Last Orders

There's no use beating around the bush. The fellers will be here and there's nothing for it. So in keeping with protocol, I will begin at the beginning, finish at the end, and if there's time I'll tell you the story about young Charlie.

Right then.

I was planted by a Methodist minister's daughter who'd read too much Wordsworth and not enough about soil conditions. Lass had romantic notions about bringing a bit of the Lake District down to Hampshire. She dug the hole herself, bless her, though her hands were more suited to piano keys than spade work.

Still, credit where it's due - she knew enough to plant me deep.

The first winter nearly finished me. Southern soil, southern rain, southern everything that felt wrong in my roots. Back home - proper home, up Cumbria way - we're used to weather that means business. Down here, even the storms seem apologetic.

But I stuck it out. What else do you do?

I was young once, and at heart I still am. Ridges and bark, but there's still sap flowing through my veins.

The minister's daughter - Hannah, her name was - she'd bring her needlework out here summer evenings. Always chose the same spot, just where my shadow fell at half-past six.

She'd talk whilst she stitched. About her brother who'd gone to sea, about the young curate with the serious eyes who'd started calling on Thursdays. About books she'd read and whether it was proper for a minister's daughter to have opinions about Catholic emancipation.

I listened. What else do you do?

She was the first to notice I was growing wrong. "Father," she said one evening, "our pine is leaning."

And I was. Still am. Ten degrees off vertical, tilted toward the house like I'm trying to hear conversations through the windows. The minister blamed wind damage, but Hannah knew better.

"He's lonely," she said. Simple as that.

Homesick, more like. When you're used to forest company and mountain air, standing solitary in a Hampshire garden takes some adjustment. The lean was my way of reaching toward the one bit of warmth and human chatter this place offered.

The curate started coming daily after that. Serious eyes, as advertised, and hands that shook when he held his teacup. Shell-shocked, we'd call it now. He'd sit where Hannah usually sat, just inside my shadow, and stare at nothing particular for hours.

Never said much, that lad. But he understood about standing watch when there's nobody to relieve you.

Hannah would bring him tea and seed cake, sit herself on the grass nearby with her needlework. They'd pass whole afternoons in comfortable silence, him with his thousand-yard stare and her with her careful stitches, both finding whatever peace my shade could offer.

I was their chapel, in a way. The kind that grows naturally where troubled souls need sanctuary.

They married the following spring. Hannah wore her mother's dress and carried rosemary for remembrance. Thomas - that was his name - wore his dress uniform though his soldiering days were done. They exchanged vows in my shadow.

I was their witness. What else do you do?

The storms came, naturally. They always do.

First child was stillborn. They buried him in the churchyard, but Hannah would come sit with me afterwards, working her embroidery with tears falling on the cloth.

"I don't understand," she'd say to the evening air. Not angry, just puzzled.

Thomas would find her there, sit beside her, take her hand in his still-trembling fingers. Neither would speak, but something passed between them. Understanding, maybe. The sort that doesn't require words.

They had three more children after that. The eldest - young Charlie - took his first steps holding onto my trunk. Used to climb my lower branches before his mother caught him at it.

Charlie would sit up there summer afternoons, reading adventure stories and planning expeditions to Africa. Had his grandfather's serious eyes and his mother's determination, plus a fair helping of eight-year-old certainty that the world was full of wonders waiting to be discovered.

"When I'm grown," he'd announce from his perch in my branches, "I'm going to plant forests everywhere. Proper forests, with every kind of tree that exists."

Grand ambitions for a lad whose feet didn't yet touch the ground when he sat in my fork.

But I believed him. What else do you do?

The telegraph came on a Tuesday morning in late July. Black border, official stamp, the sort of message that changes everything. Thomas read it twice, handed it to Hannah without a word, then walked out to the garden and sat down hard in my shadow.

Hannah read it once, folded it carefully, tucked it in her apron pocket. Then she came outside and sat beside her husband.

"Missing in action," she said to no one in particular. "Somewhere in France."

Missing in action. Military language for when they can't tell you what you need to know, when hope and despair get tangled up so tight you can't separate them.

They sat there until dark, not speaking, not moving. I wanted to offer something - shelter, comfort, the kind of solid presence that says you're not alone in this. But what can a tree do when the world breaks open and swallows someone's child whole?

You stand witness. What else?

Young Charlie never came home from France. Oh, they got word eventually - officially dead rather than missing, buried in some foreign field with a neat white cross and his name spelled almost right. But the Charlie who'd planned to plant forests everywhere had already been gone for months before the telegram arrived.

Thomas took it hard. Started drinking in ways that Methodist ministers' sons-in-law oughtn't. Hannah held the household together with needlework and determination, but I could see the effort wearing her down like water wearing stone.

"I keep thinking," Hannah said one evening, her embroidery lying forgotten in her lap, "that if I'd taught him to be more careful..."

"You taught him to be brave," Thomas replied. "World needs brave souls."

"World needs living souls more."

Simple exchange, but it settled something between them. Not healing, exactly - some wounds don't heal, just scar over - but an understanding that blame wouldn't bring their boy back.

They moved away the following spring. Thomas had been offered a position in Yorkshire. The new owners were pleasant enough - banker and his wife, two daughters who played croquet on the lawn.

But they didn't sit in my shadow. Didn't understand that some trees are meant for more than just standing pretty in gardens.

I missed them. What else do you feel?

The years rolled by. Different families, different stories. The next war brought different sounds - aeroplanes now instead of horses. But the same telegrams, the same black borders.

