She continued. ‘Do you remember that time we were down by canal, Daniel? I can’t even remember which town it were or what year only that you had that white T-shirt with orange setting sun on it that Granny Morley brought you back from that holiday she went on – only holiday I ever remember her going on – and so you must have been about eight because you grew so quickly after that – when you were nine and ten – that you coundt have fitted into that T-shirt after that age. Maybe it were Sheffield we were in but I can’t remember. It doendt matter. We were there together, alone, because Daddy was somewhere else. Probably fighting outside of town. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘We were down by canal, Daniel. Me and you, alone. We walked as sun went down and we saw that lady sitting under bridge with her knees up and the palms of each hand cradling each side of her face like her own cheeks were softest things she’d ever touched and like she were touching them for first time. We walked past her under bridge and there were sick on ground and ashes that handt singed anything but were lying on top of paving stones. Her handbag were on ground too and were open with tissues and lipsticks and that falling out and she handt even noticed, let alone stopped to pick any of it up. There were a smell of grass that had been trod on and rotted, and a smell of dogs. And that man in background. Do you remember man in background? Almost fully hidden by shadows of bridge? Standing on mud behind paving stones?’
‘I don’t remember seeing either of them,’ I said. And I did not. But I did remember the news later that week that a woman had gone missing and that she was last seen going down to the towpath. And I remember my sister telling us that we had seen the woman and that there had been a man behind her.
‘But you believe me?’ she implored.
‘Yes, of course I believe you.’
‘And you believe I was right? That it were man behind lurking in the shadows who did for her? Who pushed her in?’
I looked her in the eye. The police had searched for Jessica Harman, nineteen, for weeks before finding her tucked away by a weir, miles downstream. When they found the body and identified her they concluded that it had been a natural death. They said that she had been intoxicated and had accidentally stumbled into the canal on her way home and that the current, buoyed by recent flooding, had carried her away. They had come to this conclusion before they had found her, however. It was based on the fact that she had been out drinking with friends that evening. The police had looked for people who might have tried to kill her but decided that there was no one with a motive. Then they had found the body and decided that their assumption had been confirmed. But Cathy was sure that she had seen the woman and also a man and that Jessica Harman had been pushed.
Two weeks later a student was found washed up further along the canal by one of the locks. This time it was a boy, and it was thought that he had fallen in drunkenly, too, or else had killed himself. But we spoke again of the middle-aged man Cathy had seen in the shadow of the bridge and how easy it would be for a stealthy stranger to ease a person on their way. It would be so little like murder. Just a gentle nudge at somebody who was already unsteady. A stranger. Unless you were seen you could never be caught.
And so Daddy had asked around at Cathy’s behest. He found nothing but continued to search all the same. He patrolled the canals at night for weeks and weeks but did not come across anything out of the ordinary. He said if there had been a murderer lying in wait for young women, he had scared him off.
Of course we did not go to the police. Neither Cathy nor I had even suggested it. There was little trust there. No love lost.
But we had all believed Cathy.
Chapter Five
There was a cold spell in the week before Christmas. With the cold I became sluggish. Usually eager to help Daddy with his work outside, I spent more and more time in the kitchen, taking for myself the jobs that allowed me to stay indoors. I made sure the stove was well stoked every day and the chopped wood in the store was piled high so it did not have to be topped up from outside too often. I cleaned the house and baked cakes and mince pies for Christmas Day. Daddy went to the shop in the village and bought sheets of paper in gold and silver and red, white and green and I set about cutting them up and folding and gluing them into decorations.
I sat at the kitchen table and made snowflakes as I had at school. I cut circles and folded them into quarters and inserted apertures and grooves so when they were unravelled they became tiny sheets of falling ice, jagged but symmetrical. The gold paper became stars. I made the shapes of trees with the green paper. Winter trees. I copied the few pines that we had in the copse, the only ones that still held green. From those trees, Daddy brought in branches of green needles and pinecones for making wreathes, which I constructed as best I could, approximating those I had seen on Christmas cards.
‘You’re a funny lad,’ Daddy said to me on the morning of Christmas Eve. It was nearly nine o’clock and he had been awake and working for several hours. He had seen to the chickens and walked the puppies, who were now burly adolescents, frayed at the edges, with chalky incisors and too-long limbs. It had snowed overnight and Daddy had shovelled it into piles that now looked like an oddly dispersed mountain range. The puppies had made a scattering of deep paw prints in the snow and were now scaling these new summits.
‘Why am I funny?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know. You like making house nice and that.’
He drew back a chair from the table to sit down and I got up to pour coffee from the pot I had sitting atop the stove. Our coffee was always made slowly, brewed on the hob for hours, well-stewed, bitter, smoky. That is how we liked it.
I made my Daddy a hearty breakfast and then he went out again into the cold.
I spent the morning continuing to make paper decorations and then I stuck them up around the house. I slotted some of the shapes in the tiny gaps between the window frames and the panes of now naturally frosted glass. I stuck others on cupboards or propped them up on shelves or in picture frames. I hung paper chains of gold, silver, red, green, white – made from scraps and offcuts – from hooks on the ceiling of the kitchen which Daddy had originally pinned up to hang dried meat.
