Fiona Mozley - Elmet

We arrived home and Daddy went straight out into the woods with his tools. The shell of our house was sealed tight against the winter but the insides remained rough. Daddy was working on the lining and the floors. Wood was the material he used as much as he could. It was right there in the copse. Trees of different ages and different kinds.

He had a roughly built workshop and storehouse out there, sheltered by the copse so the thin walls and roof did not have to hold too well against the sudden winds that came up over the crest. He kept his tools in the house, to be safe, but took them out there to work on the wood he had collected and felled and sorted into stacks depending on type. Today he was working on walnut for a floor in the kitchen. He said it would last. He wanted everything in the house to last. Cathy and I had been given instructions to clear, clean and smooth the floor beneath so he could lay the wooden planks that afternoon. I had asked Daddy if Vivien could come up for dinner, as a way of thanking her for lunch today and all the other lunches, and the lessons, and, secretly, because I wanted to talk with her again. Daddy said that she preferred to see us in her own house and that she would only come here rarely. He said she liked the indoors and the quiet of her own home and that she was stuck in her ways.

While Daddy was out in the copse, Cathy and I moved the table and chairs and other pieces of furniture into Daddy’s bedroom, then got down on our hands and knees to work on the floor. It was hard work. Our muscles soon ached. We scrubbed and smoothed and scrubbed and smoothed but regularly had to stop and stretch like we were getting out of bed in the morning.

As the sun set I pressed my hands onto the cold surface of the kitchen floor and pushed myself up to my feet. I picked the cheese board off the marble counter in the back pantry and carried it through to the kitchen. I spotted Daddy coming from the copse and went to the door to let him in. He smiled broadly at me and took off his gloves and coat and placed them on a chair in the hall. As soon as he had shaken off his boots, his Goliath arms pulled me into an embrace and I wondered what it would be like to touch a real whale, and knew that despite what Vivien had said, Daddy was both more vicious and more kind than any leviathan of the ocean. He was a human, and the gamut upon which his inner life trilled ranged from the translucent surface to beyond the deepest crevice of any sea. His music pitched above the hearing of hounds and below the trembling of trees.

After our dinner, Cathy and I trimmed Daddy’s hair and beard as we did every few weeks. He stripped to his white cotton vest and revealed deep scars on his broad shoulders and thick black hair on his chest. He knelt on the floor by a tin bucket filled with water that Cathy had heated. We stretched to reach his head. His daughter stood in front of him with a pair of kitchen scissors and a comb which she pressed against his cheeks and chin. She pulled at the coarse strands and knots in his beard but he did not flinch. She measured the lengths approximately with the comb and snipped and brushed then doused his face with the steaming water to wash away the specks of trimmed black hair. I stood behind and cut away damp locks. Inch by inch they met the keen blades and cascaded. As the jettisoned hairs fell through my fingers to gather around my feet, I softly brushed my knuckles against the back of my father’s neck. His skin was smooth there. As smooth as my soft inner arms or the insides of my thighs. He was sensitive to my touch. His whole body quivered and as it did I thought again of the whales. Their hides were sensitive like this despite their size. They were reactive and finely tuned. They could be tickled and teased and just a small human hand on a whale’s flank could cause the beast’s entire body to ripple in the waves.

After our Daddy was pruned Cathy and I set down our scissors and passed a hairbrush back and forth to draw across our father’s scalp and chin. As we did so he closed his eyes and tilted back his head. The beads of water on his face and hair glistened in the crude light from an oil lamp that sat upon the kitchen table and a kind of halo emerged around him as he relaxed each muscle in his body save those in his cheeks that tempted a satisfied smile from his plumped lips. I selected and unfolded a towel from the pile we aired near the stove and rubbed the crisp fabric against Daddy’s wet skin. He moaned with sedate pleasure.

I stop at a roadside cafe. The windows are thick with filth. Smog from the motorway has caught on the panes and spread like a fungus or a grimy frost. The road licks at the glass with an acid tongue. Plumes from a militant buddleia edge the car park and the cratered tarmac upon which the cars and lorries rest.

I push at the door. It sticks on the frayed linoleum but eases then opens. The sight of people is strange. I am filled with a kind of dread. But the scent of the oil and the frying meat and eggs and bread, and of steak and kidney puddings and mushy peas and chips cooking in dripping pulls me in.

I have not eaten well these last few weeks. Scraps from bins, berries from the verge, raw turnips from a farmer’s field. I ate a pizza that had been left out by the railway then spent the next day curled beneath a viaduct cramping and vomiting.

I have come to beg for hot food. I have come to beg for thick custard poured over apple cobbler. I want gravy over Yorkshire pudding. Bangers and mash.

People sit at tables. The sort with the chairs attached. Most are men and most are alone. Lorry drivers hunch over fry ups and magazines. An old lady in the corner is doing a word search puzzle. There is a family with small children at a table by the window. The children are picking at their baked beans and potato waffles. The mother and father grimace as they sip hot coffee. They are neat and tidy in appearance and delicate in their manners. They are out of place here and their eyes shift from each other to the people sitting about and to the servers behind the counter wiping greasy hands on greasy aprons.

‘What can I get you, love?’ The woman at the till has spotted me from the other side of the room. Her hair is wrapped in netting and a large part of her face is obscured by spectacles. She is wearing catering whites and her hands are placed firmly on the counter before her as if she is holding down the lid of a jack-in-the-box.

A couple of heads turn towards me. Most do not. I walk down the thin aisle between the tables. I want to be closer to the woman before I reply so I do not have to shout over the onlookers. I want to whisper.

It has been weeks since I have used my voice. I will be hoarse.

The woman smiles despite my filthy clothes and face. A good sign. She must get all sorts in here.

‘Hello,’ I say to her. ‘I wonder if I could have something hot to eat. Anything. I handt eaten owt hot in days. Only I’ve no money to pay. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be funny.’

She makes no sign of recognition. I said the words so quietly that I wonder if she has not heard.

She nods her head and her smile becomes that of sympathy. She turns to the girl behind her who cannot be more than seventeen and has blonde hair ripped into a tight bun. The woman speaks quietly to the girl so none of the customers hear. ‘Get this lad a plate of pie, yeah? Whichever we’ve got most of. And put a good helping of chips and veg on as well. I’m not putting it through till so you’ll have to go into kitchen and tell them.’

The girl looks me up and down then does as she is told.

The woman smiles sympathetically again. ‘Take a seat, love,’ she says. ‘I’ll bring you a pot of tea.’