With Granny Morley I would sort the washing by type and put it into the machine in separate loads with the powder and the fabric softener. I would close the door and turn the dial and press buttons that commanded the water.
Granny Morley and I drank cups of tea while my mother slept upstairs, for as long as she needed to sleep.
At the ends of her visits, the bed sheets were left outside, then she left too. Wet with sweat, wet with blood. Always twisted and pulled, the evidence of a writhing body. And the smell of her. On the sheets and in the room when I went to clean it. Bitter smoke and salted sweat, and sour spit and the sweet iron of her blood. The scents reached out to me and lingered on the tip of my tongue and at the back of my nose and throat. The memory of smells and tastes and faint anguished bleats from behind the closed door of her room.
I once asked Granny Morley why we found my mother’s blood on the white sheets. She replied that my mother bled when she was broken.
The last time she came to the house there was no more fuss than on any of the other times. She said no more to us and we said no more to her. She behaved no differently. Daddy had been away too but he came back after a phone call from Granny Morley and lay in the bed by my mother for days, holding her, whispering to her gently. I heard them from outside the door, but caught none of the details. And I think Daddy was taken by surprise more than any of us when she left. She had seemed healthier, brighter, for the few days before but then slipped off, like she always did, with no goodbyes. Daddy was startled. Me and Cathy, we expected it, and Granny Morley too, I think. But Daddy was startled. He looked for her. But Granny Morley got a phone call and when she put down the receiver she turned to us and told us that our mother would not be coming back.
Chapter Nine
Mr Price returned to our house two weeks later. This time he brought his sons. Tom and Charlie Price were both tall and slender. They had long, thin legs and narrow torsos that gave way to wide shoulders so abruptly there was clear daylight between their ribcages and upper arms. Tom was older and had dark blonde hair, cut around his ears at the front and shorter at the back. Charlie had dark hair and darker eyes that were very unlike his father’s or brother’s, and although he was strikingly handsome there were greyish semi-circles bleeding from his lower eyelids. He had a hooked nose and skin that took on the colour of the day. This day was overcast so his skin was fragmentary and pale. They all wore green wellington boots and waxed jackets.
The Price men ascended the hill in their Land Rover. Cathy and I were sat a long way behind the house amongst the outlying trees. I was whittling green ash. I had stripped the tender bark from a piece the length of my hand span and was turning it and rounding it with a squat blade. Cathy held the corpse of a mallard between her knees and was pulling fistfuls of feathers from its dappled skin. A bowl of steaming water and a pile of wet rags lay at her feet for her to dip them then dab them, hot and sopping, onto the bird’s supple pores.
We did not see or hear them knock at the front door. Mr Price went into the kitchen to speak with Daddy. Tom and Charlie came to find us. They laughed candidly at private jokes as they walked through the still-green bluebell shoots.
These boys were just so handsome. They were so much more handsome than me and Daddy, we could not even be compared. We were almost distinct breeds, adapted to different environments, clinging to opposite sides of the cliff. It was as if Daddy and I had sprouted from a clot of mud and splintered roots and they had oozed from pure minerals in crystalline sequence.
They spoke and laughed with deep voices that were not like Daddy’s. They were smoother, though muted with vocal fry. The sound resonated against the cool air like a ball bouncing on wet grass.
‘Did you shoot that bird?’ Tom asked me. He was talking about the duck that Cathy was plucking but he addressed his question to me rather than my sister.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Daddy did.’
‘Daddy?’ He seemed amused by the word.
‘Yeah,’ I said, simply. ‘But it wandt on your land he shot it.’
I did not know why I had said it. Daddy might have shot it on Mr Price’s land or he might have shot it elsewhere. I had no idea but saying it meant Price’s son thought that we were guilty of something or else knew that it was something we sometimes did. I should have known better but because I had stumbled and because he had remained silent in response, I went on again: ‘He dindt shoot it anywhere near your land.’
