by Ana Salote
And they voted. The cats, dogs and sparrows, backed by the large dolphin vote were joined by many threatened species in the for camp; such is the power of hope. The two camps looked to be split evenly. The younger Pica counted and recounted before finally declaring a hung vote. The casting vote went to the great Pica.
‘Ah what a burden,’ she said, lowering her black-hooded head. Minutes passed before she raised it and spoke.
‘For,’ she declared, and I felt winded with disappointment. My supporters were with me, I could read in their faces the sigh for what might have been.
‘With conditions,’ the Pica went on. ‘You may have heard rumours that gnosis has arisen among the flora, and indeed Wilfred has given a statement on their behalf. This puts us in a very powerful position. The humans can survive without other animals, but not without plants; on the other hand, it may be that we all need human science to survive the changes ahead.
‘I propose that we support the humans on condition that they vow to respect this planet, to live without hierarchy, and strive to preserve the balance of nature.
‘They should know that we can withdraw our support at any time. We can make these demands now because we have a bridge to human consciousness, tree to boy. I have had the boy watched for some time now. He will lead. He will speak for them all.’
‘Groups of my supporters had gathered and I heard their mutterings. It’s not over yet, there will be more demonstrations and uprisings, but how much better if we had all united against them.
‘I didn’t hang around, I hopped on a log and drifted through the forest for days. Sun, shade, moonlight, passed over me again and again but I had no will to move. I had a vision of that river running on to the end of the world, of myself on the log tipping over the edge, plunging.
Men brought me back, men with their meddling. The usual reaction to a dead rat on a log is indifference, unless you intend to eat it. Hundreds of animals must have seen me on my journey through the forest. All left me alone. Only man has to have a poke. So I found myself being poked. I dived and swam leaving three boys splashing around behind me.
‘With the cold water and the hunger I felt a sudden clarity. The Pica voted wisely. We don’t need to do anything. Science got mankind into this mess, I don’t believe it will get them out of it. The weather itself will shoot them down.’
I looked around me again and it seemed that the sky was too blue, the blossom too pure, touched with sadness, like all beauty, because it cannot last.
Chapter 18 Fire and Drought
It was Graham’s birthday. The humans were enjoying a dry spell which had stretched from March well into June. I was not. My roots were locked in baked soil: imagine walking twenty miles on a hot day without a drink, while wearing wooden clogs a size too small, and you might have some idea how draught feels to a plant. The gardeners weren’t allowed to use hosepipes. Eva did what she could with the watering can; but our root hairs were only teased by the little damp that reached them. We longed for rain.
It seemed a long while back when Charlie first explained to me about human dreams. I didn’t understand at the time but now I think I do. Dreams can show you your deepest longings. I had my first dream: I dreamed of a thundery smell; fat summer drops breaking on my leaves and darkening the soil; then that first surge of living water through my empty vessels, sucked in one glorious pull through to my leaves which filled out and rebounded glossily in the still hammering rain. Then I woke and it was back to the tight clogs.
Anyway, as I said, it was Graham’s birthday and to celebrate he was having a barbecue. All the neighbours were there. The neighbours had grown very close since the oil wars: they helped each other with their various skills, there was Marion, the sewing lady; John, the carpenter; several gardeners – their skills were in great demand; Graham, the mechanic; and they all shared and walked and talked like they never used to in their car days. I looked over into Graham’s garden and it was lively and noisy, with neighbours swapping tips on ingenious ways to save power and grow your own food, and get solar panels put in on the cheap. There was a smell of smoke and roast meat and they drank Graham’s home brew, which was very strong, and Marion’s damson wine, which was also very strong, and soon there was as much laughter as there was conversation.
When it grew dusk, Graham lit a bonfire and everyone sat around on the yellow grass, all very happy, listening to the fire crackling and settling in the night air. Charlie and Conal sat together on a log, their eyes lit by fire. Eva and Brigid slipped away for a few minutes, then they came to the French doors and called everyone in. The doors were wide open and I could see and hear inside. Eva had made a cake for Graham, covered in real melted chocolate. Chocolate, by then, was an expensive treat. Graham blew out his candles and made a speech:
‘I’ve lived in this road for nine years and till last year I didn’t know any of you.
