Chances. Freya North
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the heck says “divvy”!’
‘I do.’
‘Don’t say it again.’
‘Pillock.’
‘That’s worse, Dad.’
‘I know. It’s my job to annoy you like it’s your job to wind me up.’
Jonty thought, Actually, my dad is cool and he doesn’t wind me up all that much.
‘Come on, kiddo, let’s go. Have you got money for lunch?’
‘Father!’ Jonty remonstrated. ‘Again, please!’
Oliver coshed him softly. ‘Do you have money for lunch?’
Watching Jonty lope off towards school with his mates, all of them in skinny trousers slung low, schoolbags as beat up as possible, hair lank and long and dyed darker than necessary, Oliver thought to himself how, had DeeDee still been here, he would probably be the one coping with their son’s teenagerisms the better, and it might well have caused a degree of antagonism between them. She’d have been much more You can’t go out looking like that at Jonty. She’d have said, Oliver! You speak to him! Oliver might have been caught in the crossfire. It gave him a lift to know he was doing all right as a dad to a teenage son. He liked to sense DeeDee’s approval. It was very odd to feel that these days Dead DeeDee possibly liked him more than DeeDee Living might have done.
Oh, but what I’d give for a little healthy real-life snippiness, Oliver thought as he headed off for his yard. What I’d give to hear her mutter, For God’s sake, Ols.
How he longed to argue over the finer points of managing a teenager, instead of muddling through it all on his own, albeit now doing things his way all the time without prior discussion. So, though he wasn’t the stickler for homework she had been, and although bed-time had become a movable feast and supper was now very movable indeed – usually in foil trays eaten off laps and sometimes left on the coffee table overnight – keeping up DeeDee’s obsession with grammar was a baton he’d gladly taken from her. He knew he and Jonty would run with it their whole lives.
At the yard, Boz and Spike, the two Aussies working for him, were loading the truck.
‘Tinker?’ Oliver asked.
‘Making a brew,’ said Spike. Oliver often reflected how he only seemed to employ youngsters from the Commonwealth – but there again, home-grown interest in arboriculture appeared to be sparse. And he did wonder why he gravitated towards those with names like Tinker and Boz and Spike – but he had to concede there were few applications arriving on his desk from Tom, Dick or Harry. He had a great team though – hardworking and sweet-natured. He enjoyed having them under his wing and his clients responded well. He felt paternal towards them – their own fathers being back home, time zones away. He also felt a keen duty to his trade – to hone their technical abilities as well as to train their eyes to feel a tree. Having a licence to use a chainsaw up a tree was one thing, but to sense innately how each individual tree ought to look was another. Two to four places on every branch where cuts could be made while balancing the resultant shape for the good of the tree – that was where art met science and technical ability met intuition. That’s where Oliver felt an aboriculturalist’s true skill lay. To make a tree look more like a tree, to return some hacked-about old giant, or some mangy neglected specimen, to the sculptural beauty that was its birthright. Every tree he’d ever worked on, Oliver aimed to leave as an archetype, as if Gainsborough or Poussin or Constable, Cézanne even, might have chosen it as the prime example of its genus to grace their art.
Just as Oliver chose his branches with care, so too did he select his workforce. Boz had a degree in Art History. Spike had exhibited as a sculptor before retraining in Arboriculture. Tinker grew up in Canada, in Jasper, surrounded by trees.
Oliver checked the diary.
‘You two – take the ash near Much Hadham we saw last week. You need to offer the wood to Mrs Cadogan first – if she doesn’t want it, don’t chip it. Bring it back and it can go on the first wood pile there – because?’
‘Because you can burn it green,’ said Boz mechanically, an answer he’d given many times.
‘Good lad. Tinker – you can come with me. It’s the cherry near Hatfield you took the call about.’
‘Laters!’ called Tinker to the other two.
And Oliver thought, Good God, kid – if DeeDee had heard that.
A village green, a single-track road all around it, cottages encircling it with swathes of grass in front of their boundaries. A gathering of oaks to one side, two grand sweet chestnuts on the other side. Small trees – apple, magnolia – in front gardens. A weeping willow in front of the cottages on the far side. And here, on the common ground by two cottages, was the tree Oliver had come to see. It was a breathtaking sight. A magnificent holly-leaved cherry still in full bloom in June.
‘When I have a garden of my own, I’ll plant every type of prunus and have flowers from November to now,’ said Tinker.
‘You’ll never have that garden on the wages I pay you,’ Oliver said with a gentle regret.
They sat in the truck and regarded the tree. People were crossing the green expressly to see it. A mother and two toddlers. An elderly couple. A youth with a fierce-looking hound. Two female pensioners. It was singing out, its blossom festooning the boughs and drifting gently down and around like sugar petals. Catching the sun, caught on the breeze, captivating. A man, with hands on hips, stood at the bottom of one of the cottage driveways.
‘Come on,’ said Oliver, striding off, followed by Tinker. ‘Mr Macintosh?’
‘Do you see?’ called the man from the driveway, long before they were near. ‘Can you see?’
‘It’s some sight,’ said Oliver, ‘Prunus ilicifolia.’
‘It’s new!’ said Mr Macintosh.
‘Sorry?’
‘My jag – it’s new. And look at it!’
Oliver glanced at the new car on the driveway. ‘Very nice,’ he said politely.
‘Look at it!’
‘I was looking at the tree,’ said Oliver.
‘But look at my Jag. Look at what that wretched tree’s done to it. Weeks now. Weeks of this – this stuff.’
Oliver and Tinker dragged their eyes from the tree to observe the car, covered with petals as if it had been decorated for a bridal couple.
‘It’s got to go.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Tinker. ‘I’d love a Jag.’
‘Couldn’t you park it in your garage?’ Oliver asked.
‘Not the car, man – the tree! I’m not putting the car in the garage – I want to see it every time I look out of my window. I worked my whole life to have a car like that. And I want to see it in British Racing Green – not flaming white bloody mess.’
‘The blossom will only last another week,’ said Oliver, ‘a week or so.’
‘I want that tree gone – it’s a hazard, a menace. It’s dangerous. If it rained, all that blossom underfoot would be slippery. I might fall. I might do my other hip.’
Oliver looked around. Cars had parked along the green, visitors were coming into this village precisely to see the tree and the heavenly blossom. Furthermore, it was set to be a very dry July.
‘Can you take it down now?’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Well, when can you? I’ll pay now.’
‘I’m not going to take the tree down.’
‘Well, chop off