Gardens in the Dunes (45 page)

T
HE STEAMSHIP
departed in the early evening with the tide; despite the rain, the sea was calm. A day away from the Canary Islands they woke to a bright sunlight and blue sky. The warm temperatures reminded Indigo of the desert; the peaks and troughs of the ocean waves made her think of odd barren mountains and hills of salt water. As they neared land the seagulls floated on the ocean's surface and caused Indigo to mistake them for big sea flowers. Rainbow squawked and made no mistake of their identity—they'd kill him and eat him if they could, Hattie explained.

The voyage past Gibraltar was calm and quite lovely. Edward remained in the cabin with his hand in a basin of hot salts the cabin boy changed once an hour on doctor's orders. Hattie and Indigo with her parrot enjoyed the fresh air and sun on walks on the deck. Edward joined them for the evening walk. He continuously squeezed a small latex rubber ball in the injured hand to limber the tendons as Hattie described the schools of flying fish they counted; Indigo had a good head for numbers.

The tedious daily regimen of the hand soaked in steaming water subdued the infection, and the wound was nearly healed. When they were not counting seabirds, Hattie and Indigo practiced spelling the words from the story of the Chinese monkey. Hattie felt relieved to be fulfilling at least a part of the agreement Edward made with the boarding school superintendent—to continue teaching her to read and write.

For geography they accepted the ship captain's invitation to visit the bridge, where he showed them the maps and charts that guided them toward Gibraltar. On the wall chart of the Mediterranean, Hattie pointed out Italy and the town of Lucca, where they'd visit Aunt Bronwyn's friend; here was the island of Corsica they were bound for. The captain expressed surprise Americans would risk a visit to such a lawless place (the mountains were full of bandits and revolutionists!), a place with so little to offer the
traveler. Hattie stepped back from the chart at once; she regretted the mention of their final destination, but thanked the captain for his concern about their safety. She signaled Indigo to follow her, though they'd only just got there.

Was it her exhaustion that left her so enervated and short-tempered? She fully intended to discuss dangers in the hills of Corsica with Edward after they reached Lucca and she had time to rest.

Indigo's spelling list for the week included words like “wicked,” “hundred,” “scriptures,” and “scoundrel” because the Chinese monkey was in a lot of trouble. She enjoyed the assignment to use each of the spelling words at lease once in a sentence she made up herself. Hattie was surprised at the sentence in which a policeman was called a “scoundrel” by the Messiah.

Edward locked the cabin doors at night because he feared Hattie might sleepwalk, but she slept soundly every night except the last night before they reached Genoa. That night she dreamed she was awakened in her berth by a soft glow in the corner of the cabin, a glow that seemed to spread even as she watched it. She recognized the glow as the light she saw in Aunt Bronwyn's garden, and when she sat up in her berth she was shocked to see Edward's empty berth.

Where could he be? As she leaned over to get a better look at the little antechamber where Indigo slept, she caught a glimpse of him that set her heart pounding. He was standing by the small writing desk in the dark with a bundle in both hands. She was shaking so badly she had difficulty finding her voice. She did not want to wake the child or disturb the other passengers, so she whispered his name loudly; but the figure in the shadow did not respond. Surely Edward did not sleepwalk! She watched transfixed by the luminous glow that emanated near the figure. Suddenly the radiance increased now as bright as a gas lamp and she saw it was the tin mask from the sacred spring.

She tried to call out to Edward but she could not seem to get the words out. The mask began to advance with the light through the darkness until suddenly it covered the face of the figure in shadow. “Edward!” she called out, and woke herself and Edward. She assured him it was nothing, a nightmare, and he turned in the upper berth to go back to sleep.

Hattie listened to the sounds of Edward's breathing and the beat of her heart, and concentrated on slowing her heartbeat to match the rhythm of his breathing. Certain thoughts sent her heart racing and had to be locked out; all the old feelings swept over her if she permitted herself any thought of her thesis. Somehow the news of the authentication of Dr. Rhinehart's
old scrolls only made her feel worse about her rejection by the graduate school.

She concentrated her thoughts instead on the gardens of the Riverside house, aging and neglected, in need of a great deal of attention. She looked forward to the Italian gardens for ideas for plants and shrubs suited to the dry hot climate of Riverside. As she drifted off to sleep, she imagined a pink garden entirely of roses and bougainvillea set off with the rich jade greens of aloes and agaves and large cacti.

