Arcadia Read Online Free PDF Page A

They’d soak the poison into bread, she said, to bait the rats and mice: ‘A woman my grandma knew made
chicken soup with laurel seeds and laurel sap. They’d use it as fox bait. Or for killing crows. She fed it to her bloke by mistake. He had his bum and stomach pointing at the toilet pan for
near enough a week, and then he died. The soup had poisoned him. Nice way to go.’
    ‘Ive eaten soup like that here,’ said Con, and winked. This time their laughter was prolonged. They knew this waitress had a second job. She was the kitchen girl as well.
    ‘Bang goes your chance of ever breakfasting with me,’ she said to Con, and then pressed on with what she had to say about the laurel tree: ‘My aunt, she had a neighbour who
wanted to inherit a little apple orchard when his grandma died. Except she wouldn’t die. The older she got the fitter she became. So this man and his wife, they asked the granny round for
supper. She got the spoonwood soup. She was shaking like a cow with qualsy before she’d eaten half a bowl. But she was tough. Her heart and stomach were made of wood. They had to pinch her
nose and force some second helpings down her throat. Then that was that. She’d gone. He got her apple trees.’
    The waitress paused so that the point of what she said was not missed or weakened by the laughter that she caused or by the noise of Rook’s disruptive sneezes. Then she said, ‘And no
one ever knew the cause of death. Though they took the body to a hospital and experts cut the old girl up to see what they could see. The reason is that spoonwood doesn’t leave any traces.
Except a rash inside the mouth.’ She turned to Rook. ‘You’d better watch yourself,’ she said.
    Rook did not hear. He sneezed again. He looked as pale as chalk. It seemed his tongue and mouth were drier, and more blunted, than they ought to be, though whether this was caused by laurel sap
or by the juice of orange he could not tell. He helped himself to water from a jug on the traders’ table and rinsed his hands. He took the shot they offered him, gargled with the spirit, and
spat it out into a drain. He rubbed the stinging corners of his lips. He wiped his tongue on the cuff of his jacket. His mouth was now his most self-conscious part. Rook cursed his luck. He knew
the signs of asthma on the march. His sense of smell had failed. His nails – dug in his palms – left deep red weals which would not clear. ‘You’ll live,’ the waitress
said. ‘It takes more than a lick of spoonwood to harm a man your size.’
    Rook placed his pyramid of cakes beside him on the ground. This time the sneeze gathered in his upper nose and fizzed but did not detonate. He took deep nostril breaths to try to burst the
bubble forming in his head. He started breathing through his mouth. He sucked in air. He beat his chest as if he’d eaten too much cheese and stomach wind was warring with his heart. The more
he tried to let the sneeze go free, the more it burrowed into him, and spread. His sputum was like lard. These were the times he missed his parents most. They coped with him when he was small.
They’d ignite an asthma firework for him at the table and let him inhale smoke, his head inside the cowling of a blanket or a towel. They’d massage him. They’d soothe his chest
with balsam brewed from cloves and juniper and peppermint. They had been dead for fifteen years.
    At first, the market men were unconcerned, amused that Rook was making such a fuss. They did not understand what asthma was or how the trigger of the laurel sap and smell had so alarmed
Rook’s lungs. His breathing now was panicky and spasmed. The tree of passages, the branches, twigs, and sprays, which served the air sacs in his lungs, were swollen. They were almost blocked.
He had to cough. His chest had shrunk. He did not understand what anyone was asking him.
    He could have died. The waitress beat him on the back. She struck him with the rounded heel of her right