When
I and my wife first reached the tree
we
didn’t think the woman spiking
with
both heels, with hands in pale skin gloves,
was
after chestnuts. We were scuffing
the
way you do through fallen autumn
and,
noting the burrs and a brown gleam,
stopped:
not horse chestnuts, the other ones,
covers
like sea-urchins, not sea mines.
We
stayed to look for any other
brown
modicum, bright as a toecap,
to
take home to recall our Sunday.
Then
I heard louder scuffs than my own
from
the old maid’s brogues three yards away.
She
had got there first.
I’ve
seen gulls feed,
huffily
on river scraps in mud,
and
the fattest get huffed extremely
if
a newcomer dropped ailerons
and
alit to join their muddy board.
‘Get
off! Off!’ the bon vivant would yawp,
but
couldn’t do much if starveling stayed.
Just
as the weighty lady in tweeds
couldn’t
face us down. We’d come. We’d stay.
—The
law of secundogeniture
which,
if late birds must survive, must be.
The
ground was poor. Either the old thing
had
nutted it naked every day,
or
school kids, wild half-term releases,
had
scoured it: hence her parsimony.
We
scanned the dip of the deeper wood:
did
any resemble our—her tree?
There
were a few. We trekked to find one,
with
success. It was lower, wetter;
under
the ground-leaves, wads of humus.
All
you’d to do to collect chestnuts
was
lift a yard-square patch-mat of leaves
and
sift the rotted ground through. Hundreds!
Like
digging for seashells on a shore.
In
half an hour my wife’s bag was full
and
so were my coat’s two flank pockets.
That
night we baked some on chicken wire
and
each night after till we were sick
and
the basket still three-quarters full.
Coming
back from the dip and our tree,
we
passed the old girl kicking up husks
under
hers, and on ground that would yield
one
nut an hour, each new one smaller.
Horny
old conservative! If I’d
wanted
an example of the kind
I
couldn’t have found better. There, stab!
Heel
and frown she’d stay in that wide wood,
stalking
and stabbing until she died,
under
one tree in spite of the fact
that
the last shrivel of food had gone.
