Ash before Oak Read online

  ‘Very moving, beautiful and so thoughtful too – a wonderful evocation of animals and birds, sky and Somerset.’

  — Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth

  Praise for Kath Trevelyan

  ‘An intriguing and original love story written with an expert eye through the prism of contemporary art.’

  — Jenny Diski

  Praise for The Folded Lie

  ‘Quite unlike any other novel published this year: a bold, radical, almost embarrassingly direct assault on modern complacencies, both political and artistic’

  — Jonathan Coe

  ‘Complex, thought-provoking and pertinent… A clever, partial book, written in a fluent, comfortable narrative style.’

  — Financial Times

  ‘What a really admirable novel. I read The Folded Lie with great pleasure.’

  — Fay Weldon

  ‘The Folded Lie is a timely and perceptive new novel.’

  — Tony Benn

  ASH BEFORE OAK

  JEREMY COOPER

  Contents

  Title Page

  24 December

  29 December

  1 January

  30 March

  16 April

  6 May

  13 May

  16 May

  3 June

  11 June

  12 June

  17 June

  2 July

  10 July

  13 July

  14 July

  19 July

  28 July

  29 July

  30 July

  31 July

  1 August

  5 August

  6 August

  7 August

  10 August

  11 August

  12 August

  15 August

  16 August

  17 August

  19 August

  22 August

  9 September

  19 September

  21 September

  23 September

  24 September

  26 September

  28 September

  1 October

  2 October

  3 October

  5 October

  7 October

  9 October

  11 October

  12 October

  17 October

  21 October

  24 October

  26 October

  3 November

  5 November

  6 November

  8 November

  9 November

  10 November

  11 November

  12 November

  14 November

  16 November

  21 November

  23 November

  26 November

  29 November

  30 November

  1 December

  2 December

  3 December

  4 December

  7 December

  8 December

  10 December

  11 December

  12 December

  15 December

  16 December

  17 December

  19 December

  20 December

  21 December

  24 December

  25 December

  26 December

  28 December

  30 December

  2 January

  3 January

  5 January

  6 January

  9 January

  10 January

  11 January

  12 January

  13 January

  14 January

  15 January

  16 January

  18 January

  21 January

  29 January

  31 January

  1 February

  8 February

  10 February

  14 February

  22 February

  23 February

  24 February

  25 February

  3 March

  4 March

  5 March

  6 March

  8 March

  9 March

  12 March

  13 March

  14 March

  18 March

  19 March

  21 March

  24 March

  25 March

  27 March

  28 March

  29 March

  30 March

  7 April

  10 April

  11 April

  12 April

  14 April

  15 April

  18 April

  19 April

  20 April

  21 April

  22 April

  23 April

  24 April

  25 April

  26 April

  27 April

  29 April

  2 May

  3 May

  4 May

  5 May

  6 May

  7 May

  8 May

  9 May

  11 May

  14 May

  17 May

  18 May

  19 May

  7 June

  23 July

  3 August

  4 August

  22 August

  2 September

  7 September

  9 September

  11 September

  13 September

  14 September

  15 September

  17 September

  18 September

  19 September

  20 September

  21 September

  22 September

  23 September

  25 September

  28 September

  29 September

  30 September

  3 October

  4 October

  5 October

  6 October

  7 October

  8 October

  9 October

  10 October

  12 October

  14 October

  16 October

  17 October

  19 October

  20 October

  22 October

  24 October

  27 October

  29 October

  5 November

  28 November

  2 December

  31 December

  1 January

  2 January

  3 January

  4 January

  5 January

  6 January

  7 January

  8 January

  10 January

  11 January

  12 January

  14 January

  16 January

  21 January

  27 January

  1 February

  17 February

  18 February

  28 March

  29 March

  2 April

  24 April

  25 April

  29 April

  30 April

  6 May

  10 May

  12 May

  13 May

  14 May

  15 May

  16 May

  17 May

  18 May

  19 May

  20 May

  21 May

  23 May

  24 May

  25 May

  26 May

  27 May

  28 May

  29 May

  30 May

  31 May

  1 June

  3 June

  4 June

  5 June

