If he had been drinking, Daddy would come to her room in an unpredictable mood, his taking more aggressive, his silhouette in the doorway somehow larger, more frightening. He would take off his belt; she’d hear it unthreading through his pants. The belt. That aged leather disengaging from the weak cotton loops. Ellie would feel herself unravel in the dark.
He must love me to do this… He must hate me to do this… Daddy, no…
Love was a rumour, something made up for the serialised audio books and love songs she had heard on the radio: of that, Ellie was convinced. Love was a Chinese Whisper that had mutated and deformed by the time it reached Ellie’s re-attached ear. Love was damaged and damaging; love was her father’s vicious words grunted into her ear late at night, ‘You’re a miniature of your mother… a filthy whore…’
If she opened her eyes, she would keep her gaze transfixed on the sinews of the cornices. Love was ambiguous in the dark, but hate was acrid and real. Any taunting dreams or illusions she had had about redemption and salvation had faded away, along with her childhood fantasies of Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. They had been cherished at kindergarten and when Mummy lived at home, but after Mummy had gone, they had been banished. Now it was stories from the Bible, of obeying thy father, of wrongdoers and evil. She had read of sacrifice and saw her scarred and mutilated body lying on an altar, Daddy atop her. This was her penance. She’d taken his keys; because of her, the dogs were dead and Mummy had left.
If he were in a maudlin mood, Daddy would listen to his records, Cash’s distinctive voice heralding the night. He’d croon along to ‘Cry, Cry, Cry’ before calling Ellie to his bed. She had wondered who he was thinking of and why he liked that song so much, but never dared ask.
Ellie realised she had stopped digging. How long had she been standing there, shovel in hand, lost in bitter memories? Here she was with a job to do and she was wasting her time with the past. She repositioned the shovel in the soil and drove her right foot down. She couldn’t find a rhythm; her movements were slow and awkward, and her arms and back were aching with the unfamiliar actions. The shovel felt as though it were made of pure lead, handle and all. The ground was hard, with small rocks and roots barring her way. Ellie bent to throw another grainy rock aside. Was it sandstone? She rubbed it between her fingers. Of course, she could check the encyclopaedia; there was a section on geology… Ellie groaned; her mind had wandered again.
‘Come on now, silly girl.’ She tried pressing her full body weight onto the shovel, but it made little difference. She was too weak. Daddy was right; she was useless, helpless without him. She dropped the shovel in disgust and lay down in the disturbed earth. As she pointed her toes towards the back wall of the enclosure, she wondered how big she had to make his grave. She stretched her legs out as far as she could. He’d always been taller than she, but had become stooped as he’d aged.
‘Forward or back?’ Ellie tilted her head until her chin was pointed upwards and she had an upside down view of the sky. Should Daddy’s head be at this end, near the doorway, or should his feet face the sun? Ellie scuffed her feet in the dirt. ‘Up or down?’
‘Here,’ she muttered, ‘I’ll have to dig to here, a bit wider here…’ She tried to scratch an outline in the dirt with her fingers. ‘Out to here.’ He had to fit. She would make him fit. Ellie stood and used the blade of the shovel to mark out a wider and longer boundary. She was suddenly glad he’d created such a space for the dogs. An image of their teeth, the sound of their barks, their growls, engulfed her and Ellie braced herself with the shovel. No, no more; they were gone. ‘Gone,’ she said as she kicked the rotted remains of their Hessian bedding to the rear of the enclosure near the fence. It was just her now. As she neared the back, she noticed the soil here held fewer rocks. She dug. The earth here was darker than the soil closer to the doorway, stained a darker shade, and it wasn’t a trick of the light.
‘Huh.’ Perhaps she had discovered a new coal seam in her own backyard. Perhaps she could dig herself a mine, like the one Daddy had worked. Her own colliery to match the one along the road where the trucks rumbled around the bends as they groaned their way up the hill.
