Fiona Mozley - Elmet

I told her that I had not in real life, only on the television.

‘On the television have you seen a whale breach?’ she asked. ‘That’s when it jumps clean out of the water only to smack down onto the surface of the sea. Have you seen that? The almighty splash it makes?’

I told her that I had.

‘We don’t fully understand why whales do that but there have been many suggestions. Some people say that it’s to see the world and especially the sea from a different perspective, to catch a glimpse of what it is they spend their lives swimming around in. It’s like us humans sending rockets up to the moon only to spend the next fifty years gazing at the pictures of our own earth. The whales want an experience like that. A different view. Some people have suggested that it’s not a visual experience they’re after but a sensual one. When they breach the water they feel the full size and heaviness of their own bodies in the air. They feel gravity and dry cold and when they smack the hard brine with their full airborne weight they quake to their blubber. People say that they’re trying to brush off dead skin, barnacles, lichen, and that breaching is like a horse scratching its rump against rough tree bark. But it meets at the same point, doesn’t it? The need for a physical sensation that they can’t get any other way. That sensation becomes a fixation and each time after they feel it the pressure slowly builds until they can feel it again. I think it’s something like that for the whales. They swim around for days, weeks even, feeding and sleeping and breathing and they start to think about that last time they jumped clean out of the water and how it felt when their head, then their body and fins, and then their tail, all emerged from the sea, and how it felt to momentarily hover in a substance that fills their lungs but dries their eyes, and then they remember especially about how it felt to return to the water after their moment in the air. That thump. That splash. The whale continues to think about the breach, more and more, until the urge to repeat becomes irresistible and it erupts out of the ocean only to fall again into it. And so it’s sated for a while. Your Daddy’s like that, I think. Like one of the great whales. And when he fights it’s like one of their breaches. But bloodier, much bloodier. And it isn’t a lone act. It’s not just an animal and the elements. There’s another animal too. Another human. But it’s the same. It quenches him.’

Vivien and I spent the rest of the morning speaking of softer subjects and baking cakes iced with buttercream. She kept horses in the large field behind her house and there were always chores to interrupt our routine. We paused from our work to go out and feed them and to muck out the stable.

My sister returned from her rovings before noon. Her mood was sweeter than usual. She smiled broadly as she knocked the dirt off her boots and left them on the slate by the back door. Her face was hot red from the cold and dry from the chill of the wind. Her eyes were alert.

Vivien watched Cathy come in then returned to her task. She did not ask the girl where she had been or why. We were setting the table for lunch and Vivien handed Cathy the bone-handled cutlery to lay around the place-mats as if she had just come down from an upstairs bedroom. Cathy put the items in parallel sets and Vivien went to the cabinet to pull out the plates and napkins. I busied myself at the sink. I washed and dried the tall glasses that had been in the basin since the night before and placed them on the table next to a full jug of water.

‘Your father said he was going to bring us lamb chops from the butcher.’

‘From butcher called Andrew Ramsey?’ asked Cathy.

‘That’s him.’

‘Andrew Ramsey sometimes gives us cuts of meat for no money. They’re friends, him and Daddy.’

‘They must be.’

‘Daddy goes down to village to drink with Andrew Ramsey. He’s one of the only men Daddy will drink with.’

‘He must trust him.’

‘Daddy helped him with some business a while back. Andrew Ramsey had some trouble with a supplier and Daddy sorted it.’

‘He’s good like that, your father.’

Cathy nodded. Vivien went back to the kitchen to peel the potatoes and carrots. The chops would not take long to cook. She asked Cathy for help. Usually I did the kitchen work but Cathy was cheerful today and had started a conversation all on her own. They discussed the few people we all knew. Vivien told Cathy that her hair was looking lovely now that it was a little longer and she spoke about how tall she had become. Cathy told Vivien that even if she kept growing, I — her younger brother — would be bigger than her soon. Vivien looked round at me and smiled. I smiled back.

By the time Daddy came with the lamb chops the vegetables were peeled and cut and placed in pans of water resting on the hob. Vivien flicked on the gas beneath them and flames rose against their blackened bottoms. The chops were wrapped in a blue and white plastic bag. Vivien picked up a frying pan from the draining board and placed it onto the gas, wiping a knob of butter against its rim. She did all this with one smooth motion. Daddy stood beside her and pulled the meat from its wrappings. His hold was gentle so as not to spill the blood that had collected in the folds. They were Barnsley chops. A better cut. He eased the flopping maroon flesh into the pan and the fat hissed and cracked. Jess and Becky came up to his side and stuck their noses in the air and flared their nostrils to catch the savoury steam rising off the meat. I called them out of the kitchen and they did my bidding. They knew that if they did well now they might get scraps later.

Daddy and Vivien stood side by side in front of the hot stove. He was so much larger than her. The ribbed woollen jumper he was wearing accentuated the difference. The lamb was turned in the pan and when it was cooked through Daddy took each piece out with a fork and put it on a board to rest. The second two chops took less time. The pan was hotter and Daddy and Vivien preferred their meat bloody. When the carrots and potatoes were ready to drain Vivien took a colander from a low drawer and placed it in the sink. She poured the contents of each pan into it and then back into the empty pan and onto the stove for a few seconds to dry. The vegetables were then put into separate serving dishes with more butter and Cathy took them to the table.

We ate slowly and Daddy talked to us about Andrew Ramsey’s new abattoir. And then he talked about the boiler in Cybil Hawley’s bungalow that had exploded overnight. The barrel had split clean in two. Daddy had never seen anything like it. Hot water had come pouring through the house while she was sleeping in her bed and it was a mercy that her bedroom was on the opposite side of the house otherwise she might have been boiled alive. Daddy had cleaned the place up for Cybil as best he could then set her up in the spare bedroom of a neighbour. She was friendly with her neighbours. Most had been born in that street and had lived along it all their lives.

‘You take care of people and it always comes good in end,’ said Daddy.

Daddy did take care of people. He spent his mornings in the villages around or at the farms of tenant farmers. He had many stories like this.

After we had eaten and cleared away the dishes we left. Daddy walked ahead with our dogs, Jess and Becky, while Cathy and I scuffed our feet behind. The grass up to the house was damp. It must have rained while I was sitting in Vivien’s armchair talking to her as she stoked the fire. I thought about the things she had said, about Daddy and the whales, and about violence. The smooth soles of my shoes slipped with each step and more than once I had to put a hand out to steady myself.