THE TRYSTING TREE by Linda Gillard Page A

dragging me over the sill. I yelled, “Mum!” even though I knew Phoebe wouldn’t hear me above the din which had now reached a frenzied crescendo. Unable to shut the window, I had to let it go and winced as the draught slammed the bedroom door behind me. Grabbing my dressing gown, I pushed my feet into some shoes, opened the door and ran downstairs, tearing through the hall and into the kitchen where I found the back door open and swinging. I hurled myself into the wind and headed for the studio.
    When I reached Phoebe, I put an arm round her in an attempt to keep her upright and yelled, ‘Mum, what on earth are you doing ? Get indoors! A tree could fall any minute.’
    ‘I needed to move the canvasses,’ she wailed. ‘Just in case.’
    ‘Give it to me, I’ll bring it in. Get indoors now. Go on ! It’s not worth getting killed for a painting – even one of yours. Get inside, please .’
    She staggered towards the back door, mounted the step with difficulty, then turned to watch as I struggled across the garden. The canvas resisted the wind like a sail and a sudden vicious gust wrapped my dressing gown round my legs, almost lifting me off my feet. I stumbled, but got as far as the step where Phoebe was waiting, arms outstretched to take the canvas from me.
    ‘Oh, well done!’ she gasped as we both fell into the kitchen. ‘I couldn’t sleep for worrying about it and I had such a bad feeling.’ She sank down on to a chair. ‘Thank you, Ann.’
    I turned away, intending to shut the back door, but froze as I heard a long, loud groan, punctuated with cracking sounds, like a volley of shots being fired. Alarmed, Phoebe got to her feet. We stood side by side in the open doorway, clutching each other, speechless with terror as we watched the descent of a beech as it described an impossibly slow arc across our field of vision. It just missed the studio but flattened the shed as if it had been a Wendy house. The tree’s crown, a massive tangle of branches, filled the garden where, moments ago, Phoebe and I had been arguing.
    We stood gaping at the fallen tree which looked twice as big now it was horizontal. Stunned, tearful, I reached for my mother’s hand and squeezed it, unable to speak. She managed a wheezy little chuckle and said, ‘Well, that was lucky, wasn’t it?’
     
    ~
     
    The clear-up took days. When they found the rusty tin in a hollow in the trunk, I set it aside for Connor who I thought might like to see the seed packets. When he came back at the weekend to work in the walled garden, the fallen beech was gone apart from its massive, upended stump, as big as a dining table. Delighted by the hundreds of concentric rings revealed on the cut surface, Phoebe had decided to keep it.
    ‘It reminds me of Op Art from the sixties. The circles are dazzling, aren’t they? You feel drawn into the very centre.’ She touched the cut wood with reverence. ‘If my hands were any good, I’d have a go at carving something on that surface. A face, perhaps… A Green Man, something like that.’ She looked up at me. ‘Don’t you think so? That’s what it should become. A piece of sculpture. A monument to… something. Don’t know what exactly. But something that old shouldn’t just cease to be, should it, like a mere human being?’
    Connor said the beech would continue to live on as a piece of living sculpture because it still had roots in the ground, enough to ensure it would cling on to life. He took a commemorative photo of Phoebe and me, posing in front of the stump, then we all went indoors for tea.
    Connor offered to help in the kitchen, so I asked him to set out crockery on a tray. As I reached for the tea caddy, I remembered the old tin and its seed packets. I opened a cupboard, took out the tin and handed it to him.
    ‘What do you make of this? It was found in a hollow in the tree. Someone must have climbed up to put it there.’
    ‘You’re kidding.’
    ‘The men found it when they were disposing