Jennifer Braddock understood her grandson’s difficulty only too well. These days she couldn’t get back to sleep either, after the men had left for the milking shed. After all, it was the habit of almost a lifetime to wake up, and she always did, no matter how softly they crept out of the house.

“That’s all right, Matt, I can’t sleep either,” she said, keeping her voice hushed, although there was no-one and nothing left that she could disturb. “Put the tray on the end of the bed and bring me my bed jacket, though. I think there’s been a frost.” She reached out to switch on the bedside light. There was only a faint promise of the approaching dawn in the sky behind her curtains. As always, the men had left to milk in the dark.

For a while they drank in silence; Jennifer, propped up on her pillows; the youth, perched at the foot of the bed, shivering in his pyjamas and dressing gown.

“You’d better turn on the wall heater and then hop into bed with me. You’re supposed to be recuperating from pneumonia, not catching it.”

“Awe, Grandma, don’t you think fifteen’s too old to do that any more?”

“Rubbish, it’s a king-size bed and you’ll never grow out of being my grandson, Matt. You can hop in, so long as you promise to keep those icicles you call your feet strictly to yourself. Then once you’re settled, you can tell me what’s been bothering you this past week and I’ll try to set your mind at rest . . . yes, that will do instead of the story I always used to tell you.”

Matthew was the youngest and rather missed spending mornings curled up in bed with Grandma. When they had stayed on the farm during the long summer vacations, he and his older brother and sister had often crept along the passage to squeeze into Grandma’s bed and listen to stories, once Grandpa had left for the shed. If he thought about it, Matt supposed that his sister Mary must have been almost twenty the last time they had all gathered for an early morning conference with Grandma.

“You’re right, Grandma.”

“What about? The feet, the problem, or not being too old.”

“All three, I suppose.” He pulled up the covers until only his eyes peered out over the top of the duvet and then began, his voice muffled. “Why do you visit the tree at sunset? You never used to, when I was here before.”

“I suspected that might be what was troubling you. The answer’s easy, Matt, I didn’t need to visit the tree because your grandfather was still alive. Why would I talk to a tree, when I still had a flesh-and-blood man to keep company with?”

“But you don’t just talk to the tree, do you, Grandma? I’ve watched you from my bedroom window. The men are all milking when you go, so they don’t see you, and Aunt Kath is always in the kitchen on the other side of the house preparing the dinner. I’m beginning to feel as though I’m going out of my mind, but I’m sure I’ve seen you. You don’t just talk to that damn oak tree, you become part of it. It absorbs you until not even your skirt remains visible.”

“Now I understand. You’re seeing with your third eye, just like he did. You’ve been very sick, Matt, so perhaps that’s helped to open it up. Don’t worry, you’re not going mad. You’re just seeing a little more clearly than you might find comfortable. Some people call it heightened perception, but Matthew always spoke of it as having second sight. You had a look of him when you were born, so I asked my Jenny to name you after him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t like it. How can I make it go away?”

“And men are always saying women are contrary. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, how do you know that you want it to go away?” Jennifer sighed and patted his arm. “It will never go away, Matt. Once the eye is opened, it will never shut again. The trick is to use the power wisely and not let it sour you, or ruin your life.”

“You’ve got it too, haven’t you . . . haven’t you, Grandma?”

“Yes, I have, although I would never admit it until I found your grandfather . . . . Perhaps I will tell you that story after all.

“As you know, I came to this farm as a land girl in 1942. I had no desire to go farming. I was a city girl, through and through, but just the same, I was sent. Then when I got here I met Matthew. His older brother had already gone to the war and his father had become too arthritic to continue farming. Matthew was directed to stay and run the farm, when all he wanted was to join the other young men and fight. We were both very angry young people. He thought I was quite useless and I thought he was an ill-bred country oik. We were both oh-so-right and oh-so-wrong.

“I won’t lie to you, Matthew wasn’t kind to me. He needed someone to help him dig post holes and mend fences. He didn’t need a gently nurtured female who wasn’t even capable of cooking and cleaning, let alone milking a cow.”

