Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce (the read aloud family .txt) 📕

out like this? Or did I love you too much? I’m not a psychiatrist. Not a shrink.’

Phil shook his head. ‘Will you say a prayer with me?’

‘I will not. I’ve told you before: she’s on her pipe, you are on yours.’

‘Then,’ he said, ‘will you say a prayer for me?’

I gazed at him with an uncomprehending expression.

‘You know what Mercy said, Dad? Mercy said: “I was a-dreaming that I sat all alone in a solitary place and was bemoaning the hardness of my heart.’” With that he got up and took himself outside, leaving me with Charlie.

The sigh which issued from me at that point was very nearly a howl. My son and I were reduced to trading in obscure quotations, and it was a game in which I was always going to lose. I felt Phil had confined himself to a cage, on some unreachable summit, just as Charlie had done.

‘I’m your dad,’ I whispered to Charlie, still stroking her foot, ‘come to get you. But I can’t get to you, can I? I can’t go where you are. Either of you. I don’t know the way in, Charlie, but if I did, you know I would come after you. You know I would. I’d go barefoot over hot coals for you.’

When my jaws ached from this one-way talk I went and sat outside with Mick, discussing our chances. I asked him where Phil was, but he didn’t know. I was hopeful that, after what I’d revealed to Jack, the opium bandit might decide to help us. We were silent for a while, and then Mick started talking about the new and exotic fruits he’d discovered since he’d been here; fruit he’d never seen before, and how he was going to import some for his market stall. Maybe he was faking it to lift our desperate spirits, but he seemed to have no doubt we would get out of this. He was going to be the first in Leicester market to import star-shaped fruit. Actually, I’d seen star-shaped fruit on Leicester market, but he was still talking like this when the attack came from nowhere.

Crack! Jack’s elephant whip snapped at the red earth an inch from my fingers. Dust rose in the air like gunsmoke. ‘You! Get inside that hut! I’ve had enough trouble from you people!’ The whip cracked again, as Mick and I scrambled to our feet. The bearded Khao stood behind Jack with a loutish curl to his lip. He was enjoying this.

‘Steady on!’ Mick tried. A mistake. Jack cracked the whip and it whistled as it curled round Mick’s bare leg, somewhere between ankle and calf. Mick winced and swore, struggling to keep his balance. When the whip unravelled he took a step forward, but Jack had his pistol levelled at Mick’s head.

‘Where’s that boy? Tell me where he is, fat man! You know where he is!’

Mick was incredibly calm. ‘What boy? The one I threw from the hut?’

Then Khao spoke loudly in Thai. Something gloating. Jack turned to him, and I said, ‘Yes, he’s the one who sabotaged the generator.’

Jack looked at Khao, and then at me, and then back at Khao. The heat of the afternoon and the air about me seemed to clot as I sensed events teetering on a mighty fulcrum. I had the thrilling sensation of almost hearing Jack’s brain turn in rapid motion, and as he regarded Khao steadily I saw something in his eyes, as if a piece of a puzzle quite outside my range of vision had suddenly snapped into place for him. He still had the pistol levelled at Mick’s head. He lowered it. ‘Get inside. Stay there.’

‘Do what he says, Mick. Get in the hut.’

Mick was impulsive, but not stupid. He retreated inside, like a dog to kennel.

‘You too!’ Jack screamed. ‘And listen to this: if that fucking generator stops one more time you’re a dead man! You hear me? You’re dead meat.’ With that he stormed away, leaving Khao to sneer at me. Khao formed his fingers into a play pistol, aimed it at me, and pulled the trigger. He smirked again before walking away.

Inside the hut Mick was nursing an angry red weal on his calf muscle. Charlie woke up. ‘What’s going on? Where’s Phil?’

It was a long afternoon. I tried to keep my mind off the sound of the radio belting out from its lonely table in the centre of the village. There were long pauses between the high-pitched strains that made my heart quicken, but thankfully each pause was followed by another tinny, echoing piece. I was frantic about where Phil had got to.

I feared more than ever that Phil might compromise us. Charlie, Phil and I were family: Mick was not. I was still terribly afraid that Phil, quite in desperation, might betray Mick in order to save our skins. The seriousness with which Phil took his own faith, and the gravity of Mick’s crime, made this a real possibility.

Would that be how it would work out? That we had gone into the jungle and had to surrender Mick in order to bring Charlie home? Never more desperately had I wished to know the true measure of my son’s character.

I returned to my copy of Thomas De Quincey, obstinately trying to stop my mind from turning on the complications of the last twenty-four hours and to distract myself from the hideous shadow that had fallen over the sunlit village. The words on the page seemed to skim past my eyes and I’d given up on the idea of learning a single thing from this book. But at least it helped me to fight against the doom-laden thoughts oppressing me.

I’d finished reading the Confessions, and I’d got on to the unfinished sequel, which was published in the same volume. This part was called Suspiria de Profundis. I have no idea what that means, but there in black and white was the clearest bit of writing in the entire sorry mess of