It was a few weeks later that I found the door to the greenhouse already propped open one morning and the vapour from the sprinklers curling out into the cold. The lamps were on too, though hazy, because the glass walls had been made nearly opaque by condensation. The sun didn’t reach over the trees until midday and it was still murky otherwise. I stopped shy of it.
Crockery chinked inside. Gulliver lifted her head and trotted through, nudging the door further open. It bumped into the frame again behind her. I heard a voice say something to her, a man’s voice, but too quietly for me to make out the words or whether I knew the owner.
It was much warmer inside than out. The air was heavy with the smell of damp ferns. I’d put in a clockwork misting system last year, but I’d almost forgotten about it; it took time to set it going and at some point I’d given up. It kept a fine spray in the air near the door for about ten minutes every hour. Someone had turned it on. The stove, further inside, was lit and strong; the light was coming towards me, through the ferns, which cast piano-key shadows in the vapour as it spun.
‘Come and sit down, the coffee’s ready.’
I pushed aside one of the ferns with the knuckle of my middle finger. The smell of coffee met me over the woodsmoke. At the wobbly workbench, Clem grinned and burst to his feet to hug me. It was like being folded into a rainbow. He had bright red hair, so he had never suited dark colours, and instead all his waistcoats were purple or green, with peacock lining or tartan, and his ties were always done in fantastic paisley embroidery, and his handkerchief never matched. He smelled of smoke and green. Where I’d lost it, he had put on weight; solid, broad, middle-aged weight. He was nearly twice my size. I had a sudden, weird realigning of perspective. Near Charles, who was so frail, I was big and clunky, but I felt fragile now, for all Clem was shorter. It must have shown too, because his gold eyebrows went right up. At any distance they were invisible and he always looked good-naturedly surprised.
‘Merrick, old man, you look absolutely awful. Charles hasn’t been withholding food, has he?’
‘No – no,’ I said, then laughed when I realised his wife was here too. She was almost his opposite and together they were like a pair of pheasants, the cock all bright and showy and the hen modest and brown. There were blonde streaks in her hair and she was tanned. ‘Minna, it’s lovely to . . . I’m sorry there aren’t better chairs . . .’
‘I’m happy to perch,’ she said cheerfully. ‘In fact I could sit on Gulliver, couldn’t I? She’s quite spacious.’
Gulliver snuffled at her, tail wagging interestedly. Her fur had puffed up almost at once in the humidity and she was nearly spherical now.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked. I nearly said that I’d thought the statue had invited itself in and made some coffee.
‘Fishing you out, old man. Consider yourself fished. And, er, playing with your clockwork. Sorry,’ he added as a new puff of mist came from the nozzle next to me.
Clem and I had met in the Navy and bonded over a mutual interest in Peru, but we had lost touch after I went to the East India Company and he went off to be an expeditionary for the Royal Geographical Society. I hadn’t thought of him or expected to see him again. He was Sir Clements Markham, in fact, and I had never been wholly convinced that we might really be friends. But when I came back from China in such a mess, he had arrived a few days later. I don’t know how he heard I’d been injured, or how he even knew I was in England, but he’d burst into the house and announced he would be looking after me until I was upright again. And he had, cut short only when he was called off on an archeological expedition to some Incan ruins a month later.
He pulled the last stool out from under the bench, moved the old flowerpots, and put me on it. Sitting took me into the heat of the open stove. It was lovely. Minna smiled to say hello. Her eyes were dark and so she tended to sparkle even when she wasn’t meaning to. Clem kissed the top of my head. ‘You’ll like this, it’s proper coffee.’
‘Do you take sugar, Em?’ said Minna.
I tried to remember. I hadn’t had coffee for years. It was expensive. ‘No, I don’t think so. When did you get in?’
‘Oh, only about twenty minutes ago,’ Clem said. ‘Couldn’t face going up to the house and talking to Charles, though. One of the gardeners said you’d be down here. Got lost twice,’ he added. He was a geographer and losing his way was a novelty. ‘And the house looked pretty chilly, what with the . . . enormous holes in the roof and the wall?’
‘Yes. We had some accidents. The wood from the big tree near the house explodes.’
