Rowan trees

Gethin turned on the main light to check his appearance in the wardrobe mirror before leaving for work. The late afternoon sun would have come streaming through his window if he hadn’t fitted blackout blinds. He would replace them with the net curtains his mother preferred once his memories of sniper attacks on the Forward Operating Base went away. She would open the blinds and the window once he had left the house, and would then close them again when she went to bed, well before he returned.

He had been meticulous over his appearance in the Army, and had carried this over to his civilian life. For him it was a mark of both professionalism and respect. The Army had taken a rough lad from a mining valley and made a soldier of him, but had not prepared him for the return to civilian life. Before he joined up, he had been a trainee motor mechanic. Now he was a qualified driver of heavily armoured, mine-resistant, wheeled patrol vehicles. After an exciting and dangerous four years in Afghanistan as part of a tight and highly motivated fighting group, the thought of returning to his old job left him cold. He moved back in with his mother and started looking for work.

It had not been going well, and he seemed to be just drifting when an adviser at the Job Centre came up with a new idea – what about a job as a Nightclub Door Supervisor, a ‘Bouncer’? He had the physical presence needed, and had plenty of experience of defusing confrontations in the Army, but more to the point it paid comfortably more than his Jobseeker’s Allowance, and would give him time during his daylight hours to explore other possibilities. All he needed, said the adviser, was a Security Industry Authority certificate. Four days of study and two exams, and there would be no problem finding a job. She was right: he was successful at his first interview and started work that evening.

He had chosen his new ‘uniform’ with care. Black trousers and polo neck sweater, both designer fashion but he had carefully removed the labels. Dr Marten’s executive leather safety shoes with steel inner toecaps that would withstand stiletto heels and deliver a kick if needed. A smart black overcoat for chilly nights. And under his polo neck sweater, the gold chain which Lizzie had given him before he left for Afghanistan - under the sweater because otherwise it could give an assailant something to grab if it were to come to a scuffle. Lizzie. She had a new boyfriend now. Gethin had not been one for writing letters or long phone calls, and they had drifted apart while he was away. He still had the chain, though. While he was away on service, he had left it with his grandmother for safekeeping, and now he wore it every day. It reminded him of their happy days together before he grew up and became a man. Happy days would come again with another partner, maybe marriage and kids, but he was in no hurry.

Tomorrow, he planned a day out. He would drive north into the hills and take a run in the forest. In the heat and dust, he had often dreamed of doing this again, though before his Army training it would have been a stroll rather than a run. He felt the energy coiled up inside him and needed to let it release. His job was stressful though it didn’t get on top of him. Sometimes he had to hold himself in when he had to bar drunken cocky youngsters at the door, but it was a lot easier than driving an armoured vehicle under fire watching out for signs of remotely-controlled mines in the road. So far, he had not needed to use force in the new job – his height, physique and spiky short black hair were enough to earn him respect before it came to that.

His shift over, he walked back to his mother’s house and let himself in quietly. He had a shower and shave – he never left the house unshaven – and changed into his off-road running gear and a tracksuit. He laid the gold chain back in its leather case and put it away in a drawer. Breakfast was microwaved porridge with fruit and yoghurt; he put a thermos of coffee and a bottle of water into a backpack and was ready to go.

The car had been his father’s, and Gethin had kept it in showroom condition for him. Since his father’s death, his mother had kept it in their garage even though she couldn’t drive. Gethin was determined that she should learn, if only to visit his grandma up in the valley he was now heading towards. Twenty minutes door-to-door in a car. Two hours or more by public transport. He thought of the families he had seen in the Afghan countryside, three generations, maybe more, all living apparently happily together. That was how it had been when his grandma was a child on the family farm before spoil tips from the mine covered it. Now the mine had closed, exhausted, and the spoil tips were disguised with trees and grass, but the farm had gone forever except in Grandma’s memory. He would call in and see her after his run and maybe get invited to an early lunch. He had some carefully selected pictures from Afghanistan to show her. Families sitting together outside their houses, wild and domestic animals and birds, irrigated green fields surrounded by dry land and scrub, his fellow soldiers and their armoured vehicles, the little patch of salad vegetables they kept alive with wastewater from the cookhouse. There was no need to show her the ‘horror of war’ pictures. She knew all about that from his grandfather’s stories of the First World War and his father’s from the Second. He would have his stories to tell too, but not yet.

