The House of Hardie (2 page)

It was the question which Gordon had feared and was reluctant to answer. Gordon was not ashamed that his father was in trade – but it meant that the name of John Hardie, vintner, was well-known amongst the members of a higher social class than his own. He lived and worked in Oxford, supplying college High Tables as well as those many undergraduates who devoted their university years more sedulously to pleasure than to study. In addition, he owned an establishment in Pall Mall, London – a property surrounded by the clubs of the gentlemen who patronized him. All his customers were wealthy: it was likely that Sir Desmond Langton himself was one of them. Gordon tried to think of a way in which to answer without revealing too much.

‘No more lies from now on,' said Sir Desmond. ‘Your father?'

‘A wine merchant, sir.'

‘Where?'

‘Oxford.'

‘A wine merchant in Oxford.' Sir Desmond thought for a moment and then hooted with laughter for a second
time that morning. ‘Gordon
Hardie
. You're telling me that you're John Hardie's son? The heir to The House of Hardie!'

Gordon's pale face flushed. Put like that, it sounded ridiculous. Yet it was true. The family business, founded in 1710, had been handed down from father to son through seven generations. One day Gordon would be expected to take his place behind the green bow windows in the High, condemned to a life of orders and accounts, its dullness only occasionally disturbed by visits to the French châteaux from which he would buy his wines.

‘No need to fret,' said Sir Desmond. ‘It will be five months before we reach the islands, and I can't return you any more than I can replace you. So, Mr Gordon Hardie, of The House of Hardie, will you do me the inestimable favour of swabbing this floor.' His voice rose to the roar with which he had summoned Gordon half an hour earlier. ‘NOW!'

‘Your own mother won't recognize you,' said Sir Desmond Langton.

Gordon Hardie, standing beside his master at the rail of the
Periwinkle
, grinned his agreement. No one who had seen the slightly-built and white-faced fourteen-year-old sailing out of Southampton thirty-three months earlier would have guessed this healthy young man to be the same person. Sun and wind had tanned his skin; he had grown tall with the passage of time and strong through the performance of his duties.

As his body matured, his face also had been transformed. His black, wavy hair, neatly trimmed when he left home, fell almost to his shoulders. Thick eyebrows added an impression of power to a strong, high forehead, whilst the neat nose of his childhood seemed to have taken on a life of its own as it developed. It was not only large but aquiline, giving him in profile an eager, questing look. During four months of their two-year stay in the Pacific, Sir Desmond had been immobilized by a crushed foot. Gordon, acting as the botanist's legs, had at each landfall listened while the naturalist described what he hoped to find, and then literally followed his nose. It had led him, according to the nature of each island, along beaches and up rivers and through virgin forests, probing ahead of him as though it could sniff out seeds and flowers and berries which its owner had never before seen.

Gordon himself could not have described his own new face, for he had never seen himself in profile, but he could
hardly be unaware of the changes in his body. Even at the end of the five-month voyage back to England in the confined spaces of a sailing ship he knew himself to be fit, able to face any challenge and undertake any task.

Much of his confidence came from the certainty that he had found his vocation. The boyhood reading which enticed him away from the comforts of home and the love of his family had proved to be not too far from the truth. Like some of his heroes he had had to stand his ground under attack from angry islanders and to pump and bale for seven hours without pause when the
Periwinkle
holed herself on a coral reef. In a narrow canoe that was little more than a hollowed tree trunk he had found himself approaching white water which proved to be not rapids but a waterfall, and to this day he could not tell how he had survived. More dangerous, although less dramatic, had been the fever induced by a plant whose tiny barbs had infected his blood; on that occasion it was Sir Desmond who probably saved his life by making an infusion from some of his precious plants.

None of these adventures and near-disasters had diminished his enthusiasm for the life of an explorer. He had, however, come to realize the truth of his employer's first lecture to the useless fourteen-year-old who was his cabin boy. Gordon too understood now that any search should have a purpose: there must be something to be found.

