No. I am not, Bahram-bhai.
Well then, Zadig Bey, said Bahram lightly. If that’s what you think then you’ll have to leave your first wife, won’t you?
Zadig sighed. Yes, he said. Some day that is what I will have to do.
Neither then nor afterwards had Bahram believed that Zadig would actually do it – but so he had, a few years later. He had settled a large sum of money on his other family, in Cairo, and had bought a spacious house in the Fort area in Colombo. Bahram had visited him there soon after: his mistress was a matronly woman of Dutch descent and so far as he could tell, their children were happy, healthy and well brought up.
The following year Bahram had taken Zadig to meet Chi-mei and Freddy, in Canton. Chi-mei had served them a fine meal and Freddy, who was a toddler then, had charmed Zadig. After that Zadig had made it his practice to visit them every time he travelled to China. On his return to Colombo he would often send Bahram news about them.
It was through one of these letters that Bahram had learnt of Freddy’s disappearance and Chi-mei’s death.
*
In the end it was the Redruth that settled the matter for Paulette – the brig cast a spell that put an end to whatever doubts she may have had about Fitcher’s offer.
If ships could be built in the image of their owners, then there would be no question about whom this one belonged to – she was like an extension of Fitcher’s very being. Like Fitcher, the Redruth was lean and angular, with sharply upcurved lines – her bowsprit even had a way of ‘twitchering and shaking’ that was strangely reminiscent of her owner’s brow. Even the sound of the wind, blowing through the Redruth’s rigging, seemed different from that of any other vesseclass="underline" if ships could speak, then the Redruth, Paulette imagined, would express herself in a voice that recalled Fitcher’s broad accent and whistling vowels.
But it wasn’t any of this that set the Redruth apart from every other sailing vesseclass="underline" it was the greenery on her decks. Plants were not of course an uncommon sight on sailships: most carried a few, either for nutrition, or decoration, or merely because a touch of green was always a welcome sight on the high seas. But the Redruth’s stock of flora extended far beyond the usual half-dozen pots: her decks were stacked also with a great number of ‘Wardian cases’. These were a new invention: glass-fronted boxes with adjustable sides, they were, in effect, miniature greenhouses. They had revolutionized the business of transporting plants across the seas, making it much easier and safer; the Redruth had scores of them on board, securely tied down with cables and ropes.
The greenest part of the ship was the quarter-deck: here stacked along the deck rails, and around the base of the mizzen-mast, were rows of pots and cases. To provide additional protection for the plants, Fitcher had designed an ingenious arrangement of movable awnings; these could be adjusted, as desired, to provide shade, sunlight, and protection from rough weather. When there was rain, the awnings turned into water-traps: with so many plants on board, the Redruth needed more fresh water than other ships, and Fitcher was loath to let a single drop go waste.
The Redruth also had its own, unique procedures for dealing with waste: refuse from its galleys was not indiscriminately emptied overboard; everything that might serve as plant nutrition was carefully separated from the remains of the salted meats that were the mainstay of the crew’s diet. Tea leaves, coffee grounds, rice, bits of old biscuit and hardtack – all this was dumped in an enormous barrel that was suspended over the stern. This container was covered with a tight-fitting, waterproof lid, but on hot, windless days the smell of decomposing matter was sometimes strong enough to elicit protests from nearby vessels.
Inevitably, what with the green of the plants and the glare of the glass-fronted cases, the Redruth presented an appearance that was much-mocked by bystanders: it was not uncommon for harbour-fronters to ask whether she was one of those famous ‘asylum ships’ that were reputed to be carrying lunatics to faraway islands. But in fact the brig, like her owner, was eccentric only in appearance: it quickly became evident to Paulette that there was nothing at all fanciful about the Redruth; on the contrary, every element of her functioning was determined by the twin motives of thrift and profit. Her consignments of greenery, for instance, required no significant outlay of capital, no tying-up of finances, and yet the returns they offered were potentially astronomical. But at the same time her goods were such as to be proof against both pilferage and piracy, their true value being unknown to all but a few.
Nor was there anything at all haphazard about the Redruth’s cargo. All her plants had been hand-picked by Fitcher himself: most were from the Americas and had only recently been introduced to Europe and were thus unlikely yet to have reached China. Amongst this assemblage of flora were antirrhinums, lobelias and georginas, introduced from Mexico by Alexander von Humboldt; also from Mexico were the ‘Mexcian Orange’ and a beautiful new fuchsia; from the American Northwest there was Gaultheria shallon, a plant both ornamental and medicinal, and a magnificent new conifer, both introduced by David Douglas – Fitcher was certain that the latter species would appeal especially to the pine-loving Chinese. Shrubs were not neglected either: the flowering currant, in particular, was a species for which Fitcher had very high hopes. This one plant, he told Paulette, had repaid all the costs of Mr Douglas’s first American expedition – luckily, no one had yet thought of introducing it to China.
Fitcher’s intention was to exchange these American plants for Chinese species that had not yet been introduced to the West. The idea seemed ingenious and original to Paulette, but Fitcher adamantly denied its authorship. ‘Have ee ever heard of Father d’Incarville?’
After a little thought, Paulette said: ‘Is he perhaps the one after whom the Incarvillea are named? With the beautiful trumpet flowers?’
‘That’s the one,’ said Fitcher.
D’Incarville was a Jesuit, said Fitcher, who spent several years at the court of the Emperor, in Peking. As with other foreigners his movements were severely restricted and he was not allowed to collect plants outside the city; nor was he allowed to visit the royal gardens. Seeking to change this, he conceived the idea of proposing a botanical exchange: he wrote home to France asking for European flowers, and his correspondents sent him tulips, cornflowers and columbines. But none of those caught the Emperor’s fancy – he chose instead a humble touch-me-not.
‘If that, then why not what we’ve got here on the Redruth?’
The Redruth’s functioning thus profoundly belied her appearance, for she was the creation neither of a crazed scientist nor a deluded dreamer. She was actually something much plainer: the handiwork of a diligent nurseryman – not a man who was a speculative thinker, but rather a practical solver of problems, someone who looked upon Nature as an assortment of puzzles, many of which, if properly resolved, could provide rich sources of profit.
This cast of mind was completely novel to Paulette. To her father, who had taught her what she knew of botany, the love of Nature had been a kind of religion, a form of spiritual striving: he had believed that in trying to comprehend the inner vitality of each species, human beings could transcend the mundane world and its artificial divisions. If botany was the Scripture of this religion, then horticulture was its form of worship: tending a garden was, for Pierre Lambert, no mere matter of planting seeds and pruning branches – it was a spiritual discipline, a means of communicating with forms of life that were necessarily mute and could be understood only through a careful study of their own modes of expression – the languages of efflorescence, growth and decay: only thus, he had taught Paulette, could human beings apprehend the vital energies that constitute the Spirit of the Earth.