A rustling outside caught her attention, but when she turned there was nothing, no one, no animals she could see. She had a vision of Maisie and Timmy playing in their yard. In the Before. Not now. Were the neighbours home today? With the one Daddy called ‘the brat’? Daddy had also called Maisie a brat and Maisie had been her friend. Could this boy…? No, she’d heard the neighbour’s car leave this morning, they weren’t at home.
‘Perce?’
There was no answering purr, no flash of his wiry fur. Ellie hesitated, hoping to see some sign that it was just the cat, or even a blue-tongue lizard, something in the brush, but there were no more noises. It had to be an animal, just an animal, it couldn’t be…
‘Daddy?’ Her eyes darted around the yard. There was no breeze and the leaves on the trees stood fixed to their branches. Shadows lurked under the overgrown shrubbery, but not a shadow large enough to conceal a grown man. Could he be out here? In his shed? Ellie held the shovel up—a barrier between her and this invisible threat. She counted to ten in her head. There were no more sounds. He wasn’t here, she told herself. Daddy is in there. She looked towards the house. He’s still in there.
The rustling noise sounded again, and as quietly as she could, Ellie placed the shovel on the ground. From next door she could hear the sounds of something in the yard, in the plants. Perce. It had to be Perce.
Ellie walked over to the shed and crouched down. Moving awkwardly, she scuttled closer to the fence. Parting the ferns, she peered through a gap in the palings, and stared. Percival was indeed in the neighbours’ yard but he wasn’t alone. Her cat, her beloved, traitorous cat was pouncing after a stick a boy was circling around them on the ground. The boy laughed as Percival caught the stick in his mouth and then let go.
His hair was blond, a little darker than Maisie’s had been, but his laugh carried echoes of her in its carefree warmth. So, this was ‘the brat’. He couldn’t be too bad, not if Perce liked him. Had he been left on his own? Ellie knew what that was like. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. No. She couldn’t call out. It was too much, too soon. The boy wouldn’t come in here, he couldn’t see her, no one could see her, she wasn’t to be looked at.
The back door opened and Ellie could just make out a slender, female arm.
‘I’ve finished now; we can go to the beach if you’re ready.’
The boy stood, dropping the stick and giving Percival a last pat, headed towards the house.
‘Finally, I’ve been waiting for a-ges,’ he spoke, drawing out the last word and eliciting a laugh from the woman.
‘Well, we can stay there all afternoon if you like, Dad won’t be home ‘til later.’
Ellie couldn’t make out the boy’s reply as he headed into the house and the door shut behind him. Counting to ten to make sure no one came out again before she moved, Ellie leaned back, away from the fence. They’d been home. The boy and the woman. The boy whose hair and laugh reminded her so much of Maisie. And he knew Perce. Perce knew him and wasn’t afraid, not like Percival had kept away from Daddy.
Daddy. She’d forgotten him. Forgotten his rules.
Ellie listened until she heard the sound of the front door to the neighbours’ house open and close, and heard the sound of their voices fade. They were off to the beach for the afternoon. That gave her time. She stood, returned to the enclosure and picked up her shovel. Exhaling, Ellie hunched her shoulders and resumed digging, losing herself in a steady routine—dig, turn, dump the soil, dig, turn, dump the soil. She had a job to do, and she would do it well. She could be tough. Her grandmother had seen to that.
‘You’ll have to toughen up, girl. You’ll be a woman soon, not that a man would ever want you, not the way you look, but you might as well learn how to take
care of one.’ Her grandmother had dropped her hands to her stomach as she had winced in pain. ‘You’ll be taking care of your father. I won’t be around for much longer.’ Grandmother Clements had grown thinner over the years, but thicker and bloated around the stomach. Her next words were muttered and Ellie wasn’t sure if she’d heard them correctly. ‘It’s eating me up from the inside.’
