‘He’s good like that, your father.’
Cathy nodded. Vivien went back to the kitchen to peel the potatoes and carrots. The chops would not take long to cook. She asked Cathy for help. Usually I did the kitchen work but Cathy was cheerful today and had started a conversation all on her own. They discussed the few people we all knew. Vivien told Cathy that her hair was looking lovely now that it was a little longer and she spoke about how tall she had become. Cathy told Vivien that even if she kept growing, I – her younger brother – would be bigger than her soon. Vivien looked round at me and smiled. I smiled back.
By the time Daddy came with the lamb chops the vegetables were peeled and cut and placed in pans of water resting on the hob. Vivien flicked on the gas beneath them and flames rose against their blackened bottoms. The chops were wrapped in a blue and white plastic bag. Vivien picked up a frying pan from the draining board and placed it onto the gas, wiping a knob of butter against its rim. She did all this with one smooth motion. Daddy stood beside her and pulled the meat from its wrappings. His hold was gentle so as not to spill the blood that had collected in the folds. They were Barnsley chops. A better cut. He eased the flopping maroon flesh into the pan and the fat hissed and cracked. Jess and Becky came up to his side and stuck their noses in the air and flared their nostrils to catch the savoury steam rising off the meat. I called them out of the kitchen and they did my bidding. They knew that if they did well now they might get scraps later.
Daddy and Vivien stood side by side in front of the hot stove. He was so much larger than her. The ribbed woollen jumper he was wearing accentuated the difference. The lamb was turned in the pan and when it was cooked through Daddy took each piece out with a fork and put it on a board to rest. The second two chops took less time. The pan was hotter and Daddy and Vivien preferred their meat bloody. When the carrots and potatoes were ready to drain Vivien took a colander from a low drawer and placed it in the sink. She poured the contents of each pan into it and then back into the empty pan and onto the stove for a few seconds to dry. The vegetables were then put into separate serving dishes with more butter and Cathy took them to the table.
We ate slowly and Daddy talked to us about Andrew Ramsey’s new abattoir. And then he talked about the boiler in Cybil Hawley’s bungalow that had exploded overnight. The barrel had split clean in two. Daddy had never seen anything like it. Hot water had come pouring through the house while she was sleeping in her bed and it was a mercy that her bedroom was on the opposite side of the house otherwise she might have been boiled alive. Daddy had cleaned the place up for Cybil as best he could then set her up in the spare bedroom of a neighbour. She was friendly with her neighbours. Most had been born in that street and had lived along it all their lives.
‘You take care of people and it always comes good in end,’ said Daddy.
Daddy did take care of people. He spent his mornings in the villages around or at the farms of tenant farmers. He had many stories like this.
After we had eaten and cleared away the dishes we left. Daddy walked ahead with our dogs, Jess and Becky, while Cathy and I scuffed our feet behind. The grass up to the house was damp. It must have rained while I was sitting in Vivien’s armchair talking to her as she stoked the fire. I thought about the things she had said, about Daddy and the whales, and about violence. The smooth soles of my shoes slipped with each step and more than once I had to put a hand out to steady myself.
We arrived home and Daddy went straight out into the woods with his tools. The shell of our house was sealed tight against the winter but the insides remained rough. Daddy was working on the lining and the floors. Wood was the material he used as much as he could. It was right there in the copse. Trees of different ages and different kinds.
He had a roughly built workshop and storehouse out there, sheltered by the copse so the thin walls and roof did not have to hold too well against the sudden winds that came up over the crest. He kept his tools in the house, to be safe, but took them out there to work on the wood he had collected and felled and sorted into stacks depending on type. Today he was working on walnut for a floor in the kitchen. He said it would last. He wanted everything in the house to last. Cathy and I had been given instructions to clear, clean and smooth the floor beneath so he could lay the wooden planks that afternoon. I had asked Daddy if Vivien could come up for dinner, as a way of thanking her for lunch today and all the other lunches, and the lessons, and, secretly, because I wanted to talk with her again. Daddy said that she preferred to see us in her own house and that she would only come here rarely. He said she liked the indoors and the quiet of her own home and that she was stuck in her ways.
While Daddy was out in the copse, Cathy and I moved the table and chairs and other pieces of furniture into Daddy’s bedroom, then got down on our hands and knees to work on the floor. It was hard work. Our muscles soon ached. We scrubbed and smoothed and scrubbed and smoothed but regularly had to stop and stretch like we were getting out of bed in the morning.