‘You know who’s behind this, don’t you?’ Sally Murphy from the pub had phoned Julie Ames the day after her husband had given up arguing in the name of common sense and sprayed the field. ‘It’s that odious little man from Dyson Drive.’
‘Not Mo’s husband?’ Julie was shocked. ‘Surely he wouldn’t do this. Not to his own village.’
‘He would. You know the kids have been banned from riding their bikes up the path now? Apparently they are not allowed on the footpath as it’s only for people on foot. There’s a notice gone up. And horses can’t go up there any more either. They all have to go on the road through the village and you know how dangerous that is!’ She paused as they both considered the flow of lorries hurtling off the bypass to cut a few minutes off their journey towards the motorway link. ‘I heard he walked straight through Bill Riley’s back garden the other day as well. Said it was an ancient right of way and no one was going to stop him.’
‘But that’s crazy. No one has used that path for years. There’s a whole estate of houses built across it now.’
Sally gave a hollow laugh. ‘Apparently he’s been on to the parish council and is demanding they run a path behind the whole line of houses, cutting them off from their gardens. Either that or pull the houses down because the builder hadn’t checked properly about rights of way.’
Julie was stunned into silence for a moment. ‘He can’t do that!’
‘He can apparently. It only takes one person to insist on the letter of the law.’
‘What is the matter with the man? Why would anyone want to walk up there anyway? It doesn’t go anywhere.’
‘I don’t think that’s the point.’ Julie sighed. ‘These people have no idea. No idea at all.’
It was Colonel Wright who opened the Sunday Times first in the village, exactly two weeks later. ‘Village torn apart by footpath row,’ he saw as the page two headline. ‘Lone local hero fights to re-open rights of way against a barrage of local resentment. Entrenched landowners determined to break the law …’ And there was a photo of Joe Middleton standing by … The colonel squinted at the photo in astonishment and fury. It was his own decimated laurel hedge! He felt his blood pressure mounting dangerously high as he reached for his coffee cup and then put it down again untouched. His hands were shaking violently. That was his own beautiful hedge and it had been blocking nothing! Nothing.
Doreen surveyed the pile of timber that had been her fence. A man from the council had come over with a measuring tape and fussed and measured and tutted and told her that it encroached fifteen centimetres onto the public right of way – the footpath. So the whole thing had to come down. As did the remains of the rose. She stared at her once beautiful little garden miserably. Completely open down its entire length it was unprotected from children and dogs and litter. All had done their worst. How was she ever going to replace the fence? She couldn’t even afford a new rose. Bewildered and unhappy she stood and watched as Marjory Cockpen’s Jack Russell skipped in off the path and proceeded to squat almost at her feet. Marjory, walking along the now broad and ugly path, eyes front, ignored the dog’s indiscretion. Doreen wasn’t to know that the old woman was as unhappy and embarrassed as her neighbour. It had never occurred to Marjory to take a bag for her dog’s do-dos – hitherto deposited out of harm’s way in the hedge, and even if it had with her arthritis she could never have stooped to pick it up.
Crying silently Doreen turned back into her cottage and closed the door behind her. As far as she was concerned she had just lost a friend.
Maureen was standing at her kitchen window staring out at the road. Two reporters were there from the local paper talking to Joe by their front gate. The whole world knew by now that this was the local HQ of the war.
‘This is the third footpath I have campaigned about.’ Joe’s words would appear on page three the following morning. ‘The other two were in neighbouring villages and are now fully open and accessible. They are tidy and neat and though I say it myself would do credit to a proper garden!’ What he didn’t expect when he proudly read the piece the next day was the sharp little editorial two pages further on.
‘Joe Middleton is a representative of an increasing phenomenon in the countryside these days; a retired townie determined to turn the country into a mirror image of the town he has forsaken. He appears to have no real concern for the accessibility or the beauties of the landscape, obsessed instead, in an all too familiar way, with small detail rather than the greater picture. Interviews in the villages whose footpaths he has so proudly fought to clear all tell the same story. Neighbours once friends, now enemies, beautiful countryside fractured, hedges and trees trimmed neatly back to conform to some notional norm, while flowers and berries die. Fields are blighted by the now familiar ugly poisoned scars which dissect them with the precision of a ruler rather than gently following ancient contours and byways. All to provide access for armies of seemingly angry walkers who it is rumoured actually measure the length of grass blades to ensure that they comply with footpath regulations, rather than raise their eyes to enjoy the God-given glory of the countryside they are traversing. Communities do exist where members of different countryside groups have managed to get together to settle such matters as the rerouting of old rights of way amicably and sensibly. Would that this could happen everywhere. Alas, as long as people like Joe Middleton see it as their duty to regard common sense as a dirty word and live by a Pooterish insistence on the value of small print for its own sake, this country will continue to slide into a morass of red tape and mediocrity, turning its back on the spirit of independence combined with neighbourly compromise which once made this country great.’
‘I’d give a good deal to know who wrote that!’ Ted Ames read the leader out to his wife as she dished up the potatoes for lunch. ‘That makes me feel a whole lot better, that does!’
