by Anne Morice
No reference had been made, so far, to my tree-sitting activities and I felt it might be indiscreet to mention them in front of Millie, but in fact it was she who eventually introduced the subject, although I did not immediately recognise the connection.
‘Have you told Tessa about the female monster?’ she asked.
‘Not yet, I was waiting for you. She may as well hear the whole hideous story at one go, and I get so steamed up about it that I’d be sure to leave out the most important bits. All she knows, so far, is that she’ll be doing her stint under the trees, as and when.’
‘Is Marcus also concerned in this, by the way?’ I asked.
‘Oh, indeed! As well as a good many other people, but Marc can only do his bit at weekends. He’s working terribly hard for his law exams just now. Didn’t I tell you about that?’ The digression was causing Millie to become sullen and restive, so I said, ‘No, but that can come later. Tell me about the monster! What’s her name?’
‘Mrs Trelawney. You might think that was Cornish, but no; she hails from Canada. Or rather, her last husband did. She originally came from Australia.’
‘Apparently, there’ve been about six husbands, all told,’ Millie said, ‘and all stinking rich. We conclude she ate them.’
‘So what’s she doing here? Looking for the seventh course?’
‘Shouldn’t think so. She’s over seventy.’
‘Well, that’s something on the credit side, isn’t it? Perhaps she’ll die a natural death quite soon? I presume she’s the subject of that secondary task you’ve earmarked for me?’ I added, turning to Elsa again. ‘In which case, who’s so anxious to hasten her death and why?’
‘You remember Pettits Farm?’ Millie asked.
‘Yes, of course. In fact, wasn’t this place once a part of it?’
‘Till they sold it off to my grandparents about fifty years ago, but that still left six hundred acres and Mrs Trelawney now owns the lot.’
‘Does she farm it?’
‘Does she not!’
‘That’s really the crux of the matter,’ Elsa explained. ‘She has to farm it, of course. It’s scheduled land and would be taken away from her if she didn’t. Everyone understands that. It’s her methods which have upset people so badly.’
‘Which are?’
‘More suitable for sixty thousand acres of North American corn belt. The first thing she did was to amass a huge collection of juggernaut machinery. You know, all those giant combine harvesters and things of that kind. They go thundering about, churning up the lanes and bridle paths and making no end of mess.’
‘Doesn’t sound like very sensible economics either.’
‘No, it’s not. Most of them can’t manoeuvre at all in these cosy little meadows, but she’s not to be beaten by that. She’s had most of the hedges uprooted and now we have one forty acre field where there used to be half a dozen small ones. In a year or two we’ll be living in the middle of a dust bowl.’
‘But what’s the point of it, Elsa? People round here have always farmed very successfully, and profitably too, if their cars and swimming pools are anything to go by. What’s the point of trying to change things?’
‘No point at all that anyone sane could grasp. We’ve all been puzzling about it for months and we’ve finally come to the conclusion that she suffers from a mad obsession to destroy everything in sight. She is deliberately setting out to ruin the countryside and her only pleasure seems to come from hurting people and making them unhappy.’
‘Has anyone tried reasoning with her?’
‘I doubt it and, in any case, it would be a practical impossibility. About the nearest you can get to her is when she’s shoving you aside to get to the head of the post office queue. The only other encounters are on the roads. She drives around these lanes like a maniac, just as though they were four-lane motorways, practically forcing oncoming motorists into the ditch to avoid a collision. Apart from that, there’s virtually no contact at all and she stays firmly inside her own property. It’s all enclosed now in a ten foot high brick wall, with broken bottles stuck into the top of it. You know those nasty, cheap looking modern red bricks? I can’t tell you how hideous and depressing it looks. And there are boards all down the length of it, saying that Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted, although who in the world would be tempted to try and get in I simply can’t imagine.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘I do begin to see that you have quite a problem here.’
‘And you haven’t heard the half of it,’ Millie told me.
