Familiar and Haunting Read online

  Miss Mortlock was now told that she ought to have the elm taken down.

  Miss Mortlock said that the elm had been there long before she was born and she hoped and expected that it would be there after she was dead. She wanted no advice on the subject.

  Another branch fell from the elm tree, partly squashing a farm trailer. The farmer whose trailer it was had been renting the meadow from Miss Mortlock for his cows. He tried to make Miss Mortlock pay the value of the trailer. Miss Mortlock replied that he had left his trailer in a particularly foolish place. She could not be held responsible. Everyone knew what elm trees were like, especially when they were getting old and rotten. No doubt he had heard of previous branches falling.

  Mr. Scarr had another conversation with Miss Mortlock about having the elm tree felled. She said that these tree surgeons, as they called themselves, used fancy equipment so that they could charge fancy prices. She could not afford them.

  Mr. Scarr said that he knew two handymen, pals, with a crosscut saw, ax, wedges, and good rope. They could fell any tree to within six inches of where it should go. Miss Mortlock was surprised and delighted to hear that there was anybody who would come and do anything well nowadays. Through Mr. Scarr, a bargain was struck between Miss Mortlock and the handymen.

  Mr. Scarr told his family about the arrangement at supper. Mrs. Scarr sighed with relief and thought no more of it—until later. The little girls were too young to understand. Only Ricky was interested. He said: “What will happen to the tree?”

  His father stared at him. “It’ll be felled. Didn’t you hear me?”

  “I mean, what will happen to the tree after that?” He had once seen a truck passing through the village carrying an enormous tree trunk, lopped of all its branches, chained down.

  “It won’t be a tree when it’s felled,” said Mr. Scarr. “Timber. Poor timber, in this case. Not sound enough even for coffins. Not worth cartage.”

  That night Ricky looked out of his bedroom window over the meadow to the elm. It stood, a tree. It was leafless, at this time of year, and the outer twigs on one side made what you could think of as the shape of a woman’s head with fluffed-out hair, face bent downward. He had seen that woman from his window ever since he could remember.

  He tried to imagine the elm tree cut down, not there. He tried to imagine space where the trunk and branches and twigs were—the whole great shape missing from the meadow. He tried to imagine looking right across the meadow without the interruption of the tree, looking across emptiness to the stables on the other side. He could not.

  The next day, on his way to school, Ricky called as usual for Willy Jim, his best friend, who lived at the top of the lane. They went on together, and Ricky said: “Our elm’s being cut down.”

  “So what?” said Willy Jim, preoccupied. He was still Ricky’s best friend, perhaps, but he was also in with a new gang at school. Ricky wanted to get into the same gang. He meant to try, anyway.

  In the playground later, Ricky said to Bones Jones, who was leader of the gang: “Our elm tree’s going to be cut down. It’s hundreds of years old; it’s hundreds of feet high.”

  “Didn’t know you owned an elm.”

  “Well, the elm in our meadow.”

  “Didn’t know you owned a meadow.”

  “Oh, well—Miss Mortlock’s meadow. She lets us play in it. Shall I let you know when they’re going to cut the elm down?”

  “If you like.”

  Later still that day, Toffy, a friend of Bones Jones’s, spoke to Ricky, which he did not often bother to do. He said: “I hope they cut that tree down after school, or on a Saturday. Otherwise we’ll miss it.” So Bones Jones had told Toffy and the others.

  And when they were all going home from school, Bones Jones called to Ricky: “Don’t forget to find out about what you said. Might be worth watching.”

  Surprisingly Ricky had difficulty in getting his piece of information. His father was vague, even mysterious, about when exactly the elm would be felled. He glanced several times at his wife, during Ricky’s questioning. She listened in silence, grim.

  So Ricky first knew when, looking out of his window just after getting up one morning, he saw a truck in the meadow, with a ladder on its roof, and two men unloading gear that would clearly turn out to be saw, ax, wedges, and rope.

