Fiona Mozley - Elmet

We went into the copse to see the damage. Again, the greenwood was laid bare where it had been cut. There was no black here, no charcoal. That had all been removed. But the tree looked sparse. It had been wounded — not just wounded, mutilated. It now looked so unlike any of its peers.

We worked wood all the time. We cut boughs and felled whole trees. We burnt it in our stove and hacked it into useful shapes and scrap. There was no reason this should be any different.

Mr Price was the sort of man who accelerated his car when pedestrians crossed the road. You could hear his engine tighten, raise its pitch, quicken.

Cathy said he liked to see us run but that it was not playful, like when nice men flirt with little kids. Like when kids kick a ball onto the footpath and a nice man keeps hold of it, pretends not to give it back, makes the kids squeal a bit, but then of course does give it back with a wink and a nod. Cathy said Mr Price did it to people he did not like, and to us particularly because he hated us, and because he enjoyed seeing us have to skip the last few steps to safety before his car caught us. She said that he probably wanted to kill us, but got a thrill from the almost, almost, not quite, and besides, he could not kill us while Daddy was around, she said, so instead, he made us run.

Mr Price had a few cars but drove his blue Peugeot saloon when visiting tenants. The ones who paid in cash. The rest did informal work for him on his land or elsewhere. They paid their rents through this work. He preferred it that way. That way he did not have to organise wages and they were his to run like dogs.

For the most part he had inherited the land he owned. Most of the houses in the villages nearby were his and he held the largest acreage of any of the local farmers. Later, he had bought up houses on the estates further into town. These were old council properties. Those that had been bought by tenants in the 1980s as part of the Right to Buy scheme but that were then bought by Mr Price after their owners fell on hard times. The occupants remained but they paid rent again. This time to Price. And this time in cash or in kind.

Mr Price had two sons: Tom and Charlie. They played cricket and rugby at a boarding school miles to the south and lived with their father in the holidays.

We heard stories from people in the village. Stories of two handsome, slick lads who smashed up bars for fun in the knowledge that their father could pay for the damage. Two handsome lads who, when they were still boys, had driven a farmer’s tractor through the wall of his own barn and out the other side, slicing a new tunnel clean through the hay. They had learnt a collection of manners at school, though. Now they were nearly men they drove their father’s sports cars through the village and, late at night, if they had drunk too much, they rode their quad bikes over their neighbours’ crops. Two handsome, slick lads.

Mr Price left us alone for our first summer and autumn in the house but in the new year he made himself known to us. He came to our house from time to time even though we were not his tenants. Daddy had claimed the land, they said, not bought it, and we had built our house here like a fortress.

The first time Mr Price came up he was not in his blue Peugeot but his Land Rover. It was the largest vehicle he owned and we heard its tracks coming up the newly worn dirt road to our house. We heard the dampened popping and cracking of small stones under its implacable tyres. Daddy had been drying dishes at the draining board and went to the window. Daddy’s eyesight was good and he had known Mr Price from before but still he did not immediately recognise the driver. He draped the tea towel over his hefty left shoulder and headed out the front door. It was so rare for somebody to come to our house, let alone drive here, that Cathy and I followed Daddy outside.

It was late January and there were clouds of snowdrops on the hillside beneath us. Mr Price parked his Land Rover and glanced up at us as he stepped down from the high chassis. He wore a brown waxed jacket and olive, knee-high wellington boots. His hair was a light grey with strands of white. It was cropped neatly and he was clean shaven. He was handsome and healthy, possibly just less than six feet tall.

For all his brutality, Daddy liked other people. He liked people with as much affection as a huntsman had for his prey, deeply and earnestly but with cold regard. He had few friends and saw them scarcely but the people whose worth he felt were held like rare souvenirs. He took care of those people.

Mr Price was not a man who Daddy liked. He saw who it was. He stopped, stood his ground, and waited.

Mr Price approached and offered Daddy a hand. Mr Price’s skin was lightly tanned, stiff and waxy like treated pine. He wore no rings but a gold watch.

‘You’ve given me no warning,’ said Daddy.

‘I have no telephone number for you, John. How was I supposed to give you warning?’ Mr Price took a cloth cap from his inside pocket, smoothed his hair with one stroke from his other hand, and placed it on his head.

‘You could’ve got word to me through someone in village.’

Mr Price shrugged.

‘Maybe you knew I’d turn you away,’ said Daddy.

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t have turned me away, John. We go back a long way, you and I. I thought you’d greet me like an old friend.’ Mr Price smiled. ‘And besides, we certainly had something very real in common once.’ He now laughed. He had cut glass teeth and scarlet gums.

‘What do you want?’ said Daddy.

‘Nothing much. Or nothing much for you. To me it’s important as I’m sure you’ll understand.’ He looked round at me, then Cathy, then back to me. ‘Do you still fly pigeons, John? Do you still keep a loft?’

‘No,’ said Daddy. ‘I handt for years.’ Daddy was standing at his full, majestic height. When he pulled the air around into his cavernous lungs he looked lighter than he was, like a circus tent caught in an updraft.

Mr Price pressed him, ‘Only I’ve lost a bird, you see. One of my best racers. Or I thought he was going to be. He’s young and I was testing him. He came from the best stock and I had — I have — high hopes. But he should have been back by now. He should have been back in my loft yesterday.’

‘Perhaps he’s not as good as you thought he were.’

‘No, no. I released him not too far away. Over the distance I set him, if he were slow he would have been hours, minutes late. Not a day.’

‘Then he’s lost.’

Mr Price chewed his lower lip from the inside. ‘That is clear to me. I would like to find out why. Has he been distracted? Has he been shot?’

‘And this is all you want to talk to me about?’

‘Yes, of course. What else?’

‘Well I’ll tell you plainly that I don’t know where your pigeon is. You’ll have to ask elsewhere.’

Mr Price had not finished. He shifted his weight onto the other foot and continued.

‘You hunt around here, don’t you, John? And probably poach a little too, but what’s that between friends? Nobody much cares about that around here — there’s not enough money in the shooting. And besides, most of the farmers would see it as payment for all the pests you clear off their crops. A pheasant here and there for culling twenty rabbits, eh? Nobody minds that. And you’re well known.’ He stopped, possibly waiting for a response. When none came he went on. ‘But you eat the pests, don’t you? It’s not just for sport with you. I’d probably discover that these children were fairly nifty at skinning animals. And plucking birds too, I’d say.’

‘We dindt catch your bird and eat it. I know difference between a wood pigeon and a racing pigeon. Your bird were got by a hawk and I’m sure you worked that out first thing this morning before deciding to drive up here to my house.’