‘But that’s just what I mean. Do. Do leave me. I need you to know that I’ll be fine. No matter what they do to me, what happens to me. I’ll be fine. In my self, I mean. They can do their worst and I promise you I’ll go somewhere else in my mind’s eye, for as long as I need to, and I’ll be fine. An experience is what you make of it. If you tell yourself that it means nothing, then that’s exactly what it means. So you just run. Promise me.’
‘I don’t want to promise that.’
‘Please. I can look after myself, in the only way I know how. And the thought of something happening to you is far worse for me than the prospect of something happening to me. I mean that. I would worry so much. I would never get over it. But if something happens to my body. Well, I am able to put myself in such a position that it’s like it’s not really happening. And if it’s like it’s not really happening that means it’s not really happening. Do you see what I mean?’
I told her that I did not.
‘Well. Never mind. Just promise me you’ll run when I need you to run. I will be safer and better equipped if you run. If I know you’re safe and out of it.’
I said nothing for a long while. The shouting and running had stopped. There was an unnerving silence. I moved over to sit by Cathy and took her hand as I had back in the shed.
‘If we’re off to meet up with Daddy,’ I said, ‘I’m sure we’ll be all right.’
Cathy squeezed my hand, weakly.
‘Promise you’ll run,’ she said.
‘I promise.’
The van accelerated once again and Cathy and I rocked back and forth as the way became rough. Then, all of a sudden, we slid to the back. The front of the vehicle had lifted. We were climbing a steep hill. The hill was ours. Perhaps I could tell from the precise undulations in the track. Perhaps I could smell something of home.
The van stopped and the driver stepped out and walked round to the back. He opened the double doors. Dusk had come and gone and we found ourselves looking out into the night. By starlight and moonlight I recognised the three men that had collected us before. Cathy and I rose.
She whispered to me, ‘Do as I say. We’ll get out with them, we’ll comply, and they won’t manhandle us. Then when I say, you run.’
We stepped out.
The men flanked us but did not seize us.
We began to walk towards the house.
‘Daniel,’ said Cathy, aloud. She meant for me to go. But I remained. ‘Daniel,’ she said again.
We were walking with the men towards our own front door.
‘Daniel,’ said Cathy.
I continued to walk. I was behind her, with two men at either side and one in front, leading the way.
We were nearly inside. The copse was to my right and, beyond, the shaded hills then the flats of the levels.
‘Daniel, run!’ Cathy shouted, frustrated that I was not moving to her command.
I remained where I was. One of the men chuckled, then, of a sudden, he took Cathy roughly by her arms, pinned them behind her body at such an angle that only the shoulders and elbows of a supple and lanky young girl could stand.
It was not the worst thing they could have done, to be sure, yet it hurt her. She moaned, though she did not shriek.
‘Don’t be a damn fool, love,’ said the man who had laughed and grabbed.
With that, I got shoved from behind through the space where the front door had been. These men were full-grown men. These men were strong, burly, full-grown men employed for the purpose of doing harm. They were tough. With but a light push I was half-winded.
We were marched into the kitchen. I stepped on broken glass. The windows had been shattered and cupboards were open with their contents strewn. Two of the chairs I had lovingly crafted with the help of my father had been smashed. The legs of the kitchen table, chopped roughly, lay on the floor at the sides of the room. The top, the long, thick oak board, was absent.
They bundled us in. They were more ragged in their movements than they had been. Rougher, more unkind. They took us to the sides of the room and held us, firm. Another of the men gripped me as the first gripped Cathy. My bony arms were held tight behind my back by the elbows. I was young and thin and flexible too but my shoulders ached, and my ribs where they were squeezed, and the skin at the crook of my arm where the man pinched it with his leathery palms and annealed knuckles. I yelped.
For Cathy the initial pain had passed but her breathing deepened as her body found a way through the discomfort.
Other men filed into the room. They thumped each other on the arms and nodded. There was brief, clipped chatter. Cathy and I were shovelled to the sides, still held tight.
