A tree with a footprint

Introduction - Soutar Festival. Perth March 2022

I asked a question of the panel, who were discussing the future of the Scots language. They were forward thinking, as I knew was both wise and desirable. However, my question looked back. It was about the communities that I had witnessed dying. Another set of clearances had taken place in the 90s, I saw it in the Highlands and in Aberdeenshire.

In two decades I heard nothing for them, except once down the phone, when I recognized the accent and named such places as grew the old voice I heard.

“There was me, thinking you’d have no idea but you know it exactly…”

The talk was coming to a close but was in no way finished when an elderly gentleman stopped beside me on his way out. He knew the Aberdeenshire community I’d so briefly described. He was so grateful, his eyes shone. I had been to his home, a place that still existed on a map but was not there as it had once been. We were friends, comrades, I would know so-and-so then.

I nodded, yes I knew who he was talking about, of course I did, I couldn’t say no to him. He merrily waved me farewell, the event closed. I lied, I didn’t know the name he gave and it occurred to me afterwards that the friendliness might well have gone, had he only caught my surname. Had he heard the name Gale.

In the 90s, I spend my school holidays in rural Aberdeenshire, in a big old house, refurbished in the 80s. There was no public transport, not even a pavement. The long driveway led to a road for cars, with no space for people. There was a very small hamlet of trees across the road, a ruined kirkyard on the hill behind but as with many country folk, if you wanted a walk, you went first in the car. It was my aunts home, though my grandma moved in with her that never really changed. People expressed surprise that we didn’t get bored, but I was happy playing with the pack of dogs, walking them or else tucking myself behind the staircase with books like ‘No good men’, 'The Female Eunuch' and 'Adrian Mole'. During the spring and summer I worked on the farm.

At home, my grandma’s health was failing but she could be relied on for creating domestic order, breaking up the days.

My aunt tolerated my sister and I. Opportunities to leave the house were rare, every visit there would usually be one Italian meal, generally in Inverurie and we walked the dogs on Bennachie or Gartly Moor. If she announced suddenly that she had to go to Huntley we’d run down in a mad dash, fearful of missing that precious trip to the newsagent and a run in the car. And in that car she’d play Delirium by Capercaillie. This was parent music, non-offensive, accessible folk music, some gaelic, some English. It sounds dated now, the male backing vocalists somehow sound like men with moustaches and stonewashed jeans. She played Delirium to death. But we didn’t mind, being just temporary visitors it was a manageable level of exposure and I became certain that I could sing in Gaelic – without a gaelic speaker to inform me I was singing nothing but gobbledygook.

From the car, my sister and I liked to watch the fields and how the waves of the wind made them flow, lighting up in a ribbon-like formation just before they were harvested. And, in English this view would often by accompanied with these words, from Waiting for the Wheel to Turn;

Living in a place with time Living in a place where reality is Standing on a big broad line Watching it all go by

Ah but you're taking it all away I did not see myself as having a hand in taking anything away. My aunt lived in a building that had once been a school, the Victorian toilet blocks remained. There was something ghostly about that but we had little reason to go there. The headmaster lay buried in the graveyard above, but that was ancient history, nothing to do with me or my aunt.

The local farmer would often drop off potatoes and stop for a chat. We liked him, he had such a cheery disposition. Another farmer, certainly an alcoholic, would arrive in a taxi having lost his license when he smashed his own car into a police car. He was a more frequent visitor and would always get a ‘wee snifter’, no matter the time of day. At the dining table he would reflect that he ‘had a lot of jobbies daen.’ These jobs never seemed to get done, whatever they were. My sister and I would snigger at ‘jobbies daen” but we never knew what jobs were brewing so our interpretation was accurate enough. I spent a lot of time with that man and in the end found him creepy. He had beady eyes, a carbuncled nose and made promises with all the confidence of an expert bullshiter.

‘You can go off people very quickly you know,’ he once said. I had a guess who he was referring to. Yes, I knew because he was not so welcome. Someone else was.

