‘OK. I suppose.’
‘How do we look?’ I ask.
She shrugs. ‘We look how we look.’
‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘We are who we are and we look how we look.’
A slow smile creeps across Sky’s face. ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’
‘Me neither.’
‘We’d better think of something good to say. All my life I’ve been around people who are protesting about one thing or another, and nobody ever listens to them,’ says Sky. ‘I’ve seen hundreds of demonstrators spend whole days on marches where they shout their heads off to absolutely nobody. Now we’re going to be interviewed on TV. We have to say something.’
‘You’re right.’
‘There’s never going to be another chance.’
‘I know. And they’re probably going to talk down to us because we’re kids.’
‘You can still give smart answers to stupid questions,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t matter what they ask us. This is our moment, and we just have to say what needs to be said.’
‘You’re going to be brilliant. I know you are. I’m going to forget how to talk.’
‘Between us, we can do it,’ she says. ‘We just have to plan out what to say.’
‘OK.’
There’s a long silence.
‘Maybe we should eat first,’ I say.
The iPhone sits on the platform between us as we chew, both of us glancing at it warily, as if it might explode at any moment.
A couple of times we try to discuss what we should say in the interview, but the conversation goes nowhere, even though there clearly isn’t anything else to talk about. Eventually, having decided we’ll just have to wing it, we sit there in ruminative silence, working our way through the giant picnic sent up by my mother.
The morning creeps on painfully slowly. From one dragging minute to the next, I veer between willing midday to arrive and dreading it.
Eventually the phone rings, and from the small screen in my hand I’m greeted by a news presenter whose voice is so familiar it feels almost as if he’s a member of my family. Sky positions herself next to me, and I hold the screen at arm’s length so we’re both in shot.
‘Hi!’ I say, scarcely believing this familiar TV face is someone I can actually converse with. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Loud and clear. You’re Luke, are you?’
‘That’s me,’ I say. ‘And this is Sky. It’s a joint protest.’
‘So I heard.’
‘Have we started yet?’ I ask. ‘Is this the interview?’
‘Well, we’re recording,’ he says. ‘We’re ready to begin as soon as you two say you’re ready. The sound isn’t great, so remember to use big voices. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘Ready?’
‘I guess.’
He goes still for a second, waits for some kind of signal off-camera, then turns away from us, gives an introduction about the protest and explains who we are. I try to listen to what he’s saying but my mind goes blank, blurring into a fizz of panic, which only partially clears when I see him turn back to stare at us directly through the phone screen and ask a question which passes straight through my brain without me registering any sense of what he’s asked.
Luckily Sky must have been managing to focus better than me, because she replies, in her usually chirpy voice, ‘Fine! We’re absolutely fine! What’s being built here is an atrocity and it shouldn’t be allowed, and we’re both very pleased to be taking a stand against it. My mum brought me up to believe that I shouldn’t let people push me around, so that’s what we’re doing.’
‘So do you really think that two kids up a tree can stop a multi-million-pound airport expansion going ahead?’
‘I don’t see what our age has to do with it. And no, we probably can’t stop it, but we’re already delaying it, and also making people aware of what’s going on. Not just us, but everyone who has come here to protest. This is a subject everyone should be thinking about and talking about – and here we are, talking to you, which is proof that what’s happening here is already some kind of success.’
‘Are you aware of how much protests like this cost the taxpayer? Don’t you think that now you’ve made your point you should come down?’
I feel I might be looking like an idiot, sitting here saying nothing, so I jump in with a quick answer. ‘No! For years people having been asking politely for politicians to do something about climate change, and nothing ever happens. Until you get in the way of somebody making money, nobody even notices you’re there.’
‘For older people this whole thing is just an idea – a news story – but for us it’s our lives,’ says Sky, in a voice that reminds me of an engine shifting up a gear. ‘Unless something drastic changes very soon, by the time we’re your age, in maybe 2050 or 2070, the world as we know it will have been totally destroyed by people of your generation who didn’t feel like giving up fast cars and weekends in Paris and plastic-wrapped fruit flown in from New Zealand. We’re going to have to live with this. You can’t understand how we feel.’
‘I think we can,’ the presenter says.
‘You can’t and you don’t, and every young person in the world knows this, and we aren’t going away. It’s our world, and we’re not going to just sit there politely and shut our mouths while people like you destroy it.’
Sky’s voice is wavering with emotion now, and I can see by the look on the interviewer’s face that he’s torn between being offended by her combativeness and delighted by the drama.
‘And when you ask about the cost to the taxpayer, that shows how much you don’t get it,’ I say. ‘Because the cost of doing nothing is so huge you can’t even measure it.’
‘I can see you both feel very passionately about this,’ says the interviewer, glancing down at his list of questions and hesitating for a moment, apparently finding that none of them fits the way the interview has panned out.
‘It’s not just us. It’s everyone here, and everyone of our generation, and everyone who hasn’t got their head up their bum,’ says Sky. ‘There’s no Planet B, and there’s no more time to waste. Something has to change. Everything has to change.’
‘Well, thank you for sharing your opinions and your enthusiasm—’
‘Opinions and enthusiasm?’ interrupts Sky. ‘These aren’t opinions! They’re facts. Science.’
