The Tree that Sat Down

by Beverley Nichols

  ‘I flatter myself that he won’t be too slippery for me,’ retorted Mr Tortoise. ‘In fact, there’s only one thing I’m worried about.’

  ‘What is it?’ they both demanded.

  Mr Tortoise did not answer for a moment. He was looking up through the branches of the Tree, as though he were searching for something, staring with narrowed eyes at the sky, as though it held some secret that he could not unravel.

  Judy followed his gaze. ‘What are you looking for, Mr Tortoise?’

  He still did not answer her.

  ‘You’ll give me the creeps if you go on like that,’ sniffed Mrs Judy. ‘To say nothing of a crick in the neck.’

  Slowly Mr Tortoise looked down again.

  ‘I don’t understand it,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Understand what?’ cried Mrs Judy.

  ‘The weather,’ he murmured absently.

  ‘Is that all?’ Mrs Judy gave a croaking laugh. ‘Who ever did understand the weather, I’d like to know? Good heavens, I thought it was something serious!’

  ‘For all we know, madam, it may be very serious indeed.’

  His tone was so grave, and he looked at her with so strange an expression, that she stopped laughing.

  ‘What is it, Mr Tortoise?’ asked Judy, in a gentle voice. ‘Even if it is something dreadful, I think we ought to know. We shan’t … we shan’t be afraid.’

  Mr Tortoise sighed. ‘It may be only my fancy,’ he said, ‘but no less than three times today I could have sworn I saw his face in the clouds.’

  ‘Whose face?’ they demanded in astonishment.

  Once again Mr Tortoise stared up to the sky.

  ‘The face of the Clerk of the Weather!’

  There was a breathless hush; they seemed to be waiting for something.

  And then it came. From its deepest roots to its highest branches, the Tree trembled. There could be no mistake about it. There was not a breath of wind; the air was so still that the lightest feather would have sunk straight to earth. Yet the Tree shook and trembled – its thousands of leaves, some still green, some already golden with the coming of autumn, shivered and shimmered in the sunlight, and many of them fell at that moment, spinning and drifting down towards them.

  ‘You see?’ whispered Mr Tortoise. ‘The Tree feels it too!’

  ‘But what does it mean?’ asked Mrs Judy in a scared voice.

  ‘It means that the Clerk of the Weather is up to something.’

  ‘I didn’t even know there was such a person,’ confessed Judy.

  ‘Then the sooner you learn, the better.’ He took one more look up to the sky. There was a single dark cloud, floating rapidly towards the sun, but he could not see any face in it. ‘Yes, he’s certainly up to something.’

  ‘Do you think the Witch has been putting ideas into his head?’

  Mr Tortoise laughed scornfully. ‘The Clerk of the Weather has no need of witches. He’s more powerful than all the world’s witches put together.’

  ‘Please tell us about him!’ cried Judy, who was eager to learn more of this remarkable person.

  ‘Yes, please do!’ urged Mrs Judy. ‘It’ll take our minds off this dreadful business tomorrow.’

  The Clerk of the Weather – so Mr Tortoise told them – is of all persons in the world the most moody, the most fickle, and the most difficult to please.

  Many, many hundreds of years ago, he was an angel, but he was turned out of heaven for the most extraordinary reason.

  *

  This is what Mr Tortoise told her.

  The Clerk of the Weather has three houses. One at the North Pole, one at the South Pole and one on the Equator. The houses at the North and South Poles are both made out of blocks of ice; but the house on the Equator is more like a huge tent. The principal piece of furniture in all the three houses is an immense desk. It is so large that if you were to clear it of all its books and papers you could play tennis on it.

  Each of the three desks is divided into five sections, representing the Continents of America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. And each of these five sections has five inkpots and five pens.

  There is an inkpot full of chilled water, with a pen of ice – which never melts, so that when the Clerk of the Weather wants some part of the world to be very cold, he writes the word ‘Freezing’ in the ledger, against the country in question.

  There is an inkpot that is full of bubbles, with a goose’s quill which never stops whirling round and round; and the Clerk of the Weather snatches it when he feels he wants the wind to blow, and writes – ‘Wind’ over some page of the book (he has to hold tight to the pen while he is writing, or it might fly out of his hand).

