The Seed Collectors

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘I look at the birds on my bird feeder,’ says Edith. ‘And I think, You poor little terrified things. They take one mouthful of food and then look around for predators. Another mouthful, another look. Eat, look, eat, look. Imagine having to eat your dinner like that? But of course some people do, in Africa, probably, or the Middle East.’

  Stan looks like a giant novelty candle. He is very, very fat, and from New York. He has been living on the Isle of Lewis for several years and met the others in Stornoway at the Amateur Dramatics society. Apparently they did Midsummer Night’s Dream together, then all signed up to a herbalism course with someone called Rainbow, then the gardening trip, then Reiki (also with Rainbow) and now this. And with Ina offering these retreats right here on the island, well. And they’ve all read the book, A Course in Miracles. Well, most of them have. Well, they’ve bought it at least, off Amazon: £37 for the hardback edition or £6.99 for the Kindle version. It’s a pretty strange book, to be honest, though, which is why you need a retreat to understand it.

  ‘I hate the human body,’ he says. ‘I mean who came up with the idea of having to go to the bathroom every twenty goddamn minutes? And carrying your waste around with you in an internal sack like some kind of sausage full of shit until you can find a hole full of water in which to . . .’

  ‘Are we losing the concept of God in this?’ Ina asks.

  ‘This is the bit I have trouble with,’ says Mog, sighing.

  Fleur and Skye exchange a look.

  ‘Who can bring Fleur and Skye up to date?’

  Joel frowns. ‘OK, so it’s pretty difficult for any of us to believe in a cruel God who zaps people and makes earthquakes and cripples and stuff, right? So we might wonder, if God didn’t make the universe, then who did? For years I thought no one made it, that it was just an accident. Just a few bits of crap swirling in a void, colliding and retreating, expanding and contracting, all for no reason whatsoever. I was your basic atheist. But if atheism is right, then what is to stop people just raping and murdering whoever they want? All the good moral stuff in the world comes from religion . . .’

  ‘A hell of a lot of bad stuff too,’ says Stan.

  ‘Yeah, of course. But . . .’

  ‘I think what Joel is saying is that the world as many of us see it is a paradox,’ Tony says. ‘One where half of us – actually a lot more than half of us – throw ourselves on the mercy of this entity who is supposed to be all-knowing and all-loving but in fact is cruel and brutal and seems to want to humiliate and belittle us, and the other half pretend that life is spiritually meaningless, and that “this is it”, and that although in theory we are just part of a pattern that includes, I don’t know, hedgerows, say, and pecan nuts, and polar bears, in just the same random way that it includes us, in reality we teach our kids a bit of religion just in case, and base our legal, political and moral systems on notions of “good” and “right” and “equality”. Meanwhile, the God that is supposed to represent the pinnacle of enlightenment in fact demands that we get down on our knees like the scum we are, and sing tuneless hymns at him every week, and send prayers not full of love but full of worship, as if he was just another mad dictator demanding more palaces and statues. Meanwhile, the atheists have started going to church to sing the praises of their cleverness, their nothingness . . .’

  ‘I think what Tony is saying is this: What if God did not make the world? But what if it isn’t random either?’

  ‘Surely that just means there’s another God,’ says Skye. ‘Like if the universe is not random then something must have created it. And if there’s a creator then they have to be nice or horrible, but you’d kind of hope they were nice, although I totally get your point about earthquakes and stuff, and . . .’

  ‘There’s another solution,’ says Ina. ‘Joel? You look as if you’re about to say something.’

  ‘The central idea is this,’ he says. ‘God didn’t make the world. God made us, and then we made the world, and that’s why it is so fucking awful.’

  ‘But there is actually only one of “us”,’ says Mog. ‘The idea that we are separate is just an illusion. In fact, the whole world that we made is only an illusion. None of it is real. Just like the Hindus say, and the Buddhists, more or less.’

