Still I was silent.
‘You knew that she lived up here, all her life? She inherited the land from her parents. And when she fell on hard times — which you’ll know all about, being her son — she came to me for help. And so I bought this land off her for a very high price indeed, and she should, would have been able to put herself back together again, start afresh, if it wasn’t for your father. And although this land is rightfully mine, and even after all that your parents have put me through, both when your mother was alive, and now that it’s just your father left causing me bother, I would happily sign it over to you, Daniel Oliver. I would give it to you out of the affection I held for the girl she was. But instead, your father seized it. He seized it from me when he had no right.’
I shrugged again. ‘No one else was doing anything with land.’
‘Maybe so. But that’s not the way the world works. That’s not how good, decent people operate.’
‘We’re decent people. We needed somewhere to live, is all.’
Mr Price looked me up and down and then walked around me towards his Land Rover. I thought he was going to drive away. I was feeling just a little bit proud of myself, like I had seen him off, like I had done one for the family, but he was not leaving just yet. He opened the door of the front passenger seat and reached into the glove compartment. He emerged with a clear plastic folder, containing a thick pad of documents, most in white, others in pastels: pink, yellow, blue, green.
‘I have the documents here,’ he said. ‘I am willing to sign the land over, officially, to you, Daniel Oliver. Look, you’re the named party.’ He pointed to the wording on the opening page. I saw my name laid out in black block capitals. ‘But knowing, as I do, that you would want to live here with your father — you are still a minor, after all — I have certain conditions. I need to know that your father isn’t going to be as hostile a neighbour as he has shown himself to be in recent months. I don’t want someone living so close to me who is going to give me a hard time, who is going to threaten my business and my property. Who would want that? Nobody. So you must tell him, first of all, that if he wants to be sure of a home for you all, and he wants the land to be in his son’s name — because he can be sure it will never be in his name — he must call off this stupid business. He must get those scroungers back to work, and he must make sure those rents are paid. Now I’ve spoken to the local farmers, and we’ve all agreed to up the pay a little bit. That’s only fair. And there won’t be any increases in rent for the next two years, and then only in line with inflation. Do you know what that is? No, well never mind. I’ve laid it all out in here.’ He waved the folder. ‘Here’s a letter to be given to your father, along with copies of the documents that I will sign if he agrees. That way he can think on it. He can weigh up the situation and make his decision. And then that’ll be that. Done.’
I took the folder from him and tucked it under my arm. ‘Are those conditions? That Daddy calls it all off?’
‘Not entirely,’ said Mr Price. ‘Your Daddy must work for me, from time to time, as he always used to. He must return to the fold. I used to own that man’s muscles, and I owned his mind. I owned his fists and his feet; his eyes and his ears and his teeth. How do you think he met your mother?’
‘I’ve never really thought about it.’
Mr Price made no answer. He folded his arms then unfolded them, and then placed them on his hips. ‘Just you get that message to your father,’ he said, pointing at my chest. ‘Tell him that’s all I want from him. I want to use him again. Him and that great, hulking body, the like of which I’ve never seen, not in this county, not in this country. Tell him I want to see those muscles tested, and those fists put to their proper use. Aye, I know he’ll never go round the houses for me, knocking about whoever I want him to knock about, like he might have done when he was a pup. But tell him I’ve got prouder work for him, if he’ll do it. Tell him I’ve found a man for him to fight.’
He turned his back on me and went back to his jeep. He drove away. Mud spat like shrapnel.
I had left my rake sticking straight up from the silt. It was the wrong tool for the job. I suckered it out of the ground, swung it over my right shoulder and bobbed up the hill to our house.
The front door was swinging, caught on a small, bouncing breeze with no particular direction. Cathy had left the door hanging so that this light, dewy wind could sweep the floors for us, and dance through the curtains, and the nooks in the walls, and leave our home with soft freshness and the smell of damp pollen and snapped greenwood.
‘Done with dredging?’ asked Daddy.
‘Nope. I was interrupted.’
I passed him the folder. He looked down at it and then up at me.
‘It’s from Price. He was here. He told me to tell you he wants to come to some kind of accord. He wants you to work for him, only not like you think. He said he’s got someone for you to fight. And then he’ll give us the land — he’ll sign it over to us. He said he’d do that.’
‘He said that? That he’d provide documents for the land.’
‘Yes. For us.’
‘For us all?’
‘For me. He said he’d sign the land over to me. I dindt fully understand. But it amounts to same thing. It’ll be ours on paper, and that means something.’
Daddy looked again at the folder, and took the documents from within. He looked at them closely, placing the pages flat on the table and leaning over them. He traced his index finger on the words, one by one, mouthing them precisely as he read. After some minutes he pushed the paper aside.
‘Means nothing to me.’
‘I can help,’ I said tentatively.
He shook his head. ‘No, lad, it’s not that. I can read well enough to understand what it says. It’s idea a person can write summat on a bit of paper about a piece of land that lives and breathes, and changes and quakes and floods and dries, and that that person can use it as he will, or not at all, and that he can keep others off it, all because of a piece of paper. That’s part which means nowt to me.’
Daddy gathered the documents and shuffled them back into the folder. The heels of the chair-legs scraped as he stood. The large man slouched as he went to the front door.
‘I’ll think on it,’ he said as he left the house and made for the copse.
Chapter Sixteen
The note came early before we were up. Cathy found it in the hall. It had been slipped under the door. She made breakfast and placed the note on the kitchen table, a hatchet that cut its way between the glass milk jug and the enamel coffee pot.
I woke with the smell of bacon in my nose. Daddy emerged from his bedroom too and followed the scent. He saw the note as I came through the open door into the kitchen. He pinched it between thumb and forefinger and lifted it. He saw that it was addressed to him, sliced the envelope with the breadknife and opened it.
‘Mr Price?’ Cathy asked. The coffee had stewed for too long and a dark brown, opaque liquid oozed from the spout.
Daddy hocked his throat for the first time that morning and spat up the residue glued to his windpipe by the night’s humidity and a slow evening cigarette.
‘He’s called me out.’
‘A fight?’
‘Yes, more or less. He’s arranged it as if it’s nothing more than a matter of business. There’ll be prize money and men will be allowed to bet on it. But, of course, we know that it handt got owt to do with business this time. He wants me to fight for him. If I win, he’ll get a lot of money and he’ll sign this land over to you two. If I lose, well, I’m sure he’ll still get a lot of money. He manages to fix things that way.’