  There is an inkpot full of ordinary rain-water, which of course is for ‘Rain’, and another full of very hot red ink, which is for ‘Heat’.

  But perhaps the most remarkable of all the inkpots is the one for ‘Earthquakes’, because there is no ink in it at all. It is merely a pen standing in a jar, and it looks quite harmless; but if you were to touch it you would find that it gave you a sharp electric shock. Even when the Clerk of the Weather uses it his fingers tingle so fiercely that he can only hold it for a very few moments, which is the reason why earthquakes are usually so short. This pen writes with jagged, sweeping strokes that jump all over the page, and the nib is so sharp that often it digs right into the page.

  There are all sorts of other exciting things to be found at the headquarters of the Clerk of the Weather. For instance, there is a whole aviary full of Fog Birds, who are the most remarkable creatures, with bodies made out of grey mist and long draggled wings that are really wisps of clouds. Nobody has ever caught a Fog Bird, because as soon as you try to catch it, it melts away. When the Clerk of the Weather wants to start a fog he opens the door of a cage and sends the Fog Bird on its journey. It drifts off into the sky and when it has found the right place it hovers around looking for a small cloud. Then it makes a nest in the cloud, lays an egg, and flies home again. As soon as the egg is laid, it grows and grows, and swells and swells, till finally it bursts and out of it pours a dense fog which spreads far and wide. The Fog Birds are moody, restless creatures, and the Clerk of the Weather has never been able to train them as strictly as he would have liked. For some reason or other, which he has never been able to understand, they have always been very attracted to the City of London, and when he has sent them to France or Russia or Norway they have disobeyed him and flown straight off to London instead. Sometimes, on a raw November morning, when a yellow tinge creeps over the sky, and the streets grow so dark that the lamps must be lit at noon, you can look up and see – very faintly – the draggled wings of the Fog Birds, fluttering among the clouds, preparing to lay their eggs.

  All these things, and many more, Mr Tortoise told to Judy and her grannie; by the time he had finished it was quite dark. So he bade them an affectionate goodnight and left them, like sensible people, to get a good night’s rest before their great ordeal on the morrow.

  Chapter Seventeen

  JUSTICE IS DONE

  THE GREAT DAY dawned at last, and it was a day of rising wind and angry broken clouds.

  ‘I should say it was going to rain,’ said Mrs Peacock as she called her husband in the early light of morning.

  ‘You always say it is going to rain,’ he snapped, blinking his sleepy eyes. Which was quite true; Mrs Peacock was so afraid of his Opening in bad weather, and spoiling his tail, that she always feared the worst.

  ‘When were you thinking of Opening?’ she enquired, timidly.

  Mr Peacock snorted. ‘Really! What a question to ask before breakfast!’

  ‘I only wondered if it would be before or after the verdict?’

  To tell the truth, Mr Peacock had been wondering the same thing himself. Ought he, as Foreman of the Jury, to Open as soon as the judge appeared? If so, it would be difficult to close again, without looking disrespectful. And it would be very fatiguing to keep Open throughout the entire trial. On t
he whole, he thought it would be better to Open at the precise moment that he delivered the verdict. He had acted the part many times in his own head.

  Mr Justice Owl would say:

  ‘Have you reached a verdict, Mr Foreman?’

  ‘Yes, Your Worship,’ he would reply.

  ‘And what is it, Mr Foreman?’

  And here, Mr Peacock thought, he would pause, with the eyes of the whole Court upon him. And very slowly, very deliberately, he would Open, so that his tail would be like the glittering shield of Justice itself. And out of that blaze of colour, that bonfire of blues and reds and greens, would come his voice:

  ‘Guilty!’

  For he had no doubt whatever that Sam was guilty. If anybody was so silly as to suggest that he wasn’t he would just sit down and sulk and refuse ever to Open again.

  He did not say all those things to Mrs Peacock; she would not have understood. He merely said:

  ‘Kindly leave matters of law to those who understand it.’

