The Seed Collectors

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘So what do you do exactly? What’s your job title?’

  ‘I’m a family type specialist.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ She smiles. ‘I know nothing about plants, except sometimes from Izzy’s drunken ramblings. She’s always going on about mint and herbs and stuff.’

  Izzy, aka Dr Isobel Stone, is the mutual friend who has set them up. She’s a world authority on Lamiales, the order of angiosperms that contains mint and herbs and stuff. Charlie first got talking to her in the tea room about a year ago after an incident involving a member of the public and a rather mangled herbarium specimen that turned out simply to be Lavandula augustifolia, one of the most common plants in the UK, if not the entire universe. The member of the public wrote around seventeen letters about his ‘mystery plant’, each one more offensive than the last, eventually accusing everyone at Kew of being ‘blind, intellectually stunted bastards’. Since then Charlie and Izzy have often had morning coffee and/or afternoon tea together, and Izzy has become the colleague that Charlie would never really fuck, but about whom he will masturbate if his fantasy happens to take place in a work setting. On Thursday Izzy gave him the address of this restaurant and a phone number and raised an eyebrow, and Charlie wondered if he could in fact fuck someone from work until Izzy said that her friend Nicola was expecting to meet him there at 8 p.m. on Sunday. It was all a bit awkward because Charlie had said he was available before he knew who he was meeting. And then Izzy told Charlie that Nicola had not stopped going on about him and his ‘great body and beautiful eyes’ since seeing him in a picture Izzy put on Facebook. Of course, desperate, fawning women of this type will often do anything. Which in one way makes the whole thing less . . . but in another way it becomes so . . .

  ‘Um,’ says Charlie, ‘well, say you’ve gone to the rainforest and collected a plant but you don’t know what it is and you send it to Kew for identification, I’m the person – or one of the people – who decides what family it’s in, and therefore which department it should go to for further identification. Like if its leaves are a bit furry and it smells of mint I send it to Izzy. Or one of her team.’

  ‘So you get mystery plants?’

  ‘Yeah, all the time. But mostly we solve the mystery quite quickly.’

  ‘That’s so cool.’ She pours more wine. ‘So what’s a botanical family again? I last did biology at GCSE. Plants are too real for me.’

  ‘It’s a taxonomic category. One up from genus. From the top it’s kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. Well, that’s the basic structure anyway. The rice you’re eating now has the Latin name Oryza sativa, which is its genus and species. Its family is Poaceae. Or, basically, grass.’

  ‘Rice is a type of grass?’

  ‘Yep.’

  She sips her wine. ‘What’s a human a type of?’

  ‘Monkey. Well, great ape. Hominidae.’

  ‘Oh yes. Of course. I knew that. Everyone knows that. What about this cabbage stuff then?’ She holds up a forkful of wilted greens.

  Charlie frowns. ‘You’re not going to make me identify the whole meal, are you?’

  ‘No. Sorry. I’m being silly.’ She smiles weakly. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘It’s probably Brassica rapa. Chinese cabbage. In the family Brassicaceae. The mustard family.’

  She puts some in her mouth and chews. ‘Cabbage is a type of mustard?’

  ‘Yeah, kind of. The mustard family is sometimes known as the cabbage family.’

  ‘So cabbage is a kind of cabbage.’ She laughs. ‘Wow. Excellent. OK, next question. Where are you from?’

  ‘Originally? Bath.’

  ‘Oh, I love Bath. Gosh, all that lovely yellow stone – what’s it called, again? – and those romantic mists. Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

  Charlie doesn’t tell her that Bath stone is called Bath stone. ‘I’ve got a sister. And a cousin I’m very close to. And, I guess, two half-sisters I hardly ever see, because . . .’ He doesn’t really know how to end this sentence, so he doesn’t bother. Instead, he looks at Nicola’s wrists. He tries imagining them bound with rope. Cheap, itchy rope. He imagines them bleeding. Just a little. Perhaps just a tiny blue bruise instead. One on each wrist from being held down and fucked. Face-fucked? No, just fucked. Obviously she’d have consented to all this, but it’s amazing how many women do. In fact, a lot of women have only slept with Charlie because he’s offered to tie them up. You know, as one of those jokes that aren’t really jokes. But he doesn’t really fancy Nicola, with or without rope etc.

