Winter

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by Christopher Nicholson


  ‘In Stinsford.’

  ‘And now you are living less than two miles away. I envy you that sort of continuity. You have had a more rooted life than I, here in Wessex. I was brought up in various parts of Kent – Sydenham, Beckenham – and when I was ten or eleven we moved to Margate. But there was no sense of tradition. We never felt rooted.’

  ‘I have never been to Margate.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like it much. Everyone’s a stranger, and no one ever stays for long. People come, people go. I was sent to boarding school.’

  The track rising slowly, they reached the top of the hill. Here the old man paused to catch his breath, and to study the view; by training he was something of a connoisseur of scenery, just as other men are connoisseurs of art. The landscape, drab and featureless enough to the untutored eye, contained much to catch his scrutiny. The fields, left to rest until they were sufficiently dry for the spring ploughing, were a haphazard assembly of rain-washed hues, light and dark greys, muted browns and sepias, with occasional pieces of charred ground black from September’s stubble-burning. The silver line of a winterbourne threaded through a green pasture grazed by sheep, while a widening scarf of smoke stretched from a farmhouse chimney.

  This prospect was one that he knew intimately, for he had been up here on countless occasions and had seen it in all weathers and seasons. Although it was never the same, from one day or hour or minute to the next – even now, as the clouds thinned and thickened, the light came and went on a momentary basis – its essential character had scarcely altered over the course of his lifetime. Indeed, the contours of the land, the swell and fall of hill and valley, were as they had been for thousands of years. As an example of what Cockerell called continuity it ought to have elated him, and sometimes he did experience a little of the old elation, though in an etiolated form. Looking now, however, he felt – whatever he felt, it was not elation, but some much more subdued, uneasy emotion.

  Behind his unease, no doubt, lay his fundamental apprehension of Nature as an indifferent force, rather than a benevolent one; as he had written in ‘Tess’, the planet was a blighted one, the lives of its inhabitants always subject to the whims of fortune. The view before him was a beautiful one in which all appeared to be well, but who was to say that it was indeed well? Agriculture was not presently in good health; a number of farms had been repossessed; a local farmer, apparently prosperous, had hanged himself the previous winter. In truth, the problem was wider; it was one of knowledge. If he and Cockerell had walked in another direction, they might have looked towards the town, which was rapidly spreading beyond its former boundaries, or they might have stood by the railway line and watched truck-loads of Portland stone trundling by on their way to the metropolis. Other views intruded; it was no longer possible to live in blinkers. He knew too much.

  Not far from where he and Cockerell stood was a thicket of trees hiding the circular ditches of an ancient fort. It was one of dozens of such encampments in the country hereabouts; the land had once been owned and tilled by agriculturalists of the Iron and Bronze Ages. Often, on misty autumn afternoons, he had pictured them in their coarse clothes, chopping with their rudimentary axes, steering their muddy beasts through the dead woods. The scattered fires still burned and glowed in his imagination. He was not fool enough to make this world into some kind of primitive paradise; life had been hard, no doubt; yet it was life blessed by an ignorance of the true nature of existence. Who was to say, despite all the claims made on behalf of Civilisation, that those men and women had been less content with their lot than people now? If they had possessed the gift of sight into the complications of this present troubled age, and had been invited to choose between it and their own time, they would surely have remained where they were. Privately, the old man doubted the direction of much of what passed for progress, and indeed doubted that, given the intractability of human nature, progress of any lasting kind was possible. To be an optimist after the senseless blood-letting of the War (a war in which more than eighty young men from the town had lost their lives) flew in the face of experience.

  He stared, with his characteristic expression of scepticism. A mixed party of thrushes – fieldfare, with smoky-blue capes and grey rumps, and redwing, which were smaller and more delicate – made off with a dipping flight in the direction of a leafless hedgerow. A crow on a clod of earth cawed repeatedly at some unknown enemy.

  Cockerell’s mind was elsewhere.

  ‘I was a fat boy,’ he announced. ‘Exceptionally fat.’