Daddy did not come back for lunch. This was unusual, especially on such a cold day. At one point I peered out the window to see if he was on his way, but he was not and I served up the vegetable soup I had made for me and Cathy anyway. We briefly remarked on Daddy’s absence but other than that the meal passed in contented silence.
As the afternoon proceeded and it started to fall dark, I began to worry. It was not that it was late. It was not yet four o’clock and it was that time of year when it seemed to get dark again almost before I could say I was truly awake. But it was rare for Daddy to stay out all day until dusk without coming home once for a bite to eat. If not lunch, then cake or an oat biscuit. And it was Christmas Eve. I had prepared a feast of hot pies and braised onions to keep us going until tomorrow when our main meal was to be goose. Cathy had stayed in especially and practised carols on her violin. Her bow strokes bounced over the strings, more like she was playing a sea shanty than a hymn, but I could recognise the melodies nonetheless and hummed along when she really got into her stride, lifting my voice to its full extent where I knew the words.
When darkness fell completely I thought about going with a torch to find him but the world outside was huge and everything looked different in the snow. Even though I already knew the copse well, I could not be certain I would be able to find my way through it with just a small light held in my hand, reflecting off the bright white that obscured the familiar colours and the precise shapes of the landscape. And I could not be sure that Daddy was in the copse. That is where he usually went, but not always. And although he had said he had got work to finish up there he also said he would not be long.
I thought about the tools he used out in the woods. Sharp axes and machetes and saws. I had a vision of him slipping suddenly and cutting open his thigh, where the thick, deep arteries ran, and of him passing out i
n the cold, his blood at first melting the snow around then freezing again within it.
I had already put on my coat and boots when Daddy appeared in the door frame. The hall was dark as I had shut the door to the kitchen to keep the warmth inside, and Daddy was illuminated only by the stars and by the golden light of a lantern he was holding aloft with his right hand.
‘Going out?’ Daddy asked.
‘Just to see where you’d got to.’
‘Where’s your sister?’
He did not wait for an answer but called her name. The carols stopped abruptly and she came out into the hall.
‘Both of you come with me,’ said Daddy.
Cathy slipped her feet into her boots before hopping over to the coat hooks and wrapping herself in woollens, rounded off with her navy-blue mack. We followed Daddy out into the cold, shutting the front door firmly behind us. His deep footprints led from the edge of the copse and we followed them back exactly so as not to disturb more of the snow. The ash and the hazel were bare and shivered against the wind each time it blew. Their branches were frosted and held a delicate collection of snowflakes. The hazel particularly, which had been coppiced many years ago, had many surfaces and alcoves in which snow could collect and sit, compacting into itself and freezing anew. Icicles dripped from many of the higher branches where the snow had met the midday sun and slowly melted and found a gradual path towards the earth before being caught for a second time by the cold.
We arrived at the treeline and continued to walk. Daddy’s lantern swung in his hand as we bumbled along, and the spindly shadows cast by bare deciduous branches swung and bounced too. When we passed evergreen pines the shadows became furry as the light gathered and parted their needles like water soaking into a dog’s coat.
Then the light began to change, and the spindly shadows turned to point towards us, sent by a light that appeared straight ahead, through the trees, growing stronger than Daddy’s lantern with every step. The light became brighter but still its source was not clear, obscured on all sides by the trunks of trees and the thick woodland vegetation, blanketed by snow. Indeed, the light reflected off the snow in such a way that as we got closer everything looked bright.
We rounded a huge pine and saw where the light had been coming from. Another pine, much smaller, not much more than a sapling, smaller than Daddy, was covered with lanterns. I looked more closely and saw that each lantern had been fashioned from a milk bottle with a wire hoop tightly wound beneath the bottle’s lip and another bent upwards to catch onto the fronds of the tree. Each bottle had oil in its bottom quarter, with a thin metal covering over the top, through which a thick wick poked. The coverings stopped all the oil catching fire at once, but allowed a little to seep up the wick and burn at its tip. The upper three quarters of each bottle-lantern allowed air to move around the flame, and each glowed rich amber, while the light from their fellows allowed the bottles’ oil to glimmer too, dancing and refracting as the oil slowly swirled to follow the current up the wick and to the flame, as slow as still water shifting with the earth’s tilt. It was a beautiful spectacle.
We stayed out there for half an hour or so, watching the lanterns, playing with sparklers, smoking and chatting, breathing in the cool woodland air. When we walked back to the house we did so in silence, having already got out all our words for the day. I was especially snug in my bed that night. The blankets were warm and close in contrast with the biting open outside. I pulled them up to my nose and went to sleep with that warmth and the scent of worn linen in my nostrils.
Christmas morning came with a bright, white light and left with a slurry of sleet. The landscape had shone with snow and the sky had been glossy. By noon everything was matte.
We roasted and ate the goose and Cathy played her violin.