  There’s quite a long pause.

  ‘God, you’re hard work, aren’t you?’ She grins. ‘Don’t look so serious. I’m teasing. What are their names?’

  ‘Clematis. That’s my sister. We call her Clem. Bryony’s my cousin. My half-sisters are Plum and Lavender, but they’re just kids still. My father remarried after my mother went missing on an expedition . . .’ Nicola doesn’t respond to the missing mother thing, which is odd, so Charlie explains about the family tradition of giving a botanical first name to anyone not certain to keep the famous Gardener surname, although of course Clem kept the Gardener name anyway when she married Ollie. Then he explains about his great-great-grandfather, Augustus Emery Charles Gardener, who was a famous horticulturist, and his great-grandfather, Charles Emery Augustus Gardener, who was supposed to be overseeing a tea plantation in India but ended up falling in love with a Hindu woman and founding an Ayurvedic clinic and yoga centre in Sandwich, of all places. And then his grandfather, Augustus Emery Charles Gardener, who . . .

  ‘Can I tell you about the desserts?’

  Nicola immediately looks up at the waiter, and Charlie realises he has been boring her. Good. Maybe she’ll leave and this will be over. He has had enough to eat, and definitely enough carbs, but agrees, after some pressure, to share an exotic fruit platter. He’ll have a bit of kiwi or something. But he insists on ordering a glass of dessert wine for her. He likes watching girls drinking dessert wine for reasons that would probably be disturbing if he ever thought about them. He has a double espresso, which won’t be as nice as the one he could have at home.

  ‘So why are you on a blind date?’ Nicola asks him.

  Charlie shrugs. Right, well, if she doesn’t want to know any more about his family, she won’t hear about his great-aunt Oleander, who just died, and who used to be a famous guru who even met the Beatles. She also won’t hear about his mother, who is not just missing but presumed dead, along with both Bryony’s parents and Fleur’s terrible mother. And the deadly seed pods they went to find in a place called – really – the Lost Island, far away in the Pacific. And that’s Nicola’s loss, because it’s really a very exciting story, with loads of botany in it and everything. But then all girls like Nicola want to talk about is how many people you’ve slept with and what your favourite band is and how many children you want.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Izzy sort of took pity on me because I got dumped.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’

  ‘What’s your history . . . ? I mean, when did you . . . ?’

  ‘I got divorced about ten years ago.’

  ‘Mine was last month.’

  ‘Was it bad?’

  She shrugs. ‘We’d only been together for three years.’

  ‘Yeah, but I mean, did you, were you . . . ?’

  ‘What, in love? Yes. Well, I was. How about you?’

  ‘I suppose I was. Yes. Just not with my wife.’

  Nicola pauses. Sips her wine. Puts her finger in her mouth, and then in the bowl of salt on the table, and then back in her mouth again. Why on earth is she . . .

  ‘So who did you fuck instead?’

  Charlie’s cock stirs ever so slightly at the sound of the word ‘fuck’ coming out of her full, quite posh, red-lipsticked mouth. She reapplied her lipstick when she went to the loo. He likes it when girls bother to do that.

  ‘It’s complicated.’

>   She sighs. ‘Right.’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘What, did I fuck anyone else?’

  Again, a very slight emphasis on the word ‘fuck’. The consonance of it. Another small stir.

  ‘Yes.’

  She smiles. ‘I can’t tell you that. I hardly know you.’

  Eyebrows. Smile. ‘We could change that.’

  ‘Really? How?’

  ‘Go out to the fire escape and take off your knickers.’

  She pauses, looks shocked, but probably isn’t. Laughs. ‘What?’

  ‘You think I’m joking?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Er, most men wouldn’t quite . . .’

  ‘But what if I’m not?’

  ‘Surely we could find somewhere more comfortable to . . .’

  ‘But the excitement is all in the discomfort.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  He looks at the door. His watch. ‘I mean, if you have other plans . . .’

