Elmet

by Mozley, Fiona

  Another couple of steps and I could reach her shoulder. ‘Wait up,’ I said. ‘Where you going? Fight’s about to start.’

  Cathy turned and looked over my shoulder to where the serious men were puffing and panting and moving around each other in ever decreasing circles. The crowd was beginning to swell. A slack loop was forming and the gaps were filling with men, like doves flying into the niches of their cote. Their shoulders locking. The abstract sound of the chatter had been administrative but was now hoarse with a kind of giddy terror.

  ‘I don’t want to watch it. I’m fed up. I’m fed up with the whole ruddy show.’

  With that she stalked off into the trees. I saw her weaving a path between them until the cover of their trunks and branches tightened, slicing segments out of her torso until the screen became complete and she was out of sight.

  I felt the men churning behind me. I did not want to return though knew simply that I should. There was a call to witness.

  I turned my back on the woods and joined the other men. The lot of us trembled together.

  The Bear was pacing and jumping to keep warm and stretching his muscles and shaking his bones. Daddy stood still. As still as a wolf. His eyes were glossier and bluer in the cold air and crisp grey light. They were fixed on his prey.

  A referee came between the fighters and spoke intently to each man in turn then stepped back.

  The Bear began to skip back and forth. His fists were raised. Daddy remained still, almost weary, despondent. He glanced over at me for the first time since we had arrived then raised his fists too. He made circles with them like an old Victorian pugilist whose motions were captured in stills. This is how he had learnt to fight, I remembered. He had told us once. He had learnt to fight at the hands of a very very old man who could barely stand but directed his movements from an armchair by the hearth.

  The Bear scuffed his feet on the ground. Daddy rocked back and forth. The muscles in his thighs were tense and poised.

  A blow from the Bear, which Daddy ducked. He was lighter on his feet now, suddenly geared into action, off his heels.

  They were circling. The Bear tried again. He lunged with his right fist then followed with his left. Daddy avoided the first and then parried, raising his own left fist to go at his opponent’s chin. The Bear pulled back and Daddy missed. Some calls from the crowd then a sudden shiver of silence. Another miss from the Bear, then another. Daddy was saving his punches.

  They skipped. A couple more goes at it then the Bear struck home. Not to Daddy’s head but to his chest. The crowd winced and jeered in equal measure. It must have winded him. I felt winded too. He was shuddering backwards, off balance. The Bear came at him again with a right hook. Daddy ducked but was clipped on the left side of his skull. Another knock.

  Daddy peeled back. He heaved the breath back into his lungs and straightened his spine. The Bear bared his teeth – a flash of gold – and Daddy went for them. A sharp jab. Blood. He took a second jab at the teeth, trying to tease at the same place. He had spotted a weakness. The Bear flashing a set of gold teeth meant he had had to replace his own set of teeth, which meant his gums had been permanently weakened, which meant that he could lose more. Again for the teeth but Daddy was blocked then both men pulled back panting.

  A dog barked from the back seat of a car and others joined the chorus.

  The Bear caught Daddy hard on his left cheekbone with a blow that came from nowhere. A quiet crack like a splitting log and then there was blood around his eye and dripping down his cheek, pooling on his shoulder and chest, on his white cotton vest. Daddy was blowing clots of blood from his nostrils like a dragon breathing fire.

  He could not use that eye any more. It was swelling and closing up his eyelid.

  But he kept on.

  The slap of shoes against the mud. Men stamping and rubbing their hands. Daddy and the Bear, their fists in guard. Barking dogs. Spitting men. A sticky wind. Ancient oaks arching their backs to cover the scene. The scent of diesel. Diesel, dirt, sweat, blood, burning meat, the sugars dripping from fried onions. A ring of men standing above rings of mushrooms, connected and hidden beneath the earth, and then rings of limestone.

  The Bear had Daddy on the back foot, dragging his heels. I tried hard not to look but I could not help it. Daddy’s arms were dropping and his legs slipping. He was tired. He was tired and stooping.

  Daddy gulped as if his breath was caught in his throat. The Bear came in for another punch. Daddy looked as though he barely had enough left in him to avoid the fist, but he did, for the most part. He was caught on his left shoulder, knuckle hit muscle.