“So what happened, Grandma? The way you tell it, it sounds as though you started off hating each other.”

“Passionately . . . . He made me help him milk those cows. Night and morning he dragged me down to that shed and I didn’t go willingly. Sometimes he came into this bedroom before daybreak and tipped me out of bed when I was running late. He used to swear he’d dress me himself if I didn’t hurry, and I believed him. He was right, I was acting like a spoiled brat, but then, he was behaving like a boar, so I suppose we were even.

“Things continued like that for weeks. The pair of us wouldn’t even speak to each other unless we had to, and we made life most uncomfortable for the rest of the household.”

“So what brought you together?”

“The tree . . . . We both used to go to that oak tree when we needed time to ourselves. Even then we could sense each other, quite fiercely. I used to avoid him and I suppose he avoided me, possibly without even realizing it. Hate is a powerful emotion, you know. It’s just the flip side of the coin called love.

“Any way, this particular evening, I went down to the tree and I could feel him there. I couldn’t see him, you understand, but I felt his presence so strongly that I called out to him . . . ‘Matthew, Matthew, you have to come out now, you’ve got to go back to the house and let them know. You can’t hide it any longer,’ and I reached into the tree and pulled him out, back into the real world.

“ ‘How did you do that?’ he had asked me. Then he took me hard by my shoulders and shook me, but I paid him no attention, because he was beside himself with grief.

“ ‘Your brother is dead,’ I had told him, ‘and you’ve hidden the telegram in your pocket. We’ll go back to the house together and I’ll stay with you while we tell them.’ But he wouldn’t be moved, he stopped his shaking, but he wouldn’t let me go.”

“ ‘No-one,’ he said, ‘has ever found me here before. It isn’t possible, and I intercepted the telegram at the gate, so no-one else has seen it.’

“His eyes were hazel, just like yours, and he held me at arm’s length and looked right into my eyes, as if he were searching my very soul. Then he realized that I was just like him and you needn’t think that he was pleased, because I can assure you, that he wasn’t. He was furious.

“ ‘How could the good Lord waste such a precious gift on a lazy, ignorant girl like you, when he’s prepared to let a good man like Donald die?’ And he started to cry. Well, what could I do except pull him into my arms, lean against the trunk of the oak tree and comfort him, and that was when the tree swallowed us into itself, together, for the first time, taking us into its tender heart and cradling away our cares.”

“I still don’t understand, Grandma. How can two grown people be swallowed up by a tree? It isn’t possible. And if it were, what’s it like to be stuck inside the bole of a tree? I think I’d die from claustrophobia.”

“It isn’t a place, Matt. It’s a state of being. I thought you realised that.”

The clatter of the men, coming in from milking, cut across their conversation.

“Time to get dressed and go down to breakfast, don’t you think, Matt? This is not a subject to be discussed with other people around.”

“Can I come back tomorrow morning? I don’t much fancy your explanation about the tree, but I would like to hear more about you and Grandpa. Being so much younger, I never got to know him as well as the others did.”

“Do you think you should, Mum?” Matt’s Uncle Peter was looking his most solemn. “Kath and I have been talking it over, and we think perhaps you should give up driving, now that you’re nearly eighty.”

“Peter, I shall be visiting my friends as usual, until either I fail to pass my annual driving test or I decide that I don’t wish to drive anymore.” Her back was ramrod straight and her eyes flashed.

Why did I ever think of her as an old lady, Matt wondered. She’s positively beautiful and her skin is as smooth as a girl’s.

“Goodbye, Matt. Do make sure that you have a very quiet day. There’s no point in having a relapse. Why don’t you sit in the sunshine and read a book.” She kissed his cheek then made for the door, shrugging into her jacket as she went.

“Must you go, Mum?”

“Of course I must. They’re the only people left who still call me ‘Jenny.’ “

The kitchen door shut quietly behind her.

