The Seed Collectors (38 page)

‘I don’t pour two bottles of wine down your throat every evening.’

‘Not this again. You know I only do that on a very special occasion!’

‘There were two bottles on the side this morning.
Again
.’

‘Well, Charlie . . .’

‘Charlie has about half a glass. Anyway, why does everything always
have to come back around to Uncle sodding Charlie? Why is he always here? I never thought I was signing up to this.’

‘This is not about Charlie. It’s about you.’

‘OK. One last joke. An island one.’

‘Will it really be the last one?’

‘Good God . . . Right. There’s an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman who are stranded on an island after their boat is shipwrecked.’

‘Like in
The Tempest
?’

‘Yes, except that all the characters and the whole situation is completely different.’

‘Except for the shipwreck.’

‘Yes, except this is more of a little boat. So anyway, there they are on this desert island, and they find a magical bottle with a genie inside it. The genie offers them each a wish. The Scotsman goes first. “I wish to be back home with my family with a nice roast dinner in front of me,” he says. And,
poof
, he is gone. The Irishman has a similar idea. “Take me to Dublin, to the finest restaurant, and put a beautiful woman there with me.” And,
poof
, he is gone too. Now the genie turns to the Englishman. “What do you wish?” he asks. “Well,” says the Englishman, “it’s a bit lonely here on my own, and I need some help gathering food and firewood. I wish my two friends would come back.” Boom, boom!’

‘Whatever.’

‘Shit,’ says Bryony, when she gets off the phone.

‘Who was it?’

‘Clem. From Edinburgh. We’ve got Granny problems.’

‘What’s happened?’

‘She’s got into a dispute with a noisy neighbour.’

‘I fear for the neighbour.’

‘Don’t joke. And she’s lonely, apparently.’

‘Everything all right?’ Fleur comes in with Skye Turner. They both look oddly peaceful at the moment. Have they been meditating too much? Fleur in particular looks like one of those silvery pears with a pink flush down the side, and . . . And how did they even GET here, to Jura, from the Outer Hebrides, or wherever it was they went? They say they flew, but not how they made it from the airport to the front door with basically no transport at all. And why is Bryony the only one who finds this weird?

‘Oh, everything’s fine. Well, except that Granny Beatrix is threatening to move in with one of us.’

‘Or Augustus,’ corrects James. ‘The Grange does belong to her after all.’

‘What’s the problem?’ says Skye.

‘Oh, she’s been abusing her neighbour. She lives in a very, very posh apartment in the Royal Crescent in Bath. The kind of place where you don’t abuse your neighbour. Although apparently the neighbour has been playing music very loudly, and . . .’

‘Beatrix is beautiful,’ breathes Skye. ‘I adore Beatrix.’

‘That’s right. Didn’t it turn out that she had bought . . .’

‘
Downloaded
. . .’

‘. . . one of your albums?’

‘Well, you can move in with her if you like,’ says Bryony.

The universe does a tiny pirouette. Almost trips, and then rights itself.

‘You know what?’ says Fleur. ‘That’s actually . . .’

‘Could I really?’ says Skye. ‘I mean, it would be . . .’

Disgraced pop star hides in old lady’s flat
. But what if she
could
hide from the tabloids this time? She knows now to keep her voicemail switched off at all times. If they can’t listen to her voicemail, they
can’t find her, right? There is nothing in the world to connect her with Bath. And she does sort of adore Beatrix. And she can fly to Sandwich to see Fleur whenever she wants. Because she does remember. Even though Ina said she wouldn’t, she does.

‘How was your meal, sir?’

‘Are you just being polite, or do you really want to know?’

‘Ollie . . .’

‘If you have feedback, then we . . .’

