Chances

by Freya North

  Oliver abseiled down from the oak and took the phone from Spike.

  ‘This is Oliver Bourne.’

  ‘Well, this is Vita Whitbury and I have a dangerous pear tree that really needs to come down as soon as possible.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Can you come soon?’

  ‘I can come soon to assess it, certainly.’

  ‘Today, though – can you come today? I’ve taken the rest of the day off work. Can you come please, as soon as possible?’

  Oliver looked at his watch. No, not really – by the time they finished here it would be clocking-off time. He offered tomorrow but she heaved out such a distressed sigh.

  ‘Off all the tree companies, I picked yours because your name is like mine.’

  Oliver didn’t think she’d said her name was Olivia.

  ‘I’m Vita, and Arbor Vitae means tree of life – but my tree is killing me. Please come.’

  ‘Look, where are you?’

  ‘I live in the Tree Houses – well, it’s called Mill Lane and I’m at the end.’ She started to impart an extraordinary amount of detail as if directing someone with low intelligence, poor eyesight and no sense of direction.

  ‘I know where you are,’ Oliver said patiently. And he did. In fact, from the yard he passed by quite close on his way home. ‘I’ll swing by and assess your Pyrus periculum.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Vita said, taking comfort from the Latin though all Oliver had said was dangerous pear. ‘Thank you so much.’

  Flower Man and Tree Fella

  Suzie liked it when Tim sounded pissed off with Vita. Even though it made him fractious and distracted, in general she much preferred it to when he checked his phone intently and went out of his way not to mention his ex.

  ‘How the fuck does she think we’re ever going to make enough when she fucks off early the whole time?’

  Suzie was just going to open her mouth to give her twopence worth when she realized he wasn’t actually asking her opinion. Just like when he’d said who the fuck did Vita think she was. Suzie was absolutely ready to say, I know, why can’t she leave us alone – but Tim had bulldozed on with further grievances.

  ‘Seriously. I swung by the shop at tea-time – the busiest time – and it’s all shut up! She didn’t even put one of her flowery handwritten signs in the door!’

  Suzie felt momentary alarm. Why was he swinging by there? Just to drop in? Or had he already prearranged to? He hadn’t made that clear. She felt anxious.

  ‘And she’s not answering her phone.’

  And Suzie wondered, Does he have Vita on speed dial? If so, is she higher up than my number?

  ‘I’ve a good mind to go over to her place – see what the hell’s going on.’

  ‘Don’t do that!’ Suzie leapt at the notion. He’d said he’d never been. Why start now – even if it was to have an argument?

  Tim looked surprised. Suzie quickly backtracked. ‘She’s probably not there anyway – you’ll just waste a journey. And you haven’t been there before anyway, have you.’ She hadn’t made that sound enough like a question. ‘Have you?’ She made sure it now sounded as if she was wracking her own brains over something so irrelevant she hadn’t bothered to commit it to memory. ‘She’s probably gone to get her nails done or something.’

  Tim laughed. Not at Suzie, but at the concept of Vita taking herself off to have her nails done. She always kept them filed short and never varnished them. He’d never really thought about it until then. And then he glanced at Suzie’s acrylics with the squared-off white tips and he thought how he really didn’t find them that attractive but how he hadn’t really noticed them either, until now. They were part of the package; the look, the type. You couldn’t have the legs and the boobs and the fawning over him without the rest of it. It was the deal. And, at the moment, with his ridiculous ex behaving like a total idiot, Suzie was the better option.

  ‘Just phone her again,’ Suzie said, making out the shape of his phone in his trousers. A pocketful of secrets.

  ‘I told you – I have. Her phone’s off.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Suzie huffed petulantly and flounced down on the sofa, flicking crossly through a magazine.

  The doorbell went. Tree man, thought Vita, rushing to open it. Rick was the last person on her mind but there he was, standing on the doorstep with a cockily raised eyebrow and a bunch of supermarket flowers with the 20%-extra-free label facing her.

  ‘Now, lady,’ he said, inviting himself in, ‘I did leave messages. And then you half-phoned me before it cut out. Like I said, I was in the area – but when I went to your shop, it was closed. So I reckoned I’d swing by – and see if everything is all right.’