  ‘Take off my knickers.’ She acts like this is a joke, could still just about be only a joke. ‘Right. OK. So I’m standing on the fire escape in the freezing cold with no knickers on. And then what?’

  ‘You put them in your mouth.’

  ‘I’m not doing that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, why should I?’

  ‘So that people are not disturbed by your moans of pleasure. Or pain.’

  ‘I’m going to feel really stupid anyway. I can’t . . .’

  ‘Well, just take them off then. I’ll pay and then come and join you in a second.’

  ‘And you won’t be long?’

  ‘No.’

  She flushes a little and gets up. ‘OK. Don’t be long. I can’t believe . . .’

  Is it always this easy? Yes, when you actually don’t care.

  Afterwards, Charlie drives his green MG back to Hackney. The house is just off Mare Street on a long road of huge Victorian houses in various states of renovation. Charlie and his ex-wife Charlotte (how much fun that was when they met: ‘I’m Charlie,’ ‘Hey, so am I!’, although it became complicated later on when they started opening each other’s letters by accident and one of them was That Letter from Bryony) split the proceeds on their flat in Highgate in a way that only their lawyers understood, and he ended up with just enough for the deposit on the Hackney place. He worked out that unless he asked his father for money, he could just about afford to continue living in London only if he bought a tired old student let, did it up a bit, and advertised for some housemates. He took two weeks’ holiday and painted all eight rooms, including the ceilings, while a friend of a friend with a sander did the floors for a hundred quid. So now here he is, living with two art students, a fashion blogger and a jazz musician. The main problem with the place is that the previous owner, Mr Q. Johnson, who now lives next door, insists on Charlie still keeping garlic on all the windowsills to keep bad spirits out of the house, and drops in every few days to check that he does. He has also not changed his address with the Labour Party, Disability, Spin, Saga and various other companies, so most of the post that comes to Charlie’s house is for him. It seems particularly unfair that Charlie’s post often goes to Mr Q. Johnson for no reason at all, especially when it is clearly marked number fifty-six.

  When Charlie gets in, the band is practising in the basement. He watches a bit of La Dolce Vita on BBC2, then makes a cup of fresh mint tea and takes it to bed. He should have left Nicola on the balcony without her knickers. It would have been a hilarious thing to tell Bryony next weekend. But, mainly out of politeness to Izzy, he gallantly went outside, stuffed Nicola’s knickers in her mouth and fucked her. She was quite pissed by then, so he managed to get his dick halfway up her arse before she realised what he was doing. But, again because of Izzy, he was super-polite and took it out like a nice, well-mannered boy and reinserted it in her vagina. Which is why he doesn’t understand the text message he now has from Izzy: How could you??? He texts back, Be more specific?, but does not get a reply.

  It’s very complicated, trying to organise a wake. Fleur has no idea who is even coming to the funeral. But afterwards, everybody should be invited to Namaste House for food. Of course they should. But there could be ten people or a hundred. How is Fleur supposed to know who will come? If even Augustus and Beatrix are going to come then anything could happen. Oleander changed a lot of people’s lives over the years. But many of them must be dead now: dead, reincarnated and living completely new lives. Could you contact someone who . . . ? Fleur shakes her head. How stupid. Because it’s so complicated organising a wake she is watering all the plants in Namaste House for the second time today. This is something Oleander and Fleur used to do together each evening. Doing this makes Fleur feel almost as if she is Oleander, and of course you don’t have to miss someone if you are them, and . . .

  The orangery is attached to the west wing. At this time of day it is filled with the soft colours of sunset with only a whisper of moonlight. Fleur has looked after the orchids in here since she was a teenager. Some of the ones she propagated are getting on for twenty years old, but there are others that are much older. Their roots reach out like the thin arms of the starving and desperate, although it’s all a big act because they know that Fleur knows exactly how they like to be misted, and when. Fleur waters the frankincense tree in the centre of the room, touches its bark, as she always does, her hand coming away smelling of the heat and damp of faraway places. The orangery is where the celebrities come to relax by day, to breathe air produced by rare plants and to look out at the orchard with its wise, old trees. The orangery is vast, but the celebrities won’t share it. If one celebrity finds another one already here then she, or more probably he – for some reason the residential ones are usually male – will instead go all the way to the east wing where they can choose the cool Yin room with the peppermint water fountain, the small, hot Yang room or the Dosha Den, full of black velvet cushions stuffed with down and dried roses.