‘OK. Well, since this is about the twentieth time you’ve asked is everything all right and are we enjoying our meal I am assuming that you do really want to know. Let’s begin at the beginning. Your
amuse-bouche
was not amusing. It was pretentious, surprisingly bland and a very off-putting shade of green. Like everything else, it needed much more seasoning. And more heating. The starters looked pretty enough on the surface but the cucumber was too cold. It was also unpeeled and unseasoned. The salmon was fine, but then it would be, since all the chef had to do was open the packet. Ditto the salad, which needed dressing. And if you are going to have green beans arranged like little crucifixion scenes around the plate then they should not be overcooked and flaccid. The main course was far too ambitious. I did not need to have venison two ways: one way would have been fine, if it had been cooked properly and somehow kept hot until it reached our table. I believe restaurants have ways of achieving this. Deep-frying things does not automatically render them edible if they would otherwise be inedible. For example your fondant potato, and your ridiculous “string” French fries that, remarkably, do taste of string. If I did not need venison two ways I definitely did not need parsnip three ways, once of which was simply “boiled, 1950s style” and the other two of which were indistinguishable from one another and also from the
strange lumps of celeriac I kept finding strewn around my plate. I could not identify the pink cubes. As for the puddings, of course we only had ice cream, which you only had to spoon from a tub, but the reason people serve ice cream in little bowls rather than on saucers is because it is really impossible to eat ice cream from a saucer unless you are a cat.’

‘I will pass your comments to the kitchen.’

Triathlon

‘
Y
ou said the word “Ollie” in your sleep last night, by the way.’

‘Did I? Are you sure? It wasn’t something else?’ Brolly, trolley, folly . . .

‘It was definitely Ollie.’

Dolly, volley . . . ? Don’t push it. ‘Peculiar.’ Bryony yawns.

‘Was it a university dream?’

‘It must have been. How odd.’

‘Oh well. I’ll go and make the tea.’ James kisses her on the cheek and gets out of bed.

Bryony’s dream begins to come back. It was her birthday, and James had arranged a surprise for her. When she went downstairs, every surface of the house had been covered in pink, silver or gold tissue paper. James had also installed glass cabinets everywhere. Inside the cabinets and on all the surfaces were all the things she could ever dream of buying. For example scores of pairs of beautiful shoes, all in her size. And several ranges of cosmetics. And cookware, for some reason: five different heavy frying pans. And beautifully bound books, and handbags, of course, and pens and board games and silk scarves. A basket of grey kittens. The idea was that Bryony could choose the things she wanted and James would send the rest back. He loved her so much that instead of giving her a voucher, or cash to take on a shopping trip, or one or two presents that she could take back if she didn’t like them, he had spent
all
his money on
everything
. And he
would simply take back what she didn’t want. He had, he said, kept all the receipts. The effort, the expense, the time involved in setting this up . . . Bryony could not imagine being loved more than this. It was just so amazingly, beautifully . . . And then she came to a set of upright coffin-shaped glass cabinets containing men. All the men she has ever slept with. And it became clear to Bryony that she had to choose one of these too. And then James was there saying that she could still keep all her other presents, even if she didn’t choose him. And then she chose . . .

‘Here you go.’ James returns with a mug of tea.

‘Thanks, love.’

The guy is blond, pure muscle, a tennis player, Australian? Or maybe Swedish. He can’t believe Fleur has not seen him on TV. He has won a couple of Challengers, whatever they are, but has not yet ever gone past the first round of a major, which is a big tennis tournament like Wimbledon. They also have them in Paris, New York and Melbourne, apparently. Fleur will need to talk to Holly about this, maybe offer Holly a few minutes with him in return. Anyway, he’s seen sports psychologists, more sports psychologists than you’ve had hot dinners, not that Fleur looks like someone who has had a lot of hot dinners anyway, which he actually SAYS, which makes her blush and look at his crotch and then out of the window, and she realises that he is definitely Australian and not Swedish, and then he explains that he is sort of in hiding because NO ONE trains in the UK, because why would you?

‘And what’s the problem exactly?’

‘I get so tight I choke and lose my forehand.’

‘I don’t know what any of that means.’

‘That’s why I need you. This is not a sport thing. This is fundamental.’

‘Right. OK. I really don’t even know what a forehand is.’

‘It’s usually someone’s best shot. Usually your strategy is to play to the guy’s backhand, but all the guys on tour know to play to my forehand. Sometimes just one shot hit to my forehand makes me choke because I know that he knows, and he knows that I know that he knows and it’s like all a big fucking mind game and you must know about mind games?’

‘I know about mind games.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘You breathe.’

‘Right.’