The Poison Tree (6 page)

“This is Karen,” she announced to the other members of the strange picnic. “That’s Chris on the turntables,” she said, waving at the DJ, who nodded back. She introduced me to Rachael, the girl I’d seen in the kitchen, and a handful of other people; drama students, whose names I instantly forgot. Nearest to me were Tris and Jo, a couple in matching tie-dyed trousers and with matching blond dreadlocks wound into rope turbans on their heads.

“Good to meet you,” said Jo. Her brown, ringed hand stroked my cheek in greeting. It was dry and calloused. “Want some mushrooms?” She unfolded a foil square that lay in her lap, exposing a brown pat of slimy-looking fungi against the silver. “They’re Mexican,” she said, widening her eyes conspiratorially. I didn’t know what that meant, but declined by gesturing to my bottle. I held my hand out to Tris. “Fuck that, give me a hug,” he said, and wrapped me in an embrace that was more headlock than hug. Jo dangled a brown sliver of mushroom above her mouth and gulped it down like a baby bird guzzling its first worm. Tris released me and opened his mouth obediently as Jo fed him a mushroom. Then he forgot our new friendship and with closed eyes began to pat at an imagined pair of bongos a few inches above his lap.

Biba unclenched a fist to reveal a little white pill in her palm. “Have an E!” She giggled. “They’re free, from Guy!” She gestured to a figure in the shadows, the hollows of his face briefly illuminated by the flame of a Zippo, and popped the pill into my open mouth, pressing a finger to my lips to silence any protest as well as to make sure I swallowed the drug. I didn’t have time to consider who Guy was or why he had gifted me an ecstasy tablet: it began to melt on my tongue before I could discreetly spit it out. I needed to think, and quickly. My lack of experience with drugs was less a prudish moral stand and more a case of never having been offered any. Even the drug dealers who hung around my school gates had taken one look at me and decided I wasn’t worth pushing to. There had once been some marijuana going around a party at Simon’s house, and I had taken a few inexpert drags when he wasn’t looking. It hadn’t done anything for me except to make me breathless the next day and cost me my tennis match.

I was still well informed enough to know that ecstasy and wine didn’t mix, and I had had a lot of wine. While my mind was playing squash with my options, my mouth decided for me: the pill dissolved bitterly on my tongue and I swallowed to make the taste go away. I leaned back into the side of the sofa, went back to my position as observer, and waited for something to happen.

I watched Biba dancing, hoping her behavior would give me clues as to what to expect. A pale woman in a long white dress ought to look like a ghost, but in the blur of figures Biba was luminous, more real than anyone had ever been. I watched her winding between the bodies as I waited for something to happen.

Half an hour. Nothing. An hour: nothing, and I had a dead leg from sitting cross-legged. I stood up to revive it and suddenly felt like a broken elevator was traveling at breakneck speed down through the floors of my body. My legs were made of springs and the floor beneath my feet was made of sand. I reached to steady myself on the sofa and staggered. There was a tug on the hem of my skirt and Jo was looking up at me. “Are you all right?” I shook my head. “First pill?” I nodded. She and Tris exchanged an indulgent glance, like new parents cooing over their baby’s first steps. “Come with me.” I followed her out onto the terrace and dry-retched over the balcony. The next body part to leave the building was my jaw, which began chattering uncontrollably and, I was sure, unflatteringly. Jo fumbled for a pocket in her voluminous trousers and eventually came up with a stick of chewing gum, which she unwrapped for me. It was the fruity kind, not the minty sort. I felt better once it was in my mouth.

“This will stop you pulling funny faces. If you need any more just come and find me. The trick is to dance it out. Okay?” Biba emerged from behind a speaker. I felt a surge of love and confidence and knew that everything was going to be all right.

“Why aren’t you dancing with me?” What a good question. Why wasn’t I? It was suddenly and abundantly clear to me that my whole life had been leading up to the moment where I danced with her. I was wildly amused by the realization that all my life I had used my legs for walking and running and playing sports, when all along they had been designed for marching on the spot to a series of screeches and bleeps. We plunged back into the party. There were around fifteen people left dancing and I was able to make eye contact with every single one: none of my smiles was rejected. I had become not only visible but the nucleus of the party. The music began to make sense to me: the low notes grew deeper and louder while the screeching high-pitched scratch that passed for a melody seared off into bat-audible territory. Bass and treble seemed to be having a tug-of-war and I was in the middle, being pulled apart. I didn’t know if I wanted to be put back together again. The focus of my panic changed from what to do with this rush to a sudden and gripping fear that this feeling would outlast the party. If the music stopped while I was still ready to dance, then what would I do? How would I live? I was still pacing and twirling when Biba took my hand again and pulled me out of the living room and into the kitchen. “Time for you to chill out, dancing girl,” she said. “Have some water.”