‘Well, you won’t when I tell you the latest thing this man wants.’ Julie sat down opposite him and shook her head. ‘I think it’s probably the last straw. You know where the footpath emerges from Dines Wood and crosses the heath?’
Ted nodded. He picked up his knife and fork.
‘Well, apparently the footpath has moved a few feet from its old position. The hedge has widened over the years and parts of the wood are bigger now. They’ve made the whole thing into a nature reserve. There’s a lovely old holly on the edge of the wood. This man says it has to be cut down as it’s on the footpath.’
Ted dropped his knife and fork, his food still untouched. ‘But can’t they go round it?’
Julie grimaced. ‘Oh come on, Ted. You know better than that by now. This man won’t go round anything. He knows his rights. He’s obsessed!’
Ted stared up at the ceiling. ‘What’s the council say?’
She shrugged. ‘No idea. They seem to be caving in to his every demand. He’s got the law on his side, it seems. Colonel Wright is demanding some kind of legal enquiry about some of the things that have happened, but I don’t suppose anyone will be interested in this. It’s right out in the country.’
Ted shook his head. ‘A holly, you say?’
She nodded.
‘Well, that’s going to be an interesting one.’ He gave a wry grin. ‘I’m glad it’s not on my land, that’s all I can say.’
‘You are not seriously insisting that they cut down a tree when there is a sixty-acre field out there for people to walk in to go round it!’ Maureen was watching her husband with something like awe. She had been listening to him lambasting some poor man in the council highways department over the phone.
‘It’s on the footpath, Mo.’ Joe sat back, exhausted. ‘I don’t think you understand how important this all is. I’m not doing this to upset people you know. But someone has to take a stand. These landowners think they can walk all over the rest of us just because they’ve got money and big houses. One day all land will be accessible to everyone, but until then they have to be made to toe the line.’
‘Poor old Doreen Ol
dfield doesn’t have a big house or any money,’ Maureen said quietly. ‘I was hearing at the post office that she hasn’t been seen outside her cottage in weeks. She just sits and cries because her garden is ruined.’
‘That’s hardly my fault.’ He folded his arms across his chest. ‘She should have checked her boundaries. There’s nothing to stop her putting up a new fence.’
‘Except money. And anyway, they were saying that her fence is on the old building line that goes back hundreds of years. It’s hardly her fault.’
Shrugging he gave a testy sigh. ‘Well, that’s not my problem.’
He had pinned an Ordnance Survey map to the wall now. It was covered in highlighter and pins and flags. Each footpath was marked and where they were blocked or deviated by so much as a foot from the official line he had flagged the spot. There were dozens of flags on the map. Dozens of campaigns ready to go once this one was finished. He gave another sigh, this time of contentment. Just one tree and footpath 29 would be clear and neat and ready for inspection by the committee when they came down from London to admire his handiwork and pose – this was his idea – for press photographs to celebrate yet another victory. That unfortunate editorial had been glanced at and immediately forgotten. It had obviously been written by some romantic hayseed with no idea of the realities of country life.
Maureen however was not prepared to let that one last detail go. ‘You are not actually going to force them to cut down a tree on the edge of a wood which is a nature reserve and standing by the side of a huge field?’
He nodded briskly. ‘They can always grow another tree if they want one. It’s the principle of the thing, Mo. I would have thought you would realise how important this is by now. We can’t make any exceptions.’
‘Why not?’ She stood looking at him with something like dislike. ‘Why not, just this once, make an exception?’
‘Because it’s breaking the law.’
‘The tree is breaking the law?’
He nodded.
She took a deep breath. ‘I gather it is a very beautiful tree, Joe. And old. There will be a lot of ill feeling if you insist on this.’ As if there wasn’t already. She sighed.
‘It’s not just me. It’s the council. It’s their job to enforce the law.’
‘And judging by your conversation with them just now they thought you were overstepping the mark. This isn’t some snooty landowner, Joe.’ The hated word. Red rag to a bull. ‘This tree belongs to a nature reserve. It belongs to the birds. To us all.’
‘It belongs to no one. It’s on a public right of way. It has to be removed just as it would be if it was a nettle or a bramble.’ He had his own secateurs for just such purposes. They always went with him on his walks. ‘No, Mo, I’m sorry. You are being sentimental. There is no place for sentiment in this campaign. None at all.’ And he set his jaw in a way she knew well. There would be no diverting him.
The argument on this particular tree lasted longer than most so far. People spoke about tree preservation orders; they contacted the tree warden, the Woodland Trust, the RSPB and Greenpeace; even the local druids, who promised to send someone to sit in the tree until they realised it was a holly, after which they felt a magic circle around it might be more helpful. Joe would not relent and eventually the council sent a truck laden with chainsaws and two men in hard hats. The van bounced up the footpath towards the tree and stopped. The holly was at its most glorious; laden with berries, a beacon in the dead winter landscape. The two men climbed out and stood staring at it. One took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Seems a shame.’
The other shook his head. ‘I’m not touching that. Not a holly. Bad luck that.’
They nodded in unison, climbed into the truck and drove away.
