At seven-thirty, a chainsaw began its roar outside Stella’s lounge room, and limbs began falling. She took her breakfast upstairs to her father’s study. Its window looked down on Wilson’s property, and from her seat at her father’s desk she could watch the worker, at home in the trees, his chainsaw, when not in use, dangling from his belt on a long rope. He is in his natural element, she thought. A young Tarzan. He worked with a safety belt, snibbing it to a limb below, before beginning to cut the limb above. One hand above the cut, he sawed through, or almost through the branch, then pushed it from him to crash to the earth below. She stared like a child, afraid for the worker, but enthralled by his lack of fear. There was no-one to comment, no-one around to ask if God might deem it a suitable occupation for a woman of her maturity, no-one to care if she sat at the window for one hour or three, staring at the agility of the worker, who looked more primate than man, swinging from limb to limb, from tree to tree.