  7 June

  8 June

  9 June

  11 June

  12 June

  13 June

  15 June
/>
  16 June

  17 June

  18 June

  19 June

  20 June

  21 June

  23 June

  24 June

  26 June

  27 June

  28 June

  29 June

  30 June

  2 July

  4 July

  12 July

  13 July

  15 July

  16 July

  17 July

  18 July

  19 July

  22 July

  23 July

  24 July

  26 July

  27 July

  28 July

  30 July

  31 July

  1 August

  3 August

  4 August

  6 August

  8 August

  9 August

  10 August

  11 August

  14 August

  15 August

  16 August

  17 August

  19 August

  20 August

  10 September

  21 September

  1 October

  2 October

  9 October

  14 October

  15 October

  25 October

  26 October

  28 October

  29 October

  2 November

  3 November

  4 November

  5 November

  6 November

  7 November

  8 November

  9 November

  11 November

  15 November

  19 November

  20 November

  21 November

  23 November

  24 November

  25 November

  28 November

  30 November

  1 December

  2 December

  3 December

  5 December

  6 December

  7 December

  9 December

  11 December

  12 December

  14 December

  15 December

  16 December

  17 December

  18 December

  19 December

  20 December

  21 December

  22 December

  23 December

  24 December

  25 December

  26 December

  28 December

  29 December

  30 December

  2 January

  3 January

  4 January

  5 January

  6 January

  7 January

  8 January

  10 January

  11 January

  12 January

  13 January

  14 January

  15 January

  17 January

  18 January

  19 January

  20 January

  21 January

  22 January

  23 January

  24 January

  25 January

  26 January

  27 January

  28 January

  30 January

  31 January

  1 February

  3 February

  4 February

  5 February

  6 February

  7 February

  8 February

  9 February

  10 February

  11 February

  12 February

  13 February

  14 February

  15 February

  16 February

  17 February

  18 February

  19 February

  20 February

  21 February

  22 February

  23 February

  24 February

  25 February

  26 February

  27 February

  28 February

  29 February

  1 March

  2 March

  3 March

  4 March

  5 March

  6 March

  7 March

  8 March

  9 March

  10 March

  11 March

  12 March

  13 March

  14 March

  15 March

  16 March

  17 March

  18 March

  19 March

  20 March

  21 March

  23 March

  24 March

  25 March

  26 March

  27 March

  28 March

  29 March

  30 March

  31 March

  2 April

  3 April

  4 April

  5 April

  6 April

  7 April

  8 April

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  24 December

  Today I did a beautiful thing: built a rose arch from timber I had first felled and trimmed. My work is not in itself beautiful, but the act of doing it was, the replacement of a fallen frame, an old rose set to prosper.

  In the afternoon I cleared the garden path inside the wall to the lane, so overgrown that few signs remained of it having been a way to walk. The revelation of distant lives, the uncovering of previous care for this place by people past, brings me satisfaction. And meaning. Yesterday I dug down below the bottom garden gate to unveil a grey-stone step. Earlier lives are exposed also in renovation of the building. In construction of the new chimney in what has been a barn for a hundred years or more, I found in the wall the contours of an old hearth, confirming the belief that my to-be-home was once part of a row of four farm worker’s cottages.

  Tomorrow is Christmas Day. I am happy to be living here.

  29 December

  It snowed again last night. Like yesterday, external silence a prize. At 8.15 a.m., while I was out watching the colour of the sky change with the sunrise above the curve of Cothelstone Hill, the post van drove up the lane, and from my box on the wall I picked up a single welcome envelope. After breakfast I took good feelings up by the cascade to a hidden combe and on into the woods. Many sights: a swathe of green watercress where a stream spreads out to pass through a meadow, kept free from ice by birds. Elsewhere, tracks in the snow of pheasant and fox and rabbit and badger and deer and stoat and vole.