  ‘Were you teased at your boarding school?’

  ‘Relentlessly. It did permanent damage to my self-esteem. Privately, I assure you, I am a bag of nerves.’

  The old man was amused. No one less fitting that description could be easily imagined.

  They walked on a little further, surprising a pair of snipe that had been feeding in a watery trench. They burst upward, uttering quick hoarse calls, zigzagging into a pallid sky.

  Cockerell was staring at his feet. The track was growing muddier and more slippery, and his shoes were ill-suited to such conditions. They edged past the trench, but upon meeting a puddle which stretched from one side of the track to another, and into which Wessex plunged with alacrity, the two men retraced their steps.

  Cockerell talked without a break. He was made uneasy by silence.

  ‘You know,’ he remarked in a casual tone, throwing out an arm, once they were past the allotments, ‘far be it from me, but you really ought to have a few of those pines attended to. It would give you so much more light, more air. I can see it must be good with regard to privacy, but as things stand, the house is almost engulfed.’

  ‘Florence has been badgering you, I see.’

  ‘Well, you know, it’s none of my business, but she does have a case. They have become rather overwhelming, have they not? Every time I visit, they seem larger. When one thinks back … when was it I first came here? Nineteen eleven? They were half the height then. Extraordinary how fast they’ve grown. Thirteen years! Is it the soil? One wouldn’t need to do anything too drastic.’

  ‘When trees are cut back, they invariably look disfigured and unnatural. They are tortured out of their natural shapes.’

  ‘I am sure you’re right, but no one is suggesting that they should be cut right down. A little minor surgery would suffice. A branch here and there, if only for safety’s sake. Florence was saying how tragic it would be if a branch were to fall on your head. Imagine the newspapers.’

  The old man grimaced inwardly, for he felt a paternal sense of responsibility towards the trees. They had been planted around the perimeter of the garden, the pines as a wind-break, the beeches for the colour of their foliage, and he himself had helped with the business of planting them, carefully spreading the delicate roots with his fingers to give them the best chances in life, and, in accordance with an old country superstition (in which he did not believe but which, nonetheless, perversely, he chose to observe) tossing a farthing in each hole. Perhaps, after all, the superstition did have something in it, for they had grown – at first slowly and uncertainly, and then with greater confidence, pushing their branches upwards and outwards. Trees live to varying ages. The pines were now nearing their middle term, the beeches were in the last stages of youth. To cut them back now, in the midst of their leafy lives, to prevent them from achieving their biological destiny, seemed an unnecessary act of barbarism, and one from which he recoiled.

  ‘None of the trees is in the least dangerous,’ he said. ‘Florence has the notion that they make her ill.’

  ‘Not true?’

  ‘It is all in her mind.’

  Cockerell nodded. ‘I am not a medical man, but if she feels that the trees affect her health, then one might argue that they do. You know – mens sana … And she does seem a bit down in the mouth at the moment … her system a bit run down. That operation has rather taken it out of her.’

  These easy formulations – ‘down in the mouth’, ‘a bit run down�
� – implied that Florence’s poor health was a temporary matter, like a foggy day. Whether that was so, the old man wondered; in some fashion or other she had been unwell for years, even if the symptoms varied. He wished she could have prevented herself from confiding in Cockerell.

  ‘Naturally she is anxious about you,’ Cockerell continued, ‘and of course she has a tendency to dwell on things, as women do. Common enough … the female of the species –’

  ‘No reason for her to be anxious on my behalf.’

  ‘I’m sure. It is merely that she loves you.’

  This remark hung with considerable awkwardness between them. The old man could think of nothing to say by way of response, though he profoundly disliked the turn that the conversation had taken.

  Cockerell continued: ‘If a tree or two could be given a hair-cut, it might perk her up, give her a little fillip. You would still keep your privacy.’

  He gave a stiff reply: ‘It is not a question of privacy.’

  ‘I thought that’s what it was all about?’

  ‘Not entirely. To a degree, but not entirely.’

