I laughed and didn’t ask him if he had anyone in mind. Clem thought that marriage was something that happened naturally to a person, like starting to like olives; somebody would come along and that would be that, which was just how it had been for him. He had no notion that being a second son with nothing and no access to any particular society except a dog was any impediment and it seemed churlish to disagree. He laughed too and popped the cork on the wine. He snorted at himself when it foamed over his hand. He gave the bottle shamefacedly to Minna.
‘There you are,’ she said to me. She had had to hold the glass off to one side to keep the bubbles from dripping on a tray of pansies. ‘Do wipe your hands on Markham.’ She never called him Clem, though he insisted on it with everyone else. When she’d met him he had been Lieutenant Markham and she said she still couldn’t altogether conceive of his having a first name.
I sank into a bright cushion of happiness. The wine was sweet and silvery, and the glass chimed when my fingernails touched it. Minna had brought everything in a hamper with leather straps. When she had finished pouring the wine, she took out a cake topped with icing flowers and a tumble of tropical marzipan fruit around a tiny iced signpost that said ‘To Peru, 6,000 miles’. She turned it so that the sign pointed the right way. ‘That’s beautiful.’
‘It was your birthday yesterday, wasn’t it?’ she said.
‘Was it? What day is it?’
‘It wouldn’t be very good if I were to pat you on the head, would it.’ Her deep laugh was thrumming up through her voice. ‘Do you know how old you are? Oh, God, you’re adding up in your head.’
‘Thirty, I’m thirty, shut up.’
Minna blinked at me slowly. ‘You know when a thing is so absurdly sweet it’s hard not to—?’ She smacked her hands together like she was killing a spider. ‘Charm-rage.’
‘Yes, perhaps don’t sit next to her,’ Clem stage-whispered.
‘Oh, Christ. I need to talk to Charles,’ I said suddenly.
Minna lifted her eyebrows at me. ‘Why would you ever talk to Charles?’
‘He arranged for me to be a parson in Truro. I need to ask him to delay the proceedings.’
‘Try cancel,’ Clem said. ‘I’m not letting you come back here again, not on your life. Which is a shame, because it’s gorgeous, but it would be a lot more gorgeous if you were to sling your brother off a cliff. You’re not willing to have a go?’
‘At homicide of the crippled and well meaning, no.’
‘Fastidious liberalism.’
‘Manners maketh man.’
Minna laughed and I smiled too.
‘Well, never mind,’ Clem said. ‘Leave him to his farthing-harvests. He’s a horrible little gnome. You need to get away from him. Tell you what, I’ll take you to Peru.’
I rocked forward as I laughed, which brought into view a little clear patch of the glass wall unobscured by ferns. Outside, the statue had been moved again. It was right up close to the greenhouse now, looking in, as if it were hoping to catch what we were saying.
FIVE
On the seventeenth of December, the Hooper waited on the Thames for the Greenwich time ball to drop, and the captain set both the ship’s clocks to noon.
It was a little ship but modern, with a spacious hold and heating pipes that circulated through all the cabins. On the first morning we passed the Cornish coastline and home. I saw the little harbour at Mevagissey and, right up on the hills, a canopy of dark evergreens that I was nearly sure were our pines, at the top of the valley. It was a degree and a half of longitude away from Greenwich and so technically about twenty-five minutes behind, which I hadn’t thought of before but Minna pointed out when we saw the first mate, who had nothing more pressing to do, resetting one of the clocks. It was too cold after that to linger outside and I retreated into the hold.
There, we had thirty Wardian cases, which were person-sized greenhouses shaped like Turkish lamps. Each one was big enough to hold a sapling tree, the glass thick enough to keep it sun-drenched and protected from the salt air. And in fact they did all have trees in them. I’d brought thirty apple trees for Clem and Minna to practise taking cuttings from.
‘You’re staring into space as though the ether is telling you things,’ Minna said.
I’d been waiting for her and Clem with my back against three copper heating pipes, and a sapling apple tree in front of me. Because they had been force-grown, they were blossoming in the heat of the hold. When I opened the little door in the case, the blossom blew out in the warm draught and brought the smell of spring with it.
‘Just vacancy – sorry. Have a pipe.’
She sat down next to me. ‘Markham’s on his way. How’s your leg, is it painful?’
‘The heating helps,’ I said. I watched her for a second. ‘You’ve gone green, are you seasick?’
‘A bit. It’s, um . . . it seems only to be in the mornings, though.’ She didn’t look pleased, only worried.
‘Well, go gently, whatever happens,’ I said, thinking of all the things it was possible to fall off or slip on: the ladders, the deck, which was slick with brine; the boxes stowed far short of Navy-fashion in the mess room.
‘I’ll lose it even if I sit perfectly still suspended in mid-air. I always lose them. Don’t tell Markham. Horrible to get him excited and hopeful for nothing.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Thank you. You don’t – disapprove?’
‘No. Christ, Minna, it’s yours until it makes an appearance in the world. It’s yours in the same way your liver is; you wouldn’t catch me telling you what to do or not do about that. I’d suggest not drinking heavily or taking a lot of opium, but you know.’
She laughed. ‘This is assuming I don’t become hysterical soon and give the game away.’
‘I can’t imagine you hysterical.’
‘Watch,’ she said darkly.
‘Morning all,’ Clem said, sliding down the ladder with a happy spring that made both of us look at him a bit hard. He didn’t notice. ‘Right! Shall we get going with this cutting lark? Gosh, it’s lovely down here,’ he added. ‘Hardly know it was a ship.’
I gave them both some barking knives. ‘Right. The idea is, if you both learn to do this, there’ll be three of us who can, whatever happens.’
I took them through how to take a scion cutting from one of the established branches, and then how to pack them properly. We used moss and one of Clem’s map cases, because those were what we would have with us in Peru.
‘God, it’s fiddly,’ Clem murmured. ‘Can’t we just take seeds?’
‘No.’ I paused while I checked his last cutting. It was jagged. ‘Calisaya cinchona seeds sport. Like apples and tulips. The daughter plant from a seed won’t necessarily be the same type as the parent. It has to be cuttings.’
‘Oh good. What a time to be a total arts and crafts duffer,’ Clem said.
‘You’ll be all right. That’s why I’ve got thirty apple trees. Plenty of practice – stop holding that knife like a hammer.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s try again. You were called to Leadenhall Street a few days ago, weren’t you?’ he said suddenly, which was his version of subtly.