  Vita didn’t look good. She looked messy, tired, and agitated. Her eyes were red and darting and she had a dreadful red thing on her cheek.

  ‘I have a wasp problem,’ she said, cupping her hand protectively over her jaw, ‘and I’m expecting this guy any minute now.’

  ‘Yuk,’ said Rick, inspecting her stings and not liking the look of them. ‘Do you want a drink later? Or would you like to go straight to bed, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred pounds?’

  Just then, Vita didn’t want to smile politely or laugh awkwardly; in fact, she was so preoccupied she didn’t even get his allusion to Monopoly. None of this was a game to her. She wanted the wasps gone and, just then, she wanted Rick gone too. ‘Another time?’ She didn’t have the energy for the soliloquy she’d practised; vagueness would have to do even if it complicated things in the long run.

  ‘I can see you’re a little distracted. How about later? Thing is, I’m avoiding Witch Woman who apparently needs to come over this evening to search for yet more non-existent items she’s convinced she’s left.’

  And then Vita thought of Witch Woman, whose name she might not even know but for whom, just then, she felt great empathy. ‘Perhaps she’s lonely,’ she found herself saying, ‘perhaps she’s sad, perhaps she wants to be near all the elements of her old life. Perhaps she just wants to see you. Because she misses you. Because she’s sad.’

  Rick looked at Vita as if her theory was the most crackpot one he’d ever heard. ‘Er, she’s sad all right. Anyway, call me later,’ he said, ‘let me know.’ He was about to clarify that he meant about the drink, as well as the wasps, but Vita was already looking over his shoulder. He turned and regarded a truck pulling up on the other side of the road. ‘Look, call me when the Tree Fella has gone,’ he said, laughing at his wit and taking the flowers with him.

  They passed each other along the path. The tree man thought he heard the flower man mutter, They’re not for her, as he used the bunch of flowers to swat at a wasp.

  ‘I’m looking for Miss Whitbury?’

  ‘I am – Miss Whitbury,’ Vita replied, suddenly deciding if she kept things nice and formal, and didn’t offer tea and biscuits and larky chatter, then this man could knuckle down to the job. His truck looked the part, certainly. He could chop the tree down and then chip it with that big machine.

  ‘Oliver Bourne,’ he said, extending his hand. Everything about him was warm: his smile, his voice, his hand and his handshake, the sandy colour of his hair, the deep brown of his eyes. She felt immediately confident that he’d look after things. She liked his rugged work trousers, the dark green well-worn T-shirt with the company motif in gold. She liked the motif – a sort of abstract tree of knowledge or tree of life and again, she thought, Here’s a bloke who knows.

  ‘Show me the problem, then.’

  ‘Here,’ said Vita, showing him her arms, pointing at her ankle, turning her face to show him the other cheek, then giving him a sore and slightly swollen thumbs-up. He looked at her, and politely regarded the stings whilst quietly wondering if she was waiting for a doctor and had somehow mistaken him.

  ‘The tree?’ he said.

  ‘Oh God, yes, of course. The tree did this anyway, that’s why it must go.’

  ‘The tree. Did this to you,’ Oliver said quietly. W
hat a case to end a day’s work. He stooped to untie his boots.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about those,’ Vita said, leading the way into her house. ‘I would, normally – but these are exceptional circumstances and there’s no time to lose.’

  The smells in the house accosted Oliver at once: woman’s things like candles and drying laundry. It was a comforting fragrance. She wasn’t as he’d imagined; he’d thought she’d be wild-haired and odd, older, surrounded by cats and wall-hangings – but this Miss Whitbury looked very normal, even with an angry sting on her cheek. Her place was homely and she was leading him through to the kitchen, pointing out the small garden beyond, as if some rabid dog was lurking at large.

  ‘It’s out there,’ she said.

  Oliver thought, That’s a beautiful tree.

  Even now, all these years on, seeing a new tree was such an uplifting sight.

  ‘Can you cut it down now, do you think?’

  ‘Cut it down?’ He started to laugh. ‘That tree?’

  ‘You have to. It’s a danger.’ Oliver looked at her. She was obviously dead serious. Her eyes appeared to have turned navy with graveness – he’d thought they were green when she was on her doorstep showing him her stings. ‘If not now – when, then?’

