by Ana Salote
‘I can’t promise. But if things stay as they are and we get the power back on soon, then I think we’ll manage. Is that OK?’
He nodded.
During the experiment they had learned to live almost like trees I thought with satisfaction; they ate and drank and breathed and seemed content. Except for one thing.
Every morning they sat at the breakfast table listening. If the postman passed the door Eva looked relieved. If the letter box rattled, a light came into Charlie’s eyes but Eva’s face tightened. It wasn’t just bills she dreaded. I suspected it also had to do with that letter hidden under the bread bin. But it all came out soon enough.
Chapter 9 Signs of Rot
It was Violet’s turn to host the street meet. Violet’s house is three down from ours. I can’t see in directly but one of my seedlings is growing in her garden, allowing me to catch snatches of the meet in a foggy, distant way. There was Violet, a bent figure in a head scarf, and checked slippers with bobbles on. She looked flushed and excited: all those people in her lonely, slow-ticking house.
I was getting to know the characters in the street and looked forward to the meets in our house. If Wilfred would just watch and listen as I did, he must see that people were mostly good.
The meet went through the usual business. The car keepers were named for the month, and the cooking and washing partners.
‘Right,’ said Bob, ‘well that wraps it up for tonight. I’d like to thank Vi for a nice cup of tea. Is there any other business?’
Eva stood up. ‘Yes there is.’ There was an expectant hush: ‘It seems as though I’ve offended someone around here. I’ve been getting letters - nasty letters.’ She unfolded some papers with a shaking hand. ‘Listen to this:
‘Witch, you are a disgrace to the neighbourhood. Your garden festers with foul smells, disease and rats. Your brat boy has been seen trespassing. All your neighbours want you out. Do yourself a favour and leave.’ She unfolded another piece of paper, ‘Still here witch, what are you waiting for, someone to push you? It can be arranged.’
Who would write that? All the neighbours seemed so nice. But Wilfred said that all humans have rot in their hearts. A doubt flickered in me.
Eva went on, ‘There’s more. The thing is, there are things in these letters which only a neighbour could know – a close neighbour, someone who watches me; so, whoever it is, stand up now; tell me face to face what it is you’ve got against me.’
‘This is not right,’ said a muffled voice inside my trunk.
It was Charlie. I had trained myself to tune in to Charlie’s thoughts over ever greater distances. If I focused really hard I could even reach him in school, but only in snatches. Now I was picking him up in the Jungle, right down on the Sperrin’s border.
I could see the summer Jungle brimming with life. The tall wire fence erected by Sperrin barely held it in. Trees and bushes pushed up against it, making it bulge in places. On the other side was strict, clipped order. Sperrin’s hobby was topiary. All around his house was a high hedge clipped like a castle wall, inside this were two more banks of castellated hedge and three gateways guarded by privet dogs, soldiers, stags, bears and other works in progress. Sperrin snipped at his bushes obsessively; not a stray leaf was allowed to follow its nature and reach for the sun. The ever present snip-snip grated under my bark.
Charlie was examining the ancient stone wall which ran on our side of Sperrin’s fence. It was a micro-garden all by itself; shallow roots somehow found crumbs on which to flourish; it had its own springy lawns of moss and mottles of acid yellow lichen. A fine thing the old wall. Junglus slaterii sprouted from a gap in the stones. Charlie stroked its furry purple-tipped leaves.
‘Come on,’ Conal called, ‘I’m sending the sweets over?’
Conal sat astride Sycamore and Charlie climbed to a fork in Chestnut. They had rigged up an aerial system with a bucket attached so that they could send things from tree to tree. Charlie was sending sherbert strawberries over to Conal when the rope came loose and sent the bucket flying over into Sperrin’s Garden where it clanged and bumped across his lawn.
‘Oh, nice one,’ said Conal, looking down at the rusty old bucket.
Sperrin looked up from his clipping and walked over. He was tight-lipped but smiled as he came near. He held the bucket on one finger.
