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

It was the passport Brazier-Armstrong had returned to me in Chiang Mai. I held it open at her photograph. It occurred to me that if the villagers believed in photographic magic, then perhaps Charlie could have her soul returned in the same way. She took the passport from me with a trembling hand.

In the passport photograph a sweet young girl smiled at the camera. The photographer had caught her about to burst into a laugh. It had been taken two weeks before her eighteenth birthday. ‘Look at that,’ I said. ‘It’s my girl. When she was little.’

I guess I’d meant that it was my girl when I was still in control of her life, in a way that I had never been after that photograph was taken. Charlie looked at me and said, ‘Is it going to be all right, Dad? Is it?’

‘Of course it is. That’s why I came for you.’ I had a leather wallet with a neck strap. I took the passport from her, slipped it in the wallet and hung it around her neck. ‘But it’s not just a photograph, is it? It’s love all the way, Charlie. Me and Phil and Mick. Our love is going to carry you out of this place. Isn’t that right, Phil?’

‘That’s right, Charlie,’ said Phil.

‘That’s the one, Charlie,’ said Mick. ‘That’s the one.’

Outside the din of battering metal grew louder and more impatient. More strips of bamboo were torn out of the walls, now on all four sides. Mick stepped forward. ‘Here,’ he said, hanging his amulet around Charlie’s neck.

‘Oh God!’ Charlie was trembling and crying now. ‘Oh God!’

‘Will you take this?’ Phil said. He wanted her to have his pocket Bible. Charlie closed her fingers around it, grateful for magic of any colour. Phil seemed mightily relieved.

‘This is it, Charlie,’ I said. ‘I’m so proud of you but I need you to do this one thing.’ Her eyes were closed but she was nodding at me. I actually started to think she might come through. ‘I also think I could do with a tug on that pipe,’ I added.

I took a draught of the opium. Charlie giggled, but it was an hysterical giggle, almost a shudder. ‘I might need you to carry me,’ she said faintly.

‘We can do that,’ Mick said. ‘Easily. This time with your permission, eh?’

She shivered uncontrollably. One of her hands clasped the passport wallet and the amulet, the other Phil’s Bible. Mick and I linked arms and made a chair for her to ride and we carried her to the threshold. Phil fell in line behind us, breathing steady encouragement down the back of our necks as we stepped towards the door. When the villagers saw us appear at the threshold the racket and their excitement soared. In the din I could barely hear myself think. Charlie flung her arms around my neck, burying her head in my breast. ‘It’s all right,’ I said to Mick. ‘I can take her. She’s my baby.’ The pain in my hand seared as I carried her. But I wanted it. Wanted the pain of carrying her.

‘We’re right behind you,’ Mick said. ‘All the way. Right, Phil?’

‘All the way, Dad,’ said Phil.

Charlie convulsed hideously as we passed outside. I feared she’d gone into a fit. The tumult in our ears augmented, and the huge moon seemed to crash on our heads like a cymbal. Khiem stood before us, fantastically attired, a terrifying apparition in the silver moonlight. He wore a felt cap sewn with poppy petals, and a long tunic. The belt round his waist jingled with silver discs sewn together like the scales of a fish. Draped from his neck were a great number of larger, circular, silver amulets, and in his hands he carried a wooden staff and a silver disc. He approached Charlie and touched her chin gently, so that she might look him in the eye. As she opened her eyes she was caught by his gaze, and for two or three seconds it was like watching someone draw a sting. Something passed between them in that moment, and I felt her relax marginally, surrendering a little in my arms. She gasped at his wild appearance, not least because also hanging from his neck was a familiar looking animal.

‘He’s got Rupert Bear,’ Charlie breathed.

‘That’s right, Charlie.’

I’m not sure if she fainted or merely gave herself over to us, but Khiem beckoned us on, turned, and led us slowly through the clanging, banging, clattering tumult of villagers. I saw Phoo in the small crowd. He looked anxious.

Behind us our hut was being emptied of our backpacks and other belongings. Khiem proceeded at a painfully slow pace, and as we passed the villagers peeled away and ran on up ahead, rebuilding the path in front of us, still thrashing their pots. I felt lost and bewildered in the cacophony of sound, though in a strange way protected by it. It was an island of noise in the sea of the night. ‘Are you there, Mick?’ I heard a slight panic in my voice.

‘Right behind you, brother!’

We shuffled on, this bizarre procession illumined by the massive, pendulous moon. Perhaps it was the blast of opium I’d taken before coming out of the hut, but I saw the event as if from above, singular and inexplicable, Khiem leading us with an outlandish gait that was almost a dance, me following with Charlie in my arms, Mick keeping step behind and Phil bringing up the rear, intoning psalms. And at the periphery of the crowd I saw other figures assembling, behind the villagers as it were, as we approached the spirit gate. Hordes of figures in shadow, or in silhouette, pressing in behind the villagers. I blinked them away.

On either side of the spirit gate lighted torches were burning, throwing off a waxy, syrupy smoke, and as we approached, I saw that the moon had