  But the Bear had overbalanced, and Daddy hooked round with his right fist. He moved his whole body behind the punch. He swung into it from his hips. He rose up on his haunches, almost up off his toes and off the ground. He was suddenly fresh again. A feint – perhaps it had been – a feint. His good eye was alert. He planted his fist on the other man’s jaw with every estimation of strength he had.

  Again a sound like splitting wood but this time not one cut cleanly with an axe but ripped from the side of a tree by lightning and thunder and wind. Wood that was shattering into a hundred pieces. A torrent of red and gold. Blood bursting from the Bear’s unstoppered gums as his gold incisors, his gold canines, gold molars followed a long, slow arc to the sodden earth.

  The Bear stumbled. I stumbled. I felt like I was going to pass out. Either pass out or piss myself. Oh no, oh please God no. There could be nowt worse. I rearranged my feet to steady myself and looked away, up at the sky, hoping that the cold breeze would catch my eyeballs and freshen me. Bring tears perhaps. Tears were better, tears from the cold, it could be. Oh god, please don’t let me faint. Please. My insides were moving too now. My bowels. Oh please, God, no.

  The huge man was falling, following his teeth into the mud. His eyes had rolled back into his skull. He was knocked out. And as he fell I felt dizzier and dizzier, like I’d been sucked inside him and was feeling the same motion, like I was falling too.

  The Bear was on the ground. His head had slapped and cracked again. The men around me were moving forwards and so was the ground. I was about to fall.

  And then I was in Daddy’s arms. I had not seen him come for me. He had knocked out the Bear, he had won the fight, and almost in the same step come to me. He picked me up clean off the ground like I was his trophy. He raised me into the cold air. I felt the tears on my cheeks but no giddiness. I breathed deeply. No more sickness.

  Our men were all around. And Peter, and Ewart and then Martha came over, carrying a zipped green bag, and she was opening it and taking out bandages and iodine and frozen peas.

  From my vantage point in Daddy’s arms I looked down to see his adversary lying on the floor, men crowding round him, doing little to help. One had a bucket of water and some cloths.

  And then I saw Price. He was looking up at me. Staring at me as calmly as he had watched the whole fight. Just staring.

  But where was Cathy? Where was Cathy?

  As Daddy brought me back down, I looked to the perimeter of the woods. Had she come back after all? Had she watched the fight from the cover of the trees? Had she heard it?

  Martha was fussing. She was pulling Daddy over to the car. She had fully opened up the boot of the Volvo estate and laid out some towels. Jess and Becky came to greet us, yapping at Daddy. His feet were not dragging now. He was stepping brightly. He sat down in the back of the car boot and Ewart picked up his feet and propped them on a crate. He began to untie Daddy’s laces and pull his shoes off. His socks were wet and dirty and Ewart took those off as well and wrapped the exposed skin with a towel.

  Martha had wrapped the frozen peas in a thin towel too and placed them over Daddy’s eye for him to hold. She dabbed iodine onto small fluffy pieces of cotton wool and cleaned up the other cuts. Daddy winced as she did this. Small, specific pain inflicted with care can be worse than any other kind.

  ‘Water,’ said Daddy. I pulled out a flask
from the cool-box. He drank a little then put down the flask. With his good eye he looked at Ewart, who reached inside his coat and pulled out a hip flask. Daddy took it and swigged. He swilled the first mouthful around in his mouth then spat it on the ground. He swallowed the second.

  Martha took the ice pack away from his eye and inspected the cuts. ‘It’ll need stitches. I’ll clean it before you put those peas back on.’

  She did not use the iodine but a softer solution of salt and water.

  I helped him take off his shirt and put one on clean. Then I wrapped a fleece round him and a blanket over that. He was sitting very still, sipping from the hip flask but mostly staring out into the trees beyond, smiling contentedly.

  I thought about what Vivien had said that time. About how fighting made Daddy feel. About him needing it, body and mind both. He appeared satisfied now. If only she could see him. She had been wrong about the outcome. She had doubted him.

  Cathy had not appeared but I was not too worried, then. I knew she would be safe, partly because she was tough and partly because she had walked into the woods, and her and I knew woods well. Ash and oak, like ours at home.

