The Seed Collectors (10 page)

‘What are you and Clem going to do with your share? I mean, if there is a share, which I still think there probably won’t be.’

‘Probably a teaching buyout for me, so I can finish my book.’ Ollie finishes his IPA. ‘It’s just so fucking busy here all the time. Clem wants a pond in the garden. Wants to make a film about it.’ He looks at Bryony’s wine. ‘You want another one? I’m going to get another one.’

Bryony shakes her head. He goes to the bar. Bryony wants to pee, but she can’t leave while Ollie is at the bar. Perhaps he’d think that she’d walked out on him because of what he said about fucking, or about the scholarship. Perhaps then he’d leave too. Would that be such a terrible thing? Then Bryony could go home and start again on her evening, and drink the Chablis instead of this Pinot Grigio and love James like a real wife would. There are 165 calories in this glass of
wine, but Bryony won’t log it in her food diary later because it isn’t very nice and she didn’t really mean to have it. When she gets home she’ll have 250mls of Chablis and she’ll log that instead. She also won’t log the sausage roll and chips she had in the dining hall before this evening’s class, because, after all, she wouldn’t normally have something like that, and now that term is more or less over she is confident that she will never even go to the dining hall any more, and after all where else would you find sausage rolls and chips? Fuck it. She just won’t fill in her food diary at all today. She’ll start afresh tomorrow. That means she can drink all the Chablis when she gets home. And she could have a packet of crisps now. Could she eat a packet of crisps in front of Ollie? No. Well, maybe. Actually, what Bryony really wants is a cigarette, but that would just be nuts. She gave up for the last time over three years ago. No calories in fags, of course. But James hates her smoking, and so do the kids. Last time Bryony smoked, Holly cried all night and threatened to kill herself.

Ollie comes back with a pint of IPA and a medium glass of white wine.

‘Here,’ he says. ‘Sorry I’m being a bit of a cunt. It’s been a long day.’

175 ml. Another 130 calories. And it will be warm by the time she gets to it. Warmer. What she should do, what she should really do, is wait for Ollie to go outside for a cigarette and then tip the rest of the large glass away somewhere and start again on the slightly cooler and smaller new glass. OK, how would she actually do that? She could just take it back to the bar. She could take it back to the bar and explain that she really shouldn’t drink this because she’s driving and could they just get rid of it for her, please, but in such a way that the man she’s with doesn’t see? Or she could just return it because it’s shit. She could go up to the bar and say, ‘Your wine is too shit even for students,’ or something cleverer that she would think of. But then they’d just give her more of something else. It’s so hard
to lose weight when all the time people are giving you things full of calories. Ollie starts rolling a cigarette.

‘Actually,’ she says, ‘can you do me one of those as well?’

The football is back on. Improbably, Australia scores a goal.

‘Fuck me,’ he says. ‘Game on. You coming?’

They smoke by the university duck pond. Bryony wants to vomit, but she has to admit that once she is over the initial nausea, the cigarette tastes amazing. She feels mellow, all of a sudden, almost the way she felt that time she made tea from the wrong caddy at Fleur’s cottage. She’d forgotten it was like this. She was thinner when she smoked as well. How could she have ever stopped doing it? Smoking was like having a best friend who always listens and never judges you.

‘It would be nice to have a garden pond,’ she says. ‘I guess now the kids are a bit older, but they’re so expensive and . . .’

‘If you get a scholarship you could afford a pond.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ She sighs. ‘Anyway, yes, all right, fine. I’ll pull out. I don’t need the scholarship as much as Grant and Helen need it. Point taken. But the main thing is that they’re better students than me, so why would I waste my time going up against them?’ She sighs again. And draws deeply on the cigarette.

Ollie screws up his face. ‘Why do you think they’re better students than you?’

‘They say more.’

‘You got the top mark for your essay.’

‘Did I?’

‘Yeah. So you’d probably get the scholarship. But they need it more. And they won’t come without it, so you’d basically be doing them out of their doctorates. You’ll come anyway, of course.’