  He looked at the tree and then back to her again, standing there all fiery and indignant. ‘Clarify danger,’ he said. He could do with a cup of tea.

  ‘It’s a constant danger,’ said Vita.

  And one of those chocolate digestives he could see on the worktop.

  ‘Throughout the year,’ she was saying. ‘Apart from midwinter, I suppose.’

  She was too young to be batty. It was all a bit odd really, yet quietly amusing and a little intriguing. ‘Could I trouble you for a cup of tea?’

  Vita glanced at the kettle. Then at Oliver Bourne, standing in her kitchen, broad-shouldered and softly spoken. A tanned friendly face and strong brown forearms. The company logo on his sweatshirt – his company. A specialist. Approved. Registered. She thought, I’d better not piss him off. She thought, I’ll bet it’s hard work, chopping down a tree. No biscuits, though. And no irrelevant chat.

  ‘Milk?’ she asked. ‘Sugar?’

  ‘Yes and two. Milk in first, please – makes such a difference. And a chocolate digestive too, if you can spare one.’

  She couldn’t now not offer him a biscuit, could she. He’d thrown her off balance and yet she felt strangely comforted by him, by his calmness, his experience, his gentle strength.

  ‘Are you not having one?’ It was the way he said it, as if to say, Come on, Miss Whitbury, take a load off. Have a cuppa. I’m here now. So she made herself a cup too.

  He had sat himself down, right there at her rickety kitchen table. She was bemused more than indignant. She thought back to Tim telling her once about people skills, about how to deflect confrontation, about how to diffuse tension. She was always aware when he was using them on her – so patronizing that she’d felt trapped, beaten into submission, denied the ability to vent, to express herself, even to simply say, But.

  Oliver Bourne, however, sitting in her kitchen with his tan and his sun-tipped hair, was different. He seemed – natural. He probably hadn’t thought, Silly cow, calm down. He was probably just dying for tea and a sugar rush after a full day’s work chopping wood or whatever he’d been doing. Vita leant against the sink, cupping her mug for a long moment, feeling calmer with the first sip.

  ‘It’s good to have a hot drink on a warm day – it actually cools the blood, sends the capillaries closer to the surface, tricks the body into cooling itself down,’ he said.

  ‘Tea calms me down, rather than cools me down,’ Vita said, ‘though I only ever drink half a cup. Even if I make half a cup, I just drink half of that. For me, it’s the process, I’d be happy enough just making the tea and holding the cup.’

  Oliver smiled. ‘My staff are mainly in their twenties – brawny, beefy guys who strip off their shirts and work up a sweat and can’t figure out why, when they down can after can of ice-cold drinks, they’re still hot and I’m there fully clothed, drinking tea and not breaking a sweat.’

  Vita thought, I like hearing this man talk – his voice is as soothing as a cup of tea. She felt herself unwinding. She thought about offering another biscuit. But then she thought, I can’t bear another day with that bloody tree. She placed the bottom of the hot mug over the sting on her forearm. The immediate discomfort subsided into numbness and relief and the soothing cool when the mug was lifted away.

  ‘You said the tree did that?’

  She nodded. Showed him her non-bending thumb, tipped her face back so he could see the sting on her jaw and those on her ankle, shin, elbow. He winced sympathetically. ‘The wasps did that,’ she said.

  He could see they were wasp stings. ‘And the wasps are –’

  ‘In the tree,’ Vita said. ‘All over the place.’

  ‘That’ll be the pears.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Stings weren’t much fun – it was an occupational hazard of his job. They could make a person as agitated as the wasp had been to sting in the first place. He’d go softly with this girl. ‘I might not be the right person – you may need pest control.’

  ‘Pest Off.’

  ‘I would be too.’

  Vita smiled. ‘No, I mean I called a company called Pest Off – they’ve been already.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Told me to call a tree man.’ She looked at Oliver. ‘Is that what you are?’

  ‘I’m an arboricultural consultant,’ he said. She liked the word consultant – it implied top of the – well – tree. ‘But you can call me a tree man, if you like. I think of myself as a tree geek, really.’ He finished his tea. ‘Come on then, Miss Whitbury, let’s take a look, shall we?’

