by F. G. Cottam
Table of Contents
Recent Titles by F.G. Cottam
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Recent Titles by F.G. Cottam
BRODMAW BAY
THE COLONY
DARK ECHO
THE HOUSE OF LOST SOULS
THE MAGDALENA CURSE
THE WAITING ROOM
THE MEMORY OF TREES
F.G. Cottam
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First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.
eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.
Copyright © 2013 by F.G. Cottam.
The right of F.G. Cottam to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cottam, Francis, 1957–
The memory of trees.
1. Forests and forestry–Wales–Pembrokeshire–Fiction.
2. Billionaires–Fiction. 3. Folklore–Fiction.
4. Fantasy fiction.
I. Title
823.9'2-dc23
ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-441-6 (epub)
ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8315-5 (cased)
Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland
For Susan Searle 1924–2004
Much loved, greatly missed
ONE
The letter was printed on a plain sheet of A4 paper and signed at its conclusion with an old-fashioned fountain pen. The signature was legible. The writer was a man named Samuel Freemantle, who described himself as the estate manager. The estate in question, when Curtis subjected it to a Google Earth search, was not so much substantial as it was vast. He thought that Freemantle, despite his courteous tone and the formal approach the letter signified, must be a man with a job that kept him pretty busy.
The estate was owned by Saul Abercrombie and Curtis had, of course, heard of him. Self-made business successes tended to be more flamboyant than those who had inherited their money and Curtis thought of Abercrombie, whenever he saw the tycoon’s picture or heard his quotes in the media, as someone happily addicted to the celebrity status his enormous wealth had brought him.
Curtis thought he shared the general view of people who knew Saul Abercrombie only through headlines and sound bites and photo opportunities. He was the warts and all entrepreneur with a business empire embracing everything from a Hollywood film studio to a prestigious brand of single malt whisky. He ran enterprises ranging from a bespoke software company to a road haulage fleet. He had been to prison in his twenties, and in middle age confessed, once he’d conquered it, to a couple of years of enslavement to an almost fatal crack cocaine habit.
He had survived that, unapologetic to the point of defiance about his personal extravagance and ravenous appetite for the good life. And good luck to him, people tended to think. He’s fallible and honest and, in common with too few people with the talent for becoming rich, he genuinely enjoys what his money buys him.
There was the charitable foundation and the commitment to ecology and a collection of rare Beatles and Rolling Stones material. McCartney and Mick Jagger had tried and failed to buy back some of the acetates of their early recordings he owned. There was the priceless collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings. There was an aircraft hangar-sized garage replete with trophy cars. And, not least, there was a beautiful daughter he very publicly doted on.
Saul Abercrombie’s wife, the mother of his jewel of a daughter, had taken her own life. The press account of that event was still vivid a decade on because the manner of the suicide had been so lurid. She had paid the toll and driven halfway across the Severn Bridge and brought her convertible E-type Jaguar to a halt. It had been a beautiful spring day and witnesses said she had been driving in a pink headscarf with the roof down. She clambered up the bridge railings and, without apparent hesitation, threw herself off.
Impact injuries killed her the moment she hit the water. She didn’t leave a note. An autopsy report established that she had been in good health. She wasn’t taking any medication and, when she jumped, Susan Abercrombie was completely sober.
Curtis folded the letter back into the envelope it had arrived in, rose from his desk and opened the blind to look at the morning as light gathered and strengthened in the sky. He listened to the traffic on the street seven stories below as it swelled in volume towards the beckoning rush hour. And he remembered that Abercrombie’s daughter was named Francesca. He couldn’t remember where he had seen her picture and he couldn’t remember what it was that she did. That was, if she had an occupation. It didn’t matter much. With a father like hers she didn’t really need to do anything.
The estate Freemantle managed stretched inland from a ragged spread of cliffs on the Welsh Coast. It was sufficiently substantial for parts of it to own individual place names, when Curtis looked. There was Raven Dip and Gibbet Mourning and a place called Loxley’s Cross. There was nothing on the map to signify settlement, but the names sounded old. They belonged to places that lived wholly in a past no one had bothered to document. They were of a time remote from factual detail. Maybe they were translations originally from the Welsh. Even what myths they might have engendered had perished through neglectful centuries.
Again, it didn’t really matter. Down on the ground there might be a few scattered stones but the walked by-ways of these lost hamlets would have vanished entirely. And if Abercrombie’s scheme, the scheme described in Freemantle’s letter, proved to be feasible, they would be obscured and then consumed and forgotten forever.
Those cliffs at the edge of Abercrombie’s domain had an average height of over a hundred feet. They were a vast rampart against the corrosive powers of the sea. But were they a formidable rampart? The practical part of Curtis’ mind was already turning to the subject of coastal erosion. He needed to discover whether the cliffs were granite or chalk or predominantly quartz. They might be limestone, but he hoped they weren’t. He returned to his desk and his computer but before he could switch it on, his mobile in his pocket rang.