‘Well if he shot it anywhere around here then he shot it near our land. He would have had to go very far away for it not to have been near our land.’ Tom paused to laugh at my absurd scrambling. ‘Do you hunt with him ever?’ Tom asked.
‘Only sometimes.’
‘He’s got a twelve-gauge shotgun, hasn’t he?’
Cathy looked up at Tom but neither of the boys turned to her.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He might have one but we’ve never seen it, and he doendt hunt with it.’
‘That’s odd that he’d have it and not shoot game with it. How does he hunt?’
I shrugged. Daddy had traps set up throughout our copse and in the fields around. They were not the sort that killed the animal they snared but those that kept it waiting until Daddy came to collect it and kill it himself. It was better that way. Traps that try to kill the animal usually fail and the poor thing lies there dying slowly until it is finished off. The traps that our Daddy used lured the animal with a trail of food then shut it away in a box. There was room enough in the box for comfort in its last hours and the animal had no sense of its fate. Daddy checked the traps regularly and if he found something he would take it in his hands as quietly as he could then snap its fragile neck. The little creatures never even knew they were dead.
Sometimes he fished. Daddy had rods and tackle but said that fishing with rods took too much time and that it was better to tickle the trout. He knew the places for that.
I told the lads that I had never known Daddy to use a shotgun but that he hunted game with his bow.
‘Rubbish,’ said Tom. ‘Nobody hunts with bows around here. I don’t believe that anyone’s ever been able to shoot a bird with one. Not a bird in flight.’
Cathy placed the half-plucked mallard on a cut section of tarpaulin on the ground by her feet and squeezed her hand into her right jeans pocket to pull out her leather tobacco pouch. She pinched at the dried fibres and placed what she pulled onto a folded paper. She stuck a filter at the tip before rolling it between her fingers and licking then sticking the seal. She lit the cigarette with a well-struck match then sucked on it such that the flame dimmed to glowing ash and smoke seeped from her nose and mouth. She watched the lads.
I shrugged again. ‘Daddy does. Sometimes Cathy does as well.’
‘Is that Cathy over there?’ asked Tom. She was sitting no more than five metres from him but he asked me about her without turning in her direction. For a moment, Cathy continued puffing on her rolly. Then she got up and walked over. She had grown in the last couple of months and had become ungainly in her gait, unused to the new lengths and angles of her limbs. She was upright in everything else that she did, though. She always had a certain direction.
‘I hunt too,’ she said. ‘I’ve shot birds like this bird with my bow.’
Tom turned to her and as he did he became angry. Surprisingly so, considering how small the disagreement should have been. Probably no one ever spoke back to him. Not his little brother nor anybody at his school nor the boys he played rugby and cricket with nor the men in his shooting club, not even his teachers. They were probably too taken with him. Him and his confidence. Him and his arrogance. That charm that he walked around in like a swarm of horseflies about his head. Nobody probably ever told him that he was wrong. Nor would they ever, it seemed. For his whole life. He would always get his way. Always be right. Always get to bat first. I doubted even his dad questioned him much, even his own father, Mr Price. And then on the occasions that he did they both knew that they were uphold
ing the proper order of things. When his father asked him to explain himself, or rethink something, or when he questioned him or told him that he – Tom – was incorrect, it served to strengthen Tom’s position, as second only in the universe, to be first when the time came. In those moments his father was putting Tom Price in his place but that never constituted a slight.
But with Cathy talking back at him, when he had not even been talking to her in the first place, well, it must have been frustrating. I could see it in his face. He clenched his jaw and blinked rapidly, as if trying to blink her away or blink away the thoughts he was being forced to have now that his train of conversation had been minutely offset. ‘I just brought it up because it seems odd – counter-intuitive even – that your father hunts with bows and arrows when he could be hunting with a gun. Regardless of whether or not he does have a twelve-gauge shotgun lying around, he could just get one, couldn’t he? Or some other kind of gun? I don’t understand this predilection for old technology. What’s the point?’
