The Seed Collectors

  Today Ollie has been instructed to get two pieces of salmon, or alternatively a medium-sized sea bass for supper, as well as picking up the dinner-party fish that Clem has ordered over the phone. His original brief was to ‘get something that looks nice’ but who can operate with such vague instructions? It’s like, it’s like . . . Aha! Salmon – yes, that pink fish is definitely salmon. The first way not to be humiliated in the fishmonger is to be definitely 100 per cent sure of what fish is in front of you which is: a) not always obvious; and b) not helped by the mispositioning of the little signs which Spencer often throws around when he’s in a huff.

  ‘Yes, mate?’ Spencer makes no eye contact, as usual. He had already handed over the dinner party fish, which comes to £68.14.

  ‘I’ll have a bit of that salmon, please, thanks.’ Right. Who says please, thanks, FFS? And Ollie dreads the next bit, where Spencer will ask him how much salmon he wants, and Ollie will say just a couple of pieces, enough for two people – two rich people, he will not add, for whom money is no object, unlike the little old ladies with their pensions who scrimp and save for their bit of fish on a Friday – and Spencer will say he has to be more precise and – oh, there’s a local sea bass, which is actually much simpler, because if it’s the right size then he’ll just need it cut into two fillets. The only problem is that Ollie cannot really keep any weights or measurements in his head and can’t visualise anything at all fish-related and therefore can only go by price. He knows from trial and error that a good-sized sea bass for two will cost between twelve and fourteen pounds. So, all he has to do is . . .

  ‘Actually, mate, how big’s that sea bass?’

  Spencer sighs, puts down the salmon, picks up the sea bass, turns it through ninety degrees and puts it down again. Then he goes to wash out his sinks. This is the kind of thing that happens ALL THE TIME. Ollie stands there, sighing and looking at his watch, and Spencer ignores him and washes his sinks. Now he starts on his chopping boards. This is really fucking . . . Then, finally, he turns.

  ‘Have you made your mind up, then, mate?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I just thought I’d give you a bit of time to decide.’

  CUNT. Right. Well . . .

  ‘I was still wondering how big it is. I mean by weight.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, mate.’ Spencer picks up the fish and slithers it onto the scales. He then says something incomprehensible about kilograms.

  ‘And how much is that?’

  Spencer says the same thing about kilograms again.

  ‘I meant in price.’

  ‘That’ll be thirteen pounds and fifteen pence. Call it thirteen.’

  ‘OK, thanks. Can you do it in two fillets, please?’

  Spencer guts the fish and rinses it under the tap before slapping it down on one of his chopping boards and slicing the flesh away from the spine, which is all really quite impressive to watch. He asks Ollie if there’s anything else he would like. Yes, there is: he’d like some brown shrimp and some samphire.

  ‘Right, mate. You’ve got your telephone order, your bass, your shrimp, your samphire. Anything else?’

  ‘What time are you open on Thursday?’

  This is not an unreasonable question, as the fishmonger keeps unpredictable pagan hours that Ollie doesn’t ever know for sure. Basically, they are closed all day Sunday and Monday because no one goes fishing on Saturday and Sunday. But the rest of the week is a complex arrangement of traditional half-days and non-traditional half-days, and it sometimes changes in summer, but now Spencer looks so deliberately at the ‘Opening Hours’ sign on the door that Ollie feels like a twat YET AGAIN because of course he needn’t waste Spencer’s time by asking when he could just, if he wasn’t such a posh cunt, look and see for himself.

  ‘Sorry, mate. Didn’t see the sign.’

  ‘No, no, you’re all right. I’ve lost track myself, to be honest. You know my sister who went missing last year? They’ve found a body. Down Hastings way. My dad’s gone to identify her and so we’re all a bit distracted here.’

  OMG. ‘Christ, sorry, mate. That’s . . .’

  ‘We just heard last week. First we heard there’d been a sighting. Then a particular bit of woodland. Then they did a search and there was the body.’