  Back home, I identified the footfalls of these different animals in a book given to me thirty years ago by a family friend who used to live down here near Taunton. He was kind to me as a boy – the fact that he knew and loved the Quantock Hills and brought me years ago to this land for a mid-summer walk lends to my choice of settling now at Lower Terhill a sense of balance.

  I hope this is real feeling, not sentimentality – a fabrication.

  1 January

  Hope.

  And fear.

  Together.

  30 March

  It is March, almost April, and I return to these notes. Work on the adjacent derelict half of my cottage moves ahead, with its solid new roof, window-frames fitted, traditionally done by my neighbour, a master builder.

  Discover that burdock is the name of the cabbage-leaved plant I’ve been trying to eradicate from my wood. It’s a kind of thistle, producing burrs – a wild plant with a pedigree as space-filler in both old gardens and picturesque landscape paintings, common in the work of Claude Lorrain. At the annual fair in Queensferry, Edinburgh, the Burry Man covers himself from head to toe in burdock burrs and parades through the streets.

  Maybe I’ll leave some plants after all.

  Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, artists I admire, illustrate burry men in their book Folk Archive and state in the introduction: ‘As artists we engage in an optimistic journey of personal discovery (albeit often very close to home).’

  16 April

  On
my first-thing-in-the-morning stroll along the paths through my glades, today I heard, then saw, a lesser spotted woodpecker, upside down near the base of the trunk of the big pine. When it flew away I went over to inspect the spot, and found a hazelnut wedged in a crevice of the trunk. Imagine it will return later to finish off the task of cracking open the shell. I’ve never seen this bird before, smaller than a thrush, with powerful movements of the head.

  A beautifully clear windless sunset, heralding summer, and I walked down to see if the hazelnut was still lodged in the bark. It had disappeared. I couldn’t see the broken shell on the ground, so perhaps it was forgotten by the woodpecker and instead found by a squirrel. The bird may on reflection have been a nuthatch, smaller, greyer – lesser spotted woodpeckers are a rarity round here.

  Reciting the names of birds and plants is such a British thing to do.

  Irritated by my grip on convention.

  Only just started this nature-naming business, after thirty years in London, and already tempted to stop.

  6 May

  Another fine morning. Wonderful the way seasonal change in the fall of light alters the look of familiar paths. Today, on my pre-breakfast inspection, I found myself cutting down, uprooting where I could, vagrant sycamore in the lane – quick-growing trees which push out brash big leaves across the shoots of spindle, hawthorn and the dozens of other plants of an ancient dry-stone bank. This place bears the marks everywhere of hundreds of years of occupation.

  As a boy, in the autumn I loved to play with the helicopter seeds of sycamore, unaware of their invasive virulence.

  And damning streams, another boyhood passion. There was once a narrow stream here between lane and hedge.

  13 May

  It is an ordinary robin, I this evening identified, which sings each evening on the same high branch of the black Italian poplar beside the kennels.

  Accept the solitude, I tell myself, if that’s how things currently must be. It’s enough this moment to enjoy the sight of the candle-like blooms on the weeping bird cherry tree, released this year by my cuttings and clearings to flourish near the bench. The lowest branch of the Monterey pine is precisely horizontal, the trunk vertical, picture-framing the bench which I’ve had made in hardwood slats, held by a pair of cast-iron ends bought some time ago at the salvage company in Shoreditch, my neighbours then. The trunk of this giant tree is maybe eight foot in diameter at its base, the bark rust-red, fissured, soft.

  It doesn’t matter what it’s called.

  Isn’t Monterey in America?

  I’m perpetually confused these days, when, for dozens of years, I used to be so self-assured.

  16 May

  There was a handsome young Song Thrush feeding in my garden, diving down from its hiding place in the branches of the Ash to dig for Worms in the lawn, cocking its head to listen. I like the low swoop of its flight between the trees.

  I begin to recognize the pairs of individual birds who live here with me at Lower Terhill.