I moved towards my father. ‘Do you need to leave, Daddy?’
He shook his head. He took me in his arms for a moment and held me tight. He stooped to kiss my forehead and I felt for a moment his lips, so supple and surprisingly soft, and the bristles of his beard, at once silken and prickly. He took hold of my shoulders and turned me back towards my bedroom then placed a hand at the small of my back and gave me a little push.
‘Sleep well, Danny. I will see you in the morning.’
V
I travel with Bill for days more. I am his company and he is mine. I am his succour. He is my warmth.
I search for her wherever we go. I search for her by the bus stations and by the railway tracks. I look at the adverts in shop windows. People with want for rooms, people with want for jobs. I do not have the courage to lose my faith. I bite at my fingernails as I stare out through the filthy panes of the lorry windows and scour the vertical and horizontal lines of concrete cityscapes for her familiar form.
Bill helps for a time, but finding my sister is not his main concern.
One night we take the lorry off the main roads, down some back lanes to spend the night in the quiet, away from the drill of rubber on tar. We jerk then sway back from side to side as the weighty wheels dip into deep potholes and fumble on the rocks propped against the verge. There is no light. Pitch dark. Few stars. No moon. An amber glow of electricity far off. And then our own headlights. And then a roe deer illuminated by our beacon. Caught. Stopping short. Stood right there before us and startled too, as we are. She is held as if preserved. As if dead, stuffed, posed. Glass eyes sewn into place. And what with her staring at us from behind glass, behind the windscreen, it is as if she has been placed in a museum with a natural habitat designed and built and painted for her.
Bill jams his palm against the centre of the steering wheel and the horn sounds like a hunting bugle and the deer is gone and I hate him for it, the brute.
My Daddy would have done differently.
But then we stop in a lay-by. And I learn that a body can mutate in the course of a night. And that a night can bend with the curve of a body. He is not so strong as he thinks. He is not so much of a man. His voice is deep and his chest is broad and there is more hair on his chin and jaw than on the top of his head. But I have known others. I have come from sterner stock.
I reach out to stroke him as he pulls at my jeans but he bats away my hand. I do not mind. He is nervous to the touch.
His weight is such that I am pinned. I notice the tattoos on his upper arms. They have faded and bled blues and greys against his blotchy skin. I make out the head of a serpent. There is an eagle caught in flight. Its talons and hooked beak are fierce. The body of a woman is stretched out along his forearm. Her breasts are bare.
He does not look me in the eye. We do not kiss. There is no conversation.
There is pleasure in the contact, if nothing else. In this brittle caress.
And in the morning I sit differently in my skin.
Chapter Nineteen
When you are terrified of everything nothing particularly afears. It was Cathy who first noticed the alteration. I had gone back to bed at Daddy’s behest and had fallen asleep quickly. Cathy, who had slept through the night and through the arrival and departure of the man who had come to warn Daddy, was now up and thundering around our little cottage like a songbird that had flown through the window and was madly trying to retrace its path. The noise woke me but I did not get up and go to her. I remained tucked beneath my covers with my eyes closed, terrified. When she burst into my room she nearly lifted the door from its hinges. Its handle thudded against the wall and segments of roughly applied plaster crumbled to chalky dust.
‘Wake up, Daniel, wake up,’ she pleaded. I had never heard her plead.
I hesitated, wanting nothing less than to leave my safe, warm, bed. But she was my sister. And I knew instinctively, deeply, certainly, that something was very wrong.
I opened my eyes. ‘I am awake,’ I said. ‘What is it?’
‘Daddy’s gone.’
‘He must be in trees,’ I replied immediately.
‘I’ve been into the copse. He indt there. He indt in the house and he indt in the trees.’
‘Did you go right to the heart of the copse? To the mother tree?’
‘I’ve searched everywhere.’
I was silent, but this time through comprehension.
Cathy must have seen some understanding in my expression. ‘Where is he? Where has he gone?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. He said he would stay, no matter what. And if he was going to leave, why did he leave without us?’
‘Where has he gone?’
‘I don’t know. I said, I don’t know.’
‘What do you know?’
‘I saw him early this morning. Just at dawn. A man came to the door and the dogs woke and then they woke me. They handt come back either. They must be out on the hill somewhere. Did they not wake you?’
‘I slept right through the night. I was dreaming throughout. Dreaming dreams I don’t remember.’
‘I woke and I heard Daddy speaking with the man at the front door and snuck out of bed to listen. I dindt recognise the other man’s voice. He wandt one of our lot and not someone from village. He came to warn Daddy. To warn him and to urge him to leave, get out of here, and—’ I stopped. ‘And to take us with him.’
‘Why? We’ve won.’
‘Because – and this is what the man said – because after the fight, in the middle of night, they found a body in woods behind the racecourse. A dead body. It was one of Price’s sons.’
Cathy made no reaction, gave no sense that she had even heard or understood. She simply looked at me with those bright blue eyes, shining from that pale, lucid skin.
‘The man told Daddy that Mr Price blamed him. Price and the others all think that Daddy killed son. I don’t know which one it was. They had decided it must have been Daddy, from I don’t know what, extent of strangulation, strength of hands that enclosed his neck and power of person behind them. They decided because of that and because, of course, Price hates him. His hatred of Daddy goes deeper than this recent trouble, I think, Cathy. It goes deeper than all this business about the fight and deeper than land on which we live. Stranger at door said Price had made up his mind it were Daddy killed his son, and now he’s set on vengeance. There are no games any more. He’s sending his men up, today, this morning perhaps, to get Daddy. To drag him back to them and do I don’t know what. They woundt go to police, obviously.’
‘Where is Daddy?’
‘I told you I don’t know. Stranger came up here to warn Daddy, like I said. He urged him to go but once he had left I came out. Daddy maybe knew I had been there, listening, the whole time. Daddy said he woundt go. He said—’ But I struggled to remember what he had said.