And then hush.
Into the room, into our kitchen, walked Mr Price. Like it was his own. His parlour. His workshop. His counting house. Like we were spiders climbing on his walls. Slugs suckered to his window, peering in.
His face showed wear. He was gaunt. But there was something human. A man whose son had been strangled to death in the woods, not a couple of nights before.
Tom Price, the elder of the two lads, walked behind him. He looked in horror and choler at my sister and I as our bodies were bent by the fists of others.
Father and son arranged themselves in a corner of the room. Mr Price did not direct his gaze at us. Not once. He stared above our heads and above the heads of the men he had hired. His jaw was locked, and it held the rest of his face in stiff composure.
The space was almost full with men at each side, sitting up on the work surfaces, tucked into corners and squeezed against the sides. Only the wall nearest the door was vacant, deliberately so, as men pushed and shoved into all the other spaces.
The silence remained. It was held by Mr Price. His presence settled others with a quiet trepidation. He surveyed.
A moan was heard outside. And it was as if the silence deepened. Everyone heard it. Then a sickening bellow. And something heavy dragging. And the voices of other men struggling to move an object.
‘Push. Push. I’ll guide him in.’ The words were muffled, heard through two shut doors and a whirling wind.
‘The corner’s got stuck on this clump of turf.’
The other man’s response did not make it into the room but was carried away by a sudden gust. They continued to drag whatever they were dragging. Step by step. Push and pull. It scraped and thudded. All eyes were on the door. Another moan was heard. A distinctive moan from distinctive vocal chords.
I couldn’t help it. I called out. ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ I shouted.
‘Somebody shut that boy up,’ snapped Mr Price from the corner. He did not look over. He hardly moved his lips as he issued the command.
The man holding me removed one of his fists from my arms and smacked my lower jaw. I tasted blood and with my tongue felt something loose. He shook me for good measure, bound my arms up in his own and pushed down so I had to lean forward and bend my knees.
I panted with the pain. I fiddled with the loose molar. I tasted blood. I fiddled some more with the tooth. I paid attention to this object in my mouth, to the feeling of its rough top as my tongue rubbed against it, and the feeling of the soft, tenderised gum beneath.
The door was opening. The man who had been doing the dragging could just about be seen, his back turned as he attended to his burden.
I concentrated on finding with my tongue the place in my mouth from where the blood was coming in. I fiddled around with the tooth. I enjoyed the distraction of the sharpness.
The man had now backed fully into the room. He was assisted by three others in his task. They held a board of wood. It was the top of our oak table. I saw where the legs had been and how roughly and carelessly they had been hacked off. The men carrying the table top now held it by these stubs.
I fiddled with my tooth. My back was bent in such a way that I had to strain my neck to see any of this. I thought about the pain in my spine, and the ache in my jaw and in my head, and about how I needed a drink of water, badly.
Daddy was strapped to the oak board with leather belts and cable ties. They dragged him into the room and propped him up against the wall that had been left vacant. His hands and wrists were coated in blood and his arms were spattered with it. Blood covered his face too and there were great clots of it on his forehead. On his left side, his white cotton vest was drenched crimson. His feet were bare and bound and they were rubbed and bleeding also. Everywhere the blood was mixed with dirt and mud and leaves and grasses and tar and soil from the land about, and red moved to black-brown.
When he was brought in his eyes were closed. Slowly he opened them and fixed them on mine. He looked over at Cathy, whose attention was as captured. The men who had brought him were busy ensuring his bonds were tight. Others looked at his hands and arms and legs or about them or at each other. None but my sister and I looked at Daddy’s eyes, a stark white, bright like two stars in a bloody firmament.
He groaned. He gurgled with each breath, liquid in his lungs.
Mr Price was the first to speak. ‘It’s a dark day, John. It’s a dark day. And believe me, this brings me no pleasure.’ He spoke quietly. ‘But you know that I require justice. Our kind of justice. Make your confession and it will be quick. Relatively quick.’
