The Summer We Turned Green

by William Sutcliffe

  Now that Sky has made it to the bench, I decide that I ought to try and summon the courage to stand up. I grip the safety rail and slowly pull myself on to my feet, straightening my legs in tiny increments, then uncurling my spine and finally lifting my neck. As I stand there, holding the wooden rail with both hands, my knees feel strangely loose and unreliable, barely strong enough to support my weight, so I shuffle towards Sky, sliding rather than lifting my feet, and sit next to her.

  A churn of anxiety is still squelching in my stomach, but now, looking down on the world, I begin to sense for the first time that the fear and discomfort might all be worth it. To be this far above my everyday life, my house and family, the streets I walk every day, feels like being lifted out of myself, almost reborn.

  Looking out over my city, an ocean of roofs that stretches as far as I can see, all those thousands of people scurrying around on the ground seem small and slightly ridiculous as they rush from task to task like overgrown insects, with no idea how tiny they really are.

  I soak up the view, sensing the tension leave my body and float away on the breeze rustling through the branches around us. I look across at Sky, and neither of us needs to say anything. We just smile at each other.

  And as I sit there, in this elevated, secret place, it occurs to me that I know I will never bring my school friends here. Though I haven’t known Sky for long, I’m in no doubt that she’ll stay calm up here and not take any risks or attempt any stupid, dangerous pranks. I don’t think I could trust my friends in the same way. They’d either be overconfident or, if they became frightened, they’d get competitive with anyone who was less frightened, then anything could happen. Also, there’s something about Dad and Rose moving into the commune, and the impossible-to-explain place that Sky now seems to have in my life, that feels private.

  On my street and in my house nothing is what it was, and I sense that nothing is going to stay how it is now, either. I don’t want anyone to see the soap-bubble fragility of my new life, and I’m not sure why but I have a sense that maybe, if nobody sees it, the bubble won’t burst.

  The next day starts with a short house meeting where a messaging system is put in place to coordinate what we should do if we see any suspicious activity in the building site at the end of the street. It’s expected that a demolition team will move in fast, with no prior warning.

  A string of numbers is programmed into my phone, while the curious culinary pairing of my dad and Sky’s mum serve up a stack of pancakes, which are brown for some reason but taste OK if you cover them in enough sugar. The sugar is also brown, by the way. Unless I say otherwise, just assume that all food in the commune is brown.

  When we’ve eaten our fill, Sky and I head up to the treehouse to begin our first day as lookouts. At first there’s the same jolt of fear verging on panic, but this time it settles down faster into the state of hushed other-worldly peace that our treetop hideaway seems to generate.

  We spend the day going up and down the rope ladder, hauling cushions, blankets, food and books up there to transform the platform into what feels like a homely den. For someone who lives in a hovel, Sky has a surprising flair for interior decoration. I don’t know how she does it, but the cramped space, despite now being filled with stuff, ends up feeling bigger than it did before. She creates defined areas: a lookout corner; a relaxation nest lined with the sleeping bag I reclaim from Rose; a dining area with a low table (a snack-filled cool box covered in a blanket); and we even add a hanging bucket in case of emergency calls of nature during a ladder-up situation.

  Hours pass in a flash as we refine and perfect our new temporary home, the thought of lunch not even occurring to us. Then suddenly Mum is standing at the bottom of the tree calling us down for dinner.

  She watches anxiously as we descend, and gives us both a relieved hug when we return to ground level.

  Over the meal she quizzes us on the safety of the treehouse, asking how much time we’re intending to spend up there, and not very subtly trying to persuade us to do something else.

  She says that when it was discussed in the meeting, she had no idea how high it would be, and she seems annoyed that something so dangerous was built without her permission.

  I point out that she visited during the construction work, when maybe it could have been altered, but she swats away my comment with a wave of her hand, saying, ‘Nobody would have listened to me.’

