Ash before Oak
Page 1
‘Very moving, beautiful and so thoughtful too – a wonderful evocation of animals and birds, sky and Somerset.’
— Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth
Praise for Kath Trevelyan
‘An intriguing and original love story written with an expert eye through the prism of contemporary art.’
— Jenny Diski
Praise for The Folded Lie
‘Quite unlike any other novel published this year: a bold, radical, almost embarrassingly direct assault on modern complacencies, both political and artistic’
— Jonathan Coe
‘Complex, thought-provoking and pertinent… A clever, partial book, written in a fluent, comfortable narrative style.’
— Financial Times
‘What a really admirable novel. I read The Folded Lie with great pleasure.’
— Fay Weldon
‘The Folded Lie is a timely and perceptive new novel.’
— Tony Benn
ASH BEFORE OAK
JEREMY COOPER
Contents
Title Page
24 December
29 December
1 January
30 March
16 April
6 May
13 May
16 May
3 June
11 June
12 June
17 June
2 July
10 July
13 July
14 July
19 July
28 July
29 July
30 July
31 July
1 August
5 August
6 August
7 August
10 August
11 August
12 August
15 August
16 August
17 August
19 August
22 August
9 September
19 September
21 September
23 September
24 September
26 September
28 September
1 October
2 October
3 October
5 October
7 October
9 October
11 October
12 October
17 October
21 October
24 October
26 October
3 November
5 November
6 November
8 November
9 November
10 November
11 November
12 November
14 November
16 November
21 November
23 November
26 November
29 November
30 November
1 December
2 December
3 December
4 December
7 December
8 December
10 December
11 December
12 December
15 December
16 December
17 December
19 December
20 December
21 December
24 December
25 December
26 December
28 December
30 December
2 January
3 January
5 January
6 January
9 January
10 January
11 January
12 January
13 January
14 January
15 January
16 January
18 January
21 January
29 January
31 January
1 February
8 February
10 February
14 February
22 February
23 February
24 February
25 February
3 March
4 March
5 March
6 March
8 March
9 March
12 March
13 March
14 March
18 March
19 March
21 March
24 March
25 March
27 March
28 March
29 March
30 March
7 April
10 April
11 April
12 April
14 April
15 April
18 April
19 April
20 April
21 April
22 April
23 April
24 April
25 April
26 April
27 April
29 April
2 May
3 May
4 May
5 May
6 May
7 May
8 May
9 May
11 May
14 May
17 May
18 May
19 May
7 June
23 July
3 August
4 August
22 August
2 September
7 September
9 September
11 September
13 September
14 September
15 September
17 September
18 September
19 September
20 September
21 September
22 September
23 September
25 September
28 September
29 September
30 September
3 October
4 October
5 October
6 October
7 October
8 October
9 October
10 October
12 October
14 October
16 October
17 October
19 October
20 October
22 October
24 October
27 October
29 October
5 November
28 November
2 December
31 December
1 January
2 January
3 January
4 January
5 January
6 January
7 January
8 January
10 January
11 January
12 January
14 January
16 January
21 January
27 January
1 February
17 February
18 February
28 March
29 March
2 April
24 April
25 April
29 April
30 April
6 May
10 May
12 May
13 May
14 May
15 May
16 May
17 May
18 May
19 May
20 May
21 May
23 May
24 May
25 May
26 May
27 May
28 May
29 May
30 May
31 May
1 June
3 June
4 June
5 June
7 June
8 June
9 June
11 June
12 June
13 June
15 June
/>
16 June
17 June
18 June
19 June
20 June
21 June
23 June
24 June
26 June
27 June
28 June
29 June
30 June
2 July
4 July
12 July
13 July
15 July
16 July
17 July
18 July
19 July
22 July
23 July
24 July
26 July
27 July
28 July
30 July
31 July
1 August
3 August
4 August
6 August
8 August
9 August
10 August
11 August
14 August
15 August
16 August
17 August
19 August
20 August
10 September
21 September
1 October
2 October
9 October
14 October
15 October
25 October
26 October
28 October
29 October
2 November
3 November
4 November
5 November
6 November
7 November
8 November
9 November
11 November
15 November
19 November
20 November
21 November
23 November
24 November
25 November
28 November
30 November
1 December
2 December
3 December
5 December
6 December
7 December
9 December
11 December
12 December
14 December
15 December
16 December
17 December
18 December
19 December
20 December
21 December
22 December
23 December
24 December
25 December
26 December
28 December
29 December
30 December
2 January
3 January
4 January
5 January
6 January
7 January
8 January
10 January
11 January
12 January
13 January
14 January
15 January
17 January
18 January
19 January
20 January
21 January
22 January
23 January
24 January
25 January
26 January
27 January
28 January
30 January
31 January
1 February
3 February
4 February
5 February
6 February
7 February
8 February
9 February
10 February
11 February
12 February
13 February
14 February
15 February
16 February
17 February
18 February
19 February
20 February
21 February
22 February
23 February
24 February
25 February
26 February
27 February
28 February
29 February
1 March
2 March
3 March
4 March
5 March
6 March
7 March
8 March
9 March
10 March
11 March
12 March
13 March
14 March
15 March
16 March
17 March
18 March
19 March
20 March
21 March
23 March
24 March
25 March
26 March
27 March
28 March
29 March
30 March
31 March
2 April
3 April
4 April
5 April
6 April
7 April
8 April
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
24 December
Today I did a beautiful thing: built a rose arch from timber I had first felled and trimmed. My work is not in itself beautiful, but the act of doing it was, the replacement of a fallen frame, an old rose set to prosper.
