The Palm Comes Down

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 287, 22 December 1944, Page 16

The Palm Comes Down

A SHORT STORY Written for "The Listener"

by

JIM

HENDERSON

HEY would stand round, looking at it. And there it stood, tall and ragged and rather forlorn, With a grey look about it, too. Grey and elderly. Rather sad somehow, I thought. Rather sad, "Yes, It would be best if it came down," my mother would say. "Yes. It’s getting too old, and no one could call it pretty." But there was a reluctance in her voice, I. thought. Ron would look at the palm tree, beside the worn concrete steps in the front of the house. He’d look steadily at it. First from the bottom where the roots were. They sprayed out from the bottom of the old palm tree, like clusters of veins upon the front of an old farmer’s work-worn hands. These roots, as the years passed and all the sunshine and rain fell’ upon the palm, had groped and sprayed out, and new ones had grown upon them until there was quite a circular mound of stringy roots at the bottom of the palm. Ron, my brother, would look at the roots. Then his head would tilt up a bit, and he’d consider the trunk, a furry grey thing, a hairy thing like sacking, with bits of stick poking out here and there. That’s where the palm fronds of long ago had withered and lost their greenery and sheen, and someone had looked upon them and known them to be ugly, and cut them off swiftly, with a sharp knife. "Maybe it would be hard cutting through all that fibre stuff with an axe," Ron would say, slowly and wisely, trying to give the palm a chance. "Maybe it would, too," we would all agree, trying hard to help the old palm tree. Then Ron’s head would bend a bit further back, so that he’d have to open his mouth a little for the strain at the back of his neck, and he’d look right up to the top of the old palm. Right to the top, where a brave sparrow built a scraggly ball of a nest in 1928. No other bird had built there, before or after. It was a brave sparrow. And Ron would look right up to where the very top fronds were still strong and green and neat, and: he’d scratch his head and say: "It might fall on to the roses, you know. That would be a pity. To crush those roses, mother. We wouldn’t want to do that." "No," we would all say, mother and Joan and little Hilary and I, "We can’t do that to the roses." (We all knew it would be simple to cut a gash in the palm tree so that it would fall out to the left, harmlessly, alongside the scarlet oak, and.miss the roses altogether. But we all wanted to give the palm tree a little longer to live.)

"Well," Ron would say, looking down from the top of the old palm (where great yellow pods thrust out in the spring and many bees made solid song), "well," Ron would go on, looking at us now, "it’s got to be done ‘some time, you know." "Oh yes, of course,’ we would agree happily. And so the palm stayed there. * x tk [t had been there so long, you see. It had been brought all the way from the city of Nelson ever so long ago when there were no fences on the farm, and there was much bush yet to be felled, and great sturdy logs, blackened but by no means burnt, were lying all round the new house. And they planted the palm, just a little thing then of course, my mother and my father, in the long ago, before Hilary and I were born, beside the concrete steps in the front of the house. And the palm grew up with the family. It grew up with us. It was a beautiful palm tree in the winter, all heavily thick and crusted with snow in the winter weeks, and full of yellowness and bees in the spring, as I have said. And in the summer, there would be such a happy greenness, a lively healthy greenness about the fronds, that we were glad to look up at it, and see the winds shuffling the long leaves, like fans. And autumn. There would be hard purple berries on the palm, good for spitting out of your mouth‘and putting into air-guns, and the wax-eyes would = and crack them in their little black ills. And my father had helped mother ta plant the palm, long, long ago when the (continued on next page)

F continued from previous page) farm and they were young, and now he was dead, so you see we were fond of the palm in other ways, too. * oe oe ee "THE palm was still there when I went ‘" overseas. And sometimes in the pris-oner-of-war camp I’d find myself wondering if they’d made up their minds to cut it down, yet. And when I got back it was still there. I smiled at that, and thought "Good old palm tree." But Ron had been married while all this was going on, and he had a wife called Marigold and two children, just learning to talk. And he, very paternal, thought that they might be playing round the roots of the palm tree and there might be some of the hard purple berries there, and his children might pick the berries up and put them into their mouths and choke and have convulsions, And he’d never forgive himself if that happened. Never. "But you never did, any of you, when you were children," said my mother, looking up at the old palm tree, with the wind stirring the fronds and bending down to play with her hair. Her hair. It had been jet black when I went away. But now some of it was grey... grey like some of the fluff round the palm tree’s trunk. (No. That was right enough. We didn’t choke. We only spat the berries out at each other’s faces, didn’t we?) But Ron would have none of it. So he went and got the axe this time. There was mother and Marigold and I looking on, this time. And Ron didn’t say any more, but he swung the axe, cut the gash we all knew must be cut so it wouldn’t fall on to the roses, and then lifted the axe again and again, the blade flashing, until the old palm groaned and swayed and murmured, then fell out to the left and away, slowly at first then swiftly, falling heavily under the scarlet oak as we knew it would, one day. And we all noticed the gap, and we said, "That lets the light in better now, doesn’t it?" to reassure one another. We all agreed it was a good thing, having the old palm out of the way. But that night we all went to bed before mother. She said she wasn’t feeling sleepy just yet, and she wanted to

read a little more. So Ron and Marigold and I all said "Goodnight," and left her there, before the dying fire in the old sitting-room. And just as I was getting into bed I remembered a book I wanted. I’d -left it in the sitting-room. So I went back quietly and opened the door. Mother wasn’t reading. She was looking at an old photograph-album. I knew the photograph on the page she was looking at so steadily. It was a photo of the front of the house, taken years ago, with the palm tree there, not cut down then, you see, but young and brave and strong. So = didn’t say anything. I just ciaiail the door quietly, silently, and went back to bed.