The Seed Collectors. Scarlett Thomas

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      It’s very complicated, trying to organise a wake. Fleur has no idea who is even coming to the funeral. But afterwards, everybody should be invited to Namaste House for food. Of course they should. But there could be ten people or a hundred. How is Fleur supposed to know who will come? If even Augustus and Beatrix are going to come then anything could happen. Oleander changed a lot of people’s lives over the years. But many of them must be dead now: dead, reincarnated and living completely new lives. Could you contact someone who . . . ? Fleur shakes her head. How stupid. Because it’s so complicated organising a wake she is watering all the plants in Namaste House for the second time today. This is something Oleander and Fleur used to do together each evening. Doing this makes Fleur feel almost as if she is Oleander, and of course you don’t have to miss someone if you are them, and . . .

      The orangery is attached to the west wing. At this time of day it is filled with the soft colours of sunset with only a whisper of moonlight. Fleur has looked after the orchids in here since she was a teenager. Some of the ones she propagated are getting on for twenty years old, but there are others that are much older. Their roots reach out like the thin arms of the starving and desperate, although it’s all a big act because they know that Fleur knows exactly how they like to be misted, and when. Fleur waters the frankincense tree in the centre of the room, touches its bark, as she always does, her hand coming away smelling of the heat and damp of faraway places. The orangery is where the celebrities come to relax by day, to breathe air produced by rare plants and to look out at the orchard with its wise, old trees. The orangery is vast, but the celebrities won’t share it. If one celebrity finds another one already here then she, or more probably he – for some reason the residential ones are usually male – will instead go all the way to the east wing where they can choose the cool Yin room with the peppermint water fountain, the small, hot Yang room or the Dosha Den, full of black velvet cushions stuffed with down and dried roses.

      Sometimes one of the newer celebrities will make an observation about the lack of a coherent spirituality in the house. The massages are Ayurvedic, because Ketki does them. Ish, Ketki’s husband, does both Ayurvedic and macrobiotic consultations, and is also a trained acupuncturist and cranial osteopath. The food is mostly Indian, sometimes Ayurvedic, and made by Ketki’s ancient aunt Bluebell. She specialises in kulfis – Indian ice creams made with condensed milk, cardamom pods and saffron – but which she often makes into the shape of Daleks. Everything else is a jumble of Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Hinduism, Wicca and who knows what else. Oleander famously believed in ‘everything’. There’s a tapestry halfway up the west-wing staircase with a profound religious significance that no one can quite pin down, not even the Prophet, who has an eye for such things.

      After checking the first floor again, Fleur goes down the east-wing staircase – avoiding not just the tapestry but also the White Lady, who often comes out on a Sunday, or after someone has ‘moved on’ – and through the library with its huge peace lilies and rubber plants and that tarry, tobaccoey smell of old leather bindings, and she wonders where on earth Ketki could be. She checks the orangery again, and the kitchens, with their unmistakeable smell of fenugreek, coriander and, of course, the curry plants, which Fleur now waters for the third time today. All around are big Kilner jars of yellow split peas, red, brown and green lentils, four different types of rice, whole oats, sultanas and desiccated coconut. Silicone Dalek moulds, but no Bluebell. A half-drunk mug of Earl Grey tea, but no Ketki.

      This is infuriating. There is, after all, so much planning to do. Ketki has said she’ll make curries for the wake if Fleur will help. She has also suggested that her two daughters might come up from their professional lives in London and do some cooking. Unlikely, frankly. And Fleur herself is actually going to be quite busy on the day of the funeral and . . . Fleur sighs. Goes up to the second floor, with its long corridor of guest suites with the original servant bells that she had mended years ago, and then to the third floor, to the original servants’ corridor where the ‘servants’ still live and in which the bells sometimes still tinkle, late at night, if one of the celebrities has overdosed, become enlightened or wants a cup of hot chocolate. Now, of course, it’s just Ketki, Ish and Bluebell up there, but years ago Fleur and her mother had their cramped little rooms at the north end of the servants’ corridor. And, after her parents’ disappearance, Bryony stayed in one of the old servants’ rooms for almost a year until James’s parents took her in. Ketki’s daughters – dramatically rescued from somewhere in the Punjab region, by Oleander, who saved them from almost certain abduction, rape and forced marriage – to Muslims, imagine – grew up in the house. They were joined at the south end of the servants’ corridor by their cousin Pi, who was himself rescued, but from something else entirely, quite a lot later.

      Of course no one has suggested that Pi, who moved out of his tiny room years ago and is now a famous author in London, should come and make curries. No one has suggested that his eldest daughter should take time off from Vogue photo shoots to come and make curries. His wife never comes to Namaste House so at least that isn’t an issue. But anyway, why not get Clem, Charlie and Bryony – Oleander’s actual relations, who are presumably about to inherit everything – to come and make the curries? The Prophet has, to Fleur’s knowledge, never even been in the kitchen, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t help in an emergency. But some things never change; however much time you spend with supposedly enlightened people, in a house so brimming and glowing with enlightenment it’s sometimes like being in one of those fish tanks that . . . Shut up, for God’s sake. Fleur closes her eyes. Enlightenment is so difficult and tiresome, and Fleur isn’t sure she’s going to get there in this lifetime, but she could really do with a stiller mind. As usual, when she tries to stop her thoughts, her ego goes into a sulk for about one second and there’s peace. Then the whole thing starts up again.

      She eventually finds Ketki folding towels in Treatment Room 3. It’s almost as if the old woman has been avoiding her.

      ‘There’s still time to get it catered,’ Fleur says. ‘We’ve got the money.’

      Indeed. Those packages that the Prophet still sends off. And Fleur’s big ideas, like those huge clouds floating above everyone until suddenly, splat, you are covered in rain. There’s absolutely no shortage of money. Even after the Inland Revenue came round a couple of years ago. Especially when one of them went away with his own mantra, a yin/yang necklace, a shaved head and a fondness for chickpeas.

      ‘I want to do this for Oleander,’ says Ketki. ‘She would have liked . . .’

      ‘She would have liked you to be able to relax and grieve for her in peace. We’ve got no idea who’s going to turn up for this. There’ll be the press СКАЧАТЬ