‘Nope. I was interrupted.’
I passed him the folder. He looked down at it and then up at me.
‘It’s from Price. He was here. He told me to tell you he wants to come to some kind of accord. He wants you to work for him, only not like you think. He said he’s got someone for you to fight. And then he’ll give us the land – he’ll sign it over to us. He said he’d do that.’
‘He said that? That he’d provide documents for the land.’
‘Yes. For us.’
‘For us all?’
‘For me. He said he’d sign the land over to me. I dindt fully understand. But it amounts to same thing. It’ll be ours on paper, and that means something.’
Daddy looked again at the folder, and took the documents from within. He looked at them closely, placing the pages flat on the table and leaning over them. He traced his index finger on the words, one by one, mouthing them precisely as he read. After some minutes he pushed the paper aside.
‘Means nothing to me.’
‘I can help,’ I said tentatively.
He shook his head. ‘No, lad, it’s not that. I can read well enough to understand what it says. It’s idea a person can write summat on a bit of paper about a piece of land that lives and breathes, and changes and quakes and floods and dries, and that that person can use it as he will, or not at all, and that he can keep others off it, all because of a piece of paper. That’s part which means nowt to me.’
Daddy gathered the documents and shuffled them back into the folder. The heels of the chair-legs scraped as he stood. The large man slouched as he went to the front door.
‘I’ll think on it,’ he said as he left the house and made for the copse.
Chapter Sixteen
The note came early before we were up. Cathy found it in the hall. It had been slipped under the door. She made breakfast and placed the note on the kitchen table, a hatchet that cut its way between the glass milk jug and the enamel coffee pot.
I woke with the smell of bacon in my nose. Daddy emerged from his bedroom too and followed the scent. He saw the note as I came through the open door into the kitchen. He pinched it between thumb and forefinger and lifted it. He saw that it was addressed to him, sliced the envelope with the breadknife and opened it.
‘Mr Price?’ Cathy asked. The coffee had stewed for too long and a dark brown, opaque liquid oozed from the spout.
Daddy hocked his throat for the first time that morning and spat up the residue glued to his windpipe by the night’s humidity and a slow evening cigarette.
‘He’s called me out.’
‘A fight?’
‘Yes, more or less. He’s arranged it as if it’s nothing more than a matter of business. There’ll be prize money and men will be allowed to bet on it. But, of course, we know that it handt got owt to do with business this time. He wants me to fight for him. If I win, he’ll get a lot of money and he’ll sign this land over to you two. If I lose, well, I’m sure he’ll still get a lot of money. He manages to fix things that way.’
It was to be held in the woods overlooking the racecourse. There was some precedent in that. For hundreds of years travellers had toured the racecourses, buying and selling horses, tackle, and entertainments when the racing was over and the nights fell. Then the course would be given over to travellers and their friends. Lights would be lit, meat roasted, and whisky drunk. And fights fought.
These days, the woods behind the racecourse offered cover from the police and from passers-by. Dog-walkers rarely entered the woods, such was the reputation.
Daddy trained in the copse to find his form. He lifted what he could find – logs, stones – until some people clubbed together to bring up some second-hand dumbbells. He lifted me up too, as if I weighed nothing at all, as if there had been no change in my weight since the day I was born and he had lifted me out of my mother’s arms.
He ate more meat and fish, almost double what he had been eating before. And he walked and ran to improve his endurance. That was more important now, more than ever, he said. He knew how hard he could hit and how quickly his punches could find their mark but if his opponent was much younger he would run around him and tire him out then if Daddy made a mistake, he might fall.
He told me one evening of his fears. He made sure that Cathy was out, as she often was, and he spoke to me unusually clearly. He said that he was worried he was too old. He said that there was no greater burden than success, that he had an unbeaten record and a reputation that extended well beyond the boundaries of England and Ireland. In the right circles, at any rate. But fighting while weighed down with that record, he said, would be more difficult than ever. And he worried, because this fight really meant something.
In previous bouts that he fought for money he could go in without any expectation. Even though others might stake their savings on him to win, he did not have to care unless he wanted to. He could remain calm, almost casual, and he would win because he could afford to be reckless.
Now there was more at stake. Much more than just money. And he was older. ‘Old muscle,’ he said, as he patted his biceps.
I told him that if he lost it would not matter to me and that we would find another way to keep the house, and remove the Prices from our lives. And if we could not, then we could always move away, start again, and we would still be together.
I walked down to Vivien’s house with the pups the evening before the fight. The mood in my house was tight; Daddy had gone to the copse and Cathy just sat on the step smoking. I wanted out. Blackbirds sung in the hedgerows as dusk settled. The dogs felt the twilight too. They were uneasy with the coming darkness.
The light was bright in Vivien’s hall and as I crossed the threshold I caught the aroma of the evening primrose that surrounded the entrance.
‘I thought I’d see you this evening,’ she said. She hurried as she spoke, and looked over my shoulder as she ushered me inside. The dogs kept to my heel, unsure of the new scents.
The house was colder than it had been outside. An upstairs window clattered in its frame. The sound of wood on wood, like a glockenspiel, bounced down the stairs. The net curtains rustled. Vivien hurried about, shutting everything up, pinning the latches, tucking in the material, closing velvet outer curtains, bolting shutters where there were shutters. She took Jess and Becky from me and bustled them into the kitchen, took off their leads and stored them in a drawer, took out bowls from the cupboard and filled them with water and the remains of her own beef stew from the casserole on the hob. She closed the door behind them. They did not try to follow her out but began to lap up water, tails wagging in easy delight.
She moved towards me, gripped my elbow and pushed me into a chair. Serious, I thought, but when she spoke her voice held its regular sweet lilt.