Elmet by Mozley Fiona

Author:Mozley, Fiona [Fiona Mozley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2017-06-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Caring for a wood means huge stacks of trimming get piled up around the place. In order to let new growth fight through, overhanging branches, crumbled bark and fallen trees must be cleared. Weeds in the undergrowth must be managed. The right shoots must be let through and the wrong ones discouraged. Hazel needs to be hacked back to the stem so that it sprouts forth again severally next season like the heads of Hydra.

The multiple, thin trunks that come from hazel are useful for building fences and baskets and they form the wattle of wattle and daub walls. Daddy, with our help, had been rebuilding and extending the chicken coop with wattle and daub and something like a thatched roof, though Daddy admitted a proper thatcher would be loath to give his approximation that name.

The new chicken coop was attached to our house. Its back wall was what had been the outside of our kitchen wall, by the stove. This meant the hens could enjoy the warmth that seeped through the wood and stones, such that it did. Daddy said that most people kept their chickens at the bottom of the garden far from the human house so that the human family need not be bothered by the clucking and scratching of the birds. Daddy said this was unkind and that he would rather live with the racket than think of the creatures left needlessly cold when there was a clear and direct remedy. So we built their house tucked up close against ours. Its wattle walls were curved and crinkled like a callous on the smooth, straight lines Daddy had constructed for our home the previous year. A grotesquely large wasps’ nest glued to the side of a silver birch.

With all that work for the chickens and all the continuing work to restrain and shape the copse, the piles of woodland debris grew and grew. We burnt much of it in our stove but every now and then we set a load ablaze in an outdoor bonfire. We picked clear evenings for these, even if the cold was biting, and we stood about and warmed ourselves against the baying flames and roasted cuts of meat or vegetables or else we toasted bread as we had when we first arrived and lived out of the two vans.

Now, we had much wood to burn and this time decided to bring others along to our bonfire. We invited Andrew the butcher and Peter and Ewart and Martha, and Gary and the other labourers that Cathy and I had made contact with. Ewart suggested an event to get to know people properly, to foment support or sound out the people and the possibilities that lay in our community. Martha said that we had been alone for too long.

Maybe so. The prospect of so many faces coming up the hill to see us felt strange, like we were to be stripped naked and paraded.

This said, there was excitement as well as fear. I busied myself with arrangements for the food we would serve.

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