The Seed Collectors

  The women are in the drawing room on the right. Charlie breathes deeply, as he always does when he enters this room, as if to actually take it into his body: the polished oak floorboards; the Sanderson Grandiflora wallpaper in eggshell and bronze; the antique sofas that Fleur reupholstered herself using various old Liberty fabrics, all with botanical, slightly otherworldly prints. The large vase of pussy willow on the apothecary-style coffee table. Fleur herself is sitting in the rocking chair, which has a print of dark pink and purple organisms that are almost, but not quite, recognisable flowers. Clem and Bryony are sitting together on the pinker of the two George Walton sofas. In front of them Charlie is pleased to see the Wedgwood Golden Bird tea set he bought Fleur for her thirtieth birthday. He, of course, is still wearing the labradorite pendant she made for him all those years ago. They’ve hardly spoken for months after that argument about Pi last July, although of course they saw each other earlier at the funeral, but from opposite ends of a row. Now here he is.

  ‘Hello,’ says Fleur. ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea but actually we’re due to have cocktails in half an hour when the others arrive so unless you’re desperate . . .’

  The smell of Fleur’s lapsang souchong blend. But . . .

  ‘I’m fine. Can I help with anything?’

  ‘Yes, actually,’ says Fleur. ‘Come and help me pick some mint.’

  There is a frost on the morning after Oleander’s funeral. When the robin wakes up, his wings are glary and frozen, and he has to shake himself for several seconds to free them before he can even think about flying. When he gets to the large stone birdbath he finds that there is no water, just a large slab of ice that he can’t drink or bathe in. But there is something on his table, at least: not dried mealworms; not slugs. The robin likes spelt pastry but does not like smoked salmon because it tastes of fire and danger. Norman Jay does not like smoked salmon either, and the no-name woodpecker doesn’t even come to the bird table. The bad-luck magpie will have to eat it when he comes later in the morning, or else the bigfat pigeon will have it, or his mate will.

  After he has eaten several poppy seeds and the remainder of his pink macaron, the robin flies to the other birdbath on the steps leading up the side of the cottage, where it is warmer. He drinks slowly, and then washes, his lacklustre wingflap signifying that he does not want what is coming soon: finding a mate, nesting, providing. He is tired: it is his eighth spring. Through the bedroom window he can see that Fleur is nesting. Fleur often nests. But she never lays any eggs. That man in her nest has made it yblent. Did he make Fleur put out the firedangerfish? Did he eat the other macarons? Did he make her cry out in the night, as she so often does now? The robin heard nothing, so perhaps this is the one who makes her silent. The one with feathers like a blackbird, although he has not been in Fleur’s nest for years. The robin suddenly wants to be alone, so he flies to the top of the holly tree, puffs out his chest and sings his most violent song. The song, roughly translated, tells of hard beaking, in both a sexual and non-sexual way. It has woodness, but also intense fertee.

  Fleur is not asleep. Fleur is not really awake either. She is wondering about the Scottish woman, and all those things she said. And how she wants to give her something in the morning, which is more or less now. She said she had something else from Oleander, that Oleander couldn’t give Fleur while she was still alive. Fleur can hear the robin singing something deep and far away. The woman – Ina, her name obviously the end of something else, hopefully not Nina, for obvious reasons – had travelled from her croft on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides. Oleander used to go on mysterious ‘Scottish trips’, setting off on a sleeper train roughly twice a year. But she never talked about who she saw or what she did. Fleur had imagined her in Edinburgh, Miss-Jean-Brodieing around castles and tweedy shops before meeting sad, wildered celebrities in hotel suites or mansions overlooking the Firth of Forth. She was wrong.