Daddy said nothing. Perhaps he could not. His eyes moved from Mr Price, to me, to my sister, to Mr Price.
‘You see that I brought your children here. I will be hard on them and you will see it,’ said Price.
Still Daddy said nothing.
Mr Price nodded to the big man holding Cathy. She struggled as he pushed her down, pinned her to the floor and took a knife to her clothing. The garments shrieked and whined as he ripped them apart. His aim was not to pierce her skin but he nicked it as he made the incisions, and as she struggled, and as he cut and ripped. There was blood on her too now.
Yet she did not scream. Her mouth remained shut firm. Her eyes wide open.
A naked body is just a naked body. Shame is only in beholding. And if I looked at her without shame, she could stand before me naked without shame and there would be no power in it. For why should she care for the way these men, these inconsequential men, looked at her?
Her clothes were cut and her body was revealed. I looked at her with all the intensity I could muster. I looked into her eyes and caught them with mine and I tried with all my might to let her know. Know what? Something. That she was not alone. That these things were only as bad as you imagined them to be and that only she could steady her imagination. But when I looked I saw that she was there already. There, or perhaps elsewhere. A thin, durable film of miraculous unconcern had settled upon her. She was impervious.
She stood naked. The man was still holding her tight but he could hardly be seen behind her radiance. The cuts and spotting that had appeared on her near-translucent skin hardly held attention.
Daddy coughed. Some blood dribbled onto his thick black beard. It would need washing, I told myself. When this was done, Cathy and I would need to wash our father’s clotted beard and matted hair. ‘Please stop,’ he whispered to Price.
Price stared back. ‘Confess,’ he said to Daddy.
Daddy opened his mouth to speak again. There was breath but none which had strength to catch his voice. He sighed, tried again, but again the air fell damp in his lungs.
‘Mr Price,’ said Cathy. Her voice was unusually soft but steady and cutting as the arc of an axe through air. ‘I killed your son, Mr Price.’
Many in the room had been watching her. Many still watched her. But the mode of their gaze was so very different now it could hardly be given the same name.
Mr Price turned his head.
She said again, ‘I killed your son, Mr Price.’
He smiled. Others followed suit. ‘You tell me you had a hand in it? Lured him to the place, did you, so your father could rob him and kill him?’
Cathy shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I did it alone. Daddy wandt there. He knew nothing about it. I was alone. I closed my hands around his neck and I squeezed. I squeezed and I squeezed and he struggled beneath me with all the strength he could muster but still I squeezed and he coundt do owt about it. And he just got weaker and weaker as I held his neck in my hands and he got bluer and bluer until he wandt breathing at all no more and still I held on just in case until my fingers ached. And then I let him go. And I covered him with that coat. And I dindt rob him, but that’s by the by.’
Mr Price was stunned. His mouth gaped in incredulity. ‘Get out of it,’ he said. ‘You dare. You dare lie to me, you little bitch. You dare.’
‘It’s not a lie. Why would I lie? Why would I lie now in this moment when you have us as captives here in this way? Why would I lie when I know truly that you will murder the person who saw to your son? And still I tell you, I killed him. I strangled him with these two little hands. And I’m not sorry. And I would do it again.’
Tom Price, the elder of the two brothers, had been leaning against the wall. He stepped forward. ‘But how could you? You’re a little girl?’
‘She didn’t,’ interrupted Mr Price. ‘Of course she didn’t. She’s playing with us. That’s what they do.’
‘I killed Charlie Price!’ shouted Cathy. ‘I killed Charlie Price!’ she shouted again.
Charlie Price’s father came forward himself this time. He raised his right hand behind his left ear and unfurled it on my sister’s face with a loud crack.
The naked girl shut her eyes against the impact then opened them as quickly as if she had only turned and blinked and nothing more.
‘I killed Charlie Price,’ said Cathy again.
‘Get her out of here,’ said Mr Price to the room, to all of the other men who stood there, who had witnessed my sister’s confession and had come to their own conclusions about the verity of her claims.
