‘The secret policemen?’ I asked.
‘Exactly. And when I went into the shop there were two of them in there. Dressed up to look like old women with shopping bags. They were watching to see what I’d buy. They keep a record of everything I do. It all goes on file in the secret headquarters at Mornington Crescent.’
‘Why do they do this?’ I asked.
‘Because of my work. Hasn’t Charlie told you?’
‘Charlie?’
‘I thought it would be better coming from you,’ said the Doveston.
‘Good boy once more.’ The weedy man led us into his kitchen, which smelled as bad as it looked. There were bags of rubbish piled up the walls and boxes and boxes of paper.
The uncle’s eyes caught the look on my face, which was probably one of bewilderment. ‘I throw nothing away,’ he said. ‘They go through my dustbins. I’ve seen them. They look like ordinary dust-men, but they don’t fool me.’
I nodded and smiled and sniffed a little bit. There was a strange smell in this house. It wasn’t the cigarettes and it wasn’t all the rubbish. It was something else. A rich smell, heavy and pungent. And I knew where I had smelled it before. In the great glasshouses at Kew.
Uncle Jon Peru Joans lifted a chipped enamel bucket from the cluttered draining board and held it out in my direction. I took a peep inside and then a smart step backwards.
‘It’s only meat,’ the uncle said.
‘It’s meat with bits of fur on.’
‘They don’t mind the fur, it’s natural.’ I took the bucket, but I wasn’t keen. ‘Come on,’ said the uncle. ‘This way.’
He opened the outer kitchen door and the glasshouse smell rushed in. It literally fell over us. Engulfed us. Swallowed us up. It took the breath away.
The heat smacked you right in the face and the humidity brought sweat from every functioning pore.
‘Hurry in,’ said the uncle. ‘We mustn’t let the temperature drop.’
We hurried in and what I saw, to say the least, impressed me.
It was a Victorian conservatory.
I have always had a love for the Victorians. For their art and their invention and their architectural wonders. And while many purists sing the praises of the Georgians, for their classical designs, it seems to me that many of their buildings have the severity of maiden aunts. Those of the Victorian era, on the other hand, are big blowzy tarts. They rejoice in their being. They cry, ‘Come and look at me, I’m gorgeous.
The Victorians really knew how to build on a grand scale. When they constructed bridges and museums and piers and huge hotels, they simply went over the top. Wherever there was room for a flourish or a twiddly bit, they stuck it on.
The conservatory of Uncle Jon Peru Joans had more flourishes and twiddly bits than you could shake an ivory-handled Victorian swagger stick at. This wasn’t just a blowzy tart, this was a music hall showgirl.
It swelled voluptuously from the rear of the house, all bulging bosoms of glass. The ornamental ironwork fanned and flounced, with decorative columns rising to swagged capitals. Like hymns in praise of pleasure, as Aubrey Beardsley wrote.
But if the conservatory itself was a marvel, the plants that grew within were something more. I had seen exotic blooms before at Kew. But nothing I had seen compared with these. This was exoticism taken to a wild extreme. The colours were too colourful, the bignesses too big.
I gawped at a monstrous flower that yawned up from a terracotta pot. You couldn’t have a flower that big. You couldn’t, surely.
‘Rafflesia arnoldii,’ said the uncle. ‘The largest flower in the whole wide world. It comes from upper Sumatra, where the natives believe it is cross-pollinated by elephants.’
I leaned forward to have a good sniff
‘I wouldn’t,’ said the uncle.
But I had.
And ‘Urrrrrrrrrgh!’ I went, falling backwards and clutching at my hooter with my bucketless hand.
‘Smells just like a rotten corpse,’ said UncleJon PeruJoans. ‘You’d best not sniff at anything unless you’ve asked me first.’
I sought to regain my composure. ‘It wasn’t too bad,’ I lied.
‘That’s what Charlie said.’ The uncle smiled a crooked smile. ‘And there was me thinking that children had a more sensitive sense of smell.’
I fanned at my face. ‘What is that called?’ I asked, pointing to the nearest thing as if I gave a damn.
‘Ah, this.’ The uncle wrung his hands in pleasure and gazed lovingly upon a number of large fat white and frilly flowers that floated in a tub of oily water. ‘This is called the Angel’s Footstep.’
I wiped at the sweat that was dripping in my eyes. I was seriously leaking here. My vital fluids were oozing out all over the place. I’d been thirsty when I’d arrived, but now I was coming dangerously close to dehydration.
‘The Angel’s Footstep,’ the uncle repeated. ‘So named because it is said of angels that, like Christ, they can walk upon water. But only when the moon is full and only upon its reflection.’
‘And the leaves are poisonous,’ said the Doveston.
‘Extremely,’ the uncle agreed. ‘Eat one of those and you’ll join the angels. Oh my, yes indeed.’
‘I think I might join the angels any minute if I don’t have something to drink,’ I said.
The uncle’s eyes fficked over me. ‘Put the bucket down,’ he said kindly. ‘There’s a water tap over in the corner there and a metal cup on a chain. Don’t touch anything else, or smell anything, all right?’
‘All right, sir,’ I said.
Being a resilient lad, who had already survived diphtheria and whooping cough and phossy jaw and Bengal rot, I wasn’t going to let a bit of dehydration get me down too much. And so, having revived myself with a pint or two of Adam’s ale, I was once more fit as a fiddle and fresh as a furtler’s flute.
‘All right now?’ asked the uncle.
‘Yes, thank you,’ said I.
‘Then let me show you these.’
The uncle drew my attention to a tub of plants. Deep green leaves they had, which spread in a flat rosette, interlaced with violet—tinged flowers. ‘Mandragora officinarum,’ he said. ‘The now legendary mandrake. Beneath the surface of the soil its root is the shape of a man. This is the witch plant, used in many magical ceremonies. It is said that when pulled from the ground it screams and that the scream will drive the hearer mad. Should we give it a little tug, do you think?’
I shook my head with vigour.
‘No.’ The uncle nodded. ‘Best not, eh? The roots in fact contain a tropane alkaloid which taken in small doses can induce hallucinations and visions of paradise. In large doses however, they induce—’
‘Death,’ said the Doveston.
‘Death,’ said the uncle. ‘It was very popular with Lucrezia Borgia. But three hundred years ago the Persians used it as a surgical anaesthetic.’
‘They dried the root,’ said the Doveston, ‘ground it and mixed it with camphor, then boiled it in water. You sniffed the steam. The Romans originally brought it to England.’
‘Your brother knows his stuff,’ said the uncle, patting his prodigy’s head and then examining his fingers for cooties.
I was given the full guided tour. Uncle Jon Peru Joans showed me his poppies. ‘From which opium is distilled.’ His Cannabis sativa. ‘Indian hemp, beloved of beatniks.’ His Menispermaceae. ‘A member of the South American moonseed family, from which the arrow-head toxin, curare, is obtained.’ And his Lophophora williamsii. ‘Peyote. O wondrous peyote.’
We took in the monkshood and mugwort, the henbane and hellebores, samphire and the scurvy grass, toadflax and toxibelle. I didn’t touch or smell anything.