The Summer We Turned Green

by William Sutcliffe

  ‘Hi, it’s me,’ says Mum. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Great,’ I say.

  ‘When are you coming down?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘You can’t spend the night up there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It isn’t safe.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘What if you fall out?’

  ‘We won’t.’

  ‘You might.’

  ‘We won’t.’

  ‘I never would have let you go up there if I’d had any idea you were going to do this!’

  ‘I’d better stay here, then.’

  ‘Please come down. I won’t be cross, I promise.’

  ‘You’re already cross.’

  ‘Only because you won’t come down. It’ll be dark soon.’

  ‘There are street lights.’

  ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘We’re staying put.’

  I turn to Sky and she gives me a firm nod.

  Mum spends another few minutes trying to persuade me to come down, but I hold firm and change the subject to Dad being arrested (which is surely worse than me being in a treehouse). When I ask if there’s any news from him, she just tells me I mustn’t worry, and that he’ll be out soon. Eventually we get on to the important topic of food, and how to get it up to the treehouse.

  ‘We’ve made a plan,’ she says. ‘I’m going to stay out of sight, because they already know who I am. A team of Rose’s friends are going to create a diversion. We don’t think the police know you have a basket, so get it as low as you can now without it being visible, and when you see that the distraction has worked, drop it down fast. Someone will be at the spot ready to put the food in, you pull it up and … bingo! What do you think?’

  ‘OK – we’ll get ready.’

  Sky stealthily lowers the basket two-thirds of the way down the trunk, and a crowd of people (including Rose and some of the group we brought in over the garages) soon appears next to the policeman who seems to be in charge of guarding the tree. They begin singing stupid songs, then Rose takes the policeman’s hat and puts it on, dancing in front of him, just out of reach.

  He tries to take this with good humour, and Rose keeps up her playful demeanour but refuses to give the hat back, continuing to dance just out of reach as he steps forward to try and retrieve his hat.

  Soon the other police around the tree are sucked into the argument, arrest is threatened, and at that moment a crouching figure darts out of a bush and positions himself directly below us. It’s Callum, carrying a well-stuffed backpack. Sky lets the basket plummet to ground level. Callum chucks in the backpack and we immediately pull, as hard as we can, both of us straining to get the heavy load up and out of sight.

  Nobody seems to notice what Callum has done. He turns and slips away, giving a furtive thumbs up to Rose, who immediately returns the police helmet to its owner and melts back into the crowd.

  Seconds later, the basket is in our hands, and we spread out our feast on the treehouse platform: two huge Tupperware tubs of creamy chicken pasta, a big thermos of soup, a cling-film-covered slab of sandwiches, a family pack of KitKats and several bars of chocolate, two big cartons of juice and assorted bags of crisps, sweets and popcorn. There’s even a power-bank charger for my phone.

  We both pile into our pasta and I text Mum as I eat: ‘Thnx. Best meal ever! xxxxx’

  ‘Enjoy!’ she replies. ‘Stay safe! I love you! xxx’

  Sky asks me what the reply says, but I leave out the last bit.

  After a while, Mum sends another text, saying, ‘You have been very brave and you’ve made your point. I really think you should come down now.’

  I text back: ‘Got sleeping bag, blankets and cushions. We’ll be fine. Thanks again for dinner.’

  ‘This is a really bad idea,’ she texts back, and I don’t reply.

  A few minutes later, a text comes through from Rose, saying, ‘Mum says I have to text you to tell you to come down, but DON’T. Stay there! You’re doing a great job. I’m proud of you. Everyone says they’re proud of Sky too. There have been many tears today, but you two are our brave shining lights. We all send big hugs to both of you.’

  When I read this out to Sky, a shiver of contentment seems to pass through her whole body.

  After eating our pasta, washed down with an epic quantity of chocolate, Sky and I make a nest of cushions and blankets and bed down for the night. It’s the first time I’ve used my sleeping bag since I lent it to Rose at the start of the summer holiday, which now feels like a lifetime ago. It smells smoky, with faint wafts of spicy food, incense and unwashed human body, but I don’t really mind. It occurs to me that this is the smell of the commune, which, as of today, no longer exists. The scent of my sleeping bag is a last remnant of something unique and beautiful that has just been smashed.

  I breathe it in, and imagine myself walking through the now stripped and destroyed rooms, reconstructing them in my head.

  The sounds of singing and guitar-strumming float upwards as the night darkens. Sky’s mum calls on my mobile, asks me to hand over the phone, and the two of them have a muttered chat which I try to avoid eavesdropping on, though it’s impossible to miss Sky promising over and over again to be careful, or not to notice that she signs off with, ‘I love you too.’

  Apparently, despite her best efforts, though she did get shut in a van for a while, Sky’s mum wasn’t arrested after all. Every hobby has its challenges, I suppose.

  Some of the protesters drift away for the night, others bed down in tents. From our vantage point high up in the tree, Sky and I watch the now homeless commune members pick through the remains of their possessions, which are strewn across the ground outside their destroyed home. There’s lots of hugging and a considerable amount of weeping. Almost everyone I know from the street – including Helena – comes out to help them, providing cups of tea, food, comfort and even suitcases for their belongings. Mrs Gupta keeps emerging from her house with tray after tray of brownies.

