The Seed Collectors

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘Come on, in Oleander’s world everything is OK.’

  ‘Well . . . I mean, I don’t really think that . . .’

  ‘She never even bothered to read the Bhagavad Gita properly.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Anyway, what have you written? Can I see? “Imagine you are very poor”.’ Pi laughs. ‘Yeah, right, but she wasn’t, was she? None of your lot are. “Imagine you are a squirrel”?’ He laughs again. ‘You are insane.’

  Imagine you are a squirrel storing nuts for winter. You spend your days scouring fields, woodlands and gardens for acorns or, if you are lucky, nuts from a bird feeder. It takes you a very long time to find food, and then to bury it for the long winter ahead. Morning, noon and night you scurry this way and that, sorting, burying, hoarding. If you are lucky you manage to store ten nuts each day. You have to eat quite a lot to fuel your search, and to try to put fat on before the first frosts.

  One day you are roaming through a garden when, beyond a clump of mushrooms, you find a gap in the fence that has not been there before. You investigate. Here is a tunnel you have never seen before. You check right, left, behind you, and then right and left again. You twitch your whiskers. Everything seems OK, and there are calm vibes coming from the nearby orb spider, which is usually a good sign, so you enter the tunnel. It is long and dark, but you can smell peanuts, and peanuts are your very, very . . . Oh my! At the end of the tunnel is a perfect garden. The main thing that is perfect about the garden is the huge pile of peanuts in its centre. There are enough peanuts here to keep you going not just for this winter, but for years and years to come. You pause for a moment, twitching your whiskers. There must be great danger . . . ? But you sense no danger. There are no scents here. No cat scent or dog scent or stinking fox scent. No other squirrel scent. You are alone with the peanuts. What do you do now?

  ‘So how was I conceived?’

  Good God. What a question. But ever since Holly has known that Charlie is her father she has been asking these awkward things. How was she conceived? Right. Concentrate. Why is Bryony not here? Then again, this would be even more embarrassing if she was. They never talked about that night afterwards, and doing it now, in front of Holly, would be . . .

  ‘It was at the Grange, in the summer house.’

  ‘That’s nice. What were you and Mummy wearing?’

  ‘Not very much, when it came down to the actual act of . . .’

  ‘I know that. I mean before.’

  ‘Your mother was looking very striking, I remember, in a golden dress.’

  Which he ripped, he realises, pulling it off her shoulder the wrong way.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What, why was she wearing the dress? She was at a wedding.’

  ‘Whose wedding?’

  ‘Augustus – Granddad – and Cecily.’

  ‘Was she a bridesmaid?’

  ‘No. For some reason Cecily chose not to have any bridesmaids because . . .’

  ‘OK. Whatever. Anyway . . . ?’

  What can he say next? He was on his way to the loo when he heard shouting coming from the drawing room and eavesdropped, as usual. For some reason Fleur was shouting at Augustus. Two people who never spoke were suddenly, passionately, shouting at one another. Something about being invisible, not existing. It was all very bizarre. Was she . . . ? With Augustus? That would explain all the . . . When she came out, Charlie followed her to the kitchen garden. There, among the lavender, mint, rosemary, lemon balm and thyme she tearfully told him the truth; that she was his sister, and that his – their – father had made her keep it a secret because he was so ashamed of sleeping with her mother, the evil Briar Rose, who . . . Of course, Augustus knew that Beatrix would never forgive him if it turned out that . . . And Augustus was a coward, and . . . And then the bit that Charlie can’t bear to relive. Fleur reaching for him with her shaking, slender hands, needing to be embraced and stroked and comforted, like a little frightened animal that has been locked out in the cold all night. Charlie pushed her away. ‘Don’t be so disgusting,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t touch me.’ For all those long years he had tortured himself wondering why she had rejected him after their time in the summer house, and what he had done wrong. And now, finally, had come the reason. He wanted to throw up. Instead, he left the kitchen garden and headed for the marquee, and a bottle of champagne all of his own. And there was Bryony, with a bottle of champagne all of her own. Where was James? Possibly driving somebody somewhere? Or maybe he was never there. In those days he was often never there. He was always on a deadline of some sort, always writing a book, or on location. And Charlie’s wife Charlotte was at work, of course, always at work, always on call.