‘No, she hasn’t, but you take over now, Millie. I knew I should leave a lot out. It’s all so horrid, I sometimes feel the only way to bear it is to put it out of my mind and pretend it isn’t happening.’
‘Typical of your generation!’ Millie informed her grandly. ‘And the main reason why odious people like Mrs Trelawney so often get away with it.’
‘Although, fortunately, there can’t be many people quite like her,’ I remarked. ‘What else has she been up to?’
‘Well, she’s torn down most of the old barns. They weren’t all that special, so they hadn’t been classified as historic buildings or anything, but they were a damn sight better than what she’s put up in their place.’
‘Concrete blocks with corrugated iron roofs, I suppose?’
‘No, much worse. Concrete concentration camps for pigs and battery hens.’
‘Yes,’ Elsa said, ‘I forgot to tell you that she hates animals, as well as human beings. She’s ringed most of her land with electric fencing, ostensibly to keep the cattle from straying, but it wouldn’t have been necessary, if she’d left the hedges alone, and it’s not much fun if you want to take the dog for a walk.’
‘She even tried to close all the public footpaths across her land,’ Millie said, adding yet another item to the doom laden catalogue, ‘but the Council stepped in at that point and told her to put her head in a bucket. So how do you think she got round that one?’
‘Can’t imagine!’
‘By putting up notices on all the stiles, saying Beware of the Bull.’
‘My God!’
‘I know, it’s absolutely revolting, isn’t it? She’s only got two bulls and obviously they can’t be in forty places at once, but not many people feel like risking it on their afternoon walk. Whatever we do, she somehow manages to go one better. We’ve no sooner formed a rescue squad to go prowling around at night, cutting the electric wires and knocking down the notice boards, than she dreams up some new hellish idea. Trees are coming in for the treatment now. Anything which stands in the path of the plough gets the chop and she’s cutting them down like nettles.’
‘But listen, Millie, surely the Council can get her there too? I always understood that you had to get permission to cut down trees, even those on your own land?’
‘That’s the law, in theory,’ Elsa explained, ‘but there are dozens of ways for unprincipled people to get round it, if they have a mind to. You can say that they’ve got Dutch Elm disease, or are quietly and invisibly rotting away inside and constitute a danger to the public. In other words, you act first and talk later and, if anyone complains, the worst that can happen to you is to be fined about fifty pounds, which would mean less than nothing to someone like Mrs Trelawney.’
‘So now you’re having to mount guard round all the trees? Sounds like a pretty formidable undertaking?’
‘Oh yes, and far too ambitious for a group like ours to cope with, but there’s one in particular which we know to be on the execution list and for the moment we’re concentrating on that. It’s in a hollow and the land is quite unworkable, so she has no excuse at all and it also happens to be a very special local landmark. It’s a magnificent oak and about two hundred years old, so they say. We mean to protect it, if we can, partly to show her that we’re not beaten yet, but mainly because of what it would do to poor old Geoffrey to lose his beloved tree.’
‘Geoffrey? You mean that nice, old-maidish little man who offers one wine
gums and writes those whimsy little pamphlets about the local beauty spots? Strolls Through Storhampton and so forth? Geoffrey Darling, or some name like that?’
‘Dearing. Yes, he’s the one.’
‘And you’re telling me this philistine has designs on his cherished oak?’
‘The trouble is that, technically, it’s not really his at all. It’s on the wrong side of the fence; but only a few yards inside the boundary and, naturally, after all these years, he feels a sense of ownership and dedicated duty to protect it.’
‘Because, you see,’ Millie added, ‘when he’s not munching wine gums and writing his whimsy pamphlets, he’s sitting in front of the window, munching wine gums and gazing with dazzled eyes at the beautiful oak.’
‘Understandable,’ I admitted. ‘I remember it well and I could so easily find myself similarly occupied, if I could see it from my window.’
‘So far, we’ve managed to head her off,’ Elsa said. ‘Twice now, the men have rolled up with their ladders and chain saws and either Geoffrey or someone else has been there to shoo them away again. We hope to wear her down with our eternal vigilance.’
