A corner of the conservatory had been curtained off from the rest by a greasy damask tablecloth. The uncle stepped to this and flung it aside with a theatrical flourish.

‘Wallah!’ went he.

‘Stone me,’ said I, in the manner of Tony Hancock.

On a cast-iron pedestal stood an ancient aquarium and in this some of the queerest plants that I had ever seen.

I was not at first sure that they were plants. They had much of the reptile and some of the fish. They were scaly and shiny and all over odd and they made me feel most ill at ease.

As with all normal children, I harboured a healthy fear of vegetables. Cabbage put the wind up me and I lived in terror of sprouts. Parental assurances that they were full of iron had been tested with a magnet and found to be naught but lies. Exactly why parents insisted upon piling vegetables onto their children’s plates had been explained to me by Billy. Vegetables were cheaper than meat and times were ever hard. When, later in life, I briefly rubbed shoulders with folk of a higher social bracket, I was amazed to discover adults who ate nothing but vegetables. These folk, I learned, were called vegetarians and although they had enough money to buy meat, they actually chose not to do so.

As one known for his compassion, I naturally felt great pity for these sorry individuals, who clearly suffered some mental aberration that was beyond my power to cure. But ever philosophical, I looked upon the bright side. After all, the more vegetarians there are in the world, the more meat there is left to go round amongst us normal folk.

‘My beautiful boys,’ cried the uncle, startling me from my musings. ‘Bring the bucket over here and we’ll serve them up their supper.

I hefted the bucket and cautiously approached. Scaly, shiny, reptile and fish and with more than a hint of the sprout: whatever they were, they were clearly alive, for they quivered and shivered and shook.

‘Are they vegetables, sir?’ was my question.

‘Mostly,’ said the uncle, peering in at his ‘beautiful boys’. ‘Mostly sprout, but partly basilisk.’

‘Chimeras,’ said the Doveston.

‘Chimeras,’ the uncle agreed.

‘And they’ll eat this meat in the bucket?’

Uncle Jon Peru Joans dug into his jacket and brought out a pair of long-handled tweezers. Passing these to me he said, ‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’

The Doveston nodded encouragingly. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘it’s a big honour. Bung them a gobbet or two.’

I clicked the tweezers between my fingers. Sweat drip-dropped from my eyebrows and I felt far from well. But I had paid my shilling and this was what I’d come for, so I plucked some meat from the bucket.

‘Arm’s length,’ the uncle advised, ‘and don’t get your fingers too near.

I did as I was told and lowered a chunk of tweezered meat into the aquarium. It was as if I had dropped a dead sheep into a pool of piranhas. Nasty little hungry mouths all lined with pointy teeth came snap-snap-snapping. I fell back with big round eyes and a very wide mouth of my own.

‘What do you think?’ the Doveston asked.

‘Brilliant!’ said I and I meant it.

We took it in turns to feed the plants and we emptied the whole of the bucket. The uncle looked on, nodding his head and smiling, while his crazy eyes went every-which-way and his fingers danced with delight.

When we were done he said, ‘There now then,’ and closed the tablecloth curtain.

I handed the uncle his tweezers. ‘Thank you very much, sir,’ I said to him. ‘That was jolly good fun.’

‘Work can also be fun,’ said the uncle. ‘Even Great Work.’

‘You were going to tell me all about that.’

‘Maybe next time,’ said the Doveston. ‘We have to be off now, or we’ll be late for Cubs.’

‘Cubs?’ I said.

‘Yes, Cubs.’ The Doveston gave me a meaningful look. Its meaning was lost upon me.

‘I’m in no hurry,’ I said. ‘Good,’ said the uncle. The Doveston groaned.

‘Are you all right, Charlie?’

‘I am, Uncle, yes. Just a touch of King’s Evil, that’s all.’ ‘I’ve a root that will cure that.’

‘I’m sure that you have.’

‘Am I missing something?’ I asked.

The uncle shook his little bald head. ‘I think Charlie has a girlfriend,’ he said. ‘And is eager to practise upon her the skills he has learned from the lady librarian.’

The Doveston sniffed and shuffled his feet.

I made the ‘eli?’ face again.

‘The Great Work,’ said the uncle, striking a dignified pose. ‘The work that will earn for me a place in the history books. But they know that I stand poised upon the threshold and that is why they watch my every move.

‘The secret policemen?’

‘The secret police. They have powerful telescopes trained upon us even now. Which is why I keep my boys behind the curtain. The secret police want to know about my work and steal it for their masters at Mornington Crescent. But they won’t, oh my word no.

‘I’m very pleased to hear that.’

‘What I’m doing here’, said the uncle, ‘is for all mankind. Not just a favoured few. What I am doing here will bring about world peace. You asked why I chose to cultivate these particular varieties of plant, didn’t you?’

I nodded that I did.

‘It is because of the drugs that can be distilled from them. Powerful hallucinogens, which, when blended correctly and taken in careful doses, allow me to enter an altered state of consciousness. Whilst in this state it is possible for me to communicate directly with the vegetable kingdom. As Dr Doolittle talked to the animals, so I can talk to the trees.’

I glanced across at the Doveston, who made a pained expression.

‘What do the trees have to say?’ I asked.

‘Too much,’ said the uncle, ‘too much. They witter like dowagers. Moaning about the squirrels and the sparrows, the traffic and the noise. If I hear that old oak by the Seamen’s Mission go on one more time about how civilized the world used to be, I’m sure I’ll lose my mind.’

I ignored the Doveston’s rolling eyes. ‘Do all trees talk?’ I asked.

‘As far as I know,’ said the uncle. ‘Although of course I can only understand the English ones. I’ve no idea what the Dutch elms and Spanish firs are saying.’

‘Perhaps you could take a language course.

‘I’ve no time for that, I’m afraid.’

I nodded moistly and plucked once more at my groin. ‘So the secret police want to talk to trees too, do they?’ I asked.

‘Their masters do. You can imagine the potential for espionage.’

I couldn’t really, so I said as much.

The uncle waved his hands about. ‘For spying. You wouldn’t need to risk human spies, if plants could do it for you. Just think what the potted plants in the Russian embassy have overheard. They’d be prepared to tell you, if you asked them nicely.’

‘I see,’ I said, and I did. ‘But you’d have to learn how to speak Russian.’

‘Yes, yes, but you get the point?’

‘I do get the point,’ I said. ‘So that is the Great Work.’

‘It’s a part of it.’

‘You mean there’s more?’

‘Much more.’ The uncle preened at his lapels. ‘Communicating with plants was only the first part. You see I wanted to know just what it was that plants wanted out of life and so I asked them. The ones in this conservatory grow so well because they tell me what they want and I give it to them. How much heat, how much light and so on. But there’s one thing that all plants really want, and do you know what that is?’

‘Love?’ I said.

‘Love?’ said the Doveston.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Not love then?’

‘They want to get about,’ said the uncle. ‘Move about like people do. They get really fed up spending all their lives stuck in one place in the ground. They want to uproot and get on the move.

‘And that’s why you’ve bred the chimeras.’

‘Exactly. They are the first of a new species. The plant/animal hybrid. My beautiful boys are a different order of being.’