One of their number came forward after a moment of pause. He reached out a gloved hand and stroked her neck. ‘I’ll shut her up,’ he stated blankly.
‘Good,’ replied Mr Price. ‘Take her to the next room and do with her whatever you wish. And I mean whatever you wish. Make the most of her.’
The new man with the gloved hands took Cathy from the grasp of the first and lifted her over his shoulder. She did not struggle. He removed her from the room and carried her into our hall then into a bedroom. I heard his footsteps. I heard the door click open and shut. I strained to hear more but there was nothing for several minutes.
In the meantime I was pulled up by my chin. It was Mr Price. The grip at my elbows was eased and I stood straight. Price asked, ‘And what was your part in this, my boy? The man, the girl, and you,’ he said. ‘Your father, your sister, and you. Your sister admitted conspiracy. What of you?’
‘Cathy dindt admit conspiracy,’ I said. ‘She told you that she did for your son and that she did for him alone.’
‘Aye. And I don’t believe her for one minute. A girl like that? Alone? No, I don’t think so. I’m no fool.’
I said nothing.
Mr Price continued. ‘I wonder,’ he said, his voice more gentle than it had been. ‘I wonder if you will come to resemble your mother or your father. In character, I mean. It is clear already that you have taken after your mother in physical appearance. But whose path will you follow? Will you end up like him?’ He nodded towards Daddy, whose eyes had closed, whose breath had softened. ‘Or will you end up like her?’
I lifted my head. I noticed creases in his golden skin and paler places at his lids. Shades of white-flecked pigeon-feather hair. Dry lips. Large ovaline nostrils flared when he inhaled. A flattish brow.
Perhaps he wanted me to ask. Perhaps he wanted for me to plead with him to tell me all about her. I cannot say that I did not want to know. I did. I had wanted to know all these years. I had wanted to ask it of Daddy, one time, on another day, on a very different type of day from this day, a day when we were here in this kitchen before these men came to stand here, any of the many days in the previous year when we had long hours to ourse
lves. We had had much to discuss but always had spoken little. Silence had been the mode of our exchanges. It had been the rule I had learnt.
So I remained silent, and the silence stayed my curiosity. My mother had come and gone. Until the last time when she had just gone. And not come.
When I was a very small boy I had sat in her arms as she rocked on a swing in the park behind Granny Morley’s house. The chains that held the seat were rusted iron. They crackled as my mother leaned our weight against them, and ferrous crumbs dropped as she rocked. They hit the rubber beneath. I had held her tight. I had held on for dear life. But her fists crunched on those chains. She gripped them until her knuckles bleached out and until her palms were stained with that thin russet pigment, as if the metal had been treated and ground especially to colour that chalked skin precisely the shade of her very own vein-blood.
‘She was always a grumpy girl,’ said Mr Price. ‘Always unhappy about something. You’d look at her and, likely as not, she’d have a downturned mouth and a frown on. What she had to be miserable about, God alone knows. Pretty face, of course, but she never made the most of it. I mean, I tried to do what I could for her. I would have married her if my boys’ mother had died sooner. I made her a good offer. But she chose another path. She frittered her life away. Went about with the wrong sorts of people. Went to the wrong sorts of parties. The farm and the land she’d inherited all went to waste. And if there’s one thing I hate, Daniel, it’s waste. The waste of land especially. Good land, made barren. I can’t stand it.’
Mr Price turned from me and went to the kitchen counter.
‘So by the time I took her in, it was on very different terms. It had to be. She had disgraced herself. But I put a roof over her head, at least! Not that she ever showed any gratitude. And not that she stuck around. Your Daddy – if he is your Daddy – was working for me at the time, collecting rents, winning fights that I set up for him. And the two of them ran off together, didn’t they. Ran off with a pile of cash, my wife’s jewellery and a pair of 1960s Holland & Holland guns.’
He pulled at the brass ring handle of a drawer with a hooked, bloated thumb. It was the drawer that I had helped fit. I had not managed to fix the alignment quite right. It always stuck.
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