Page 22 of The Wishing Tree Beside the Shor
Ryan’s lengthened the chain tethering him to the tree so he’s up this end of the overgrown land, and he’s wearing black three-quarter-length cargo trousers, solid-looking hiking boots, and a tank top, which isreallyunfair because his biceps are on show for all the world to see, and they’re tanned and so huge that he must live on a Popeye-style diet. He’s so distracting that I don’t realise Tonya has come over to say good morning and has got an eye on exactly where my gaze is directed.
I swallow, trying to remember my own name. Those arms are enough to make you forgeteverything.
Everyone else calls over a greeting too, and I wave to them all, trying to concentrate onanythingother than Ryan’s presence behind me.
‘What’s this?’ Alys comes over holding her phone out.
I really should have swotted up on household gadgets and things chefs might know … for example, how to cook … last night, but I didn’t have a chance. However, the picture on the phone she shoves under my nose isn’t a household gadget. ‘Only Ryan got it so far. None of this lot did.’ She tuts.
My face screws up in confusion. ‘It’s someone holding up a … tool in a bookshop?’
‘It’s a spanner in The Works!’ She announces gleefully.
I don’t know if I’m delirious, or if she is, or if Ryan’s biceps are responsible for people losing their minds, but it’s quite possibly the funniest thing I’ve ever heard and I burst out laughing.
‘My friend and I compete to see who can do the best puns too,’ Alys says by way of explanation.
‘It’s tree-lly funny,’ Ryan adds.
‘Oh, don’t you start.’ I point at him and he grins. He was always the king of bad jokes.
The site is abuzz with activity this morning, and not just with the bees zipping around the white bramble flowers in search of nectar. Cynthia is hobbling up and down with her walking frame and giving said bees words of encouragement. Mr Barley is sitting on the wall of a flowerbed with a set of paints and a gnome in hand.
‘Boris Johnson!’ He calls over when he sees me looking.
At first I think he might be insulting me and I put a hand on my head in case I forgot to brush my hair this morning, but Tonya quickly clarifies. ‘He makes his own gnomes out of clay and paints them to look like people he hates. He’s already done Donald Trump. Gnome Boris and Gnome Trump are going to do a photoshoot for Twitter later.’
‘Gnomes sound like better options for world leaders than the current ones,’ Ffion calls out. ‘Can we vote for them at the next election?’
The two blokes are sitting on one of the other brick flowerbeds and playing chess, and Godfrey is on the same bench as yesterday reading a newspaper. There’s another man painting another cardboard sign, this one reading “Give peas a chance” with a picture of a green pea with a peace symbol drawn over it. Baaabra Streisand is down by the sycamore tree, happily scraping through blackberry bushes and eating whatever she uncovers.
Chaos is the word that springs to mind. As Harrison’s assistant for the past four years, I’ve dealt with a few protests, and none of them have been like this. If it weren’t for Ryan chained to the tree, it would be like a regular day in the care home garden. No one looking in would even know there was a protest going on.
Up at the care home, a middle-aged man in a baggy salmon-pink polo shirt emerges and struts past the hedge, but doesn’t come through the gateway that joins the care home to the garden. After a few paces up and down, he turns and walks away.
‘See that guy?’ Ryan’s voice is in my ear again, so close that his chin is millimetres away from my shoulder and his arm comes up to point around me.
I nod, following the direction he’s pointing in even though the man in question has long since disappeared around the front of the building.
‘That’s Steffan, the owner who’s planning to sell this land. Checking up on us again.’
‘He does that every day,’ Ffion says.
‘He expects us to give up,’ Cynthia says.
‘We’re not giving up,’ Tonya reassures her.
‘We’renevergiving up,’ Ryan says. ‘Not while I’m still breathing.’
Ryan’s stood back up to his full height now, but he’s barely stepped away, and I’m wondering how much longer I’ll be breathing for, never mind this lot.
‘He never comes down here. Just skulks around and looks over several times a day – hoping to catch it unoccupied so he can put his fences up and call his morally compromised property developers. They’re all lying in wait, you know.’ Ffion uses a walking stick to point towards the unkempt hedgerows like property developers might be lurking in the undergrowth.
‘But he hasn’t actually sold it yet, right?’
‘He was all set to sign on the dotted line, but I faked a heart attack to distract him,’ Tonya says.
‘And I stole the papers from his desk!’ Mr Barley shouts. ‘It really put the willies up him! I put willies on my gnomes that day in celebration!’
