Page 10 of The Bedlam Stacks

‘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.

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.