“I don’t have to go home, do I?”

She shook her head and smiled. “Are you getting rushes? This should make them amazing.”

She whipped my body around and began to knead the flesh of my shoulders, which yielded to her bony, inexpert fingers. But the feel of skin—her skin—on mine compensated for the imprecision of her touch. I closed my eyes and prepared for my body to dissolve under her hands, only for the massage to come to an abrupt end.

“Oh, bloody hell.” She sighed. The man who stood before us, arms folded, had to be Rex. The face was her own, re-sexed. Straight, thick, unplucked eyebrows framed the same brown eyes. (I thought with a sympathetic wince of the effort her grooming routine must involve.) The small teeth and tight jawline were the same, as was the pointed nose, but the long neck was interrupted by an Adam’s apple that dipped and rose. Without the glow and spirit that made her face beautiful, his was top-heavy and beaky. He ran his fingers through his hair: it formed a quiff and retained its shape.

“Just checking you’re okay,” he said to her, holding her by the chin. “How much have you had? Your eyes are like
pins
.” How could he tell how big or small her pupils were? Last time I had looked into her eyes, the black-brown irises merged with the pupils, surrounded by unbroken whites. Perhaps it was different if you had the same eyes, if you were used to looking at them in a mirror.

“Just half a pill, Rex, don’t
fuss
,” she said, her voice echoing his own rising intonation. “Do you want one? Guy’s got loads.”

“Who the bloody hell is Guy?” he snapped, and then, “No, thanks. Someone’s got to stay vaguely compos mentis.” Biba kissed him full on the lips and smoothed his hair. It bounced up again almost immediately.

“This is Rex, the best brother in the world,” she said to me. “And this is my new best friend, Karen,” said Biba. “She is a linguistic genius, and she has taken a whole ecstasy tablet, and she is very much enjoying herself, so you’re not to tell her off or nag her at all.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Rex. “But you two take care. Have you got enough water? Remember only to drink if you’re dancing. Okay then.”

The intense rush died down to be replaced by muzzy feelings of benevolence. The girl called Rachael, so intimidating a couple of hours ago, now numbered among my new friends. She offered me not a joint or wine but a sip of the tea she was drinking from a chipped mug.

“Biba and her brother are very alike, aren’t they?” I said.

“Ridiculously so,” agreed Rachael. “They almost give truth to those bizarre plots in Shakespearean comedies, don’t they? It’s such a pity Rex can’t act. They’d be a shoo-in for
Twelfth Night
.”

“He’s not a drama student, then?”

She barked a cynical laugh. “Rex? He’s not an
anything
.”

A new and irregular beat came not from the amps but from the front door. A male voice was raised in anger. Edging away from the dance floor, I crouched on the landing and peered through the banisters. The candles had long ago blown out.

“What’s wrong with you people?” The voice cracked as the man strained to make himself heard above the noise. “My wife is
pregnant
!” He wore a T-shirt and sweatpants, probably pulled on moments before. I saw only the top of his head and wondered if he knew about the incipient bald patch at the crown, or if it was still a secret his wife kept from him.

“This is the worst one yet!” His voice rose to a screech. “I’ve written it down in my noise diary, and I’m calling the police if you don’t turn it off
right now
.”

“We’ll wind it up, Mr. Wheeler.” Rex’s voice was gentle. “I’m sorry if we kept you awake. It’s Biba’s twenty-first, so we’re in quite high spirits.”

His composure exacerbated the other man’s hysteria and he began to repeat himself. “It’s four o’clock in the bloody morning! My wife is pregnant!”

There were no antisocial behavior orders then, but I think that this is when Wheeler began to research their 1997 equivalent. The next time we saw him he had memorized the relevant council bylaws and was able to quote them to us.

I raced ahead of Rex back into the heart of the party; he had a word with Chris at the turntables, pointing at his watch and raising his palms to say, I’m sorry but what can you do? Everything was over so suddenly. Chris said he knew a club in King’s Cross that they could probably get into for free and would let them dance until at least 9 a.m. He left his turntables and records where they stood as most of the remaining guests, including the girl called Rachael and the boy called Guy, followed him down the stairs and out of the front door like children tagging behind the Pied Piper. Biba didn’t seem to mind the sudden exodus of her friends, settling into an earnest, whispered conversation with the fat woman on the sofa. I felt a throb of jealousy and joined Rex on the terrace.

