Best Served Cold
David J. Gatward
Weirdstone Publishing
Best Served Cold
by
David J. Gatward
Copyright © 2020 by David J. Gatward
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Author’s Note
Untitled
About David J. Gatward
Also by David J. Gatward
To Mum and Dad
Grimm: nickname for a dour and forbidding individual, from Old High German grim [meaning] ‘stern’, ‘severe’.
From a Germanic personal name, grima, [meaning] ‘mask’.
(www.ancestory.co.uk)
Chapter One
John ‘Beef’ Capstick had the temper of a bull with a sore head and the build and face to match. He was the kind of farmer all the others avoided, and who took pride in the fact that they did.
Living out beyond Gayle at the upper end of Wensleydale, deep in the shadow of Dodd Fell, John ran the farm which had been left to him by his less than dear old dad over a decade ago. Drowning in debt, and yet somehow managing to stay just outside the clutches of the bank, John hated his life but knew nothing else. The farm’s tumbledown house, and its surrounding outbuildings, stood grey and dark, as though forever damp and dejected, crumbling slowly into the earth, dying a slow death born not only of neglect but good, honest meanness. They reflected John’s life daily and he’d long ago decided to do nothing to change it.
None of this was John’s fault though, or at least that was what he told himself, and anyone within earshot, piling the blame onto his father, shouting at the ghost of a man he’d grown up hating, and yet never been brave nor courageous enough to stand up to or just simply move away from. But this was the dales so where the hell was he supposed to have moved away to anyway? He’d grown up on the farm, knew nothing else but farming, and his blood was in the soil in more ways than most, spilt not just from thorn and nail and angry hoof, but the hard slap of a calloused hand across the face, a leather belt across the back of his legs, a thrown rock or branch.
The wounds on the outside healed, but the ones inside just festered, and John grew up to be a moody child, an angry teenager, and finally a rage-filled adult. He never wondered what his mum would’ve thought of the man her baby had become, because he’d never known her, and that was the one thing his dad had reminded him of daily.
‘You killed her, lad, you hear? Took her from me the day you were born! And nowt good’s come about from having you instead of her, that’s for sure. Should’ve been you, not her, you hear? Not her!’
Lad was about as close to calling him by a name as his dad ever got, though usually he went with something more coarse, spitting the words at him like bullets as he ordered his son out onto the farm to work in all weathers, one hand cracking him hard across the back of the head, the other holding the bottle he loved more than his own flesh and blood. And the worse the weather was the harder his father had driven him, hoofing John out into the thickest snow and the hardest rain, never caring as to whether his only son was actually kitted out well enough to not come back half drowned or frozen to death or, on the sunnier days, burned to the bone.
John had ended up being called Beef at school, not just because everyone had a nickname, nor indeed because of how he’d seemed to grow at twice the rate of his peers, but because that was usually all he had ever had for lunch. But it was never the good stuff, just a few slabs of corned beef from a tin, dropped in a Tupperware box, with a couple of slices of bread. He had to prepare it himself after all, and if he took anything else, his dad would get angry, call him a thief, belt him one.
Unable to take his frustrations out on his dad, a man whose arms were corded with thick twists of muscle, and whom he’d once seen punch a cow in the head just to get it to move out of the way, John looked to easier targets.
The dogs chained in the yard soon realised that the boy from the house had sharper toes than the man and they would avoid him, baring their teeth and more than willing to sink them into him if he got too close. But sheep and their lambs, the few cattle in the lower field, the chickens, they got the brunt of it. And so did the kids at school.
Bullying had come to John as naturally as breathing. But then in his father he’d had the best teacher he could have ever asked for. John was bigger than most, and they all teased him because of his clothes, and the stink that followed him from the farm to the classroom. He wasn’t the only farmer’s kid by any stretch, but he was the only one who had reeked to high heaven of it. And kids were cruel, but he was crueller, and some, to protect themselves, lined up behind him, if only to be out of the way of his fists.
If happy days had ever truly existed for John, then those days at
