I used to write on this tree, like it was some kind of secret notebook. I used to carve the letters into the bark with a little penknife and make sure that they couldn’t be seen from below. Then I decided it was wrong to deface a wonderful thing like a tree, so I stopped. But I can still see them and touch them. My name, “Mina” (many times), and “Mum” and “Dad” (many times). “I hate EVERYTHING!” is carved onto one branch. “I LOVE everything!” is on another. “The World Is a Place of Wonder” is in elegant letters high up on the trunk. “Mina is lonely” is on a narrow branch, in very very tiny writing. The words are healing over now as time passes and the spring comes back. In a few years’ time they won’t be able to be seen at all. I used to write on my arms as well, but I stopped that, too, except when I want to make a quick note to myself about something I’ve seen or heard.
Looks like they’ve finished clearing out Mr. Myers’s house. The last of the junk’s been carried out. There’s been rubbish heaped up in the front garden for the last few days – broken furniture, boxes of old clothes, crockery, cutlery, ancient books and magazines. I see people pausing there. A couple of them have sifted through it all to see if there’s anything of value or use. But there seems to be nothing. They throw it all back, take nothing away.
It’s already been put up for sale. There’s already been people eyeing it up. A man stared through the front window. He looked up at the roof. He scribbled notes in a notebook. Then a woman and a man climbed over the junk and stared into the front window. They turned and looked along the street as if they were inspecting it, checking whether it was up to their standard. They didn’t see me. They looked very dull, very boring. “Don’t you buy it!” I said inside myself. They said a few words to each other, then they shook their heads and walked away without a backward look.
“Good riddance!” I said inside myself.
Then a huge refuse wagon drove into the street. It stopped outside Mr. Myers’s house with a great sighing of brakes. A man jumped down from the cab. He was dressed in orange overalls. He pulled on a pair of gloves and put a mask across his mouth, like he was dealing with something lethal. He lifted all the rubbish and threw it into the back of the wagon. He saw me watching. He laughed and waved. As he passed by my tree, he slowed right down and wound his window down.
“Hello, young’n!” he called.
His eyes were merry and bright.
“Hello,” I answered.
“Looks like you’re having a grand time up there in your tree!”
“I am,” I said.
“Good lass!” He grinned, and shrugged, like he wanted to say something but didn’t know what to say. Then he just called out, “Live your life, young’n!”
And he was gone, carrying the remnants of Mr. Myers’s life to the town dump.
What else can I do but live my life? But of course he meant, Live it well. Live it to the full. Which is a very nice thing to say to anybody, and which is exactly what I intend to do!
Suddenly the street was quiet and empty. I jumped down from the tree and went to Mr. Myers’s house. I went to the front window, cupped my hands against the glass and peered inside. There was nothing, just dirty floorboards and lots of dust and beige wallpaper with faded flowers on it peeling from the walls. The ceiling was damp and cracked and a whole section of it had broken away. The door to the room was ajar. I imagined Mr. Myers shuffling through it with his zimmer frame into the corridor beyond. Mum had told me he’d been living downstairs for months. There was a bed and a toilet in what used to be the dining room.
Funny how somebody can just disappear from the world. Mr. Myers used to be a runner and a long jumper. He even had trials for England. He flew fighter planes in World War 2. He was married three times, Mum had told me. And now it was all over. But it wasn’t, really, and he hasn’t completely disappeared. Some of Ernie Myers must remain inside the house – flakes of his skin, for instance[4].
And his smell must remain as well. And maybe they were the stains of his pee on the floorboards. Maybe there were molecules of Mr. Myers’s breath still mingling with the air inside the house. Maybe his soul was still inside the house.
In some places, people believe that a person’s soul stays near their home for many days after death before it flies away. In some places people believe that the soul never leaves this world, but takes the form of a bird. Imagine if that were true – that the birds we see around us are people’s souls. I looked up to the roof, where a blackbird was calling. I held my hands against the brightness of the sky. Much higher up, I saw the tiny black dots of distant singing larks.
Then Mum was there, behind me. She put her hand on my shoulder.
“Wish I’d known him when he was young,” I said.
Mum laughed.
“If you had, you’d be well on the way to being an old woman yourself.” I pondered that fact. “He was a nice bloke,” Mum said. “I always remember pushing you along in the buggy and he opened the door and came out. He put a pound coin into your hand. A bit of treasure for the baby, he said.”
“Was Dad there?”
“Yes. Yes, he was.” Then Mum flinched. “What’s that?” she said.
“What’s what?”
“That. Inside the house, Mina.”
We both peered in through our hands, and we saw the black cat slinking out of the room through the open door.
“Oh,” she breathed. “It’s just a cat.”
I smiled at the image of my little savage friend. I was certain there’d be mice aplenty for him in Mr. Myers’s empty house.
“There’s been people looking at the house already,” I said.
“Good. Be nice to have new neighbors soon.”
“But they might be boring,” I said. “They looked very boring.”
“You know you can’t tell what somebody’s like just by looking at them, Mina.”
“Yes, I know that. But they did look boring, and …”
She laughed.
“Maybe you should put a notice on the door. Only interesting people are allowed to buy this house!”
“Maybe I should.”
“Anyway, buying a house is very complicated, and whoever buys this one will need to do lots of work, and that’ll put people off, so just because somebody’s looking at it doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know.”
A blue car drove slowly past. The man driving it peered out. He stopped the car. The woman beside him leaned right down so she could see it too. She soon sat up again. They said a few words, he drove away.
“Be nice if a family bought it, wouldn’t it?” said Mum.
I shrugged.
“Be nice if they had somebody round about your age, wouldn’t it?”
“Don’t care,” I said.
She smiled gently.
“Don’t you?”
“No. Just as long as they’re …”
“Interesting?”
“Yes! Interesting!”
She smiled again and I suddenly felt really awkward. She reached out and patted my arm.
“I’m sure they will be,” she said.
We walked back home. The blue car drove into the street again and went slowly past the house again.
The blackbird squawked a warning call.
“Do you believe that birds are souls?” I asked.
She pondered.
“No. Not really. It’s a nice thought, though. Do you?”
“No. Birds are quite extraordinary enough without having to be souls as well.”
Mum went back into the house. I climbed back into the tree.
