Tree Talk Page 4

  As Rose finished her story, the door slammed. They were back. Eva had a fresh flush and Charlie’s eyes shone even more brightly than usual.

  ‘That was great; can we have a horse?’

  Eva rolled her eyes.

  ‘Well, chickens then. Brigid said she’s going to let us have some hens.’

  ‘She gives us too much; I must do something to pay her back. Have you eaten?’

  Charlie’s too sensitive not to notice the over-brightness in her voice. He looked at the thin bread bag on the table.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘loads.’

  I saw her relax. ‘Come on then, we’ll have an hour of telly before bed.’

  There were six minutes of Brooke Farm left. I was right. It was a classic coma storyline: the tubes, the steadily beeping screen by the bed, a sinister shadow falling across the pillow and then the theme tune. Only then did I notice Eva’s lack of interest. Her eyes were focused somewhere else and under the music I could hear the low rumbling of Charlie’s empty stomach. They continued to sit through a game show, lost in their own thoughts. At last Eva got up heavily. As she followed Charlie upstairs he asked a question:

  ‘Mum, Conal’s dad saw you in town this afternoon. Did you have a day off?’

  Eva sighed. ‘I might as well tell you, my hours have been cut. I don’t get it; I’m the best worker in the office. Why not chatty Cathy or idle Ivor? They sat down on Charlie’s bed. ‘Anyway, I don’t want you worrying,’ she said, pushing his hair back and looking into his eyes. ‘We can still sell the Jungle if we have to.’Charlie closed his eyes.

  ‘Listen to me a minute. Mr Sperrin stopped by my desk today to remind me.’

  ‘No-oo,’ said Charlie, putting his hands over his ears and rolling on the bed in a mock fit. ‘He can’t have the Jungle; he’ll ruin it. It won’t be jungly any more.’Children speak in childish words but the pictures in their heads may not be childish at all. In Charlie’s head I saw something terrible: a crumpling down of all that was green into a grey, rotting wasteland; birds and insects trapped in the slime and then, nothing.

  ‘Listen. I said no, but...’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘He made me a better offer – silly money, probably double what it’s worth.’

  ‘What did you say then?’ Charlie asked intently.

  ‘I said I needed time to think.’

  ‘Oh,’ he let out an agonised little sob. ‘If you sell, I’ll camp in it. I’ll live in the trees.’

  ‘Why does it mean so much to you?’

  ‘Mum, it’s everything.’ Eva looked bemused. ‘Listen, the garden is alive.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘No you don’t. It’s alive like we are, and it has to go on. It’s the mother and father of everything that comes after… after the changes.’Again Charlie’s thoughts flew high above Eva’s.

  ‘Eva, are you there?’ It was Brigid’s voice.

  ‘Come up.’

  ‘I’ve brought your uniform, Charlie. You left it at ours.’ Brigid hovered in the doorway.

  Charlie spied an ally. ‘Mum’s hours have been cut and now she wants to sell

  the Jungle.’

  ‘Not wants, needs.’

  ‘I knew something was wrong. What’s it all about then?’ Brigid said, sitting on

  the bed.

  Eva explained. ‘Sperrin’s obsessed with our trees. He was always asking Pete to cut them back. He said they blocked his light and the roots were making his house sink. But you know what Pete’s like: ‘What’s eating you man? Chill out,’ he used to say. Anyway, Sperrin can’t wait to get rid of the trees now, though he says he just wants to help me out.’

  ‘I’d hold on to it if you can,’ Brigid said, ‘land will be the only thing worth having soon. Money’s no use when there’s nothing left to buy, but you can live off your land.’

  Charlie bounced up on his knees, the speckles dancing in his eyes: ‘Yeah, who needs money anyway? Let’s do without it.’

  ‘You have some good ideas, but that’s not one of them,’ Eva said.

  ‘Alright then, let’s see how long we can live without money. If we can last for thirty days then we don’t sell. Is it a deal?’ He was on his feet now bouncing manically, his hair lifting and flopping.

  ‘Good lad,’ said Brigid, ‘I’m behind you all the way.’

  ‘Look Charlie,’ Eva said, taking him by the shoulders, ‘I can’t promise anything but… alright, let’s give it a go.’

