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【阅读理解】Reading: The Orchard on Signal Hill
Ruth Calloway first knelt in the orchard at sixty-two, her knees creaking like an old gate.
She told her grandson Teo, nineteen, who had come to Signal Hill for the summer of 2019, to tighten the ladder.
The orchard had 214 trees on a slope above a suburb that was once farmland.
Ruth had a coupon for diesel, a waterproof manual, and a real appetite for one more harvest.
Teo was good with machinery; she was good at being stubborn.
In 2009, a multinational retail agency asked to build a tunnel through the hillside to link the coast to a new residential dome complex.
The council's assessment assumed the population would grow by 12 percent, that most residents wanted a retail precinct, and that the historic orchard was, as one consultant said, 'a subsidiary and ornamental feature.'
Ruth attended the exhibition in the town hall, standing among 300 people.
She said into the microphone, 'This is not a diversion. It is a demolition.'
She lost. The tunnel opened in 2014, and by 2017 the water table had dropped four metres.
The trees were not killed directly by the tunnel, but by the sediment it released, the toxins that dissolved into the aquifer, and the systematic exhaustion of a slope irrigated since 1911.
Ruth kept records: a glossary of symptoms, a series of photographs, an embossed ledger with 4,100 entries.
Teo said, 'You're describing a catastrophe.' She replied, 'No, I'm describing a pattern.'
By 2021, only 61 trees were left.
Ruth wrote to the embassy of a country she had never visited, mistakenly thinking its agricultural attaché might help.
She applied for a charity grant of £18,000 and received £2,200.
She tried acupuncture for her back, which did nothing, and a robotic massager, which did less.
Teo introduced her to flexitime work so she could oversee the harvest.
On the first morning of October, they picked 340 kilograms of apples—a tremendous quantity, she said, considering.
The majority were small and scarred. The market would discount them. 'Regardless,' she said, 'they are ours.'
What she could not adapt to was the silence. The orchard had once teemed with insects; now it was scarce of everything.
A burglar might have stolen the last of the crop, but no burglar came. The vegetation was thin. The birds were gone.
'I'm dissatisfied,' she told Teo. 'Not with you.'
He had begun to describe a prospectus for a vertical farm—a conceptual design, all glass and water—and she listened, and she did not kneel.
Her knees had withdrawn their consent. 'You could sell the land,' he said. 'You have an overdraft.' 'I have a constitution,' she said, 'and it does not include selling.'
The words were incendiary, and he left the room.
The following spring, she postponed nothing. She mounted the slope with a manual pump and a waterproof belt, and inspected the remaining trees one by one.
Her presence irritated the new owners of the dome complex; they had expected her to conform, to accept the settlement, to sign.
Instead, she delivered a request for an unbiased review—14 pages, embossed, sincere.
The council's reply was a single paragraph. 'We cannot guarantee a favourable outcome,' it said.
She read it standing, then sat down on a crate. The exhaustion was immense. She had sacrificed a decade to this. She had been, at times, gullibly hopeful.
On a Tuesday in June, a stranger arrived: a woman named Priya, thirty-four, an optical engineer on vacation, who had seen Ruth's exhibition at the library and had come to volunteer.
'My grandmother had an orchard in Kerala,' she said. 'It decomposed after the dam.'
They began to sift the soil together, to engrave tags, to mingle compost with sediment.
Priya had a repertoire of jokes and a daunt of nothing.
They found one tree—a Belle de Boskoop—with new growth. 'It's a beginning,' Priya said.
Ruth said nothing. She kneeled. The knees complained. She stayed there anyway.
Questions
1. What was the council's assumption about the orchard in 2009?
A. It was a subsidiary and ornamental feature. B. It would be expanded to 214 trees. C. It was essential for the local economy. D. It would attract more tourists than the tunnel.
2. How many trees remained in the orchard by 2021?
A. 61 B. 340 C. 214 D. 4100
3. What does the word 'incendiary' most likely mean in the passage?
A. Inflammatory B. Soothing C. Humorous D. Practical
4. Why did Ruth refuse to sell the land?
A. She had no overdraft to pay off. B. She had a constitution that did not include selling. C. She planned to build a vertical farm. D. She wanted to wait for a higher offer.
5. What is the main idea of the passage?
A. Priya's journey to find her grandmother's orchard in Kerala. B. Teo's plan to modernize the orchard with a vertical farm. C. Ruth Calloway's struggle to preserve an orchard against environmental and bureaucratic challenges. D. The construction of a tunnel and its impact on a local suburb.