“It’s beautiful here,” I said to fill the silence. “How long have you lived here?”

“Forever,” he said. “It’s the only home I’ve ever known. My grandparents lived here. And my mum.” This last was said in a tone that didn’t invite further inquiry. He was smoking a cigarette or a joint, to keep his hands busy rather than for the hit, I thought. The prop didn’t suit him: he had an edgy, nervy quality, like a librarian a whisper away from a nervous breakdown. A pair of glasses, constantly slipping from the bridge of his nose and pushed back up by a middle finger, would have been a more suitable nervous tic.

The first light of the day had started to lift the color of the wood from dark gray to green and draw a line between treetops and sky. It went on for miles, only a few roofs and the odd church spire breaking the rural illusion.

“Daybreak,” he said, looking out at it. “I’ve always thought it was funny that dawn should be called daybreak. This is when the day is made: it’s the beginning. It’s the best part: you’ve got all the potential of the day to come, and you haven’t wasted it yet. When it gets dark,
that
should be daybreak. When the day is broken. When it turns into nighttime, that’s when it all starts to go wrong.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d be quite happy if tonight never, ever ended.” The look he gave me made me uncomfortable. You’ll see, it seemed to say. Biba had told me he was twenty-four, only four years older than I was, so why was he acting like a concerned parent?

By six, there was only a handful of people left in the room. I stretched out on a blanket, conversations drifting over my head as sleep pressed down on me.

When I awoke dry-mouthed at ten, someone had covered me with a patchwork quilt that stank of stale smoke. The smell of the room, of sweat and bodies and cigarettes, made me retch. I hadn’t noticed it last night. Now, it was an assault on my senses. I had company under the blanket: Biba, the sleeping bride. Her mouth lolled open and a zephyr of rank breath traveled under my nostrils. The tinny sound of a cheap stereo and the odd thud were audible through the ceiling. I imagined Tris, still wide awake and playing his air drums, and was glad I’d declined the mushrooms. I took back what I’d said to Rex earlier: now that the night was over, I wanted to be home, and clean, and if not asleep then at least between my own sheets. Nobody was awake to hear my good-bye.

I had always rather envied those girls you saw in last night’s clothes, wondering what their stories were, but now I was one of them—I was the one with the story and I wanted to tell it. I wanted to shake awake the dozing man with the Tesco shopping bag opposite me and ask him if he had ever had a night like mine. I made do with replaying the events in my mind: the sounds, the sensations. The only people I didn’t want to tell were my housemates. They would disapprove and would never understand. I would not have understood myself had I not been there. I was relieved to find a note on the kitchen table telling me that they were playing tennis all day. They were with Simon and his new girlfriend, although I didn’t work that out until later.

Even when I was showered, minty and lying between the clean sheets of my bed, I couldn’t sleep. I turned on my clock radio and heard the opening bars of a hit from a few summers before that still wouldn’t go away. As a baritone voice intoned the refrain “I’ve never met a girl like you before,” no lyrics had ever rung so true. My last thought before I drifted off was that I had finally met the person that all the love songs were about. And it was a girl—a weird, wild girl living in a filthy house with a creepy brother. And there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. Oh, fuck.

O
UR COTTAGE IS CALLED an artisan’s dwelling, which is real estate agent-speak for tiny and shabby. Its size reflects the kind of mortgage that freelance translators, even good ones, can get. The stone fireplace and thick little leaded windows are supposed to compensate for the lack of space, but I didn’t realize how small it was until now. It went from cozy to tiny the minute Rex stepped inside. I had forgotten how tall he is. For the last ten years I’ve only seen him sitting down, and then in a hall fifteen feet high. He has already hit his head twice on the low doorway that divides the front room from the kitchen. I don’t need to remind him to stoop, though. His posture has changed: he now holds himself constantly on the verge of a cower. Even when he is in a different room he fills the house up. His shuffling footfall is heavier than Alice’s and tells me where he is when he’s upstairs. The Capiz chandelier on the living room ceiling shakes when he treads, the shells making a brittle tinkling sound that is mildly distracting to me now, a sure sign that in a couple of weeks it will drive me mad.