‘Of course it does,’ he laughed. He knew Heligan well enough to expect pointless bizarre things in the neglected corners.
Minna was arranging the coffee-making things across the bench, which she’d neatened up. I’d left a sprawl of seed trays and packets out and now they were all in a strict row along the side. A small hessian bag sat open, still mostly full of coffee beans that gleamed. A mortar and pestle I normally used for seeds still had some ground coffee in it – it looked much cleaner than it did usually – and by her elbow a percolator that wasn’t mine stood fastened, steaming. It was bright bronze and it showed us all in colours warmer than we really were. They had brought their own cups too. She set one under the percolator and pushed a lever gently. The black coffee was silky and slow. She poured in the milk while she waited for it, so that it plumed brown, then gave the cup to me, still with rainbow coffee bubbles around the outside where the furling milk hadn’t quite yet reached.
It was wonderful when I tried it. When I lifted my head, they were both watching me in the same concerned way.
‘I don’t look that bad,’ I said, but not with much confidence. Next to the two of them, I could have been a tramp. My clothes were clean, more or less, but they had been washed in a sink, not boiled, and nothing had been ironed for a long time. Because I always had my sleeves rolled back, the cotton was a fresher, clearer white about halfway down my arms when they were rolled down.
‘Well,’ said Minna.
‘Listen, we’re not actually here for a jaunt,’ Clem said. ‘There’s another wave of malaria in India. Price of quinine through the roof. The India Office are tired of buying it in from Peru and they want their own supply once and for all. They want us to try for the cinchona woods.’
‘So you came via Cornwall?’
‘When I say us I mean you too. They said you refused by letter a few weeks ago and I said they must have misunderstood.’
‘No. I can’t go on an expedition, Clem, I can’t walk.’
‘You’ll be fine. Boat, horse, tent, easy. I’ll show you the route.’
‘I can barely make it down here from the house—’
‘Of course you can’t, you’re living in the middle of nowhere with Vile Charles. Now do shut up and listen to me.’
I sat quietly. Minna kicked my ankle and nodded a little. I couldn’t meet her eyes for long. I loved both of them, but they did tend towards over-optimism, having always had a lot of money and a lot of friends.
Clem lifted his bag into his lap to take out a folded map. When he unfolded it, it was a beautiful chart of southern Peru, covering much more territory than mine did. Lima was too far north for it, but near the coast was Arequipa, marked quite big, and then the great ragged shape of Lake Titicaca. He had already inked on the route around. It looped past the lake, north, to a pair of towns close together called Juliaca and Puno, then north again to Azangaro, where there was a drawing of what might have been a cathedral. After that, the Andes. Beyond them, there was nothing. None of the forest there was charted. The cartographer had put on intricate little etchings of tropical trees and the suggestion of mountains for the sake of not having white space, but that was all. Clem pinned the edges down with our cups when they tried to curl upward.
‘Right. Now, I don’t know what the situation was when you last looked into it, but according to the latest reports, the whole Sandia Valley – that’s this bit here on the interior side of the Andes – and everything nearer the mountains has been completely stripped of cinchona. There’s nothing left within easy reach, which sounds unpromising but in fact it’s good. It means there’s no quinine industry in the region. The supply regions are in the north, and the suppliers up there harvest lower-yield trees. But there are high-yield woods in the rainforest beyond Sandia, much harder to access. Technically, though, trying to get at them would be a violation of the monopoly, so we’ll have to be—’
‘Wait, wait,’ I said. ‘There’s an official monopoly now?’
‘Ooh, yes,’ he said. ‘The government run the supply as far as I can tell. Or rather, a group of violent criminals runs the supply, and the government enforces their monopoly for a cut of the very considerable profits. The point is to keep foreigners from taking anything.’
‘What happens if they catch us?’
‘Prison or shot.’
‘Right. And – how do you know there are more trees further in?’
‘Because the Dutch got out with a few. You remember, don’t you?’ he added, sounding a little shocked that I’d forgotten about it. ‘The expedition who were killed by mad Indians last year. One of them survived, got out with some trees, remember?’
