The Seed Collectors (25 page)

‘
When
is Uncle Charlie coming?’

It is literally always the same. Ollie stands in line at the fishmonger, or what he thinks is the line, except some other fucker always crosses that line, or ignores it completely, so that even though it is Ollie’s turn, Spencer, the son in Marsh & Son, will turn to the other guy with a cheery ‘How are you today, Mr Collard?’ or ‘How’s life, Ben?’ or simply ‘What can I do for you, mate?’

Ollie has been coming to this fishmonger – tucked away on a backstreet in Herne Bay – for the last THREE YEARS and isn’t even sure that Spencer recognises him. Spencer has been cheery with him only once, last time he came in, on a cold Friday afternoon. Ollie has tried going at different times. Eleven a.m., just before Spencer has his first cup of tea of the day, after starting work at 4 a.m. (you learn these things just from being in the queue), is the worst time. Late afternoon can be all right, because Spencer is in a good mood
because his working day is almost over, but of course there are hardly any fish left by then. Early morning is best. If you go to the fishmonger early in the morning they take you seriously, as if you are a chef, or someone with a real man’s job. After all, anyone who convincingly calls other men ‘mate’, drinks things from cans and carries cash in his back pocket will have completed all important transactions in his life by around 8 a.m. These people count as real men in some unfathomable way that would not make sense in, say, a university or bookshop, but does make sense on a building site or in a fishmonger.

These men, often booked to come and look at the boiler in ‘the morning’ or to put some shelves up at 9 a.m., invariably turn up at 7.45 a.m. wanting a cup of tea (
white with one, white with none
. . .) and a shit. Then, having knocked off work as early as possible, all that is left for these men to do is go for a nap in a lay-by, or hang around the local tip chatting about SHELVES or SCREWDRIVERS or the COUNCIL, or go down the bookie’s. These are the kinds of men Spencer respects. He is also partial to people in wheelchairs, old ladies, old men, the retarded, pretty girls, children and dogs. Ollie is so obviously a middle-class twat with a professional job that it’s no surprise that Spencer treats him so cruelly. He is literally at the bottom of Spencer’s list. On the odd occasion – usually a Saturday morning – when Ollie has turned up at around 7.45 a.m., Spencer has been almost nice to him. Once he even gave him a recipe for a monkfish-cheek stir-fry with lime leaves and ginger, even though Ollie didn’t want monkfish cheeks and doesn’t really know how to cook fish anyway, because cooking fish is Clem’s job and it is only buying fish that is Ollie’s job. Then there was the perplexing, but not unpleasant time when Spencer said to Ollie, ‘You like all the expensive fish, don’t you? Like my sister used to. I prefer the cheaper sort, me. Cheaper the better. I can take or leave the halibut and bass myself. But my sister, she was just like you.’

And last Friday was also strange. Just as he was leaving, with
approximately seventy-five pounds’ worth of tabloid-wrapped fish in three separate pink-and-white striped carrier bags, Spencer smiled – yes, smiled – at him and said, ‘Got your bottle of wine, have you?’ Well, yes, in fact Ollie had just that morning waited in to take delivery of a box from Berry Bros. & Rudd that cost approximately £280, containing old, bloodlike liquids that the following evening Clem would pour from a gigantic decanter into gigantic glasses like something from a fairy tale full of giants and people with big swords. But the result would be somehow disappointing and not taste at all like it looked and Ollie would end up drinking beer instead, as usual.

‘Yep,’ Ollie had said.

‘Nice bottle, is it?’

‘I think so.’

‘Suppose we won’t be seeing you first thing tomorrow morning then?’

‘No. No, I suppose you won’t.’

HE HAD BEEN REMEMBERED AND ACKNOWLEDGED!!!

But the next time he went in, it was as if this exchange had never happened.

Martin, the Marsh in Marsh & Son, has always been a lot nicer than Spencer. Even though he, also, has never entirely acknowledged that Ollie has visited his shop more than once, despite the fact that his visits must by now be approaching 200, what with all the dinner parties that Clem insists on having, where the starter is often oysters on a plate of crushed ice, or brown shrimp on toast, and the main course is usually pan-fried sea bass, pan-fried halibut, pan-fried red mullet or pan-fried salmon, each with new potatoes and courgettes or butternut squash purée and samphire, when it is in season.

Mind you, there was that one time when Martin said, ‘Go and get that halibut out, Spence,’ when he saw Ollie coming, which was encouraging. And of course then there are all the conversations that Martin never seems to remember, but are often the highlight of Ollie’s
day, about the merits of local wild sea bass over the farmed stuff, which always looks small and pathetic anyway, and which Clem once suggested he TAKE BACK, as if you could ever take something back to a fishmonger, especially to one ruled by Spencer; and why you should have a glass of stout with your oysters, and how at Martin’s daughter’s wedding, which was possibly in Spain, the caterers replaced the dead eyes of the cooked whole sea bass with small pieces of glistening black olive and its greyed gills with cucumber, and served it to look as if it were still alive, or at least raw, and also made a salmon mousse in the shape of a salmon that no one ate because they didn’t want to ruin it. The fishmonger also sells poultry and game, so there are always packages of little dead birds and mammals in the display, which Ollie tries not to look at.

Today Ollie has been instructed to get two pieces of salmon, or alternatively a medium-sized sea bass for supper, as well as picking up the dinner-party fish that Clem has ordered over the phone. His original brief was to ‘get something that looks nice’ but who can operate with such vague instructions? It’s like, it’s like . . . Aha! Salmon – yes, that pink fish is definitely salmon. The first way not to be humiliated in the fishmonger is to be definitely 100 per cent sure of what fish is in front of you which is: a) not always obvious; and b) not helped by the mispositioning of the little signs which Spencer often throws around when he’s in a huff.