  ‘Starting tomorrow,’ Charlie said. He was good at hope.

  Chapter 7 Swap Shop

  I was all for it. Every living thing except humans manages without money. It seemed to me that money was nothing but trouble, a bad habit they needed to break.

  Eva couldn’t see it. When her shoe flapped away from the upper, she thought in the old way.‘I’m going to have to buy shoes,’ she told Charlie apologetically.

  ‘Wait there,’ he said. A few minutes later he came back with a box. ‘Twenty-three pairs – from the attic.’

  ‘I can’t wear those,’ she said.

  ‘It’s these or your wellies. Look, do this and I’ll… I’ll tidy my room.’

  Eva turned slowly. ‘How long since I first asked you to tidy your room?’

  “Bout three years.’

  ‘OK, what do you think for work: blue platforms or yellow stilettos?’

  ‘I like the cowboy boots,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Here’s to the death of fashion,’ she said resignedly.

  Next day Eva wavered again. ‘It’s the final demand from the electricity company, and I’ve got seven days to pay something on the mortgage.’ I could see that in her heart she’d given up. She was just playing along with Charlie, waiting for him to get real.

  ‘Alright,’ said Charlie, ‘stay cool. I’ll think of something.’

  Charlie thought. He thought in circles as he walked round and round the garden. ‘We’re not selling,’ he said to the Jungle, as he paced the edge of the orchard. ‘Staying,’ he chanted as he swung backwards and forwards on the treehouse rope, till I told him the friction was burning my bark.

  That night was barely cooler than the day had been. Eva came out late to inhale.

  ‘Beauteous,’ she whispered. Charlie knelt by his bedroom window.

  ‘Mum,’ he called, ‘Can I come down? I can’t sleep.’

  ‘Come. Ten minutes.’They sat on the back step together.‘Why can’t you sleep?’ She put an arm round him and he leaned against her shoulder.

  ‘Kids don’t have a say in anything do they? They’re just meant to put up with things.’

  ‘Well, if the grown-ups do the thinking, you can get on and have fun.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that though does it?’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  They murmured together until the sudden dimming of curfew. The stars grinned as night in its fullness came down, and Eva said they should go to bed.

  Charlie reappeared in his room and I watched him, a spinning hump under a quilt. Too hot, he threw the quilt back, too cold he pulled a corner of it back. At last he came and leaned his elbows on the window again.

  ‘Want to play the breathing game?’ I suggested.

  ‘I’ll try,’ he said with a sigh.

  This is a relaxing game we play which often ends with Charlie drifting off to sleep and me slipping off into my own tree rest. I breathe out and Charlie takes in my green breath; he breathes out and I take in his red breath. The molecules bubbling in my leaves get sucked in a stream towards Charlie. He says it’s like a pure green drink; it makes him feel like he’s growing. Charlie’s lungs have branches just like a tree; a mysterious pink-lit tree, and to me his breath tastes of life in a warm, mineral way. Try it some time: pick a friendly tree and breath with it; it’s very relaxing, aah…

  ‘That’s it,’ he murmured after a while, ‘that’s what I’ll do. Thanks Ash,’ and he slept.

  Charlie was up and out at dawn, whispering to the garden that he nee
ded their help. He would do everything in his power to save the Jungle, but for thirty days at least, the garden must provide.

  The garden came through. Every day after school Charlie set up a stall in front of the house selling veg and flowers from the garden. We all rallied round and the more he picked the more we blossomed. Charlie filled a bowl with pea pods, and new pods appeared faster than they could be eaten; stems bowed to the ground with fruits; roots and tubers swelled with goodness. Word got around the neighbourhood. The flowers were bigger and more colourful than anyone had ever seen. The veg was sweet and crisp and curiously vitalizing.

  When Wilfred next came to the garden he could barely push his way through the veg plot.

  ‘What’s going on with this garden?’ he asked as he stripped a pod of peas. ‘I’ve never seen greens taking off like this, and, um, so sweet. What’s that gardener of yours feeding you?’

  ‘Same as always,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think so. Just look at it.’

