Charlie appeared more reticent than his brother. More thoughtful, perhaps. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s a shame.’
Tom looked at his brother for a moment then over at Cathy then at me. He had become bored by the conversation and wanted to get moving. He suggested we return to the house where their father was speaking with our father. Tom and Charlie walked that way and I thought it best to follow. Cathy too. The plucked bird swung by her side: plump and bobbing.
We followed the tall lads into the kitchen. The inside heat was thick. Daddy and Mr Price sat facing each other on opposite sides of the scrubbed kitchen table. We hovered around the edge of the room but the men concluded their business and both pushed back their chairs with a searing scrape against the floor. They stood to their full heights. Daddy was a giant. He towered over Mr Price by at least a foot but the smaller man did not cower.
Mr Price held out his right hand. ‘I hope you will think about what I have said, John.’
At first Daddy held back, both arms fixed tightly to his sides, but then he released one to meet Mr Price’s. His expression remained blank.
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.