  ‘Well, as I say, it’s none of my business. Forgive me for raising the matter.’

  The matter had been raised, however; some further explanation seemed necessary.

  ‘When I was a boy, I met a woodman who told me of certain ancient oak trees that shivered at the very sight of an axe.’

  ‘The idea being that the trees were afraid?’

  ‘The woodman thought as much, certainly. As soon as he and his fellows walked towards them, carrying axes, they began to shake their branches and rustle their leaves.’

  ‘It sounds very Polynesian to me,’ said Cockerell. ‘How can a tree feel fear? Or even see an axe? Trees don’t have eyes. Scientifically speaking, it must be bunkum, mustn’t it?’

  ‘Who knows?’

  Cockerell was silent for a moment. ‘So is that your opinion?’ he asked in a voice of some incredulity. ‘You believe trees can feel? Do you think they are also conscious?’

  ‘It is not entirely impossible.’

  ‘Really! I’ve always thought of you as thoroughly rationalist!’

  At this the old man’s mind went back to a letter he had received, four or five years earlier, asking whether he would be prepared to join a campaign on behalf of rationalism, the purpose being to prevent future wars. He had declined, largely out of a strong disinclination to commit himself publicly to any particular philosophical position which he might later change, but also out of a suspicion that the world itself was fundamentally irrational, and that wars were therefore not inexplicable outbursts of irrationality in a rational universe, but volcanic expressions of an underlying chaos. The conclusion which necessarily followed was that a campaign to prevent war by the promotion of rationalism would be as effective as an attempt to prevent an eruption by tossing a cork into a smoking volcano.

  In reply to Cockerell’s remark, he might have asked what it meant to be ‘thoroughly rationalist’, or he might have suggested that consciousness was not quite as easy to define as it might seem. Or he might have pointed out that trees were not so different from human beings, physiologically – that trees breathed, inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen.

  He said mildly, ‘My old mother brought us up to believe that it was ill luck to cut down a holly.’

  ‘Surely that is paganism? How can it possibly be ill luck to cut down a holly?’

  ‘It is hard to know, but my mother’s advice was generally sound. For better or worse, I never have had one cut down.’

  ‘Did her advice apply only to hollies?’

  ‘It applied especially to holly. However, she did not approve of cutting down any tree unless it was necessary.’

  ‘I see,’ said Cockerell, and he laughed merrily. ‘Well, I promised Florence I would try my best, and I understand that I am bound to fail, since I am now arguing against your mother! But, you know, the time will come when you will be obliged to have the trees seen to, or the postman will be unable to get up the drive.’

  ‘I shall be dead and buried long before then.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’ll live to a hundred. I’m willing to put a bet on it.’

  The old man gave a snort. ‘I very much hope not,’ he said, although in truth he relished the idea of living that long. As long as possible, surely. To die was the end of everything.

  Aspects of this conversation resonated in his mind for days. Did he truly believe that trees could feel? An animistic world? Or was it merely that, for reasons of sentiment, he liked the notion of trees as human? Walking down the Max Gate drive early one morning, wrapped in hat, coat and gloves against the cold, he paused to study the pines and was struck by the sheer physicality of their bodies rising into the pale winter sky. How powerful and strong they were! With their reddish trunks and stiff branches, they were as straight as sentries. Yet it was impossible not also to notice how much they varied among themselves. No two were alike, although all had been planted at the same time. Some had grown tall and thin, some were short and stocky; some had branches much lower than others; a few were stunted.

  The same was true for the beeches. These differences were not only down to heredity, but also to experience, for it was in response to the wind, rain, sun and storm that the trees had developed into the beings they were. Their trunks, pocked, scarred, were tablets of memory. In all this he saw resemblances to members of the human race.

  A dozen or more rooks had settled in the pines above his head and were cawing loudly. Enjoying their company, he pottered about for a time. The needles of the pine trees were slightly twisted, and the cones, which a few weeks earlier had been tightly packed, were now beginning to open their plates like the wings of birds. As for the beeches, their seed cases were covered in bristles, each one of which was equipped with a small hook like those on a hog’s back.