‘Now boys, I suppose you want this back. I’m going to have to ask you to be more considerate. Mrs Sperrin is a nervous type and boys give her headaches.’He handed the bucket up to Charlie. ‘Better get down from there, we don’t want any accidents do we,’ and he laughed a forced, hollow laugh.
The human laugh is an odd thing, but it’s a sound that normally lifts my spirits. Sperrin’s laugh was barren.
‘That’s right; off you go. Plenty of room to play without coming down here,’ he called as the boys backed away.
Something was bothering Charlie. He paused and looked back as if he needed to check something but there was nothing to see. Sperrin had gone.
‘It’s empty,’ said Conal taking the bucket, ‘and my mouth’s watering for that sherbert. I cleaned the chickens for a month to get those. It’ll be another month before we get any more. Will we go back and look for them?’
They turned. There was a scattering of pink and a glint of cellophane in the grass just beyond the fence.
‘We can reach those,’ said Conal, ‘all we need is a stick with a bit of a hook in it.’
Conal found the stick quickly and lay on his belly in a narrow gap where the old wall had broken down in front of the wire fence. The stick was too short.
‘If I make a little hollow I’ll get my arm under here; that’s it.’
The stick advanced towards the sweets and hooked around them. Quick as a snake a hand shot out and clamped over Conal’s wrist.
‘Trespass!’ Sperrin shouted from where he lay behind the wall, ‘It’s trespass,’he came up onto his knees, still clamping Conal’s forearm to the ground, and breathing heavily. ‘Now listen carefully. All of this is mine,’ he gestured from the fence and beyond; ‘all of this,’ he indicated the length of Conal’s arm, ‘shouldn’t be here. If this was a branch the law says I could cut it off,’ – that peculiar laugh again.
There was something very odd about Sperrin’s mouth. He had inside out lips like a fish. His eyes too were fishy: cold and bulbous. At that moment they were excited and undisguised.
‘So that’s who you are,’ thought Charlie.
Conal stood up showing a hump on his back. The bump rippled along his shoulders, round his middle down one leg and up the other.
‘Good god, what’s that?’ said Sperrin.
A white head with pink eyes erupted from the top of Conal’s jumper. Sperrin
spluttered and staggered backwards.
Conal giggled, ‘It’s only Elsie. She’s a ferret. Why don’t you stroke her?’
‘A stinking polecat – it’s disgusting.’
‘No, she’s beautiful,’ Charlie said.
‘Insolent. I’ll be speaking to your mother, though it’s a father’s hand you need –
a proper father.’
Charlie froze. I felt it. His heart and brain just froze, and so I lost him.
The room took a breath and murmured. Eva’s eyes went deliberately round, pausing for a moment on each face: some looked sympathetic; some looked offended; some, trying too hard to look innocent, ended up looking guilty.
‘Come on, whoever did this, have the guts to stand up for yourself.’
There were mutters of sympathy round the room. Bob put his arm round Eva and water came out of her eyes.
The room grew very dark to me. I saw shapes crowding round Eva, then Charlie and Conal came in and pushed their way forward. I lost the picture but faintly caught a little voice saying: ‘What’s wrong with Mum?’
When they got home Charlie asked why Eva hadn’t told him about the letters.
‘I didn’t want to worry you.’
Charlie came to the w
indow and looked past me to the Jungle. After a while he spoke.
‘Mum, did you know that Mr Sperrin hates kids?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘It’s true.’
‘Don’t be silly. He’s got none of his own – probably doesn’t understand them. Charlie raised his eyebrows. ‘You think he wrote the letters don’t you?’ she said.
‘No, it doesn’t fit, he’s being so helpful at work.’
Next morning there was another envelope. Like the others it was pale blue with a typed address.
Eva’s hand shook as she held it. ‘I’ve a good mind to put it straight on the fire,’ she said.
‘Let’s see what it says,’ said Charlie, ‘it might give us some clues.’
Tight-mouthed, Eva slit it open and swore. ‘Now I’m really confused.’