‘I guess so. Well, no pond then.’ And no forest. ‘Never mind. Hope you get yours.’

‘No kids to drown in ours,’ Ollie says. ‘Never will be.’ He throws
his cigarette end in the duck pond. ‘And because of that, my wife has started hating me. But you’ll know all about that.’

Bryony does not have any idea what he’s talking about.

‘I don’t have any idea what . . .’

‘Look, ignore me. I’m being a total cunt. Sorry. Fuck it. Let’s go back.’

Inside, Australia have scored another goal. A penalty. It’s 2–1.

‘Well,’ Ollie says. ‘Miracles do happen.’ He goes to buy another drink.

Bryony should have left by now. She hasn’t even texted James to tell him she’ll be late. Why has she not even done that? She could have done that while Ollie was at the bar, or while he was outside smoking, if she hadn’t been outside smoking with him. She should do it now. When she gets in she’ll have to clean her teeth before saying hello to anyone. That might sort of fool the kids, but it won’t fool James. Whatever she does now, he’ll know she’s been drinking, and smoking. At this rate she won’t even be able to finish the lovely Chablis because James will probably be in bed reading, and what kind of wife sits up drinking while her husband lies in bed reading?

She quickly texts him now:
End of term drinks. No reception until now, sorry. Home soon as I can get away. Love you
. Somebody, probably Fleur, was telling Bryony recently about an app people get that writes their text messages for them. In order to do this, it has a database of the things people always say in text messages.
Sorry. See you soon. Leaving now. I love you
. It must have been Fleur. Yes, it was over tea on Sunday while they were not talking about Oleander’s death and how Fleur felt about it. One of the celebrities had told Fleur about this app, expecting her to disapprove. But for Fleur there was no difference, not really, between an app supplying the words ‘I love you’ and one’s fingers typing what are essentially just words anyway. Bryony surprised herself by saying something back about Derrida, and arguing that it’s not that words are meaningless: quite the opposite. Words separate
things. They create meaning. Without words we wouldn’t know the difference between a table and a planet. Without words, would anything exist at all? Then Fleur, being Fleur, said there’s no difference between a table and a planet anyway because the whole universe is just an illusion. Then Holly rolled her eyes and said, ‘OK, you are both officially mad.’

‘Clem doesn’t hate you,’ she says to Ollie when he comes back. ‘How could she? I mean, you’re very attractive – I’m saying that objectively, of course – and your book is going to be amazing, and . . .’ Bryony touches Ollie’s arm in a way that is supposed to be reassuring. Bryony doesn’t touch many men’s arms, at least not any more. She is surprised to find how firm this one is. Ollie’s biceps are incredible: rocks the size of tennis balls. Bryony’s intellectual mind retreats into what could be an endless ellipsis while her vaginal walls immediately start producing fluid. Biology is such an easy lay.

‘Maybe she thinks she doesn’t,’ he says. ‘But underneath, she does.’

‘No. That’s not right. She’s lucky to have you.’

He sighs. ‘I don’t know.’

He’s probably right. Bryony was the lucky one, getting James. He has already texted her back:
No hurry. Hope you have fun. Kids in bed. Drive safely. Love you forever
.

When Ollie gets in, Clem is asleep. Or pretending to be asleep to make him feel bad about staying out. Or perhaps some mixture of the two. He shits in the spare toilet before joining her. Here’s the game: he is being REALLY, REALLY quiet so as not to disturb her because she is so clearly REALLY, REALLY asleep. She cracks first.

‘Hello.’

And he does love her. That’s the thing. He adores her.

‘Hello.’

‘Are you having an affair? Do I need to start shaving my legs more or something?’ She yawns. ‘Please tell me it’s not a student.’

‘No, no. You’re quite safe. I was out romancing Frying Pan.’