  Similar little squabbles and arguments were in progress all over the wood, as the animals swallowed their breakfasts and hurried to the Court. Long before nine o’clock it was full to overflowing; there was not an inch of grass nor even a tiny log to spare, and the branches of the trees were so heavily loaded with birds that they seemed to be laden with strange exotic blossoms. Even Mr and Mrs Seagull had flown inland for the occasion, and were perched on the end of an apple-bough, where they looked very white and elegant against the red fruit.

  *

  Meanwhile, Mr Justice Owl, who had been sitting up all night poring over the facts of the case, was watching the sand trickling through the hour-glass and feeling – though nobody would have guessed it to look at him – exceedingly nervous. There were a number of features about this trial which he did not like at all, features which disturbed and bewildered him. Miss Smith, for example. He had good reason to suppose that Miss Smith was on the right side, and would do all in her power to bring Sam to justice; none the less, she was a Human – at least she was shaped like a Human – and since she was also a witch, there was no knowing what tricks she might not play.

  ‘Humans!’ moaned Mr Justice Owl, moving restlessly up and down on his perch. ‘Heaven deliver me from Humans!’

  ‘You called, Your Worship?’

  It was PC Monkey who spoke. He had just been out to take a final look at Sam, who was still as sullen and silent as ever.

  Mr Justice Owl blinked at him. ‘How much longer is there to go?’ he demanded.

  PC Monkey glanced at the hour-glass. ‘About seven minutes, Your Worship.’ Then, in a timid voice, and with a nervous grin, he murmured … ‘This is a great day, Your Worship.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Mr Justice Owl raised his huge black eyebrows. ‘In what respect is it a great day?’

  PC Monkey started to scratch himself, and then stopped abruptly, under the warning glare of those piercing eyes. ‘Well, Your Worship … the trial, and the murder …’

  ‘Attempted murder,’ corrected Mr Justice Owl.

  ‘Just as you say, Your Worship,’ he stammered. ‘And Sam, and all these Humans.’

  ‘Humans!’ Mr Justice Owl closed his eyes, and assumed the most pained expression. ‘Humans!’ he cried. ‘How wonderful the world would be without them! The other day I read a report in the paper … needless to say it was a Human paper … in which a number of Humans were blamed for “behaving like sheep – going about in herds and not thinking for themselves”. Did you ever hear of such impertinence? It is an insult to the noble and peaceful family of Sheep. It is the Humans who go about in herds and don’t think for themselves! Look at the way they make war! Sheep would never be so foolish, nor would any other animal. Did you ever hear of a lot of sheep suddenly leaving their homes and their pastures and going off to fight, let us say, a herd of zebras whom they’d never even met, just because some silly sheep had told them that the zebras wore striped coats, and that anybody who wore a striped coat must be their enemy? That is exactly what Humans are doing all the time. Look at their dreadful way of waging war in the air. If I have a fight in the air, it is because I am attacked. I fight for my life. But what would you think of me if I were to take a rock and fly off with it to a farmyard and just drop it in the middle of a basket of eggs? That is what the Humans call “bombing”. They all do it, and they think it is wonderful, and they give medals to the Humans who break the most eggs. To me, it is all sheer folly and wickedness. I have very little hope for the Human race … very little. It will take them at least a million years to reach the level of animals … and long before then, I am afraid that they will all have killed each other off.’

  He closed his eyes once more, and shook his head.

  There was silence, except for the moan of the rising wind.

  PC Monkey looked at the hour-glass.

  ‘Your Worship,’ he said, ‘it is time.’

  Mr Justice Owl blinked, ruffled his feathers, and cleared his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was clear and cold, the perfect voice for a judge.

  ‘We will proceed.’

  He fluttered down from his perch.

  ‘You have my papers?’

  ‘Yes, Your Worship.’

  ‘And my glasses?’

  PC Monkey produced them.

  Mr Justice Owl put them on, and glanced at the list. By now, he was completely master of himself, and was no longer feeling nervous; in fact, he was beginning to enjoy himself immensely. Then he waved his claw. ‘You may lead the way.’