‘Well what’s the point of any of this?’ said Cathy. ‘We could just live in a town and Daddy could get a job and we could buy all our food in a supermarket like everyone else does. And go to school and have friends, and that. I mean, you might ask why we don’t just do that?’
Tom laughed. And I knew it had been coming. ‘You’re right, I could just ask that. Why are you living here in the middle of our wood?’
Cathy had opened her mouth but the other son, Charlie, quiet until this point, stepped in. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘we don’t need to get into that. Don’t be an idiot.’
Tom looked startled at his brother’s intervention but said nothing to him and nothing more to Cathy. He again turned away from her and directed his comments to me. He asked about the copse. He asked about the trees within it, the types and the ages. He asked where we had lived before we came here. He asked why Daddy had chosen this spot. He asked how long it had taken Daddy to clear the land and to build the house. He asked about our mother. He asked whether we went to school. He asked how long we would be staying.
I did my best to evade the questions and, after a time, he became frustrated.
‘I’m just curious about your lives, that’s all. You must admit that it’s unusual, you lot living here. And in the way that you do.’
I looked about myself. Cathy had returned to the bird. She took it again in nimble hands, her plucking more resolute. She tore at the creature with the quiet fanaticism of a flagellant at his own skin but though her fists pulled at the downy fluff with pressing haste, she did not draw blood nor did she damage the flesh. She doused it with the water, though it had cooled, and wiped off the stubble and residue that marred the otherwise pristine carcass.
I answered the tall, smart lad as best I could. ‘Daddy thinks it’s important we learn to live with things we ourselves can make and find. That’s all. We just want to be left alone.’
‘You mean you don’t want to be friends with me and Charlie? Did you hear that, Charlie?’
Charlie appeared more reticent than his brother. More thoughtful, perhaps. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s a shame.’
Tom looked at his brother for a moment then over at Cathy then at me. He had become bored by the conversation and wanted to get moving. He suggested we return to the house where their father was speaking with our father. Tom and Charlie walked that way and I thought it best to follow. Cathy too. The plucked bird swung by her side: plump and bobbing.
We followed the tall lads into the kitchen. The inside heat was thick. Daddy and Mr Price sat facing each other on opposite sides of the scrubbed kitchen table. We hovered around the edge of the room but the men concluded their business and both pushed back their chairs with a searing scrape against the floor. They stood to their full heights. Daddy was a giant. He towered over Mr Price by at least a foot but the smaller man did not cower.
Mr Price held out his right hand. ‘I hope you will think about what I have said, John.’
At first Daddy held back, both arms fixed tightly to his sides, but then he released one to meet Mr Price’s. His expression remained blank.
The visitors directed themselves out of the house then down the slope towards their Land Rover. Daddy leaned against the murky kitchen window to see the vehicle leave. He watched it all the way down the track, round the corner and along the bottom road until it was out of sight.
He placed his right hand in his left and massaged his knuckles. They were rigid from fractures and calcification and there was barely any flexibility in the rough, taut skin that wrapped them let alone between the joints. He rubbed the thumb of his left hand across the many, composite scars, feeling almost nothing in either hand, his nerves having receded after repeated bruising. He performed the action for memory and motion rather than sensation.
We stared at the lost man, our father, partly blind to us as his body grasped itself and he slipped again into his own thoughts, alone in his motion.
He returned to us in due course. ‘Put another log in the stove, Daniel. I want for us to be warm again.’
I slid into the hall where the dogs were sat in their straw bed. They jumped up at the sight of me and sniffed and licked my hand as I lowered it to stroke them. I placed my palm on Becky’s head and she lifted her muzzle so as to catch me above my wrist and bring the hand down into the reach of her tongue. I wrapped my hand around the other side of her head and she lifted her muzzle again so my outstretched arm and her jaw danced round and around in circles.