  When I confess that I’ve relocated most of the family supply of snacks to the top of the tree, bracing myself for a telling-off, she just gives a resigned shrug, as if she thinks the whole project is mad, but is somehow not her problem. This seems to be the position she’s reached on everything to do with the commune, including Dad.

  ‘Just be careful up there,’ she says.

  ‘We will,’ I assure her, but I can sense that she doesn’t believe me. Even so, she doesn’t argue back or try to forbid us from going back up there, which seems uncharacteristically easy-going and passive.

  Now I look at her – at the pallor of her skin and the bags under her eyes – and realise that I’ve never seen her look so tired. My mother, who has always been a source of boundless energy, looks, for the first time ever, like someone who can’t be bothered to fight her corner.

  ‘We’ll be careful. I promise,’ I say.

  She smiles at me, but it isn’t really a smile.

  Later that evening, as I’m putting myself to bed, Mum comes into my room and hands me a dark brown leather case the size of a couple of food tins, with a metal clasp and a cracked, brittle neck strap.

  ‘What’s this?’ I say, feeling the weight of it, sensing immediately that it’s something precious.

  ‘It’s for you. For your job up in the treehouse.’

  I click open the rust-speckled clasp and pull out a pair of heavy black and silver binoculars.

  ‘They were my dad’s,’ she says, watching me lift them to my eyes and showing me how to adjust the focusing dial. ‘For his birdwatching. They’ve been sitting in a drawer for years, but I want you to have them.’

  At first I see only a blur, then a shelf of books at the far end of the room crystallises out of the murk. The titles become crisp and clear; even the creases on the spines are visible.

  ‘They’re amazing,’ I say.

  After I’ve experimented a little longer, Mum asks for a go. As she raises the binoculars to her eyes, her face relaxes into a dreamy faraway expression.

  ‘I remember the feel of them,’ she says. ‘Reminds me of being your age. He always took them with him on walks. If he saw anything interesting, he’d put the strap over my neck and try to show me. I hardly ever saw what he saw, but … wow, just holding them … I haven’t touched them since Dad … it’s like he’s … I can almost feel his hand on my shoulder …’

  She lowers the binoculars and she’s smiling, but her eyes are glistening with a filmy sheen of tears.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, handing back the binoculars and standing. ‘Sorry. I wish you’d met him. He was a good man. He was kind. You would have liked each other.’

  She swipes at her eyes quickly with the side of her thumb, turns away and walks out.

  It’s hard to say exactly what we do up there, but whole days drift easily by with the two of us right in the sweet spot between something and nothing to do, contentedly idle without being bored. Just watching the world go by, invisibly and from a secret height, is strangely and endlessly mesmerising.

  Then, only minutes after getting home from her Wednesday half-day in the office, I see Mum march out of our front door with a determined, angry look on her face and cross the road directly towards us. My first thought is that we must have done something wrong, but she strides straight past the tree without even glancing upwards and heads into the commune.

  I hurry down the rope ladder to see what’s going on. As soon as I’m in the house, I can hear Mum’s voice reverberating out of Dad’s attic room.

  I follow the sound up the stairs, and it
’s obvious (to me and probably everyone else in the house, if not the street) that they are arguing. Mum has evidently just listened to a voicemail on the landline at home from the ‘HR department’ (whatever that is) at Dad’s work, saying that if he doesn’t respond within twenty-four hours to the emails and phone messages regarding his unexplained absence, his employment will be immediately terminated.

  In other words, Dad has been bunking off and they are about to fire him. It’s not clear what Mum thought he was doing, or what she thought he had arranged with his work to allow him to muck around in the commune all day, but it’s pretty clear she wasn’t expecting this.

  It doesn’t feel right to go into his room in the middle of their argument, but I can’t walk away either, so I hover on the landing outside, listening.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Mum’s yelling.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll sort it out.’

  ‘Sounds a bit late for that. They’re about to fire you.’

  ‘They won’t fire me.’

  ‘The message says you’ve got twenty-four hours.’

  ‘They’re bluffing.’

  ‘How can you be so calm! If you lose your job …’

  ‘I’m not going to lose my job.’

