Facing Eviction

“We might as well just give in,” says Bernard. And that makes me stop to think. Because nobody would call Bernard a quitter. His quiet stubbornness and determined to get a task done and not be deflected counts for more than any amount of flailing and fuss-making. “We can move. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

     The fact that he could well be right makes me angry. Whether at myself or him, I don’t know. Neither. Both. 

     “There will be other views just as good,” he says, “Other places to put down roots.”

     “The tree’s the one that puts down roots,” I point out, pedantically. “And this is a fine tree. A strong tree. Our tree. What harm were we doing? Why couldn’t they just leave us alone?”

     I know I sound puerile and petulant. Adults know, or should do, that doing no harm is no guarantee for being left alone. Perhaps not always even a sound argument.

     “It’s not just us,” I say, “It’s the whole – what’s the word? – gentrification of the area.”

     “Don’t imagine I like it, Bettina,” he says. “All that decking next door – and it’s not even natural. I might not mind if it were,” he pauses, briefly lost in thought. 

     “And the cheek of complaining about the noise,” I point out. “When they’ll be used to towns full of traffic noise every hour of the night and day. What is there to hear here? Lapping water. Rustling in the trees. Birdsong. Not that I’m that wild on the owls.”

     We curl up together on the rickety balcony, looking out to the lake. Even the lake is getting gentrified. It looks as if the reeds and the rushes and the water-lilies have been tamed. And there are signs saying Keep Away from the Edge and Do Not Feed the Ducks. I know that they claim that’s because people feed them unsuitable food like stale buns and that it’s interfering with the natural ecosystem. But the truth is they’d prefer the ducks, not to mention the geese, to go away altogether. Perhaps a couple of rare breeds, and some graceful, sanitised swans. 

     Well, I won’t be a hypocrite. I’ve had things to say about the ducks myself, especially when I accidentally tread in what we’ve tried to train the children to call their leavings, but of course that isn’t the word they use most of the time. 

     They’ve already started their work on some of the other tree houses. I would say they’ve let their imagination run wild, but I fancy it’s something they saw in some magazine or on some TV show. One of them is turning into a Swiss Chalet. Another looks a bit like Noah’s ark. Some of them, well, they evidently just want them to look like regular little bungalows. So why go to the trouble and expense of building them in the trees? There’s not exactly a shortage of regular little bungalows elsewhere.

     I can’t remember a time when I didn’t live here. Can’t remember a time when I couldn’t sit on the balcony and look upwards at the shifting and sifting sky, and downwards at the lapping lake, where there aren’t just ducks and geese, but short-lived, flimsy damsel-flies skittering across the surface, and glimpses of fish below. Further away, but still visible, are the conifers, whose feathered branches probably wouldn’t support a tree house, but whose green seems to be tinged with blue or purple and softened by mist on even the brightest summer day.

     Bernard can point out all he likes that there are other lakes, and other forests, and the same sky, but inside he knows as well as I do it would not be the same. I know there will be something new every day, and yet know that it is sweetly familiar. 

     Next door – well, next tree! – have opened that big, ugly door of theirs that looks like a garage door. They evidently want everyone to see inside their tree house. I don’t doubt they call it a little palace. I can hear the sound of wind chimes. Again. The first time I heard that sound I thought it was quite pretty, but now it gets on my nerves. 

     “You know we can’t keep putting it off forever,” Bernard says, “And leaving it to the last minute – we could well end up homeless.”

     I was on the point of saying that if we leave here, either of our own volition or under duress, we will be home less anyway. It does not mean the same thing as houseless.

     “Perhaps we should go and squat in their houses – the ones that have other houses,” I say, finding the idea decidedly appealing.

     It’s hard to tell if Bernard is smiling. “Tempting, isn’t it?” he says. “But you know, underneath, the consequences could be pretty disastrous.”

     “Oh, don’t always be so ruddy SENSIBLE!” I snap. I didn’t mean to snap, but for a treacherous few seconds I didn’t want Bernard to be sitting beside me on the rickety balcony anyway. I wanted someone who would grin and say, “Yes, let’s go for it!” or “Bettina, my dear, you’re outrageous!” but plainly meaning it as a compliment. 

     “Some would say it’s miraculous it hasn’t been put on a demolition order before now,” Bernard says.

     “Some might well, but so far as I know they haven’t, and why do we have to make it easy for them?”

     Bernard, so far as I can remember, has never said, “You might be better left alone for a few minutes,” but he doesn’t need to say it. 

     Oh, dammit, sometimes I wish I didn’t love him so much! They might say that our sort don’t experience love, don’t know what it’s all about, not really, but that’s just another example of that slithery superiority.

     You don’t have to have fancy words and tinkling wind chimes and big bunches of flowers in your house to know what love is all about. 

     I may as well admit it; I’m scared. For all his quiet ways and reasonable manner, and not making himself conspicuous or making a fuss about things, Bernard is far braver than I am. At any rate, he doesn’t have my fear of the new and the different and making changes and moving on. 

     For all my defiance and my sulks, I don’t really want to go down in flames. Certainly not literally (and I have heard rumours of such things happening, not 100% proven, but from what Bernard calls “Reliable Sources”) and probably not even figuratively. 

     I retreat to one of my favourite refuges, in the tree itself, not in the house. There are dry leaves here, even in summer, and they can be surprisingly comfortable. A bee is buzzing around – I don’t know why, she won’t find any pollen up here, and normally I would find the noise vaguely irritating, but today I don’t mind it. We ignore each other. Perhaps it would be interesting if we could speak each others’ languages. I would quite like to know her opinion on this matter. I believe bees are very intelligent.

     But she would not understand. Even if her buzz, which I could suddenly understand in this little fantasy, were sympathetic, which might very well not be the case, she could not understand. Bees live in colonies if they are wild, and hives if they are domesticated.  I know that. I suppose they know what wood is, or at least what it isn’t, but they do not need it.

     But we do. After all, why else would we be called woodlice?