‘But only a couple of the specimens survived the passage to the Java plantation,’ I said slowly. The information came back as if I’d dreamed it rather than read it in the papers and argued to and fro by letter with India House about it. Finding the recollection again felt like having turned aside a stone to get at the thready roots of a few weeds only to find the ruins of a whole town. Something spidery walked down my back when I saw the extent of what I hadn’t known I’d forgotten. I glanced around the greenhouse as if there might have been more crumbled half-memories clustered around it. ‘And then the trees died once they were planted. The last British expedition were all killed too.’
‘That’s it. Are you all right?’ Clem said.
‘I’m . . . sorry. I do know. Too much time by myself not talking.’
‘Happens to me whenever I visit my mother, I can quite imagine it’s dreadful after months rather than days,’ Minna said. She poured me some more coffee. ‘I come back a veritable mute.’
I didn’t say I thought it was something more serious than that. It was a miniature realisation, that I’d forgotten about the Dutch expedition, but it had lit a little miner’s lamp somewhere in those lost places in the pit of my mind. The light echoed weirdly and I had a horrible feeling there were caverns there when I’d thought there were only a few caved-in corridors. Seams and forgotten seams.
Clem rubbed my shoulder. Some of it must have showed on my face.
‘So – to be clear,’ I said at last, because they had both been waiting for me to speak in a loaded silence that sounded a lot like they wanted to make sure I definitely could speak still. ‘We are . . . being sent to steal a plant whose exact location nobody knows, in territory now defended by quinine barons under the protection of the government, and inhabited by tribal Indians who also hate foreigners and have killed everyone who’s got close in the last ten years. Who was the British man?’
‘Backhouse,’ Minna said. ‘Half a regiment of Peruvian soliders disappeared in the forest trying to help him.’
‘Oh, did they, good,’ I said. ‘And you two think you’ll get through it all if you go at the pace of someone with only one working leg?’
‘Proper organisation, that’s all that’s required,’ Clem said firmly. ‘You don’t mind a few mad Indians, do you?’
‘It’s more the two of you I’m worried about.’
‘Kind but unnecessary,’ he said, waving his hand. ‘Anyway, you make it sound like we haven’t the foggiest where to look. But we’ve got a pretty good idea of where the things are. It’s round here.’
He was circling a point right on the edge of the map with his knuckle.
When I touched it too, my fingertip, rough from digging and seeds, scratched against the paper. I clenched my hand, then motioned between us. ‘We would stand out, in the interior highlands of Peru. If the monopoly is what you say then they’re watching for white men.’
‘We say we’re mapmakers. And we will be. The India Office has asked for an accurate map of the region as well as the plants. If we have to take any planty-type equipment, we’re also collecting rare types of . . . something that grows in the same conditions at the same altitude?’ he finished hopefully.
‘Coffee,’ I provided. ‘But I doubt anyone would believe that.’
‘Well, that brings me to what I wanted to ask you. Your father lived round there for a while, didn’t he?’
‘An Indian mission village called New Bethlehem. It’s about here.’ I touched the map just by the Bolivian border. ‘My grandfather was collecting quinine for one of the early runs but he was caught and he had to hide for a while. They took him in. Dad went back for other things, orchids mostly. And some coffee, actually. Frost-resistant stuff up there. He used to live there four or five months of the year.’ I hesitated. ‘But we’d have to ask around for it, once we were over the Andes. Neither of them ever put it on a map. Dad said there are things that shouldn’t go on maps. He got cross when I tried to make him tell me once. It’s the only time he ever snapped at me that I remember.’
‘Oh dear, how useful.’
‘Oh, well.’ I had to wave my hand to encompass all the things about Dad that hadn’t been very useful. He had been made mostly of fly-fishing techniques and Peruvian stories, and since he wasn’t a capacious person to begin with, there hadn’t been much leftover room for cartography or finance. Getting annoyed about it was like blaming a butterfly for not being able to spin a web.
‘Did he ever say why?’
‘No.’ I tried to think about it. At the time I’d taken it at face value. ‘But he was born there. I think he was trying to protect the Indians. Or something.’
‘Well, that’s not an ignoble thing. We do have a habit of barging in and stealing all their cocoa. Do you suppose anyone there would still remember him?’ Clem said. ‘Anyone willing to help us?’
‘Should do. But I wouldn’t be confident of getting a letter out there,’ I said, looking up.