Another family by then. The Hendersons, with twin boys who built model airplanes. Both joined up the moment they turned eighteen, both came back changed.

They'd sit together in my shadow sometimes, those boys, not talking about France or Jerry or the mates who hadn't made it home. Just sitting, breathing.

"Over there, when things got really bad," one said, "I'd picture this exact spot. This tree, this shadow. Kept me going."

"Same," his brother replied. "Always this tree."

Home. That's what I'd become without meaning to. Not just a place marker, but the fixed point around which their sense of safety turned.

Trees remember things. Not the way humans remember, but in the steady accumulation of rings, the patient recording of seasons survived.

I remember the taste of rain from 1847 and the weight of young Charlie's boots on my bark as he climbed toward his dreams.

I remember the sound Thomas made when he read that telegram - not quite a sob, not quite a sigh, but something caught between the two that spoke of hopes breaking in real time.

I remember the way Hannah's embroidery silk caught the evening light.

All of it stored in my rings like books on a shelf.

But memories aren't just for keeping. They're for passing on.

The vibrations started before dawn today. Heavy machinery moving into position, diesel engines warming up. Professional sounds that speak of inevitable execution.

Development, they call it. Progress. Same words they used when they widened the road and took out the elm avenue.

I'm not bitter about it. What's the use? Trees don't get votes in these decisions.

The survey team finished their work yesterday. Young lad with a clipboard, older woman with a tablet.

"Pinus sylvestris," the young lad announced. "Scots pine. Unusual specimen for this location."

Unusual specimen. As if I'm some sort of curiosity instead of a living memory of everyone who's ever found shelter in my shadow.

The woman was more observant. Noticed my lean, the wear patterns in my bark where generations of climbers had left their mark. Photographed the old rope swing.

"Shame to lose it," she said. "Tree like this, it's got history."

History. Past tense, as if my story's already over.

But that's where they're wrong. Stories don't end when the telling stops. They just find new voices.

The machinery's closer now. They'll take me down in sections, probably. Professional work, no doubt. I'll be timber and firewood by evening.

But timber isn't the end of the story any more than falling is the end of flight.

In the soil where my roots have been mining nutrients for nearly two centuries, molecules are changing. Complex chemicals carrying information about survival strategies, all being released as my cellular structure begins its final transformation.

Other trees will read those chemical messages when their roots probe this ground in years to come. My experience translated into the molecular language that connects all growing things.

And in the rings of my heartwood - the compressed history of every year I've stood watch - there's information that will outlast whatever human project replaces me.

Wood remembers. Even when it's cut and dried and turned into furniture, it carries the chemical signature of the tree it came from, the seasons it weathered.

Someone, somewhere, will sit at a table made from my timber, and in that moment they'll be connected to every conversation that happened in my shadow.

Not consciously, perhaps. But connection doesn't always require awareness.

The saw's starting up now. Higher pitched, more urgent. Someone who knows their trade.

Good. If this is how my story ends, at least it'll be done properly.

Two-person crew, both wearing proper safety gear. The older one's studying my lean, calculating angles.

But the younger one keeps looking up into my crown, noticing the smooth patches where climbing children wore away my bark.

"Shame," he says. "Tree like this, someone's going to miss it."

"Always do," the foreman replies. "But they get used to it."

Always do. As if missing something is just a phase you work through.

Maybe he's right. Maybe the families who found sanctuary in my shadow will adapt to my absence.

But adaptation isn't the same as replacement. You can get used to a gap without ever stopping to notice that it's still a gap.

The first cut's coming now. I can feel the saw's vibration through my bark. Not pain, exactly - trees don't experience hurt the way animals do - but awareness of damage.

But deeper than the physical cutting, I can feel something else beginning. The biological process that every tree carries but rarely needs to use. The final protocol.

Every molecule in my trunk is working now, concentrating the chemical signatures of my entire life into the deepest layers of my heartwood.

The cutting's systematic now. Crown first, then major branches. Methodical dismantlement of what took nearly two centuries to build.

But with each cut, I'm releasing more than just sawdust. Volatile compounds that carry memory, chemical messages that speak of every season I've survived, every moment of joy and sorrow that played out in my presence.

I'm not thinking about falling now. I'm thinking about Hannah's embroidery silk catching the evening light, about young Charlie's boots scraping against my bark as he climbed toward his dreams, about Thomas sitting in my shadow finding whatever peace my presence could offer.

That's my real legacy. Not the timber or the space I'm making available for development. But the memory of safety I provided, the sense of permanence I offered to creatures whose lives move so much faster than mine.

In a world where everything changes, I was the thing that stayed the same. The fixed point around which human uncertainty could find its balance.

The last cut's coming. I can feel my remaining supports giving way, feel gravity beginning to claim what's left of my vertical presence.

But falling isn't failure. It's transition.

In the soil enriched by my decay, new growth will find nutrients it couldn't access before. In the chemical messages that my decomposition releases, future trees will learn lessons I couldn't teach while standing.

Death and growth - they're not opposites but partners in the same dance that's been sustaining forests since the first seed learned to reach toward light.

The ground's rushing up now, ending my long vertical conversation with sky and stars. Nearly two centuries of standing watch, of providing shelter and witness and the kind of patience that only trees can offer.

But patience continues in different forms - in the slow release of nutrients, in the molecular information that passes from what was to what might be.

Time to see what horizontal feels like.

Time to begin the next chapter of being useful in the world.

Last orders, then.

But not last service.

Never last service.