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.
I sat and turned towards the warm stove. ‘What shall we do?’
‘Price’s hope would be that I’d do his work or that we’d move away.’
‘This is our home,’ I said.
Daddy looked at me as if for the first time in weeks and he placed his right hand on my left shoulder. ‘My feelings are the same,’ he said.
We stayed together in the kitchen for the rest of the afternoon. We drank mugs of hot, milky tea and at around four o’clock Cathy pulled a couple of bottles of cider from the cupboard. We discussed what Mr Price had said to Daddy and what could be done. Daddy told us again that Mr Price cared nothing for the copse. Daddy said that Mr Price just hated to feel the weight of helplessness. To interfere with the lives of others was to carve for himself a presence in the world. Mr Price detested that which he could not control. We lived here on his doorstep yet he had no access to our lives. We did not pay him rent, we did not work for him, we did not owe him any favours. And so he feared us. Daddy said that to Mr Price people were like wasps zipping around his head, ready to sting at any moment. He liked to know their movements. He liked to know their intentions. And when he knew those things he could catch them and put them in a breathless jar.
Daddy said that we should seek out his few friends in the village. There were a handful of people that he had helped in recent months and though Daddy was reticent in his favours, there were perhaps a couple he felt he could confide in. His friend Peter had less affection for Mr Price than we did and we resolved to pay him a visit.
Chapter Ten
We went the next evening. The morning we spent together on the rough, wet grass outside our wooden house. After an early start Daddy carried the kitchen table and chairs outside and set it up with a chequered cloth. I got the eggs and bacon on. Cathy brewed the tea and we took it all outside to eat in the cold bright sun. The bacon was from the butcher, Andrew, who was also one of Daddy’s few friends. It was well salted and he had cut it thickly but I made sure the rind was crisp before I lifted it from the skillet. The eggs fried quickly in the bacon fat and took on salt from the meat so their bottoms formed caramel crusts while the yolks remained golden. I warmed the plates first in the oven before serving up and afterwards finished them with a slice of fresh bread.