds out the feather.

Here you go, present from the Reservation. I think it belonged to a hawk owl.

At dinner, the cogent residents make a fuss over Rachel, asking about her work and her life. It is apparent they think she is some kind of veterinarian, though her mother is perfectly capable of explaining. They ask whether she is married or has any children. No and no, she says. Oh well, she’s still young, someone comments. Binny snorts.

Nearly forty!

Rachel carefully lays her knife down and reaches for the salt.

Isn’t that how old you were when you had Lawrence? Elderly primagravida?

Laughter from the other ladies at the repartee, the mother — daughter spat. Does she have a boyfriend? they ask. Rachel shrugs. No. She thinks of the centre workers’ jokes about relationships: ‘Pissing in tandem’, like the urinary markings of the breeding pairs. But she holds her tongue. Despite the residents’ enjoyment of that which is mildly risqué, such an observation would not be appropriate at the dinner table. Among these leached, desiccated beings, she is already feeling too burlesque, too live. The woman to her right — Dora — a tiny wobbling creature, takes hold of her wrist and informs her that Binny is a very popular member of the Willowbrook community, one of the fun personalities, a good card player, a huge flirt. Dora maintains a lucid flow of conversation, pats Rachel’s arm, and name-drops as if she will recognise the people being spoken about, as if Binny keeps her in the loop. While the ladies cluck and gossip, her mother remains silent, scowling, pushing apart a piece of fish, trying to lift the grey skin away. There’s the soft clicking of dentures and the scrape of cutlery. The meal progresses interminably. The food is boiled and blanched, easy to digest, but the exercise of eating still seems too rigorous for most. Almost every resident has a box of pills next to their place setting. Statins, anticoagulants, pain-killers, steroids. Her mother’s medication is for high blood pressure and the ruined bladder. She hasn’t taken Herceptin for fifteen years; is deemed no longer at risk. Her left breast is whole; the right was never reconstructed. The surgery heralded the end of an era for her mother; either she lost interest in men, or they in her. Rachel notices very few men at the home, but then longevity is not their strong suit. Opposite her is a woman in a gaping blouse, her chest furrowed and crêped, her face vacant. She is helped from time to time by an orderly. There are a couple of empty chairs at the tables and the health of whomever is missing is openly discussed. Such-and-such has fallen, broken a hip, been hospitalised, has a bowel obstruction, infection, isn’t expected to return.