Fiona Mozley: Elmet

Sometimes he did lock himself away like that but we never knew why. Of course we assumed that he was troubled by something and did not want to share it with us but we could never really know because we never saw. I never saw my father waiver, never saw him lose control or stumble, and I took it for granted that I would never and could never see him cry. Perhaps he was different when he locked himself away. Perhaps he was more himself or less himself in those moments, whichever way you think of it. But I could not say for certain, because I never saw.

When Cathy did not reply to me I thought again about what she had said about Vivien, and tried to work out what she had meant by it. Sometimes she did just take against people. She told me exactly why they were bad people and she usually convinced me to feel the same way. She had not explained herself here and I was having trouble working it out.

‘She wandt very welcoming,’ I offered after a while. ‘I mean, she was and she wandt. She was polite and helpful. As much as you’d expect. But she was always distracted, like she wanted us to leave.’ Cathy said nothing and I thought again. ‘And she seemed embarrassed by us. Not that there was anyone else there to see that we were there with her. Nobody else to question our involvement with her. But she seemed uncomfortable and it was the kind of uncomfortable you feel when you’re embarrassed not when you’re unsettled or unprepared. It was like even though there weren’t any other people there to feel ashamed in front of, she felt them there anyway and she dindt want those invisible people to see her talking to us.’

‘That’s not the thing I was thinking of. It’s the way she moves around. The way she walks. Hers is the most horrible body I’ve ever seen. She can’t move forwards without moving sideways. It’s her hips. She’s not even fat. There’s no extra weight on her, but her hip bones are so large and wide that she can’t move without considering them. When she walks she has to follow their lead and they sway from side to side. God, it’s disgusting. Can you imagine running with hips like that? Can you imagine trying to run away from someone when you’re being pulled back by your own bones? Can you imagine what tops of your legs must feel like being stuck in to hips like that? Muscles on your thighs being twisted as you’re trying to run away and your knees trying to support those hips and your running thighs while trying to keep them in line with your feet. All of you trying to go forwards and bloody bones are holding you back. Jesus fucking Christ, I’d rather die.’

She continued. ‘Do you remember that time we were down by canal, Daniel? I can’t even remember which town it were or what year only that you had that white T-shirt with orange setting sun on it that Granny Morley brought you back from that holiday she went on — only holiday I ever remember her going on — and so you must have been about eight because you grew so quickly after that — when you were nine and ten — that you coundt have fitted into that T-shirt after that age. Maybe it were Sheffield we were in but I can’t remember. It doendt matter. We were there together, alone, because Daddy was somewhere else. Probably fighting outside of town. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘We were down by canal, Daniel. Me and you, alone. We walked as sun went down and we saw that lady sitting under bridge with her knees up and the palms of each hand cradling each side of her face like her own cheeks were softest things she’d ever touched and like she were touching them for first time. We walked past her under bridge and there were sick on ground and ashes that handt singed anything but were lying on top of paving stones. Her handbag were on ground too and were open with tissues and lipsticks and that falling out and she handt even noticed, let alone stopped to pick any of it up. There were a smell of grass that had been trod on and rotted, and a smell of dogs. And that man in background. Do you remember man in background? Almost fully hidden by shadows of bridge? Standing on mud behind paving stones?’

‘I don’t remember seeing either of them,’ I said. And I did not. But I did remember the news later that week that a woman had gone missing and that she was last seen going down to the towpath. And I remember my sister telling us that we had seen the woman and that there had been a man behind her.

‘But you believe me?’ she implored.

‘Yes, of course I believe you.’

‘And you believe I was right? That it were man behind lurking in the shadows who did for her? Who pushed her in?’

I looked her in the eye. The police had searched for Jessica Harman, nineteen, for weeks before finding her tucked away by a weir, miles downstream. When they found the body and identified her they concluded that it had been a natural death. They said that she had been intoxicated and had accidentally stumbled into the canal on her way home and that the current, buoyed by recent flooding, had carried her away. They had come to this conclusion before they had found her, however. It was based on the fact that she had been out drinking with friends that evening. The police had looked for people who might have tried to kill her but decided that there was no one with a motive. Then they had found the body and decided that their assumption had been confirmed. But Cathy was sure that she had seen the woman and also a man and that Jessica Harman had been pushed.

Two weeks later a student was found washed up further along the canal by one of the locks. This time it was a boy, and it was thought that he had fallen in drunkenly, too, or else had killed himself. But we spoke again of the middle-aged man Cathy had seen in the shadow of the bridge and how easy it would be for a stealthy stranger to ease a person on their way. It would be so little like murder. Just a gentle nudge at somebody who was already unsteady. A stranger. Unless you were seen you could never be caught.

And so Daddy had asked around at Cathy’s behest. He found nothing but continued to search all the same. He patrolled the canals at night for weeks and weeks but did not come across anything out of the ordinary. He said if there had been a murderer lying in wait for young women, he had scared him off.

Of course we did not go to the police. Neither Cathy nor I had even suggested it. There was little trust there. No love lost.

But we had all believed Cathy.

There was a cold spell in the week before Christmas. With the cold I became sluggish. Usually eager to help Daddy with his work outside, I spent more and more time in the kitchen, taking for myself the jobs that allowed me to stay indoors. I made sure the stove was well stoked every day and the chopped wood in the store was piled high so it did not have to be topped up from outside too often. I cleaned the house and baked cakes and mince pies for Christmas Day. Daddy went to the shop in the village and bought sheets of paper in gold and silver and red, white and green and I set about cutting them up and folding and gluing them into decorations.

I sat at the kitchen table and made snowflakes as I had at school. I cut circles and folded them into quarters and inserted apertures and grooves so when they were unravelled they became tiny sheets of falling ice, jagged but symmetrical. The gold paper became stars. I made the shapes of trees with the green paper. Winter trees. I copied the few pines that we had in the copse, the only ones that still held green. From those trees, Daddy brought in branches of green needles and pinecones for making wreathes, which I constructed as best I could, approximating those I had seen on Christmas cards.

‘You’re a funny lad,’ Daddy said to me on the morning of Christmas Eve. It was nearly nine o’clock and he had been awake and working for several hours. He had seen to the chickens and walked the puppies, who were now burly adolescents, frayed at the edges, with chalky incisors and too-long limbs. It had snowed overnight and Daddy had shovelled it into piles that now looked like an oddly dispersed mountain range. The puppies had made a scattering of deep paw prints in the snow and were now scaling these new summits.