It was cool outside but her office was hot. The central heating was on and the windows shut. There were piles of heavily typed documents on her desk and the sideboard and walls bore the varied compositions of sundry children in oversized scrawls and motley hues. There was a row of rubber stamps stained with carmine ink. Each sported a slogan of adulation and acclaim.
‘I hope you know that your daughter’s behaviour was unacceptable. The attack was unprovoked. Those poor boys just wanted to play football on the beach and they asked Cathy if she and Daniel wanted to join in. I mean, I know Daniel and Cathy might not have had quite the same opportunities in life as Gregory, Adam and Callum but that’s no excuse for behaviour such as hers. Gregory had bruises all up his legs and Callum’s mother said the boys had even been kicked in their private parts. She must be told that it’s not acceptable to kick little boys there.’
Mrs Randell went on like this and Daddy said nothing much in response. Neither did Cathy. A viscous silence had settled on Daddy and Cathy and me and although Mrs Randell spoke in fluid phrases that rippled against and sporadically punctured the gummed ambience, drab quiet was the primary mood and her dry utterances did little to refine that mood. Later, Daddy told us that after he had heard the teacher’s comments on the conduct of the boys he saw that there would be no real use in responding with his true thoughts. Mrs Randell’s assessment was simply the way people saw things, he told us. It was the way the world was and we just had to find methods of our own to work against it and to strengthen ourselves however we could.
Outwardly, Daddy agreed with Mrs Randell’s recommendations and offered an apology on behalf of his daughter. He proffered assurances that it would not happen again. He insisted that discipline would be enforced at home and that Cathy would find a way to appease the boys.
Daddy walked us back home through the darkening suburbs to Granny Morley’s house. He told us that he would be staying for at least a month and that we should come home from school on time every day so that we could all spend time together. He told Cathy that she had done everything correctly. He only wished she had acted sooner.
Granny Morley died on a Tuesday afternoon. Cathy found her in her usual chair in the sitting room and closed all the curtains and all the doors and forbade my entrance. We had no way of contacting Daddy so we just kept that room shut and the curtains closed and lived upstairs in near-silent vigil. Cathy snuck down for food from the cupboards. We lived off biscuits and bananas and crisps until Daddy happened to come home a week and a half later and we ran to him and wept for the first time and he told us that he would never, not ever, leave us again.
II
Years later and miles away that girl’s brother trudges through mud to find her. It has been days. I have seen no trace but I still have hope.
The memory of that evening in our house in the copse does not loosen. The stills do not fall from their reel. Each face and each gesture confirms its shape. Nothing slackens.
As I walk I think on the sight of them all. I think on my sister with her slick of black hair. I think on my Daddy and the words he did and did not speak. I think on the others, all eyeballs and teeth.
I was right to run.
As I walk now I look about. The further I step from home the more uncanny the sights become. My eyes respond in kind. They fall upon the familiar.
I see the chimney stack and cooling towers of a power station on the horizon, gorging on the earth and spewing measures of caustic exhaust. I see a veil of ashen smog that hangs between land and sky and the leaden vapour pooling into mock clouds. I see a chain of pylons stretching from far-ground to foreground like a vast, disarticulated arthropod, and tethered shadows, more gargantuan still, lying upon the hills like the insignia of pagan forbears. I see bovine silhouettes shift steadily across meadows, hulking their uneasy weight from trough to furrow, and elsewhere, I see the dusk settle on the fleeces of grazing ewes like sparks from flint to tinder. I watch the land glow and the sky burn. And I step through it with a judicious tread.
I pass from Elmet bereft.
Chapter Three
We kept on with our silly childhood games long after we were much too old. Our copse provided the materials we needed and an undulant terrain in which to run and hide. In another world we might have grown up faster, but this was our strange, sylvan otherworld, so we did not. And that, after all, was why Daddy had moved us here. He wanted to keep us separate, in ourselves, apart from the world. He wished to give us a chance of living our own lives, he said.
We played at archery, like we were outlaws in the wood. After the house was built and Daddy had more time, he showed us how to make bows and arrows for ourselves, and explained which were the best tools to use. We made longbows that were almost the height of each of us and whittled from a single piece of hardwood. There was a lot of ash about but oak was better, and yew the best, Daddy said. He would pick a piece that had the right shape and then we would strip away the bark, the soft new growth beneath it, and then cut it down with a lathe, only shaving off a little at each time in case we went too far. We made our arrows with materials from the woods around. When we practised with targets we made do with arrows with blunt ends as we shot them against a hessian sack with a painted bulls-eye. But when Daddy hunted birds or rabbits or muntjac he needed a hard metal tip and had to buy them.
We made bows that we could use easily now, bows that would test and strengthen us and bows that we would develop into. Cathy could pull much harder than me because her arms were so long, even though I had the broader chest, even then. She did not flinch when the arrow was released and the bow string whipped at her arm, as it can do when it is hard pulled, when you are tired or your arm is not properly aligned. Or when you have the kind of arms that are so thin and supple that when they are straightened to their limit the soft, fleshy part with the blue veins at the crook of your elbows is almost convex. Both Cathy and I had arms like these. You release the bowstring with all the power it took to pull it back, and as the arrow is loosed it slaps against your left forearm. This is not just a skin pain. It goes deeper. I did not have much else on me but skin and so it hurt me in my marrow. Those painful vibrations that send waves through your bone, and then further.