The Family Upstairs(45)

I nodded and looped some string around the stems of the calendula, tying it in a bow. ‘Is that OK?’

‘Brilliant. Yeah. So,’ he opened. ‘I heard about you and Phin. The other week. You know, tripping.’

I flushed pink.

‘Man,’ he said, ‘I didn’t touch drugs ’til I was almost eighteen! And what are you? Twelve?’

‘Thirteen,’ I replied firmly. ‘I’m thirteen.’

‘So young!’ he said. ‘Hats off to you.’

I didn’t understand this sentiment. It was so clearly a bad thing I’d done. But I smiled anyway.

‘You know,’ he said conspiratorially. ‘I can grow anything out here. Virtually. Do you know what I mean?’

I shook my head.

‘I don’t just grow stuff that’s good for you. I can grow other stuff. Anything you like.’

I nodded seriously. And then I said, ‘Like drugs, you mean?’

He laughed his belly rumble laugh again. ‘Well, yeah, I guess. Good ones.’ He tapped his nose. ‘And bad ones too.’

The back door opened at that moment. We both turned to see who it was.

It was David and Birdie. They had their arms looped around each other’s waists. They glanced briefly in our direction and then went and sat at the other end of the garden. The atmosphere shifted. It felt like a cloud passing over the sun.

‘Are you OK?’ I mouthed at Justin.

He nodded. ‘I’m cool.’

We sat for a while in the muffling blanket of their presence, chatting about different herbs and plants and what they could do. I asked Justin about poisons and he told me about Atropa belladonna, or deadly nightshade, which, legend has it, was used by Macbeth’s soldiers to poison the incoming English army, and hemlock, used to kill Socrates at his execution. He also told me about using enchanting herbs, with spells, and aphrodisiacs like Gingko biloba.

‘How did you learn all this?’ I asked.

Justin shrugged. ‘From books. Mainly. And my mum likes to garden. So you know, I was brought up around plants and the soil. So … natural progression, really.’

At this point we had not been given a day’s teaching since Sally had left. We children had been freewheeling around the house, bored and restless. ‘Read a book,’ was the refrain to anyone complaining of having nothing to do. ‘Do some sums.’

So I was ripe, I suppose, to learn something new and all that was on offer elsewhere was David’s weird exercises or Birdie’s fiddling.

‘Are there any plants that can make people, you know, do things – against their will?’

‘Well, there are hallucinogenics, of course, magic mushrooms and the like.’

‘And you can grow these?’ I asked. ‘In a garden like this?’

‘I can grow virtually anything, boy, anywhere.’

‘Can I help you?’ I asked. ‘Can I help you grow things?’

‘Sure,’ said Justin. ‘You can be my little apprentice buddy. It’ll be cool.’

I do not know what sort of pillow talk occurred behind the dreadful door of David and Birdie’s room; I didn’t like to think too hard about anything that happened beyond that door. I heard things which even now, nearly thirty years later, make me shudder to think about. I slept with my pillow over my head every night.

In the mornings they would descend the stairs together, looking self-satisfied and superior. David was obsessed with Birdie’s waist-length hair. He touched it constantly. He twisted it around his fingers and bunched it up in his hands; he ran his hands down it, twirled shanks as he talked to her. I once saw him pick up a strand and hold it to his nostrils, then breathe in deeply.

‘Isn’t Birdie’s hair wonderful,’ he said once. He looked across at my sister and Clemency who both wore their hair on their shoulders. ‘Wouldn’t you like to have hair like this, girls?’ he asked.

‘You know,’ said Birdie, ‘in many religions it is seen as highly spiritual for women to wear their hair long.’

Despite not being at all religious David and Birdie talked a lot about religion in the early days of their relationship. They talked about the meaning of life and the terrible disposability of everything. They talked about minimalism and feng shui. They asked my mother if it was OK if they repainted their bedroom white, if they could move their antique metal bedframe into another room and have their mattress on the floor. They abhorred aerosol cans and fast food and pharmaceuticals and man-made fibres and plastic bags and cars and aeroplanes. They were already talking about the threat of global warming and worrying about the impact of their carbon footprints. They were, looking back on it from the point of view of the end-of-days scenario currently playing out during this ominous heatwave of 2018, with the ocean full of plastic-choked sea creatures and polar bears sliding off melting ice caps, well ahead of their time. But in the context of 1990, when the world was just waking up to all that modern technology and throwaway culture had to offer and embracing it, they were an aberration.

And I might have had some respect for David and Birdie and the strength of their commitment to the planet if it hadn’t been for the fact that David expected everyone else to live according to his will. It wasn’t enough for him and Birdie to sleep on mattresses on the floor. We all must sleep on mattresses on the floor. It wasn’t enough for him and Birdie to eschew cars and aspirin and fish fingers. We all must eschew cars and aspirin and fish fingers. It had become very clear to me that what I had predicted subliminally all those weeks ago when I saw David and Birdie kissing had come to pass. She had unlocked something terrible in David and now she wanted David to control everything.