  As I looked around the other gardens and then back to ours, it was clear. We burgeoned. We were greener, brighter, bigger, stronger. In the patchwork of countryside and gardens, we glowed with a powerful green and golden halo.

  ‘That’s Charlie’s doing, I guess,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh yes. Clever boy that.’

  ‘Yes, he’s got plans for the garden.’

  Wilfred was very still, listening intently; too intently.

  ‘I don’t really know what they are yet,’ I said truthfully.

  ‘Well, when you do, I’ll be interested,’ Wilfred said, ‘there’s something unusual happening here.’

  On Saturday morning Charlie hauled down some boxes from the attic to add to his stall. I couldn’t see but Charlie was close enough for me to tune in to him. He wrestled with Eva who clutched a bundle to her chest.

  ‘We don’t need them,’ he said.

  ‘But they’re your baby clothes.’

  ‘Yes, all of them. Just keep one thing if you have to.’

  She picked through them sulkily. ‘You’re heartless.’

  Conal came to help. ‘You let that mirror go for how much?’ he said with his Irish lilt. ‘Move over now, let me show you how it’s done.’

  I’m fond of Conal. His instinct for animals is like Charlie’s feeling for plants. If an animal is sick, he knows exactly what to do. Brigid always sends him to fetch the animal feeds because, she says, he haggles like some wily old farmer.

  Conal cleared the table and Charlie filled it up again. They brought the spoils into the kitchen. This money, Charlie reasoned, was OK to spend because it didn’t come out of Eva’s wages.

  Later he was peering at the electricity meter and copying down the numbers.

  ‘We’re going to halve this,’ he said, and he handed Eva a list of rules.

  She read: ‘Ironing, don’t bother. Hoovering, once a month will do. Kettle, get used to cold drinks. Standby, banned. Washing, just rub dirt off dirty bits. Is that us or the clothes?’

  ‘Both.’

  At least she managed a smile. Later on she got jumpy. Every time her hand drifted towards a switch, Charlie appeared beside her with his clipboard. ‘On a scale of 1-10, how necessary is that?’ he asked.

  ‘Ten being?’

  ‘Life or death.’

  ‘How high does it have to be before you let me use it?’

  ‘Ten. Come on, we can do it; we’re used to power cuts.’

  He was a bit more lax when it came to telly, but I had to protest when he switched off Brooke Farm half way through.

  ‘Don’t stress,’ he said, ‘it’s just the commercials. We’re down to an hour of telly, and if we switch off between programmes we can save 12mins of electricity per day, which is 73 hours per year, which, if everybody did it, would be about 219 million hours of electricity saved per year.’

  He did test my patience with that one.

  ‘Now,’ I kept butting in, ‘switch on now.’

  ‘Not yet, not yet,’ he laughed, ‘3,2,1 - now,’ and mostly he got it right.

  The mortgage company gave Eva four more weeks to pay. Charlie smiled as he marked another money-free day on the calendar.

  ‘Eleven down, nineteen to go,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm, what shall we buy first on day thirty?’ Eva asked.

  ‘Sweets,’ Charlie forgot himself; sweets are his weakness, ‘but I can wait – easily.’

  ‘I could kill for some chocolate myself. Do you fancy a walk to the shop? We can spare a few pence I’m sure.’

  ‘You’re a weak-willed woman. www. Mum. I know,’ he said suddenly.

  Jumping up, he dragged a kitchen stool in front of the cupboards and reached for an old biscuit tin.

  ‘Ah-ha,’ he said as he prised it open.Inside were some bits of smashed Easter egg, half a stick of rock in a twist of cellophane, turquoise jelly beans, and some Christmas cake icing with the marzipan stuck inside.

  ‘But that’s all the stuff we don’t like. It’s been there for ages.’

  ‘Remember that experiment we did, when Dad said all jelly beans tasted the same if you closed your eyes; well he was right. Close your eyes: this isn’t a turquoise jelly bean, this is an electric blue paradise island sweet.’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said, ‘and this is scrumptious sticky chewy nougat,’ and she fed Charlie a chunk of seaside rock, gone soft on the outside. And this is my favourite chocolate truffle. She ate a broken piece of Easter egg.

