PETER QUINCE
For several days our village has echoed inter- mittently to the sound of the power-saw cut- ting through old timber. It is, on most occa- sions, a melancholy sound, implying the death of fine trees, as well as a singularly un- pleasant one, suggestive of a dentist's drill of appalling size and force. This time, however, we have put up with it cheerfully, knowing that what was taking place was skilled sur- gery upon an old and valued landmark.
There stands, in the centre of a garden that was laid out here during the eighteenth cen- tury, a magnificent walnut tree. It is not the common walnut (which is handsome enough) but the so-called BlackWalnut, Jugfans nigra, which is a native of North America, and which, as this specimen testifies, achieves with age a marvellous size and grandeur.
Our walnut (I say 'our' because we all feel proprietorial about it, even though our only title to do so is neighbourly admiration) has been maturing for upwards of two hundred years. It must have been one of the first to be introduced here from the American Col- onies, although I believe some were planted towards the end of the seventeenth century. It was coming along nicely when Dr .14nson was in his prime, and it has now attained a height and spread which- make passers-by stop and stare, especially in spring when its leaflets are a delicate pale green.
Not long ago there was a thunderous crash from this tree. Its owner, hurrying out to inspect it, saw that one of the great branches had parted company with the rest of the tree and lay, ruined, upon the lawn. His feelings at the sight were a mixture of alarm and dis- may, with alarm possibly gaining the upper hand when he recalled that only a little time previously a tea party of the village's pen- sioners had been held beneath the walnut's accommodating shade. And then another branch split away from the trunk, and plunged down beside the first.
Having a proper sense of his responsibility as custodian of this failing giant, he did not simply order it to be felled as many people would have done (thereby depriving himself and the rest of us of a noble sight), but went to some trouble to find an accomplished tree surgeon who could deal with the matter in a more civilised fashion. And this admirable fellow, after much careful examination and diagnosis, pronounced that the patient could indeed be saved if certain drastic remedial measures were taken.
So now a gang of his minions are busy about the tree, which stands festooned with ropes and invaded by ladders as the opera- tion is performed. The scene, in fact, is rather like some large-scale, slow-motion reproduc- tion of a hospital operating theatre when a human patient is being healed by the knife.
The object, essentially, is to reduce by
about one third the overall size of the old walnut, and to remove those branches which the expert eye has judged likely lp pose a . threat to any future gathering, whether of pensioners or others, on the grass beneath. The work goes ahead briskly, with much shouting and piercing bursts of sound from the power-saw, and the inevitable back- ground noise from a transistor radio propped up on a pile of sawn timber.
The leader of this team, a bearded young man in colourful clothes which suggest he might be an actor off duty, is in fact clearly an enthusiast. He mourns for every branch that is removed, then glows with pleasure at the thought that it is all in the old tree's best interests. 'Beautiful tree.' he says repeatedly, looking upwards. 'What people forget,' he assured me with some earnestness, 'is that trees are like teeth. They have to be cared for when they get on in years. And people forget that even then trees have a natural life and have to die at the end of it.'
To him, plainly, the inescapable fact of mortality is almost as painful when applied to trees as it is to humanity. He is a very sympathetic young man.
An odd thing he told me was that no one seems to want the timber of the fine trees which he often has to cut down. He has to pay someone to take the carcases away. Oaks, walnuts, elms—frequently he has to fell them in their prime, to make way for houses or roads; their timber would in other, more sensible ages have been prized for the making of beautiful furniture. Today it is junk. In many cities it cannot even be sold for fire- wood, because to burn it would be to infringe the smokeless zone regulations.
The old walnut, however, is a long way from any such fate now. As I hear the screech of the saw working in its branches, I think of the amiable young man patting the massive trunk cheerfully and declaring, 'She'll be good for another hundred years when we've linished',
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