  Fuck. Fuck. Poor Martin, lovely innocent Martin who simply laughs when people ask for pheasants in June and asks Spencer to go and put the board back round the right way. Imagine having to go and identify the body of your own daughter. Ollie sees an image of Martin sipping his tea on a winter’s morning and taking off his steamed-up glasses and rubbing his hand over his pink face, and . . . And for some reason Ollie now also remembers the one time he saw Spencer in Asda in Canterbury, and how he looked wrong and out of place, like houseplants in removal vans that are suddenly covered in dust, or obviously haven’t ever been pruned or watered properly and now have one whole side missing because of a wall that isn’t there any more.

  ‘Look,’ he says to Spencer now. ‘I’m so, so sorry. If . . .’ He wants to say something like ‘If there’s anything I can do’. But he’s just a stranger, just a twat with a bad attitude who comes along and pretends to know something about fish when he knows NOTHING about fish, and plays these stupid power games with a fishmonger when he is a university lecturer who lives in a huge house with a study of his own and an interior-designed living area, not that that makes him better or anything, but even so . . . Suddenly he has an overwhelming desire to offer to work for Spencer for free, not that he is sure how that would help. But he could cover the funeral, surely? And if anyone was feeling really depressed afterwards. He imagines putting on a blue-and-white striped apron and becoming a hero, because no one else from around here would even bother to CARE about the death of a fishmonger’s daughter . . . Well, TBH, they might care a bit, and of course they’d be much more likely than Ollie to already know something about it, to have been following the story on the local news and so on, but Ollie has some depth of feeling that these people do not have because he can’t actually BEAR the local news, where strangers feed off the misery of other strangers; but here, now . . .

  ‘Thanks, mate. It’s just all happened so suddenly, and . . .’

  Whatever Spencer was going to say next is lost, because Ollie drops his wallet and even though he doesn’t immediately bend to pick it up, his eyes follow it, and then Spencer says, ‘Don’t forget your wallet, mate,’ and turns back to rinse his chopping board.

  ‘Take care of yourself,’ says Ollie, but he isn’t sure whether the sound of the running water drowns him out. He wants to say it again: ‘Take care of yourself, mate.’ Or even better, ‘Take care of yourself, Spencer.’ He knows his name, of course. Everyone knows Spencer’s name. But they’ve never been formally introduced, and anyway, Spencer has now gone back to his other sink.

  The orchid walk begins at the Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory at 10 a.m.

  ‘So, kids, there’s a prize for who can record the most plants.’

  ‘But we’ll see all the same ones.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Well, what’s the prize?’

  James sighs. ‘Um . . . cake. Yes, the winner chooses what cake I make this afternoon.’

  ‘Can the winner choose no cake?’

  ‘Christ, Holly, get into the spirit of this.’

  ‘Daddy, don’t swear.’

  ‘And we’re having roast lamb first.’ James tickles Ash under his ribcage. ‘Yum!’

  Holly just sighs.

  Bryony and Charlie are still inside looking at books. They come out with the guide, a large man with a moth-eaten jumper. Bryony is wearing huge sunglasses, like something from a magazine, which is sort of embarrassing. There are around ten other people waiting to begin the walk, including a woman who looks like a witch, with grey hair, a large mole and a bright red anorak, and a woman who is wearing a lot of make-up and new wellies, but at least no sunglasses. There are two boys with their dad. One of the boys is eating grass. No one
is stopping him. Holly writes the date in her notebook: 28 May 2011.

  ‘Excited?’ Charlie asks Holly.

  ‘Why would I be excited?’

  ‘You’re going to see wild orchids!’

  ‘Right, whatever.’

  They set off with the guide. Holly writes down plant names: silverweed, granny’s toenails and black medic. Then they see the first marsh orchids. Charlie throws himself on the ground and gently touches the pale mauve flowers. The boy who was eating the grass starts eating some of these flowers, but no one notices. Holly wonders if he might die. The orchids are nice but quite small. You could definitely miss them if you didn’t know what you were looking for. But up close the flowers are amazing. It’s hard to explain why, but they just look nicer than other flowers. As if they were drawn by a better, more imaginative artist. There are also green winged orchids, which look a bit like the marsh orchid with extra green bits. The guide tells everyone not to touch or pick any of the wild flowers, and says you can go to prison if you do. They see yellow rattle, which, in autumn, has seed pods that actually rattle; lady’s bedstraw, which smells of honey and can be used to help people give birth; lesser bedstraw; evening primrose . . . The group scrambles through a meadow and then an alleyway and then onto a strangely quiet housing estate.