  At breakfast his mother said to his father: “If they start now, they’ll have finished before the afternoon, won’t they?”

  “Likely,” said Mr. Scarr.

  “So that wicked tree’ll be safely down by the time you get home from school,” his mother said to Ricky. Ricky scowled.

  But there was still one chance, and Ricky thought it worth taking.

  On the way to school he told Willy Jim; in the playground he told Bones Jones, Toffy, and the two others who made up the gang. “They’re starting on the elm this morning. If we go to the meadow between the end of school lunch and the beginning of afternoon school, we might be lucky. We might see the fall.”

  The older children were allowed out of school after lunch to go to the sweetshop. The six boys would need only to turn right toward the lane, instead of left toward the sweetshop, when they set off at the permitted time. They would have about twenty minutes.

  So, between one o’clock and a quarter past, the whole gang, including Ricky, were tearing down the lane to Miss Mortlock’s meadow. They halted at the meadow gate, surprised; Ricky himself felt abashed. The truck and handymen had gone, although wheel tracks showed they had been there. The elm still stood. At first sight, nothing had happened or was going to happen.

  Then they noticed something about the base of the tree. They climbed the gate and went over. A wide gash had been chopped out of the trunk on the side toward the river. On the opposite side, at the same level, the tree had been sawed almost half through.

  Ricky, remembering his father’s talk, said: “They’ll drive the wedges in there, where they’ve sawed. When the time comes.”

  It now occurred to them to wonder where they were—the handymen, the tree fellers. Toffy recollected having noticed a truck going up the village in the direction of The Peacock. The handymen, having done most of the hard work, had probably gone to get a beer at The Peacock. After that, they would come back and finish the job.

  Meanwhile the boys had the elm tree to themselves.

  They were examining the saw cut, all except for Ricky. He had gone round almost to the other side of the tree. Clasping the trunk with his arms, he pressed his body close against it, tipped his head back, and let his gaze go mountaineering up into the tree—up—up.

  Then he saw it and wondered that he had not noticed it at once: the rope. It had been secured to the main part of the tree as near to the top as possible. Its length fell straight through the branches to the ground, passing near the fingertips of one of his hands. It reached the ground, where more of it—much more of it—lay at the foot of the tree, coiled around and ready for use.

  “Look!” said Ricky.

  The others came round the tree and gathered where the rope fell, staring at it, then staring up into the tree, to where the end was fastened, then staring across the meadow toward the river.

  Bones Jones said: “We could take the rope out over the meadow. That wouldn’t do any harm.”

  Toffy said: “Not with us not pulling on it.”

  Willy Jim said: “And not with the wedges not in.”

  Ricky said nothing.

  All the same they were very careful to take the loose end of the rope over the meadow toward the river, keeping as far as possible from the buildings on either side. They walked backward toward the river, dragging the rope. At first, it dragged slackly through the rough grass of the meadow. Then, as they walked with it, it began to lift a little from the ground. They still walked, and the deep, floppy curve of it began to grow shallower and shallower—nearer and nearer to a straight line running from the boys to the top of the elm tree. They pulled it almost taut and paused.

  Toff
y said: “This is about where they’ll stand.”

  Bones Jones said: “And pull.”

  They arranged themselves in what seemed to them a correct order along the rope, with the heaviest at the end. That was Bones Jones himself. Then came Toffy, then the other two and Willy Jim, and lastly Ricky, the lightest of all, nearest to the tree.

  “And pull,” repeated Bones Jones, and they pulled very gently, slightly tautening the rope, so that it ran from their hands in that straight, straight line to the top of the elm tree.

  The cows that were grazing in the meadow had moved off slowly but intently to the farthest distance, against the old stables.

  “Only the pulling would have to be in time,” said Bones Jones. “You know, one, two, three, pull, rest; one, two, three, pull, rest. Feeling the sway of the tree, once it started swaying. Before it falls.”