Aside from when he brought potatoes and attending a couple of parties with his wife, I didn’t know the nice farmer well but I was very excited when his sheepdog Fay, had a litter of puppies and of course, I would see them any chance I could. Then, without seeking my parent’s permission, I was sent to stay with the nice farmer and his wife a few miles away. Officially to help with the puppies but by this time the puppies were capable of leaping beyond their pen and required very little from me.

I hung out the washing, dug up potatoes (very few, it’s harder than it looks) and chatted to the farmers wife. I was sent down the road to their daughters house to babysit for their granddaughter. I destroyed their daughters washing line by driving a tractor through it. This was an accident, I lacked the strength to apply the break and was pressing down with all my might when the farmer jumped aboard and stamped down on my foot. This did the job. I felt very guilty though there was no talk of blaming me. I’d driven tractors before, though I couldn’t have been much more than thirteen. I have not driven one since.

I fed and helped dip the sheep. I cried out, 'Away by' to the flock, as shepherds in that part of the world do. The farmhands were very nice, their Doric was unintelligible to me but they knew that, and spoke to the lowland kid in a language they knew she’d understand. I did not watch TV, there were few books and so I was quite happy to do whatever needed doing.

When we drove past my aunts house I asked when I would be going home. The farmer confirmed I had another day or two. I realized that this had been arranged by my aunt and it wasn’t so much that he wouldn’t have allowed me a say, more than he would rather not go against instructions that came from her. Another night in that bedroom. The creepiest room I ever slept in. I was convinced at one point, that someone or something had opened the window. I would pull the covers completely over me as a protective shield, trying to find the smallest breathing hole, leaving next to no part of me exposed.

I did not sleep well but of course, when asked in the morning, ‘How did you sleep?’ would reply, ‘Fine thank you.’

The creepy room aside, it was a nice house. Lots of people passed through it as a working farm and family home. I particularly remember the artwork of a granddaughter, who had been very liberal with the cotton wool when using it to convey her grandfather’s hair and by doing so, had made for an amusing and very recognizable drawing.

But what I remember above all that and the strange circumstances was the tree. While my room looked out on bare fields and felt the full force of the wind – on the other side there was an oak tree. Its branches stretched over anyone who entered the house and over to the kitchen window. I would walk the path to the house and note that where the trunk separated, not a foot off the ground by the path, was a shape like a figure of eight, the size of a child’s foot. And there was no question that this space had been the foothold of many many children over the years. That first step up into a wonderful tree.

The life of the farmers wife revolved around her three daughters and granddaughters. She cheerfully speculated that the house was haunted and later, as I was leaving, reflected aloud that none of her daughters would stay in the room she’d put me in. I don’t know if she clocked the shock on my face. I never stayed in that room again. But I did stay in that house just a few years later.

By then my aunt had married the nice farmer. His wife had left the house, my grandma had moved in and his daughters and grandchildren did not visit. My aunt was making her mark on the house. Whether my stay was an early stage of the plan is something I’ve wondered since.

I have a diary entry from 1996, when it all kicked off. My aunt has told me that the farmers wife slapped her around the face. My first question was; “Did you hit her back?” My aunt replied, “No, but I was tempted.”

It was the stuff of soap opera, so much so that the News of the World turned up sniffing a potential story. Nothing was ever printed, to my knowledge.

But if I seemed flippant, I was uneasy.

You're coming here to play But you're pulling the roots from a dying age

I had stayed it that house when it was alive but I was welcome no more, perhaps having served my purpose. The familiar voices, the farming community had departed with the family. My grandma used to have a sitting room that smelt of clean wool and other textiles. When she moved to the farm, that space transferred to a dark room, directly below the haunted bedroom. It did not smell of my grandma, it smelled a bit damp and decayed. The cat did not welcome us either, it was a haughty, unfriendly black puff of a cat. Once, when my grandma passed it in the corridor it reared up like a lion on its hind legs, preparing to plunge its claws into her legs. While it didn’t carry out its threat, believe me when I say that no cat could have threatened with more menace.