  Holly catches up to Charlie, who is talking to the guide.

  ‘And then some divvy actually mowed one . . .’ the guide is saying.

  Charlie shakes his head. ‘How could you not realise . . . ?’

  ‘There,’ points the guide. ‘Up ahead.’

  Charlie sighs with anticipatory pleasure. They walk towards a grass verge outside a large house. There is a single orchid. It is bigger than the ones they have already seen, pale green and pale purple, and the flowers have long things coming out of them that look like lizard’s tongues. There are another two identical plants just a few yards away.

  ‘This is the lizard orchid,’ says the guide. ‘Himantoglossum hircinum. It is very rare. Although we have up to a hundred plants growing in the Sandwich Bay area, we are actually one of very, very few sites around the world that support this wonderful orchid. It’s a real beauty. Look carefully. Don’t touch. Smell the flowers – they have a powerful scent: some say like goat.’

  ‘Flowers that smell like goat?’ Holly says, but Charlie is on the ground again.

  Holly drifts off to look at one of the other lizard orchids. The two boys and Ash follow her. The boy who was eating the grass snaps a flower from the plant.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ says Holly.

  The boy gurns at her and eats the flower.

  ‘You spastic,’ says Holly. ‘I hope you die.’

  She smells one of the flowers carefully, without touching it. It smells of socks.

  Soon they are right by the sea. Here they find seaside daisies, yellow-horned poppies, sea beet, sea kale and white bryony. There is stuff growing everywhere! Then back across fields and meadows. Charlie and Bryony walk together, talking urgently, with their heads down. At one point Holly creeps up behind them and hears something like ‘If you don’t tell her, I will’. Which sort of sounds like it could be to do with a birthday surprise, but had an odd, un-birthdayish tone about it that made Holly reluctant to ask them about it.

  ‘And this,’ says the guide, pointing to something that looks like a really, really huge orchid, ‘is Himalayan balsam. It’ll be six feet tall by the end of the summer.’

  ‘Aren’t the RHS asking us to cut that down?’ says the woman with the make-up and the shiny wellies.

  The guide frowns. ‘Not here, they’re not.’

  ‘But we’re all being asked to cut it down everywhere. It’s invasive! It chokes rivers, like Japanese knotweed. You want to cut it down. Dig up the roots. It drinks all the water, and . . .’

  ‘How much water do you see around here?’ the guide says, laughing. ‘This has been growing here for the last twenty years. I’m not going to cut it down.’

  The group moves on. The witchy woman in the red jacket walks next to the welly-woman.

  ‘That’s rosebay willowherb anyway,’ she says.

  ‘I know.’

  They both laugh.

  ‘And some fucking cunt doing sidestroke. Who does sidestroke nowadays? With plastic bags occasionally falling out of his pockets. And three fat women wearing fat women’s perfume which, as you probably know, can travel a hell of a long way in a swimming pool. Just because you are in the water does not mean you no longer smell of anything. And then the porno children. Don’t look at me like that. You’ve clearly never seen rhinestones on a four-year-old’s bikini before. Maybe they don’t do that kind of thing at the golf club. It’s no wonder they ban photography. I mean, with only a camera and an internet connection you could set up quite a profitable child porn site without actually doing anything that illegal or really even going very far out of your way. OK. You’re not saying anything again. What?’

  ‘Shut up and pass me the roasting tin.’

  ‘I’m having déjà vu . . .’

  ‘Whatever. Can you just . . .’

  ‘Yes. Here.’ It’s the right tin. Ten points and a gold star! But . . .

  ‘OK. I am not going to nag . . . I said I wouldn’t nag.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it, I know.’