  ‘The reality,’ says Ina, ‘if you can call it that, is that we are imagining everything. This world is a bad dream. Think of it like this. There we were, blissfully happy with God, the most contented, pampered child you could ever imagine, far beyond space and time, where no one ever dies and nothing bad ever happens and everything is perfect, and will be for all eternity. But then this child wondered what it would be like to be separate from God. What if he went off and did something on his own, away from the creator? This tiny, awful thought was really the beginning of the ego. The ego is the part of us that thinks, “Maybe it would be better if . . .”, or, “Perhaps I could have more . . .” or, “Wouldn’t it be exciting if things were different?” or, “I have to prove I am better,” or even, “Where is the drama?” But this ego-driven desire to be separate from God, the most loving entity imaginable, led to a flash of guilt so tremendous that it became the Big Bang that made this universe, in which we are now trapped, fragmented and disparate, trying to find ways to come back together and remember who we are so we can switch the whole thing off. But in the meantime the ego has taken over. War! Shopping! Sex! Violence! And if anyone turns up saying that things could be different they get crucified for it. Or people simply find them boring. And then everything they ever said gets written down wrong and people end up using messages of peace as excuses for war and turning the son of God – who is all of us, who represents all of us together – into jewellery and swearwords and Christmas cards. And here I am now getting angry about it, feeding the ego, when . . .’

  ‘You have to forgive,’ says Joel. ‘That’s the only thing to do.’

  Ina now laughs. ‘Which is easier said than done, of course, as we’ll find out.’

  Halfway down Jura’s one road, Craighouse nestles in a beautiful bay with more sparkling blue water and an old stone jetty that curves back towards land like an elbow that someone has rested there while they have a long chat with their neighbour. The Small Isles poke out of the sea like pieces of something’s spine. They are, in all seriousness, and according to an information sign by the jetty, called Flat Island, Rabbit Island, Goat Island and Useless Island. Craighouse has a shop (closed on Sundays), a village hall, a hotel and the Jura whisky distillery. It’s very charming, but they are not staying.

  ‘But why not, Daddy?’ asks Holly.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Bryony. ‘We may as well have dinner here, surely?’

  ‘I think we should press on. Fleur said there were supplies at the house.’

  ‘Right, but Fleur’s idea of supplies is likely to be . . .’

  ‘And you must be curious to see it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Where is Fleur anyway?’

  ‘On some mad spiritual quest to the Outer Hebrides.’

  ‘Aren’t we in the Outer Hebrides, Mummy?’

  ‘Jura is the Inner Hebrides,’ says James.

  Ash doesn’t say anything because he is asleep.

  After everyone leaves, Fleur, Skye and Ina sit together in front of the peat fire. It’s impossible for Skye and Fleur to walk back, and Ina doesn’t have a car. Somehow she manages to survive on this vast shopless island with just a bicycle, and the bus. Skye is bathing her feet in hot salt water. Fleur has a blanket around her shoulders. It’s cold in the evenings here, even in July. Ina gets them each a nip of single malt.

  ‘So, I’ve really come about the book,’ Fleur says. ‘And, I suppose, the seed pods.’

  ‘The book?’

  ‘You gave it to me after the funeral.’

  ‘Oh, Oleander’s copy of A Course in Miracles. That makes sense, although it’s odd that you managed to find out about the retreat . . .’

  ‘The book was blank.’

  �
�What?’

  ‘The book wasn’t A Course in Miracles. It was blank.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘It’s back at the hotel. I should have brought it with me, but I didn’t realise . . .’

  ‘We’ll find someone to drive us over and get it once the retreat is over tomorrow. We’ll have a proper look at it. I mean, you’re absolutely sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Did Bryony come here with her parents once, or did she just imagine it? No one is exactly clear how Jura House came to be in the family, except that Fleur seemed to think it had something to do with the Prophet. It wouldn’t have looked then as it does now. It’s been an extremely expensive holiday let for years. But even now it looks like something other than it is: it is a hyperreal vision of what someone in London thinks that someone coming on holiday here thinks that a hunting lodge should look like. And it’s all been put together with a slightly raised eyebrow, with, if Bryony’s honest, a bit of a metropolitan sneer that may even be very slightly camp. But you can analyse these things too much. Who really cares that the herbarium specimens hanging in the front parlour are written in French, and are from Southern France, rather than Scotland? And surely no one really minds that the boy riding the goat in the painting in the white bedroom is from a different century, country and socio-economic class, let alone family, from the ankle-socked girls in the large framed photographs in the dining room? It is all tremendous fun, as Granny might say. And now, she – well, she and James, or maybe let’s go back to she – owns a third of it.

