For that first couple of weeks it seemed too easy. The men were all asking each other why they had not done anything like this before. They had assumed their work was worth nothing. Many were just out of prison or else serially unemployed. They thought rough labour out on a farm for cursory, under-the-table payment was all they could get. And possibly they were right. But still the landlords needed them. It was not like they were doing these men a favour. Yet, what with the new wages, the employers could have gone and got other people to work for them, but they did not want the paperwork. Our lot still were not asking for contracts or anything like that, you see. It had been discussed by everyone, including Mr Royce, and everyone had decided against it. Nobody wanted to be on any kind of official radar, much. And that was not for tax reasons. It was just nobody wanted the authorities – least of all the police – to know anything about any of it. That held true for the farmers as much as for the workers. That was the pressure-point on which all of this seemed to operate. Both sides were trying to push each other but not so much as the police would get involved.
Given that, when the recriminations started, as Daddy warned they would, Mr Price’s men did not hold back as there was no fear that we or any of the others would report it. After at first agreeing to the demands, both Gerald Castor and Jeremy Higgins and any of the others who had initially conceded, then went back on their words. It was suspected, with good reason, that they had consulted with each other and then with Price, and – though cowed by the initial shock of the workers’ and Mr Royce’s activities – had then thought again, taken stock, composed some kind of plan.
Reports came that they were hiring work from elsewhere. Bussing people in. Standard practice, said Mr Royce, you just had to know how to handle it. We had to find out where they were getting them from and where they were being picked up and dropped off. I did not learn what the plan was after that.
The real fuss arrived when the end of the month came and went and no rents had been paid from any of the houses in the entire area. That was a bigger deal. Mr Royce said it would be. That was where the real money lay, he said, and up here it was a lot harder to get new tenants than new workers.
There were recriminations. Mr Price and some of the others employed men all year round to collect their rents and sort out their problems. They were big men, strong and mean. If a tenant got behind with his or her payments they would come round and see to it. They were full-time, private bailiffs. They would knock on the door. They would make threats. If still the money did not come they would knock down the door and take what was owed in kind. They were hard men, big and tough and ruthless. But they were nothing to Daddy.
Daddy was king. A foot taller than the tallest of these men, Daddy was gargantuan. Each of his arms was as thick as two of theirs. His fists were near the size of their heads. Each of them could have sat curled up inside his ribcage like a foetus in a mother’s womb. These men did not move Daddy, and when they began prowling in earnest, he knew how to respond.
The bailiffs started knocking on doors. At first they would concentrate on a few houses in a certain area. This made it easy for Daddy. Gary, our man from the potato sorting, had use of his uncle’s car and as soon as he got a call from any of the tenants he would drive Daddy over as quickly as he could. Daddy would get out and make his hulking presence known. The bailiffs would leg it.
So the bailiffs started mixing up their routine. They would only go to one house in a neighbourhood and then get in their cars and drive away before Gary and Daddy could get there. But Daddy stepped it up as well. When he did catch up with a couple of them he dragged them down a snicket into a patch of overgrown grass, laced with wild flowers, cut off from view by high hawthorns. There, he broke ribs and fingers and sent them on their way.
Daddy did that a couple of times with a couple of different groups of them. The bailiffs began to lose interest. For them it was just a job, after all. They were only getting paid. And the landlords couldn’t pay them enough to make risking their necks worthwhile, not without paying out to bailiffs more than they would make back in rents.
It seemed as if we were winning. Morale was high. We met regularly, up at our house, to drink and chat and urge each other on. There was a real spirit behind it all, and people were excited.
But, of course, it could not last. And on a Tuesday, late on in the evening, but not so as it was yet dark, Mr Price drove up to our house.
I was scuffing up the path when Mr Price drove his Land Rover up the hill. There had been heavy summer rains this last fortnight and the torrents had run down the slope with half a tonne of mud, silt and rocks, and had pooled at the bottom of our path near where it met the bridleway. I had taken a rusted iron rake from the tool-shed and was shunting sediment back into a path shape. It was all clay up here. The claggy earth clung to the teeth of my rake as I scraped it into place, such that I could barely see the metal through the topsoil.
I heard Mr Price’s jeep coming up the bridleway. I knew of no one else with an engine that grand and smooth. He turned the corner onto our path and the front wheels of his vehicle sunk right far into the standing sludge. That deep engine revved and the wheels spun for a bit, kicking up muck and water that would have splattered me had I not seen it coming. He did not dare take the hill, so slowly reversed back out onto the bridleway and parked the jeep on the verge.
He opened the door and stepped out. If he was flustered and bothered behind those blacked-out windows he did not show it when he stepped into the outside, out in the evening light. He came towards me with a sinking sun at his back, illuminated. ‘You’re just the man,’ he said.
I stumbled. ‘I think I’ll just go and get my Daddy.’
‘No, no, no.’ He held out a hand to gather me back round, so as I would go with him out into the bridleway. His tone was sweet, generous. His face was kind.
I looked up at my house. The lights were being lit.
God, I was a coward sometimes.
Mr Price was still standing there, with his arm outstretched, waiting for me. It was a case of pleasing the person who was right there in front of me, you see.
I picked my way through the puddles and out into the lane. Mr Price took us to a place where we were hidden from the house by the honeysuckle.
He stood in front of me. He was wearing wellington boots, corduroy trousers, and in the warm summer evening just a chequered cotton shirt, unbuttoned at the top.
He put his left foot up on the banking and leaned on it with his left elbow so that his whole posture opened and dipped. Like this, he stood a few inches smaller than me, and he looked up at me with brindle eyes.
I noticed that I was fidgeting with my hands and feet, rubbing the soles of my shoes back and forth against the damp grass and winding my fingers in rings about themselves.
‘What’s your surname, lad?’
‘Oliver.’
‘Daniel Oliver?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Daniel and Catherine Oliver.’
‘Yeah. What of it?’
‘What’s your Daddy’s surname?’
‘Smythe.’
‘Smythe?’
‘Aye. You know that.’
Mr Price nodded. ‘I do know that. I just wanted to ask.’
He shifted his weight so that he was standing tall, but there was still warmth in his manner as far as I could discern.
‘You and your sister were given your mother’s surname.’
‘Aye. So what? That happens lots of times.’
‘I suppose it does.’ Mr Price paused and wetted his lips, looking at me the whole while. ‘You see, I’ve got a great deal more time for an Oliver than I do for a Smythe. It’s fortunate for you, then, that that is what you are.’