Elmet

by Mozley, Fiona

  ‘Where is Daddy?’

  ‘I told you I don’t know. Stranger came up here to warn Daddy, like I said. He urged him to go but once he had left I came out. Daddy maybe knew I had been there, listening, the whole time. Daddy said he woundt go. He said—’ But I struggled to remember what he had said.

  ‘Of course he woundt. He would never leave us.’

  I took my time to think this through, before I replied. ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘I do.’ I stopped speaking for a moment and bit my lip. ‘But where is he?’

  We took the back road to the village. The pavement leading to Ewart and Martha and their house and garden was sticky with three days of heat. A thin film of condensation, which had sat thick in the air, had dropped and compacted on the tarmac. It was slick.

  I had persuaded Cathy to follow me here. She had been unsure.

  We knocked the door not once but twice. The first time, I rapped my knuckles gently against the pane of stained glass at the centre of the door. The second time Cathy thumped the wood.

  It swung open. Ewart and Martha stood at the threshold, both. Both, husband and wife, held a strange countenance and a skewed stance. They looked between us, my sister and I. They looked above us and around us. They looked behind them into their own home.

  I ventured. ‘Have you seen our Daddy?’

  Martha glanced at Ewart. Ewart held my gaze.

  ‘That’s a fine thing,’ he said.

  I made no reply.

  ‘That’s a fine thing,’ he said again.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘What’s a fine thing?’

  He held me still, with his eyes that is, for a moment more.

  ‘You two coming here, looking for your Daddy, looking for him. That, I tell you, is fine.’

  But he did not mean fine like I mean fine or Cathy or Daddy mean fine when it is a fine day or when you ask for something reasonable and they tell you it is fine.

  ‘Ewart, love,’ said Martha, ‘it’s hardly their fault. They can hardly be blamed. For any of it.’

  ‘No? They’re old enough, aren’t they? They’re old enough to participate in the business end of things, why not in this? They’re a tight family, this lot, that’s what they always said. That’s why we took to them. You know as well as I, Martha, that we would never have trusted a man like John, man with his reputation, and let him into our home and into our confidences if it handt been for these two. A father with children is a much more reliable prospect than a single, lone man. It’s all about perception. That’s how these tricksters lure you in, see. Come with a family and you’re trustworthy. They’re probably all in on it. What have you two come for, then, my wife’s jewellery? The car?’

  ‘Enough,’ demanded Martha. ‘They came to see where their father is, and they thought he might be here. They’re at as much of a loss as we are. They had nothing to do with any of it.’

  ‘Nothing to do with any of what?’ asked Cathy.

  ‘Perhaps you’d best come in,’ said Martha.

  ‘Perhaps they had better not!’

  Ewart put an arm across the threshold to bar our entrance. Neither Cathy nor I had made any moves to enter.

  ‘You could just tell us while we wait here,’ I suggested.

  Martha took a deep, leaden breath. ‘Your father came here first thing. At dawn, or just after, even. Neither Ewart nor I were up, but we heard him at the door.’

  ‘That we did. We were happy to see him. It was early but he always did keep irregular hours. We were used to welcoming him into our homes at all times of the day and night. Trusting fools that we are.’

  ‘Enough, Ewart. It’s your pride. It’s your pride.’

  ‘It’s more than my pride. It’s fifty thousand pounds, Martha. Money that wasn’t even ours.’

  ‘I know that. I know that. But these two children need to know.’

  Ewart took a step back and folded his arms over his belly. He couldn’t look at us.