‘There are two sides to every story.’
‘Not this one. How long do you think we have left?’
‘Er …’
‘If nothing changes, how long will the world as we know it last? Twenty years? Fifty? Seventy? If we do nothing, in my lifetime how many people will lose their homes or die? How many millions? One? Ten? A hundred million?’
The presenter takes this as his cue to end the interview, and without any kind of goodbye, the line is cut and the screen goes blank.
Then there we are again, up in our treehouse, alone together, shortly to be broadcast all over the country.
We look at each other in stunned silence for a few seconds, then suddenly, I don’t know why, we’re both overtaken by hysterical laughter.
‘How do you think that went?’ says Sky, when we finally recover.
‘You were fantastic,’ I say.
‘I shouldn’t have said bum. People don’t say bum on the news, do they?’
‘Not usually. But apart from that it was great.’
‘You think? I have no idea what I said.’
‘I can’t remember, either. The whole thing’s a blur. I feel like it lasted about five seconds, or maybe like it didn’t really happen at all.’
‘It definitely happened,’ says Sky. ‘Whatever it was, it happened.’
There doesn’t seem to be anything else to do now except carry on eating, so we reopen the food box and begin to snack, jumping from sweets to crisps to sandwiches to sausage rolls and back again.
When I can’t eat any more, I flop on to my back and gaze up at the shimme
r of blue that dances through the shuffling layer of leaves, luxuriating in the way that up here it seems as if time slows to a crawl. Nothing-to-do hours in the treehouse feel almost like lolling in a warm swimming pool. I breathe deeply, pulling into me the clean, woody scent of this tree, which I don’t ever want to forget.
Will this be our last day up here? I feel as if we don’t have much longer. Someone will force us out. They must know that if they start cutting, we’ll have to climb down.
How much longer will this tree be alive? It seems like an immense responsibility that Sky and I are the only things holding back the murder of this beautiful giant, and feels unspeakably sad that soon we will be beaten and the axe will fall.
Picturing the trunk of this tree cracking open as it crashes to the ground makes my eyes prickle with sorrow and fury. One human with a small, buzzing tool bringing to an end hundreds of years of life in a matter of minutes: how can that be possible? How could a person do that?
Without shifting position I reach out, pluck a leaf and rub it between finger and thumb, feeling its two textures: rough on the dark green surface and smooth but ridged on the pale green underside. With a fingertip I trace the perfect taper of the silky-smooth central stem as it shrinks to a hair’s breadth at the leaf’s tip.
Holding it up to the light, my eyes follow the veins that branch off this tiny spine, and the veins that branch off them, and the minuscule filaments that split off yet again, barely visible. As I examine this pattern of perfect ever-shrinking smallness, my mind suddenly spins out to picture this vast tree cradling me high in the air, and the thousands upon thousands of leaves it has grown over century after century, every single year, creating and dropping these same leaves on this same spot when I was a baby, and when my parents and grandparents were babies, and their grandparents, on and on. Until now. And I have a sudden sense that this tree, which has become my temporary home during what will be the last few days of its unimaginably long life, is speaking to me about the interconnectedness of everything – telling me that big is small and small is big, and the whole planet, from the tiniest bug to the largest mountain, is one thing. I can’t quite fully capture or understand this thought, but I feel it, in my fingertips and blood and heart.
This daydream is interrupted by the ping of my mobile phone receiving a message, then, almost immediately, another and another. There’s one from Mum, another from Sky’s mum, rapidly followed by a torrent more from Rose, Clyde and seemingly every other person who has my mobile number, all of them compliments on what we said, or variations on ‘You were amazing!’
None of these messages quite sink in. My eyes slip over this seemingly endless stream of words as if they have little to do with me, as if it’s someone else who is being con-gratulated, then one flashes up from Grandma. My dead Grandma. For a second I think I must have gone mad, then I remember that she shared her mobile phone with Grandpa, even though he never seemed to use it. I haven’t been texted from this number since she died, and I had no idea he still owned the phone. The message says, ‘You showed them, big guy! Proud of you! Grandpa x’.
I’m not sure why, but the sight of these words hits me in the guts, and I feel my eyes welling up. I turn my head so Sky can’t see, pondering how to reply, but I can’t think what to say, so after a minute or two I just send back a smiley emoji and a thumbs up.
Not long after that, Dad calls to say that he’s been released without charge, and that I don’t need to worry about him (which, as soon as he says it, is something I realise I had completely forgotten to do). He then says he’s heard I’ve become a celebrity.
I don’t really have an answer to that, but he tells me he’s on his way home and he’s impressed by my courage and he can’t wait to see me. As I’m hanging up, it occurs to me that I can’t remember him ever saying this to me before.
That night, again, I can’t sleep. It’s for a different reason though. The gentle swaying of the treehouse no longer bothers me, and even the intermittent creaking of the platform’s wooden joists has come to feel soothing rather than worrying. The new problem is that I feel as if my whole body is fizzing with a crackling energy that won’t let my mind shut down. Everything that has happened over the last weeks has been spiralling me towards this supercharged instant in time, and now the spiral has found its centre.
