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, for producing 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 taking orders, even at school. Never did do as you were told. That job — it’s not your kind of thing.
Rachel glances at her mother, then away. Is this an exercise in fond memory or chastisement? She can’t be sure. They were always contrary beings and never really knew each other as adults. But Binny is under no illusions about the nature of the visit or their family choreography. She is simply getting-down-to-business while her daughter is at hand. One thing the woman has always been good at is directness. You’ve got your own money from the milk round, so use it. We’re going to have to put the dog down — no, stop crying and look at it, Rachel; look, it can’t even walk. Ask for the combined pill, it’s better. I’ve got to leave in five minutes, how much does it hurt, Rachel?
Rachel?
No, you’re right, it’s not my kind of thing. But it was worth a look. I’ll probably leave before breakfast to miss the traffic tomorrow.
Rachel.
Binny reaches across the table and takes hold of her daughter’s wrist, firmly, as she used to when she wanted to stop her running away after an argument, out of the house and onto the moors.
I hope there’s something more than following those creatures about all day. I hope there’s something more for you. You aren’t to give up, my girl.
Rachel waits, uncomfortably, until her mother lets go.
What, like a husband? Didn’t you teach me how to avoid them?
There is something unintentionally harsh in her tone. The joke is wrong, if it even was one. Binny makes a startled, indignant noise and alters position in her armchair. Leakage. Too much tea. Rachel leans forward, as if to help, then stops. What can she do? The body breaks when it breaks. The pads her mother wears are dense and absorbent, but there is probably no way of accepting such a loss of function, the warm wet shocks. Binny grunts impatiently.
It’s no laugh, getting old. Let me tell you now. I hate it. You will, too. Get off the bus when it’s time.
She could take her mother’s hand, perhaps, and try to forge something in their last hours together. But what could she say? The good memories are not the usual ones, of demonstrative affection. We used to walk for miles on the moors. I remember the backs of your legs, your strong muscles. I remember trying to keep up with you. It is all too far back in the past, and inarticulable. She does not take her mother’s hand. Instead she finds herself repeating a line she read once, in a poem, in a book on a shelf in a house where she spent no more than a few illicit hours.
Everything tends towards iron.
A nameless man, asleep in the slurry of sheets, his legs sprawled. A random piece of text found while she roamed wakefully, before dressing and leaving. She could remember more if she wanted to, about him, about all of them. But the line was beautiful, and felt meaningful.
What? What did you say?
Binny is leaning forward on the seat again, hunched, almost crouching, wanting something from her daughter, if not intimacy then a marker of some kind. It is within Rachel’s power to deliver it.
Never mind, Mum. Listen, you know that bad knee I had as a child, whenever I was growing — that lump of cartilage that used to swell up. You remember? It used to keep me up all night and you’d spray it with that awful stinking hot stuff. And you’d bandage it up so tight, I couldn’t even bend it! Anyway. It’s come back. Maybe I’m getting taller. What do you think?
She stands and straightens her back.
Taller? What?
Binny peers up at her daughter, her brow avalanching towards her eyes. She does not understand.
What, she says. What?
She does not understand, and then she gets it, her daughter is fooling around, kidding with her, and suddenly Binny is laughing, barking, like a crone, which soaks her gusset and leaves her wheezing.
You are a silly beggar, she says. You really are.
Rachel sits down and smiles and drinks her tea. The truth is, from time to time they did get on. They lived together in the post-office cottage for eighteen years. They burnt pans, left rings in the bathtub, argued like murder, and squabbled over who would mind Lawrence. But sometimes they got along. Sometimes they laughed.
It’s amazing the levels of human kindness that suffice, Rachel thinks. This will be the moment she will take away and think of as success, of a kind. Looking down over the black coast and frozen wastes of Labrador, with a plastic wine glass in her hand and the in-flight film sounding tinny inside the headphones, she will remember this laughter and think, yes, that was her mother, revealed. The gamey woman smelling of urine and sweat, cackling in the chair, was Binny. Fuck the doctor and the orderly and all the other doom-mongers. There was still brightness in her eyes.
THE RESERVATION
The airport is a brown stone building, compact and utilitarian, with one desk serving Horizon Airways, a hire-car pick-up kiosk, gift shop, and a small coffee counter. The sign above the arrivals gate reads Welcome to Nez Perce Idaho. Kyle is waiting for her on the other side of the plastic cordon, one of a few dozen people standing in front of the squeaking conveyor belt waiting to greet travellers or collect luggage. Denim, snakeskin, expensive suits and briefcases, braided hair: the usual commuters and residents mill around, regional traders and ranchers, the exceptionally rich. Kyle is tall, taller than anyone else, his hair tied back above his neck, hatless. He waits, hands in his pockets, not especially watching out for her, nonchalant almost. His presence is alarming. She was expecting to get a connection to Kamiah, then call for a lift. Left Paw, she thinks, bad news. She walks over and drops her bag next to him.