A bundle of money spilled out of the envelope. A typed strip came with it. It said simply ‘wishing you well’. Charlie looked at the note so closely he went cross-eyed, then he sniffed. ‘Nice smell – like fresh washing,’ he said.
‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ she held up the fan of notes. ‘Do you think… would it be alright to pay the electricity bill?’
‘Well, it doesn’t feel like bad money,’ Charlie said thoughtfully.
Chapter 10 I Spy
I had my first rebellious thought whilst watching Brooke Farm. Father Parry, a wise man in a long black dress and a white collar, had said to a crowd of well-dressed people, all very full of themselves: ‘Are any of you dressed as well as a lily?’
‘Obviously not,’ I had muttered from my viewing point outside the lounge window, ‘so how about a bit of respect.’
Charlie had swung one eye towards me and started with a fit of giggles.
‘Good,’ said Wilfred, when I told him about this, ‘you’re beginning to see through them – there’s hope for you yet.’
And he followed up quickly by telling me the nastiest things he could think of. I don’t even want to repeat them. ‘So you see,’ he said, ‘there are humans who like causing pain: to other humans, to animals, even to themselves. They like it. I’ll leave you with that thought.’
I didn’t believe it, until I remembered that friend of Charlie’s, George, stabbing the earwig. Then I happened to look through next door’s window.I watched in horror as Graham attacked the other man with a drill, and in the most cowardly way possible, surprising him from behind.
Charlie came thudding down the chute.
‘What’s up Ash?’ he said, ‘you don’t seem like yourself.’
I quickly shut him out of my thoughts. A child shouldn’t see what I had just seen.
‘I’m OK.’
‘Half the school field got ploughed up today. The school’s going to grow all its own veg and all the kids get to help – that’s good isn’t it?’
‘Mmm,’ I said absently. The vermin score raced forwards in my mind.
‘Charlie, if you feel like something bad is about to happen and you keep on thinking about it, is that worry?’
‘I’d say so.’
‘Then I’m worried.’
‘What are you worried about Ash?’
‘It feels like we’ve got enemies on every side.’
‘I feel it too.’
‘Sperrin, I saw his aura; it’s black – I’ve never seen anything like it before.’
‘And Mum still trusts him.’
‘Then there’s Graham.’
‘What about him?’
‘I think there might be a hidden side to him.’
Charlie sighed. ‘There’s only one thing Graham’s hiding,’ he fiddled with some plant fibre string he’d been making. ‘There’s Mum,’ he said and slid down the rope without saying goodbye.
I turned to Holly. ‘Did I say something wrong?’
‘Give up,’ she said, ‘you’ll never understand them,’ and she dropped back into a sun trance.
I looked into Graham’s house again, dreading what I might see, but the room was empty. It was Eva’s strange behaviour that drew me back to the kitchen.
‘Nnaaargh,’ she shouted, as she threw her bag down. Then she punched a pile of washing and stamped like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
C hapter 11 Here Comes the Chopper
Charlie and Eva were helping Graham with his garden.
‘I don’t know where I’m going wrong,’ Graham said. ‘You must have a magic touch,’ and his eyes wandered to our lush greenery.
Eva bent to Graham’s grey, hard-packed soil. ‘All this needs to be broken up. The plants can’t push their roots through it and they need water.’ She stood up straight throwing back the weight of her curls.
I was just learning to read human body language. Children mostly tell it like it is, adults hardly ever. The truth is in their eyes and faces and gestures and movements; you just have to learn the codes. Graham was smiling too much and breathing high up in his chest. What did that mean? Charlie seemed to know. He moved between them.
‘You said you had something to show me,’ he said to Graham.
‘Yeah. My pride and joy. Wait there.’
‘Well, I’ll get off then,’ Eva said, handing Graham a calendar of things he needed to do.
‘Go, go, go,’ I shouted to Charlie.
‘Stop being so para,’ Charlie hissed at me, ‘check his aura; he’s OK.’
‘Clever enough to hide the rot?’ I said.
Graham came out wheeling a gleaming metallic monster of a bike.