‘No need,’ he said. ‘We can sort out a guide and details when we arrive; in fact it’s better that way. No paper trail, no letters, no evidence. We’ll cross the Andes, find someone who can take us to the village, then we’ll be roughly in the right place and if they recognise you they might just help. They don’t know anyone else from Adam and we’re going to need native help if we’re going to find these wretched trees.’
‘I’m not him. Even if the same people are there, I don’t speak Quechua—’
‘I do. Listen, I don’t want you just for that. The idea is this. The guide and I will go up to the cinchona woods and bring back seeds or cuttings or whatever, and then you’ll look after them from there on in. If the path is decent you could even come up to the woods with us.’ He lifted his eyebrows at me, because I’d started to shake my head while he was still talking. ‘I’d be a lot more confident about the specimens if I knew you’d chosen them. I suspect you know how to look after them?’
‘I could make an educated guess,’ I said, hedgingly.
‘Good. So what do you think? Don’t think about the leg. That isn’t a reason not to do anything.’
‘Well, it is.’
‘I’m logistics. Let me worry about that,’ he said over me. ‘Merrick, the India Office put you at the top of the list. It isn’t only me who wants you to do this. They haven’t forgotten about you.’
‘I’m sure they haven’t. But I really can’t walk. Perhaps it will be a bit better in good company doing something useful, but not much.’
‘Can you ride?’
‘Yes—’
‘Good then. Em, I want your brain and your family connections. If you keep those in good order, I’ll worry about getting the rest of you there. Don’t think I imagine you’ll spring up like a lamb, I know you won’t, but the difficulty of getting you over there is paltry in comparison to the value of your presence – do you understand?’
‘Do you mean it?’
‘No, I’m lying, and so is the India Office, which of course is well known for its sentimental approach to all things.’
I looked between him and Minna and wanted to insist that it was a terrible idea. In the best of all possible worlds, Clem was going to realise it was a mistake and I’d have to stay like a fifth wheel in Arequipa or Azangaro to wait for him while he crossed the Andes, and in the worst, there was going to come a moment when we would have to run from someone with a gun and I wouldn’t be able to.
‘They’re offering to pay a fortune if we get it right,’ he added. He only flicked a look at the house, but it was clear enough.
‘I imagine doing something like this has come to seem wholly impossible,’ Minna said gently. ‘But honestly, Em, we can get you there. Stop looking at it as an impossible thing and start looking at it as a thing that must be done.’
I was on the edge of saying no, but having almost decided on it made that future very clear. A parsonage in Truro while Charles amputated pieces of the grounds and the house until eventually there was nothing left and he was stuck with me in a spare room, surrounded by people he would never believe weren’t beneath him. And me: I’d never see anything but Cornwall again, except maybe Clem’s townhouse in London at Christmas. I’d be the quiet, tired person in the corner, and all those parts of myself I could feel crumbling now would be gone, and with any luck I’d never even remember that I’d been cleverer once and better, but I didn’t generally have good luck. Minna frowned, worried. It tipped me over. It was better to get shot in the Andes than live for another forty years while they both looked at me that way.
‘Christ, the two of you. All right. We can try,’ I said. ‘But I won’t be magnanimous when it all goes wrong.’
Clem laughed. He had a huge, golden bubble of a laugh. It wasn’t put on, just expansive. I’d never heard him sing, but I’d always had a feeling he could have easily filled a concert hall. ‘Excellent. We’re off in December; it’ll be summer in Peru. Which we’ll need, I tell you now. The highlands round Titicaca are bitter in winter. You wouldn’t be able to get plants through it alive. What’s it now, end of August – here, do you speak Spanish?’
I shook my head.
‘Soon fix that. I’ve a fellow at the Spanish Embassy in London. Let’s get you shacked up there until we go, he’ll teach you. You’ll learn in no time. It’s as close to English as crumpets and cricket. God, it’s lovely in here,’ he exclaimed, surging to his feet again. He rubbed Gulliver’s ears with both hands and she jumped up with a happy yip and walked round him twice, as pleased with him as I was. ‘We’ve brought a picnic, shall we get cracking? You clearly haven’t eaten properly in aeons. Honestly, Em, either look after yourself or marry someone who will.’
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.