We went out to the Christmas Tree again that night, and the next night, and every night after that until the twelfth was up, just as Daddy had said. He refilled and relit the lanterns before we got there so the image we saw was identical each time. The grove smelt of paraffin and pine needles rising with the hot air. Timid popping and fizzing emanated from the burning oil.
When Daddy finally pulled the milk bottles down off the branches, he put them in a crate and stored them with his tools. He told us we would get them out again next year, along with the paper decorations I had made. But a few days later Cathy and I spotted that there was also a pile of charred branches and singed needles in the woodpile. They were from our Christmas Tree. In parts they were still fresh, and where they had been cut the soft, greenwood was still visible. But in other places they were black through, and dry and brittle, and with the delicate fronds still coming off some. Oversized charcoal quills. The heat over time had singed them, and some were so burnt it must have been from a lantern whose metal divider had failed and which had burnt all its oil at once.
We went into the copse to see the damage. Again, the greenwood was laid bare where it had been cut. There was no black here, no charcoal. That had all been removed. But the tree looked sparse. It had been wounded – not just wounded, mutilated. It now looked so unlike any of its peers.
We worked wood all the time. We cut boughs and felled whole trees. We burnt it in our stove and hacked it into useful shapes and scrap. There was no reason this should be any different.
Chapter Six
Mr Price was the sort of man who accelerated his car when pedestrians crossed the road. You could hear his engine tighten, raise its pitch, quicken.
Cathy said he liked to see us run but that it was not playful, like when nice men flirt with little kids. Like when kids kick a ball onto the footpath and a nice man keeps hold of it, pretends not to give it back, makes the kids squeal a bit, but then of course does give it back with a wink and a nod. Cathy said Mr Price did it to people he did not like, and to us particularly because he hated us, and because he enjoyed seeing us have to skip the last few steps to safety before his car caught us. She said that he probably wanted to kill us, but got a thrill from the almost, almost, not quite, and besides, he could not kill us while Daddy was around, she said, so instead, he made us run.
Mr Price had a few cars but drove his blue Peugeot saloon when visiting tenants. The ones who paid in cash. The rest did informal work for him on his land or elsewhere. They paid their rents through this work. He preferred it that way. That way he did not have to organise wages and they were his to run like dogs.
For the most part he had inherited the land he owned. Most of the houses in the villages nearby were his and he held the largest acreage of any of the local farmers. Later, he had bought up houses on the estates further into town. These were old council properties. Those that had been bought by tenants in the 1980s as part of the Right to Buy scheme but that were then bought by Mr Price after their owners fell on hard times. The occupants remained but they paid rent again. This time to Price. And this time in cash or in kind.
Mr Price had two sons: Tom and Charlie. They played cricket and rugby at a boarding school miles to the south and lived with their father in the holidays.
We heard stories from people in the village. Stories of two handsome, slick lads who smashed up bars for fun in the knowledge that their father could pay for the damage. Two handsome lads who, when they were still boys, had driven a farmer’s tractor through the wall of his own barn and out the other side, slicing a new tunnel clean through the hay. They had learnt a collection of manners at school, though. Now they were nearly men they drove their father’s sports cars through the village and, late at night, if they had drunk too much, they rode their quad bikes over their neighbours’ crops. Two handsome, slick lads.
Mr Price left us alone for our first summer and autumn in the house but in the new year he made himself known to us. He came to our house from time to time even though we were not his tenants. Daddy had claimed the land, they said, not bought it, and we had built our house here like a fortress.
The first time Mr Price came up he was not in his blue Peugeot but his Land
Rover. It was the largest vehicle he owned and we heard its tracks coming up the newly worn dirt road to our house. We heard the dampened popping and cracking of small stones under its implacable tyres. Daddy had been drying dishes at the draining board and went to the window. Daddy’s eyesight was good and he had known Mr Price from before but still he did not immediately recognise the driver. He draped the tea towel over his hefty left shoulder and headed out the front door. It was so rare for somebody to come to our house, let alone drive here, that Cathy and I followed Daddy outside.
It was late January and there were clouds of snowdrops on the hillside beneath us. Mr Price parked his Land Rover and glanced up at us as he stepped down from the high chassis. He wore a brown waxed jacket and olive, knee-high wellington boots. His hair was a light grey with strands of white. It was cropped neatly and he was clean shaven. He was handsome and healthy, possibly just less than six feet tall.
For all his brutality, Daddy liked other people. He liked people with as much affection as a huntsman had for his prey, deeply and earnestly but with cold regard. He had few friends and saw them scarcely but the people whose worth he felt were held like rare souvenirs. He took care of those people.
Mr Price was not a man who Daddy liked. He saw who it was. He stopped, stood his ground, and waited.
Mr Price approached and offered Daddy a hand. Mr Price’s skin was lightly tanned, stiff and waxy like treated pine. He wore no rings but a gold watch.
‘You’ve given me no warning,’ said Daddy.
‘I have no telephone number for you, John. How was I supposed to give you warning?’ Mr Price took a cloth cap from his inside pocket, smoothed his hair with one stroke from his other hand, and placed it on his head.
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