‘Sam Freemantle,’ a voice said. ‘Did you get my letter?’
‘It arrived this morning.’
‘Much maligned, the Royal Mail.’
Curtis looked at his watch. ‘It’s not yet seven thirty.’
‘Postmen start work early.’
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘We rise early too, Mr Curtis, those of us who’re slaves to the land.’
&n
bsp; ‘I’ve no cows to milk or crops to tend, Mr Freemantle. Just because my profession is trees, it doesn’t oblige me to live in a wood.’
Freemantle chuckled. He was not a Welshman, Curtis didn’t think. There was a curl to the vowels, a slight suggestion of the West of England in his dialect. He said, ‘I know exactly where you live. I posted you the letter. But you’re up with the larks, nevertheless.’
Curtis nodded to himself. This was true.
‘Should you have such things as larks, in Lambeth.’
Curtis didn’t know whether he did or he didn’t. Ornithology was not his speciality.
Freemantle cleared his throat. The small talk had come to its conclusion. He said, ‘Do you think it practical, Mr Abercrombie’s scheme?’
‘Depends on what you mean by practical,’ Curtis said. ‘It can be done. It can be successfully achieved.’
‘It’s sustainable?’
‘It can be made sustainable, yes.’
‘I’m sensing a “but”.’
‘It’ll be hugely expensive, even if the conditions are ideal. It could be colossally expensive if they’re not.’
Freemantle paused. ‘With or without you on board, he’ll do it,’ he said. ‘Mr Abercrombie is someone with a lifelong habit of fulfilling his dreams. This dream is going to be no exception.’
‘Except in scale,’ Curtis said.
‘He’s totally committed.’
Maybe he should be committed, thought Curtis, who’d detected more than a touch of megalomania to the plan baldly mapped in Freemantle’s letter. He glanced at his desk, at the mail that had arrived but had not been opened that morning, at the brown envelopes containing bills he knew he would struggle any time soon to pay. It was almost the end of March and he had not worked except in fits and starts since the Salisbury commission of the previous September.
‘Will you assist Mr Abercrombie in achieving his dream?’
‘I’ll come and take a look,’ Curtis said.
‘Excellent. When can you get here?’
Curtis bit his lip. There was no point in standing on ceremony. Cash was a far more important imperative at this point in his life than point scoring. ‘I could come up tomorrow.’
‘Today would be better,’ Freemantle said. ‘But I suppose tomorrow will have to do. And you’ll need to stay the night.’
‘You can’t treat this as something doable in the blink of an eye,’ Curtis said.
‘I know that,’ Freemantle said. ‘I’ve spent the bulk of my life outdoors. I’ve never come across a scheme remotely like this one. It’s almost a reversal of nature.’
‘It’s more in the way of restoration,’ Curtis said.
Freemantle’s tone, when he replied, was suddenly more relaxed. ‘That’s how Saul sees it too. I’m not sure I agree. Do you really restore something after a thousand years? Surely you recreate it,’ he said.
‘I’m not a philosopher,’ Curtis said, scratching the stubble on his jaw. ‘Not at seven thirty in the morning I’m not.’ So the land manger was on first-name terms with the man employing him.
‘One more thing,’ Freemantle said. ‘Keep all of this to yourself.’
‘It won’t be a project you can exactly hide. Not if it goes ahead. It’ll practically be visible from space.’
‘Just the same, please speak of it to no one. Scheme, scale, logistics, projected cost – all of it remains a secret. Are you someone capable of discretion?’
‘This isn’t espionage we’re talking about.’
‘Answer the question.’
‘I’ve never courted gossip in my life.’
‘Good. I’ll email you a set of map coordinates. There’s an eight-foot barbed-wire fence strung along the entire landward perimeter. There are gates for access, obviously.’
‘Go on.’
‘The coordinates will put you outside the western access point. I’ll have keys to the gate there couriered to you this afternoon.’
‘All the way from Pembrokeshire?’
‘Saul Abercrombie has a London office. And we were fairly confident you’d take the job.’
‘Why not just meet me at the gate?’
‘Don’t want to prejudice your first impressions. When you’ve had a bit of time to have a good look around, we’ll come and find you.’
Curtis calculated that he could comfortably arrive at his destination by 11 a.m. the following morning. Freemantle said, ‘At the wheel of a Land Rover, I assume?’
‘You’d be disappointed if I was driving anything else,’ Curtis said.