  Miss Mortlock’s dog, a King Charles spaniel, appeared at the gate into the meadow and stared at the boys. He was old, and he didn’t like boys, but this was his meadow. He came through the gate and toward what was going on. He stood between the tree and the boys, but some way off, watching. After a while he sat down, with the regretful slowness of someone who has forgotten to bring his shooting stick.

  They were getting the rhythm now, slow but strong: “one, two, three, and pull, rest; one, two, three, and pull, rest. …” They were chanting in perfect time under their breaths; in perfect time they were pulling, gently, well.

  Mrs. Scarr, looking up from her sink and out through the kitchen window, might have seen them, but the sweetbriar hedge was in the way.

  Miss Mortlock did see them, from an upper window. She had gone up to take an after-lunch nap on her bed and was about to draw the curtains. She looked out. Her eyesight was not good nowadays, but she knew boys when she saw them, and she knew at once what they must be doing. She saw that the elm tree was beginning a slow, graceful waving of its topmost branches. Very slightly: thisaway; thataway. Only each time it swayed, the sway was more thisaway, toward the river, than thataway, toward the house.

  Thisaway, thataway…

  Miss Mortlock knocked on the windowpane with her knuckles, but the boys could not hear the distant tapping. She called, but they could not hear her old woman’s voice. She tried to push open the window, but that window had not been opened at the bottom for twenty years, and it was not going to be rushed now.

  Thisaway, thataway; thisaway, thataway—

  “Pull…” the boys chanted, “… and pull… and pull. …”

  They did not hear the sound of the truck driving up to the meadow gate again. The two handymen saw. They began to shout even before they were out of the truck: “No!”

  The cows lifted their heads to look toward the elm.

  “Oh, no!” cried Miss Mortlock from the wrong side of the window glass.

  The King Charles spaniel stood up and began to growl.

  “… and pull… and pull…”

  “No!” whispered Ricky to himself.

  For the rope they pulled on was no longer taut, even when they pulled it. It came slackly to them. There was a great, unimaginable creak, and then the elm began to lean courteously toward them. They stood staring, and the tree leaned over—over—reaching its tallness to reach them, and they saw what only the birds and the airplanes had ever seen before—the very crown of the tree—and it was roaring down toward them.

  “NO!” screamed Ricky, who was nearest to it, seeing right into those reaching topmost branches that only the birds and the airplanes saw, and the other boys were yelling and scattering, and Miss Mortlock’s window shot up suddenly, and she was calling shrilly out of it, and the handymen were vaulting the gate and shouting, and the King Charles spaniel was barking, and the elm tree that had stood forever was crashing to the ground, and Ricky was running, running, running from it, and then tripped and fell face forward into the nettles on the riverbank and staggered to his feet to run again, but suddenly there was nothing to run on, and fell again. Into the river this time.

  The river was not deep or swift-flowing, but muddy. He wallowed and floundered to the bank and clawed a hold there and stood, thigh-deep in water, against the bank, still below visibility from the meadow. He listened. There were the mingled sounds of boys shouting and men shouting and a dog barking. He guessed that the men were chasing the boys, and the dog was getting in the way.

  But he didn’t stay. He waded along the river, in the shelter of the vegetation on its bank, until he reached the end of the meadow. The boundary of the meadow, on this side, was a sweetbriar hedge that, farther up, became the hedge of the Scarrs’ garden. He crept out and crept home.

  His face tingled all over and had already swollen—even to the eyelids—with nettle stings, and he was dripping with river water and with river mud that stank. His mother, meeting him at the door and having—at last; who could miss it now?—realized what had happened in the meadow, dealt with him.

  No question of his going back to afternoon school; he ended up in bed. His mother rattled the curtains together angrily and told him to stay exactly where he was until his dad came home.

  When she had gone, he slid out of bed and laid a hand on the curtains to part them. But he did not. There was no sound of voices from the meadow now, and he didn’t really want to see. He had thought he wanted to, but he did not. He went back to bed.