I broke free and stepped over the dogs to get a log from the corner behind their bed. I returned to the kitchen with both pups at my heels and closed the door behind them. They leapt and sniffed at Daddy and Cathy and I busied myself at the stove while Daddy continued to talk.
‘Do you know why I built our house here?’ asked Daddy.
I looked at Cathy. She hesitated. ‘We thought you must have bought the land from the travellers or else won it in a fight.’
‘I dindt buy land,’ answered Daddy. ‘I dindt win it in a fight neither. As far as Price is concerned we don’t own it, not in the way he sees ownership, at any rate.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘Your mother lived round here. When she fell on hard times, Price seized a lot of what she had. But when your Granny Morley died it seemed like the right place to come, to build a home, to live as a family. Because of your mother. And because I knew we would care for this land in a way Mr Price never could, and never would. Mr Price does nothing with these woods. He doendt work them. He doendt coppice them. He doendt know the trees. He doendt know the birds and animals that live here. Yet there is a piece of paper that says this land belongs to him.’
Daddy raised himself from the chair and paced over to the stove where I was finishing stoking the fire with the new log. I poked it and shunted the dead embers into the grate.
‘Does Mr Price want us to leave our home?’ asked Cathy.
‘He does and he doendt. He coundt give a stuff about these woods. But he’s taken us moving here as a hostile act. He thinks I’m trying to provoke him. Perhaps I am. But regardless, he’s made it clear he’ll cause as much bother for us as he can. There were once a time when I worked for that man. When he used my muscles to bully weak and poor, to make sure they paid their debts. I were useful to him, and he wants me to be useful to him again. But I won’t. I won’t work for any man ever again. My body is my own. It is all I own.’
Daddy took the poker from my hands and thrust it into the heart of the fire where it stuck into the fresh log which lay atop the flames but was barely touched by their flickering edges. He twisted the iron rod and rent apart the grain and split the log into two frayed sections whose frills caught easily and transmitted the fire to the wood proper. The glass door of the stove flashed as he shut it.
‘He’ll start by causing small nuisances for us that’ll build and build until they become unbearable. He’ll make sure people in villages begin to freeze us out. They’ll stop serving us in shops and stop speaking to us. That won�
��t matter much. We hardly buy owt and we hardly speak to anyone either but it’ll be an inconvenience. That’s how it begins. Then he might send people round when we’re out to silt up our well and we’d have to bore a new one. After that we’d always make sure that someone was here. We’d be afraid to leave. And so in that way he would have begun to control our movements. Then he’d have bricks and dead rats thrown through our windows, and dog shit left by our front door. Then they’d start picking on you two when you’re out alone.’
‘We’d be a match for them,’ Cathy interjected.
Daddy shook his head. ‘I’m sure you would be at first,’ he said. ‘When you have the advantage of surprise on your side. That’ll always be your advantage, Cathy. Nobody will ever expect you to fight back and certainly not in the way I know you can. But once they’ve realised you’re no pushover they’ll send more men and those men will be tougher and nastier and even you won’t be a match for them all.’
‘You would be though,’ said Cathy assuredly.
Daddy shook his head again. ‘I win fights because I am suited to the rules of those fights, Cathy. They’re a test of strength and speed and endurance and I am the strongest, fastest and toughest man in Britain and Ireland. But take away those rules and it’s anyone’s guess who’d win. If someone pulled a knife on me, or a gun, well I’ve dealt with those things before, I don’t mind telling you, but that doendt mean I could again. It all depends on circumstances. And if it’s one against many then, well, the odds are stacked. And that’s not to say I woundt try. You two know me well enough. But I have to be realistic.’
I took for myself a thick slice of brown bread from the board and scooped butter from the churn to slide across it. The dogs watched me with begging brown eyes and twitching black noses as I bit and tore and chewed. I pondered my father’s words. I watched my sister as she sat with that duck corpse on her lap and hunched her shoulders against the glum news. Daddy placed both his hands flat on the table, his bowed fingers and knuckles almost camouflaged against the likewise knotted, ecru oak.
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