A week later the council rang Ted Ames. ‘If one of your farm workers could take down that holly we’d much appreciate it.’ There was a loud sigh the other end of the line. ‘It’s got to be done. We’ll pay, of course. We’ll never have any peace if we don’t get it sorted.’
But none of the farm workers would touch it.
Two lots of contracting tree surgeons from neighbouring towns found themselves too busy to do it before the spring at the earliest. The odd job man from Dyson Drive turned down two hundred quid. ‘Unlucky to chop down a holly, mate,’ he told a by now almost incandescent Joe.
In the village people were beginning to smile to themselves quietly.
No one had actually turned their backs on Maureen. Most were sorry for her. But still, people stopped talking when she went into the shop. They stood back and let her go first and waited until she had closed the door behind her before they resumed their conversations. It was on one such an occasion, after she had gone and the long silence was suddenly broken, that Colonel Wright’s wife heard from Julie Ames about Doreen’s heartbreak. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell us that she couldn’t afford a new fence?’ she asked, horrified. ‘That’s awful.’
The other women in the shop shrugged. How could they explain? The colonel and his wife were part of the village, but not of the inner cadres. Their large house and their money and their posh accents set them apart.
Two days later however the village watched with deep approval as a lorry arrived at Doreen’s cottage with new fence timbers to erect a smart fence on the correct line along the footpath. This gesture was followed by the colonel’s own gardener laden with young rose bushes and a mandate to restore Doreen’s garden. From then on the colonel and his wife became part of the village at last – a village where their ancestors had lived for two hundred years!
It was from the gardener that Doreen heard about the stand-off over the holly. She smiled, by now almost restored to her former benign self. ‘Silly man. After all he has done, doesn’t he realise to cut down a self-sown holly is to court bad luck for the rest of his life?’
The gardener shrugged. ‘He’s a townie, Dor. He doesn’t care.’ He shook his head. ‘And I don’t think he’s going to give up.’
He didn’t. Hiring a chainsaw from the tool hire company, with all the protective gear to go with it – goggles, hat, gloves, trousers – Joe took the holly down himself four days before Christmas. He sawed up the tree and carted loads of berried branches in his car boot back to Dyson Drive where he proceeded to sell them to all his neighbours who did not realise where they came from.
The village waited with bated breath. The footpath was now clear over its entire route. Not a branch, not a weed, not a blade of overlong grass obstructed it. A drift of arrows pointed the walker from one end to the other, finger posts announced the start and the finish and it lay across the countryside like an unhealed scar. No walkers came of course from the town in winter, not even the committee. They spent the cold wet months planning next year’s onslaughts and had no intention of actually setting foot in the countryside if they could help it until the spring; and they wouldn’t be returning to Winchmoor anyway. They had no interest in the place now they had done their bit. The locals didn’t walk it either. Not as it was now. It had lost its charm; and the muddy tracks across the open fields, without the shelter of the hedges which made the winter walks tolerable, were universally shunned. They followed the paths they always had and ignored the neatened corners, the dead straight miles. Who wanted their dog to walk over poisoned ground anyway? So footpath 29 lay for the most part unvisited – except by Joe.
Thus it was that he was quite alone when he strode the path two months after Christmas on a clear bright day after a week of violent February gales. He walked slowly along the muddy track alongside the nature reserve, admiring its neatness, the straight clean edges of the ditch where someone after his own heart had trimmed the dead wood back neatly and removed the unsaleable remains of the holly which Joe had tossed over the ditch into the wood to make sure that the path was unencumbered. Standing under the overhanging branches of an ancient oak, safely rooted on the far side of the ditch, he did not look up to admire its grace and stature and thus did not see the hu
ge bough, detached by the gales, hanging precariously over his head. That it chose just that exact moment to fall was of course complete coincidence.
Maureen was visiting the kids that weekend so there was no one to miss him. He came round once or twice, lying on the path, gazing up at the beauty of the huge tree under which he lay. It swam in a mist, from time to time seeming to dance slowly in a graceful pirouette, and from time to time he thought he saw faces peering at him from among the branches. It grew dark early at that time of year and as the hazy sun set below the rim of the field the temperature began to drop sharply. With a smile he closed his eyes. In the morning he would have to see to it that the fallen bough was sawn and the path tidied otherwise someone might trip over and hurt themselves.
It was three days before they found him. The village was sorry for Maureen of course. One by one they called to see if they could help and almost immediately she found herself at the centre of conversations in the post office. Once she began to get over the shock she mourned Joe, of course. But the man she mourned was the man she had married before the obsessions set in. She was, she had to admit, secretly glad to be free of him. And suddenly she felt for the first time at home in her own house. She began to feel as though she had lived in the village forever and at last she was confident that she could ask people home. When they came for coffee or tea there was no sign of any Ordnance Survey maps; no flags or pins or fluorescent pens. Around the lawn she had planted a holly hedge and that spring, out on the fields, nature began to grow back. The tree stump in the middle of the path near the nature reserve had already thrown out one or two small green shoots. No one would ever cut it back again. It’s unlucky to cut down a holly.
Sacred Ground
Somewhere in this field there is sacred ground.
Beneath the plough, the hooves,
the combine harvester,
the uncaring plodding feet,
there is a place where our ancestors