Grandmother Clements had wordlessly gifted Ellie with scraps of cloth, as well as pencils, paper, and thread, even as her complaints had continued about Ellie’s rough stitching and poor patterns. Ellie had lived for those times when her grandmother left for the day so she could create her dolls and stitch humble outfits for them, and not sit painstakingly sewing and then unpicking the flaws in the shapeless dresses her grandmother demanded she make for herself. Ellie had wanted these fabric friends to fill the lonely hours indoors. In time her fingers had become as calloused and tough as her grandmother’s, their roughness a fine match for the scar tissue that wove its way across her face and arms, marking her outsides. On the inside she had felt dulled, in danger of becoming as brittle and cold as her grandmother, and Ellie desperately needed her dolls to bring in the light.
One day her grandmother stopped coming. She’d dared to ask Daddy why.
‘It’s just you and me now. You’re a teenager, you’re big enough to stay alone. You know the rules.’
Ellie didn’t ask when Grandmother was coming back. She didn’t ask how big was big enough to stay alone. She knew the rules. She became used to the routine of just her and Daddy. Preparing his breakfast each morning, packing his lunch, preparing his dinner, Ellie knew her role. After he had left of a morning, deadlocking the door after him, she would unconsciously relax her jaw, unaware of how tightly she had been clenching it, and gradually the tension in her neck and shoulders would release—a tension that would rebuild as she listened for his car each afternoon. When her father returned home, Ellie would surreptitiously watch his face to gain a sense of his moods and try to anticipate his needs so he would have no cause to be angry with her.
The phone had rung one night and Daddy’s voice became smooth and friendly, the voice of a stranger.
‘Yes, yes, I understand,’ he had said, his voice low, ‘I think she must be referring to my sister who died years ago. She never got over it.’ He had paused before continuing, something making his face tense. ‘No, no, I don’t have a daughter. No, it must be something Mum’s made up in her confusion… Yes, a shame.’ Another pause and oddly, he grinned. ‘Isn’t there something you can give her for these delusions? I mean, it’s palliative care now…Yes, thank you, Matron, thank you. Good night.’ He had been chuckling when he had put down the receiver. He had winked at Ellie who had stood silently in the corner of the kitchen whilst her father had been on the phone. Never make a sound. She knew the rules. Her father had ruffled her hair as he’d walked past her.
‘Mad old bat.’
Men stood around the pool table in the games room, away from the gaudy poker machines downstairs. The unnatural incandescence and clamour of the machines was muted in this nondescript part of the club. A few elderly women sat at one of the tables, raising their voices to meet ever-deafened ears. Arthur walked past them, feeling their eyes bore into his back as he made his way to the bar. There was a mah-jong table in the far corner of the room, and seated around it was a serious-faced group of four older Asian women, their black-and-silver hair wound into buns. The buns were pulled tight, but not tight enough to have straightened the lined and weathered faces. Arthur ordered a beer, turned his back to the barman, and surveyed the room. The air was thick with decades of lives, of memories spurring satisfaction or regret, of long-standing feuds, friendships, and cliques, with everyone keeping to their unofficially designated positions.
‘The game’s not over yet.’
‘Did you hear about Vic’s family?’
‘The funeral…’
‘Order seventeen is ready. Order seventeen, bangers and mash with gravy.’
Arthur let the voices wash over him, mingling with the clicking of the balls on the pool table. The accompanying soundtrack gave him the illusion of company, though he spoke to no one. He turned back to the bar. These people were just hollow shells of men and women, who, he supposed, thought that he was one of them. Another worker who had never risen through the ranks, never been given a fancy title or a company car or even a gold watch just before the door shut behind him. Pack of old fuckers. He was not like them. He had done things they could never imagine.
He took a sip of beer. He could tolerate these people for a while. It beat spending another day shut in with Ellie. Some days he hated the very sight of her. Maybe there would be someone here from the old days, from the mine, who would remember him. Not a friend. He didn’t have friends. He didn’t need them. He could never let his guard down. He’d never been able to have anyone over for a drink; he could only meet folks here at the club, but every now and then it didn’t hurt to have a chat. You never knew what you might find out.