  ‘He came round here before dawn,’ said Martha again. ‘Your daddy. He asked to come in, and, of course, we welcomed him. He said he had need to see the books. The one where we recorded all the business. All that’s been going on these last months. Well we kept all that in a safe upstairs, all the names and the money they’d been giving us. Because you know there were dues. Union dues, I suppose. Well, those involved, as you may know, were paying their rent money for each week or month to us. To me and Ewart. Just for safe keeping. For if the strike went tits up. Or for if we came to the kind of agreement where the landlords submitted to our demands and in return they got the withheld money back, in whole or in part. And, well, that’s what we agreed to, isn’t it. Your Daddy settled his score with the land for the house in that fight. Price had wanted him to fight for him all along. You two have no idea how much money was riding on that fight, and how much Mr Price stood to gain from John cooperating with him again, fighting for him, like he used to. But separate to all that was the deal we struck with all the landlords collectively. Mr Price, yes, but the others too. And not about your house and land but that of all those in the rented houses and flats, the old council properties. They agreed to a rent freeze. They agreed to a more reasonable rent for those who quite clearly could not afford. They agreed to forget about arrears. And they agreed to fix some of the things that had broken. Not all, mind, we asked people to take care of some of their own stuff too, and people from the community who are good at that sort of thing, but the landlords agreed to do a lot. And we would pay back the money that had been withheld. Not at first, but after we saw that they would keep their word. And, of course, there was something of your Daddy’s fight in that. It sealed the promise. Sealed it in blood. Don’t ask me how. But it did. Only the money, near fifty thousand pounds, given to us by all those good folk who trusted us and expected us to see them right, it’s gone. Your Daddy went upstairs to see the books – we trusted him with the key to the safe – and he rustled away the money. All of it. And then he left.’

  Ewart took up the tack. ‘And as the morning wore on we heard stories. Stories on which you two might be able to expand. Stories from Peter down the way and others in the village. A story about a dead boy in the woods. That son of Price’s. The pretty one. The prettier one. Dead. Strangled. And his watch and money robbed.’

  ‘His watch and money robbed?’ asked Cathy.

  ‘Aye. Your Daddy clearly wandt content with all he had won that day. Or else his blood was up. Clearly there’s no satisfying men like your Daddy when their blood is up. When they’re in the mood for violence. When that violence is the violence of avarice. They’ll go to the lowest possible limits of greed and thuggery. I should have known. I was a fool. I should have known. A man like that. With his reputation. Mr Price is a wrong’un, to be sure, but his boy was just a boy. Just a lad. And his neck was nearly clean snapped by all accounts, such was the force with which your Daddy gripped it.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ said Cathy, quietly.

  ‘Not true, is it?’ said Ewart. ‘You dare to defend him? That’s fine. That’s fine.’

  Again, he did not really mean fine. He meant rich, that’s rich. Or he meant, that is absurd, or he meant, that is offensive to me and to everything I stand for.

  ‘You’ve just assumed,’ said Cathy. ‘Yesterday you were his friend, you were cheering for him with the others, but today you accuse him.’

  ‘He stole fifty thousand pounds from me!’

  ‘So you accuse him of strangling Charlie Price. There is nothing to suggest it were him. Only rumours. And only rumours that tell you he was motivated by greed, that he stole from Charlie Price. You believe that he stole the wallet and the watch because you believe he stole fifty thousand pounds from the safe in your house.’

  ‘He did steal fifty thousand pounds from the safe in my house!’

  ‘But he dindt kill Charlie Price. I did.’

  Ewart and Martha stood in silence. I stood in silence. Cathy was silent too.

  Then, after some time, Ewart
spoke. ‘You’re a little girl, Cathy. You might think you’re big and tough like your daddy, but you’re a wee girl. Don’t play games with us.’

  ‘I’m not playing games with you.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re trying to protect your father,’ said Martha. ‘That’s good of you, really it is, but it’s not helpful here.’

  ‘I’m not trying to be helpful. I’m trying to tell the truth. I killed Charlie Price.’

  ‘Cathy.’

  ‘I killed Charlie Price. I strangled the life out of him. I am glad I did it and I would do it again.’

  Martha and Ewart Royce said nothing. They looked at Cathy, aghast. Martha took hold of the wooden door and slammed it shut. The glass pane rattled.

  Cathy and I stood for a few moments more, turned and walked back down the garden path.

