Tree Talk

by Ana Salote

  ‘I need windscreen wipers for my eyes,’ Charlie’s voice snapped me back to life. He was somewhere very near. I could see him, one eye closed with water streaming out of his hair, the other blinking into the rain.

  Soon, the kitchen door opened and in trailed Eva and Charlie, their clothes hanging from them with the weight of water. Charlie was laughing and all my fear fell away. They stripped off, wrapped up in warm blankets, and raised hot drinks with still shaking hands. At first it was difficult to understand what Eva said through her chattering teeth, but this is what she told Brigid:

  ‘I ran out into the street. I was going to take a pool car, but they were gone. The emergency car had gone too. I started running towards Stoop Lane, then Graham, bless him, pulled up on a motor bike.’

  ‘Not just any bike,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘a Harley V-pod; you should see it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have cared if it was a penny farthing so long as it had a motor.’

  The metal monster did have its uses then.

  ‘Anyway,’ Eva continued, ‘he whizzed me down the hill but we couldn’t get further than the church. That’s when we saw Conal in a crocodile of kids being led uphill. He told me that Charlie was washed away in the second rush of water. I was nearly hysterical. George’s dad had binoculars. He said that there were children on the school roof and one child stranded in a tree. Straightaway I thought, ‘That’s Charlie.’ He let me look and it was.’

  I sent my thanks to the tree.

  Eva went on: ‘We were opposite that row of boarded up shops and a chap from the old water sports shop came over. He said he had a couple of dinghies, would they be any use. Graham got in a dinghy and paddled out to the tree. The water was still rising and pushing us further back. I watched through the binoculars. I could see Charlie’s tree but I couldn’t see Charlie any more. Graham was leaning out of the dinghy trying to grab the tree trunk. He lunged at it, the dinghy slid away from him and he disappeared under the water, but he bobbed up, scrambled back into the boat and tried again. Then I saw Charlie’s legs dangling below the leaves. There was a current running past the tree and Graham was paddling to stay in one place. Charlie was swinging from a branch…’

  ‘And Graham was shouting to me,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘he said don’t let go till I say. He got the dinghy steady, then he shouted ‘now’ and spread his arms out to catch me, but when he stopped paddling the boat started drifting, and I had to swing myself out and then I dropped on top of him.’

  Charlie giggled while Eva went on:

  ‘There was this tangle of arms and legs and the boat tipped right up on its edge but they hung on and Graham started paddling back.’

  ‘And the dinghy was going down fast; I think I burst it when I dropped into it.’

  ‘I rushed into the water and nearly drowned trying to pull the boat in.’

  ‘Then Graham got us clear on the Harley. He’s gone back to help the others.’

  ‘I hope he’s OK,’ Eva said, and her eyes were soft.

  We came up Stoop Lane, and guess who was out in his driveway shouting into his phone? ‘If a drop of that flood water reaches me, heads will roll.’’

  ‘Was Sperrin complaining to God?’ Charlie asked.

  It was dark before we heard the roar of Graham’s Harley. Eva ran out and brought him in. What a sight. Charlie handed him an old shirt of Pete’s and he settled down with a quilt round his shoulders to tell the rest of the story. He saw the children air-lifted from the roof of the school. He managed to rescue a girl from a telegraph pole and an old woman who was trying to hold on to a drain pipe while gripping a budgie cage. Eventually they all sat quietly thoughtful in front of the dying fire.

  ‘And you know why it happened?’ said Wilfred, in the blessed cool of the next morning, ‘the seas of the world were all high and swollen with the heat and the ice melt. A broken river had gone to meet a swollen sea. The animals haven’t suffered too much, we saw it coming and headed for high ground but I couldn’t resist going back to watch the chaos and the break down.’

  He must have felt my disapproval.

  ‘Why not, they’ve brought it on themselves, they’ve brought it on all of us. There’s a certain satisfaction in seeing the truth dawning. Look around - now who’s wise? Homo sapiens, we’re so wise, we’re so clever. Oh really, look around you and weep. Anyway, I braved it, I went down into the town for a nose round, I wanted to feel what it would be like after.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘After they’re gone. I wanted to feel the peace. I swam through the window of a house, and floated round the room on the back of a red sofa, my head high and swirling with happiness.’

  ‘You might’ve drowned.’

