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

you stop playing games? This does nothing to my head. You’ll only end up hurting yourself.’

Phil suddenly exploded. His face was distended and almost purple with anger. It made me think of the carved face of a Thai puppet. ‘I refuse to have anything to do with this!’ he said, thumping a fist into the open palm of his other hand. ‘I won’t take any responsibility for what happens from now on!’

His impotent rage was actually quite funny. ‘What are you shouting about?’ I said. ‘Sit down and put your head in a prayer book.’

Further provoked he said, ‘Mick, do you know why he’s doing this? Jealousy. Did you know that, Mick? He’s always been jealous: jealous of our opportunities; jealous of our education; jealous of our independence from him.’

‘Rot,’ I said.

Phil hadn’t finished. ‘When I went to university he was jealous, but he couldn’t say so. Then when Charlie went to Oxford he was even more upset, because Charlie was his little girl, and she was outstripping him, cleverer than all of us. The only way he could speak to us was by mocking us. Mocking Charlie’s boyfriends, mocking my lifestyle. Endlessly mocking. He’s spent the last half of his life in a jealous rage. You see what he’s doing here, now? He’s competing with Charlie.’

I’d had enough of his woe, and of his spirit-depleting manufactured suffering. ‘You know what, Phil? I’m sick of your misery. I’m sick of your whining. In fact I’m sick of your face—’

‘Shut it, Danny!’ Mick said with surprising force. ‘Leave Phil alone.’

‘Look, if I want to say—’ I tried.

‘You hear me? Just get off Phil’s case. Leave him alone and get on with what you’re going to do.’

The sharp note in Mick’s voice warned me to let the matter drop. I looked to Charlie for support. She folded her arms. ‘Phil’s right, Dad. Why do you always think we’re in some kind of competition?’

By now Nabao had the first pipe heated and smoking, but as she passed it to me Phil intercepted it. ‘Here, I’ll do it for you, shall I?’ He took a deep tug on the pipe. His eyes watered but he held back the smoke without coughing. I shrugged. If Phil wanted to join me I wasn’t going to argue. In the event, Mick stepped forward and gently took the smoking pipe from Phil and gave it to me.

Phil collapsed on to a mat in the corner of the hut, head in his hands, defeated.

Though the mood had soured I wasn’t going to let it stop me. I stretched out on my sleeping bag and got comfortable. I took a deep draught on the pipe and held the smoke in my lungs. Nabao plucked a banana leaf and tore a strip from it. This strip she placed beside her, and proceeded to prepare a second pipe.

I puffed away at the pipe until I realised that the thing had gone out. There was a tiny twist of ash in the brass bowl. Nothing was happening yet, though I was aware of how seriously I had become the object of everyone’s attention. Mick sat back quietly, puffing instead on a Marlboro. Charlie regarded me with her lip curled. Nabao, intent on preparing the pipe, flickered glances at me from time to time. I noticed Nabao had refused to make any eye contact with Charlie.

‘Satisfied?’ Charlie said. ‘Not much to it, is there? Made your statement? Anywhere I can go you can go better.’ I’d stolen from her the armour of defiance, of youth, and I’d reversed the roles. She didn’t like it.

Nabao passed me the second pipe. Again I pulled the smoke deep into my lungs and held it. Nabao tore another strip of banana leaf and placed it on top of the first.

After the third pipe Charlie said to Mick, ‘Are you going to stop him?’

‘I don’t see what I can do. I can’t stop him,’ Mick said pointedly, ‘any more than he can stop you.’

Phil still held his head in despair. I suppressed a snigger.

Charlie stood up. ‘I’m not going to stay here and watch him get wrecked just to prove a point.’

‘Fine,’ Mick said. ‘Where, exactly, are you going to go?’

It was a good question. I puffed my pipe and looked at Charlie. Our eyes locked. I chose to say nothing. Charlie shook her head slowly. ‘I never really knew how bad it was in him,’ she said, ‘until the day he waved me away to university. If he could have done, he’d have packed his bag and come with me and sat in on my lectures. Just so that I wouldn’t know more than he does. He can’t stand it.’

Mick scratched his head. ‘Yes, he is a bit of a pain like that.’

‘I’m surprised he has any friends,’ Charlie said. ‘He’s so mean-spirited. The moment anyone wants to do anything outside his control, he stops giving. He doesn’t even give you an argument. He shuts down. That’s what he did with me when I got old enough to want to do things my own way. Stopped hugging. Stopped being kind. Stopped being interested. It was like I was overdrawn at the bank one day.’

I sniggered, because I didn’t take seriously these emotional attacks. It was as if they were talking about a cartoon version of me.

‘I have noticed,’ Mick put in, ‘that he’s a bit tight with information.’

‘He’s an emotional miser,’ said Charlie. ‘A skinflint with his affections.’

‘Probably why Mum left him,’ Phil added.

‘What?’ Charlie said. This was news to her.

‘Oh yes. Or put another way, he drove her to another man.’

I snorted derisively at this, too. Well it was all hurtful sure enough, but it didn’t seem to upset me, because once again it didn’t exactly seem to be about me. I would have said the opium was making me apathetic, except that I couldn’t feel any effects. Every time Nabao gave me a pipe she tore another banana leaf. I was on to my fifth pipe