  ‘But, well, pudding . . . ?’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Imagine you have just been reincarnated, but instead of ending up back on Earth, you end up on the far side of the universe on some brown, rock-like planet that you don’t understand. In some way, you remember being human. Whatever you are now – a worm, or an insect, or a grain of sand – in your heart you are still human. Now – close your eyes if you like – and imagine the person you hate most, now, in this life. Back to your rocky world, where you are all on your own, with no one who understands what it is to be, or to have been, human. And then, all of a sudden, from behind a tree or from the undergrowth, or whatever they have there, out walks, or flies, or crawls, your hated person. How do you feel about them now? If you were the only two organisms on a distant planet, how would you be with one another? What would matter, and what would not matter? Now ask yourself: is that person on the rocky planet your higher self or your lower self?

  When they get back from tennis, the house is full of the smell of lamb stuffed with garlic, which is disgusting. It is disgusting and grey and wet and flabby, like a dirty flannel dipped in oil and blood. If you eat it, that’s what you end up with in your tummy, for days and days, until you poo it out. But you can never poo all of it out; some of it will stay inside you forever, and will actually become you, even things like your eyeballs. Imagine having sweaty, garlicky, flannelly, dead baby creature IN YOUR EYES. Holly wants to be sick. But in sort of a good way that she couldn’t really explain to anyone.

  Charlie comes back from his shower and arranges himself on one of the sofas with a pile of weekend supplements: travel, foreign news, features. Holly does twenty press-ups on the floor by his feet and then manoeuvres her way onto his lap.

  ‘Uncle Charlie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think you are the loveliest man in the world, apart from Daddy.’

  ‘Thank you, Holly.’

  ‘I can’t marry Daddy, so can I marry you?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘We could get married in four years.’

  ‘You’re not twelve yet.’

  ‘I’m almost twelve.’

  Charlie pinches her arm gently. ‘We all know when you’re going to be twelve, Holls.’

  ‘Anyway, when I’m sixteen, you’ll only be . . .’

  ‘I’ll be very old indeed.’

  ‘But you’ll still be very nice.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Holly kisses Charlie on the neck: it’s a little tiny winged kiss like a fairy landing on something soft like a cloud. No response. She does it again. She does it all around his neck like a fairy necklace. And then up and u
nder his ears. He smells sweet and a little bit of the cinnamon soap in the spare bathroom.

  ‘Uncle Charlie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Am I good at kissing?’

  ‘You’re very good at kissing.’

  ‘Am I better at kissing than your girlfriend?’

  ‘I don’t have a girlfriend.’

  ‘All right, then. The last person you sexed.’

  ‘Much better.’

  ‘So basically there’s no reason for us not to get married.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I believe it’s still illegal to marry your uncle.’

  Bryony comes in holding two glasses of white wine. She gives one of them to Charlie.

  ‘What on earth are you talking about? Holly, stop mauling your uncle.’

  ‘Your charming daughter has proposed to me,’ says Charlie. ‘And as she’s such a good kisser I am inclined to accept, except . . . surely it’s illegal to marry one’s uncle?’

  ‘He’s actually my second cousin, once removed, isn’t he, Mummy?’

  Bryony sighs. ‘Oh, I’m sure marrying her is legal somewhere in the world. Holly. Off. Now.’

  Charlie takes the glass of wine. Holly wrinkles her nose.

  ‘Uncle Charlie? Why are you drinking wine?’

  Bryony rolls her eyes. ‘Leave the man alone, Holls, for goodness sake.’

  ‘Because I’m a grown-up,’ says Charlie. ‘And it’s Sunday.’

  ‘But is it Paleowhatever?’

  ‘It’s made from grapes, which are fruits that grow in the wild.’

  ‘So you’d find some wild grapes and jump up and down on them? With your tribe?’

  ‘Holly, give it a rest.’

  ‘I suppose we’re not married yet,’ Holly says. ‘So you can do what you like.’

  ‘What else won’t I be allowed to do when we’re married?’

  ‘Don’t encourage her.’

  ‘Well,’ Holly says, ‘obviously no drinking or smoking. No cakes. No McDonald’s. Nothing deep fried at all. No staying up too late. No watching sport. Oh, I suppose except the London Marathon, you can watch that. And tennis, of course. No bird watching. And no real sexing, just kissing. Because I’m still quite young. And . . .’