  I did not ask any more of Cathy. I did not ask questions nor request that she repeat what she had said.

  We walked along a couple of streets and still said nothing. We split up and agreed to meet back at home in an hour. Cathy went to Peter’s and to some of the others we knew from the village. I made towards Vivien’s house on the outskirts, past the common land, past the stray, back towards where we lived, me, Cathy and Daddy. Cathy had not wanted to come to Vivien’s house. She had said she would rather speak with the honest people of the village. So I walked down the lane alone.

  The curtains were drawn, not just the upstairs windows but the downstairs windows too.

  I knocked on the door. There was no answer and no sounds from within.

  I knocked again. No answer. No hushed voices. No bustle of cooking or cleaning. No radio.

  I waited, and knocked, and thumped, and waited. I paced the front garden. There was no answer yet I knew that she was at home. I knocked, I waited, I struck the door with both fists. Once. Twice. I waited.

  With each passing minute I knew more fervently that Vivien was truly inside, hiding from me, listening to me knock and thump, perhaps watching me through a slit in the curtains, watching me pace, watching my skin flush, watching tears well in my eyes.

  I had come to depend on Vivien with a weight I could only just acknowledge, now, as I set that weight down. Daddy had built me a home – for me and for him and for Cathy. He had built shelter, arranged wood and stone over our heads in such a way that kept off the wind and the snow and the rain. He had given us safety and warmth. But, for me, in a way that I could not quite fathom let alone describe, Vivien had built a home for me too. A nest. It was a different kind from the one by the copse on the top of the hill. There was nothing tangible about the home I felt in Vivien. There were no bricks, no mortar, no rivets, no joints. It kept off no weather. It sank slowly into no mud. But it had a kind of hearth and a kind of fire. It was a place with a future. A place of possibility.

  ‘Vivien!’ I shouted. I knocked again. And waited. ‘Vivien!’

  There was no use in it. I gave up. I turned for the last time and walked back down the path towards the gate and the lane that led home.

  As I turned onto the track, Vivien’s front door was flung open, and the woman who I had met the year before, so composed, ran from her house towards me. Unkempt hair was tossed by a sudden gust. Her eyes were red.

  ‘If you want to talk, Daniel, you’d better come in!’

  At first I remained motionless. I stood for a while to take in the scene. Then I followed her inside and she shut the door, but we didn’t make it past the hall. ‘He’s gone, Daniel. And no, I don’t know where. That he wouldn’t say.’

  ‘But he came to see you.’

  ‘Yes, he did. You’ve only missed him by half an hour or so.’

  ‘I should have come here first. I knew I should have come here first. But that means he might still be near.’

  ‘You won’t find him. When he moves, he moves quickly. And he doesn’t want you to chase him.’

  ‘He said he would stay.’

  ‘How could he. There are men after him. Men and dogs. Men that want to kill him. Really kill him, this time. Catch him alive, if possible, drag him back to Price and kill him slowly. This isn’t business, any more, he killed that boy.’

  ‘He dindt,’ I said.

  ‘Of course he did.’

  ‘Is that what he said? Is that what he told you?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t deny it.’

  ‘But did he tell you that, really? Did you ask him directly and did he tell you directly?’

  ‘He didn’t have to. Word spreads fast. I had a phone call from Ewart first thing this morning. He wanted to warn me. He said that your Daddy had killed the Price boy, strangled him to death, nearly took his head off with the force of his fists, then he’d gone to Ewart and Martha’s at dawn and stolen some money.’

  ‘But still you let him in when he came?’

  ‘Well, your father had always been wild. I always knew he was no angel.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘But he dindt kill Charlie Price.’

  ‘Whatever he did. Whatever he did or didn’t do, Price’s men are certain. They found your Daddy’s coat draped over the boy’s body, you know? Like a blanket. Like a shroud.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘John’s a marked man. If they catch him, there’s no telling what they’ll do to him. I know he’s tough. We all know that. But this is different. Running was the only chance he had.’

