Sarah Hall - The Wolf Border

If you think of anything else, ring me at the station. It might be an idea to check things more regularly, once they’re inside. Set up more cameras.

A paternal note has entered his voice — faint, anticipatory caution. The call-out now may have been a waste of time, but he can foresee trouble, and does not want to have to chase down escaped predators.

Kids, Michael says again, shaking his head. It’s silly season. They’re bored stiff before they get back to school and looking for stuff to bugger around with.

The young constable chips in.

We have had a lot of tombstoning this year. They just pulled a lad out of Thirlmere last week. He got caught in the dam mechanism.

Bloody idiot, Michael says. And it’s not just themselves they get killed. It’s the fellas going in after them.

They make their way to the cars in the clearing. Rachel checks the clock on her phone. Almost ten. The morning feels like a waste. She will barely have time to go back home before the appointment — but she must, the bag she has been instructed to bring in case she is admitted to the ward is sitting in the cottage hallway. She is hungry and her bladder is uncomfortably full. From the copse comes the earthen, muddy aroma of decay — roots, rot. A few bright leaves drift downward from the canopy. The policemen get into the Land Rover and head back towards the main road. No doubt they will have much to discuss on the long ride back to the station: the enclosure, Lord Pennington’s extraordinary wealth. The young officer was right, Rachel thinks, it is Jurassic. The Earl is a behemoth among ordinary men; he resides at the apex, above all trophic levels. She checks the time again.

Michael, do you mind dropping Huib off? she asks. I’m not going back that way.

She needs to urinate and does not want an audience. Michael shrugs.

Fine.

I’ll hopefully see you later, she says to Huib.

Yes. Good luck.

Huib opens the passenger door and Michael’s brindled lurcher jumps out, begins to sniff the ground and scout about, its tail held rigidly behind it. The dog steers along scent trails, past Rachel, and towards the woods.

Tess! Michael calls sharply. Tess. Git.

The dog looks up expectantly, her big, soft ears folding forward like wings. Topaz eyes, a long, slender, upturned nose — one of their ancestor’s closer-looking cousins, though Michael would not want to hear that. She is high-haunched and handsome, leaning slightly forward, in readiness.

Git, Michael says.

The dog scrambles up inside the utility van.

I’ll follow on after you, she tells them.

It’s a D lock on the gate, Michael says over his shoulder as he gets into the van. Just fasten it shut behind you.

She watches them drive down the narrow lane, then finds a nearby dell in the woods. The sound of the van dies away. All is quiet. The ground underfoot is plump and springy, upholstered with moss — rising up, the musty smell of wet bark and fungus. There are frilled orange brackets growing around the trunks, berries, dusty blue and blood red. She squats and relieves herself, the weight of the baby making it awkward to hold her position — she leans back against a tree. The branches rustle behind her, the lipping wind or birds flitting between trunks, something stepping back under cover. There’s no one there, but she suddenly feels self-conscious, watched. She stands and looks into the trees, their dark old republic. The perfect environment for ambushing lynx, or bear. She would like to believe Thomas, to think that the country as a whole will one day re-wild, whatever its new man-made divisions created at the ballot box. She would like to believe there will be a place, again, where the streetlights end and wilderness begins. The wolf border. And if this is where it has to begin in England, she thinks, this rich, disqualifying plot, with its private sponsorship and antiquated hierarchy, so be it. The ends justify the means.

She walks back to the car, looks up towards the barrier. She doesn’t really believe the attack was random. Whoever went for the fence must have known the topography of the estate; they knew this section was off the beaten track and there would be no witnesses, no one to raise the alarm. Little else about the attack makes sense. It is too early in the project to have been a genuine threat. Perhaps Michael is right, perhaps there was nothing more to it than opportunism and boredom, a lark. But in less than a month the wolves will be out. It was a near-miss.

*

Thirty-seven weeks. The baby is breech. They have decided to try an external cephalic version. The obstetrician, a small Indian woman, walks Rachel through what will happen, the risks — abruption of placenta, reduction of blood in the umbilical cord — though these are low. Chances of success are about fifty-fifty. If the procedure is too uncomfortable or if the baby cannot be turned, they may try again with an epidural, they tell her. She signs the consenting paperwork.

In the procedure room, she is cannulated and given terbutaline to relax her uterus. Jan pops in to see her as the preliminary ultrasound is underway.

You’re probably going to feel like a piece of dough, getting kneaded, she says. But you’ll be fine — Dr Nirmal is very good. She has magic hands.

Jan wiggles her fingers. Her hair has been dyed an unnatural shade, something between redwood and plum; her scalp glows with the colour, in need of a few shampoos to calm it down. One of her ladies is giving birth in the midwife unit, not in any particular haste, it seems.

I’ll come back in a bit, she says.

Rachel tries to make herself comfortable. The placenta and levels of amniotic fluid are checked, and the obstetrician begins. The magic hands are small and strong. She puts on pressure-sensing gloves, feels for the baby’s head and buttocks, pushes upward away from her pelvis. Rachel tries to breathe slowly and not tense. The discomfort is bearable. She breathes deeper, in through the nose, out through the mouth. A medical student is in the room, observing and making notes, a horribly young-looking man, not altogether interested, possibly just rotating through gynaecology. He asks her to score her pain, on a scale of one to ten.

Three. Four, maybe.

He ticks a box — some kind of survey or study project. Then he offers to sit next to her, like a substitute partner. She shakes her head. Alexander had offered to come that morning, too, but she’d declined.

Either he turns or he doesn’t, she’d said.

He, is it? Reckon I could do it, and save you the trip.

She’d smiled at that, thinking he probably could. All the cows’ cervixes he’d manipulated, reaching in to find the struggling hooves and ankles, then deeper, to the sloppy, upside-down head. The brute force of calving.

What at first feels like a deep massage becomes more like a rearrangement of abdominal wall and organs. Dr Nirmal pushes and rolls, pushes and rolls, inch by inch, concentrating, checking the position with the ultrasound. Rachel tries to relinquish control. She thinks of Binny, swearing as she tried to locate, by touch and stretch, the recoiled elastic in the waist of Rachel’s school trousers. Bloody thing! It’s gone all the way. Here, madam, you try! You’re the one who snapped it! It is frustrating and bewildering, that at these times she can’t stop thinking of her mother, who would have been a grandmother, and no doubt amazed by the prospect.

You’re doing really well, the doctor says. Almost there.

Rachel breathes. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The baby’s heart rate increases as the procedure continues, healthily, perhaps even indignantly. It is moved, to the transverse position. Then at an upright angle. Finally, after twenty-five minutes, the head is down. Dr Nirmal finishes and removes the expensive gloves.