What the Pine Heard

Three Accounts

By lunchtime the Oak had acquired three accounts of the pinecones, none of which agreed with the statement supposedly issued by the Pine. Mr Jack Daw asked to see the statement. His cousin said it was being revised.

Wind pushed cloud across the Square, and the Jacks argued from branch to branch while the path below them dried and darkened by turns. The cousin remained among them, offering corrections to details nobody had asked him for.

“You seem remarkably well informed,” Mr Jack Daw observed.

“I have listened to the Pine.”

“The Pine does not speak.”

“It has excellent grounds for silence.”

Rain Sweeps Through

Rain swept through after lunch. Stirling’s squad crossed the lawn in two separate bursts, ignoring both cones and the committee above them. Batman Smith watched from the hedge, frustrated that nobody in uniform had come to ask for his report. Then the squirrels were gone, leaving the Jacks to resume a much less orderly investigation.

The Cousin Confesses

Gary arrived when the showers had thinned. The cousin was explaining that the second pinecone had fallen because someone wanted Stirling to ask a question he had not already answered for himself.

Gary stopped on the Oak’s lowest branch. Mr Jack Daw turned slowly towards his cousin.

“I never told you that sentence,” he said.

The cousin glanced at the Pine. “It was in the statement.”

“Whose statement?” asked Gary.

The cousin tried the expression of a bird whose administrative duties had suddenly become confidential. It failed in front of his family. They pressed closer. At last he admitted that he had been in the Pine when Gary and Mr Jack Daw spoke. He had leaned out to hear the end of their conversation, slipped, and knocked one cone loose. In recovering himself, he sent the second after it.

“So nobody threw them,” Batman said, disappointed.

“I did not intend to,” said the cousin.

“You did intend to listen,” Gary replied.

“Only after you began saying something interesting.”

That defence impressed several Jacks. It did not impress Mr Jack Daw.

Gary Gives an Answer

“What exactly did you hear?” he asked.

The cousin repeated Gary’s final challenge to Stirling and no more. He had missed the earlier admission about the territory. Unfortunately, he had already told two relatives there was a secret, and one of those relatives had told the Oak it concerned ownership, a journey and possibly an unidentified witness. By the time he reached the unidentified witness, even he sounded surprised.

Gary let the resulting argument run. He could have flown away. Instead he waited until the Jacks were quiet enough to regret it.

“The thing Stirling found,” he said, “was mine before the bird living in that other territory ever saw it.”

Mr Jack Daw looked at him. This was more than Gary had offered the Square before, and far less than Mr Jack Daw knew.

“That does not explain how it came here,” the cousin said.

“No,” said Gary. “It does not.”

He left them with that. The cousin immediately began correcting his relatives’ versions of the correction, which was how the whole business acquired a fourth account.

Later, Stirling’s squad returned to the garden. Gary was gone. The Jacks watched the squirrels work without volunteering their news, although several looked close to bursting. A Goldfinch passed through while they were trying to decide who had authority to tell Stirling anything. Mr Jack Daw had never seen his family treat a question of authority with such genuine distress.

As evening drew in, an unfamiliar Treecreeper made a discreet journey up the Oak. Batman opened his beak to advise it on proper tree use, caught sight of Derek elsewhere in his memory, and thought better of it. For once, the Smiths had more to discuss than somebody else’s climbing. The Pine had heard a private conversation. The Pine had apparently drafted a statement. And nobody knew whether Gary’s answer had made matters better.

Across the Boundary

Night settled under broken cloud. Marjorie appeared at the boundary alone. Across the way lay Marlboro’s garden, now thoroughly her own. Marjorie held her place for a while, then crossed the silence with a gentler opening than she had managed lately.

“You have made something of it,” she said.

When Marlboro answered from her side, she sounded ready for the usual dispute. “I had to.”

“Yes. You did.”

That agreement wrong-footed them both. Marjorie tried again.

“I am proud of you, Marlboro.”

For a moment her daughter had nothing sharp to offer. Then: “You could have said that before you made me leave.”

“I could have said it sooner,” Marjorie admitted. “I would still have made you go.”

Marlboro protested, and Marjorie defended the boundary without taking back the pride. Their disagreement travelled between the gardens for a little while longer. At last Marlboro withdrew into her own trees, leaving Marjorie to finish an argument that no longer required an opponent. She remained after the last answer had come, then went quiet too.

Before dawn Marjorie passed the Square once more. She did not call her daughter back. She looked towards the neighbouring trees and continued on her way.

Before the Statement

Morning brought clear air and a cold lawn. Steve and Mrs Steve searched the ground while Brenda, Mildred and the waking Robins made the hedges busy. Derek moved along the Oak as if the previous evening’s revelations had no bearing on bark. Gary appeared briefly among the Jacks and found his audience alarmingly polite.

By midmorning Stirling’s squad was back in the garden. Jay carried on with his autumn errands, and Clive the Coal Tit passed through the branches. The squirrels withdrew before Gary returned. For a while Gary stayed with Mr Jack Daw as the Oak filled again around them.

“Your cousin will tell Stirling,” Gary said.

“My cousin will tell everyone. Accuracy will depend on who catches him first.”

Gary looked towards the Summerhouse. “Then I had better get there before his statement does.”

The cousin, directly above them, began to say that he could deliver it personally. Mr Jack Daw fixed him with a look.

For the first time since the pinecones fell, the cousin kept his beak shut.

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