I know it was a Saturday when I first saw the sapling, because it was the same day I drove Lydia to the station, and I don\u2019t like to drive on Saturdays. During the week there are site visits to fit in so I\u2019m expected to drive to the office, to sit queuing for inch-gains of tarmac, to inhale the same invisible particulates as everyone else, to allow my spine to curve into the car-seat shape, soft and passive.<\/p>\n
At the office my childhood conditioning is reasserted. I sit or stand with spine erect as I draw lines. \u2018Don\u2019t slouch boy, it will become a habit.\u2019 My father\u2019s voice. His figure in the coffin remained unbent, a long straight line.<\/p>\n
On weekends I don\u2019t drive. I work in the garden using only manual tools. So, after dropping Lydia at the station and saying an awkward goodbye \u2013 watching her struggle to hoist heavy bags towards the departure door \u2013 I returned home and garaged the car. I headed for the wildest part of the back garden, skirting around the collapsed remains of the insect house, which looked like one of those simulations: the effect of an earthquake on a low storey building. A few dispossessed insects were making their unsteady way across the garden.<\/p>\n
Before Lydia arrived with her soft Welsh lilt and her iconoclastic ideas, I pushed my Silent Cut 21 Reel Mower over the lawn every Friday and the grass was flat and beautiful. An insect could cross it easily.<\/p>\n
Well, that Saturday I began to restore order. First the lawn, then the insect house, then her \u2018wild flower meadow\u2019 borders: tangled, spiky. \u2018Even wild areas need an element of control,\u2019 I\u2019d told her. \u2018There are species which will spread tendrils everywhere if not treated ruthlessly, will strangle everything else if allowed.\u2019<\/p>\n
I\u2019d watched Lydia\u2019s mobile, impermanent mouth flex as she laughed, watched the coloured braids in her hair dance; I\u2019d stopped trying to make her understand.<\/p>\n
The sapling was already settled in when I found it sheltering in the lee of a thistle, growing stealthily. Tree saplings are always obvious, their upright spines, those light green leaves, their attempt \u2013 never very good \u2013 to look just like another weed, innocuous, weak, easy to get rid of. When I yanked the thistle out, the soil around the waving roots spattered back into the ground and the sapling nodded its head.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Lydia was the temporary receptionist at a client site. She appeared one week and when I provided my name asked what colour I was.<\/p>\n
It seemed odd and my chin lifted. \u2018White. Caucasian.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Try again. The closest folders to white were beige and I threw those away, refiled them.\u2019 She climbed onto her rotating chair, which spun.<\/p>\n
\u2018Careful.\u2019<\/p>\n
Her flung arm caught at the shelf of records.<\/p>\n
\u2018What about green?\u2019 She pulled five green wallets out, flicked through.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m filed under \u201cS\u201d.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Not in the new system. \u2018See,\u2019 she gestured. \u2018It looks better.\u2019<\/p>\n
Bands of colour, reds, oranges, yellows, greens and blue. Not quite a rainbow.<\/p>\n
\u2018But if you can\u2019t find\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I always do, eventually. Perhaps,\u2019 she said, \u2018you\u2019re a closet orange.\u2019<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
On each visit, while I sat on the only upright chair, waiting, Lydia chatted. She asked questions, was never satisfied with standard answers.<\/p>\n
\u2018But what do you really do, each day?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I squeeze,\u2019 I admitted, at last. \u2018I fit houses into small spaces \u2013 squares, triangles, misshapes of land. I produce white and black drawings of little \u201cPete Seeger\u201d boxes, and they get built.\u2019<\/p>\n
Her eyes blanked at the folk-singer\u2019s name, but what she asked was, \u2018Doesn\u2019t it hurt?\u2019<\/p>\n
Her ringing phone seemed a welcome distraction.<\/p>\n
\u2018Is it what you dreamed of?\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Your phone.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018They\u2019ll wait.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018What about you? This is hardly \u2013\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Oh, this isn\u2019t permanent. If I stay too long, anywhere, employers get restless.\u2019<\/p>\n
I eyed the ringing phone, the colour-coordinated records, the cup on the windowsill filled with browning rose petals and water.<\/p>\n
\u2018They don\u2019t like your\u2026\u2019 I rejected several words, settled on, \u2018\u2026idiosyncrasies?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Uh?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Quirks.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Good word.\u2019 She put a cushion over the ringing phone. \u2018You\u2019re right, they don\u2019t. But I\u2019m a temp. By the time they discover them, I\u2019m already half-gone. There\u2019s no point in firing me.\u2019<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
When my client\u2019s receptionist returned, Lydia moved in with me.<\/p>\n
\u2018Just temporary-like. Until you discover my\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I know.\u2019 I\u2019d cut her off.<\/p>\n
She brought chaos into my life: burnt toast in the kitchen, spread hues of colour through my shirts as they churned and twisted round her African cottons, rearranged furniture into an obstacle course.<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s feng shui,\u2019 she said, \u2018I read it in a book once.\u2019<\/p>\n
She hung bird feeders on the budded branches of my discovery apple tree, confiscated my slug pellets, and of course \u2013 built an insect house.<\/p>\n
She talked to the neighbours, brought back details, names: Eddie next door, \u2018bought that boat as a wreck, spent years making it sea-worthy.\u2019 At the weekends, her gaze would trail the hauling car, the swaying boat, until he rounded the corner.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019ve never yet lived on the sea,\u2019 she said. \u2018Only ever crossed it.\u2019<\/p>\n
She got a job on a steamer. \u2018Only temporary-like, until they\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n
She\u2019d waited for me to cut her off, to save her the hassle of finishing the sentence. But my lips were pressed together.<\/p>\n
She left me the bird feeders, the feng shui obstacle course, the colour-streaked shirts. I don\u2019t understand what happened with the insect house. Maybe I just wanted to see her face in the morning. But she never looked in the garden, just dragged her bags out to the car. So perhaps she, and not I, was the one who stamped on it. Although the footprint looks suspiciously large \u2013 and her feet are slender, nimble, good for skipping away, dancing on the earth. Not so good for rooting.<\/p>\n
I left the tree sapling where it was. Even though I know that if you don\u2019t get them out early, they\u2019re absolute buggers to shift.<\/p>\n
THE END<\/p>\n