Roger Curtis - Lights in a Western Sky

A plan was hatching in his mind. A slow smile began to contort his thin, pursed lips.

He was going back.

Dusk was approaching and still Bloomfield had not arrived. From the table in his study Martin Trexler peered through the open doors and the grey-green gloom of the conservatory to the orchid house in the garden, where the last rays of the sun were painting the glass with golden brush strokes. He stroked his beard, half expecting to see his rival skulking there in his usual aggressively inquisitive manner. But he knew the man was too subtle for that.

Perhaps the visit had something to do with the vacant position of Keeper of the Herbarium at Kew and Bloomfield, who already worked there, wanted his support. But even if Trexler did not know the reason for this unexplained wish to see him – and Bloomfield had given nothing away when the telephone suddenly went dead – he was sure that his adversary had no inkling of the revelation that he, Trexler, was about to deliver. On this day of all days, there were more important things to think about than Dr Ray Bloomfield and his ambitions.

Trexler’s study was the product of a bygone age. Visitors usually needed a moment or so to convince themselves they were still in suburban London and not a faraway museum dedicated to the relics of colonial rule. Around the walls, Victorian stalwarts in antique frames posed trenchantly against impenetrable jungle backdrops reflecting expeditions of unspeakable hardship. They looked down upon a miscellany of hideous masks, barbarous weapons and wood carvings littering the room that were the spoils of Trexler’s own wanderings. High above the central table, drapes of threadbare linen cloth drooped tent-like from the ceiling rose to the upper walls. On the table’s carpeted surface an assortment of academic botanical volumes were stacked as if for no other purpose than to gather dust. For Trexler, this room had the cosiness of a womb.

He swivelled in his seat and looked up at the most impressive of the figures, his grandfather, his idol. He was reassured by the approbation that he chose to see in the piercing eyes. Gerhardt Trexler, the doyen of collectors, the chief of Sander’s team, the leader of men praised in that heyday towards the end of the last century as vigorously as they were now reviled by those who understood the despoliation of the jungles of the world.

Of course Trexler understood all that, but it was not how he saw his grandfather. From early childhood Gerhardt’s exploits had fired a rampant imagination and fuelled an unquenchable urge. Of these deeds one had held a special place in orchid lore, ever since a tantalisingly cryptic note in Curtis’ Orchid Magazine had referred to a species of Cyprepedium quite unrivalled in its distinctiveness and beauty that no-one besides Gerhardt himself was destined ever to see. Until today.

With Bloomfield quite forgotten, Trexler rose from his chair and entered the conservatory. He re-emerged carrying a small grass-like plant with curiously spotted leaves and bearing a single slipper-like bloom that, with unbearable slowness, had developed from the ripe bud of the previous day. He set the pot beside Gerhardt’s notes that lay open on the table. As he had done repeatedly throughout the day, he again compared the features. There was no longer a need to convince himself. The two flowers were undeniably the same.

The paper he had written on this assumption lay pristine and complete on the table beside an envelope addressed to the editor of the Orchid Review . For the moment it was all that was needed to establish his claim to the species, which he had named Paphiopedilum trexleri.

While he was absorbed with the plant a young Asian woman, twenty years Trexler’s junior and with straight black hair to her slim waist, had entered noiselessly through the open door. She stood behind him, waiting patiently until he should notice her. She spoke only when he acknowledged her with a slight turn of his head.

‘Is it ready?’ she said.

‘If you must know, it is ready.’

‘I can post it for you?’

‘Thank you, but I’d prefer to do it myself.’

‘Of course,’ she said, leaving the room.

He had been distracted by his wife’s entrance. But his spirits quickly returned. Perhaps he had been harsh. After all, without her, more or less, there would have been no cause for celebration. And there was always a way… But no, he would not sully his success with black intentions that could safely lie dormant. Besides, did not the manner of his discovery have the makings of a legend just as potent as the scientific one he had just made? No, caution must prevail and he must bide his time. He began to speak, addressing an imaginary audience: ‘Ladies and gentleman, when my grandfather left Siam for the last time, his fever having subsided, no one could have guessed…’

He was interrupted by a loud knock at the front door. He heard his wife’s footsteps, and then Bloomfield’s loud voice in the hall. Stealthily he returned the plant to the conservatory and stood with his back to the fireplace, hands clasped behind him, waiting for his visitor to appear.

After a few minutes Bloomfield knocked lightly on the door and entered. His first words concerned Trexler’s uncanny resemblance to the figure on the wall above him.

At the beginning, it seemed that providence must have had a hand in it: that it had fallen to Trexler, after desperately craving a new species – any new species – to be handed the very one he had sought both in his dreams and in reality. The years of tramping the forests of the orient with this his primary – if unadmitted – objective had come to an abrupt and delicious end. And all in the privacy and convenience of his own greenhouse.

The consignment had come from one of his newer shippers – Anova Orchids in Bangkok. At first he had not been sure. There had been just a single plant. It had no flower as such – that had withered in transit – but the tessellated leaves were as familiar to him as the backs of this own hands. This sole example in a batch of otherwise mundane specimens was surely the most bizarre of accidents. He spent the afternoon in the Herbarium at Kew, just to make sure, and on the following morning booked his flight to Bangkok.

Trexler was widely known and regarded in orchid circles, so his first decision – whether to arrive incognito – was agonising. But, as far as he was aware, to Anova Orchids he was still just a name. As the time to leave approached he shaved his beard, trimmed the residual moustache, practised speaking with a Welsh accent and referred to himself as Jones, the name that appeared in his second – and nefariously obtained – passport that had lain in his drawer in readiness for such an eventuality for a number of years.

At Don Muang International Airport he hired a car and made for the small hotel on Rachadapisek Road that on previous journeys had passed the test of obscurity. Later, having installed himself on the veranda with a glass of beer, he was content to let himself melt into the lengthening shadows and subject himself to the noises of the night. It fell to a selenid moth, alighting on his grandfather’s journal on the table beside his nodding head, to bless his endeavours.

The next morning he searched the orchid stalls at the flower markets of Pak Klong Talat, Bangrak and Phahonyothin, as he had done many times before. But where previously the exercise would have been a cause for delight, now it was a mechanical race against time. In his haste he handled the plants roughly, and was chided for it. Then, empty-handed, he drove to Sukhumvit Road to put in his first appearance at Anova Orchids.

He was flattered by the attention given to him by the pretty Thai girl in the office. He noted particularly the smile with which she received his visiting card, carefully improvised at the airport.