Daddy was king. A foot taller than the tallest of these men, Daddy was gargantuan. Each of his arms was as thick as two of theirs. His fists were near the size of their heads. Each of them could have sat curled up inside his ribcage like a foetus in a mother’s womb. These men did not move Daddy, and when they began prowling in earnest, he knew how to respond.
The bailiffs started knocking on doors. At first they would concentrate on a few houses in a certain area. This made it easy for Daddy. Gary, our man from the potato sorting, had use of his uncle’s car and as soon as he got a call from any of the tenants he would drive Daddy over as quickly as he could. Daddy would get out and make his hulking presence known. The bailiffs would leg it.
So the bailiffs started mixing up their routine. They would only go to one house in a neighbourhood and then get in their cars and drive away before Gary and Daddy could get there. But Daddy stepped it up as well. When he did catch up with a couple of them he dragged them down a snicket into a patch of overgrown grass, laced with wild flowers, cut off from view by high hawthorns. There, he broke ribs and fingers and sent them on their way.
Daddy did that a couple of times with a couple of different groups of them. The bailiffs began to lose interest. For them it was just a job, after all. They were only getting paid. And the landlords couldn’t pay them enough to make risking their necks worthwhile, not without paying out to bailiffs more than they would make back in rents.
It seemed as if we were winning. Morale was high. We met regularly, up at our house, to drink and chat and urge each other on. There was a real spirit behind it all, and people were excited.
But, of course, it could not last. And on a Tuesday, late on in the evening, but not so as it was yet dark, Mr Price drove up to our house.
I was scuffing up the path when Mr Price drove his Land Rover up the hill. There had been heavy summer rains this last fortnight and the torrents had run down the slope with half a tonne of mud, silt and rocks, and had pooled at the bottom of our path near where it met the bridleway. I had taken a rusted iron rake from the tool-shed and was shunting sediment back into a path shape. It was all clay up here. The claggy earth clung to the teeth of my rake as I scraped it into place, such that I could barely see the metal through the topsoil.
I heard Mr Price’s jeep coming up the bridleway. I knew of no one else with an engine that grand and smooth. He turned the corner onto our path and the front wheels of his vehicle sunk right far into the standing sludge. That deep engine revved and the wheels spun for a bit, kicking up muck and water that would have splattered me had I not seen it coming. He did not dare take the hill, so slowly reversed back out onto the bridleway and parked the jeep on the verge.
He opened the door and stepped out. If he was flustered and bothered behind those blacked-out windows he did not show it when he stepped into the outside, out in the evening light. He came towards me with a sinking sun at his back, illuminated. ‘You’re just the man,’ he said.
I stumbled. ‘I think I’ll just go and get my Daddy.’
‘No, no, no.’ He held out a hand to gather me back round, so as I would go with him out into the bridleway. His tone was sweet, generous. His face was kind.
I looked up at my house. The lights were being lit.
God, I was a coward sometimes.
Mr Price was still standing there, with his arm outstretched, waiting for me. It was a case of pleasing the person who was right there in front of me, you see.
I picked my way through the puddles and out into the lane. Mr Price took us to a place where we were hidden from the house by the honeysuckle.
He stood in front of me. He was wearing wellington boots, corduroy trousers, and in the warm summer evening just a chequered cotton shirt, unbuttoned at the top.
He put his left foot up on the banking and leaned on it with his left elbow so that his whole posture opened and dipped. Like this, he stood a few inches smaller than me, and he looked up at me with brindle eyes.
I noticed that I was fidgeting with my hands and feet, rubbing the soles of my shoes back and forth against the damp grass and winding my fingers in rings about themselves.
‘What’s your surname, lad?’
‘Oliver.’
‘Daniel Oliver?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Daniel and Catherine Oliver.’
‘Yeah. What of it?’
‘What’s your Daddy’s surname?’
‘Smythe.’
‘Smythe?’
‘Aye. You know that.’
Mr Price nodded. ‘I do know that. I just wanted to ask.’
He shifted his weight so that he was standing tall, but there was still warmth in his manner as far as I could discern.
‘You and your sister were given your mother’s surname.’
‘Aye. So what? That happens lots of times.’
‘I suppose it does.’ Mr Price paused and wetted his lips, looking at me the whole while. ‘You see, I’ve got a great deal more time for an Oliver than I do for a Smythe. It’s fortunate for you, then, that that is what you are.’
I shrugged. ‘I can’t say I knew my mother all that well. Daddy’s been both for us. Both mother and father. Daddy and our Granny Morley were, I mean. Before we came here. I might be an Oliver by name, but I’m a Smythe by nature.’
Mr Price considered these words for a moment and then shook his head, ever so slightly. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t see that at all. You are not a bit like your father.’
An ounce of extra stubbornness shot through me with this declaration.
Mr Price continued: ‘I don’t suppose you’re enjoying the current state of affairs much. I shouldn’t think it would be in your nature to seek out or prolong proceedings such as these. The strike, I mean. This business about the rents for the properties I own. It’s all a bit silly, isn’t it? That’s my take on it, if you want to know. It should never have come to this. Why are your father and his friends approaching things in this way, I ask myself? Why not just come to me straight away to discuss their grievances?’
‘You threatened to kick us off our land, that’s why.’
‘Did I? You heard that, did you? You were there, were you?’
‘No, I wandt there. But Daddy said.’
‘Daddy said?’
‘Aye.’
Mr Price gathered himself, folded his arms on his lower chest. ‘I would give you this land tomorrow,’ he said. ‘This tiny copse with a handful of good trees and clay that’s running down into the Levels? I would give it up to you tomorrow. Not to your Daddy, but to you. Not a Smythe, but an Oliver. Your Daddy is a brute. You are your mother’s son. What do you say to that?’
‘I … I don’t really understand.’
‘I’m telling you I would give you the land, where your Daddy’s built that house, tomorrow. It would be yours, officially. I would sign over the papers. There would be no further problems.’
‘But I woundt want it by myself. I would still want to live with Daddy and Cathy.’
‘And I suppose that’s it, right there. The thought of handing over your mother’s land to your father doesn’t sit well with me. Never has. But he just placed himself on it, didn’t he? He’d been after it for years and then, one morning, he just turned up and started building. And the first I heard of it, he’d already got the best part of a house up. Does that sound right to you?’
I said nothing.
‘You knew it was your mother’s land, didn’t you? Your father told you that much, surely?’