Page 69 of Snowflakes at the Little Christmas Tree Farm
‘I’m fi—’ Another rush of water hits him in the face, making him splutter.
I reach down to him. ‘If you don’t give me your hand right now, I’m going to kill you.’
He manages to get his feet back under him and struggles upright, his hands on his knees, bracing himself against the flow of the water. ‘That’s counterproductive.’
‘It’s not funny! People drown in floodwater like this. You could’ve already caught an unthinkable amount of life-threatening diseases.’
‘It’s melted snow and mud, Lee. What do you think is going to happen to me? I’ll start turning into a dirty snowman?’
I ignore his sarcasm. ‘Can you climb up the bank now it’s like this?’
‘No, there’s that wee beach by the bridge, I’ll go up there.’
‘You cannot stay on your feet and walk all the way back there! Give me your hands and I’ll pull you out.’
He looks dubiously between me and the bridge. The shallow stone beach where we sat when he showed me around for the first time is around a curve in the river from here and you can barely see a hint of the bridge’s railings peering through the rain and mist.
‘Don’t stand there thinking about it!’ I shout at him. ‘Now!’
The bank is steep where he’s dug the sides away, a far cry from the gentle slope he helped me up the other day, and I end up lying down in the mud to anchor myself and holding both hands out to him, wet skin slipping on wet skin when he takes them, inching backwards on my belly as he struggles to get purchase with his feet under the water.
Somehow I manage to pull him far enough until he can get his elbows on what’s left of the grass and wriggle the rest of the way up until we’re both lying in the puddled water, gasping for breath.
He instantly goes to get up, but thinks better of it because he sways before he gets as far as his hands and knees, and he stays in that position, his chest heaving as he pants, his arms shaking from the exertion of the digging and the effort of holding himself up, and probably from the cold too.
I push myself onto my knees and shuffle across until I’m near enough to reach over and brush his dripping hair off his face, unable tonottouch him, even though nothing’s right between us.
‘Thank you.’ His voice is wrecked and barely above a whisper, but he turns his head into my hand instead of pushing me off like I expected him to, so I keep tucking the same bit of hair back. He’s breathing hard, and I want to throw a warm blanket over him and wrap him up. ‘You’re freezing.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘No, you’re not. Sod the trees, Noel. You’re more important. Trees can be replaced –youcan’t. Go home to dry off and get warm. I’ll stay here and carry on.’
He yanks his head away from my hand and pushes himself up onto his feet. ‘Trying to get rid of me? In case I was in any doubt about how unwanted I am onyourfarm, trying to saveyourtrees?’
It stings me, probably just as much as it stung him when I said something similar the other day. ‘The opposite, you prat! I bloody love you, Noel, I don’t want to see you hurt.’
He looks down at me sitting in the mud and I look up at him and it takes a few seconds for me to realise what I’ve said and panic. I didn’t even realise I felt that way until the words came out, I certainly didn’t intend to say it to him. After all this, that’s the last thing he was supposed to know and the last thing I was supposed to feel. I decide to carry on from the previous sentence, eschewing that one completely. ‘I mean, these trees are my responsibility, not yours.’
He’s quiet for a minute before he speaks. ‘Sometimes people can help other people out. They can share their problems and their responsibilities because they’re neighbours, friends, or … more. Not because they want anything out of it.’
‘You can’t blame me for thinking what I think.You’rethe one who didn’t tellme. I’ve been honest since the day I met you –youhaven’t.’
Instead of responding, he walks around pushing at the grass with the toe of his boot, assessing the area. I take it for what it really means – he obviously isn’t going to say anything more.
I try to ignore him, to not watch him or think about what he’s doing when he disappears into the trees. I get to my feet, retrieve my shovel, move further along the riverbank and start digging another channel.
‘The ground’s saturated,’ he calls over when he comes back. ‘Balsams are tolerant of wet soil, but I don’t think the closest ones are going to survive this. The ones further back might be in with a chance if we can stop the river reaching them.’
I look up at the sky, letting the rain batter down on my skin and rinse away some of the mud.
Noel disappears into the trees again, and when he comes back this time, he’s hauling a fallen Christmas tree. He drops it and runs back up the track, disappearing from sight and returning minutes later with a bow saw from the barn. I try not to watch as he starts sawing through the trunk of the fallen tree, separating it from the clump of roots and earth at its base. He looks between the ground, the trees, and the river, and seems to make a judgement before he rolls the trunk of the fallen tree into position.
I can’t pretend I’m not looking. ‘What are you doing?’
His wet hair flies around his shoulders as he turns to look at me like he genuinely didn’t realise I was watching. ‘Using the casualties to protect the others. These are already lost to the storm. The best thing we can do with them is build them up as a dam to save the rest.’
Once again, I think about how lost I’d be without him. From the moment I arrived until right now. How much of this would I have been able to learn on my own? Even now, after six weeks of absorbing his knowledge, Istillwouldn’t have thought of something like that. There’s still a voice in my head saying that if he wants Peppermint Branches for himself, of course he’s going to do everything in his power to save the trees, but there’s another part, growing by the second, that trusts him.
