The leaves of the walnut were long and oval and green. They had a strong dark smell. The smell was there in the tree even when the leaves were green. It would be stronger when they fell and blackened and grew greasy in the autumn and Billy swept them up. In the tree it was as if you could smell that blackening already though it was summer. Perhaps it was the sun shining through the leaves that made the smell come out. It you looked up through the tree the leaves were a bright apple-like green despite their odour, and the branches between them were elephant grey but smooth, smoother than elephant skin would be, if you were to touch and climb an elephant. If he stood on one of the lower branches he could put two hands to the one above and pull himself up, rest his tummy on the branch, lift a leg astride it while Jonny stayed below as he wasn’t tall enough to reach. From that point the branches were more closely spaced so he could go higher. Don’t go any higher, Jonny said, from his safe branch below. It makes the tree move when you go higher, I can see the top of the tree moving, it’s scary, you’ll fall. It’s fine, he said, finding a place to put his foot, lifting himself up one last branch.

I can see everything from here.

The top of the tree swayed just so little beneath his weight. He could see clear in every direction. He was like a hawk on a telegraph pole, looking down. Sharp as a hawk, watching for movement below. There was his mother talking to Billy who was getting the lawnmower out. There was Mrs T coming on her bicycle up the drive. There was Jackson’s little grey tractor out in their fields where he was topping the field edges before harvest. The fields were still their fields though Jackson worked them. Now Billy was pulling at the cord of the mower. The mower was starting with a puff of blue smoke. His mother was walking towards the tree across the lawn. Mum. Look, Mum. See where I am. She didn’t hear him over the sound of the mower.

Later he took his father’s old binoculars and put a string on them and climbed up there again, on his own this time, and tied the binoculars to a small branch so that they would be there whenever he went to his perch.

I’m like a hawk, he said to his mother. I climb high up the tree.

She didn’t know how high he meant.

I see everything. I watch you from high up. I see Billy. I see Jackson. I see Jackson’s men. I see the people who come to visit. I see you talking to them, wherever you are.