As soon as Matt heard the car leave, he excused himself and went to find his book. It was a fantasy novel, filled with dark images, balanced by wonderful sorcery, and finding a patch of sunlight was not conducive to the mood, so he snuggled into a high wing-backed chair. In front of him, a fire crackled brightly in the sitting-room grate and he was soon completely absorbed in the story, except for an occasional pause to throw another log on to the blaze. The buzz of voices from the window embrasure on the other side of the room did not intrude on Matt’s consciousness, until he heard Uncle Pete mention his Grandmother.

“I don’t like it, Kath. It’s been almost a year and she won’t even try to get over it. It’s obscene the way she keeps going back to that tree. I’ve offered to take her once a week to visit his grave, and do you know what she says? ‘Why would I wish to visit an empty shell? What’s the use of a chrysalis once the butterfly has flown? I’ll remember Matt in my own way, thank-you?’ ”

Aunt Kath’s response sounded well worn. She and Uncle Peter had obviously had this conversation many times before. Matt knew he should make his presence known, but he wanted to hear more about The Tree.

“The latest farmboy is starting to ask about it. And he gets such weird ideas. He reckons he saw her walk up to the tree, but when he looked back a few moments later, she was gone. He was pretty spooked, because that tree is right out in the open, and he says she didn’t have time to get out of sight.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Peter, don’t be silly. Derek had probably had one too many tokes of that pot he thinks we don’t know he smokes in his room. Your mother must have walked around behind the tree, while his back was turned.”

“He’s adamant that he went back and looked for her. Maintains he was scared she’d fallen and was concealed by the grass. After he’d said that, I could hardly accuse him of snooping. No matter how much I wanted to.”

“That’s not what’s really bothering you, though, is it, Peter?”

“Of course it’s not. I’m used to gossip. Our family has always been a little different. Young Matt’s another one, the signs are there. You needn’t look at me like that, I know I’m getting off the subject.”

“You’re worried about the aging, aren’t you?”

“That’s it. Before Dad got killed in that freak lightning storm, they seemed like a relatively normal elderly couple. Well preserved, but unremarkable. Okay, so sometimes they gave the impression of a couple of youngsters, playing an elaborate game of charades, but they helped each other blend in.”

“And now your mother isn’t bothering to pretend any more.”

“That’s it, Kath. It’s obscene. No one should get younger every day, instead of older. She goes down to that bloody tree every day, no matter the weather, and comes back looking like a young girl. In certain lights her hair looks gold instead of white, and sometimes I begin to wonder if she was ever really old at all, or if the appearance of aging was just a trick they played to keep us happy.”

“What on earth are you saying, Peter? You’ve never talked like this before. You’re frightening me. I know your mother’s got ‘the sight.’ She told me before we married that I would never conceive, but not to worry, because it wouldn’t matter to you—and she was right. She’s always right. But she has to grow old like the rest of us. What you’re suggesting isn’t natural.”

“It’s all right, Kathy.” Uncle Pete rarely use the diminutive, Matt thought. Perhaps his Aunt was crying. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, darling. It’s just that I don’t think she means to go on much longer. She’s getting too careless. One of these days she’ll go down to that tree to meet my father and she won’t come back.”

The voices receded, but it was a long time before Matt could again concentrate on his book.

“Go on, Grandma. I know you’re awake, and I’ve been awfully patient. You and Grandpa were sucked up into the tree, together. What happened next?”

“The way you’re carrying on, Matt, anyone would think I was about to relay the next installment of your favourite fantasy novel.” Her face was stern, but there was a chuckle in her voice.

“Aw, come on, Grandma. You know you’re dying to tell me.”

“Well, I’d like to tell you that once we’d had that disturbing union with the tree, your grandfather and I realized our love for each other and quickly married, but I’m afraid that it did not happen like that.”

“So?”

“We went back to the house, and told his parents. Neither of them ever got over his brother’s death. Your great grandfather died within a year, and although Ma lingered for many years, the heart had gone out of her.