  Sometimes one of the newer celebrities will make an observation about the lack of a coherent spirituality in the house. The massages are Ayurvedic, because Ketki does them. Ish, Ketki’s husband, does both Ayurvedic and macrobiotic consultations, and is also a trained acupuncturist and cranial osteopath. The food is mostly Indian, sometimes Ayurvedic, and made by Ketki’s ancient aunt Bluebell. She specialises in kulfis – Indian ice creams made with condensed milk, cardamom pods and saffron – but which she often makes into the shape of Daleks. Everything else is a jumble of Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Hinduism, Wicca and who knows what else. Oleander famously believed in ‘everything’. There’s a tapestry halfway up the west-wing staircase with a profound religious significance that no one can quite pin down, not even the Prophet, who has an eye for such things.

  After checking the first floor again, Fleur goes down the east-wing staircase – avoiding not just the tapestry but also the White Lady, who often comes out on a Sunday, or after someone has ‘moved on’ – and through the library with its huge peace lilies and rubber plants and that tarry, tobaccoey smell of old leather bindings, and she wonders where on earth Ketki could be. She checks the orangery again, and the kitchens, with their unmistakeable smell of fenugreek, coriander and, of course, the curry plants, which Fleur now waters for the third time today. All around are big Kilner jars of yellow split peas, red, brown and green lentils, four different types of rice, whole oats, sultanas and desiccated coconut. Silicone Dalek moulds, but no Bluebell. A half-drunk mug of Earl Grey tea, but no Ketki.

  This is infuriating. There is, after all, so much planning to do. Ketki has said she’ll make curries for the wake if Fleur will help. She has also suggested that her two daughters might come up from their professional lives in London and do some cooking. Unlikely, frankly. And Fleur herself is actually going to be quite busy on the day of the funeral and . . . Fleur sighs. Goes up to the second floor, with its long corridor of guest suites with the original servant bells that she had mended years ago, and then to
the third floor, to the original servants’ corridor where the ‘servants’ still live and in which the bells sometimes still tinkle, late at night, if one of the celebrities has overdosed, become enlightened or wants a cup of hot chocolate. Now, of course, it’s just Ketki, Ish and Bluebell up there, but years ago Fleur and her mother had their cramped little rooms at the north end of the servants’ corridor. And, after her parents’ disappearance, Bryony stayed in one of the old servants’ rooms for almost a year until James’s parents took her in. Ketki’s daughters – dramatically rescued from somewhere in the Punjab region, by Oleander, who saved them from almost certain abduction, rape and forced marriage – to Muslims, imagine – grew up in the house. They were joined at the south end of the servants’ corridor by their cousin Pi, who was himself rescued, but from something else entirely, quite a lot later.

  Of course no one has suggested that Pi, who moved out of his tiny room years ago and is now a famous author in London, should come and make curries. No one has suggested that his eldest daughter should take time off from Vogue photo shoots to come and make curries. His wife never comes to Namaste House so at least that isn’t an issue. But anyway, why not get Clem, Charlie and Bryony – Oleander’s actual relations, who are presumably about to inherit everything – to come and make the curries? The Prophet has, to Fleur’s knowledge, never even been in the kitchen, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t help in an emergency. But some things never change; however much time you spend with supposedly enlightened people, in a house so brimming and glowing with enlightenment it’s sometimes like being in one of those fish tanks that . . . Shut up, for God’s sake. Fleur closes her eyes. Enlightenment is so difficult and tiresome, and Fleur isn’t sure she’s going to get there in this lifetime, but she could really do with a stiller mind. As usual, when she tries to stop her thoughts, her ego goes into a sulk for about one second and there’s peace. Then the whole thing starts up again.