  I watch my mum have a long conversation with Clyde, jotting things down on a piece of paper, then she goes up and down the street, ringing on doorbells. One by one, everybody from the commune leaves the mournful gathering under the tree and goes into one of the homes on the street, lugging with them the salvaged remains of their belongings.

  Last to find a bed for the night are Clyde and Sky’s mother, who are led into my house by Mum. I imagine Rose must be sleeping in her own bedroom for the first night in weeks, so presumably one of our guests will be in my bed and the other on the sofa in the living room.

  All change again, I think to myself, as I begin to doze off. Commune people sleeping in my house with Mum and Rose, the commune empty, me and Sky up a tree and Dad in a police cell. I didn’t see that arrangement coming. When my parents set out to bring Rose home, I’m pretty sure this isn’t what they imagined, either.

  Sleep won’t come though. Lying still in the dark, it begins to feel as if the platform is moving. Even though it’s a relatively windless night, up here the whole tree seems to creak and sway. Whenever my body begins to drift into unconsciousness, a panic reflex telling me I’m going to roll off and fall to the ground kicks in and jolts me awake.

  With the street silent at last, quiet enough for me to hear the leaves above my head jostling against one another, I turn towards the moonlit silhouette of Sky’s motionless body and whisper, ‘Are you asleep?’

  ‘Sort of,’ she says. ‘You?’

  ‘Can’t sleep. I feel like we’re moving.’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘It’s weird.’

  ‘It’s natural,’ she says. ‘Why do you think people rock babies to soothe them?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Because we’re monkeys. Fancy monkeys who think we’re cleverer than all the other monkeys, but this is where we belong. In trees.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘According to
who?’

  There’s a long silence. For a while I think Sky has fallen asleep, then she says, ‘You know I said this is the first place I’ve been for years that feels like home? It happened once before. There was a man, when I was small. We lived with him in a tent. It was a protest camp in a forest down south. About a road, or something. A bypass. He was called Aidan. Me, Mum and him in one big tent, which he called a yurt. It had a wood stove in the middle and a hole in the roof for the smoke. He’s not my dad, but he felt like it for a while. It was him that taught me how to play chess, with pieces he carved himself. We went out into the forest every day. Searching for firewood and food, or just walking. Looking at things. He taught me which mushrooms you can and can’t eat, and where to find them. Same thing for berries. Also all sorts of stuff about birds and how to spot the tracks of deer and foxes. If he saw a spiderweb he liked the look of, we’d all stop, examine the shape of it, talk about how it was made.’

  Sky pauses for a moment, lost in a distant memory, then carries on in such a quiet voice it’s almost as if she’s talking to herself. ‘Everything he saw, he had a story about it, or sometimes just questions. And he always listened to my answers, which usually led to some other story, probably about plants or insects or wild animals … but most of all he loved trees. He taught me how to identify them from their leaves or bark or even just buds. He had a hammock, and sometimes the three of us would climb really high, and he’d tie us on and we’d all lie there. Listening. Just being there. It was amazing. I was never bored. Not for one minute in that forest was I ever bored.’

  ‘How long were you there?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably less than a year, because I remember it getting too cold. I think that’s why we left.’

  ‘What happened to the man?’

  ‘Aidan? I don’t know. He stayed, we left. That was that. Mum was different then. More fun. I don’t often think of him now, but … he was nice. I know people think I’m stupid. They think I don’t know anything about anything, but that’s not true. I just know different things.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re stupid.’

  ‘You did at first. I saw it in your eyes.’

  There’s no answer to that, and I’m glad it’s too dark for her to see my face, because I know she’d see that she’s right.

  After another long, sleepy silence, Sky says, ‘Did you know that trees talk to each other?’

  ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘Not in words but in scent. There’s a tree in Africa that sometimes gets eaten by giraffes. The giraffes only nibble for a short while though, then they walk away, not just from that tree, but from all the others close by. When scientists studied it, they learned that after the tree starts to get eaten, it sends out a bad-tasting toxin to the leaves which puts the giraffe off. But not only that – it also gives off a scent warning to other trees nearby, and those trees pump their leaves with the same toxin before the giraffes even bite into them. The trees help each other.’

  ‘Is that really true?’

  ‘A hundred per cent. Aidan told me, and he never lied. He loved stories like that. Did you know that in a forest, underground, all the roots of all the different trees intertwine and connect? An ill tree will be sent nutrition by its neighbours to help it recover. Aidan always said a forest, however big, was actually like one organism endlessly rebuilding itself over time frames that humans can’t even imagine. He said that if you walk in a forest and all you see are individual trees, then you don’t know what a forest is. That’s how trees are supposed to be, and that’s how the whole world looked until humans came along and started cutting everything down. This oak we’re in now, it’s an orphan. They don’t like being on their own.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t now,’ I say. ‘We’re here.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ she says.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘If you try to stay still while the tree moves, you’ll never sleep. You have to accept where you are. Move with the tree. Be part of the tree. If you do that you’ll have the best sleep of your life.’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Night night.’