  I nodded. ‘Perhaps.’

  I looked through an open door into the front room. Vivien did not invite me further into the house. It was cold to me.

  ‘Did he come here to say goodbye to you?’ I asked.

  ‘In part.’

  ‘What was the other part?’

  ‘He asked me—’ She stopped speaking.

  ‘He asked you what?’

  ‘It was a big ask. Beyond what most people would ask of each other.’

  ‘What did he ask you?’

  ‘I don’t know if I should say.’

  ‘Vivien! My father disappeared from me this morning and there are men and dogs hunting him, to kill! Tell me!’

  ‘He wanted you and Cathy to come here. He wanted me to look after you for a little while until he could find somewhere safe. Then he would come and get you.’

  I did not say anything just then. I wanted her to finish.

  ‘Only it’s a lot to ask,’ she continued. ‘I’ve got my own life, and yes I feel sorry for you, but it’s a lot. And besides, you and Cathy are fairly self-sufficient. You two wouldn’t want to move in here with me. You’re your own family. You’ve got each other. And I’m not one to share my space. I’m too old and too used to living alone, now. Perhaps years ago it would have worked. There was a time in my life when it might have been a lovely thing. But not now. It’s too late.’

  ‘Daddy asked you to do that?’

  ‘Yes, he asked that.’

  I thought about it for a moment. A scene in which somebody who is running for their life asks an old friend to care for their children, and that old friend refuses. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I suppose you’re right. Cathy and I can make do at the house.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. You be careful though.’

  She seemed to want me to leave.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, we will.’

  ‘Because Price and his men might come for you, you see. To get to Daddy.’

  ‘I suppose they might.’

  ‘So don’t open the door to any strangers.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We won’t.’

  I took a step back. ‘Thank you for letting me in.’

  For a moment she had forgotten that initially she had not. She looked taken aback. ‘Oh, no, I mean, of course. Of course I was going to let you in. I was upstairs with the vacuum on, that’s all. You’re always welcome here. To visit.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s kind.’

  I opened the front door and stepped out into the sun. I closed the door behind myself, thinking that the right thing to do but it was stiff in its frame and I had to shunt it a co
uple of times, and Vivien, saying something muffled that I did not hear, pushed it from within.

  The walk home was slow.

  We hid in the trees when Price’s men came to search the house. It was mid-morning and we heard the dirty, claggy exhausts of their vans long before they got to the top of our hill. Cathy suggested that we stay in the house and confront them. She said we should show them we were not cowards. I persuaded her to leave off on this idea and instead we let ourselves out the back and ducked and skipped as quietly as we could until we hit the cover of the copse. There was no sign of Jess or Becky. I looked for them out on the horizon as we skulked across the open ground but caught no sight.

  The soft, wet moss on the woodland floor and the sallow bark of the ash smelt more familiar this morning than ever before. Birds in the branches and the small mammals in the undergrowth kept the silence with us, though I saw shining eyes and flickering indigo feathers through apertures in the leaves.

  I breathed slowly and deliberately and felt Cathy do the same. The vans parked on the stony earth outside our front door, and the men in the front seats got out. One rushed to the back to unstick the big double doors of both vehicles and five men climbed from the galley of each. Fourteen there were in total. I squinted to see if any were recognisable, feeling sick at the thought that it might be anyone we knew here, and, clearly, something had shifted. At least four were farm labourers who had come up to our bonfire on that night, weeks ago now. And all the men looked set on work like they were climbing out of the backs of vans to pick strawberries or sort potatoes. A couple even had spades, though to be put to a different use. Others gripped baseball bats and crowbars.

  The men started circling the house. No one wanted to knock on the front door but a few – the bravest – went up to the windows, stuck an eyeball against the glass and shielded it from glare with a cupped hand. They paced for the best part of a minute before a smallish man with bulldog shoulders shuffled his crowbar to his right hand then swung it at the door, by way of a knock. I heard the sound briefly resonate within the house, like he had thumped an empty oil-drum.