Sir Desmond had not only taught him that lesson but had provided the goal. Gordon had been engaged as a personal servant, not as a member of the ship's crew, and so all his time was at his employer's disposal. No doubt it was the prospect of tedium on the long journey out which prompted the naturalist to become a tutor as well as a master. Drawing on the ship's stores for examples, he had taught Gordon how to dissect a botanical specimen and
how to describe it scientifically and to categorize it according to the Linnaean classifications. He lectured him on the composition of soils and the properties of light and water. He lent him books to read and a candle by which to read them; and on the following day interrogated the boy on what he had discovered.

Perhaps in the beginning Gordon's eagerness to learn had something to do with the unromantic nature of the tasks for which he had primarily been employed. But he was still expected to scrub and polish and slop out and darn and carry meals and messages, so that the diligence with which he applied himself to his new studies must soon have been fostered by a dislike of idleness and a genuine fascination with what he was learning.

On the voyage home, which was just ending, there had been no pretence that he was merely a cabin boy. Sir Desmond, declaring that he deserved a reward for two years of vigorous and dangerous field work, promoted him to the post of scientific assistant. There was much to do, for thousands of specimens had been collected. Some had to be kept alive, whilst many were to be carefully dried for preservation. Seeds must be sorted and packaged and labelled, and all must be painstakingly catalogued. It was, after all, just as well that Sir Desmond had employed a schoolboy and not a bootboy: for hours at a time Gordon sat at the cabin table, pausing in the task of taking dictation only during some unusually severe battering of the ship.

Today, though, all the records as well as the specimens were roped away in wooden chests. As the
Periwinkle
glided through the calm estuary water, Sir Desmond's eyes were seeking out familiar landmarks whilst Gordon, beside him, wondered how best to broach the subject
which had filled his mind for the past few days. In the end it seemed best to come straight out with it.

‘Sir Desmond. Should you have any new expedition in mind, I would very much like to serve with you again. If you would have me.'

Sir Desmond sighed. ‘I fear this may prove to be my last expedition,' he said. ‘I've five years' work here with the seeds we've brought back. Not just germinating them and growing them on true, but doing a little cross-pollinating and grafting to find out whether man can improve on nature. By the time all that's under way, I may well be growing too old to leap in and out of small boats or wade across raging torrents up to my waist. Besides, I promised my wife … You'll discover one day for yourself, my boy, that wives don't always take kindly to being left alone for two or three years.'

‘Perhaps I could help you with your experiments for a year or two. And then organize an expedition of my own. To China, perhaps,' Gordon added hopefully. His boyhood fascination with that country was as strong as ever.

‘China!' Sir Desmond, who had explored so many parts of the world, had never been to China, but his sigh of regret recognized that he was unlikely now ever to make the journey. ‘You could look for Merlot's lily in China.'

‘Merlot's lily?' For three years Gordon had listened spellbound to his master's stories of exotic places and treasures, but this was a name new to him.

‘Merlot was a missionary who travelled in China and tried to get into Tibet – forbidden territory at the beginning of the century. Well, it still is, come to that. He wasn't a botanist, unfortunately. Ten thousand feet up in the mountains he came across a valley filled with lilies. The queen of lilies, he said – the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen. He wrote a letter of description home, with a
drawing. Dug up a few of the bulbs to send as well. Presumably he did it while the lilies were still in flower, so it's not surprising that they didn't survive. What with the change from almost freezing conditions to the heat of the plains, and then a six-month journey back to Europe, they were shrivelled and rotten by the time they arrived. Merlot himself was caught by the Tibetans. They chopped off the heads of the villagers who'd shown him the way into the country, as a hint to anyone else who tried to give a foreigner a helping hand. The missionary himself was simply never heard of again.'

‘Did he say in his letter where he saw the lilies?'

‘No. You've put your finger on it. Something that could be the most beautiful flower in the world, and no one knows where to find it. So there you are. Go to China and bring back the Merlot lily. Except that then it would be the Hardie lily.'