  ‘Anyone spoken to Price yet?’ asked Daddy.

  ‘Not yet. We wanted to get you fixed up first. That’s more important,’ said Martha.

  ‘Is he a man of his word?’ asked Daddy.

  Ewart considered. ‘He’s a man of his word when he’s in public. He’ll set everything right here in front of others, and then – by that alone – he’ll be bound to it. And he’s cause to be happy. He’s won a huge amount of money here today. He’s bested those Russians. You weren’t the favourite today. For the first time ever, is that? Nah, Price should be thanking you.’

  Daddy shook his head. ‘I’m not so sure.’ He looked up at me. ‘What do you think, Daniel?’

  I had no idea, but I was hopeful. ‘I think you’ve won your prize,’ I said. ‘I think we’ll be going home and it really will be our home.’

  He nodded, more trying to will my words into truth than out of agreement.

  I got him a pair of boots and after putting them on he got up and walked over to a group of cars, one of which was pulling away carrying the Bear. Another man was picking the gold teeth out of the mud and putting them into a sealable plastic bag. Price was sitting in the driving seat of his Land Rover, speaking to a couple of men through the window. I could not read his expression.

  He saw Daddy approaching and gestured for the other men to stand aside but remain close.

  ‘Well there it is,’ stated Price. The outcome, he meant. The conclusion.

  Daddy nodded. ‘There it is.’

  Daddy waited for a moment for Price to continue. He had an offer to complete. But Price let Daddy wait. He wanted Daddy to have to ask. In a final attempt at humiliating and subjugating him, he wanted Daddy to ask.

  ‘How about it then? How about the land? Can we tie it all up then? Make it official?’

  ‘We can,’ said Price. ‘Gavin has the signed documents.’ He nodded to one of the men he had been talking to. A dim-looking thug who pulled a black ring binder out of a briefcase he was carrying. From the ring binder he unclipped one of the plastic wallets and gave it to Daddy.

  I could tell from the way he hesitated before taking it that he did not really understand the transaction. He did not know what the document meant but did not want to ask Price to explain it. He had no understanding of the way things worked in the real world and he had no experience with paper and the law.

  Mr Price smirked. ‘Those are the deeds, which I had signed, that formally give you the land that you have built that house on.’

  ‘And the copse behind?’ asked Martha sharply from behind. ‘And with rights to access the road, I mean the track in front?’

  Price considered for a moment. He would answer all our questions slowly, in his own time. ‘Yes. You can read it if you like, though I hope you trust that I am a man of my word. It’s all there.’

  Martha took the plastic wallet out of Daddy’s hands and pulled out the sheets of paper, which had been stapled at the corner. She began to read.

  Mr Price tapped his steering wheel in irritation.

  ‘We have to know what we’re getting, Price,’ said Martha without looking up at him. ‘I’ll have to read through all this, whether you like it or not, and you can’t leave until I do.’

  ‘Can’t?’

  She continued to read, flicking back and forth through the papers when she came to a detail she needed to check.

  Price did wait and after a minute or so commented idly to himself or perhaps to his men or possibly really to us, ‘Strange, isn’t it? An illegal fight to settle a legal dispute. Ending the day by signing papers after a spectacle that could have us all thrown in jail.’

  Martha ignored him and continued to read, but Daddy looked up at him curiously, suspiciously. Ewart shuffled his feet, uneasily.

  Martha finished reading. ‘I think you should sign it. I will witness,’ she said. They did so on the bonnet of Mr Price’s Land Rover.

  He drove away soon after with that smooth heavy purr of the Land Rover rolling slowly over wet ground. The sun was coming out and the dampness was lifting from the clearing in a thin haze that seemed to pulse evenly upwards from the crest of the trees. Slices of sunlight came through the clouds, the shape of a blackbird’s singing beak.

  Money was changing hands throughout the clearing. Every man there, it seemed, had placed a bet. The paper notes were shuffled, counted then folded hastily and placed into inside top pockets. The bookmakers’ assistants made marks in notebooks. The smell of onions again and the heat and sizzle that came off the stove as they were shifted around the pan with a wooden spoon. Men were clicking open cans of beer and popping the tops off bottles.