  His father, home for tea, was far less angry than his mother. He liked the idea of half a dozen schoolboys felling the elm tree by accident—and Ricky among them. “Didn’t think you had it in you,” he said to Ricky.

  As for punishment, the state of Ricky’s face was about as much as was needed, in Mr. Scarr’s opinion.

  And anyway, said Mr. Scarr, nobody had expressly told the boy not to fell the tree. Then Mrs. Scarr became very angry with Mr. Scarr, as well as with Ricky.

  Next day at school there was a row, but not too bad. It was over quickly. The rest of the gang had had theirs yesterday. In the playground, Willy Jim said to Ricky, “You can go around with us, Bones says. We call ourselves Hell Fellows now—Hell Fellers—fellers, get it?”

  “Oh,” said Ricky, “you’re one?”

  “Yes,” said Willy Jim, “and you can be one, too.”

  So that was all right, of course. Ricky had what he wanted.

  Bones Jones decided that after school the Hell Fellers would go and look at the tree they had felled. No use going straight from school, however, as Ricky said, because the men would be there, lopping and sawing. So they all went home first to their teas and then reassembled, singly, carefully casual, at the top of the lane—all except for Ricky, of course, who had his tea and then hung over his front gate, waiting.

  When daylight began to fail, the handymen stopped work, packed everything into the truck, shut the meadow gate, and drove away. They drove out of the top of the lane, and behind them, the boys converged on the entrance to the lane and poured down it. They collected Ricky as they passed his house, then over the meadow gate and across the meadow to the elm.

  Most of its branches had already gone, so that they could clamber up it and along it fairly easily. Bones Jones, Willy Jim, Ricky—all of them—they clambered, climbed on and jumped off, ran along the trunk. They fought duels along the trunk with lopped-off branches and nearly put each other’s eyes out, played a no-holds-barred King of the Castle on the tree stump, carved their initials in the thickness of the main bark. All they did, they did quietly—with whispers, gasps, grunts, suppressed laughter—for they did not wish to call attention to themselves. There was little fear, otherwise, of their being noticed in the half-light.

  Now they gathered together in a line along the trunk. Ricky was in the middle. They linked arms and danced, stamping and singing softly together a song of victory, of Hell Fellers, hell-bent, of victors over the vanquished. The stamping of their feet hardly shook the massive tree trunk beneath them.

  The meadow was almost dark now. Like ghosts, they danced along the long ghost of what had once
been a tree.

  Oblongs of yellow light had appeared in the houses overlooking the meadow. The dancers began to waver. They shivered at the chill of night and remembered their homes. They stopped dancing. They left the tree trunk, climbed the gate, went home.

  Ricky went home. He was still humming the tune to which they had danced. “You seem pleased with yourself,” his mother said grumpily. She had not got over yesterday.

  Ricky said, “Yes.”

  When he was going to bed, he looked out of his window, across the meadow. It was quite dark outside, but you could still see which was sky and which was not. He could make out the blackness of the old stables against the sky. There was nothing between him and them. He stared till his eyes watered.

  He got into bed thinking of tomorrow and the Hell Fellers at school, pleased. He fell asleep at once and began dreaming. His own tears woke him. He could not remember his dream and knew that it had not lasted long because the same television program was still going on downstairs.

  In the middle of being puzzled at grief, he fell asleep again.

  Fresh

  The force of water through the river gates scoured to a deep bottom; then the river shallowed again. People said the pool below the gates was very deep. Deep enough to drown in, anyway.

  At the bottom of the pool lived the freshwater mussels. No one had seen them there; most people would not have been particularly interested in them, anyway. But if you were poking about among the stones in the shallows below the pool, you couldn’t help finding mussel shells occasionally. Sometimes one by itself; sometimes two still hinged together. Gray-blue or green-gray on the outside; on the inside, a faint sheen of mother-of-pearl.