To fill long days left alone in the house (Marcus commuted to his college), Joyce’s boredom often drove her to flick through the Chalfens’ enormous supply of delivered magazines (New Marxism, Living Marxism, New Scientist, Oxfam Report, Third World Action, Anarchist’s Journal) and feel a yearning for the bald Romanians or beautiful pot-bellied Ethiopians – yes, she knew it was awful, but there it was – children crying out from glossy paper, needing her. She needed to be needed. She’d be the first to admit it. She hated it, for example, when one after the other her children, pop-eyed addicts of breast milk, finally kicked the habit. She usually stretched it to two or three years, and, in the case of Joshua, four, but though the supply never ended, the demand did. She lived in dread of the inevitable moment when they moved from soft drugs to hard, the switch from calcium to the sugared delights of Ribena. It was when she finished breast-feeding Oscar that she threw herself back into gardening, back into the warm mulch where tiny things relied on her.
Then one fine day Millat Iqbal and Irie Jones walked reluctantly into her life. She was in the back garden at the time, tearfully examining her Garter Knight delphiniums (heliotrope and cobalt-blue with a jet-black centre, like a bullet hole in the sky) for signs of thrip – a nasty pest that had already butchered her bocconia. The doorbell rang. Tilting her head back, Joyce waited till she could hear the slippered feet of Marcus running down the stairs from his study and then, satisfied that he would answer it, delved back into the thick. With raised eyebrow she inspected the mouthy double blooms which stood to attention along the delphinium’s eight-foot spine. Thrip, she said to herself out loud, acknowledging the dog-eared mutation on every other flower; thrip, she repeated, not without pleasure, for it would need seeing to now, and might even give rise to a book or at least a chapter; thrip. Joyce knew a thing or two about thrip:
Thrips, common name for minute insects that feed on a wide range of plants, enjoying in particular the warm atmosphere required for an indoor or exotic plant. Most species are no more than 1.5 mm (0.06 inch) long as adults; some are wingless, but others have two pairs of short wings fringed with hairs. Both adults and nymphs have sucking, piercing mouth parts. Although thrips pollinate some plants and also eat some insect pests, they are both boon and bane for the modern gardener and are generally considered pests to be controlled with insecticides, such as Lindex. Scientific classification: thrips make up the order Thysanoptera.
– Joyce Chalfen, The Inner Life of Houseplants, from the index on pests and parasites
Yes. Thrips have good instincts: essentially they are charitable, productive organisms which help the plant in its development. Thrips mean well, but thrips go too far, thrips go beyond pollinating and eating pests; thrips begin to eat the plant itself, to eat it from within. Thrip will infect generation after generation of delphiniums if you let it. What can one do about thrip if, as in this case, the Lindex hadn’t worked? What can you do but prune hard, prune ruthlessly and begin from the beginning? Joyce took a deep breath. She was doing this for the delphinium. She was doing this because without her the delphinium had no chance. Joyce slipped the huge garden scissors out of her apron pocket, grabbed the screaming orange handles firmly and placed the exposed throat of a blue delphinium bloom between two slices of silver. Tough love.
‘Joyce! Ja-oyce! Joshua and his marijuana-smoking friends are here!’
Pulchritude. From the Latin, pulcher, beautiful. That was the word that first struck Joyce when Millat Iqbal stepped forward on to the steps of her conservatory, sneering at Marcus’s bad jokes, shading his violet eyes from a fading winter sun. Pulchritude: not just the concept but the whole physical word appeared before her as if someone had typed it on to her retina – Pulchritude – beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection. Beauty in a tall brown young man who should have been indistinguishable to Joyce from those she regularly bought milk and bread from, gave her accounts to for inspection, or passed her chequebook to from behind the thick glass of a bank till.
‘Mill-yat Ick-Ball,’ said Marcus, making a performance of the foreign syllables. ‘And Irie Jones, apparently. Friends of Josh’s. I was just saying to Josh, these are the best-looking friends of his we’ve ever seen! They’re usually small and weedy, so long-sighted they’re short-sighted, and with club-feet. And they’re never female. Well!’ continued Marcus jovially, dismissing Joshua’s look of horror. ‘It’s a damn good thing you turned up. We’ve been looking for a woman to marry old Joshua…’
Marcus was standing on the garden steps, quite openly admiring Irie’s breasts (though, to be fair, Irie was a good head and shoulders taller than him). ‘He’s a good sort, smart, a bit weak on fractals but we love him anyway. Well…’
Marcus paused for Joyce to come out of the garden, take off her gloves, shake hands with Millat and follow them all into the kitchen. ‘You are a big girl.’
‘Er… thanks.’
‘We like that around here – a healthy eater. All Chalfens are healthy eaters. I don’t put on a pound, but Joyce does. In all the right places, naturally. You’re staying for dinner?’
Irie stood dumb in the middle of the kitchen, too nervous to speak. These were not any species of parent she recognized.
‘Oh, don’t worry about Marcus,’ said Joshua with a jolly wink. ‘He’s a bit of an old letch. It’s a Chalfen joke. They like to bombard you the minute you get in the door. Find out how sharp you are. Chalfens don’t think there’s any point in pleasantries. Joyce, this is Irie and Millat. They’re the two from behind the science block.’
Joyce, partially recovered from the vision of Millat Iqbal, gathered herself together sufficiently to play her designated role as Mother Chalfen.
‘So you’re the two who’ve been corrupting my eldest son. I’m Joyce. Do you want some tea? So you’re Josh’s bad crowd. I was just pruning the delphiniums. This is Benjamin, Jack – and that’s Oscar in the hallway. Strawberry and mango or normal?’
‘Normal for me, thanks, Joyce,’ said Joshua.
‘Same, thanks,’ said Irie.
‘Yeah,’ said Millat.
‘Three normal and one mango, please, Marcus, darling, please.’
Marcus, who was just heading out the door with a newly packed tobacco pipe, backtracked with a weary smile. ‘I’m a slave to this woman,’ he said, grabbing her around the waist, like a gambler collecting his chips in circled arms. ‘But if I wasn’t, she might run off with any pretty young man who rolled into the house. I don’t fancy falling victim to Darwinism this week.’