But he drove down in the Saab. It was quicker and less thirsty. The Land Rover was garaged, having failed its MOT, and he hadn’t had the money since it failed to put right the faults. He assumed Freemantle would be equipped anyway with the sort of off-road vehicle suited to a thorough tour of the site. If the weather was fine – and the forecast was good – they’d probably do it on quad bikes. Nouveau-riche landowners generally had a stable full of those.
Evidently Saul Abercrombie was an impatient man. He would have to get used to the fact that his dream couldn’t be realized as quickly as he seemed to wish. He would have to accommodate a huge workforce and massive material disruption. On the other hand, the timing, seasonally, could not really have been better. It was spring, the time of growth and life and regeneration in nature; the time of warmth and fecundity returning to the land and the warming and softening soil beneath its surface.
Curtis had his sample and analysis kit in a canvas grip on the seat beside him. He would need that gear. He also had a freshly pressed suit in a suit bag carefully folded into the Saab’s boot. He didn’t know whether Freemantle’s invitation to stay the night at the estate involved dinner with its master. But he thought it might and wanted, if it did, to observe the necessary courtesies. His formal shoes were polished and he’d even packed a necktie. The truth was that he needed this job pretty desperately.
He drove with the picture in his mind of dinner, of a candelabra-lit baronial hall; Abercrombie and the lissom Francesca seated at a huge table heaped high with dishes, cooling under glittering metal domes as an army of discreet staff served them, Freemantle a red-faced figure in hairy tweeds, blushing as he twisted his cap between ruddy hands, standing awkwardly on.
It wouldn’t be like that, of course. Saul Abercrombie was self-made and the land manager referred to him by his Christian name. He was a man with a bohemian history and a famously common touch, and his daughter would be busily occupied in some exotic and exclusive part of the world a cultural universe away from rural Wales. But the speculation passed the time, diverted him from the motorway monotony of the journey. And Curtis was more relaxed during the four hours his journey took for having packed his suit and scrupulously polished shoes.
He naturally wondered why they had selected him for the job. It was possible he was among a handful of arboreal specialists shortlisted and that this was just a preliminary audition. But his phone conversation with the land manager had suggested otherwise. He was their man, wasn’t he?
He did have some experience of large projects, carried out on-budget and with successful results. Despite this track record, he had no real media profile, which apparently suited Freemantle and, given the nature of the project, the frankly absurd condition of confidentiality insisted upon by his boss.
But he thought probably his bloodline had been the clincher in getting him the job, rather than any professional qualification or career achievement. That would have been the deciding factor when they looked at their shortlist and selected his name from the three or four he imagined would have been written down there.
His father had been Welsh, born in Barmouth in the autumn of 1948. And his father, in common with his own ancestors, had been a fisherman who lived and died in the Kingdom of Wales. Tom Curtis had not been born in Wales, but he could have played rugby for the country had he possessed any aptitude or appetite for the game, and that tended to be the populist qualification on which the nationality
of Welshmen was these days judged.
You could not transform the character of so vast a tract of Welsh land in the way that the Englishman Saul Abercrombie intended to. Not without the person orchestrating that transformation having a blood bond with the land undergoing the upheaval, you couldn’t.
The days of burning weekend cottages owned by English visitors seemed thankfully to have gone. But Wales was still a nation in some important regards and it would be only pragmatic for Abercrombie to employ a Welshman to oversee this job. Some would see it as a violation, however handsomely the justification was dressed up. It would be a provocation too far for some of the local population for that violation to be committed by an Englishman.
He reached the western gate on foot. The Saab was fine until the narrow road he was on petered into a lane and then a rutted track. But when the track became rough ground the car didn’t have the clearance for the terrain. By that point the fence securing Abercrombie’s land was in sight, a quarter of a mile distant. He could see the evenly placed wooden stanchions and the sunlit glitter of its steel thorns. He picked his workbag off the passenger seat and locked the car door behind him.
He used the single key couriered to him the previous afternoon to open the heavy padlock securing the gate. Having entered the estate, he paused and looked around and listened, but there was no one there to meet him. He would have seen them over the flat expanse of wild grass rippling greenly in the breeze.
Curtis was aware of how quiet it was. Birdsong came with hedgerows and bushes and the branches of trees in which to nest and perch and there were none of those here. The land was not exactly flat, however. That was an impression given by the openness and scale of what he viewed from where he stood, an illusion strengthened by the vacant expanse of the sky. He was in Wales, not Kansas. The ground undulated beneath its verdant carpet of grass. There were no trails, though, beaten and worn by trampling feet as clues to which direction to take.
He walked for about half an hour. He’d walked in Wales before, but in Snowdonia and the Black Mountains and on the coastal stretch of land between Barmouth and Cader Idris. They were locations characterized by dramatic and even majestic landmarks. This was a wilderness – empty, almost featureless. When eventually he stopped, it was because, practically speaking, he was lost.