Bill jams his palm against the centre of the steering wheel and the horn sounds like a hunting bugle and the deer is gone and I hate him for it, the brute.
My Daddy would have done differently.
But then we stop in a lay-by. And I learn that a body can mutate in the course of a night. And that a night can bend with the curve of a body. He is not so strong as he thinks. He is not so much of a man. His voice is deep and his chest is broad and there is more hair on his chin and jaw than on the top of his head. But I have known others. I have come from sterner stock.
I reach out to stroke him as he pulls at my jeans but he bats away my hand. I do not mind. He is nervous to the touch.
His weight is such that I am pinned. I notice the tattoos on his upper arms. They have faded and bled blues and greys against his blotchy skin. I make out the head of a serpent. There is an eagle caught in flight. Its talons and hooked beak are fierce. The body of a woman is stretched out along his forearm. Her breasts are bare.
He does not look me in the eye. We do not kiss. There is no conversation.
There is pleasure in the contact, if nothing else. In this brittle caress.
And in the morning I sit differently in my skin.
Chapter Nineteen
When you are terrified of everything nothing particularly afears. It was Cathy who first noticed the alteration. I had gone back to bed at Daddy’s behest and had fallen asleep quickly. Cathy, who had slept through the night and through the arrival and departure of the man who had come to warn Daddy, was now up and thundering around our little cottage like a songbird that had flown through the window and was madly trying to retrace its path. The noise woke me but I did not get up and go to her. I remained tucked beneath my covers with my eyes closed, terrified. When she burst into my room she nearly lifted the door from its hinges. Its handle thudded against the wall and segments of roughly applied plaster crumbled to chalky dust.
‘Wake up, Daniel, wake up,’ she pleaded. I had never heard her plead.
I hesitated, wanting nothing less than to leave my safe, warm, bed. But she was my sister. And I knew instinctively, deeply, certainly, that something was very wrong.
I opened my eyes. ‘I am awake,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘Daddy’s gone.’
‘He must be in trees,’ I replied immediately.
‘I’ve been into the copse. He indt there. He indt in the house and he indt in the trees.’
‘Did you go right to the heart of the copse? To the mother tree?’
‘I’ve searched everywhere.’
I was silent, but this time through comprehension.
Cathy must have seen some understanding in my expression. ‘Where is he? Where has he gone?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. He said he would stay, no matter what. And if he was going to leave, why did he leave without us?’
‘Where has he gone?’
‘I don’t know. I said, I don’t know.’
‘What do you know?’
‘I saw him early this morning. Just at dawn. A man came to the door and the dogs woke and then they woke me. They handt come back either. They must be out on the hill somewhere. Did they not wake you?’
‘I slept right through the night. I was dreaming throughout. Dreaming dreams I don’t remember.’
‘I woke and I heard Daddy speaking with the man at the front door and snuck out of bed to listen. I dindt recognise the other man’s voice. He wandt one of our lot and not someone from village. He came to warn Daddy. To warn him and to urge him to leave, get out of here, and—’ I stopped. ‘And to take us with him.’
‘Why? We’ve won.’
‘Because — and this is what the man said — because after the fight, in the middle of night, they found a body in woods behind the racecourse. A dead body. It was one of Price’s sons.’
Cathy made no reaction, gave no sense that she had even heard or understood. She simply looked at me with those bright blue eyes, shining from that pale, lucid skin.
‘The man told Daddy that Mr Price blamed him. Price and the others all think that Daddy killed son. I don’t know which one it was. They had decided it must have been Daddy, from I don’t know what, extent of strangulation, strength of hands that enclosed his neck and power of person behind them. They decided because of that and because, of course, Price hates him. His hatred of Daddy goes deeper than this recent trouble, I think, Cathy. It goes deeper than all this business about the fight and deeper than land on which we live. Stranger at door said Price had made up his mind it were Daddy killed his son, and now he’s set on vengeance. There are no games any more. He’s sending his men up, today, this morning perhaps, to get Daddy. To drag him back to them and do I don’t know what. They woundt go to police, obviously.’
‘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?’