Read Online The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore by Paul Burman - Free Book Online Page B

beltà slendea
    Negli occhi tuoi ridenti e fuggitivi,
    E tu, lieta e pensosa, il limitare
    Di gioventù salivi?
    On a shelf among other books, next to a tin with two flint points, in a house I call my home, is a copy of Leopardi’s poems. (Some memories are impossible to live without, however tormenting they might be to keep alive.) To one side, in a brass frame, is a slightly blurred, black-and-white photo of a man carrying a child on his shoulders. It’s my only photo of my father.
    It’s late-afternoon, I’ve just got home from school, and I’m phoning Kate. Before Mum and Brian get in.
    â€œI’m so angry,” she cries.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” Maybe there’s been trouble at school, or an argument with her parents. Stuff from my world.
    â€œThe bloody council. Nothing but vandals. They butchered the trees in my street. Every single one.”
    â€œChopped them down?”
    â€œJust about. Every year I watch the first buds shoot into leaf, but it won’t happen now. They’re a bunch of bastards, bureaucratic vandals. I do my homework in the front room so I can see the greenery and listen to the birds singing, and now it’s bare. It’ll be bare all summer and especially when I’m revising for exams. All I’ll see is the bloody factory opposite.”
    It’s mid-March and a fortnight since the dance. We’ve met in Northampton to see a film – Picnic at Hanging Rock – and at a pub a few days later. Every couple of nights we speak on the phone, even though Brian’s getting toey about the bill, and even though I’ve told him I’ll bloody pay for each friggin’ call if he wants me to.
    â€œAnd they’ve cut them all down?”
    â€œThey were just beginning to look like real trees again, after the last time. I was hoping they wouldn’t do it again. I guess I’d forgotten. It’s a few years back. And now those morons have cut all the branches off, right down to the trunks. Every tree in the street – but especially my tree.”
    â€œPerhaps they’ve got Dutch Elm disease, Kate. Perhaps that’s why. Perhaps they’ve gotta take them down completely and then they’ll replant more.”
    â€œDon’t say that. These trees are fine. I don’t think they’re elms. Limes or planes, I think. They do it every few years. Pollard them. Thinks it makes them look bleeding tidier, but they’re more like knobbly poles than trees now. Stumps. Oh, it makes me so angry. It’s the Council’s fault of course. They’re a bunch of knobs. The workmen are only doing what they’ve been told. I’ve a good mind to write a letter to the newspaper. I think I will. I’ll do it tonight.”
    I’ve little to offer except what an elderly neighbour told me when I’d helped with her garden once. “If they haven’t been chopped back too far, they’ll probably sprout again pretty quick. Sometimes, when plants are cut back, they grow even faster. It sort of encourages them.” And instinctively I look out at Dad’s almond tree and our spruce.
    â€œDo you think so? You probably think I’m being silly.”
    â€œNo. Not at all. Do you want me to come over? We could meet somewhere. Anywhere.”
    â€œWould you? Would you really do that?”
    â€œOf course I will. If you want me to.”
    â€œI’d love you to, Tom, but not tonight. I’ve got an essay to finish and some reading to do, and I’m gonna write that letter.
    Saturday though, eh? I’ll see you on Saturday?”
    â€œDefinitely,” I say, and decide to buy her a plant to keep on her windowsill; something with lots of leaves that won’t die in a hurry, like a rubber plant or a spider plant, or maybe a poinsettia.
    On a night of icy frost, when spring has retreated against winter’s return, Kate teaches me the nature of my sex. On this brittle