  *

  The Court rose at the entrance of Mr Justice Owl, who fluttered up to his judicial perch in the shelter of an overhanging rock. Judy, her grannie and Mr Tortoise walked over to a bench reserved for them by the side of the Jury Box. (Sam was still chained up in the barn.)

  For a moment there was silence. Then, in ringing tones, Mr Justice Owl cried: ‘Swelpmegod!’

  And everybody sat down.

  The next few minutes seemed to Judy to pass in a dream. She saw Mr Tortoise walk slowly to the centre, and bow to Mr Justice Owl, who returned the bow and proceeded to address a few carefully chosen sentences to the Jury, explaining the nature of the case and telling them to keep their minds open and to return a fair verdict.

  ‘That is all I shall say for the moment,’ he said. ‘I leave the case, for the time being, in the able hands of my learned friend, Mr Tortoise.’

  Even then, everything seemed misty and unreal; Judy had a curious sense that these things were not actually happening, that she was only listening to somebody telling her a story. She saw Bruno lumber up, and take his place in the box as the first witness, and she heard him stammering out the story of all the uncanny events of the past few weeks … but though she knew that he was speaking nothing but the truth, the voice seemed to come from a great distance, and it was as though he were speaking of somebody in a fairy tale rather than her own self.

  It was only when Bruno had finished his evidence and stumbled down from the witness box that Judy really woke up. It would indeed have been difficult for anybody, to remain aloof at that moment, for the whole Court burst into applause – never did you hear such a clapping of paws and tapping of beaks and thumping of tails. Bruno stared around him, bewildered, the tears starting to his eyes, and then hurried over to sit with Mrs Bruno, who clasped his paw in silent sympathy.

  ‘Order! Order!’ cried Mr Justice Owl. ‘If there are any more demonstrations, I shall clear the Court.’ He glared at them all very fiercely from under his glasses. ‘Next witness, please!’

  ‘Miss Smith!’ cried PC Monkey. ‘Forward, Miss Smith.’

  As his voice rang up to the trees, it seemed to echo and echo through the branches, and every echo was a hiss, like the hiss of a snake – Miss s s s Sssssmith – Miss s s s Sssssmith! Far and wide spread the echoes, rising and falling, and they were caught up by the wind which had grown fiercer and colder as soon as her name was called.

  Suddenly Judy felt a trembling hand on her shoulder.
It was her grannie.

  ‘What is the matter, Grannie?’

  ‘I don’t like the look of things,’ she whispered. ‘I have just seen his face!’

  ‘Whose face?’

  ‘The Clerk of the Weather!’

  Judy stared quickly up to the sky. ‘I can see nothing.’

  ‘No – he’s gone again. But he was there a moment ago – when they called her name.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘I only saw the face. But it was like a great mountain through the clouds – and it was grey and sharp and angry.’

  ‘Why should he be angry?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he obviously is. Listen to this wind!’ She shook her head and muttered, ‘I don’t know how the Tree will stand it!’

  But even as she spoke, the wind died down again, and in the sudden hush the voice of PC Monkey was heard once more crying, ‘Miss Smith!’

  This time there were no echoes, and at last Miss Smith appeared.

  She stepped out from behind the big pear tree where she had been hiding, putting the finishing touches to her appearance. As she walked forward, the animals gasped with astonishment; never had they seen so beautiful a young lady. For Miss Smith had dressed herself to kill; she had on a brand new nose; she had sprinkled gold-dust on her wig, and had put magic drops in her eyes to make them very large and sparkling. Her dress was made of a shimmering silver brocade, and in her hair – or rather her wig – she wore a diamond tiara. It was not really made of diamonds of course, but of glass; however, the animals could not be expected to know that.

  ‘Quite an aristocrat,’ whispered Mrs Peacock, who had noticed that Mr Peacock was preening himself and turning his tail so that Miss Smith could see it to its fullest advantage.

  Mr Peacock was inclined to agree, but he did not like to have his opinions given to him by his wife. So he snapped, ‘Quite … they are always the worst,’ thereby causing poor Mrs Peacock to feel that once again she had said the wrong thing.

  Miss Smith mounted the box, murmuring ‘Swelpmegod’ as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and Mr Tortoise proceeded to examine her. The following dialogue ensued.