They entered a clearing bounded by dense festoons of purple and red bougainvillea. Rows and rows of slipper orchids, many in bloom, were laid out on low trestle tables in the shade of mimosa and frangipani trees. The entire genus Paphiopedilum seemed to be represented here. Established species mingled with hybrids that in quality matched any in Trexler’s own collection. And then he saw it, next to where the girl was looking innocently up into the tree above, where birds were twittering. It was as if all of them had been waiting for him to find it.
Trexler approached the plant circumspectly, fearfully almost. Though there was no flower, the pattern of blotches on the leaves left him in no doubt. So rapt was he that he hardly noticed Maia had put her hand in his.
‘Is this one for sale?’ he asked huskily, trying to sound calm.
‘Everything has its price,’ she replied, laughing.
For a moment Trexler was silent. Then he asked, ‘Are there others?’
‘A few. They came from one place only, in the north. As far as we know all were taken and we have them all. We searched very hard.’
‘And you have seen the flower?’
‘The collector did. But since then none of them has flowered. So I cannot help you.’
‘I would like to buy… all of them.’
‘Then you must talk to my father.’
They drove back to Bangkok in silence, embarrassed by the awareness that each was withholding information from the other. At his hotel she left him almost no excuse not to walk away, but then called after him.
‘You couldn’t let a girl go hungry,’ she teased.
Over dinner she told him that her father was away on business until the following afternoon, but would be back in time to watch the races at the Royal Turf Club. They danced, they looked at the moon with their arms around each other. Then, under the single light bulb with the moths now revelling in ecstasy, they made love. When he woke in the morning she was gone, but on her pillow lay a leaf of the orchid to which he had vowed to give his name.
At breakfast, the waiter set a phone beside his plate, and he received instructions for the meeting with Maia’s father.
The Mercedes that took him into the city he remembered seeing parked at the Anova Nursery. The black curtains at the window remained undrawn. He knew where he was only when the driver set him down somewhere near Chulalongkorn University.
From the street and on its lower levels the apartment building was unremarkable, and remained so until they reached the third floor. ‘Mr Rama uses a separate entrance,’ the driver whispered, as if apologising. ‘You will be met on the top floor.’ He stood to attention at the lift entrance and remained there until the doors had closed. Trexler felt himself whisked upwards.
The penthouse flat overlooked the racecourse. Trexler saw below him the gathering of horses that heralded the start of a race, but Mr Rama drew his attention instead to a bank of computer screens through the open door of an adjacent room.
‘See, Mr Jones, how we marry tradition and technology. I like to see how my investments perform. Perhaps I can tempt you to a small wager before the race begins. There are a few minutes left.’
‘I’m afraid I have only a few thousand baht,’ Trexler replied nervously.
The response was an icy stare that caught him unawares. ‘If you have no money, Mr Jones, what are we doing talking about orchids?’
‘That is a different matter, Sir.’
‘Indeed it is.’ He turned to the window to contemplate the final preparations for the race. ‘I understand you got on well with my daughter, Mr Jones.’
‘Very much so.’
‘And found her attractive?’
‘What man wouldn’t?’
‘That’s good, very good. Because it might make the orchid affordable for you.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Ten thousand sterling for the orchid and the hand of my daughter in marriage. You see, Mr Jones, I want a life for her in your country so that she can be allowed – if you’ll forgive the euphemism – to blossom.’ He turned again to the window. ‘Ah, the race begins.’
That night Trexler slept fitfully. The moths around the bulb were conspicuously absent, as if aware that there was just too much excitement to share. However much Trexler tried to bring logic to bear there was always the spectre of his grandfather to over-ride it: in the mirror above where he filled his glass, in the pattern of flowers in the curtain, even when he looked down at the matting on the floor. You owe me this, the cold, demanding eyes seemed to say.
In the morning he telephoned Mr Rama’s office to convey his decision, but both father and daughter were away. With ice in his heart he left a message: tell Mr Rama that my answer is yes. ‘Mr Rama will be very pleased,’ said the receptionist. ‘What do you mean?’ Trexler replied, alarmed that his secret might be out. ‘Why, to receive such an important order,’ the voice replied.
In the days that followed, Trexler’s attempts to see Maia seemed thwarted at every turn. First her grandmother had summoned her to Chiang Mai to give guidance on the marital state. Then, by telephone, she told him that she had visited the site of origin of his orchids, where he should join her the following day. But when he reached the rendezvous at the beginning of a forest track she was not there, and he was taken to see only patches of recently disturbed earth. On telephoning the Bangkok office he was told that her father had taken ill and required her immediate attention. Trexler asked himself if it mattered that much, and returned to his Bangkok hotel having, for the moment, written her out of the equation. The marriage and its foreseeable aftermath was a diversion, albeit a pleasant one, that was best looked upon as an embellishment of his great deed. There would be plenty of time to come to terms with it and enjoy the pleasures of the flesh.
It was in this frame of mind that he accompanied his wife to be, his prospective father-in-law and diverse family members unknown to him to a registry office somewhere across the Chao Phraya River. She made no attempt to lift her veil, whispering to him that she did not know what the impact of a kiss might make on her family. In fact they had hardly spoken since the now familiar black Mercedes had collected him from his hotel. Something was amiss, but he could not put his finger on it. It therefore came as no surprise when Mr Rama touched his arm and led him aside.
‘There are small problems with the paperwork for your plants – CITES permits and the like. I may have been a little less generous with the information than was expected. If I take your wife with me to sort it out she can meet you at the airport with the plants. Best to give me her ticket in case you get separated.’ Then he added, ‘It’s a good thing the documents are in her family name.’
It was not until Trexler reached the departure hall that he felt he had played with and lost ten thousand pounds, besides having no plants and no wife. On the screen the line for his flight crept steadily upwards like the water level in some medieval aquatic torture, but still there was no sign of her. When it indicated the boarding gate he accepted defeat, cursed himself for being a fool and made his way sadly to the check-in area, vowing never to return.
But he was wrong, at least in part.
‘Ah, Mr Jones,’ the girl at the check-in desk said, ‘your companion could not find you and has already gone through.’
‘Was she carrying a… package,’ he enquired tentatively.
‘We argued about it,’ the girl said casually, ‘but it just made it as hand luggage. But Mr Jones, you must hurry. The gate will be closing.’
At the gate the last few passengers were showing their boarding cards as Trexler joined them.