Nora was nothing if not persistent, however, and the next week she told Alison she had ‘a solution tae our problem’. Couching it in those terms was disconcerting enough, but Nora had brought a dildo round, a strap-on. It was certainly formidable, but when she’d attached it to herself Alison had instantly erupted in laughter. Then she was besieged by the notion that if a dildo could crumble into a semi, then by Nora’s expression you’d have thought that had just happened. But she tried and Alison could say, hand on heart, that she didn’t have a sapphic bone in her body.
As she entered the oak-pannelled Chambers, weighed down by the close heat from outside, Alison was set on edge by the presence of all those busy, purposeful bodies and the foul waft she caught rising from her own armpits, in spite of the attention of both shower and roll-on deodorant. Yuck. Drug and alcohol sleaze. You keep washing it away. It keeps coming back.
She made her way to the back of the two-thirds-full hall and sat down. Her new boss, Alexander Birch, was heading to the podium, positioning himself behind the lectern. With his light grey suit, and hair fashionably styled, Alison found herself disconcertingly impressed by her new boss. He had a gay man’s grooming, but with the slightly combative edge of the sporty heterosexual.
— I’m Alexander Birch, and I was drawn to working with trees for some reason that eludes me, he began, to the inevitable polite laughter. He’d long since learned to use the potentially embarrassing coincidence of surname and profession as a business tool. Allowing the mirth to subside, he then restarted, steely-eyed and deadpan. — I don’t want to sound melodramatic, he looked around at the quieting, settling mass of bodies, — but I’m here to talk about a terrible plague that threatens to change our beautiful city beyond all recognition.
The rustling abruptly stopped, and he had everybody’s attention, even Alison’s, who was wondering if such irony was sailing a little close to the wind.
Her view was quickly revised when Alexander’s longish face remained set in earnest concentration over a slide projector. He clicked on the frontal view of a dark-looking insect. With its extended legs, it seemed to be challenging all in the room to a square-go. — This is the elm bark beetle, or Scolytus multistriatus. This creature spreads a fungal disease fatal to all elm trees. In an attempt to stop the fungus from spreading, the elm responds by plugging its own tissue with gum, which prevents water and other nutrients getting to the top of it, and then it starts to wither and die.
He isnae jokin!
Again the drum spun, sending a second slide clicking onto the screen. It showed a tree yellowing from the top down. — The first symptoms of infection are the tree’s upper branches beginning to wither and shed leaves in the summer, giving the diseased tree an unseasonal autumnal hue, Alexander solemnly explained. — This spreads south, eventually going into the roots of the tree, which subsequently atrophy.
Alison had settled down in her seat at the back of the Chambers. Crossing her legs, she sidetracked herself with carnal thoughts, which came easily in the squalid hangover and, indeed, was the only way to eke any enjoyment from it.
Going south. To the root.
Then suddenly, with an involuntary shudder, she wondered what they could do with her mother. The tests. More chemo. Would it work this time? Probably not. Would they take her to the hospice, or would she die at home, or in a hospital?
Mum …
Her breath caught. In panic, she pulled raggedly on the stale hot air in the room. A sequence of slides flashed up, some cityscape shots of Edinburgh, ranging from the recognisable Princes Street Gardens and the Botanics, to the hideaway corners of the city. — Edinburgh is a city of trees and woods; from the magnificence of the natural woodlands at Corstorphine Hill or Cammo, to the huge variety of splendid specimens in our parks and streets, Alexander argued, a pleasing flourish to his rhetoric. — Trees and woodlands have an inherent biodiversity value, whilst providing opportunities for recreation and environmental education. Our objective is to maintain a multi-aged treescape with a wide range of species that will achieve a balance of the physical, economic, social and spiritual needs of the city. Edinburgh has over twenty-five thousand elm trees: they are an integral part of our city’s treescape.
As Alexander looked around at the forest of faces in the audience, Alison visualised her new boss as a little boy lurking hesitantly on the edge of the woods. There was nothing shrinking about him though, as he went on: — Failure is not an option. We’ve lived with this nightmare since it was discovered here back in 1976. We’ve already lost 7.5 per cent of our elms. Now we have to intensify our efforts on sanitation felling, even if it means accepting that we’re now moving into a post-elm Edinburgh.
That was what her mum felt. Failure. Stricken by that horrible disease and she blamed herself. She feels like she’s abandoning us, as if she’s failed.
The next slide showed a group of overall-clad, power-saw-wielding workmen, engaged in the act of felling trees. To Alison, Alexander looked sombre, as if he was mourning the passing of an old friend. Another shot, this time of some trees piled up and blazing, a thick black cone of smoke billowing into the air against a blue-white sky. Alison thought of the last funeral she was at. It would have been Gary McVie from school, who’d died on Newhaven Road, driving home a stolen car while drunk. He was a young, popular and good-looking boy, and there had been a big turnout. Now she imagined his smashed body blasted to bone chips and dust, down in that furnace they’d lowered the coffin into. Matty, who’d briefly worked at Seafield Crematorium, had cheerfully told her that the incinerator didn’t completely reduce bodies to ash, the attendants had to put them through this crushing device to grind down the stubborn skeletal larger bones: the pelvis and the skull.
Mum … oh Mum …
Alexander’s messianic gaze fell on the assortment of councillors, officials, staff and pressmen, then swept upwards to the smattering of concerned citizens in the public gallery. — The intensification of Dutch elm disease control, through a sanitation policy of the felling and burning of elms, is absolutely vital in order to keep the disease at a manageable level and allow us to gradually replace the elms with other species.
Alison was now thinking of her mother playing with grandchildren, the kids she supposed that one day she, Mhairi and even Calum might have, as Alexander clicked on a slide of trees being planted. Suddenly, he was upbeat once again. Did he have kids? Alison thought she recalled him saying something in passing to that effect. After the interview, when she’d been appointed and came to see him and they’d had a coffee and an informal chat.
— This policy of ruthlessly culling diseased trees and renewal through planting is the only way to preserve our treescape, thus our cityscape, he contended, winding up the presentation on that positive note, graciously thanking the audience. It had seemed to go well, even if it was intended more as a ‘hearts and minds’ session, as he’d previously described it to her. The recreation committee had already passed the policy and it would go through the formality of going to the full council next week, as extra resources had to be sought from the Scottish Office. As he climbed down from the platform, Alison gauged Alexander’s smile; terse and businesslike, warm and inclusive, yet some way shy of frivolity, accepting with ease the admiration for the way he’d formulated this policy and was now preparing to enact it.