As he drove past the sleeping houses, he wondered whether soldiering was in the family’s genes. Would his son, assuming he had one, choose to be a soldier too? Perish the thought! His father and grandfather had both volunteered, but would have been conscripted anyway if they hadn’t done so. He had chosen to join up to get away from a boring job and learn a trade. He had left school with no qualifications and the recruiting posters made the Army seem the obvious solution. Now he would like his children to have more choice; if they really wanted to join the forces then they should get the right qualifications to enter Officer Training at the start. He laughed at himself - here he was making plans for his children, and he hadn’t met their mother yet.

The road began to rise along the valley, and there were soon trees on either side. Trees always brought him peace. Trees and a mountain stream brought bliss. Today, he was going to follow a track he hadn’t used before, because according to the map it crossed a stream near a ruined building. A good place to bring his thoughts together.

He pulled off the road into the Forestry Commission car park. There was a recent scar along one edge of the parking area; someone had driven up the track from the road at high speed and failed to control the car in time to avoid hitting the bank. The car had gone, but a sapling little more than a metre high lay on top of the bank, battered and with most of its roots out of the soil. Gethin grew angry. He had seen armoured vehicles driven across ditches and crops when there was no need, mindlessly damaging the farmers' land, and he knew what had happened to the local farms under the mine waste tips. He realised that his reaction was out of proportion. After all, it was just one sapling of hundreds in the area, but somehow it mattered. What had happened to it shouldn’t have happened – it was the result of human stupidity and lack of care for the world around us, but at least he could put this bit right.

He found a plastic carrier bag blown into a bush and carefully eased the tree into it, with as much soil around the roots as possible. He could see from the now wilting leaves that it was a Rowan Tree, and he had vague memories of his grandma laughing that they used to have a Rowan Tree in the old farmyard but it hadn’t helped when the mine owner wanted to dump spoil on their land. He placed the tree in its bag in his backpack and started his run, not yet knowing what he was going to do with it. He had more of a jog than a run but eventually he reached the ruin by the stream. It had been a cottage with two outhouses, and the outline of a garden or vegetable patch was still visible. Now it was surrounded by the Sitka Spruce of the Forestry Plantation and   felt unreal.

Gethin decided that this was where his Rowan tree should live – the creamy white flowers would bring light in the spring, and the red berries would feed the birds in the autumn and winter. The soil in the garden patch was still good, and with a broken tree branch he scooped out a hole in a corner where it should get sun for at least part of the day.  With the sapling in position, he looked for a way to bring water to it from the stream. The carrier bag was useless – too many holes – but he did have his water bottle, and with several trips to the stream he was happy that ‘his’ sapling would have a chance of survival. He scattered small flat pebbles from the stream over the surface of the soil; they would let the rain through and delay drying out by protecting the soil from the sun. He washed his hands in the stream, sat on a rock in the sun and enjoyed his coffee.

His grandma was delighted to see him as always, and wanted all his news as she prepared them caws pobi, Welsh Rarebit, for lunch.

‘Why did you used to say that the Rowan at the farm didn’t save the farm from the waste tips, Nan?’

‘Well, in the old days it was supposed to be magic, bringing good fairies and protecting the family from bad ones. Let me show you something.’

She went across the room and opened a linen chest, which Gethin remembered from childhood. She felt around under the clothes and brought out a stick of polished wood about a metre long.

‘This was my grandma’s wand, and she told me it was made of Rowan. She never told me what she used it for nor where she got it, but she did say that anyone who planted a Rowan would get good luck from the fairies.’

‘I could use some of that. No sense of direction at the moment.’

‘Ah, you should have stuck with Lizzie. Nice girl, that.’

‘But she has another bloke now.’

‘You should stay in touch better. He didn’t last a month that one, and they do say she misses her soldier boy still.’

‘Nan, I don’t believe in fairies, I don’t believe in magic, I think the Rowan is just a beautiful tree, but when I go back home tonight I’m thinking of calling Lizzie and she’s got every right to bite my head off.’

‘Well, maybe I should see if I can cast a spell or two before you do that. Now shall we have some fruit loaf before you go?’

Gethin drove away, confused and excited. Had he really made that decision at last?

His grandma picked up the phone and dialled.

‘Hello, Lizzie dear, it’s me. You may get a call tonight...’