  At the funeral Ina talked about the first time she’d met Oleander, at a festival in 1968 at which Oleander gave a spontaneous workshop involving a projection of a Super 8 film of the inside of a tree stump. Everyone – bearded guys on acid, their children, their wives who, when not attending festivals with them still cooked them their ‘tea’ and whom they called ‘love’ – gathered around to watch the jerky footage of small rodents inside the tree stump fighting over scraps of cheese, fruit or whatever people put there for them. Oleander stood there, mice and voles and the occasional stoat fighting grainily over everything behind her, all inside this tree stump, and she apparently said, ‘That’s you,’ to everyone watching. She said, ‘That’s you when the girl you love sleeps with yet another man. That’s you when your mother tells you to get a job, yet again. That’s you when that man on the tube tells you to get your hair cut. That’s you when your best friend buys the dress you wanted. That’s you when you run out of fifty pences for the meter. That is the violence you feel inside. That is the violence of your mind, as it separates you from your brother or your sister and condemns them. You may not ever resort to actual violence. Indeed, most of us probably never will be violent in the world of form. But your mind is violent, and your thoughts are violent and with your thinking you murder people thousands of times a day. You tear out their eyes with your little claws and you hate, hate, hate.’

  Pi stirs next to Fleur. They have already established that he has to leave early to get back to London to take Nina to ballet. Pi’s wife, Kamala, known as Kam, could do it, but she has a hair appointment. A cut, blow dry and a whole head of highlights, apparently, as if anyone in the world even cares what Kam does to her hair. So, for the sake of a ballet class and hair appointment, Fleur will have to tidy up by herself, and grieve by herself, and cry by herself, and make her own tea, and fetch her own tissues. She’ll find out what Ina has to give her, and then she’ll have no one to tell about it. Why, why, why is it so impossible that on this day when Fleur actually needs him, Pi could not just ask his wife to reschedule her hair appointment and take her fucking daughter to fucking ballet herself?

  Can Nina not just order a cab? Or go on the tube? She is fourteen fucking years old. Although since that is apparently not old enough for her to be able to cope with any kind of separation or divorce, it probably isn’t old enough for her to make it to ballet on her own. Poor, stupid Nina. When Fleur was fifteen she flew to Bombay on her own. And met Pi, and brought him into the country, and made him a book of English sayings to help him settle in. If only their plane had crashed and none of this had happened then everyone would be happier. If Pi just died now, Fleur could be free. Except she wouldn’t even be able to attend his funeral. And he is – secretly of course – her fucking PARTNER. Fleur thinks of the mice in the tree stump. This is what she is doing to Pi, of course, what she always does to poor Pi. She is tearing out his eyes with her little claws. He is at least honest with her. Except for the part about leaving Kam when Sai, the elder daughter, went on her gap year. That never happened, because he realised that in fact he can only leave Kam when Nina goes to university, which is not for another FOUR YEARS. Can Fleur do this for another four years? She sighs. She’s not sure she can do it for another four hours. Or even four seconds.

  He deletes all her texts, which in any case he encourages her not to send. He tears up the birthday cards she sends him, and the silly but sweet Happy Monday cards, and the little notes she puts in with his tea blend – which she invented just for him. When she asked him why, he asked her what she would do in his position. What would she do? Apart from the fact that she would have left her partner the very instant she realised she was in love with someone else, she would have rented a diamond-plated safe, or a tiny but beautiful room somewhere, in which to keep everything her lover sent her. Somewhere perhaps to sit and reflect. A sort of temple of love. In a place like this he could keep a mobile phone on which she could text him at any time, although of course he’d never be in this place because he’d always be taking Nina to school, which is what happens every weekday
morning, or, after that, working in his study at home with Kam popping back from the hospital for lunch sometimes. WHY he can’t just get an office somewhere in London where he could have some privacy is a mystery. OK, well, not a complete mystery, as it would cost a fortune, and he has only had one bestselling book and that was over ten years ago. But the book was basically all about Namaste House – which Fleur now owns, which is an odd feeling – and all the things Fleur taught him and gave him and HAS SHE BENEFITED FROM IT AT ALL? She was not even in the acknowledgements. It would have been natural for her to have been acknowledged, given that she did help with the book and they virtually grew up together and everything. But he said if he couldn’t put her first, and if he couldn’t dedicate the book to her (it is dedicated to his dead parents) then he didn’t want to mention her at all. Although of course back then it was all about his aunt and uncle, and Sai, and then suddenly there was Nina, despite him supposedly not really ever having sex with Kam. Suddenly Nina, and eighteen more years of hell. But Fleur knows now that Pi will never leave Kam. She isn’t stupid.