  ‘Your mother was drinking champagne out of a beautiful crystal flute.’

  ‘From a flute?’ Holly mimes with her fingers.

  ‘A champagne glass, silly.’

  ‘Did you ask her to dance?’

  ‘Sort of, yes.’

  The band had long stopped playing. ‘Life sucks,’ Bryony had said to Charlie. ‘Don’t you think?’ And then he’d asked her what made her think her life sucked. Whose life could suck more than his did at that moment? Anyway, it turned out to be something about missing her parents, and James not being there when she needed him. She was pissed and feeling sorry for herself. But she perked up when she realised that Charlie was unhappy too. ‘Let’s get another bottle,’ she said. ‘Let’s be really unhappy together. Let’s be unhappier than anyone has ever been.’

  ‘We were the only people left in the marquee,’ says Charlie now. ‘We looked at each other and suddenly realised . . .’ What? That at that moment they were exactly as lonely and fucked up as each other? Or that they both needed to do something awful and stupid and outrageous? ‘We realised that even though we were not exactly in love, we were very, very great friends, which is better in many ways than being in love, and your mother looked extremely beautiful, with her red curls tumbling down her back like something from a Rossetti painting, and I was wearing an Yves Saint Laurent tuxedo, and we were younger then, and both sparkling and shimmering, and the moon was shining . . .’

  ‘This is becoming sort of gross, but I like it.’

  ‘We walked across the grass towards the summer house, through the secret garden which was full of this heady, wonderful smell of jasmine, and into the cherry orchard. We picked some late cherries as we went, and we fed them to each other, and kissed.’

  And then Bryony went to throw up. And Charlie imagined he could hear Fleur’s sobs carried over the garden, and he wanted to go to her but he couldn’t, and then Bryony came back and rinsed her mouth with the champagne they were still carrying, and suddenly here was his big, bold, rather beautiful cousin, in whose soft flesh he found oblivion, just for a while. The warmth of her, and the soft scent between her large breasts, and then the sweet earthiness he found between her voluptuous thighs, and then . . .

  ‘And then . . .’

  ‘Yes, and then you were conceived.’

  ‘And was it the very best moment of your life?’

  ‘Well, when you put it like that . . . Of course it was.’

  So there’s this bloke, right, and he is very, very poor. He lives on an industrial estate in a room without heating, with rats that eat his soap and nibble his toenails while he’s asleep. He’s a saver, a hoarder, a make-do and mender. He’s a big bloke with one change of clothes and an understanding with the guy at the gym with the sauna round the corner. He nicks stuff from time to time: caffeine from the factory; pills; bits of old radio; but mostly what he does is forage for mushrooms and rabbits and pigeons, and he pickles things, including sometimes himself, ha ha, in cheap gin. He likes a bit of a magical mystery tour, right? Only £5.99 to really not know where you are going, which is not a bad deal and actually better than most drugs, not that you should know anything about that. And he can always get a shag by the seaside, this bloke. Sometimes he has to pay for it, but not usually. He is so dirty that he seems clean,
and girls just love the way his tight little balls flob around in his grey tracksuit bottoms. In his favour he also has piercing blue eyes, nice cheekbones and he’s always up for anything, pretty much, and girls like blokes that take a risk now and then.

  And then one summer’s day in nineteen eighty-whatever he gets on a coach to Margate. He has a bag of yellow pills – never you mind where they came from. And he ends up with a load of beautiful posh people at some seafront ding-dong in something called Dreamland or Dreamworld, and everyone does a load of yellow pills and then it’s off again, whoosh, up the A2 to the M25 and into a field somewhere where everyone loves everyone but the person he loves most is called Briar Rose, and she reminds him of someone he loved a long time ago, and so he follows her through the field and into a caravan and then, yes, she lets him, she does, right, even though later she says she didn’t, and then he follows her back across the field and back around the M25 and, whoosh, down the A2 and all the way to a place called Sandwich – ha ha, stupid name, right? – and into a big house containing a beautiful thin daughter who he is NOT ALLOWED TO TOUCH and a clever old woman running yoga courses and waiting for the Beatles to come back and a witchy friend and their most treasured possession which was a magical book that was a load of bollocks, right, except . . .

