II
Years later and miles away that girl’s brother trudges through mud to find her. It has been days. I have seen no trace but I still have hope.
The memory of that evening in our house in the copse does not loosen. The stills do not fall from their reel. Each face and each gesture confirms its shape. Nothing slackens.
As I walk I think on the sight of them all. I think on my sister with her slick of black hair. I think on my Daddy and the words he did and did not speak. I think on the others, all eyeballs and teeth.
I was right to run.
As I walk now I look about. The further I step from home the more uncanny the sights become. My eyes respond in kind. They fall upon the familiar.
I see the chimney stack and cooling towers of a power station on the horizon, gorging on the earth and spewing measures of caustic exhaust. I see a veil of ashen smog that hangs between land and sky and the leaden vapour pooling into mock clouds. I see a chain of pylons stretching from far-ground to foreground like a vast, disarticulated arthropod, and tethered shadows, more gargantuan still, lying upon the hills like the insignia of pagan forbears. I see bovine silhouettes shift steadily across meadows, hulking their uneasy weight from trough to furrow, and elsewhere, I see the dusk settle on the fleeces of grazing ewes like sparks from flint to tinder. I watch the land glow and the sky burn. And I step through it with a judicious tread.
I pass from Elmet bereft.
Chapter Three
We kept on with our silly childhood games long after we were much too old. Our copse provided the materials we needed and an undulant terrain in which to run and hide. In another world we might have grown up faster, but this was our strange, sylvan otherworld, so we did not. And that, after all, was why Daddy had moved us here. He wanted to keep us separate, in ourselves, apart from the world. He wished to give us a chance of living our own lives, he said.
We played at archery, like we were outlaws in the wood. After the house was built and Daddy had more time, he showed us how to make bows and arrows for ourselves, and explained which were the best tools to use. We made longbows that were almost the height of each of us and whittled from a single piece of hardwood. There was a lot of ash about but oak was better, and yew the best, Daddy said. He would pick a piece that had the right shape and then we would strip away the bark, the soft new growth beneath it, and then cut it down with a lathe, only shaving off a little at each time in case we went too far. We made our arrows with materials from the woods around. When we practised with targets we made do with arrows with blunt ends as we shot them against a hessian sack with a painted bulls-eye. But when Daddy hunted birds or rabbits or muntjac he needed a hard metal tip and had to buy them.
We made bows that we could use easily now, bows that would test and strengthen us and bows that we would develop into. Cathy could pull much harder than me because her arms were so long, even though I had the broader chest, even then. She did not flinch when the arrow was released and the bow string whipped at her arm, as it can do when it is hard pulled, when you are tired or your arm is not properly aligned. Or when you have the kind of arms that are so thin and supple that when they are straightened to their limit the soft, fleshy part with the blue veins at the crook of your elbows is almost convex. Both Cathy and I had arms like these. You release the bowstring with all the power it took to pull it back, and as the arrow is loosed it slaps against your left forearm. This is not just a skin pain. It goes deeper. I did not have much else on me but skin and so it hurt me in my marrow. Those painful vibrations that send waves through your bone, and then further.
But Cathy did not seem to feel it or else she did not care. She never wore a leather armband around her forearm and always kept her arm as straight as she could, so as to keep her aim, and so inevitably, because of her supple, almost convex arms, she would pull the string back to its full extension and when it was released it would slap with a loud crack against her soft, pale skin. It went on like that, with Cathy holding the bow with her arm turned towards the string and loosing her arrows so that that she was struck hard, again and again. Her forearm became red raw and so bruised that the grey and yellow blood that settled there almost made a complete bracelet that seeped all the way around, like her skin was stained with gold.
Still, she did not alter her method. Daddy became angry with her every time he saw it. At least, he was angry in the manner that feeling is expressed when it is mixed with love. Like sadness but with the energy for intervention. He would go over to her and take the bow gently away and sit down with it some way off. He would wait for Cathy to calm down, to stop breathing so deeply with the exhaustion of it all, and for her to go and join him on the ground, amongst the leaf litter. I would go over too and Daddy would pull out some crackers and a block of hard cheese and we would sit and eat them together, and then go back to the house.
Chapter Four
There was a woman who lived down the way. Her house was maybe a mile and a half away but there was only one turning between our road and hers so that made her a neighbour. She lived alone in a white house that had a window on either side of the front door and in the summer months sweet peas grew on trellises along the side of the house. There was a garden to the front and at the back. She parked her dark blue car on one side and on the other side a farmer’s field began where there were rows of dark cabbages followed by lines of beets.
Cathy and I were unsure of how she knew Daddy. We never understood why he knew anyone other than us, but they seemed reasonably acquainted, even though we were far from Granny Morley’s home now and I thought everyone would be a stranger.