  ‘Not me, I once held the record for long distance sewer swimming – anyway, I floated away from that house on a garden table, so carefree I didn’t mind where it took me; eventually I washed up nicely at the bottom of Spring Hill but my peace was spoiled by seeing a trail of them heading up to the woods. They’ve made a camp up there and they’re mucking up the place already.’

  Chapter 20 Future Vision

  After a few days the waters dropped a little but the town was not safe. The sea that I had longed for was coming to me. The new unfinished sea defences were all breached. Many could not return to their homes and a camp was growing in the woods. All types of people were levelled as they stood like trees, naked before the weather.

  This concerned me. ‘Won’t they die in the woods?’ I asked Charlie. ‘I mean humans are tender aren’t they? Don’t they die if left outdoors?’ Surely no one would live in a house, away from all that was fresh and alive, unless they had no choice.

  ‘People are sort of half-hardy,’ said Charlie, ‘for now.’

  Eva did her bit and took in three lodgers.

  Sperrin’s ground floor had flooded: his fortress breached and no one in particular to blame. He wanted to blame the council but he himself had lobbied for the underground car parks, now useless, rather than the new sea defences. Some months after the flood a ‘for sale’ sign went up outside his house. Oona told Charlie that Sperrin pictured himself in a castle on some high ground where he could defend himself against the hungry and homeless, but houses on the coast could not be given away and all the castles were taken. Oona went to join the camp in the woods.

  I watched the news and saw that things were just as bad all along the coast. In some places it was much worse. The government was putting up thousands of emergency homes on higher ground.

  ‘This is just the beginning,’ Wilfred said. ‘Will you admit now that these critters have to be put down.’

  ‘That’s not how I would put it. Like I always say: in a garden you’ve got to get on with your neighbours. Maybe the humans will understand that now.’

  ‘And if they don’t?’

  ‘The gardener comes along and digs them out.’

  Together we felt the approach of wisdom. The Pica herself dropped down among my leaves.

  ‘How does the work progress?’ she asked.

  ‘The gnosis does not spread much beyond the garden, except through seed.’ I reported.

  ‘Her hooded head bowed up and down.’

  ‘Then we must ensure that the seeds of the garden are preserved throughout the catastrophes which lie ahead. This task has fallen to the boy, I believe.’

  Wilfred looked a bit sniffy at this, but he kept quiet.

  ‘The garden and the boy will begin the new co-operative. The humans must acknowledge their dependency and show due respect. If they fail, the balance of power is with the plant kingdom. Be open now,’ she bade me, ‘and receive your reward.’

  Here was great knowledge: the forces and currents that muster and move the weather all around the planet were shown to me as one system. All was moody, turbulent and heaving. I was shown the sea of trees once more, and I was sickened to see that the Southern edge was rimmed with flames. I could only hope that things would heal with time.

  The Pica read m
y mind and moved me forward to calmer times.

  This is what I saw: a great glass dome in dry and utterly barren hills; inside full of life and greenery, vines climbing high into the roof, little enclosures with all kinds of animals penned there, a smell of hay, rustling and quiet munching. The animals, though, were a token presence next to the plants, which grew with a kind of stately grace and potency. They were the first of a new order.

  Behind a glass screen I saw a man with astonished green eyes, like he never got over being born, now narrowed with purpose. He tapped data into a computer; a sparkling web crystallized on the screen. Before acting, the man was checking the effect of each change on the whole new ecosystem. ‘Beneficial’ flashed up. So he went on, inserting dormouse genes into the DNA of another animal. Dormancy would help the animal survive the harsh conditions it would have to face when released. Next, the man emptied some specks from a red matchbox labelled Ash, and then I was confident that my seeds were in good hands. My own fate didn’t matter much to me as long as I knew that the seeds would carry on.

  I heard a sound something between a sneeze and a hiccup. I saw Conal taking some food to a nest of big-eyed sweet–faced rodents; their enclosure was labelled ‘gopi’ and I knew that Charlie would find a way to save them too. Outside the dome was a ring of new green growth. Into this strip of life the green-eyed man released a cloud of insects.

  Then from the shadows under the bench, where corn had spilled to the floor, another creature crept out and nibbled boldly at the grain, a creature with grey-brown fur and long yellow teeth: Wilfred, the great survivor.