It was a delight to read out my short story, commissioned for this year's festival, on a hot sticky Saturday afternoon in a cool Queen's Park tent. The inspiration came from John Blandy, a local artist who has been painting the same lime tree, from the same spot in Queens Park, every day since 1997.
Lime Tree
The writer had been watching the painter out in the park for years now, while he himself sat inside, at his desk, wrestling with his latest novel. Almost every day the thin, angular figure in the green cap would walk through the park’s metal gates at 9 a.m. carrying his easel and wooden box of pastels. When he reached the lime tree, he would set these down, then place his feet, shod in brown lace-up boots, in the same two worn patches of earth, like roots.
The writer liked the fact that he knew almost nothing about the painter, not even his name. But for three hours each morning, they both did their work, separated by the glass of his study window, which faced west onto the park. He, shuffling words around the page, and the painter silently applying pastels to the paper, clipped to the easel.
They say that every writer tells the same story over and over again, just in different ways. Similarly, the painter was telling the same story, that of the lime tree, from the same angle, yet always different due to the constant shift of light and seasons.
Painting by John Blandy.
Over the years the writer had learnt to see the lime tree through the eyes of the painter, to look deeper: the joyful burst of tiny brown buds in spring; the luscious bloom of green in summer; the golden drift of leaves in autumn and in winter, the stark grey branches, stripped bare like bones.
In his 20’s, when he had travelled to India, the writer had read a book by the philosopher and writer Krishnamurti. One particular phrase had burrowed deep into his brain - ‘the observer becomes the observed’. He still thought about it from time to time, turning the words over in his mind to distil their meaning: when we truly learn to see something, then the boundaries between ourselves and that which we are looking at, will dissolve.
That morning, in the delicate mauve light of the midsummer dawn, the painter was out especially early. Although his easel was set up, he wasn’t working. Instead he stood still, arms resting at his side as he contemplated the tree.
Pausing from the chapter he was editing, the writer noticed that the painter’s face with its usual sharp lines was blurred, as though someone had smudged it with their thumb. The writer thought it might be a smear on his glasses, but when he glanced towards the nearby bandstand, that was as clearly defined as ever.
He kept looking up from the desk, and each time he saw that the figure’s face and body were becoming hazier. Unable to focus on his editing, he pulled on his jacket and hurried down the stairs.
He was almost at the park railings, when he saw that the man was no longer there. Only his easel and box of pastels remained on the grass. Peering through the foliage of nearby trees - ash, rowan, horse-chesnut and beech, the writer walked quickly along the path. In the distance a lone jogger in a red tracksuit was stretching by the children’s playground and a tennis ball thudded rhythmically on the court by the café.
He reached the lime tree, setting his feet in the two worn patches of brown earth, where the painter usually stood. The piece of white paper backed with hardboard and clipped onto the easel was blank.
He stared at the tree, seeing it once again through the painter’s eyes: the vibrant green enveloping the upper branches; the small heart-shaped leaves threaded with tiny veins; the mottled, brownish-grey bark.
He stepped nearer to the tree and laid a hand on its trunk, feeling the cool, solid mass beneath his fingers. A sudden shift of cloud, and the lower part of the tree was dappled with sunshine. For a moment, he thought he saw the familiar outline of a thin, angular face in the pattern of the bark, but seconds later, the sun slid behind a cloud and it was gone.