‘But what bribery or persuasion did you use on them? Apart, that is, from crying: “Woodman, spare this tree!”?’
‘Passive resistance!’ Millie replied, with a crusading light in her eye.
‘Oh, I see! You literally flatten yourself against the trunk and instruct them to proceed over your dead body?’
‘Fortunately, it hasn’t come to that yet,’ Elsa said, ‘and let’s hope it won’t. The poor men would be most embarrassed. We just tell them that there’s an injunction on it, or some nonsense and that they might be in trouble with the law. On the whole, they’re quite relieved just to slink away. Obviously, they never had much heart for the business in the first place. Which reminds me, Millie: who’s on guard this afternoon?’
‘Oh, Geoffrey’s there and on the watch. I promised to be there by about six and stay till it gets dark. He’s going to drinks with the Ramseys.’
Then you’d better get your skates on, because it’s nearly six now.’
‘Okay,’ she replied, getting up and hacking off a large slice of banana cake, which she wrapped in a paper napkin and stuffed in her pocket, before leaving the room.
Watching her go, Elsa sighed: ‘Problems, problems! The place is stiff with them just now. And I haven’t even begun to tell you about Marcus yet. I think I’d better wait until we’ve both got a drink in our hands before I embark on that.’
I was not, after all, to hear about Marcus’s problem until much later, because by the time we both had a drink in our hands Elsa had started to get worked up about the dinner. She had invited my cousin Toby, under the impression, for some reason, that I would be burning to see him, and he had accepted.
I was faintly surprised to hear this, because he does not much care for dining in other people’s houses and normally has a whole battery of excuses to hand, when faced with such emergencies. I think Elsa had been rather taken aback too, but she discovered later that Mr and Mrs Parkes were on holiday, which explained everything. Mr Parkes looks after Toby’s garden and his wife rules the domestic roost, a job which she has performed with the utmost efficiency and ironest of rods for many years. I seriously doubt whether Toby could any longer find his way to his own kitchen.
Elsa’s cooking was not up to the Parkes standard, but luckily Millie was engaged elsewhere for the evening, so at least she had no need to divert part of her energies into boiling up great mounds of brown rice, which she informed me would otherwise have been the case.
‘Where’s she gone?’ I enquired. ‘And, if she’s off boys, how does she come to have such a busy social programme?’
‘Oh, she and a few friends of like persuasion have discovered a macrobiotic restaurant in Dedley and they go drifting off there once or twice a week, usually ending up in the cinema. I believe some of them actually are boys, as a matter of fact, but you can hardly tell, so I don’t suppose they count.’
That’s all right, then. I was afraid Toby might have scared her off.’
‘Oh no, he wouldn’t count either. Far too old.’
Nevertheless, and despite this built-in advantage, it was just as well, from several points of view, that she was not with us. He would inevitably have blotted his copybook, or perhaps merely confirmed her in the view that senility was another word for the mid-forties, by his scathing dismissal of the anti Trelawney campaign.
‘Absolute madness!’ he informed Elsa. ‘It never does to oppose people of that sort when they hold all the cards. You’ll only wear yourself out by trying to descend to her level and, being an amateur at that game, you still won’t win. In fact, by fighting her you are probably simply adding fuel to her flames.’
‘I don’t know where we should all be now, if everyone had taken that attitude,’ she protested mildly.
‘Exactly where we are, I daresay. Sensible people have always known where the better part of valour lay. The time for killing dragons is when you’re encased in a heavy suit of armour and equipped with a long, sharp sword.’
‘And what do you do when you have neither? Sit back and wait for the dragon to come and eat you up?’
‘No, you move to a place where all the dragons have been killed off already, or have yet to be born. It need not be very far away. If you really want my advice, you’ll sell this house, preferably tomorrow or the day after, before the word gets round about what is going on here and the bottom drops out of the market.’
