A Twist of Orchids (3 page)

Mara left the Americans to make their peace with Jacqueline and went to Joseph who, with Maïtre Joffre, was making his way slowly to the notary’s car.

“She’s gone,” Joseph said as Mara came alongside him and took his free arm. It was what he had said to everyone at the service and graveside, as if repetition would somehow help him to grasp the reality. His gnarled face, made wooden by his affliction,
was unable to shape to his emotion, but his eyes shone with the anguish of unshed tears. The sagging lower lids were red and dry. They made Mara think of something desiccated and at the same time newly flayed. A bubble of saliva winked at the corner of his mouth, burst, and began to snail down his chin. She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue, found only the one she had blown her nose on, and used it to wipe away the trail of spit.

“Yes, she’s gone,” she tried to comfort him, “and we’ll all miss her. But you won’t be alone, Joseph. You’re surrounded by people who care for you, who’ll stand by you.” Neighbors who themselves were aging, but who would support him out of solidarity. And herself. She was the incomer, the youngest resident of Ecoute-la-Pluie. She would repay every kindness Amélie and Joseph had ever shown her. She turned to the notary.

“Are you coming back with us?” A simple funeral reception was to be held at the Boyers’.

“
Oui
,” Maïtre Joffre sighed. He opened the car door. “It’s a sad day.”

Together they backed Joseph onto the passenger’s seat. He had been a big man, still was, although today his body felt to Mara like a gathering of bones. His eyes followed the notary as he walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side. Urgently, Joseph tugged at her sleeve.

“You’ve got to find out.” His lower jaw trembled, and his voice was barely audible. Mara had to bend forward to catch his words. “They won’t tell me. But they might tell you.”

“Won’t tell you what, Joseph?” she asked gently.

“Why?” Joseph looked at her pleadingly. “Why was she up there?”

“Does it exist or not?” demanded the fellow orchid enthusiast, thumping a page of the open book they held between them.

“As I said, it’s an uncertain sighting. Not mine, unfortunately,” said Julian Wood.

The enthusiast was no fellow but a towering female whose salient bosom nearly struck him in the face as she leaned over to make her point. Above that part of her anatomy he was aware of shrewd blue eyes in a round face and a full head of unnaturally red hair. For the moment he felt dwarfed and a little desperate. Of course, he was sitting and she was standing, which gave her an unfair advantage. A long, lean, middle-aged Englishman with melancholy features obscured by an untidy mustache and beard, he found the little table at which he crouched very uncomfortable. It was positioned just inside the doorway of the Librairie Mazeau, the newest bookstore in the town of Bergerac. The idea was that customers coming and going would stop to purchase an autographed copy of his most recent work,
Les orchidées sauvages de la Dordogne/Wild Orchids of the Dordogne
, a stack of which stood on the floor beside him. With spring around the corner, it was theoretically a good time to promote a book about flowers. But winter still had the land in its grip; people were exhausted and grumpy from months of nasty weather and far from believing in spring. So far, all he had attracted was this woman and cold air every time the door opened.

“Ach! Then why include it?” Her English was stiff but correct.
German, he thought. Or, he modified, picking up a singsong intonation, Swiss.

“Because I think it almost certainly grew in these parts once and hopefully still does.” Julian spoke guardedly of an unidentified Lady’s Slipper orchid of which he had only artifactual traces. His book, a lovingly annotated bilingual photo-guide of every species of terrestrial orchid known to the region, included a blurry photo and an artist’s sketch of a flower he had provisionally named
Cypripedium incognitum
, not known at all. The orchid was a thing of mystery and almost sinister beauty. Its bright pink middle petal, the labellum, was shaped into the characteristic pouch-like slipper that gave the genus its name. Two astoundingly long, twisted, dark purple petals sprang dramatically from the sides of the flower.

Perhaps because it was unknown,
Cypripedium incognitum
drew Julian like a siren’s song.
Find me
, the flower seemed to whisper. And from the moment it had thrust itself into his life a couple of years ago, he had been obsessed with doing just that, combing hills, meadows, and woodlands in his search. Ardently he believed that one day this flower, seductive as a phantom bride, would reward his quest by showing him its face. Somewhere it waited, just for him, on a sun-dappled ridge or around the next turning of the path.