You probably thought of me as that nuisance who rides motorbikes up and down the street at all hours of day and night. All I knew of you was which car was parked outside which house. It’s only recently, since we’ve all had to pull together that I’ve really got to know my neighbours, so… hello.’ Then he giggled a bit as he was quite drunk. ‘I do miss my bikes - I do. What I’m trying to say is we’ve all lost something, but what we’ve found is,’ he raised his glass and looked directly at Eva, ‘better.’
Eva raised her glass to him.
Charlie looked at them both thoughtfully.
‘Hear, hear,’ everyone chorused. Then they ate.
‘Mm, so long since I’ve had chocolate.’
‘Oh, this is so good.’
Then silence with a few groans of pleasure.
Thankfully, manure, unlike cocoa, does not have to be imported, only carted from the nearest pig sty. However I would have given up manure for a year just then for one good draught of water.
My attention drifted down Graham’s garden. It was all pale and dry as straw. If only the wind would change and bring that rain down from the North. There was a gust as if in answer to my wish. Burning paper lifted from the edge of the bonfire and dropped down at the edge of the compost heap. The baby flames grew instantly strong, as though a fire dimension impatiently lapped through into our own. Within seconds rabid flames ran along to some bin bags. I watched as a plastic bag shrivelled from the rubbish inside like disintegrating skin from a skeleton. Something in the bag caught fiercely: Graham’s oil-soaked rags or overalls I think. The strengthening breeze lifted one blazing flag over the fence and out of sight.
I called to Charlie, ‘Look up, look up,’ but he, like the others, was too transported by the chocolate to listen. Eventually, Bob looked up and noticed the fire running wickedly towards Graham’s shed. Everyone spilled into the garden.
‘Get water,’ someone called.
‘There’s buckets in the shed,’ Graham shouted. Flames swarmed around the shed even as he ran towards it.
‘Where’s your hosepipe? No don’t tell me, it’s in the shed.’
‘There is no water,’ Graham remembered. ‘It’s off till tomorrow morning.’
‘Better get the fire brigade,’ said Eva.
The hedge behind the shed was alight too. Now that was painful to watch; the outside was dry and shrivelled but I knew its heart was green and burning.
Just then all of us: Charlie, Eva, the whole garden, me; were swallowed, enfolded in a noise; a swollen, bass, ba-room.
In the pause it flashed through my mind that Wilfred’s end of days had come. I waited for the sky to fall.
‘What was that?’ Brigid said.
‘It’s bomb testing at Barrow,’ said Conal.
But the black smoke mushroom did not hang over Barrow Point it rose from just beyond the fence and blew over Fortress Sperrin.
Graham swore under his breath, ran up to the attic and poked his head through the skylight.
‘Whoa,’ he exhaled from somewhere above me.
‘What is it?’ Eva called up.
&n
bsp; ‘Sperrin’s annexe, it’s burning like crazy.’
Charlie joined him and they shouted a commentary down to the rest of the neighbours. They saw the fire engines stuck in the old town’s narrow lanes finally coming out at Stoop Top and then, their sirens screaming over Graham’s voice, lights pulsing through the trees, they swung up on both sides, one outside Sperrin’s and one in front of Graham’s house. Eva and Charlie went up to our own attic to watch.
At Sperrin’s a line of neighbours gathered in a row, arms folded, speculating; their eyes and faces lit with heat as great cables of water battered the fire, while another vehicle came leisurely up Stoop Lane. One of the very few cars out after dark, it was a black four wheel drive and it carried the Sperrins homewards. Charlie got out his telescope for this, Sperrin’s arrival.
‘He looks like he’s going to burst something,’ said Charlie, ‘the firemen are holding him back. Fire’s jumping down his line of soldiers, all their heads blazing - weird. He’s struggling - looks like he’s fighting with one of the firemen. Wind’s blowing flames towards his house - he got away, running for the gate. Another fireman’s got him now, two of them, leading him away. There’s Oona; she’s cool.