  Even Oleander’s funeral ended up being scheduled around Kam and Nina. How would they feel if they knew that? It had to be on a Thursday or Friday, really, because Pi comes to Namaste House most weekends, to visit his uncle and aunt, to write and also, of course, to screw Fleur, which he likes to do hard, in the dark, from behind, when she is not quite ready. A Tuesday or Wednesday funeral would have meant poor Pi having to INTERRUPT HIS WRITING and come to Kent twice in one week. Which is entirely unreasonable, of course. What does Kam think he’s doing, every weekend, though, really? Perhaps she doesn’t care. She and Nina now spend every weekend with her parents. And this is a good arrangement, of course, for a mistress. To have every weekend with your lover! Fleur should be grateful. But she is not grateful. In fact, she has started hating Pi. She should leave him. When he wakes up she should tell him . . .

  He puts his hand on her thigh and pulls her back down under the covers.

  ‘You’re gorgeous,’ he says to her.

  ‘Really?’ she says.

  Ollie’s Oral B Triumph SmartGuide, a slab of plastic stuck to the wall on his side of the bathroom (yes, such a thing exists), has gone mental. It’s haunted, or something, like, literally. It’s a Zombie SmartGuide. Last month, or maybe even the month before, the batteries ran out. Of course, the batteries on Clem’s identical SmartGuide have not run out, and she definitely cleans her teeth more than Ollie does. But that’s incidental. Ollie’s batteries ran out, and so for weeks he’s been standing here cleaning his teeth with no SmartGuide because its screen has been blank, dead, kaput, gone, always thinking he should ask Clem for more batteries but always forgetting literally the moment he finishes brushing his teeth. But then, like a week ago, the screen began flickering. A few days later it was back to life. Under normal circumstances, like when it has working batteries, the SmartGuide counts down thirty seconds for each quadrant of your mouth until all four are complete, when it displays a happy face and four stars – actually five, plus a dimple on the happy face if you’ve used the ‘intensive’ setting, but who has time for that? – and shows a sad face and a red exclamation mark if you press too hard. It also displays the current time when you are not brushing your teeth.

  Now that the dead battery has come back to life it does some really weird shit. For example, it acts out wholly fictitious toothbrushings in crazed fast-forward. You’re pressing too hard! No, you’re not! Now you are again! Now you’ve done three quadrants but only TWO SECONDS have gone by. But now you’ve done none. Now you’re BRUSHING YOUR TEETH BACKWARDS. The face is sad! ☹ The face is happy! ☺☺☺ Now the face is happy but the red exclamation mark is there too !!☺!! Now it’s 07.17. Now it’s 13.09. Now it’s sad again ☹. Now it’s 12.23; 14.34; 06.14. And so on. The Zombie SmartGuide works much harder to construct these fictional, time-travel tooth-brushing scenarios than it ever did on normal tooth-brushing scenarios when it was alive. It literally does this all day long. Lately it’s taken to showing the transition from 07.16 to 07.17 quite frequently. What’s the significance of 07.17 to a SmartGuide? Is that the moment it was born? Is it the moment it will die? Are its selections truly random in a mathematical sense, or only random in the way students mean the word? Basically, is it trying to tell Ollie something?

  Imagine you are very poor. One day you return to your grotty bedsit to find a letter. It tells of an anonymous benefactor who has arranged for you to have a luxury holiday in a beautiful hotel somewhere in southern Europe. For the first day it is bliss. All you do is lie on the beach reading books that make you feel good about yourself, and swim in turquoise water with soft yellow sand underfoot and multi-coloured fish all around. Back in your room, you admire the tapestries on the walls, the mosaics in the bathroom, the towels that feel like cashmere on your long-neglected skin. Each day the housekeeper leaves you two chocolates and a flower on your bed. But then one day the flower doesn’t come, and you feel inexplicably sad. Suddenly your books don’t make you feel good about yourself, and there are clouds in the sky that were not there before. The next day the chocolates don’t come either, and you wonder just why that bitch of a housekeeper has decided to ruin your day – no, your life. Suddenly the towels don’t feel so great any more. In fact, the next thing that goes wrong is that the housekeeper forgets to replace the towels. The next day the chocolates and the flower are back, but you become so worried that they might disappear again that you wish they’d never been there in the first place.