The woman, still skeptical, said, “You know, of course, Western Europe has but one indigenous Slipper orchid,
Cypripedium calceolus.
If this”—she thumped the page again—“proves to be a native, it will be two. It will make a sensation for the orchid world.”

Good God, she didn’t have to tell him!
The monumental possibility had long teetered in his mind like a boulder on a slender finger of stone.

“However,” she went on, “I think it is more likely an import that has managed somehow to establish itself in the wild.”

“Even so, it makes for a remarkable story,” Julian countered. The chances of a transplant surviving were slim, which made his
Cypripedium
not only alluring but vulnerable and valiant.

“Hmm. And you are sure about the lateral sepals?” She referred to two blackish purple petal-like structures flanking the labellum; a third of similar hue arched over top, like a canopy. “This, too, I question. As you know, except for the Ram’s Head and
Cypripedium plectrochilum
, all other Slipper orchids typically have the lateral sepals fused as one. In your book you show them clearly separated.”

“It’s what makes this orchid so remarkable.”

“But what is your evidence? Ach! A picture taken in situ, not very good, and this drawing of some kind of embroidery.” The photograph she referred to had been shot in May 1984 by Mara’s twin sister, Bedie; the drawing was an artist’s sketch, based on an antique embroidered representation of
Cypripedium incognitum
dating from 1869. Bedie, unfortunately, could not be asked about the orchid; she had taken all knowledge of it with her to the grave. The embroidery, however, told a tale. It was a remarkable piece of needlework done by someone with an eye for detail and was the most complete depiction of the flower Julian had. The photo, blurry and stained, was unreliable and by itself could have shown merely a one-off mutant. However, the embroidery was botanically precise and gave the flower a second, much earlier reference point. The two, taken together, were sufficient to convince Julian that the orchid, native or transplant, was no isolated event.

“Moreover,” went on the Swiss, “you give no information on how you came across the photograph or where you found the embroidery.”

“No,” said Julian firmly. “I don’t.” That would be to reveal the areas of his ongoing search. The world was full of orchid
hunters, most of them, as far as he was concerned, totally unscrupulous.

“Hmm,” she said, perhaps divining his motives. “Such an orchid I have never seen, and I would very much like to do so. I am particularly interested in Slipper orchids. This one”—she cocked a shrewd, bright eye at him—“I don’t mind telling you, I particularly wish to have.” She paused, the eye sizing him up. “I am prepared to pay you extremely well to find it for me.”

“You—what?” He gaped, unable to believe what he was hearing. She was proposing to engage him in the same way collectors of past centuries had hired plant hunters to go to the ends of the earth to bring back exotic species. He understood what drove collectors, being prey to some of the same mad forces himself, but really, this Alpine Valkyrie had a nerve. The orchid, if it belonged to anyone, belonged to him. He had no intention of delivering up what could prove to be the greatest orchidological find of the twenty-first century to anyone but the botanical world at large, a world he intended one day to stand on its ear. He struggled to maintain a civil front.

“Well—er—it’s been nice talking to you.”

“Perhaps I do not make myself clear. I want this orchid.”

She had, and he wanted her to leave. She was blocking the entrance and, more importantly, potential buyers. The door opened, admitting another blast of frigid air, and a man squeezed past.

Julian backpedaled. “As I said, it’s an uncertain sighting. One can’t really be sure of it.”

Her gaze narrowed. “So you are now saying you don’t know if there really is such a thing?”

“No. Well, yes. I suppose when you get right down to it, that is what I’m saying.”

“Ha!” Her wide red mouth opened in a predatory laugh, and
she punched him playfully on the shoulder. The blow rocked him backwards. “You are dodging.” She pronounced it
dotching.
“You are afraid I will steal your darling. All right. Simply prove to me
Cypripedium incognitum
exists. I will pay.”

Julian heaved himself up. He was taller than she, but not by much. He said briskly, “Well, that’s my point, isn’t it? In order to prove anything, I first have to find it. So you see, it’s sort of a chicken-and-egg thing. And if I find it—
when
I find it—I won’t need to be paid.” He gave her a ghastly grin. Let her chew on that.