  ‘I’m staying in here, thank you very much.’

  She watched from the kitchen window, watched as he walked calmly all around the tree, looking up, down, coming in close and sitting on his heels to inspect the base of the trunk. He walked to the back of the garden and then back to the tree, did the same from the kitchen, saluting Vita when he caught her eye which made her smile and salute back. He picked up a fallen pear. She saw a wasp fly from it and back to it. He put it back down, slowly. How was he not stung? He stood for a while longer, hands on hips. Then he came back in.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, ‘thank you.’

  ‘Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘There are a lot of wasps,’ he agreed. ‘A lot of fallen pears. You really need to clear them daily – you’re not helping the problem.’

  ‘You can’t seriously expect me to go out there daily?’ she said, as if he was telling her to take her life in her hands.

  ‘Husband?’ She shook her head. ‘Boyfriend? Brother? Dad?’

  ‘I’m an only child, my dad died when I was fourteen and I don’t have – I’m not –. I’m single.’

  She appeared to be close to tears. He spoke quietly, almost apologetically. ‘I can’t chop down a tree because wasps are eating its fruit.’

  ‘But it’s dangerous!’

  ‘The tree itself isn’t – it’s in good health.’

  ‘But the parrots!’

  ‘The – what?’

  ‘Every morning, at the crack of dawn, these parrots come. Hundreds of them.’

  ‘Hundreds?’

  ‘About six. Or five.’

  ‘Are they green?’

  ‘Yes. And they scream and attack the pears and then the pears fall. Donk. Donk. Donk. At the crack of dawn. Then they go and the wasps come. Till dusk. It’s a dreadful, dangerous cycle.’

  ‘It’s a bizarre ecosystem for Hertfordshire, I’ll grant you.’

  ‘But it’s my first summer here – in this house. And it’s turning into a nightmare. That’s why you need to do something. Please! Isn’t it obvious? No tree – no parrots. No parrots – no fallen pears. No fallen pears – no wasps. No danger
.’

  ‘I can’t chop the tree down because of wasps and parrots.’

  ‘I need you to – it’s, it’s . . .’ But suddenly she felt acutely self-conscious.

  ‘It’s what?’

  That gentle voice of his, the level gaze with the soft brown eyes.

  ‘Ruining my life.’ It sounded ridiculously melodramatic.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Now his calmness, his control, irked her.

  ‘Yes, I’m bloody sure – I moved here because I had to. Because I needed a fresh start. It hasn’t been easy. It’s been bloody difficult. Still is, sometimes. And this tree is now seriously affecting my life. My happiness, my sense of security and well-being are all under threat.’

  Don’t laugh, Oliver. Poor girl. She’s in a right old state.

  He had an urge to make her another cup of tea, just to hold or to place over the sting. To sit her down for a while and cheer her up. Then he thought, What am I thinking! Procedure! Think procedure! In itself, it should leave her with a little bit of hope, for the time being at least.

  ‘Look, I will see what I can do. But I can’t do anything tonight. I can put in an application for you, if you like. It’s the steps you have to go through, I’m afraid. I know the officer who oversees tree planning at the council very well. I will make the case for you.’

  ‘You can’t cut it down today?’ She was desolate.

  ‘Not today. Let’s see what Martin says. He’ll call round soon. He’s good like that.’

  ‘In the meantime?’ Her voice wasn’t rising, it was cracking.

  ‘Earplugs? Long sleeves? You have to try and work with what’s going on here, not against it.’

  ‘I haven’t slept properly for days.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ And he genuinely sounded it. ‘They’re not parrots, they’re parakeets.’

  ‘What are they doing in my garden? Why are they even here? Shouldn’t they be somewhere tropical?’

  Oliver smiled. ‘They’re from the Wynfordbury Estate.’

  ‘I don’t know what that is.’

  ‘Wynfordbury Hall? Just near here – it’s still owned by the Earls of Seddon. The Victorian earl had an aviary – as was fashionable at the time. And some of the birds escaped – and liked the surroundings and have stayed ever since. I see them up Flamford way too – there’s an orchard I maintain there. The poor owner only ever harvests half the fruit that grows – the rest is rotten. You should see his wasps. Makes yours seem as innocuous as butterflies.’