  Fleur waits until Ina has gone and then opens the package. The first thing is a note from Oleander. Dearest Fleur, it is very important that you read this carefully. If you have this package then it is very likely that I have gone. I hope not to have to come back. You will understand everything when you read the enclosed. If for any reason something is not clear, you must find Ina and ask her. Then, wrapped in light red tissue paper is a dark red hardback book with gold edging on the pages like a bible. But when Fleur opens the book, it contains nothing at all. There is simply blank page after blank page. The paper is very nice, soft and slightly porous, and certainly seems like the kind of paper that one would read from rather than write on. It’s not a notebook. Or is it? There is a space on the front for a title, but there is no title. What on earth is the meaning of this? Is this one of Oleander’s riddles? Too late, Fleur realises she has no contact details for Ina apart from a postal address on the Isle of Lewis. She rushes out of the door and down the gravel driveway until she can see the bus stop. There is no one there. Ina has gone.

  Holly’s Friendship Tree

  It is a chilly spring morning in Hackney, but in Charlie’s mind he is somewhere else, somewhere perhaps sub-tropical, definitely pre-fertile-crescent, somewhere where there is no wheat swaying in the breeze and quietly enslaving people. In this place, Charlie, a hunter-gatherer wearing a simple garment made not from cotton but from skin, plucks some blueberries from a tree. He steals a small amount of honey from a bees’ nest, perhaps led there by the honey-guide – a bird that evolved along with humans and uses its song to tell people where to find bees’ nests in return for the beeswax the humans drop. Perhaps there are some primitive wild oats too – dodgy, but not as bad as contemporary wheat, which studies have shown stimulates the same neurological pathways as opiates. Charlie should use these ingredients to make a simple muesli, in which the nuts and fruits far outnumber the oats, but, even though he knows it is unlikely that you would come across a microwave in this pre-agricultural, sub-tropical wilderness, he still fancies porridge after his run.

  Charlie was brought up to be a proper scientist, and not to fall into the trap of giving evolution by natural selection (evolution on its own has been around for a lot longer) the indignity of consciousness, even though the whole thing sped up almost seems conscious in the same way that the walking palm sped up seems to be walking. He should not think that the honeyguide deliberately decided to help the humans in return for the beeswax, because th
is is not how nature happens. In nature everything is completely random, and the things that work, well, work and so they endure. That’s it. Oh, except for the Darwinian twist which is that things only change when life is so dangerous that everything that doesn’t work dies. This is why humans are now so pathetic: they have no predators. Since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, which led to barns full of grain, basically living seeds that don’t want to be eaten, not really, and will get their revenge, but for the time being meant people could stop starving and start political debates, legal systems and wars, there has been no selection pressure on human beings.

  Even the obesity epidemic, some believe caused by the barns of grain, does not stop people being able to reproduce. There is nothing that kills screwed-up humans before they can fuck, except perhaps online bullying and severe anorexia. Charlie had a very interesting conversation about this with Skye Turner at Oleander’s funeral supper last week. Skye Turner and Bryony were talking about high heels, and Skye Turner said that evolution had made people become taller in the last 200 years. Charlie laughed at her, and Bryony glared at him. But he explained that this is simply not true because in that time period nothing came along and wiped out the short people. The gene for being short was not destroyed. In the history of civilisation there has never been a famine that favoured tall people (and presumably also giraffes?) by providing food that only grew at the tops of trees. In the last 10,000 years, Charlie said, he would guess that very few short people have died because they can’t reach fruit, or catch fish or kill enough prey or because they get eaten by taller things. Short people just go to Sainsbury’s like everyone else.

  ‘So why did people get taller, then?’ Skye asked him.