On Graham’s side the last frill of sparks was battered into wet blackness. The hedge was saved but the shed was just a few black stumps with bicycle frames standing up in between. Sperrin’s fire was fiercer. Fuelled from within, the flames shrunk down under the water, shook themselves and jumped back to double height.
What had made the garage explode like that, everyone wanted to know. Charlie and Eva knew.
Charlie carried on with his commentary. ‘Mr Jack from over the road is talking to Sperrin. Now he’s running back towards his car, but the fire engine is blocking him in. He’s ranting and raving about something. Another fire engine’s coming. Flames are smaller now. It’s all deadening down; the tunnel’s gone and there’s not much left of the garage – looks like a blast hole in the roof.’
One other unexpected bonus: all of Graham’s garden got a very thorough soaking with water, and my roots push quite a way under the hedge on that side. I took a long steady and very welcome drink.
Eventually the firemen were satisfied that the scene was safe and the neighbours drifted back into their houses except for Mr Jack who had a long conversation with Sperrin. Charlie saw him pointing back to his own house and then gesturing up towards us. Sperrin got into his car. Charlie came down to the treehouse.
‘I’ve got witnesses,’ Sperrin burst past Graham into his garden. ‘A-hah, I can see for myself. What sort of idiot builds a bonfire on a day like this? Mrs Jack saw it from her sickbed. Fire coming over your fence and landing in my hedge clippings. I expect compensation from you, do you know how much…,’ he checked himself.
‘I’m sure your insurance will cover it,’ Graham tried.
‘This is criminal negligence. You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.’
Charlie coughed and Sperrin looked up. Eva and Charlie were leaning forward, watching eagerly from my branches. Eva broke into giggles. Charlie’s laugh streamed out under hers, and then Graham too cracked. The three of them were more and more gripped by their sense of humour, it split their faces, it made their bodies jerk and buckle. Sperrin’s odd fish-mouth hung open in his smoke-dirty face.
‘Mrs Slater and brat! Misfortune’s a joke to you is it?’ He turned to Graham. ‘Did she put you up to this? Taken in by a pretty face were you? I’ll see the lot of you in court.’
He turned and tripped over a hosepipe. Laughter followed him down the alley.
Something clicked inside me. It was connected to that moment when Sperrin looked up into two faces, two people stuck up a tree. I felt a swirling in the fattest part of my trunk and I wanted to do that ha-ha thing. Excitement came over me like a delicious warm shower. What a great feeling. I was getting a sense of humour.
C hapter 19 Of Floods and Heroes
Wilfred could be wrong but all the signs and my own instincts said he was right. Each day brought new reports of droughts and flooding and ever bigger weather.
The heat of that summer was like none I’d ever known. The previous year was a minor rehearsal. Brassclash, Charlie and I named it. Even the humans stopped glorying in the sun – like fools welcoming the executioner, Wilfred said - and started to ask, how much hotter can it get, and when will it end? Night brought no relief. Brigid brought the cart round after sunset so that they could all ride with a breeze on their faces. It was too hot to sleep so at midnight they waded in the sea.
There were many deaths in the gardens and among the people. The Jungle had never looked so brown and withered. The strong green aura, which shimmered above it, was pale and yellowing. Our greatest loss was Beech. Seventy summers she had seen, but this was one hot summer too many. She died. Water was strictly rationed. Eva could not help us. What moisture I could get I conserved at my centre. There was no choice but to let my outer branches die. I passed through the tight clogs stage. I could no longer feel my roots at all.
I realised how sick I was when I couldn’t follow the plot of Brooke Farm. Charlie was very worried; he mulched around my roots and talked about building a canopy over me if the weather did not break soon. Seeing that events were speeding up, he turned to his science books in a new fury of reading. I might have given up but I sensed relief was coming, if I could just hold out a week or two longer.
Charlie looked around the clear blue sky. ‘Feel anything Ash? Can you feel cloud anywhere in this half of the planet?’
I showed him what I sensed.
