THE TREE AND HOUSE SUPPORTED EACH OTHER

by DF Lewis

Written today and first published here:


When Simon saw the secret house he knew there was a key to it somewhere. The map hadn’t shown any properties at all in the vicinity, but perhaps it wasn’t a map that would have shown them even if there had been any properties to show. He wondered why he had bothered to bring the map, as he hadn’t really been following it. Simon had simply been following his nose – shorthand for misguided instinct, and sometimes one needed a misguided instinct to fetch up anywhere at all one wanted to be. Indirect meant direct, when one least expected it. Simon smiled. This was the house he had been seeking all his life. He shrugged the rucksack to a hopefully more comfortable position on his shoulders as he approached the front door.

He decided knocking would be too easy. He ought to go round the back. This was typical of much of his life: always taking the more difficult course in the hope that it would end up being the easiest. If he’d been let in at the front, he may have thought he was intended to see someone who was never meant to be involved in his destiny at all and he may have missed seeing the person whom he really needed to see when entering by the kitchen entrance at the back.

Halfway round the back of the house, Simon simply changed his mind – and returned to the front door. He had seen a tree growing that was a horrific sight. Its roots had been rudely revealed by the digging of some large animal: and the branches leant against the side of the house. It was still growing, as a tree, but it was the unwholesomeness of the whole situation that perturbed Simon, as the house and tree were held together by some backward state of misguided symbiosis. An awkward situation that augured ill for the route he had chosen. He thought the tree was smelling rankly of its own self-cultured cankers or growths.

Having returned to the front door, he decided that he should have ignored the tree and continued reaching the back entrance. But direct once become indirect could then become more indirect than indirect itself if several changes of mind were experienced, involving walking back and forth for several hours to the front and rear of the house, even skirting the tree when the tree’s side of the house was chosen rather than the other side of the house where there was no tree at all leaning against the house. If Simon had chosen the treeless side of the house in the first place to reach the back of the house, then the whole quandary would not have arisen. He would have gone straight to the back and entered the house via the kitchen, thus taking his fate within two positive hands.

Simon eventually managed to enter the house, because one of the servants took pity on him or, more likely, suspected him of loitering with ill intent. Having passed over his credentials, Simon entered the house officially at 6.05 pm when dusk was settling like dust upon all visible surfaces. The entrance used was the one on the treeless side of the house which he had not previously noticed. A secret door. Only obvious as a door on the outside when opened from the inside. The servant was holding a balding broom ready for use, as some excuse for having opened it, but Simon knew she had really opened it because she had seen him wandering around the house on his own for some hours and, furthermore, he reckoned she must fancy him. She was a dowdy miss. But he was pleased for any excuse of making his grand entrance.

“Thank you for letting me in,” he said. He felt handsome, even if he wasn’t. He smiled knowing that it was a winning smile. “As you know, I have come to clean the chimneys.” He opened his rucksack to reveal the various interlocking rods and the shock-haired head of their business end.

“Madame must have forgotten to tell me you were coming,” she said, blushing.

“But first of all.” He held his chin pensively. “Can you tell me about the tree at the side of the house? I am in favour of nature and its preservation. Recycling. Birds. And animals. But nothing seems to live in that tree. It seems to kill all it touches.”

“It holds the house up,” she suggested while she made as if to sweep the floor with the excuse for a broom.

“More like the house holds it up!” he rejoindered.

Later, as dusk’s desiccations approached optimum density-point, the chimneypots, one by one, gave birth to a spiky growth.

Below, within a secret inner room with no key to open or close its entrance, two bodies lived their last moments of indirect love within each other’s arms, their aging once healthy growths having been hoisted off their shoulders like rucksacks.

No map to signpost any such properties, real or imagined.