Moonflower Madness (11 page)

For once he spoke to her without harshness or anger. ‘When a plant has been collected and the field-notes have been written up, it has to be dried. This is done in presses between blotting paper. With fleshy plants, and in wet weather, the paper has constantly to be changed and dried.'

‘Which would have been one of my tasks,' Charles said to her, forcing a ghost of his usual grin. ‘Even in good weather, the sheets have to be changed at least once a day to make sure that mould hasn't attached itself to the plants, or insects eaten the best specimens.'

‘And how many plants will there be in the presses at any one time?' Gianetta asked, sipping the tea one of the Chinese had brought across to her.

‘Three or four hundred,' Zachary said, his mouth tugging into the hint of a smile at her stunned expression. ‘And though locals can be trained to do a certain amount of the changing, the job of arranging the plants in the press the first time is far too important to be delegated.'

‘Even to me,' Charles said, with a return of his impish humour.

‘You don't have the patience.' Zachary looked down at him, his hands on his hips. ‘How do you feel now?'

‘Shaky,' Charles replied with naked honesty.

Zachary frowned slightly. ‘The sooner you get to Chung King, the better. I'll have the Chinese sort out enough provisions for you. The next town north is only thirty or thirty-two li away. Once there I'll be able to replace both men and mules.

‘When do you think we should make a start?' Charles asked, wincing as he repositioned himself in the canvas chair.

‘In about an hour.'

Gianetta saw Charles flinch, and her own heart sank. Riding so far with a badly injured arm would not be easy for him. He would need all of her help. Ever since she had first conceived of the idea of travelling to Kansu, she had refused to admit that it might be an impossibility. Now, for the first time, defeat was staring her straight in the face. Charles could not return to Chung King without her. She had to return with him. She had no alternative.

‘Would you finish your drawings of the plants we collected yesterday?' Zachary asked her, his hair still glistening with river water, his wine-red linen shirt clinging damply to his chest, the whipcord muscles clearly defined.

She nodded. While Charles remained seated, sipping at another glass of medicinal brandy, and Zachary began to sort through the stores, ordering the Chinese to reload the mules, she began once again to draw.

‘You don't realise it,' Charles said, his voice sharp with pain. ‘But you've been paid a great compliment. Zac is a very talented artist himself and usually always does his own drawings. I've never known him to allow anyone else to draw for him, especially straight into his field-book.'

‘It's nice to know he approves of
something
about me,' Gianetta said drily, trying to resist the little rush of satisfaction that she felt.

Charles managed a semblance of his old grin. ‘He is a bit of a bear, isn't he? But take my word for it, his bark is far worse than his bite. My mother tells me he was an exuberant little boy until his parents died. Their deaths must have been a great blow to him.'

Gianetta said nothing. She knew exactly how much of a blow it must have been. Like her, he had had to go and live with people who, though kind, had not truly wanted to be burdened with him. He had had to make do with a local grammar-school education when Charles, who had admitted that he didn't have half of Zachary's intelligence or ambition, had been sent away for the most privileged education that money could buy. Yet he had still achieved far more than Charles. She remembered Charles telling her that Zachary had gone up to Cambridge on a scholarship.

‘What college was it that he went to?' she asked curiously.

‘Christ's,' Charles said with a wry grin. ‘He took honours in the natural science tripos. Very humiliating for me. All I had to show for Oxford was a rowing blue!'

They were laughing together when Zachary strode back towards them, his previous fleeting flash of good humour nowhere in evidence.

‘The mules have been reloaded. You will return with two Chinese and one pack mule. I will take the others.'

‘Do we need to rob you of the mule?' Charles asked doubtfully. ‘We shall be in Chung King in two days'time. We don't need much in the way of provisions. What we do need we can carry with us, surely?'

‘You're going to have enough problems riding with one arm, without having to cope with extra baggage,' Zachary said decisively. ‘One of the mules, with suitable provisions, goes with you. I've explained to the Chinese what is happening and paid them off. They're both trustworthy men and they'll stay with you until you reach the Residency.'