  Silence descends, until I whisper one last question.

  ‘Are you frightened?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘No.’

  I don’t even notice myself falling asleep, and the next thing I’m aware of is a sound that I at first think is an alarm clock, until my eyes open to a bright shock of sunlight and I realise my phone is ringing.

  ‘It’s me,’ says Mum. ‘Look down.’

  I peer over the edge of the treehouse, and there’s my mother, in the middle of the street, holding a basket of food. She gives me a big wave.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asks. ‘Did you sleep?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m fine.’

  ‘I know this is going to sound weird, but there’s someone here who wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s some TV news people.’

  I peer over the edge again and notice that Mum is standing directly in front of a camera crew as she’s talking to me.

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been trying to get some breakfast up to you, but the police here won’t let me, and these news people think this is a good story, so they want to ask you how you feel about being starved out of your protest.’

  ‘Starved?’

  ‘Well, you can say whatever you want. Shall I hand you over now?’

  ‘OK.’

  There’s a rustling sound, and a younger female voice comes on the line. ‘Hello, is that Luke?’ she says.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about your protest, if that’s OK.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, still not entirely believing what’s happening to me. Even on a normal day I find the world confusing at this time in the morning, and though I’ve only been awake for less than a minute, it’s already clear this is very much not a normal day.

  ‘How was your night in the tree?’ she asks.

  ‘Fine,’ I reply. I know I ought to think of something more interesting to say, but I haven’t yet found the on switch for the part of my brain where words are kept.

  ‘Your mother’s been trying to send food and water up to you, but she’s being prevented by a police cordon. How do you feel about that?’

  ‘Er … angry,’ I say. ‘It’s … really bad. I’m starved. And I’m only thirteen. That’s not right, is it?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Do you have a message you’d like to give to the authorities who are trying to starve you out?’

  ‘Yeah … er … just … don’t be stupid. Don’t be mean. But this isn’t about me, anyway. It’s about the planet. It’s the most important thing there is, and everyone my age feels the same way about it. We need a future. Can we … talk about this later? I’ve just woken up.’

  ‘OK. We can try. Thank you, Luke.’

  Then the line goes dead.

  ‘Who was that?’ says Sky, rubbing her eyes and yawning.

  ‘Them,’ I say, pointing down at the TV crew. ‘News people.’

  ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘You’re famous.’

  ‘Hardly. They said they might call back. Maybe you should do the talking next time.’

  ‘I won’t be any good,’ she says.

  ‘You’ll be better than me.’

  ‘You were great!’

  ‘Apart from the fact that I couldn’t remember any words. As soon as she said who she was, I basically forgot how to speak.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. I heard the whole thing.’

  ‘Well, that’s what it felt like. Anyway, apparently Mum’s trying to send up breakfast but they’re not letting her.’

  ‘It’s OK. We’ve got loads left from last night.’

  This is certainly true. We unpack the food we’ve hidden away from marauding squirrels and begin to pick at what turns out to be a rather lavish and prolonged breakfast. We’re certainly far from hungry when a text message pings
through from Mum, saying that the police have caved in to the ‘PR calamity’ (whatever that means) of blocking her attempts to send up food, and that brunch (whatever that is) will be on the way soon.

  Before I even have time to reply, a second message arrives saying that I should open the parcel carefully, because there will be a fragile surprise in there.

  By this time a demolition team has arrived to continue their work of dismantling the commune. An enormous digger with a brick-chewing pincer on the end of a hydraulic arm shoves and bites at the structure of the building all morning, first pulling out the roof beams, then setting about the work of crunching down the walls. There’s something mesmerising about the slow, inexorable destruction this machine can wreak, pulling apart an entire house in front of my eyes.

  The protesters have been pushed back away from the demolition site, but they’re still present in large numbers, and as the morning progresses they seem to find their voice. We can’t quite make out the words of their songs, but there are moments when both of us think they’re singing about a treehouse, and we may be imagining things, but from time to time we even think we hear our names.

  When Mum reappears from the house, she’s carrying two bulging carrier bags of food, and she walks confidently towards the tree. The police cordon parts to let her through, and I watch her thank the policeman in charge with what I can tell, even from a distance, is extravagant sarcasm.

  Sky drops our basket down, and together we haul up three loads of supplies. The last one contains a padded envelope with our address scribbled out on the front, and above that the words ‘OPEN CAREFULLY ’, in Mum’s handwriting.

  Inside is an iPhone and a letter saying that the phone will ring at midday with a video call from a news anchor, which will be recorded and put out on the national lunchtime bulletin.

  ‘You’re going to be interviewed on TV!’ says Sky.

  ‘We are,’ I say. ‘Both of us.’

  ‘I won’t have anything to say.’

  ‘Yes, you will. And even if you don’t, people should see you.’

  ‘I don’t know if I want them to.’

  ‘I’m not pretending I’m up here alone. That would be a lie.’