  ‘It looks to me like you are doing literally everything a person could possibly do to try and lose their job.’

  ‘You have to do something really bad to get fired these days.’

  ‘How is this not bad? They’re not going to pay you to do nothing all day!’

  ‘I’ll tell them I’m having a nervous breakdown. I’ve seen it loads of times before. It always works.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Am I what?’

  ‘Having a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Because it really looks like you are.’

  ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t be so angry with me.’

  ‘Unbelievable! You’re asking me not to be angry! While you sit around all day playing the banjo and making soup.’

  ‘It’s not a banjo, it’s a guitar.’

  ‘We need both salaries to pay the mortgage!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So what are we going to do when you get fired?’

  ‘I won’t get fired.’

  This is when I realise that Rose is standing next to me on the landing. ‘What’s going on?’ she whispers. ‘Why are they talking about Dad being fired?’

  ‘He hasn’t been going to work, and Mum says they’re going to sack him,’ I say.

  Mum now appears in the doorway.

  ‘What are you two doing here? Are you eavesdropping?’ she says.

  ‘Has Dad been fired?’ says Rose.

  ‘Ask him yourself. If he’s not too busy tuning his banjo.’

  Dad shuffles out on to the landing, next to Mum. ‘I don’t know why you’re all in such a panic. I’ll call into work tomorrow and sort everything out.’

  ‘He’s going to tell them he’s gone mad,’ says Mum.

  ‘Sounds plausible,’ says Rose.

  ‘See?’ says Dad.

  Mum’s jaw drops open. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Are you having a nervous breakdown or not?’ I ask.

  ‘If a nervous breakdown is doing things you actually enjoy, and being happy for the first time in years, and not living every minute of your day as a slave to other people’s demands, then yes – absolutely – this is a nervous breakdown and it’s bloody marvellous.’

  ‘Was that a yes or a no?’ I say, to Mum and Rose. They both shrug.

  ‘How long are you planning to stay here?’ says Mum.

  ‘I just need to see this protest through. It’s important.’

  ‘Important on some kind of principle? Or just important that you’re having a nice time?’ asks Mum.

  ‘When did you get so cynical?’ says Dad.

  ‘When did you get so totally insane?’ replies Mum.

  ‘Why did you even come here?’ asks Rose.

  ‘Well, I …’ Dad tails away with a vague wave of an arm.

  ‘Tell her,’ insists Mum. ‘Give her a proper answer.’

  ‘OK. At first it was just to flush you out. Then I realised I like it here,’ says Dad.

  ‘Flush me out!? Like a turd?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! This has nothing to do with turds.’

  ‘You’re the one that talked about flushing!’

  ‘Out. Not away. You don’t flush out a turd. You flush away a turd. It’s a completely different meaning.’

  ‘Well, I’m really flattered by the comparison.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’

  ‘I hate to interrupt this fascinating conversation, but I think we might be getting off the point,’ says Mum. ‘Shall we get back to your explanation of why you came here?’

  Dad looks from Rose to Mum, then back again, thinks for a few seconds, then says, ‘I thought me being in the commune might make the place seem less appealing, and you’d get fed up quicker and go back home.’

  ‘So if I went home now, would you go too? Mission accomplished and all that?’ says Rose.

  Dad looks at her, chewing his lip, deep in thought.

  ‘That’s a tricky one,’ he says.

  ‘A TRICKY ONE!’ yells Mum. ‘YOU TOLD ME THAT WAS WHY YOU CAME! NOW SHE’S OFFERING TO GO HOME AND YOU’RE HESITATING.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Dad and Rose reply simultaneously.

  ‘Didn’t say what?’ asks Mum.

  ‘That I was offering,’ says Rose. ‘It was a theoretical question.’

  ‘Someone else is living in your bedroom now, anyway,’ I say.

  ‘What? You gave away my bedroom?’

  ‘I haven’t given it away,’ says Mum.

  ‘TO WHO?’ says Rose.