  Considered alongside humans, he thought, these trees had lived quiet and admirable lives. Resolute, determined, they had remained rooted to the same ground, much like the man whose entire existence is spent in the same village. There was a distinct virtue in this loyal commitment. If humans were to be judged morally, why not trees? The philosopher’s answer that trees did not have the power of moral choice, and therefore could not be considered moral beings, was a specious one; after all, trees and human beings were fellow inhabitants of the planet. The influence of the former was entirely benign; of the latter, largely malign.

  To Cockerell, who took a narrowly humanist view of existence, none of this would have made sense; but Cockerell had not been born in the country and had no instinctual feeling for the natural world. Indeed it seemed to him that Cockerell in the country was half blind, unable to see more than a small part of what was to be seen. He was deaf, too, in that to him the sounds of trees were merely sounds, whereas to the countryman they were a form of expressive language, and the soft flutterings of a beech, the ecstatic whisperings of a birch and the languid sighs of a pine so close to conversation that they could be nothing else. It was at night, when other senses were attenuated, that he himself was most conscious of the voices of trees, but even now, in a wintry dawn with a light wind, the squeal of two branches chafing each other seemed to speak of irritation.

  Of what, he wondered, might the trees talk, between themselves? An idea sprang in his mind. ‘The old man planted us here,’ one murmured to another, ‘a long time back; he dug the holes and set us here. Then he was younger, then he was stronger, and taller than us, even; look at him now, bent and bowed, stick in hand!’ – ‘Yes,’ said the second, ‘how often we have watched him, in dawn light, on his walk down the drive. He has aged and grown weary, as men do – their lives are not as long as those of trees – he will not be with us much longer. See how unsteady he is. The day of his death is approaching.’ – ‘Sometimes he seems to be listening,’ said the first, ‘do you think that he hears us?’ – ‘We cannot tell,’ came the reply of the second tree, ‘but he has been our friend. He gave us l
ife, and has protected us from the sharp teeth of the axe and saw.’ – ‘Why do men hate us so?’ asked the first. – ‘They have always been like that, and always will be,’ said the second. ‘They are creatures who might live in peace, if they would only try, but ineluctably they are drawn to violence. The spilling of blood lies ingrained in their natures.’ – ‘Is he the same, the old man?’ – ‘No,’ said the second tree, ‘we may be sure, he will protect us, as much as he can, as long as he can.’ The two trees murmured thus and then, with the ebb of the wind, fell silent.

  That morning he began to turn the conversation into a poem. It proved unsatisfactory – almost as soon as it was finished he screwed up the paper and threw it on the fire, which was the fate of much he wrote. But trees were much on his mind, and after lunch he managed to compose several quick verses about the unknown tree whose boards were destined to enclose his body. Though strangers now, the tree and the man, each rocked and blown, would come to rest in deep ground and there lie safe from the convulsions of the world. It was only after he had written the poem that he recognised its inspiration to be one of Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy’ poems:

  No motion has she now, no force;

  She neither hears nor sees,

  Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course

  With rocks, and stones, and trees.

  A storm blew up in late afternoon. Seated at his desk, he watched as the trees heaved and tossed, their branches swaying and shaking. Groups of rooks whirled past, riding the crests and troughs of the gale, uttering their strange cackles and yaps. Did these trees not belong to the birds as much as to him? Who owned what? What right did he have to cut them down?

  More than ever, he thought of the trees as a community of beings, akin, perhaps, to an Attic chorus, and, of course, Ancient Greece also had its dryads and hamadryads – a hamadryad being a nymph who died upon the death of the tree that she inhabited. He remembered Eurydice, the wood nymph who had fatally pursued her lover, Orpheus, into the underworld, and also Keats’s invocation to the nightingale: ‘light-winged dryad of the trees’. Perhaps dryads were birds. Or might birds be angels? But, whether he did or did not believe that trees were capable of feeling, he was quite certain that he did not believe in angels.

 

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