  ‘How do you feel with all this God stuff going on?’

  ‘Kind of weird. How about you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oleander never did the God thing. The ego thing, yes. But not the God thing. But so much of what they are saying here is like the stuff she used to say, so how can she not have done the God thing?’

  ‘Maybe she just didn’t call it that in her head.’

  ‘Maybe . . .’

  ‘I mean, they talked a lot about “the universe”, right? What’s the difference between the universe and God?’

  ‘Yeah. Nothing.’

  ‘I keep thinking about that bird thing she used to say.’

  ‘What bird thing? Oh, the thing from the Rig Veda?’

  ‘Two beautiful birds living on the same tree . . .’

  ‘The selfsame tree, is how she put it . . .’

  ‘One eats the fruits of pleasure and pain . . .’

  ‘While the other just looks on.’

  ‘Yeah. I like that.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I’d still rather be the one that eats all the crap though.’

  ‘Me too. Although . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe you’re supposed to be both? Like it’s the ego and the self together?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe. Oh well. Goodnight.’

  ‘Night.’

  The plane banks slightly to the left, and Charlie can see that below him the landscape is beautifully wounded, as if it were a troubled teenager with a razorblade and a whole afternoon alone. In places the red is streaky or slightly clotted. But every so often there is a perfect square of it, and it is the most wonderful red you could ever imagine. It is actually far redder than blood. Can people make red like that out of binary code or melted-down plastics? No. This is not Pantone 186 or 711. The only thing that is red like this is summer poppies. There are fields and fields of them, annihilating the wheat, and overdosing any insects stupid enough to try to eat them.

  Charlie remembers being maybe twelve or so, which meant Clem, Bryony and Fleur would have been about ten. They were driving somewhere together. Perhaps it was someone’s birthday. Yes, perhaps Aunt Plum’s. Bryony’s mother. There was a two-car convoy: his father Augustus driving one and Uncle Quinn driving the other. He remembers a silly race down country lanes. Going over a small humpback bridge and at least one of the cars actually taking off and all the grown-ups laughing about it afterwards. Some village pub that he forgets, and perhaps a picnic in some woodland, although maybe that was another occasion altogether. But he particularly remembers coming around a bend on a high ridge and seeing below a huge, perfect square of red that at first looked like the roof of the biggest barn imaginable, but set at a funny angle. He remembers his mother and his sister begging Augustus to chase the red, to find out where and what it was, how it began and how it ended. At each bend they would either lose or find the red. And when they did glimpse it, magical and intense and always so maddeningly distant, his mother would sigh and say, ‘It’s poppies, darlings. Poppies everywhere.’

  Doilies.

  Lots and lots of doilies. Some of the doilies have little statues of the Buddha on them. Some of the Buddhas are covered in a kind of gold foil. Also covered in gold foil are the chocolates, which are arranged on various cake stands around the room. There are framed photographs of rainbows with angels superimposed on them. Mog and Joel have not come to Sylvia’s for the second part of the workshop, and it is as if they have taken some light away with them. The remaining delegates, if that is what one would call them, all seem to be wearing polyester. There is a smell of sweat, and, vaguely, mostly from Stan’s direction, faint wafts of urine. Fleur goes into the kitchen to see if Sylvia wants help with the tea. Also to get away from the smell. Ina follows her.

  ‘It’s your own fault,’ says Ina, when Sylvia pops out to the car for more pink wafers.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ says Fleur.

  ‘If you actually believed anything at all that I have said, or that Oleander used to say, you would not have made all this so remote and, well, so unattractive and horrible. You’ve made it much worse today than it was yesterday. Why?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘This is all an illusion, right? Your illusion. Sort it out.’

  ‘How would I do that?’

  ‘Forgive everyone. Forgive yourself.’