That first winter came early, and quickly too. One morning in November when it was so cold that crispy ice strangled the drainpipes and windowsills, Daddy got us up just after dawn, and we walked out towards Vivien’s house, down the hill to our little lane and then along hers. I was wrapped up in two tartan scarves and a dark green fleece that I had zipped up to the top, and I held it tight against my chin to keep the warmth locked inside. Cathy had pulled thick purple walking socks up over the ankles of her jeans to shield her legs from the biting breeze and Daddy wore his usual coat with a woollen jumper underneath, and motorcycle gloves.
The walk down the hill was slippery as the frost on the soft tussocks melted beneath our feet, and we slid a few inches with each step. The morning smelt of wood and little else. The summer scents had been bottled by the cold. It was a clear day, though, particularly now when the sun was low, and bright rays cut raw across the grass. When we got to the path the trees cast long, precise shadows. The stones on the ground were not smooth but the kind chucked up by heavy machinery, and, little though they were, they sliced the light more precisely still.
We walked quickly to keep warm and I jogged on every few steps to keep up the pace. Cathy had been quiet since the previous evening but seemed to lighten as we lengthened our strides.
‘How do we know her?’ she asked Daddy.
‘Through your mother.’
We could say nothing after he mentioned our mother. We almost never spoke of her and his mentioning her was so rare that we did not know whether to take it as an invitation or as a warning. I could not detect either mode in his tone nor read his expression. He walked on impassively, while I looked up at him then down again at the path in front of us then up again at him, like our eager dogs who trotted at our feet and turned their faces up to their masters on every other step. The dogs looked at me and Cathy. We looked at Daddy.
Becky, who never ran too far from me, slashed her tail against my shins as she hopped in front of my feet. I kept kicking her, accidentally, then stumbling on myself so as not to hurt her.
Vivien’s garden had a neatness about it but looked natural. At first sight the ground was uneven and the rose bushes were strangled at the roots by shallow weeds but I saw that there were no fallen petals or dried leaves. Those had been cleared away. The grass stopped suddenly at the patio, trimmed severely at the edges to keep a clea
n line, parallel to a set of French windows.
Daddy knocked and Vivien opened the door and stared at us. She was tall like Daddy, but slim. Her hair was a thick russet and her skin so pale that you could almost see the blood behind it, the redness at her cheeks and the blueness at her eyes. It was honest skin. It was the kind of skin that could not hide a mark or a blemish or a sickness that lay within. She looked tired, either a tiredness from the early morning or a tiredness from a long life. She was perhaps forty, but seemed both older and younger, with irises that were both a bright green and a dull yellow, and an uncertain stoop that you see in both old ladies and adolescent girls. In the moment she stared at us, she inhaled deeply and exhaled quickly, as if she were conjuring a beginning or marking an ending.
‘I didn’t expect you this early,’ she said to Daddy, although her eyes still jumped between my sister and me. She turned to him now and smiled, and pulled the door wider to see us all better, and then to let us in.
Cathy took the invitation and stepped over the threshold, standing in front of the woman as she placed a long hand on each of Cathy’s upper arms.
‘You must be Catherine,’ she said. ‘I met you when you were a toddler and your brother was a baby.’
Vivien ushered Cathy through into the house and I took the step up into the hall.
She looked at me and took me as she had taken Cathy, firmly and with both hands. ‘Daniel. Come in.’
The sitting room was light despite the heavy green plants propped up on the windowsills. The French windows faced south-east towards the morning sun, and light poured in over the sharply edged papers that had been placed carefully on specific surfaces. There was a deep sofa covered by worn blue velvet, with two large sitting cushions. They dipped to meet each other in the middle but were still quite plump at their outer edges. There was a blanket on one of the arms with a scene stitched together with red and white wool but obscured by the folds. There was a carpet atop a carpet, one grey and fitted to the size and shape of the room, and one a set rectangle with tassels on the two shorter edges and a pattern of lines and angles that I would have sat down on and traced my fingers over were I younger or alone. There was a coffee table in the centre of the room and a round upright table by the French windows with a white cotton cloth and a tucked-in chair. There was a plate and a cup of tea or coffee on this table, and I supposed Vivien had eaten her breakfast there. There was a fireplace with a smoke-screen in front of it, and although there was a fire already made up, nothing had yet been lit. Fire tools were in a bucket on the hearth. Tongs. A poker. A shovel. A coarse brush. And triangles of compacted newspaper were stored in a small open-topped wicker chest, safely stowed in a corner away from the fireplace. There were some ornaments on the mantel, and I remember particularly a small clock with Roman numbers, whose face was set into a roughly hewn piece of limestone.
Daddy and Vivien came through into the sitting room to join Cathy and me. He had taken off his jacket and had his hands in his trouser pockets while she had hers crossed over her body with each hand on the opposite shoulder.
They were standing close to one another as if they were old friends but without the years of separation. There was the comfort of continuance between them. Yes, she was standing at his side but slightly in front, so that his arm could have been partially around her. I could not quite see but there might have been contact.
He opened his mouth. He looked particularly handsome today, within my own conception of what it was to be handsome, which I suppose came only from the image of my father.
‘Vivien were a friend of your mother’s,’ said Daddy again, seriously. ‘She’s going to teach you things what I can’t. She’s good at things what I aren’t. You’ll be spending your mornings with her.’