Remember the Buachaille Mor Reaching for the skies from the barren shores Watching over the village of burns And counting the days since the gael kept home Well, the stranger claims it now

My aunt was the stranger and I was, unwittingly, part of her entourage.

There was a newly dug pond that my aunt decided trout should inhabit. We collected a barrel full but on the drive back knew that we were running out of time, that trout will only survive in a barrel for so long. So it proved, we emptied a barrel of trout into that pond and they all died. I saw them moving, weakly waving on their sides, seeming to become entangled in pond weed. My response was to walk into the pond to try to revive them, rubbing their sides as I did with weak lambs. Five minutes of this and my aunt called for me to get out of the water, I persisted for a bit, hoping that at least one fish might survive. Eventually even I realized it was futile and stepped out of the water to survey lots of rainbow trout, tangled up round the sides of the pond. How they were cleared up I do not know.

Don't you see the waves of wealth

Washing away the soul from the land?

Perhaps I could put in down to circumstance, messy breakups between adults known to me. Before the farmer, my aunt had a boyfriend I liked very much. He used to tell me ghost stories before bedtime and they were sufficiently scary that I would listen even when I felt bedtime stories were childish. My aunt, by her own admission, did not like children and for a short time I was a privileged exception.

Then my grandma died.

My grandma put a fight, not to live but to die. She fought hospital admission but they got her into the ambulance. No sooner had it driven away than she died.

She believed very much in assisted dying, we ended the suffering of old dog, she argued, so too should human beings. She’d been saying this for years before she actually passed. The last time I parted from her, I called back, ‘See you soon,’ and she replied confidently, ‘no you won’t.’

I was prepared for the house without her. I was not prepared for the house without the tree.

You're coming here to play But you're pulling the roots from a dying age

The tree had been cut down, not even the figure of eight in the shape of the child's foot remained, just a low stump of the greatest corpse. That reach, the susurration, the birds of the tree and the colours and shade were reduced to absence. I made my horror known to my uncle, in quiet mutterings, “She’s cut down the tree. She’s cut down the tree.”

Her brother tried to reassure but when he asked her directly, in his voice I tell he was at a loss, hoping perhaps that the tree was diseased but no. “It was blocking the light…”

It was the light! The only room it deprived of light was the utility room, where time would be spend on the floor sorting washing.

Her voice was faint. She did not wish to be drawn into a discussion because it seemed, even she lacked an explanation for an act that had made a beautiful house instantly ugly. I felt more sorrow for that healthy tree than I did my grandma. Time has taught me that this is a normal response after watching someone suffer. For five years she’d been losing her independence despite trying desperately to cling on to it. At the time I thought there was something wrong with me.

I never saw my aunt again. After a year I did not see my uncle again. The nice farmer was diagnosed with cancer but fought it many times. Others of my aunts small circle of friends faced illness and did not make it through.

My aunt had once waited a night on the moor trying to find her dog. We’d rescued lambs together and it seemed to me that love of the land went hand in hand with love of animals. She wanted a farmers life, therefore she must love the land. Every single video she owned was All Creatures Great and Small. She must love the land.

But no one who cared could cut down that tree after all it had seen. I had no explanation, the tree was gone, my attachment was gone.

I wondered how soon after the tree was cut down that my grandma died. She was the teenage girl who came home one day to find that her house had burned down. Her family moved to a council flat in Glasgow, where she shared her bed with three sisters. She knew what it was to have your home torn from you, to survey the destruction of something dear to you.

I was torn away from the extended family with the tree, which is fitting. I sometime wonder if I’ve projected too much into the loss of one tree, but never for long. I caught a glimpse of the family and farming community that lived in the shade of its branches before it was taken all away.

Self interest saw thee stand in freedoms ways So thy old shadow must a tyrant be Thoust heard the knave abusing those in power Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free Thoust sheltered hypocrites in many an hour That when in power would never shelter thee Thoust heard the knave supply his canting powers With wrongs illusions when he wanted friends That bawled for shelter when he lived in showers And when clouds vanished made thy shade amends With axe at root he felled thee to the ground And barked of freedom - O I hate that sound

Excerpt from The Fallen Elm by John Clare.