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They’ve No Time for Trees Today She said there was a different attitude. Everyone was throwing away and there was no mending. She loved walking or driving in winter but never stopped to observe for long, Oh look at the Mountain Ash! her sigh went up as she booted past in the Mini or maybe I wasn’t looking either, only waiting to poke holes in her snobbery, Wherever there were Protestants, they planted trees! And what about Spenser chopping them down so he could kill every Gael? You could walk from Cork to Limerick and not meet a soul before the Plantation of Munster! God, you’ve an answer for everything, haven’t you? But I was only just saying! And why can’t we have a discussion? Look you can still see the outline of the carriageway at the back. Imagine what we think is the back was the front of the house then… She was right about the beeches, meeting overhead on the road to Mallow – a green gift from the planters. A lover of funerals, she preferred Deanes’ back avenue past its heyday with its moss ruff leading to the neglected cobbled yard, ruined belfry, Servants, imagine it! The new bungalows were ugly, I suppose people have to live somewhere. But trees were going to get scarcer because 158
page 167
The people have gone stone mad! A conservatory, three bathrooms and no one inside in it, where will it end? Sure what about the size of Deanes’ House? Well everyone can’t be at it and that is the size of it! Only who gets to decide? She was the one who, in the dark, surreptitiously hacked down armfuls of beech branches and stuck them in the brown and pink Victorian ewers she’d rescued from Cotters’ farm, they blazed emerald one summer in our cold salvaged fireplaces, old was always good in her book. She was always looking back and now – me too, rooted, staring after her. 159

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The people have gone stone mad! A conservatory, three bathrooms and no one inside in it, where will it end? Sure what about the size of Deanes’ House? Well everyone can’t be at it and that is the size of it! Only who gets to decide? She was the one who, in the dark, surreptitiously hacked down armfuls of beech branches and stuck them in the brown and pink Victorian ewers she’d rescued from Cotters’ farm, they blazed emerald one summer in our cold salvaged fireplaces, old was always good in her book. She was always looking back and now – me too, rooted, staring after her.

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