‘Yes, mate?’ Spencer makes no eye contact, as usual. He had already handed over the dinner party fish, which comes to £68.14.

‘I’ll have a bit of that salmon, please, thanks.’ Right. Who says
please, thanks
, FFS? And Ollie dreads the next bit, where Spencer will ask him how much salmon he wants, and Ollie will say just a couple of pieces, enough for two people – two rich people, he will not add, for whom money is no object, unlike the little old ladies with their pensions who scrimp and save for their bit of fish on a Friday – and Spencer will say he has to be more precise and – oh, there’s a local sea bass,
which is actually much simpler, because if it’s the right size then he’ll just need it cut into two fillets. The only problem is that Ollie cannot really keep any weights or measurements in his head and can’t visualise anything at all fish-related and therefore can only go by price. He knows from trial and error that a good-sized sea bass for two will cost between twelve and fourteen pounds. So, all he has to do is . . .

‘Actually, mate, how big’s that sea bass?’

Spencer sighs, puts down the salmon, picks up the sea bass, turns it through ninety degrees and puts it down again. Then he goes to wash out his sinks. This is the kind of thing that happens ALL THE TIME. Ollie stands there, sighing and looking at his watch, and Spencer ignores him and washes his sinks. Now he starts on his chopping boards. This is really fucking . . . Then, finally, he turns.

‘Have you made your mind up, then, mate?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I just thought I’d give you a bit of time to decide.’

CUNT. Right. Well . . .

‘I was still wondering how
big
it is. I mean by
weight
.’

‘Oh, sorry, mate.’ Spencer picks up the fish and slithers it onto the scales. He then says something incomprehensible about kilograms.

‘And how much is that?’

Spencer says the same thing about kilograms again.

‘I meant in price.’

‘That’ll be thirteen pounds and fifteen pence. Call it thirteen.’

‘OK, thanks. Can you do it in two fillets, please?’

Spencer guts the fish and rinses it under the tap before slapping it down on one of his chopping boards and slicing the flesh away from the spine, which is all really quite impressive to watch. He asks Ollie if there’s anything else he would like. Yes, there is: he’d like some brown shrimp and some samphire.

‘Right, mate. You’ve got your telephone order, your bass, your shrimp, your samphire. Anything else?’

‘What time are you open on Thursday?’

This is not an unreasonable question, as the fishmonger keeps unpredictable pagan hours that Ollie doesn’t ever know for sure. Basically, they are closed all day Sunday and Monday because no one goes fishing on Saturday and Sunday. But the rest of the week is a complex arrangement of traditional half-days and non-traditional half-days, and it sometimes changes in summer, but now Spencer looks so deliberately at the ‘Opening Hours’ sign on the door that Ollie feels like a twat YET AGAIN because of course he needn’t waste Spencer’s time by asking when he could just, if he wasn’t such a posh cunt, look and see for himself.

‘Sorry, mate. Didn’t see the sign.’

‘No, no, you’re all right. I’ve lost track myself, to be honest. You know my sister who went missing last year? They’ve found a body. Down Hastings way. My dad’s gone to identify her and so we’re all a bit distracted here.’

OMG. ‘Christ, sorry, mate. That’s . . .’

‘We just heard last week. First we heard there’d been a sighting. Then a particular bit of woodland. Then they did a search and there was the body.’

Fuck.
Fuck
. Poor Martin, lovely innocent Martin who simply laughs when people ask for pheasants in June and asks Spencer to go and put the board back round the right way. Imagine having to go and identify the body of your own daughter. Ollie sees an image of Martin sipping his tea on a winter’s morning and taking off his steamed-up glasses and rubbing his hand over his pink face, and . . . And for some reason Ollie now also remembers the one time he saw Spencer in Asda in Canterbury, and how he looked wrong and out of place, like houseplants in removal vans that are suddenly covered in dust, or obviously haven’t ever been pruned or watered properly and now have one whole side missing because of a wall that isn’t there any more.

‘Look,’ he says to Spencer now. ‘I’m so, so sorry. If . . .’ He wants to say something like ‘If there’s anything I can do’. But he’s just a stranger, just a twat with a bad attitude who comes along and pretends to know something about fish when he knows NOTHING about fish, and plays these stupid power games with a fishmonger when he is a university lecturer who lives in a huge house with a study of his own and an interior-designed living area, not that that makes him better or anything, but even so . . . Suddenly he has an overwhelming desire to offer to work for Spencer for free, not that he is sure how that would help. But he could cover the funeral, surely? And if anyone was feeling really depressed afterwards. He imagines putting on a blue-and-white striped apron and becoming a hero, because no one else from around here would even bother to CARE about the death of a fishmonger’s daughter . . . Well, TBH, they might care a bit, and of course they’d be much more likely than Ollie to already know something about it, to have been following the story on the local news and so on, but Ollie has some depth of feeling that these people do not have because he can’t actually BEAR the local news, where strangers feed off the misery of other strangers; but
here
,
now
. . .

‘Thanks, mate. It’s just all happened so suddenly, and . . .’

Whatever Spencer was going to say next is lost, because Ollie drops his wallet and even though he doesn’t immediately bend to pick it up, his eyes follow it, and then Spencer says, ‘Don’t forget your wallet, mate,’ and turns back to rinse his chopping board.

‘Take care of yourself,’ says Ollie, but he isn’t sure whether the sound of the running water drowns him out. He wants to say it again: ‘Take care of yourself, mate.’ Or even better, ‘Take care of yourself, Spencer.’ He knows his name, of course. Everyone knows Spencer’s name. But they’ve never been formally introduced, and anyway, Spencer has now gone back to his other sink.