Greenfingers, or the man who turned into a tree... first draft.

penelopecarax

So this is my latest attempt. I tried to simplify my writing style and make a story rather than just a description this time. There is still a lot to rewrite, so any hints on changes that should be made, would be great. Thanks... Penelope xx





0nce there were two hearts with mouths to speak through, but no words to come out. By coincidence or serendipity, or just good planning, they found each other and by that measure, they found a voice. They talked in fingers tapped upon the table-top and little treble clefs and smiley faces drawn onto post-it notes with a pink felt tip pen and stuck to the door of the fridge.

Their house had two rooms. This house had more than two rooms, but these were the only two that mattered. Their hearts were made of different things: His of earth and hers of water, and each had a place to keep it in: He the garden and she the kitchen. She lived next to the kitchen sink. As she plunged her hands back into her element, her fluffy slippers would slip-slap on the linoleum floor in delight. He spent his time outside in the flowerbeds between the geraniums and the beech hedge; liking it best when his boots squish-squelched in the mud.

However, like all rooms, they were separated by walls. An impenetrable barrier muffled their feelings and muted their tactile chatter. Even when together, their hearts belonged on either side of the wall, and neither one of them could see a way through. So they knocked it down and replaced it with a window. Hearts still lay in separate places, but division between them was no longer opaque. With hands submerged in lemon scented bubbles, she would gaze through the window at him. He would return the glance with a smile and a wriggle of his toes in the mud.

She didn’t actually enjoy scrubbing crockery, but in the plunge of rough hands into scalding water. Her red and crinkly fingers curling and uncurling, clenching and unclenching around the plastic scrubbing brush. She never wore gloves. The miniature waves that slapped against the sides of the basin reminded her of the sea, of the womb. The urgent memory of that throbbing place was awakened by slipping her arms into a sink full of suds. 0ften the water slopped over the sides of the sink, running down the front of the cupboards and staining her pinafore with wet heat. She would press forwards into the trickles, letting them warm her own empty womb.

He, on the other hand, had always been green-fingered. After the rain he would peel off his damp woollen socks. Stuffing them under the lips of his big brown boots and leaving them by the back door before padding off towards the plants. His bare feet splodged through the oozing silt: curling and uncurling, clenching and unclenching. His toes were sucked back into the moist earth, rainwater trickling through the gaps between them. He lifted them up, separating from the mud to make foot-shaped puddles. The way the wind shivered down from the tree leaves to the damp place beneath his feet reminded him of the sea, of the womb. The rush of blood along a single cord. A dark, wet bubble, safe.

After a rather messy dinner party, and a particularly torrential rainfall, they stood on either side of the pane of glass, enjoying the earth, enjoying the water. They smiled at each other through the window, the busy limbs hidden from view clenching and curling and plunging and squeezing. They stayed there for an entire evening, barely moving.
It comes as no surprise, therefore, that after so long in the earth, his feet began to take root. His toenails sprouted green shoots swiftly in the well fertilised soil. She had to dig him out with a fork and a trowel.

From that time on, he tried to keep away from the garden, letting it grow wild without him. She, in a way understood his need for the dark of the velvet soil, and shook her head in pity as she watched him fruitlessly curl and uncurl his feet upon the kitchen floor. His face grew grey and pinched; his body dry and listless.

It seemed that sooner or later, his fate would be sealed, and one night he crept from the fleshy arms of his wife back to the gritty pleasures of the soil to spread his roots once more. She awoke in the morning to find him again in that other bed, moss growing half way up his shins. This time, however, not even the flashing jaws of the garden shears could sever the roots that he had planted.

She gave a shrug and a sigh, which was a sort of understanding and went back inside. She instead brought him a kiss and a cup of tea with a biscuit, served on a plastic plate taken from their picnic set - green of course to make him feel at home - and then settled down to life with a more organic lover. When his arms became branches and he could no longer bring the cup to his lips, she fed him, poking the crumbs from out of his facial bark with a twig. From the window she could him grow strong again, the soil feeding his flesh through the earth. Entrenched in the dirt he was blooming; his whole being beating in time with nature.

He felt happier than ever before. With the rustling jostling words that the wind sang for him, reading from his leaves, there was no need for the pink mouth organ that had failed him for so long. He even stopped asking for his regular supply of tea and biscuits, favouring a local brand of fertiliser. Slowly his mind turned to tree from man, and his thoughts and emotions with it. In burying his heart in the ground, it changed, but did not cease to exist altogether. He still loved her, but in seed and bough. His stems still curled tight at the feeling of her on the other side of the glass. Lovingly, he would lower one of his branches for her to climb on to, and drape his foliage about her. At sunset he crooned a wood-sung lullaby of the oak, and the pine and the cedar. In return, she stroked his mossy trunk and pressed herself into his circumference, her soft red fingers clutching at the bark. She learnt to speak his language, ear to the soil, hearing love letters sent through the shifting soil as he moved his roots about.

The seasons changed, completing their cycle from year to year. Through the winter he slept, naked under a grey sky and she was left alone with her rippling thoughts. In spring he showered her in blossom and in summer she sat under his boughs, shaded from the sun, reading him tales of other trees in other gardens. In autumn she plucked the fruits of their love, eating them before burying the seeds. Two of them survived and grew up, intelligent saplings with the love of the water as well as the land – of course they were willow trees. She milked them with the sweetest water, but eventually they grew too big for the little garden and had to leave, in search of greater spaces and wilder water. She dug them up and took them to the park, where they flourished; their long fronds and water-wood content on the banks of a river. They send messages on the wind, passing words from tree to tree, from leaf to leaf until he caught them, resting on the tips of his foliage.

0ne summer arrived, bringing with it a sulking, scorching sun which burnt the earth and sucked green water-blood from the translucent veins of the plants. His roots shrivelled in the relentless heat, and she soothed his parch with buckets of water carried out from the other side of the wall until the tap, the font of life ceased to drip. She could do nothing but watch him wilt. Her hands twitching in a dry steel basin.

The weeks went by and still the sun spat heat upon the clouds. Rain spluttered out of existence before it had a chance to drop. It soon became obvious that he was dying. The liquid amber that gave life to his wooden heart was simply evaporating away. She sat in the dust, at the base of the trunk, feeling his timber ache with thirst and his wood too parched to tell her so. She wept for him, the droplets a bitter salvation, for the tears of those born to water are life themselves. Thus, she literally cried her heart out, pouring into the soil, quenching his thirst. With the last ripples of strength within her, she melted; running into the cracks and crevices, trickling through those amber veins towards his pulsing wooden heart.