  ‘Right. Look. If I forgive everyone for being old, fat, smelly, boring and ugly then I won’t mind any more that they are old, fat, smelly, boring and ugly. So for all you know I might have already forgiven them.’

  ‘So then why are you making us have this conversation?’

  Fleur sighs. ‘This is doing my head in.’

  Sylvia comes back with the pink wafers.

  ‘So I read that midges are point six millimetres, which is obviously really tiny, right, but the things that keep biting me are’ – Bryony holds up her forefinger and thumb with approximately two centimetres between them – ‘this long. What are they?’

  ‘They’re called clegs. They’re like a horsefly.’

  ‘Clegs?’

  ‘Yep. Horrible things.’

  ‘They don’t seem to respond to insect repellent.’

  ‘Have you got Avon Skin So Soft?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A young woman now joins in. ‘Did you get the blue or the pink bottle?’

  ‘Blue.’

  ‘That should work,’ says the man. ‘Mind you, it works on me but not on my wife.’

  ‘You see,’ says the girl, ‘you’ve got normal clegs and then you’ve got deer clegs . . .’

  ‘They chased us off the beach,’ Bryony says.

  ‘Well, yes, they’ll do that.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What you need is Smidge.’

  ‘Smidge.’

  ‘It’s the only thing that works on local clegs.’

  ‘Brilliant. Thanks. Well, I’ll take one . . .’ What? Tube, bottle? Bryony looks around.

  ‘We’re out of stock, unfortunately. We’ll have more in on Thursday.’

  It is Tuesday. Bryony can literally not stand outside for more than two seconds without feeling that horrible pinch of something biting her and then looking down to find yet another black insect sucking out her blood. Yesterday they went on a bus tour of the island and Bryony wore jeans, socks, shoes, a hat and a long-sleeved top. They got out to look at an old graveyard and one of the fuckers bit her TH
ROUGH HER TOP.

  ‘Where could I get some now?’

  ‘You’d be needing to go to Islay if you wanted some now.’

  Islay. What seemed like a tiny, insignificant island when they arrived has since been revealed to be a buzzing metropolis compared with Jura, with its one shop and one road. The only thing you can reliably get all the time here is whisky. It seems that by the beginning of each week the tiny shop has run out of all its fruit and most of its veg. It does have an amazing range of everything else you could possibly imagine, however, and James certainly didn’t need to bring a lunch box full of garlic and herbs and cinnamon sticks, because they have all those things here. And the shop does sell wine, but not after 5 p.m., and nothing even remotely drinkable that isn’t a five- to ten-pound Shiraz. Bryony has already been to the island’s only hotel and bought their last remaining bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and both bottles of their second wine, a rather nice Côtes du Rhône. But where has it all gone? She had been resigned to buying village-shop wine – yes, yes, she is a snob, but no one is here to see her or to care, so whatever – but actually now she has an excuse to go to Islay . . . There probably isn’t an off-licence on Islay either, but there is a Co-op, Bryony remembers, which probably means cut-price Château Sénéjac or Château something else . . . And a nice hotel too, that will presumably do a good lunch for one. Or maybe Charlie will want to come too . . . ? And she did promise Holly she’d try and find a tennis court. There are none on Jura.

  But in the end it is just Bryony who goes to Islay. And yes, the nice hotel can fit her in for lunch. The others have decided to go off to find the house where George Orwell wrote 1984. And here’s the thing. Even though they are her children, her husband, father of one child, and her cousin, father of the other, Bryony secretly wishes that one of them will, well, not die, exactly, but get injured so badly that they have to be airlifted from this wild and dangerous place where insects suck your blood and crabs nibble your toes and wild deer loom everywhere. Just to prove . . . Well . . . Why is it only Bryony that is allergic to this stuff? She orders another glass of wine and tries not to scratch her biggest and most uncomfortable cleg-bite, which of course is right on her arse. She sips her wine. Outside, boats bob in the cold blue harbour, and birds shiver from one side of the bay to the other, and Bryony realises she is the only person in the dining room, perhaps the only person on this island, perhaps the only person left in this whole entire ridiculous world.