The Eucalyptus

The yard was too small for a Eucalyptus really. The roots were a constant menace, pushing at the paving stones, inching them upwards season by season, laying traps for unsuspecting feet. It looked almost lonely in the company of rose bushes and ivy. A displaced Antipodean, abandoned far from home. 

The house had been bought by an Australian in the 70s. She'd planted it one spring, a shivering little sapling from a garden centre, leaves a muted teal in the weak English sunlight. A little piece of home. Awkward, trying its best to acclimatise, to settle in. It sent its roots deep, looking for home, sent them wide, looking for compatriots, finding only English stone. But it had flourished nevertheless. 

She died some time in the 90s, the Australian. Tucked up in bed in her home away from home. There were worse ways to go. She was laid to rest under heavy English soil somewhere nearby and her tree left alone in the too-small yard. A ghost of her, in a way. Like the flowery wallpaper at the back of the closet and the tobacco stains blooming round the living room cornices. 

An English couple moved in, decisive southerners with a plan; stripped the wallpaper, painted the yellowing walls, but they left the tree in peace. Such a beautiful shade of blue. Exotic. Unique. A selling point. It dominated the estate agent photos. Part of the appeal, not a haunting, not a voice calling across the decades saying, 'I was here! I came all the way across the world and I made this place home. This tree was me. I was here.'

A child climbed into the deep Y of the boughs. Feet scuffing against the bark that peeled in great sheets every year. His tree, cartoon blue and shady in the heat of the midday sun. It was his special place. The perfect size, the perfect shape, standing guard outside his window. A part of his world for as long as he could remember and, because he was ten, as long as he could remember was all that there was. History was just another story. His tree popped into being the moment he understood that it was a tree. It wasn't strange or displaced or exotic, it was the tree-est of trees because it was the first tree he knew. He would always measure trees by this first one.

 

It was a winter storm that finally saw it off. Driving rain and hail, a bitter wind howling in over the North Sea bringing the frigid fury of borrowed Arctic air. An unnatural end for a gum tree. It was built for fire, not ice. Sodden blue leaves on whip thin branches raked the air and found no purchase. A heaving crack and one long bough hit the deck. The watery light of morning revealed the gruesome scene: the trunk split open like a carcass, splintered orange insides spilling out. Half a century of enduring undone in a night. 

It was too close to the house, too close to the fence, the yard was too small. Who thought it was a good idea to plant a tree like that in a place like this? A terminal diagnosis. Time to go. 

The tree surgeons brought a wood chipper and the bright smell of Eucalyptus oil lingered in the borders for weeks. Reawakened by the rain or the sun. A haunting. A reminder, quieter and quieter until nobody could quite make it out anymore: 'I was here! I lived here, I made a home here, I was wanted, I was immutable as the stone beneath my feet for just the blink of an eye.' 

 

One little life in a too-small yard. It had meant something to someone, once.