Fiona Mozley: Elmet

Mr Price glanced over at us and quickly away. His face looked hard worn, steadfast.

We were led to the van and bundled in the back.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Where’re you taking us?’

‘Up back to yours, via a stop on the way,’ said the man.

‘Back to ours?’

‘We’ve found your Daddy.’ He winked and grinned with teeth then slammed the van door tight shut, soaking us in a stiff darkness.

Cathy, with a sudden panic, ran to the door and rattled the steel with her fists. ‘Let us out!’ She hammered. ‘Let us out!’

I remained where I was, and held firm to the side of the van. The choking engine spluttered and caught and the van rolled then jolted then accelerated sharp. Cathy fell back and winded herself. I held on but grazed my elbow on something sharp. I felt a moisture in the crook of my right arm. It could have been blood or it could have been sweat. It was too dark to see.

Cathy coughed and caught her breath as the van hurtled forwards. I shuffled my feet apart to balance as the floor rattled beneath us. The roads and lanes round here were rutted after years of frosts and thaws and disrepair. I thought I heard dogs howling in the distance. They could have been ours. I had not seen Jess and Becky since they had run out of the house and down the hill. They often went roaming round about, but usually they found their way home.

We had not gone all that far when the van shuddered to a halt. Men leapt out. Shouting. Doors slammed. The sound of men running on grass and tarmac and gravel.

Cathy crawled to the door of the van where there was a slight crack in the rubber seal. She angled her nose against the metal in such a way that her eye was more or less aligned with the crack.

‘Can you see much?’ I whispered.

She rearranged her body, tilted her head, and looked out again.

‘I don’t recognise the place.’

There was more shouting. No words clear enough to make out. But there was much in the tone. An anger. A brutal excitement.

Cathy shuffled away from the door and sat. I could see her outline, dimly. It was too dark to see features or expression but I knew her well enough to recognise when she was afraid. Her ribs shuddered as she breathed. She was still such a little thing.

‘I don’t feel good about this, Daniel. If you get the chance to get out of this, take it. Go, run, and don’t look back.’

‘I woundt leave you.’

‘But that’s just what I mean. Do. Do leave me. I need you to know that I’ll be fine. No matter what they do to me, what happens to me. I’ll be fine. In my self, I mean. They can do their worst and I promise you I’ll go somewhere else in my mind’s eye, for as long as I need to, and I’ll be fine. An experience is what you make of it. If you tell yourself that it means nothing, then that’s exactly what it means. So you just run. Promise me.’

‘I don’t want to promise that.’

‘Please. I can look after myself, in the only way I know how. And the thought of something happening to you is far worse for me than the prospect of something happening to me. I mean that. I would worry so much. I would never get over it. But if something happens to my body. Well, I am able to put myself in such a position that it’s like it’s not really happening. And if it’s like it’s not really happening that means it’s not really happening. Do you see what I mean?’

I told her that I did not.

‘Well. Never mind. Just promise me you’ll run when I need you to run. I will be safer and better equipped if you run. If I know you’re safe and out of it.’

I said nothing for a long while. The shouting and running had stopped. There was an unnerving silence. I moved over to sit by Cathy and took her hand as I had back in the shed.

‘If we’re off to meet up with Daddy,’ I said, ‘I’m sure we’ll be all right.’

Cathy squeezed my hand, weakly.

‘Promise you’ll run,’ she said.

‘I promise.’

The van accelerated once again and Cathy and I rocked back and forth as the way became rough. Then, all of a sudden, we slid to the back. The front of the vehicle had lifted. We were climbing a steep hill. The hill was ours. Perhaps I could tell from the precise undulations in the track. Perhaps I could smell something of home.

The van stopped and the driver stepped out and walked round to the back. He opened the double doors. Dusk had come and gone and we found ourselves looking out into the night. By starlight and moonlight I recognised the three men that had collected us before. Cathy and I rose.

She whispered to me, ‘Do as I say. We’ll get out with them, we’ll comply, and they won’t manhandle us. Then when I say, you run.’

We stepped out.

The men flanked us but did not seize us.

We began to walk towards the house.

‘Daniel,’ said Cathy, aloud. She meant for me to go. But I remained. ‘Daniel,’ she said again.

We were walking with the men towards our own front door.

‘Daniel,’ said Cathy.

I continued to walk. I was behind her, with two men at either side and one in front, leading the way.

We were nearly inside. The copse was to my right and, beyond, the shaded hills then the flats of the levels.

‘Daniel, run!’ Cathy shouted, frustrated that I was not moving to her command.

I remained where I was. One of the men chuckled, then, of a sudden, he took Cathy roughly by her arms, pinned them behind her body at such an angle that only the shoulders and elbows of a supple and lanky young girl could stand.

It was not the worst thing they could have done, to be sure, yet it hurt her. She moaned, though she did not shriek.

‘Don’t be a damn fool, love,’ said the man who had laughed and grabbed.

With that, I got shoved from behind through the space where the front door had been. These men were full-grown men. These men were strong, burly, full-grown men employed for the purpose of doing harm. They were tough. With but a light push I was half-winded.

We were marched into the kitchen. I stepped on broken glass. The windows had been shattered and cupboards were open with their contents strewn. Two of the chairs I had lovingly crafted with the help of my father had been smashed. The legs of the kitchen table, chopped roughly, lay on the floor at the sides of the room. The top, the long, thick oak board, was absent.

They bundled us in. They were more ragged in their movements than they had been. Rougher, more unkind. They took us to the sides of the room and held us, firm. Another of the men gripped me as the first gripped Cathy. My bony arms were held tight behind my back by the elbows. I was young and thin and flexible too but my shoulders ached, and my ribs where they were squeezed, and the skin at the crook of my arm where the man pinched it with his leathery palms and annealed knuckles. I yelped.

For Cathy the initial pain had passed but her breathing deepened as her body found a way through the discomfort.

Other men filed into the room. They thumped each other on the arms and nodded. There was brief, clipped chatter. Cathy and I were shovelled to the sides, still held tight.

And then hush.

Into the room, into our kitchen, walked Mr Price. Like it was his own. His parlour. His workshop. His counting house. Like we were spiders climbing on his walls. Slugs suckered to his window, peering in.

His face showed wear. He was gaunt. But there was something human. A man whose son had been strangled to death in the woods, not a couple of nights before.

Tom Price, the elder of the two lads, walked behind him. He looked in horror and choler at my sister and I as our bodies were bent by the fists of others.

Father and son arranged themselves in a corner of the room. Mr Price did not direct his gaze at us. Not once. He stared above our heads and above the heads of the men he had hired. His jaw was locked, and it held the rest of his face in stiff composure.