Orphans of War. Leah Fleming

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       October 1999

      The storm in the night takes everyone by surprise: ripping tiles into domino falls, battering down doors, plucking out power lines and cables, hurling dustbins and chimney stacks through fences and down the streets of Sowerthwaite, past the sturdy stone cottages whose walls have stood firm against these onslaughts for hundreds of years.

      Showers of rolling timbers hurtle into parked vans, flinging in fury against shutters and barricades. In the back ginnels of the market town, the brown rats newly installed in their winter homes burrow deep into crevices as the wind flattens larch fences, blows out cracked greenhouse glass, twisting through gaps on its rampage.

      The old tree at the top of the garden of the Old Vic public house is not so lucky, swaying and lurching, groaning in one last gasp of protest. It’s too old, too brittle and hollowed out with age to put up much resistance; leaves and beech mast scattering like confetti, branches snapping off as the gale finds its weakness, punching around the divided trunk, lifting it out of its shallow base, tearing up rotten roots as it crashes sideways onto the roof of the stone wash house; this last barrier down before the storm races over the fields towards the woods.

      In the morning bleary-eyed residents open their doors on to the High Street to assess the damage: overturned benches flung into the churchyard, gravestones toppled, roofs laid bare and trees blocking the market square, smashed chimney cowls denting cars, gaping holes everywhere. What a to-do!

      The BBC news tells of far worst devastation in the south, but swathes of woodland have been flattened in the Lake District and here in the Craven Dales, so the town must wait its turn for cables to be raised and power to come back on and mop-up troops to clear the debris. Candles, Gaz burners and oil lamps are brought out from under stairs for just such emergencies. Coal fires are lit. Yorkshire homes know the autumn weather can turn on a sixpence.

      The tree surgeons come to assess the damage to the Old Vic and inspect the upended beech that’s stove in the wash house roof. The pub lost its licence decades ago but the name still sticks.

      The young tree surgeon, in his yellow helmet and padded dungarees, eyes the fallen monster with interest. ‘Not much left of that, then…Better tell them up at the Hall that it’s being sawn up. They’ll want it logged quickly.’

      His boss stares down, a portly man in his middle years. ‘She were a good old tree…I played up there many a time in the war when it were a hostel, after it were a pub, like. They had a tree house, as I recall. Kissed me first girl up there,’ he laughs. ‘This beech must be two hundred year old, look at the size of that trunk.’

      ‘It’s seen itself out then,’ replies the young man, unimpressed. ‘We can sort this out easy enough.’ They put on goggles and make for their chainsaws.

      ‘Shame to see her lying on her side, though. Happen she’d had a few more years yet if the storm hadn’t done its worst,’ mutters Alf Brindle, running his metal detector over the corpse. He’s broken too many blades on hidden bits of iron stuck into trunks over the centuries, wrapped over by growth and lifted high: crowbars and nails, bullets and even heavy stones hidden in the bark.

      ‘Who are you kidding? It’s rotten at the core. Look, you could ride a bike down there and it’ll be full of rubbish.’ The young man ferrets down into the divided hollow to make his point. There’s the usual detritus: tin cans, rotting balls. Then they begin stripping the branches, sawing the trunk into rings.

      ‘What the heck…?’ he shouts, seeing something stuck deep into the ring growth. ‘Switch off, Alf!’

      ‘What’ve you got there then?’ The older man pauses. ‘It always amazes me how a tree can grow itself round objects and lift them up as it grows.’

      ‘Dunno…I’ve never seen owt like this afore,’ his mate says, examining the rings, loosening what looks like a leather pouch, the size of a briefcase, from its secret cocoon. Curiously he begins to unwrap the cracked layers of rotten fabric. ‘Somebody’s stuffed summat right down here. It’s like trying to unpeel onion skins.’

      As he loosens the parcel he reaches the remains of a tea cloth; its pale chequered pattern still visible. ‘Bloody hell!’ He jumps back and crosses himself. ‘How did that get there?’

      The men stand silent, stunned, not knowing what to do. Alf fingers the cloth with shaking hands. ‘Well, I never…All these years and we never knew…’

      ‘Happen it’s been here for donkey’s years,’ offers the lad, shaking his head. ‘I can count the ring growth…must be over fifty years.’

      ‘Aye, must be…You OK? Look, that cloths’s got a utility mark in the corner. We had them on everything in our house after t’war,’ says Alf, shaking his head in disbelief.

      The lad is already making for his mobile in the truck. ‘This is a job for the local constabulary, Alf. We don’t do owt until they’ve sorted this out, but better fetch someone from the Hall. It’s their property. I need a fag. Let’s go for a pint…Who’d’ve thowt it, bones buried in a tree? Happen it’s just a pet cat.’

      Neither of them speaks as they stare at their discovery but both of them sense that these aren’t animal remains.

      A tall woman in jeans and a scruffy Barbour paces round the tree trunk in silence, kicking the beech mast with her boot. She is youthful in her late middle age; the sort of classy woman who ages well and has never lost her cheekbones or girlish figure. Her hands are stuffed in her pockets whilst behind her a red setter bounds over the branches, sniffing everything with interest.

      The woman looks down the path to the old stone house that fronts on to the High Street, its wavy roofline evidence of rotting roof timbers bowed under the weight of huge sandstone flag tiles. The tree has crashed through the outhouse at the side, leaving a gaping hole. It’s a good job they’d not begun any renovations, she sighs.

      The scene of the discovery is cordoned off but soon it’ll be all round Sowerthwaite that remains have been found in the Victory Tree, human remains. It will be headlines in the local Gazette on Friday. There’s not been a mystery like this since the vicar disappeared one weekend and turned up a month later as a woman.

      ‘’Fraid it’s made a right mess of your wash house, Maddy,’ says Alf Brindle, not standing on ceremony with her ladyship. He’s known her since she was in ankle socks.

      ‘Don’t worry, Alf. We’d plans to pull it down and extend. Our daughter’s hoping to set up her own business here: architectural reclamations, selling antique garden furniture and masonry. She wants to use all of the garden for storage. The storm’s done us a favour,’ she replies, knowing it’s better to give the word straight before the locals twist it.

      ‘She’s up for good then, up from London to stay?’ he fishes.

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