Cherished it was; every bit of it polished to perfection; not a fingerprint dulled it’s long stretches of silver; not a scratch marred its buffed leather.
‘Sickening,’ I said, ‘all that attention lavished on a dead thing, while your poor plants are on their last legs.’
‘This is what I bought when I sold my slopes to the Sperrins,’ Graham boasted. ‘It’s a Harley V-pod. I’ve had it for two years and it still makes me shiver. Look at those lines. I was going to take it round the world. Then the war broke. It looks like I’ll never get to do it now.’
‘I haven’t seen you ride it.’
‘No, I will, but it’s got to be for a big enough reason. I wouldn’t go burning petrol for pleasure. And I wouldn’t use it for a trip to the shops; that would belittle the spirit of the beast. For now, I just polish it and dream my petrol-head dreams.’
Graham lowered himself reverently onto the seat, and cocked his head towards the pillion.
‘Climb on. Can you feel the power, hear that exhaust growl, see the road stretching away through the rocks, surf crashing.’
Graham swayed from side to side as though he was taking bends, then bent low to the handle bars, like an awful demon.
Charlie slid to the ground. ‘Well I hope you get to ride it again some day.’
‘I don’t kid myself. That whole way of life has gone now hasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie, kindly, as though he were talking to a child.
‘Promise me you’ll never go round there again by yourself,’ I said when Charlie returned.
‘Not unless you tell me why.’
‘Just trust me.’
Eva came out and handed a bowl up to Charlie.
‘Will you pick some berries while you’re up there. I’ve found this old recipe for Rowan jelly.’
‘Told you – whatever you need is in the garden,’ Charlie said.
‘Just as well,’ Eva said darkly.
‘Do you mind Ash?’ Charlie asked.
‘Delighted; be my guest.’
‘That’s right: take, take, take. Don’t leave any for the wild things,’ said a voice from the hedge.
It was Wilfred. His behaviour had been strained and agitated for some weeks. He had finally lost all patience with the human race he told me; it was time for action.
Charlie took the berries down to the kitchen and came back with Conal who carried a hen under each arm. Charlie was thrilled with Hilda and Gilda. He sat on the grass with Conal and threw co
rn to the birds. Wilfred gnawed tetchily on a twig as he watched them.
‘I wonder why they lay eggs,’ Charlie said, ‘I mean, when there’s no baby chicken inside. It’s just a waste of energy. It’s like they’ve got a conveyor belt inside them, and it just keeps churning out eggs for no reason.’
‘They do it for us don’t they?’ Conal said, jokingly.
I saw Wilfred freeze; I saw him make himself large. I saw him start a slow advance towards Conal. I saw him bare his teeth.
‘Wilfred, stop it! What are you thinking about?’ I shouted.
He stopped in the undergrowth and looked up at me.
‘Someone needs to tell them, while they’re young, that animals do not exist just for their convenience,’ he hissed.
‘And how do you mean to do that? By biting him?’
‘It’s one way.’
‘Not a way he’d understand.’
Charlie had noticed something. He was looking over to the undergrowth.
Wilfred shrank down and relaxed. A twinkle came into his eye.
‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘there are much better ways of making them listen. In fact it should be starting about now.’
‘What are you up to?’ I asked uneasily.
‘Just commit to the cause and I’ll tell all.’
And he slipped away leaving me stuck in the mud as usual.
Something wasn’t right. Since the traffic had gone away, air was the new wine. It surprised people that breathing could be a pleasure. I felt the same. Everything had become faintly and subtly garden-scented. That evening the air was dirty again.
Charlie crouched on the floor rearranging the seed collection. I saw his back stiffen. He turned, came to the window and shuddered. I felt it too: it was a tremor which passed up from the whole garden. A tree shivering and rustling on a perfectly still night is an unnatural thing, but there it is, even Holly was shaking. Charlie grabbed his telescope, climbed as high into my branches as he could safely go, and looked across to the Jungle. In the round frame of the telescope this is what we saw.