‘Anyone spoken to Price yet?’ asked Daddy.
‘Not yet. We wanted to get you fixed up first. That’s more important,’ said Martha.
‘Is he a man of his word?’ asked Daddy.
Ewart considered. ‘He’s a man of his word when he’s in public. He’ll set everything right here in front of others, and then – by that alone – he’ll be bound to it. And he’s cause to be happy. He’s won a huge amount of money here today. He’s bested those Russians. You weren’t the favourite today. For the first time ever, is that? Nah, Price should be thanking you.’
Daddy shook his head. ‘I’m not so sure.’ He looked up at me. ‘What do you think, Daniel?’
I had no idea, but I was hopeful. ‘I think you’ve won your prize,’ I said. ‘I think we’ll be going home and it really will be our home.’
He nodded, more trying to will my words into truth than out of agreement.
I got him a pair of boots and after putting them on he got up and walked over to a group of cars, one of which was pulling away carrying the Bear. Another man was picking the gold teeth out of the mud and putting them into a sealable plastic bag. Price was sitting in the driving seat of his Land Rover, speaking to a couple of men through the window. I could not read his expression.
He saw Daddy approaching and gestured for the other men to stand aside but remain close.
‘Well there it is,’ stated Price. The outcome, he meant. The conclusion.
Daddy nodded. ‘There it is.’
Daddy waited for a moment for Price to continue. He had an offer to complete. But Price let Daddy wait. He wanted Daddy to have to ask. In a final attempt at humiliating and subjugating him, he wanted Daddy to ask.
‘How about it then? How about the land? Can we tie it all up then? Make it official?’
‘We can,’ said Price. ‘Gavin has the signed documents.’ He nodded to one of the men he had been talking to. A dim-looking thug who pulled a black ring binder out of a briefcase he was carrying. From the ring binder he unclipped one of the plastic wallets and gave it to Daddy.
I could tell from the way he hesitated before taking it that he did not really understand the transaction. He did not know what the document meant but did not want to ask Price to explain it. He had no understanding of the way things worked in the real world and he had no experience with paper and the law.
Mr Price smirked. ‘Those are the deeds, which I had signed, that formally give you the land that you have built that house on.’
‘And the copse behind?’ asked Martha sharply from behind. ‘And with rights to access the road, I mean the track in front?’
Price considered for a moment. He would answer all our questions slowly, in his own time. ‘Yes. You can read it if you like, though I hope you trust that I am a man of my word. It’s all there.’
Martha took the plastic wallet out of Daddy’s hands and pulled out the sheets of paper, which had been stapled at the corner. She began to read.
Mr Price tapped his steering wheel in irritation.
‘We have to know what we’re getting, Price,’ said Martha without looking up at him. ‘I’ll have to read through all this, whether you like it or not, and you can’t leave until I do.’
‘Can’t?’
She continued to read, flicking back and forth through the papers when she came to a detail she needed to check.
Price did wait and after a minute or so commented idly to himself or perhaps to his men or possibly really to us, ‘Strange, isn’t it? An illegal fight to settle a legal dispute. Ending the day by signing papers after a spectacle that could have us all thrown in jail.’
Martha ignored him and continued to read, but Daddy looked up at him curiously, suspiciously. Ewart shuffled his feet, uneasily.
Martha finished reading. ‘I think you should sign it. I will witness,’ she said. They did so on the bonnet of Mr Price’s Land Rover.
He drove away soon after with that smooth heavy purr of the Land Rover rolling slowly over wet ground. The sun was coming out and the dampness was lifting from the clearing in a thin haze that seemed to pulse evenly upwards from the crest of the trees. Slices of sunlight came through the clouds, the shape of a blackbird’s singing beak.
Money was changing hands throughout the clearing. Every man there, it seemed, had placed a bet. The paper notes were shuffled, counted then folded hastily and placed into inside top pockets. The bookmakers’ assistants made marks in notebooks. The smell of onions again and the heat and sizzle that came off the stove as they were shifted around the pan with a wooden spoon. Men were clicking open cans of beer and popping the tops off bottles.
After the fight, it seemed, the crowd were going to make a day of it. Eat and drink and buy and sell. It was a fair, after all. Secret, free from taxation and rents and controls.
Men came over to Daddy and shook his hand. A man wearing a tweed jacket and a cloth cap slipped a fifty pound note into Daddy’s hand. ‘I’ve made a lot more from you today, I can tell you,’ he said. He handed Daddy a bottle of beer and toasted him.
Someone brought out a bottle of whisky and someone else an unmarked bottle containing vodka from their own distillery. ‘All above board, mind,’ he said as he poured out some of the vodka into a plastic glass. ‘And there’s more of this in my van,’ he said more loudly, so that others could hear. ‘I’m selling it for five pound a bottle, over there in the blue Astra.’
As well as the fifty pound note, Daddy was offered other gifts. Tributes. A crate of cigarettes, crates of spirits, a lamb’s carcass, skinned, wrapped and ready for Daddy to butcher. A box of vegetables. A box of kippers. Men had made money from Daddy today. I took the gifts and stowed them in the back of Ewart and Martha’s car. Men patted me on the back, too, and they ruffled my hair as if I were a token of luck. They asked me to take sips from their drinks before they drank themselves like they were toasting Daddy through me. There were arms flung around me, and rough, male kisses applied to my forehead.
Where was Cathy?
The man in the tweed jacket and flat cap who had slipped Daddy a fifty walked over to me. ‘You’re a funny lad, aren’t you?’ He reached up to my hair, like the others, and rubbed and gently pinched my right cheek for good measure.
‘Am I?’
‘Aye, you are that. You’re a funny little thing. A pretty little thing.’ The man looked me up and down. ‘Not built like your Daddy, are you?’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Are you going to be a boxer when you grow up?’
‘No. I’ve never boxed. Daddy’s never taught me.’
‘Never taught you, eh? Funny for a boxing father not to pass it on to his son. It’s a grand tradition, you know.’
He chewed on his lip and shuffled from side to side, then chuckled again.