I’ve never felt like a nobody, because the idea didn’t mean anything to me. It never crossed my mind that I could be a somebody. But now I’m at the heart of something big, and it feels like an electrical pulse has buzzed into my veins. I am the focal point of attention for people I don’t even know, and I realise this is just a fleeting, freak occurrence which will pass, and will never happen to me again, but it’s happening now. Right now. It’s as if I’m a firework filling the sky with a brief flash of beautiful colour, and if I close my eyes for a second I’ll miss it.
In the dead of night, the clatter of a bin lid pierces the silence, and I look down over the edge of the platform. A sleek, silent fox wanders insouciantly across the road, followed by two skittish cubs.
Sky sits up next to me, also wide awake, and we watch the three animals until they slip out of sight under a hedge.
‘Still awake, then?’ I say.
She nods, rolls on to her side, and says, ‘How much longer do you think we can last up here?’
‘Not much, probably. We can’t leave though, can we? As soon as we do, the whole protest is finished, and the tree will be cut down.’
‘I know.’
‘We can’t do that.’
‘I know.’
After a long silence, I say, ‘When this is all over, where will you go?’
She turns on to her back and thinks for a while, looking up at the flicker of leaf shadows against the slate-grey sky, then says, ‘Just move on, I suppose. There’s always a next place.’
It’s a long time, and Sky’s breath has gone slow and deep, before I say, ‘I’ll miss you.’ There’s no reply, so I have no idea if she hears me.
It’s the pitch of the sound that wakes me up. Voices, lots of them, not shouting or singing, just talking, but at high frequency.
I look over the edge of the platform, and at first I can’t quite understand what I’m seeing. The whole street is filled with a crush of bodies. Hundreds and hundreds of people. I can barely see a single patch of tarmac. Only heads.
I switch on my phone and call Mum.
‘You’re awake!’ she says.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Have you seen?’
‘Who are they?’
‘Just people. Mostly teenagers. I’ll hand you over to Rose. She’ll tell you.’
There’s a clatter as the phone is passed over.
‘Luke?’ says Rose.
‘What’s happening?’
‘After the news thing yesterday, you and Sky exploded online. The Instagram feed for the protest went crazy. People all over the world love what you’re doing and what you said. Lots of them were saying they wanted to come and be part of it, so in the end I put something up about how to get here via the garages, and apparently there’s so many people turning up the police haven’t been able to stop it. From the crack of dawn this morning, they’ve been flooding in over all the back fences. Everyone on the street has opened their garden doors and let them through. The whole thing’s insane. And it’s not the usual protester types, either. They’re mostly young, but it’s just normal people. It feels like the whole world has turned up.’
‘Wow.’
‘You’re famous.’
‘But I haven’t done anything.’
‘You have. You and Sky said what every environmentalist has been saying for years, but something happened, and this time people listened. It got heard.’
‘Why?’
‘No idea.’
I wake Sky and show her the crammed street below us. With every minute, the crowd gets thicker, and spreads further down the street in both directions. A forest of flags and placards waves above
the heads of the demonstrators, displaying calls to action, howls of anger, messages of hope, jokes, slogans and demands. Pockets of singing and chanting rise up and fall away. The four policemen around the tree, now pressed in close to the trunk, look uneasy about being this heavily outnumbered.
There’s no way the demolition work can continue today. An impenetrable blockade of bodies is filling every inch of ground between the bricked-up remnants of the half-destroyed commune and the fenced perimeter of the building site, where the first few workmen are now beginning to appear. You couldn’t possibly drive any kind of bulldozer down the street now, or bring back the police to arrest this number of people. I can’t see how you could even clear the area, because there isn’t any space for the protesters to retreat to. Sending in horses again would be lethal.
All it takes is for me or Sky to give a wave over the edge of the platform and a huge cheer passes through the crowd.
My phone keeps ringing and buzzing with calls, messages of support and updates on what’s happening below. Everything we hear is essentially an excited repeat of ‘MORE PEOPLE!’ until around the middle of the day, when Clyde calls and tells me to put the phone on speaker so he can talk to both of us. He then says that a government minister is planning to come to the site. Apparently if we agree to come down when he visits, the minister will grant immunity from arrest and will promise to save the tree. He won’t cancel the airport expansion, obviously, but plans can be adjusted, and the tree will be saved.
‘What do you think?’ says Clyde.
‘I don’t know. What do you think?’ I reply. ‘I mean, we have to come down at some point. Probably quite soon.’
‘Yeah – I think this is your moment. This story’s never going to get more exposure than today, and the best we can hope for from this is to spread the word. The whole struggle is about awareness and communication as much as it’s about anything else. So I guess what we have to do is accept the minister’s plan, but make sure it plays as a victory, not a defeat.’
‘How do we do that?’ says Sky.
‘You have to do to him what you did to the news guy. He thinks he’s just going to shake hands with a couple of kids and be the hero of the hour for resolving a stand-off. You have to change the conversation. Say what needs to be said in front of the cameras. And this time it’s not just the UK. People around the world are following this. You can do that, can’t you?’
The Summer We Turned Green Page 20