Where the Trees Drive Tractors

Somewhere between a Sainsbury, a cemetary and a derelict gas works trouble is brewing.

Of the assembled crowd only Boris appeared to expect the trouble. It had begun in a cafe, log jammed with prams and running low on skimmed milk. A minor disagreement about who would buy the brownies escalated and soon two customers were being pulled apart by the staff. Children screamed and struggled and soon they too were being pulled apart by children, parents and staff alike. The line between puller and pullee was obscured and it took the sound of a siren to slow the melee. A community police officer simply held door while the patrons located their prams, loaded their charges and filed out, heads down.

Boris remained in place in his corner. He had a briefcase on his lap and a newspaper still folded in front of him. When the cafe's owner realised he was still there he brought a fresh latte and a pain au chocolat and apologised profusely for the fracas. It really was an unusual event, quite unlike the area. Things like that very rarely happened around here, at least not in quite such an aggressive manner.

Coffee and pastry finished Boris had stepped back onto the street and trailed a couple of prams down the hill, across the canal and onto this plot of wastleland. The weather was pleasingly mild for October. Ignored by all, he lay down with his briefcase as a pillow.

The crowd milled around discussing families and politics as if at the local library's fundraising cake sale. To the canal boaters inching past there would be no indication of the earlier skirmish but even had he not been in the cafe, Boris would have sensed it. There was a smell of malaise. Shoulders were tensed, fingers fidgeted, eye contact was rare and voices clipped; things Boris noticed. When the first blow landed it went unnoticed by all but the recipient but after the second deterioration was rapid and the fallout fierce.

Boris watched the last human standing stagger backwards and trip over a motionless body. He watched the moment of realisation and the wash of remorse and the flicker of decision and the raising from the dirt and the search for the correct pram and the final glance at what had been done, before leaving the field.