Sarah Hall - The Wolf Border

Let’s see about getting you a support belt. Not the swishest fashion item, I’m afraid, but they do help.

The session overruns; all Jan’s sessions overrun. Most interesting to Rachel during their time together is hearing about the strange phenomena of the job. The anecdotes, the decades of observed behaviour.

Don’t be surprised if you find yourself wanting to be in the smallest room in the house when you’re in labour. Box room. Downstairs lav. I’ve had women do the coal shed.

They have a conversation about the risks of the quarantine pen, but it seems belated. In any case, Jan is not the cotton wool and antibacterial type. Her area covers the west coast farmers. There is the issue of lambing; she has had one or two cases of Q fever, but if every pregnant lady in the county stopped associating with her husband’s livestock, farms would shut every week up and down the district, she says.

She flexes her sore leg in and out.

I might draw the line at coming in with those wolves, luvvie.

Her smile is all uppercase: a row of tiny, identical teeth sitting on her bottom lip. She will be a good person to have at the delivery, Rachel thinks. Her patients, bellowing and begging for pain relief, punching their partners in the face during the ring of fire, the associated fluids — what else is there to do but see the funny side? She reminds Rachel a little of Binny, a benign version of Binny. Or is it just that she has begun seeing her mother in strange and unexpected places, in women of a certain age, straight-talkers, grand dames. She has started seeing Binny in restless dreams, too, in a capacity not wholly unwelcome or unhelpful. Swimming in the river, gloriously naked, her missing breast restored. Showing Rachel how to squeeze and palpitate to make the milk come. Making jam! The madness of gestation, strange chemicals and hormones, the other side of the brain’s looking glass.

You’re a sensible lass, Jan is saying, so I know you won’t get all flearty when I say this. But I’m also going to show you how to programme in a set of emergency numbers, in case anyone else needs that information pronto. Better to be prepared.

Rachel nods and hands over her phone. Jan unlocks the screen and fiddles with the buttons — master of modern technology as well as midwifery.

Doesn’t mean people can get into your nudey photos and private stuff, she assures, but they can access names of loved ones, the hospital, me.

I didn’t even know phones did that.

Oh, yes. Air ambulance are always complaining when people don’t bother. No one thinks how hard it might be to trace families in an emergency.

She hands the phone back.

Pop your other numbers in now.

Not like Binny after all, Rachel thinks. Binny couldn’t even master ring-back or last number dialled on her landline. At the end of the meeting, Jan walks her to the surgery door, past a couple of other women in the waiting room at various stages of pregnancy. She points to a car in the staff row outside the health centre — a small, vulpine-looking vehicle, sporty, bright orange.

That’s me, she says. The Renault. She goes like the clappers when she has to.

Jan bids Rachel goodbye and good luck, as if she is about to undertake a race, and heads back inside. Will it help to like her when it comes to the birth? Rachel wonders. Or will she not care whether the devil himself is in the room, telling her to pant and push, holding her knees, getting the scissors out? It will help, she decides. It must.

*

By the second half of quarantine, the wolves have become much less nervous, smelling the meat being brought to them and anticipating the spot where it will be dumped. They come close in the wolfery, and do not strike back into the enclosure if a sudden move is made, or the gate clangs. Rachel and Huib rotate feed personnel and times when the carcasses are delivered. But the pair still slope towards them through the grass, heads slung low, cunning eyes. It is impossible to decoy, or approach in secret. They are too clever, hardwired; they know . Sometimes it is difficult not to believe they have additional senses, abilities not biomechanical — a kind of clairvoyance. Sometimes they are waiting in the right spot for the food the moment she has chosen its location and begun to approach. She has seen them turn to look and sniff before the wrapped deer in the Land Rover has even arrived, when it is en route, as if there is preternatural knowledge of the blood travelling to them, rather than the iron waft leaking from the wound, through hide and fur.

They discuss the matter with Thomas at the monthly review meeting in the Hall. The problem is presented and extra scare tactics proposed, so the carcasses can be placed more quickly, staff members won’t be as intrusive, and the wolves will reassociate their human keepers. Thomas listens attentively and seems regretful about the plan.

Yes, I suppose they’re not pets and shouldn’t act like it.

They’re not pets, Rachel says. It would be wrong to let them become any friendlier. They’re seeing too much of us. By which I mean, we’re seeing too much of them.

Shame, he says. It’s wonderful to observe them down there — they’re so magnificent.

She wants to remind him of the seriousness of the undertaking, the experiment he has committed to; he seems less focused. She wonders whether he has been visiting the wolfery out of hours, though he knows the schedule is restricted. Sylvia explains again the need for distance. Her tone is patient, and slightly confiscating — clearly she understands her father’s tendencies.

Daddy, the trouble is, if they get used to being around people, even if they aren’t completely tame, they might learn to scavenge, and we don’t want that. They have to remain as wild as possible, for their own good.

He smiles with tenderness and pride.

Yes, darling Soo-Bear. I do understand. How clever you are. No, you’re right, Rachel. Whatever you think best. These scare tactics — what do you suggest? Play Bach very loud?

Puccini, Sylvia says.

The Earl and his daughter laugh, a quiet conspiratorial laugh — a private joke about musical tastes, possibly. There are occasional tells between them during such meetings, but mostly Sylvia remains professional, and does not play princess. She works hard, reads up on the subject. But at times like this, Rachel is reminded that she is guesting on the project, that it is a year out rather than a year in for her.

There are a few reliable methods we can use, Rachel says. Including loud noises. My feeling is it won’t take much to restore a bit of caution.

Very good, Thomas nods. Is there anything else on the agenda?

Rachel considers updating him on the levels of protest, the regular occult letters from Nigh, and the more organised legal correspondence from The Ramblers, though his lawyers will surely be keeping him in the loop on the latter. She decides against it. He has been successfully distanced from the public face of the project, and she wishes to keep it that way.

No. We’re in good shape, overall.

Excellent.

He claps his hands together.

And have they fallen in love yet?

He raises an eyebrow, begins to hum a tune. Love is in the air . Rachel smiles tolerantly, but does not find him funny. The spontaneous foolery of her employer, his hop-skip-and-jump attitude, still leaves her feeling awkward. She wonders if this is his persona in the House of Lords, too, whether he gets away with flamboyance and buffoonery, whether he prospers because of it in a climate of old schoolboys, all of whom aspire to or claim eccentricity in some degree. She thinks back to their original meeting, his studied attempt to win her over to the project. Since then, it seems his knowledge on the subject has gone into serious decline. But now that he has Rachel running things, perhaps he can afford to be less invested. It is perhaps his habit, to surround himself with experts, then dislocate.