Speaking Terms

The Wind Takes Charge

By lunchtime the wind had taken charge of the Oak. Mr Jack Daw’s relatives kept changing branches and insisting this was strategy rather than a failure to hold on.

“Stirling still hasn’t answered Gary,” said the cousin.

“Gary hasn’t been here to hear an answer,” said Mr Jack Daw.

“That makes it worse. We have nothing to repeat.”

Brenda slipped through the hedge beneath them. Batman Smith appeared at its other end and offered to establish a system for visitors entering from opposite directions. Brenda was gone before he reached the word system. A Rook crossed the far side of the Square, declining to become involved in anyone’s arrangements. Percy inspected a twig that had survived the wind and seemed satisfied that it had done so without Batman’s assistance.

Nothing From Stirling

The afternoon thinned. The Jacks remained at their posts, although there was remarkably little to post about. When Reginald passed high overhead, every cousin looked up as one. None admitted afterward that they had ducked.

At last Gary arrived. He landed in the Fruit Tree, glanced towards the Summerhouse and found Mr Jack Daw watching him.

“Anything?” Gary asked.

“From Stirling? Nothing.”

“From your cousin?”

“Several things. None of them worth carrying over here.”

Gary stayed long enough to make the cousin uncomfortable, then went. He came back once as the light began to leave, but Stirling did not appear. Batman made a final inspection of the fence, found the wind in breach of three informal agreements, and went to bed with a list of grievances.

Speaking Across the Boundary

Across the boundary, Marlboro had a far better evening planned: no inspection, no committee and no need to explain why she liked her own trees. She was telling one of them so when Harold answered from the other side.

“Are you talking to the tree,” her father asked, “or may I join in?”

“The tree was listening.”

“Then it has an advantage over most of the family.”

Marlboro considered whether to be offended. “You can join in.”

Harold did not cross the boundary. He asked after the place she had chosen, and she told him about a branch that caught the last of the evening light. He suggested a sheltered one for colder nights. She told him she had already found it.

“I thought you might have,” he said.

“Then why did you suggest it?”

“I am your father. There are traditions to maintain.”

She gave him a little of the old exasperation, but it had lost its sharp edge. For a while they traded ordinary news: a stubborn patch of ivy, the wind, the regrettable opinions of creatures who believed all branches belonged to them. Harold did not offer to bring her home. Marlboro did not have to defend staying where she was.

“You can visit,” she said at last.

“I know.”

“That is not the same as supervising.”

“I shall try to remember the distinction.”

A Distant Answer

He left her with the promise intact, and Marlboro carried on with her night. Much later she had another thought to share with the dark. Then another. Each time the garden on her side of the boundary seemed a little more like a place in which she could finish a sentence without anyone finishing it for her.

The cold deepened. Near the last part of the night Marlboro came back to the boundary, not looking for a quarrel. From somewhere farther away, Marjorie answered.

Marlboro held still. Her mother had not come to inspect the new place, nor to demand anything of it.

“I’m all right,” Marlboro said.

The answer came from a distance. “I know.”

It was infuriating, of course, how much Marjorie could put into two words. Marlboro retreated among her own trees, tried out a few private responses, and returned to tell the night that she was perfectly capable of deciding what all right meant. Marjorie remained where she was. Once or twice Marlboro thought she might answer again; once or twice she did. There was no invitation to come back and no order to move farther away. Eventually Marlboro stopped waiting for either.

Batman Notices the Cold

Before the sun was properly up, she had come back to her favourite side of the garden. Batman Smith was already at work in the hedge.

“You’re out late,” he said.

“You’re up early.”

“Someone has to notice what happens at this hour.”

“Then notice that it is cold.”

Batman opened his beak to offer a more detailed observation. Another Robin began without waiting for him, and then several more voices took up the morning. Marlboro regarded them with the weary affection of someone discovering that independence did not include the right to silence the neighbours.

Steve emerged beneath the Fruit Tree a little later, followed by Mrs Steve. Batman was still explaining to the other Robins that he had begun first. Mrs Steve took one look at him and asked whether anybody had eaten breakfast. The question improved the atmosphere more than his entire speech.

Behind the Summerhouse

By morning the Jacks had reclaimed the Oak. Mortimer passed above them; a small procession of tits crossed the garden below. Gary made two visits, each too brief for the cousins to reach agreement about his expression. On the third, he stayed near the Summerhouse.

Stirling came across the grass alone. Gary watched him approach. Neither called for an audience. They went behind the Summerhouse, where Batman saw only their shadows and took it personally.

“You asked whose life that place belonged to,” Gary said.

“I did.”

“Mine. Before it was his.”

Stirling looked at him for a long moment. “And the thing I found?”

“Mine then. Mine now.”

“Why not say so when I first asked?”

“You had already decided I had stolen it.”

Stirling did not dispute that. “There is still something you are leaving out.”

Gary’s gaze went past him, towards the empty garden. “I didn’t leave that place. He drove me out.”

“And you kept this?”

“It was the one thing I managed to take with me.”

Stirling waited for the rest. Gary did not give it to him. Stirling let him go.

When Gary returned later, Mortimer was back above the Oak. A Rook passed without stopping; Clive and Barry worked their way through the bird table crowd. Mr Jack Daw waited until Gary landed beside him.

“Did he ask the right question?”

“Almost,” Gary said.

Below them Batman was still trying to discover what had happened behind the Summerhouse. For once, nobody helped him. Gary had given Stirling an answer, and left him with a question considerably harder to ask.

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