He laughed as he spoke, but he was not joking. For his own part, Gordon was unable even to attempt a smile. His heart swelled to bursting point. It was as though he had suddenly and for the first time realized why he had been born. Falling in love, he thought, must be something like this. Perhaps one day he would meet a girl, whom he did not yet know to exist, and realize that he had been waiting for her all his life. She would give him no choice. There would be a compulsion to love her – just as the lily was now placing him under a compulsion to search for it.

‘My God!' exclaimed Sir Desmond. ‘What have I done?'

Gordon blinked and looked at the older man, puzzled as to his meaning.

‘Irresponsible!' growled the botanist. ‘I remember, on the voyage out, telling you that if you wanted to be an explorer you needed a goal, and that was true enough.
Something else I should have emphasized. You need money as well.'

‘You mentioned once that the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew sponsors expeditions of this sort from time to time.'

‘I should have kept my mouth shut,' growled Sir Desmond. ‘I shall be lucky if the next case of cognac I order from The House of Hardie isn't laced with poison. I can't be blamed for your running away, but I don't intend to be responsible for your failure to return to the bosom of your family.'

‘My father may have disowned me by now.'

‘That's as may be. There's only one way to find out. And if your mother's still alive, chances are that she'll persuade him to own you again.'

An unexpected surge of emotion flooded Gordon's body; he swallowed the lump in his throat, alarmed by what he saw as a failure of imagination. Very often in the past two and a half years he had remembered with shame how he had waved a farewell to his mother with the casual gesture of a boy going off to school as usual. He had understood, and regretted, the alarm she must have felt when he failed to return at the end of the day, and the grief and anxiety which would persist even after she received his letter. But as time passed, and he knew himself to be healthy, he had forgotten that she would still be worried. And the thought had never occurred to him that she herself might become ill, or even die.

‘Any brothers?' asked Sir Desmond.

Gordon shook his head. ‘A younger sister, that's all.'

‘So you should be all right. Not a woman's business, wine. Your father won't want to break a family tradition if he can help it. A word of advice, then. You've got a natural talent. To be a plant-hunter, I mean. But you're –
how old is it now? Seventeen? So. Take whatever training your father has in mind to give you. Go to France if you can, see the vines growing and all the processes of making the wine. One of these days you may be able to bring two talents together, breed a new variety of grape. But don't turn up your nose at the business of keeping accounts and getting to know your customers. One of these days, when The House of Hardie is yours, and thriving well enough to finance an expedition of your own, you may find you can put a manager in for a few years. But first of all you must have at your own fingertips everything you'll want him to do. Take your training.'

Their conversation was interrupted by a loud, repeated shout. Many times during the past two and a half years Gordon had listened as the orders for the mainsail to be lowered and furled were relayed upwards, and had felt the abrupt change from the wind's full power to a more delicate, gliding propulsion. He had leaned against the rail, as he was leaning now, studying the coastline of a tropical island and wondering what treasures were hidden in the interior. Here the water was grey instead of a bright, clear blue, and instead of palm trees fingering the sunshine he could see only the misty outlines of cranes. After such an absence, the life that lay ahead of him was almost as hard to envisage as the life of the islanders who paddled their canoes out to the
Periwinkle
and led her to safe anchorage. The journey to Oxford would be the beginning of a different kind of exploration; but Sir Desmond had reminded him that this too could have a worthwhile goal.

Twenty-four hours later, on the first Sunday of October 1877, Gordon Hardie strode along Oxford's High Street and came to a halt opposite the bow windows of The
House of Hardie, with their small panes of bottle green glass. The premises would of course be unoccupied at this hour: he could stare at them without any danger of being seen and recognized. He would find his father and mother and sister, he hoped, at their home in Holywell. How would they greet him? As the prodigal son returning, to be welcomed and feasted, or as someone who had behaved heartlessly, disappointing their hopes – someone who could not be forgiven? His guess was that his mother would cry and Midge, his sister, would tease, and his father would be at first severe, but willing to be placated by promises of future good behaviour.