In the afternoon I cleared the garden path inside the wall to the lane, so overgrown that few signs remained of it having been a way to walk. The revelation of distant lives, the uncovering of previous care for this place by people past, brings me satisfaction. And meaning. Yesterday I dug down below the bottom garden gate to unveil a grey-stone step. Earlier lives are exposed also in renovation of the building. In construction of the new chimney in what has been a barn for a hundred years or more, I found in the wall the contours of an old hearth, confirming the belief that my to-be-home was once part of a row of four farm worker’s cottages.
Tomorrow is Christmas Day. I am happy to be living here.
29 December
It snowed again last night. Like yesterday, external silence a prize. At 8.15 a.m., while I was out watching the colour of the sky change with the sunrise above the curve of Cothelstone Hill, the post van drove up the lane, and from my box on the wall I picked up a single welcome envelope. After breakfast I took good feelings up by the cascade to a hidden combe and on into the woods. Many sights: a swathe of green watercress where a stream spreads out to pass through a meadow, kept free from ice by birds. Elsewhere, tracks in the snow of pheasant and fox and rabbit and badger and deer and stoat and vole.
Back home, I identified the footfalls of these different animals in a book given to me thirty years ago by a family friend who used to live down here near Taunton. He was kind to me as a boy – the fact that he knew and loved the Quantock Hills and brought me years ago to this land for a mid-summer walk lends to my choice of settling now at Lower Terhill a sense of balance.
I hope this is real feeling, not sentimentality – a fabrication.
1 January
Hope.
And fear.
Together.
30 March
It is March, almost April, and I return to these notes. Work on the adjacent derelict half of my cottage moves ahead, with its solid new roof, window-frames fitted, traditionally done by my neighbour, a master builder.
Discover that burdock is the name of the cabbage-leaved plant I’ve been trying to eradicate from my wood. It’s a kind of thistle, producing burrs – a wild plant with a pedigree as space-filler in both old gardens and picturesque landscape paintings, common in the work of Claude Lorrain. At the annual fair in Queensferry, Edinburgh, the Burry Man covers himself from head to toe in burdock burrs and parades through the streets.
Maybe I’ll leave some plants after all.
Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, artists I admire, illustrate burry men in their book Folk Archive and state in the introduction: ‘As artists we engage in an optimistic journey of personal discovery (albeit often very close to home).’
16 April
On
my first-thing-in-the-morning stroll along the paths through my glades, today I heard, then saw, a lesser spotted woodpecker, upside down near the base of the trunk of the big pine. When it flew away I went over to inspect the spot, and found a hazelnut wedged in a crevice of the trunk. Imagine it will return later to finish off the task of cracking open the shell. I’ve never seen this bird before, smaller than a thrush, with powerful movements of the head.
A beautifully clear windless sunset, heralding summer, and I walked down to see if the hazelnut was still lodged in the bark. It had disappeared. I couldn’t see the broken shell on the ground, so perhaps it was forgotten by the woodpecker and instead found by a squirrel. The bird may on reflection have been a nuthatch, smaller, greyer – lesser spotted woodpeckers are a rarity round here.
Reciting the names of birds and plants is such a British thing to do.
Irritated by my grip on convention.
Only just started this nature-naming business, after thirty years in London, and already tempted to stop.
6 May
Another fine morning. Wonderful the way seasonal change in the fall of light alters the look of familiar paths. Today, on my pre-breakfast inspection, I found myself cutting down, uprooting where I could, vagrant sycamore in the lane – quick-growing trees which push out brash big leaves across the shoots of spindle, hawthorn and the dozens of other plants of an ancient dry-stone bank. This place bears the marks everywhere of hundreds of years of occupation.
As a boy, in the autumn I loved to play with the helicopter seeds of sycamore, unaware of their invasive virulence.
And damning streams, another boyhood passion. There was once a narrow stream here between lane and hedge.
13 May
It is an ordinary robin, I this evening identified, which sings each evening on the same high branch of the black Italian poplar beside the kennels.
Accept the solitude, I tell myself, if that’s how things currently must be. It’s enough this moment to enjoy the sight of the candle-like blooms on the weeping bird cherry tree, released this year by my cuttings and clearings to flourish near the bench. The lowest branch of the Monterey pine is precisely horizontal, the trunk vertical, picture-framing the bench which I’ve had made in hardwood slats, held by a pair of cast-iron ends bought some time ago at the salvage company in Shoreditch, my neighbours then. The trunk of this giant tree is maybe eight foot in diameter at its base, the bark rust-red, fissured, soft.
It doesn’t matter what it’s called.
Isn’t Monterey in America?
I’m perpetually confused these days, when, for dozens of years, I used to be so self-assured.
16 May
There was a handsome young Song Thrush feeding in my garden, diving down from its hiding place in the branches of the Ash to dig for Worms in the lawn, cocking its head to listen. I like the low swoop of its flight between the trees.
I begin to recognize the pairs of individual birds who live here with me at Lower Terhill.