The woman waved chickens and eggs aside. “Monsieur Wood, I am not just an ordinary collector. I am also a botanist and a breeder. I specialize in Slipper orchids. I have a greenhouse full of rare species that people from all over the world beg to see. I am Adelheid Besser. You have heard of me?”

“Ah.” He had, and he acknowledged the name with a sinking feeling. She also had a reputation for ferocious acquisitiveness and was exactly the kind of person he needed to shield his orchid from.

She went on grandly: “However, my interest in orchids is more extensive than collecting and breeding. I do also research into the food and medicinal uses of orchids. For example, do you know the European Lady’s Slipper has a very interesting phyto-chemical makeup? It contains cypripedin, an allergenic quinone that gives some people a bad rash.”

You give me a bad rash
, he thought.

“The plant makes this substance to protect itself from fungal attacks. Now, have you ever thought that perhaps cypripedin has antifungal properties that can be commercially exploited?”

My God.
Julian’s mind flew protectively to his orchid, and his stomach lurched.
She’ll grind it up. Or boil it. To make a cure for athlete’s foot.
He stared at her in horror, much as he would have stared at a cannibal about to eat him.

“So,” she pursued, impervious to his state of mind, “to get back to
Cypripedium incognitum.
If you can prove to me this orchid exists, as I said, I will pay you well. Call me when you have considered my proposition.” She gave him her card.

“Look, I’m really not interested—” He backed away as Adelheid Besser accosted him again with her enormous anatomy.

“I would not,” she said ominously, “wait too long.”

Julian drove back to Ecoute-la-Pluie at the end of the afternoon. His encounter with Adelheid Besser had left him feeling paranoid and helpless. Paranoid because he was desperate to protect his orchid from people like her; helpless because in order to protect it, he first had to find it. It would not come into bloom—if it bloomed at all; orchids could be bloody temperamental—until early May. Until then, there was little he could do. Without its flower,
Cypripedium incognitum
would be hard to spot.

Mara was in the kitchen assembling a
gratin dauphinois
when he came into the house. They alternated cooking nights. Tonight was her shift, and when she cooked she was typically distracted, if not downright cranky. Julian exchanged quick pecks with her and edged between their two dogs to get a beer from the refrigerator.

“How’s Joseph bearing up?” He did not know the Gaillards well but had liked Amélie, was sorry his book signing had made him unable to pay his last respects.

“Not well. I passed on your regrets. A nephew and his wife are with him now.” She squinted at an opened cookbook through a pair of varifocal glasses that she had never learned to see through, near or far. “But they can only stay for a few more days. After that, until some kind of regular home care is set up for him, Jacqueline and another nurse will rotate to visit him daily, and Francine Boyer, Huguette Roche, Suzanne Portier, and I will work in turns to drop in, see to shopping and his evening meals. I’m taking some of this over to him later.”

“Poor old boy. Who’d have thought she’d go first?” Julian echoed everyone’s sentiments. He dodged around her, getting a glass, rummaging through drawers. Her kitchen, a model of good design, boasted color-coordinated appliances, strategic track lighting, and a center island table with matching stools that were too low for him. Interiors were Mara’s profession, and she had successfully transplanted her Montreal practice to the Dordogne, where her services were much in demand. However, Julian still had not figured out where things like the bottle opener were kept.

“Here.” She found it for him in the dishwasher. “Now stop hovering.”

So he backed off and stood watching her, sipping his beer and feeling a bit at loose ends.

The problem from Julian’s perspective was that the rest of her house was like her kitchen: a showcase.

“You have to understand,” Mara had told him when he first moved in, “my home is my shop front, my display window.”

“Yes, but the display keeps changing.”

This was because she ran a sideline in one-off furniture and accessories. She was forever picking through junk shops and
vide-greniers
, unearthing an old farm cupboard, a fire surround, an antique standing clock, all of which took their places in her dining room or salon or vestibule, waiting to be sold on. Other things would take their places. It was very hard for Julian to feel settled.