“Those things aside, everything else was the same. I was still the spoiled city girl he loved to hate. He was still the uncouth farm boy who talked down to me. The changes, when they did come, were very slow.

“First, Matthew started taking me to the Saturday-night dances at the country halls. Once we got there, we never used to dance with each other. There was a girl he thought he fancied, and I was a pretty little thing. I never wanted for a partner.”

“But what about the tree?”

“Very perceptive of you, Matt. From the day your grandfather received that telegram, we began to meet at the tree. Those meetings were as natural as breathing. We’d talk about the happenings of the day and what we were to do the next, and I suppose friendship blossomed, where before there had been only anger and distrust.

“All the same, it was a long time before Matthew could forgive me for harbouring the gift that had been denied to his brother. You see, we didn’t really need the tree at all, we could read each other’s minds, as easily as you and I are doing now.”

Matt suddenly realized that not a word had been spoken aloud for several minutes.

“So my Great Uncle Donald who died in the war didn’t have the third eye?”

“No, and it sorely hurt your grandfather that I should have what Donald had been denied. Also, because of the bond between us, he couldn’t hide what he was feeling.

“In the end it didn’t sort itself out until the boys came home from the war. The girl Matthew thought he fancied was swept up by a returning hero and Matthew wasn’t even able to pretend regret.

“Then I wasn’t needed on the farm as a land girl anymore. My papers came to say that I could leave, and suddenly, your grandfather couldn’t bear to let me go. We went to the tree for the last time, to say goodbye, and he took me into his arms for the first time.

“ ‘How can you talk about leaving me, Jenny Wren,’ he had said, ‘when you know that you’re the other half of me? If you leave, it’ll feel as though you’ve wrenched out half my mind and taken it with you, along with the better part of my soul.’

“I tried to push him away. ‘You’ve always said you hated me,’ I hissed at him. ‘Why the sudden change of heart?’ ”

A vision of the two young people locked together under the oak tree sprang vividly into Matt’s mind and he could hear his grandfather’s deep voice. “I was lying to myself and to you. We were meant to meet and we were meant to fall in love. Can you bring yourself to look at me and then deny it?”

His grandmother’s ash-blonde hair was like a halo around her head, lit by the rays of the dying sun. For a moment, it looked as though she was going to make another attempt to push his grandfather away, but then she crumpled against him, flinging her arms around his strong, young neck.

“How could I ever leave you, Matthew?” she said. “I might be taking the better part of you away with me, but what about the heart and soul of me I’d have to leave behind?”

To Matt, it was like watching a movie, but that first kiss had more power in it than anything he had seen before, or was likely to see again. Suddenly, the moment became too intimate and he tried to pull his mind away, but he didn’t have to. The ecstatic young couple faded slowly from his view into the all-encompassing embrace of the enormous oak tree.

Now, his grandmother spoke aloud. “Time to go down for breakfast. The men will be in soon.” Her face had a thoughtful, dreamy look. “They’d better move the stock to the highest paddock this afternoon. There’ll be flash floods when the rain comes. I’d better get on the phone to the neighbours.”

There had been no storm warnings, but they both knew what would happen before evening.

Matt, however, had seen his grandmother take advantage of the eye of the storm and visit The Tree. Watching her from the bedroom window, he had thought she looked little older than the young woman of his early morning waking dream. As always, when she reached The Tree, she threw her arms around it and merged into its gnarled trunk. But this time, everything else was different.

The storm started again with ever-increasing fury, throwing a bolt of lightening across the sky that rent the oak tree asunder, toppling its blackened remains to the ground.

For a horrified instant, Matt thought his grandmother dead.

But then he saw them, the young farmer and his beautiful war-bride, walking hand in hand away from him across the paddocks, totally absorbed in each other and utterly oblivious to the driving rain.

After the funeral, Matt planted an acorn in his grandparents’ memory, and for the rest of his long and productive life, he regularly visited the tree that sprang up the following spring.