  He nicked it. Of course he bloody did. What’s the point of a magical mystery tour if you don’t get a shag and some swag? And he was going to sell it, of course he was, except it turned out to be quite an interesting book when he read it, full of spells and charms and ways of making the universe do what you want. So the man whispered to the rats one night, asked them to leave, and they did. He made offerings to the woodland creatures and spirits, and they showed him all the fruits and nuts and mushrooms he could ever desire. He asked the universe for a big house and he got a set of record decks, but whatever. He suddenly had a long-lost uncle in Jura who sent him whisky and money, and he sold the whisky and bought records and he bought pills and he bought records and he bought pills and he met this bloke called MC Loss so he became a DJ, and the book told him to always leave sugar out for ants and grow flowers that insects like, if you want the insects to like you, that is, and to shag everyone because it does them good and to do what you want because . . .

  He ended up taking the book back. They were so upset, all these women, bless them, and then so grateful, and he even got to have another go with Briar Rose, just once, but then everyone was leaving on planes to find drugs and what’s wrong with that, so the DJ sloped off to the spare room and did a few repairs and grew a few plants and helped Briar Rose with her Big Project which meant quite a lot of pruning and watering but also a bit of smoking and snorting, and then one Tuesday afternoon not quite dying but waking up without an arm. And then she was gone.

  ‘So what I really want to know is, will you give me another five marks on my essay if I take my top off?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘For ten marks I’d . . .’

  ‘Charlotte May, please. This is not why I . . .’

  ‘It’s three in the morning, and I am here, alone, in my flat, and who has come to visit? It’s my lecturer, Ollie. Say hello, Ollie.’ She holds up her phone.

  ‘You’re recording this. Why?’

  Now Charlotte May Miller takes off her top. She is not wearing a bra. Her breasts are small, and sort of triangular. The triangularity is emphasised by the last dregs of suntan line from a string bikini. Her nipples are hard, but she strokes each one of them separately to make sure anyway. She jiggles up and down, and her tits – do they count as ‘tits’ now that she is no longer behaving as a pretty daughter might? – bounce as if she were doing naked aerobics. She stands next to Ollie jiggling and filming herself. He hopes he looks horrified. He tries to look more horrified for the camera. He actually wants to be sick because he knows that this is the end of his academic career, however it plays out. This is the kind of thing that no one can explain. Why did you even go to a student’s flat at 3 a.m., Ollie? What a fucking twat.

  ‘Shall we see if he has an erection?’

  Charlotte May leans down towards Ollie’s lap. He slaps her away. Strangely, instinctively, he slaps her face, which is a part of her that should be naked, rather than the other usually clothed areas within reach. It’s also, he realises, how he would slap her if she was his daughter. The phone flies out of her hand and lands on the other side of the room.

  She screams. ‘Ow! Get off me.’ She keeps up a pretence of protesting and owing as she goes to retrieve the phone.

  Ollie sighs. ‘I am nowhere near you.’

  ‘Hitting a student. Nasty. And you were kissing me before.’

  ‘Charlotte May, please. You know that’s not true.’

  ‘Come on, Ollie. Ollie. Ollieeee . . .’ She makes her voice sound like an echo.

  ‘Are you on drugs again?’

  ‘Everyone’s on drugs, baby.’

  ‘You are, aren’t you?’

  ‘I just really, really want a First.’

  ‘I know you do. Look, how about this. I’ll give you fifteen more marks if you put your top back on.’

  The universe shudders, sighs and is silent just for a moment.

