Daddy shook his head again. ‘I win fights because I am suited to the rules of those fights, Cathy. They’re a test of strength and speed and endurance and I am the strongest, fastest and toughest man in Britain and Ireland. But take away those rules and it’s anyone’s guess who’d win. If someone pulled a knife on me, or a gun, well I’ve dealt with those things before, I don’t mind telling you, but that doendt mean I could again. It all depends on circumstances. And if it’s one against many then, well, the odds are stacked. And that’s not to say I woundt try. You two know me well enough. But I have to be realistic.’
I took for myself a thick slice of brown bread from the board and scooped butter from the churn to slide across it. The dogs watched me with begging brown eyes and twitching black noses as I bit and tore and chewed. I pondered my father’s words. I watched my sister as she sat with that duck corpse on her lap and hunched her shoulders against the glum news. Daddy placed both his hands flat on the table, his bowed fingers and knuckles almost camouflaged against the likewise knotted, ecru oak.
I sat and turned towards the warm stove. ‘What shall we do?’
‘Price’s hope would be that I’d do his work or that we’d move away.’
‘This is our home,’ I said.
Daddy looked at me as if for the first time in weeks and he placed his right hand on my left shoulder. ‘My feelings are the same,’ he said.
We stayed together in the kitchen for the rest of the afternoon. We drank mugs of hot, milky tea and at around four o’clock Cathy pulled a couple of bottles of cider from the cupboard. We discussed what Mr Price had said to Daddy and what could be done. Daddy told us again that Mr Price cared nothing for the copse. Daddy said that Mr Price just hated to feel the weight of helplessness. To interfere with the lives of others was to carve for himself a presence in the world. Mr Price detested that which he could not control. We lived here on his doorstep yet he had no access to our lives. We did not pay him rent, we did not work for him, we did not owe him any favours. And so he feared us. Daddy said that to Mr Price people were like wasps zipping around his head, ready to sting at any moment. He liked to know their movements. He liked to know their intentions. And when he knew those things he could catch them and put them in a breathless jar.
Daddy said that we should seek out his few friends in the village. There were a handful of people that he had helped in recent months and though Daddy was reticent in his favours, there were perhaps a couple he felt he could confide in. His friend Peter had less affection for Mr Price than we did and we resolved to pay him a visit.
Chapter Ten
We went the next evening. The morning we spent together on the rough, wet grass outside our wooden house. After an early start Daddy carried the kitchen table and chairs outside and set it up with a chequered cloth. I got the eggs and bacon on. Cathy brewed the tea and we took it all outside to eat in the cold bright sun. The bacon was from the butcher, Andrew, who was also one of Daddy’s few friends. It was well salted and he had cut it thickly but I made sure the rind was crisp before I lifted it from the skillet. The eggs fried quickly in the bacon fat and took on salt from the meat so their bottoms formed caramel crusts while the yolks remained golden. I warmed the plates first in the oven before serving up and afterwards finished them with a slice of fresh bread.
Eating a full breakfast outside with my Daddy and sister was always a joy but this morning more than ever. There were troubles, we knew. Our home was in danger. But right now, with a bright white sun shedding its light onto my pale, thin arms, and thick crispy bacon held between two slices of soft, warm bread, I could not have been happier.
A clutch of gulls cut through the eggshell sky, their bellies caught in dark shadow.
Breakfast and its lazy aftermath took most of the morning and the afternoon was spent in the copse or round about. We set and checked traps and Cathy and I called Daddy to make the kill if there was a catch. Otherwise we saw to the hens or cultivated the kitchen garden as it was needed.
Daddy contacted Peter in advance from a pay phone in the village. We walked down together as dusk fell and Cathy and I huddled outside while Daddy went into the box with a stack of ten pence pieces. The spot stank of piss.
It had been an old, red phone box but the paint was chipping and now it was little more than a rusted metal shell. The glass in its panes was cracked but not yet smashed. Daddy picked up the receiver and I heard an amplified crunch and its echo then a clear dial tone.
Cathy pulled out her smoking equipment and started to roll up. The ground was already strewn with cigarette butts of various ages like little brown slugs slithering in different directions through the ash-stained mud. She rolled a cigarette for me too and lit it with a match from a box in her top jacket pocket before turning the match to the end of the roll-up she was holding between her lips. I inhaled as deeply as was comfortable and blew my smoke in the direction of my sister and up into the night air.
Daddy’s voice sounded muffled from within the box. He spoke to Peter briefly and gave him a few details. When the conversation finished he pushed open the door, took the cigarette from my mouth, took a drag and replaced it.
‘Let’s go.’
It was half a mile walk but we hardly spoke along the way. The main street through the village was lit with amber streetlights. Security bulbs flashed on from the houses by the road as we passed. They darkened again almost as quickly. Some of the houses had televisions playing that could be seen flickering behind the closed curtains. We passed a house where a man and woman were shouting at each other and a baby was crying. Daddy slowed as we passed that house and listened hard but then walked on with us and the shouting and crying faded to nothing.
Peter’s house was on the outskirts of the village and had a long back garden that stretched way out amongst the fields. The house itself was not much bigger than ours. 1970s build. Pebble dash. The inside was sparsely decorated. A TV stand but no TV. CDs but no hi-fi. That sort of thing.
His bed had been moved into the back room so he no longer had to climb the stairs. The double doors through to there were partly open and revealed a jumble of sheets and pillows and a couple of green beer bottles and a box of tissues on the bedside table.
‘So Price wants you to work for him?’ said Peter as soon as Daddy, Cathy and I had sat down. ‘He’ll be getting you to kick me out of here, next.’
‘You’re his tenant?’ asked Daddy.
‘I am,’ said Peter. ‘At least I have been so far only I can’t afford the rent any more. He wants me out, faster than even law would get me out. I bet he’ll want you to do it. Break you in by getting you to shift a friend from his home. He’ll know you helped me that time. That time you saw to Coxswain in that car park.’
That evening we drank the best part of two bottles of whisky. Daddy said the day merited something hard and sent Cathy out with a well-used fifty pound note to get the best spirit stocked by the village shop. Daddy and Peter drank the lion’s share between them. They poured approximate double measures into their glasses then returned for more.