Cathy and I did not mind taking orders from Daddy. Sometimes we were more like an army than a family and he was not the type of leader to make you do anything for nothing.
Vivien looked nervous. She only seemed half on board, half off board. As she looked between us, weakly, her pink lips became whiter and she pulled them into a smile.
Daddy looked better pleased with his plan. He clapped his hands together. ‘Let’s get going then. I’ll be off for the next few hours. You can begin today.’
He turned and left the room. I heard a rustle in the hall as he picked his still-warm jacket off the coat stand and put it on. The door clicked shut after him.
Cathy’s expression was sour and she eyed Vivien suspiciously. Vivien loosened her grip on her shoulders and walked over to the small round table by the windows, the one with the tea and cake crumbs. She untucked the chair and sat down. She looked at both of us, but still mainly at Cathy.
‘I want to make these lessons, you know, fun for you both.’
I thought for a moment that she had said the wrong thing. Cathy stared. She did not raise her eyebrows or roll her eyes. She did not even purse her lips. She just stared. She felt as if she had been patronised. Slighted. I knew this because I knew my sister well, better than anyone, even Daddy, though he thought they were so alike in their hearts.
Vivien looked at Cathy seriously, unable to decipher the sudden silence.
But Cathy took Daddy deadly seriously in his attempts to train us against the world. She found a kind of solace in his tasks. She wanted to be every inch of him but believed what he said about how different she was, about how she had to be good at different things, how she had to find a different way of surviving. If Daddy thought Vivien’s lessons were important then she would commit herself to them, at least initially.
So Cathy stopped staring and came back to life, throwing herself into the moment.
‘What do we need to do, then?’ Cathy asked.
Vivien ventured a smile.
That evening Cathy and I went out into the clearing we had lived in before Daddy had built the house. It was still well-trodden but the earth was harder than it had been during the summer and the branches of the overhanging trees were thin tendrils. We sat on the cold stumps of a couple of trees.
‘I can’t think of owt worse than growing up to be her,’ Cathy said. She was talking about Vivien.
‘I thought she was okay,’ I replied. ‘She’s not very like us but I don’t know if that matters.’
Cathy didn’t answer me. She seemed sad, restless, and she cradled her mug of warm tea and looked into the liquid.
We had come outside because Daddy was in a dark mood and had shut himself up in his room alone. He had been light and brisk all day but as the sun began to set just before five o’clock he had taken a turn for the worse and slipped out of the kitchen quietly. We had not noticed right away and kept on with making the dinner. It was only when we had put the scrubbed potatoes inside the oven to bake and turned to sit down that we noticed he had gone. Cathy went out into the hall to see if he wanted any beer or cider to drink before the dinner was ready but found that the door of his room was locked shut without any answer from within. She had come back and when the food was ready we had eaten alone, leaving a plate for him covered on the hob. He stayed locked away long after we had finished, and I suggested that we go outside.
Sometimes he did lock himself away like that but we never knew why. Of course we assumed that he was troubled by something and did not want to share it with us but we could never really know because we never saw. I never saw my father waiver, never saw him lose control or stumble, and I took it for granted that I would never and could never see him cry. Perhaps he was different when he locked himself away. Perhaps he was more himself or less himself in those moments, whichever way you think of it. But I could not say for certain, because I never saw.
When Cathy did not reply to me I thought again about what she had said about Vivien, and tried to work out what she had meant by it. Sometimes she did just take against people. She told me exactly why they were bad people and she usually convinced me to feel the same way. She had not explained herself here and I was having trouble working it out.
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��She wandt very welcoming,’ I offered after a while. ‘I mean, she was and she wandt. She was polite and helpful. As much as you’d expect. But she was always distracted, like she wanted us to leave.’ Cathy said nothing and I thought again. ‘And she seemed embarrassed by us. Not that there was anyone else there to see that we were there with her. Nobody else to question our involvement with her. But she seemed uncomfortable and it was the kind of uncomfortable you feel when you’re embarrassed not when you’re unsettled or unprepared. It was like even though there weren’t any other people there to feel ashamed in front of, she felt them there anyway and she dindt want those invisible people to see her talking to us.’
‘That’s not the thing I was thinking of. It’s the way she moves around. The way she walks. Hers is the most horrible body I’ve ever seen. She can’t move forwards without moving sideways. It’s her hips. She’s not even fat. There’s no extra weight on her, but her hip bones are so large and wide that she can’t move without considering them. When she walks she has to follow their lead and they sway from side to side. God, it’s disgusting. Can you imagine running with hips like that? Can you imagine trying to run away from someone when you’re being pulled back by your own bones? Can you imagine what tops of your legs must feel like being stuck in to hips like that? Muscles on your thighs being twisted as you’re trying to run away and your knees trying to support those hips and your running thighs while trying to keep them in line with your feet. All of you trying to go forwards and bloody bones are holding you back. Jesus fucking Christ, I’d rather die.’
Elmet Page 4