  ‘Yes, and I bet we could grind up this icing and make some cookies.’

  ‘Cookies,’ Eva growled.

  They carried on, eating their way through most of the tin, giving all the sweets exotic names; then they came out into the garden on a sugar rush. Clouds were just parting on blue. The leaves were all cupping rain water after a heavy shower.

  ‘Fresh,’ Eva said ecstatically as she inhaled.

  She was standing under a sapling at the edge of the orchard with her eyes closed. Charlie sneaked behind her and shook the tree. Eva’s curly hair was flattened and her shoulders were darkened with rain water. ‘You,’ she said scarily, and chased Charlie round the garden until he let her catch him.

  ‘Look, look,’ he said, ‘you can do it to me,’ and she did, and they laughed. But I saw what they didn’t see, which was Graham standing on his side of the hedge, like me, just watching.

  Chapter 8 The Street Meet

  In spite of all our efforts, on day sixteen a man came to turn off the electricity supply.

  ‘Well that’s it,’ Eva said, ‘we did our best, but we can’t carry on.’

  ‘Just give me another day,’ Charlie begged.

  He came up to the treehouse and waited for inspiration. ‘Like leaves on a tree,’ he said at length, ‘we’re all like leaves on a tree.’

  His next idea was helped along by the government. Humans have things called governments. I think they are like sheepdogs which nose everybody onto certain paths, though they can also be like nasty guard dogs. The government had started putting up posters and sending out leaflets with slogans like, ‘Don’t do it alone,’ and ‘Energy - it’s for sharing,’ and there were pictures of group bake-ins, TV parties, and car sharing. Everyone in the pictures was smiling.

  Charlie made his own leaflet and showed it to Eva.

  ‘Street Meet. Swap, Share and Save,’ she read. She looked questioningly at Charlie.

  ‘So you want to invite all the neighbours round here for a meeting, on Friday.’

  ‘Yes, so we can help each other survive.’ Eva raised her eyebrows. ‘That’s how it will be.’

  Up till then I had seen about twenty humans up close. All at once there was another twenty.

  The thing with humans is that, though they seem pretty much identical, if you look carefully you notice subtle differences. Trees are obviously different, with different numbers of branches in different arrangements, and trunks and roots which twist and fork in endless ways. You could never mistake one tree for another. Humans all have two a
rms, two legs, a head. It takes practice to tell them apart – then you notice little things like the cleft in Eva’s chin, and how Conal’s freckles run together. Eyes, though, are the giveaway; eyes are never alike.

  Seeing all those new faces I’m afraid I got over-excited.

  ‘Look at that one,’ I said to Holly, ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Holly.

  ‘No hair at all - head like a potato.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Holly, and she went back to contemplating the clouds.

  ‘Oh look, there’s a brand new one. Look, look, look.’

  ‘Is that a human shoot?’ said Holly.

  ‘It’s called a baby,’ I said.

  Eva actually frowned up at the window then, because I, in my eagerness, was blocking out the light.

  Soon every chair and cushion was taken. Everyone joked about how bad things were. I watched closely as strangers knit into neighbours.

  When the meeting was over Charlie had made a list of skills and surplus stuff that people were willing to swap. He also made a deal with Graham next door.

  A long wire appeared. It came out of Graham’s window, tightened across my trunk, passed through our kitchen window and ran up to the washing machine. Eva flicked it on and sighed with relief as it started to churn. In return Eva handed a big box of fruit and veg over the hedge to Graham.

  Eva seemed to try harder after that. She could see that everyone was struggling and that they would have to help each other. Charlie was right; from then on, that’s how it would be. And she had another reason for keeping going. Animals have this padding on their branches: they call it fat, it’s protection and a food store. Eva was losing hers and for some reason this seemed to please her. ‘You should be worried,’ I said, ‘never know when you’re going to need those fat stores,’ but she just stood in front of the long mirror and held her loose jeans away from her flat stomach with a satisfied smile.

  Charlie put a big red cross through day thirty and high-fived Eva.

  He came to the window and looked at the garden. ‘See, I said I wouldn’t desert you,’ I heard him think. He turned back to Eva. ‘Now, do you promise not to sell the Jungle?’