‘Yes,’ Elsa agreed reluctantly, ‘I daresay you have a point there. It would probably be the most practical solution, but unfortunately it is not open to me. Not if I wish to remain on speaking terms with Marcus and Millie.’
Toby did not comment and she added defensively, ‘I can tell from your expression that you would regard that as a small price to pay, but it would be a huge one for me. They’re all I have, you know, and they’re both mad about this place.’
‘Yes, but the point is, Elsa dear, that you’re not going to have them for ever, are you? At least, not quite in the same way. In a few years from now they’ll be off creating a different sort of hell for someone else and you’ll be left sitting all alone in your dust bowl.’
‘I hope not, Toby. In fact, I rather expect it to be the other way round. This place belonged to my family, you know, not my husband’s. My parents moved out when I married and I hope to do the same one day for Marc or Millie. Besides, that’s not the whole story, or even half of it. They’re like all their generation, absolutely potty about ecology and conservation and so on. They regard Mrs Trelawney as the enemy, but also as a challenge, and they’d never forgive me if I surrendered in the first round.’
‘Better than being knocked out cold in the tenth, I should have thought,’ Toby said, ‘but I can see that nothing I could say would do anything to change your mind and . . . strangely enough, I’m rather glad, in a way.’
Elsa and I being somewhat thunderstruck by this swift reversal, he was kind enough to explain.
‘It has given me an idea for a play. I am not sure how it will end, or even begin, for that matter, but naturally I shall be following your progress with some interest.’
‘According to Elsa, if we don’t look out, it will end with the old harridan getting herself murdered,’ I told him.
‘Oh no, I don’t care for that at all. I shall be looking for something much less crude and obvious.’
‘So shall I!’ Elsa agreed fervently.
‘Then obviously you and Toby should pool your resources. He will find a nice, neat theatrical ending and you must somehow translate it into real life.’
‘So at least one good thing has come out of this,’ I remarked an hour or two later, when Toby had gone home and we were loading up the dishwasher.
‘Indeed? Do tell me!’
‘Toby’s idea for a play. You know how hard it is for him to put pen to paper and how he suffers from this dread of going to the gr
ave without ever finding the urge to write another line? If you’ve really managed to shake him out of it, however briefly, it must do some good.’
‘You don’t think he was serious?’
‘Something tells me he was, although time alone will tell. Are you too tired to tell me about Marc now?’
‘Yes, I think it had better wait until the morning. Millie might come in at any moment. There is a very strict and well understood rule that she has to be home by eleven, and just occasionally she has been known to observe it.’
‘And this is not for her ears?’
‘Strictly speaking, not for anyone’s. Entirely my own fault for not warning you, but for a moment I was terrified you were going to blow the gaff to Toby.’
‘How could I have blown it when I didn’t know what the gaff was?’
‘It was when you told him that this could end with Mrs Trelawney getting herself murdered.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, that’s the worry, you see. Marc’s the one who’s been going around making these silly threats that, if no other solution can be found, he, personally, will undertake to devise and carry out the perfect murder.’
‘You do see how very awkwardly it could turn out?’ she said about twenty minutes later, I having stubbornly refused to go to bed until I had heard every detail of Marc’s eccentric plan.
Fortunately, this had been one of those rare occasions when Millie had obeyed the strict and well understood rule and, after taking a pained look at the remains of the sirloin, which still adorned the kitchen table, had gone straight up to her room.
So we finished the clearing away and then sat in the kitchen, drinking warmed up coffee and waiting for the dishwasher to go through its paces, while she gave me the full story.
‘I mean, just think of it, Tessa! Suppose the old woman were to drop dead from a stroke or something? And it could easily happen, you know! She’s over seventy and they say she flies into the most terrible rages when she can’t get her own way. Well, if something of that sort did happen and people were to remember Marc’s ridiculous threats, you can imagine all the talk there’d be? Not malicious, necessarily, although I daresay there’d be a bit of that too. He’s not the most popular boy in the neighbourhood and you know how people fasten on to gossip in a small place like this?’