  And another sweet thing about James is that he never, ever mentions the eBay room. Bryony has hardly even been into the eBay room for about three years, but however much she ignores it, it never decides to just disappear, or clean itself up. Isn’t there some theory that if you don’t look at something it doesn’t exist? Surely shame must trump quantum physics at some point? But Bryony is, unfortunately, quite sure that behind the door is the same mess of stuff that was there last time she looked. There’s the sewing machine, on which, admittedly, she did make one quilt, when she was trying to get over her PND after Ash was born. There’s all her quilting stuff: a big rubber mat for cutting out octagons, squares, triangles etc., and a sharp knife, and a ruler, and serrated scissors – but all this was before Bryony discovered that you could order quilting squares PRE-CUT from eBay. Mind you, all the pre-cut squares she ordered ended up smelling of cigarette smoke, and some were covered in pet hair, so they went off into their own zone in the eBay room. They could be thrown out without any problems, but to get to them Bryony would have to wade through all kinds of stuff she just can’t handle yet.

  For example there is all the yarn that she bought so that she could knit clothes for Ash in a last attempt to bond with him and love him like a real mother from a glossy children’s picture book or Sainsbury’s Magazine. And all the yarn she bought to knit clothes for herself to make her feel better about still not being able to wish she hadn’t had him when he was ONE. But in the end buying cashmere cardigans is much easier than making them, even though Bryony went through a phase of walking around shops saying ‘But you could make that!’ You could, but she didn’t. Still, in the weeks and months she spent thinking about knitting she invested a lot of time and money in choosing some really wonderful yarns, including some from a black alpaca called Santos. The balls of yarn came with a picture of Santos and his pedigree and details of the prizes he’d won. Sometimes Bryony gets a bit tearful thinking about Santos. But she will do something with his wool, she will. And in the meantime it will stay in the eBay room.

  James did suggest getting a skip at one point. But there is no way that Bryony could ever throw Santos’s wool in a skip! Surely it’s more realistic for her to become a better person and eventually tidy the room and maybe buy a rocking chair and a wood burner and sit there on winter nights making a lovely big blanket for the whole family to use to snuggle under to watch films or on long car journeys. But the skip conversation led to the moving-house conversation which led to Emmy coming round and in fact THAT was what cured Bryony’s PND. She bought some high heels and some blusher and went to work. But of course being an estate agent is not 100 per cent fulfilling all the time, which is why she also goes to uni. But she is definitely not depressed any more. The eBay room, however, still smells of depression. Not just any old depress
ion, but that exact depression. If Bryony ever had to go back there, then . . .

  But she is there, now. And there’s another smell as well as depression.

  Pear drops mixed with ripe lilies.

  ‘Holly?’

  She is under the old desk, beyond the still new-looking ironing board and the iron that are there purely for quilting, and pressing darts.

  ‘Holly? What are you doing under there?’

  ‘Reading.’

  ‘We’re going to be late. You’re going to Aunt Fleur’s, remember?’

  You can’t get cross with Holly any more, because if you do she doesn’t eat. Of course, it turns out that she’s always been prone to fits of starvation, but Bryony never properly took account of it until recently. Of course now that she has been actually hospitalised . . . Holly goes quite well in the eBay room, actually. Another project that Bryony thought would work but didn’t. Something she thought would always be shiny and new, or at least artistically distressed, a bit like a cobwebby shawl made from Kidsilk Haze in a colour like ‘Hurricane’ or ‘Ghost’ hanging over an antique doorknob in a contemporary pattern book. But you can’t think like that about your own child, and anyway, everything in the eBay room, including Holly, is Bryony’s fault. They are things Bryony fucked up. Which is why . . .

  ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘Granddad’s journal.’

  ‘And why exactly are you reading Granddad’s journal, Holly?’

  A sigh. ‘Because you won’t. And Daddy won’t.’

  ‘But it might be private.’

  ‘Mummy, he’s probably dead. But if he isn’t dead then maybe there are clues about why he and Grandma and Great-Aunt Plum disappeared. I don’t think he’d mind. He probably wants us to read it. Although . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There is quite a lot of sexing in it, Mummy.’

  ‘Oh, Holly. You’d better give me . . .’

  ‘Well, I’ve read it now so it’s too late.’