Fiona Mozley: Elmet

‘She didn’t,’ interrupted Mr Price. ‘Of course she didn’t. She’s playing with us. That’s what they do.’

‘I killed Charlie Price!’ shouted Cathy. ‘I killed Charlie Price!’ she shouted again.

Charlie Price’s father came forward himself this time. He raised his right hand behind his left ear and unfurled it on my sister’s face with a loud crack.

The naked girl shut her eyes against the impact then opened them as quickly as if she had only turned and blinked and nothing more.

‘I killed Charlie Price,’ said Cathy again.

‘Get her out of here,’ said Mr Price to the room, to all of the other men who stood there, who had witnessed my sister’s confession and had come to their own conclusions about the verity of her claims.

One of their number came forward after a moment of pause. He reached out a gloved hand and stroked her neck. ‘I’ll shut her up,’ he stated blankly.

‘Good,’ replied Mr Price. ‘Take her to the next room and do with her whatever you wish. And I mean whatever you wish. Make the most of her.’

The new man with the gloved hands took Cathy from the grasp of the first and lifted her over his shoulder. She did not struggle. He removed her from the room and carried her into our hall then into a bedroom. I heard his footsteps. I heard the door click open and shut. I strained to hear more but there was nothing for several minutes.

In the meantime I was pulled up by my chin. It was Mr Price. The grip at my elbows was eased and I stood straight. Price asked, ‘And what was your part in this, my boy? The man, the girl, and you,’ he said. ‘Your father, your sister, and you. Your sister admitted conspiracy. What of you?’

‘Cathy dindt admit conspiracy,’ I said. ‘She told you that she did for your son and that she did for him alone.’

‘Aye. And I don’t believe her for one minute. A girl like that? Alone? No, I don’t think so. I’m no fool.’

I said nothing.

Mr Price continued. ‘I wonder,’ he said, his voice more gentle than it had been. ‘I wonder if you will come to resemble your mother or your father. In character, I mean. It is clear already that you have taken after your mother in physical appearance. But whose path will you follow? Will you end up like him?’ He nodded towards Daddy, whose eyes had closed, whose breath had softened. ‘Or will you end up like her?’

I lifted my head. I noticed creases in his golden skin and paler places at his lids. Shades of white-flecked pigeon-feather hair. Dry lips. Large ovaline nostrils flared when he inhaled. A flattish brow.

Perhaps he wanted me to ask. Perhaps he wanted for me to plead with him to tell me all about her. I cannot say that I did not want to know. I did. I had wanted to know all these years. I had wanted to ask it of Daddy, one time, on another day, on a very different type of day from this day, a day when we were here in this kitchen before these men came to stand here, any of the many days in the previous year when we had long hours to ourselves. We had had much to discuss but always had spoken little. Silence had been the mode of our exchanges. It had been the rule I had learnt.

So I remained silent, and the silence stayed my curiosity. My mother had come and gone. Until the last time when she had just gone. And not come.

When I was a very small boy I had sat in her arms as she rocked on a swing in the park behind Granny Morley’s house. The chains that held the seat were rusted iron. They crackled as my mother leaned our weight against them, and ferrous crumbs dropped as she rocked. They hit the rubber beneath. I had held her tight. I had held on for dear life. But her fists crunched on those chains. She gripped them until her knuckles bleached out and until her palms were stained with that thin russet pigment, as if the metal had been treated and ground especially to colour that chalked skin precisely the shade of her very own vein-blood.

‘She was always a grumpy girl,’ said Mr Price. ‘Always unhappy about something. You’d look at her and, likely as not, she’d have a downturned mouth and a frown on. What she had to be miserable about, God alone knows. Pretty face, of course, but she never made the most of it. I mean, I tried to do what I could for her. I would have married her if my boys’ mother had died sooner. I made her a good offer. But she chose another path. She frittered her life away. Went about with the wrong sorts of people. Went to the wrong sorts of parties. The farm and the land she’d inherited all went to waste. And if there’s one thing I hate, Daniel, it’s waste. The waste of land especially. Good land, made barren. I can’t stand it.’

Mr Price turned from me and went to the kitchen counter.

‘So by the time I took her in, it was on very different terms. It had to be. She had disgraced herself. But I put a roof over her head, at least! Not that she ever showed any gratitude. And not that she stuck around. Your Daddy — if he is your Daddy — was working for me at the time, collecting rents, winning fights that I set up for him. And the two of them ran off together, didn’t they. Ran off with a pile of cash, my wife’s jewellery and a pair of 1960s Holland & Holland guns.’

He pulled at the brass ring handle of a drawer with a hooked, bloated thumb. It was the drawer that I had helped fit. I had not managed to fix the alignment quite right. It always stuck.

‘Where she is now, God knows. Your Daddy couldn’t hold her down for long either. Like I said, there was always that restless sadness about her. Always that inexplicable, unwarranted misery. If you told me she’d overdosed in a dark alley or Chapeltown brothel, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

Daddy kept his knives in that drawer. Every Sunday evening he took them one by one from that drawer, sharpened them with a whetstone and returned them one by one in their particular arrangement.

Mr Price did not select the largest. That was a long, thin filleting knife with a gently curving edge. He chose instead a paring knife with a walnut handle and a stubbed, pointed blade roughly the length of my index finger.

He stepped towards Daddy. He stood close to him, such that they could inhale and exhale each other’s breath. The air entered Daddy clean and left him with a bloody mist, and Mr Price breathed in that mist, the blood with it, and returned it dry.

Mr Price raised the blade and placed the point at Daddy’s shoulder. He struck through. The knife pierced the skin then went further. Mr Price had cut right through to the bone like he was jointing a stag. The blood gushed. Deep burgundy like thickened wine from deeper, more abundant vessels than the thin bright crimson blood splashed and smeared over his skin and candid white vest. The flow dribbled down his chest and arm both, soaked into his armpit.

Still Daddy’s breath did not catch his voice box. He could not muster a scream. He sighed and looked upwards at the ceiling, though his face relaxed into a serene expression like he could see past it, up to the clouds and up to the stars. I did not know whether or not Daddy believed in heaven and hell. I did not think I had ever asked him. And if I had asked and been told, I had forgotten the answer.

Mr Price unplugged the knife. Another red spill.

‘He’ll bleed out,’ Mr Price said to another man.

‘Slowly,’ said the other man, ‘he’s a big one. He may need another for good measure.’

‘Oh I know it will be slow. And I’ll put more on him before I’m done. But that one should be enough to do it.’

It was almost as if Mr Price was irritated by the advice, like he wanted to show that he knew what he was doing, like he, as much as any of the men here, could deal in matters of the body, in matters of slow death.

I watched Daddy as I had watched Cathy.