The Chinese were already mounted and waiting expectantly.

‘Are we going now?' Gianetta asked, putting down her pencil reluctantly.

Zachary nodded. ‘The sooner you leave and the sooner Charles' arm is seen to professionally, the better.'

Charles rose cautiously to his feet. ‘This is a damned ignoble way to return,' he said bitterly. ‘Perhaps we'll have better luck next year, Zac. Perhaps we could go to the Himalayas or the upper reaches of Burma?'

‘Perhaps,' Zachary said non-committedly and Gianetta looked swiftly towards him, suddenly sure that Charles' capitulation to his injury had wrecked any chance of Zac taking him again on a plant hunting expedition.

Filled with an overwhelming sense of despair, Gianetta walked over to Ben and patted him lovingly.

‘It's no use, Ben,' she said softly. ‘We have to go back. There'll be no more adventures; no searching for blue Moonflowers.'

Ben nuzzled her with his head, understanding only that he was once again about to be ridden, and indicating his pleasure at the fact.

She mounted him and as she did so Zachary helped Charles into his saddle. She heard Charles give a quickly suppressed cry of pain and walked Ben towards him.

‘Are you going to be all right?' she asked him anxiously. ‘Would it be any easier if you rode behind me?'

He shook his head. ‘No, thanks all the same, Gianetta. I've been riding since before I could walk. I can ride with one arm. Please don't look so worried.'

‘Whatever you do, don't loosen the bandage binding your arm to your chest,' Zachary warned. ‘As long as they stay firm and your arm stays immobile, you'll have no problem.'

‘Gianetta will look after me,' Charles said with a strained smile. ‘And don't frown like that, Zac. Her virtue will be safe. I might be able to ride, but if you must know the truth, I feel like the very devil.'

For the first time since she had met him, Gianetta saw Zachary Cartwright grin. ‘You'll be all right. The Chinese can set bones more efficiently than any other nationality on earth.'

Charles had walked his pony in front of Gianetta. The two Chinese had fallen into position behind them, with the pack mule on a leading rein. They were ready to leave.

‘See you in another ten or twelve months, Zac,' Charles said, looking suddenly very young and very vulnerable. ‘Make sure you bring home something that will knock them cold at Kew.' ‘I'll do my best,' Zachary promised. He looked towards her, seemed about to say something and then thought better of it, saying only, ‘Goodbye, Gianetta. I hope your uncle doesn't give you too hard a time.'

For a moment she thought she saw a flicker of sympathy in his near-black eyes, but she couldn't be sure.

‘He won't,' she said bleakly, with far more confidence than she felt. ‘Goodbye.'

Charles touched his pony's flanks with his heels and began to move off at a steady walk. Zachary stood beside the still burning camp-fire, the collapsible table and chairs nearby incongruous in the vast, bare landscape. He looked very alone. Very lonely. She turned her head away from him, fixing her eyes firmly on Charles' pony, knowing that if she looked back again the abandonment of her dreams would be too much for her. The tears glittering on her eyelashes would trickle down her cheeks and disgrace her.

Considering the difficulty under which Charles was riding, they made very good time. As dusk approached she was able to recognise the landscape in which she had camped.

‘It was just outside Fu-tu Kwan,' she said as the town became visible in the distance. ‘Near the river.'

‘I don't see how we can hope to find the exact spot where you found your yellow potentilla,' Charles said, his face sheened with sweat and exhaustion. ‘I think we're going to have to disappoint Zac.'

Gianetta thought so too. More than once she had thought that Charles had been about to fall from the saddle but the Chinese had ridden quickly up to him, genuinely caring, speedily helpful.

‘We'll stop now,' he said to her relief. ‘No point in entering Fu-tu Kwan. It's a filthy place.'

‘The river is only a little way off the trail to the right,' she said, in fervent agreement with him. ‘Can you stay mounted for just a little while longer, until we reach it?'

He gave her a weary grin. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘Of course I can. Lead on, MacDuff.'

