Treehouse dreaming

By Julie Myerson, FT.com site

Published: Sep 22, 2007 

She sits in a faded deckchair in the late summer garden, eyes closed, tangle of dirty blonde hair, grubby bare feet up on the table. She is 16. She has on a new T-shirt, skull-and-cross-bones necklace. Her jeans are dirty and ripped. I don't really know what she does to get so dirty. It reminds me of when she was two and we'd spread old newspapers under her chair before she ate.

She doesn't know what I'm thinking. But she opens her eyes. "Hey Mum. How about this? You know the big tree? "

"Yes? " We have lots of trees in our garden, partly because once upon a time it was the graveyard for the church next door. Then, in 1850-something, they exhumed all the bodies (where did they go?) and it became a garden. The Monkey Park they called it, because the eccentric but philanthropic rector brought monkeys and zebras to this grimy spot of south-east London to brighten the lives of the local children.

The tree - the one she's talking about - must have been a small sapling then. Now it's enormous, ancient and sturdy, a million bright leaves - a plane tree but not a common London one, said the tree surgeon who came to quote for thinning it.

"It's a plane tree, " I tell her, "some exotic type. I wish I could remember what the tree surgeon said it was. He said it might be 150 years old. "

She screws her face up in a frown. She never asked for so much information. "Yeah well, listen, don't you think it would be just brilliant if it had a tree house in it? "

I start to laugh.

"No but listen, Mum! There's easily room for one, up there among the branches. Just a little one I mean but with enough space, yeah, for me to sit and play my guitar. "

I think about this. I think of her up in that big old tree, singing her punky songs. I smile. When she was a toddler, she was always in the garden; she loved mess and mud. At six or seven, she liked to sharpen sticks, bang them against the fence. At 10, she'd try to set fire to things using a magnifying glass. But then she turned into a teenager and the garden was ignored. It was always either too cold or wet or hot to enter. Why did we force her to eat outside in summer? "I hate it out here. It's so bright. It hurts my eyes. " What was the point of all that green space?

But this summer - only our second in this strange new-old garden - all of this changed. Quite a few times, and more and more just lately, if she sees me sitting out here with tea or a book, she'll venture out - a small animal sniffing the air, picking her way down the steps in her bare feet. "Hiya, " she'll say, flinging herself into a chair and greedily proceeding to chat.

"You really want a tree house? But you're way too old for a tree house. "

She grins. "Oh, but Mum, just think about it. It would be so cool. A little ladder up there, a place where I could be all alone! "

"I used to have one, " I tell her, "but not in a tree. It was on stilts. "

"Yeah, yeah but that's not the type I want. I want a proper one - the sort that could almost be a real house, you know? "

I shade my eyes to look at the tree, the sombre shade it casts. They say there are no bodies left here any more but I don't know. Last year, when they shaved off a little of our garden to extend the church forecourt, a grave was uncovered. A crypt containing three lead coffins - father, mother, daughter. They had lain under the lawn all that time.

"OK, just a small one then? " she tries with a sigh. "I don't see what you've got against a really tiny tree house. "

People sometimes ask me whether I mind having a former graveyard for a garden. What would I feel if there were still bodies under here? The truth is, I feel incredibly lucky to be the custodian of all this space, light and shade, old walls, ancient trees - and bones.

"Mum? " She starts to speak then gives up, yawns, picks at her toes. I think of what might lie beneath, then I think of all the bright beauty here - the crazy life of the garden. Look at my sweet peas - urgent, exploding, as if they can't grow fast enough.

"A tree house would be incredibly expensive, " I tell her now because out here in the lazy heat, it would be so easy (but too cruel) to get her hopes up.

"But you'll at least think about it? "

"Hmm. "

"No you won't. "

I look again at the plane tree, ancient and sturdy, the kind of tree that makes you feel like the smallest animal speck on the surface of this earth. And then I look at her funny, smudgy face and think how I have never loved her quite so much as now in this particular moment on a day in late summer, as she sits there picking her feet and begging to have a tree house in this garden, which we both do and don't own, and where the sweet spirits of the dead are all around us.