‘There’s chains and curtains of diamonds being hoovered off the sea. All that water funneling up. It’s a long way off though. And will it come this way?’ he wondered.
I didn’t know.
At last dawn broke behind clouds. The sky darkened and darkened, till at midday it was as black as I had ever seen it.
Then it came. Splat: one, two, three, a hundred, a thousand thousand drops of splattering, rattling, hammering, rain. Underneath was hush; the rain hush, a sort of pause and shock. The plants receive, the birds are stilled and quieted, humans stop and shelter.
At first I gloried; the water surging through my cracked vessels was almost painful. I drank and drank until every cell of every leaf was full to bursting. The way it rained was as though a century’s water was stored up in the sky, and then some god tipped it all out in one day. The rain came and came and came again. I stood in woozy abandon, aware of nothing but the rain.
The dusty earth took it all for a day and night before it started to pool around my roots. In the morning the rain eased and everything steamed in the sun. It was Charlie’s last day at school. Eva let him cycle down Spring Hill since it was almost free of traffic. Where once it had been jammed with cars it had become sweet with tree breath from the woods at the top. In the morning it was a-sing with birds and bicycle bells and careering children arriving at school in a breath-taking free-wheeling rush; others dawdled through puddles, stopping to feed grass to the sheep or pick wet faced flowers from the grateful verges.
At midday I scented rain again, then came a vision which unnerved me. The tea cup, with the deep blue tea, frothed violently and started an endless overflow. Uneasily my mind searched for Charlie. There he was, sitting in his classroom under a summer collage of cotton wool clouds, chewing his pencil.
Even as I looked at him the classroom darkened and a great crack of thunder ripped the sky. Sheet rain slid over the windows; then came a train of flicker and boom, and after each boom, the rain seemed to press heavier. Beyond the thunder I thought I heard something scarier: a terrible breaking rush.
Charlie looked up from chewing his pencil to see a stream creeping across the floor. His first thought was that someone had peed themselves; then he looked to the art sink to see if it overflowed. Other children were looking too. Then, ‘Miss, Miss, look!’ The teacher’s heels clattered through the wet; she opened the door and the water came in.
Eva came ou
t, catching my attention. She held a coat tented above her head. Looking over the hedge, she caught her breath at the water thundering down Spring Hill. The morning’s muddy stream had become a brown torrent. She stood frozen, water running into her nose and mouth.
‘Charlie,’ she whispered.
She ran to the phone and jabbed at three or four different numbers.
‘Where are they all?’ she shouted and threw the phone down.
The thunder cracked again; the rain came with a new crushing weight. Eva ran from the house. My roots had loosened in the soft ground. I actually leaned over a fraction with my great desire to run after her. All my branches were alive, probing. There was something about the weather that I had never felt before, not even in the great storm of ’87. What was it? It felt unbounded; it felt as though anything could happen. ‘The weather itself will shoot them down,’ Wilfred had said. I could only feel that he was right. All my life I had looked on the weather as a mother; now it felt like an outlaw.
Minutes later I heard an oddly thrilling, growling roar; a sound which tore the air. It was familiar but I couldn’t quite place it. Soon after, I thought I heard clopping from the street, not the steady rhythm I knew, but an urgent pounding.
Over and over I tried to reach Charlie but all I got was interference and tree thoughts. ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ Sally Durrell had said to Les. I wished that I hadn’t wished quite so hard for rain. There was nothing to do but watch as water filled up the world. Around me every hollow became a puddle, every dip a pond. I saw Hilda peer out of the coop, which stood like a river hut on stilts in the pooling water. The wooden steps through the Jungle had become a waterfall. The rushing came again, louder, swifter more terrible, and then the sirens started.
I lost all feeling of time, letting myself drown in my old green state as my fears grew. At last I heard sounds. Brigid and Conal came down the alleyway, found the spare key in the greenhouse and let themselves into the kitchen. Brigid looked around worriedly, rubbed a towel through her hair, then sat down at the kitchen table to wait. After a while she went to the sitting room and got a fire going. She found the old clothes horse and hung towels and blankets in front of the fire to warm.