The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

bandages around her arched, horned toes and fasten her thick-soled shoes, as if readying a toddler for the outdoors. They will attempt to discuss Lawrence’s marital situation again, as any close female relations might: meaning Binny will complain and Rachel will listen and try to reason.
    I can’t bear that woman. He should never have proposed to her, she wasn’t even pregnant!
    He likes doing things properly, Mum – he’s conservative.
    Well, he didn’t get it from me!
    She will try to make a success of the visit, somehow. Each morning during her stay she has walked up the small hill next to Willowbrook and looked over the hills to the strip of silverishestuary beyond. She is not sorry she came, but she feels no closer to reunion of any kind, at least, not with her mother. Binny, too, is clearly not satisfied. Her daughter is beyond her understanding. Idaho seems to her a nest of right-wing extremists, which she cannot parse.
    What do you mean no one pays tax? Are these Indians bloody Republicans, too? I blame Thatcher. You’re all her children.
    Rachel tries to explain, again. She goes where the work is, she goes where there are wolves. Her mother wants something from her, something she cannot ask, or does not understand. Binny keeps trying to speak, in her brusque way, to open up and get at the meat of things.
    Now she spills tea into the saucer as she manoeuvres the cup onto her lap. She spills sugar from not one, but two heaped spoonfuls – Tate and Lyle, pure refined white, the real thing, Binny remains a Londoner to the bone. One stroke, one cancer, and dodgy waterworks, versus years of smoking and bacon fat, sugar and salt. Is that such a bad equation, Rachel wonders. It is not. Though damaged, Binny’s tremendous body prevails; she still enjoys . The spoon clatters round the edges of the cup as she stirs. A good daughter, what is that, Rachel wonders. She might not be able to unearth any tenderness towards her mother, but she can at least be companionable.
    Actually, I agree with you, she says. The female of the species usually chooses the male, and you could argue true power lies with the decision-maker.
    Comments such as this have, in the past, resulted in exasperation. You’re always on about science. Why don’t you talk about people more? Where’s all your blood going, my girl? Upstairs is where . Occasionally her mother takes credit for Rachel’s intellect, forproducing a smart, go-getting daughter. Today, rather surprisingly, she simply asks a question.
    So. You’re happy at that place, then, doing what you do? Well, you seem like you are.
    I am.
    I haven’t ever been.
    To America? Did you want to go?
    No. Never fancied it. Africa, though, before all the nonsense, now I would have gone there. No wolves, eh? Just lions and elephants.
    Binny caws. Rachel dips the stiff ginger biscuit into her cup, lets the fluid rise up and soften the crust. English biscuits, hard as relics, like something from another century.
    Actually, there are, she says.
    They are the most distributed predator on Earth, she could say, but she refrains from lecturing.
    Well, you’ll like getting back to it. Better than some kind of glorified estate-keeper here. I don’t know why he’d want to spend so much money on that, anyway. And if you worked for him, you may as well join the Tories.
    He’s a Liberal Democrat.
    Binny leans forward, painfully. There’s a dribble of tea on her chin.
    Same thing. No, it wouldn’t be wild enough for you.
    No.
    She is still astute, knowing – she might mean something other than professional preferences.
    I could have gone to Africa, Binny says. I had the opportunity. Don’t know why I didn’t. No point regretting it now. You always liked getting away though, so off you went. Didn’t like takingorders, even at school. Never did do as you were told. That job – it’s not your kind of thing.
    Rachel glances