  After the fight, it seemed, the crowd were going to make a day of it. Eat and drink and buy and sell. It was a fair, after all. Secret, free from taxation and rents and controls.

  Men came over to Daddy and shook his hand. A man wearing a tweed jacket and a cloth cap slipped a fifty pound note into Daddy’s hand. ‘I’ve made a lot more from you today, I can tell you,’ he said. He handed Daddy a bottle of beer and toasted him.

  Someone brought out a bottle of whisky and someone else an unmarked bottle containing vodka from their own distillery. ‘All above board, mind,’ he said as he poured out some of the vodka into a plastic glass. ‘And there’s more of this in my van,’ he said more loudly, so that others could hear. ‘I’m selling it for five pound a bottle, over there in the blue Astra.’

  As well as the fifty pound note, Daddy was offered other gifts. Tributes. A crate of cigarettes, crates of spirits, a lamb’s carcass, skinned, wrapped and ready for Daddy to butcher. A box of vegetables. A box of kippers. Men had made money from Daddy today. I took the gifts and stowed them in the back of Ewart and Martha’s car. Men patted me on the back, too, and they ruffled my hair as if I were a token of luck. They asked me to take sips from their drinks before they drank themselves like they were toasting Daddy through me. There were arms flung around me, and rough, male kisses applied to my forehead.

  Where was Cathy?

  The man in the tweed jacket and flat cap who had slipped Daddy a fifty walked over to me. ‘You’re a funny lad, aren’t you?’ He reached up to my hair, like the others, and rubbed and gently pinched my right cheek for good measure.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Aye, you are that. You’re a funny little thing. A pretty little thing.’ The man looked me up and down. ‘Not built like your Daddy, are you?’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Are you going to be a boxer when you grow up?’

  ‘No. I’ve never boxed. Daddy’s never taught me.’

  ‘Never taught you, eh? Funny for a boxing father not to pass it on to his son. It’s a grand tradition, you know.’

  He chewed on his lip and shuffled from side to side, then chuckled again.

  I shrugged. ‘Daddy dindt want it for me.’

  ‘Is it
that?’ said the man. ‘Or is it that you’re not big enough? You’ve got skinny little arms, handt you? Not sure what weight class you’d be in but you’ve not got the muscle, have you? Tallish, mind, but skinny. Worst combination for a boxer that. You carry your weight in your height not your muscles. Worst build for a boxer.’

  ‘Well it’s fine by me.’

  ‘Oh aye? Fine by you, is it? Well I woundt like sons who coundt hit back, that’s for sure, no matter how pretty they were. It’s true we can’t all be like your Daddy, but I thought his own son would be something along the way to him.’ He stopped for a moment. ‘Aye, though,’ he said. ‘You are a pretty one.’

  I had never thought of myself as pretty.

  I thought about Vivien stroking my hair and my face in the way this man had.

  Where was Cathy?

  The man chuckled again as I walked away. Daddy was still occupied with his admirers.

  I walked into the woods. The trees’ trunks and enveloping foliage sheltered me from sounds of the fair, and I was left with my footsteps, the insects and the birds.

  I walked in a straight line, following the rough path she had taken.

  I had walked maybe 100 metres. Steps are slower in woodland.

  ‘Daniel.’ She was behind me with her back against a tree trunk. I had walked right past her without noticing. Her arms were crossed about her body.

  ‘What you doing?’

  ‘Nowt.’ She did not meet my eyes.

  ‘Daddy won.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Did you watch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you hear from here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How then?’

  ‘Because I knew he’d win. Dindt you?’

  ‘Well yes, of course. I mean, of course. But I were nervous, I suppose.’

  ‘I wandt.’

  ‘Nothing is certain.’

  ‘Yes it is. He is.’

  She turned and walked away from me, through the trees, back to the clearing where the men had watched the fight. Some were moving on now. Clearing up, going home. I followed her. Skipped after her. My legs were as long as hers now but I still struggled to keep the pace. I never went anywhere or did anything with as much urgency as Cathy did. Big sister, little brother. I wanted her to always lead the way, tell me what was what, carry me home.