Twenty minutes later she had found a camp site with grazing and water for the ponies and mules. The Chinese helped Charles from the saddle and he sagged against them weakly.

‘There's only tomorrow to go,' she said encouragingly.

The Chinese lowered him to the ground, sitting him down with his back supported against the trunk of a tree.

‘Thank God,' he said with heartfelt relief. ‘You know, Gianetta, I have the crazy feeling that Zac expected me to continue with the expedition, fractured arm or no fractured arm.'

‘I don't think so,' she lied soothingly. ‘You would only have been a handicap to him, wouldn't you? Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?'

He shook his head, looking pale and drawn. ‘No, nothing. The Chinese are being very good. They handle me with unbelievable gentleness.'

The Chinese were busy making a fire and unpacking provisions for the evening meal.

‘Will Zachary have difficulty in finding men to replace them?' she asked with a worried frown.

‘No.' Charles'voice was confident. ‘Zac never does have those kind of difficulties. Men are always eager to work for him. I don't know how he does it, but they always turn out to be not only hard workers, but blindingly honest into the bargain.'

‘Perhaps it's because he doesn't expect them to be anything else,' said Gianetta. She had been squatting down on her heels beside him; now she stood up. ‘Dinner looks as though it will be another twenty minutes or so. Do you mind if I go for a walk and try and find the potentilla? I know we're in nearly the same place as I camped the other night.'

‘No, I don't mind,' Charles said, closing his eyes. ‘Take my note-book and penknife with you. If you do find it, Zac will be delighted, and at least
something
will have been salvaged from this debacle.'

He opened his eyes again. ‘You know what to put in the notes, don't you? What the soil is like, where you found the plant, its position, whether it is facing north or south, whether the plant is solitary or in a group, how tall the scape is …'

‘The scape?' she asked, puzzled.

‘The stem,' he said. ‘How many flowers it carries, the width of the corolla …'

‘The corolla?'

‘The whorl of petals contained in the calyx.'

She thought it best not to ask what the calyx was, in case he decided it was pointless her even looking for the plant.

‘Yes,' she said, rising to her feet.

‘And take another cutting with my penknife,' he said, closing his eyes once again. ‘Then we can press it.'

Gianetta left him and walked away down the river bank. In the distance, the walls of Fu-tu Kwan looked just as they had done two evenings ago, neither nearer or farther. The landscape was very bare, the hills treeless apart for a few banyan trees. Poppies gave an occasional splash of colour, but apart from the poppies she could see no wild flowers and no grey-leafed, yellow-flowered shrub. The sound of the Kialing as it flowed strongly southwards was restful and she was glad that they were once more camping beside it. It would help her to sleep and not to lay awake, thinking of the dreams she had left behind her.

She had gone as far as she dared and was just about to turn back when, in the deepening dusk, she saw the beaten earth where she had camped, and nearby, the inconsequential-looking shrub, its small yellow flowers closed but unmistakable.

With an uprush of pleasure she knelt down beside it, taking a cutting, then she rested the note-book on her knee and regarded the shrub thoughtfully. She wouldn't be able to tell how many petals there were until morning, when the flower opened, but she could make notes about its situation and the soil it was growing in.

She looked at the soil and rubbed it with her fingers. It was very gritty. She somehow didn't think that would be quite the kind of description that Zachary would deem as being sufficient. She took a handkerchief from the pocket of her jacket and scooped up as much soil as she could into it.

Charles would be a far better judge of her find than she was. There were no similar plants around it, or any plants at all, so she wrote down the word ‘solitary'. Then she paused. She couldn't measure the stem accurately without a ruler, so that task would also be best left until she returned to Charles, and she couldn't make another drawing because it was too dark.

Gianetta rose to her feet, her hands grubby. She would come back in the morning to sketch it, and Charles would be able to come and look at it and make any notes that were needed.

‘I found it,' she called out to him as she walked back into the small camp. The fire was crackling merrily and the smell of beans and dried pork rose enticingly into the air.

‘Good girl.' Charles was still propped against his banyan tree and she saw that one of the Chinese had poured him a restorative brandy.