This is what he calls Bryony. How do these nicknames start? Well, Bry rhymes with Fry, obviously. Bryony and frying pan have the same number of syllables. They are both dactylic, which means that the stress falls on the first syllable of the three. The nickname is also metonymic, because Bryony is fat, and frying pans represent, or in some way stand for, fat. But you can analyse these things too much. Clem knows who he means, and while she never joins in his nicknaming, she doesn’t stop him doing it either. It’s basically because she must still believe that he is taking the piss out of himself when he does it, and not the other person. And his nicknames aren’t that good, to be honest. If Clem comes up with something it’s brilliant. If Ollie does it’s usually just a bit weird. Like all his book proposals.

‘God, I must give Bryony a ring about next Thursday.’ Clem rolls onto her back. ‘How was your class?’

‘Fucking awful.’

Ollie can see Clem’s Forever Fish swimming bag neatly packed for the morning on the yellow wooden chair on her side of the room. The neatness is partly to spite him, just as the neatness all around the house is partly to spite him. The yellow wooden chair on his side of the room is empty. It is empty because their cleaner, Alison, insists on putting everything away. Anything that is left out is dumped, hidden or imprisoned in whatever cupboard or on whatever shelf happens to be nearest. Ollie looks and finds yesterday’s gym shorts hanging up in the wardrobe. This is stupid because, first, who hangs shorts in a wardrobe? Second, they stink. Ollie would report this to Clem, but she would just lazily say something about how he isn’t a child and can he put his shorts in the washing basket if he wants them washed rather than put away. Under the reign of Alison, these are the only two things that can happen to objects in this house: they are either
washed, or they are put away. Clem has no qualms about telling Ollie off, but will never mention how she really feels to Alison. But of course, if Clem feels really strongly about something she never actually says it to anyone. This is why Ollie reads her journal. And because she knows he reads her journal, she never writes what she really feels in it (and sometimes goes so far as to actually lie, for example all that stuff about how she REALLY, REALLY loves him).

But anyway, even if half her journal is bullshit, he knows how she feels. He knows that she genuinely wants him to be a success – not as much of a success as her, of course – but enough of a success that he is no longer embarrassing. Can’t produce a book, can’t produce the right sort of sperm . . . Ollie imagines Clem in the swimming pool, in her red swimming cap with her turquoise goggles. That swimming cap . . . He imagines making love to her while she is wearing her swimming cap, and her sensible turquoise-and-white Speedo swimsuit. He’d pull the swimsuit to one side, as if they were both teenagers, perhaps leaning up against a tree . . . He’d get her to give him a blow job with her swimming cap on, and then he’d come on her head. Ollie’s erection subsides as he pisses for the last time before bed. Can he not even get a sexual fantasy right? He imagines telling her about it, and then Clem laughing, just once, and asking why she’d be leaning against a tree in her swimsuit and explaining where the whole fantasy had gone wrong.
That bit about the swimming cap
. . . But it’s rubber, isn’t it? Of course men are going to feel that way about rubber.
But coming on my head? That’s a bit, well, a bit odd, wouldn’t you say? Especially as you’re infertile. I mean, who wants a load of dead spunk on their head?

Clem yawns, and starfishes her legs under the covers.

‘So why did you go for a drink with Bryony?’

‘I totally persuaded her not to go for the scholarship. It was so easy, and . . .’

‘Isn’t that a bit immoral?’

‘Not if I get two PhD students for the price of one. Or three, if
I can get Grant and Helen to split the scholarship between them. They can’t not promote me if I have three PhD students and loads more time to . . .’

‘How can they split a scholarship?’

‘The eighteenth-century one is like twenty-five grand a year. For that you could easily get two sets of tuition fees and two lots of rent with some left over for a Pot Noodle every so often, or some lime and soda down the pub. They’ll do some teaching. They won’t starve. I mean it’s not as if these . . .’

‘But isn’t the point of that scholarship to give a student a really good PhD experience because that’s what Esther would have wanted. I mean, didn’t her husband say . . .’

Ollie rolls his eyes. ‘It’s great being dead, isn’t it? I mean, dictating what everyone . . .’