He spied a familiar face shuffling towards the bar. Old George Barnes, from the mine. It had been years, but George recognised him. Arthur gestured with his glass to the barman and ordered another, handing it to George who took it with a nod.
‘Cheers.’
George had been with him the day of the gas explosion, that long-wall mining attempt that had gone horribly wrong. The crew had set up with two-legged supports, but their capacity was too low. Mistakes were made: that was what one of the bosses had said after the event. Mistakes that cost lives. George had been livid. He had been issuing instructions beforehand—‘The seam’s three metres thick here. C’mon fellas, get a move on. I know it’s fucked, we’ve just got to make it hold.’ Arthur had been contemplating the grunts, the sweat, and the infernal black dust that coated every surface inside and out, which had become such an elemental part of his life. He had been picturing the dust inside his body, blackening his organs in steely soot. He had inhaled so much, worn and swallowed so much—it was another ugly feature of the life he had inherited when his father had died.
A fiery wave had seared his eyes. Men were yelling, screaming, and he had stood stock still in wonder. One man had burned alive. Two others died later as a result of their injuries.
‘Move it, Clements.’ A man had shoved him forwards, perhaps not even registering that Arthur was watching the unfolding disaster with a look of almost pleasure on his face. Arthur had made a grimy statue, white teeth visible in the hellish tunnel, before the heat and jostles of fleeing workers had rushed past him and the instinct for self-preservation surfaced from its tightly coiled position beneath his pore-black skin.
‘Shock,’ another voice had said. ‘Get some water into ya.’ Arthur had survived. Arthur always did. Apart from a deeper blackness scoring his skin, he had emerged unscathed, without a mark upon him.
He had often thought that going out in an incandescent blaze beat the lingering deaths of the miners who succumbed to diseased and poisoned lungs that could no longer contain the tumours flourishing within. His father’s death had been quick. Before they had even laid the body to rest, his mother had announced that fifteen-year-old Arthur would have to leave school and bring in the money. Time to grow up. To become the head of the household. Be a man. That suited him fine.
Arthur had met George on his first day. Instructed to stick close to this man, only three or so years older than himself, Arthur had followed George down to the crib room. He had watched the conveyor belt trundle its haul of prized cargo in a never-ending stream past his eyes. He had assumed that he would find life as a miner dull, yet he had sensed the inherent danger and grown strangely attracted to the dark world underground, where it was midnight no matter the hour, where men reigned and understood the way the world worked. That life was hard. That strength was power. Arthur had learned to love the life beneath the mundane rules of the surface.<
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Fire, earth, air, water. Under the ground, the earth was his.
‘Haven’t seen you in a bit, Arthur.’ George wiped his mouth and pointed towards a table where a drained beer glass stood unattended. The men walked over.
‘Been keeping to me self, George. How about you? How’s the family?’ Without waiting for an answer, Arthur raised his glass and sipped the cold, amber liquid. It was always a safe question, an expected politeness, asking about someone’s family. He never cared what the answer was, but he would ask anyway. Play the game.
‘We’re keeping well. Nothing to complain about, not really.’ George rubbed his chin as he spoke. ‘Saw the grandkids on the weekend. They get taller and louder each time I see ‘em, God love ‘em.’
Arthur nodded, but grandkids weren’t something that he’d had to worry about. He had taken care of that. No more mouths to feed in his house; no crying, rowdy kids there, no way.
‘You were married once weren’t you, Artie?’ George looked at Arthur curiously. Arthur grunted. No one had called him Artie in years.
‘Had a daughter too, didn’t you?’ George stared at one of the stained cardboard coasters on the tabletop, as if staring into vacant memory, willing the names to come to him. As if names and their owners were harder and slower to find these days. ‘What was her name? Helen? Ellen? Something like that.’
Arthur took a swig of his beer and didn’t reply.
George looked at him quizzically.
‘Ellie,’ Arthur muttered.
‘She… Something happened, didn’t it? What was it now?’ George toyed with one of the coasters on the table. ‘She was attacked, wasn’t she? Bitten? Something terrible…’
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