  ‘Sky sleeps there sometimes, but I haven’t given her the bedroom.’

  ‘Sometimes as in every night,’ I say.

  ‘You can have it back any time,’ says Mum.

  ‘NO! I DON’T WANT IT! IF YOU’RE IN SUCH A RUSH TO SWAP ME FOR ANOTHER DAUGHTER, YOU CAN KEEP IT!’ says, Rose, spinning on her heel and marching away.

  ‘Why did you say that?’ Mum says to me angrily.

  ‘Just being honest,’ I reply.

  ‘Well, there won’t be a bedroom for either of them if he doesn’t keep up his half of the mortgage payments,’ snaps Mum.

  ‘Why is everyone being so emotional?’ says Dad.

  ‘Aaaaaarrrrrrggghhhhhhh!’ growls Mum, throwing her arms in the air and eyeballing Dad as if she might throttle him.

  Dad tries to hold her gaze, but fails.

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘We’re going on holiday in a few days anyway. Why don’t you just stay here till then and sort things out with work, then treat the time away as a chance to think about what you’re doing, and how to resolve whatever weird thing it is you’re going through? And after Spain we can all make a fresh start. Try to get back to normal. Does that sound like a plan?’

  ‘Er … I suppose. Maybe that’s the best way forward.’

  ‘That’s the most enthusiastic response you can come up with, is it?’

  ‘No, I … er … great! Yeah! That’s a good idea.’

  Shaking her head, Mum turns and walks away down the staircase.

  When she’s gone, Dad shrugs at me and tries to pull his lips into a smile, but it ends up looking more as if he’s about to vomit.

  I look back at him, not smiling. I like Dad being a bit crazy, but getting fired from his job and living as a dropout is taking things too far.

  ‘It’ll all be OK,’ he says, patting me on the shoulder.

  ‘Not if we get thrown out of our house,’ I say.

  ‘That won’t happen. And even if we did have to move somewhere a bit smaller, that wouldn’t be the end of the world. You can’t spend your whole life never doing anything you actually want. Well, you can – maybe most people do, but I’m not going to be one of those people. I c
an’t do it any more.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re not going back to work?’

  ‘It means I’m figuring out how to stand up for myself for once.’

  With those ominous words he steps away and goes back into his tiny room, so I head downstairs and climb back to the treehouse, which is the only place I want to be. A few days ago it terrified me to be up here, now it feels like the safest place I know.

  I can tell by the way Sky looks at me that she heard all the shouting. After giving me a while to sit and think, she says, ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘It’s my dad – they’re threatening to sack him, and Mum’s not pleased. He’s gone kind of nuts.’

  ‘He seems fine to me,’ says Sky. ‘I like him.’

  ‘He seems fine,’ I say, ‘if you’ve never met him before. But this isn’t what he’s supposed to be like.’

  ‘What’s he supposed to be like?’

  ‘Like other dads. You know – boring.’

  ‘Boring is better, is it?’

  ‘Definitely. Well … I don’t know … I think this version is kind of OK, but it drives Mum crazy, and the family’s falling apart, and he might lose his job, so that can’t be good, can it?’

  ‘I suppose. I wouldn’t really know. I’ve never had a dad.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, trying to slam the brakes on my self-pity. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I mean, he must exist somewhere,’ says Sky, ‘but I don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘All Mum will say is that he’s an arsehole.’

  ‘That’s all you know? He’s an arsehole?’

  ‘Yup. That’s it. Probably not enough information to track him down, is it?’

  ‘I suppose you think I’m making a fuss about nothing, then?’ I say, after an awkward silence.

  ‘No. If I had what you had, then it started falling apart, I’d be heartbroken. I think you’re being brave.’

  For someone who knows nothing about anything, Sky has an uncanny ability to see into the heart of things.

  ‘I suppose I should be grateful to have a dad at all, even if he is losing his marbles,’ I say.

  Sky shrugs, picks up the binoculars and stares out at the encampment of bulldozers and demolition machinery that has recently begun filling up one end of the street.