Just before dawn, Hattie awoke with a pounding headache and rising nausea; in her haste to the lavatory, she bumped into a chair. The startled parrot flew against the side of the cage and woke Edward and Indigo.

She had never seen Hattie's face so white—poor woman! What was wrong? Indigo dampened a washcloth to wipe her face, then helped her walk back to her berth, while Edward rang for a steward, then rushed off to find a doctor.

Hot pulses of pain expanded behind her eyes until they filled with tears and even her nose dripped. She felt hot, then suddenly she shivered. If she opened her eyes, the room spun so fast she felt she had to grip the sides of the berth to keep from falling. Only the coolness of the damp cloth Indigo placed on her forehead gave any comfort.

Edward returned alone, anxiously rubbing the bandage on his injured finger. Through the pounding pain in her temples Hattie had difficulty understanding Edward. He said something about the ship's doctor with a woman in childbirth, but not to worry. He'd met a good Austrian doctor the night before in the casino; his new acquaintance would be there at once.

Indigo retreated to her bed in the alcove to play with Rainbow, though she listened closely in case Hattie needed her again. She heard Hattie moan; Indigo wished she had Grandma Fleet's little clay pipe and the crushed blossoms of the healing plants they smoked for nausea or headache. When she or Sister Salt got sick, Grandma Fleet used to recommend someone sit in the darkened room to sing softly or tell stories to the patient, but Hattie behaved as if she wanted to be left alone.

The drumming pain in her head did not permit sleep, but Hattie did not feel entirely awake either; part of her brain whispered the word “delirium.” Her thoughts raced out of her control. Over and over she saw the print of the newspaper page, but greatly enlarged—it was the London
Times
article about the authentication of the Coptic scrolls. Giant typeset words were printed in oily black ink on odd paper the texture of the old scrolls themselves.
Instead of elation over the news, she felt a lingering sense of futility and loss. She had been right all along, but now it didn't matter.

She did not know how much time passed, but it seemed hours before she heard a knock and Indigo call out, as they taught her, before she opened the cabin door to the doctor. For an instant the pounding in her head made it difficult to understand the doctor's words; she strained to make out the English he spoke until suddenly she realized the doctor was Australian, not Austrian; she could scarcely understand his Australian accent. He introduced himself as Dr. Gates.

While the Australian doctor felt her pulse by gently placing his hands to her temples, he spoke in a soothing tone about the card games he and Edward enjoyed in the evening after she and the child were in bed.

He prescribed belladonna as needed for the pain and nausea; the bitter white syrup turned to heat in her mouth and throat and spread over her entire body like a gust of hot wind. All the while the doctor kept talking in his ridiculous Australian dialect she hardly understood; as she drifted further into the warm, warm sea of her own blood, his odd vocabulary mattered not at all. The pounding pain that enclosed her face and head like a mask receded, and Hattie was able to sleep.

The Australian doctor returned later to massage the veins in the back of her neck; his hands worked their way down and around to the insides of both her arms until suddenly she felt alarmed at his attention. She called Indigo from her game with the parrot in the alcove, and the doctor left off the massage.

Later she told Edward the Australian doctor made her feel uneasy; she feared he might be an imposter or one who touched women with license. But Edward laughed out loud at such a suggestion. He was confident Dr. Gates was no imposter because they had talked a good deal over late night toddies about their professional training. They talked about a great many things, including citrus horticulture, especially the effects of temperature and climate, and Edward was quite satisfied Dr. Gates was reliable. Undoubtedly she was suffering the combined effects of the migraine headache and the belladonna, Edward assured her.

At this Hattie felt a spark of anger at Edward because he had only a modest appetite for female anatomy, and he did not seem to realize other men were not so chaste or honorable. The Australian doctor's fumbling with her bed clothes alarmed her because it recalled Mr. Hyslop's fumbling attack on her breasts.

Dr. Gates came again while Edward was out with the child at breakfast. He entered the cabin without knocking and set off the parrot; for once she was grateful for the bird's loud screeches. The deafening noise unnerved the doctor as he approached Hattie. He might have remained in the cabin alone with her longer but the parrot's incessant noise cut short the doctor's call, and Hattie was spared the ordeal of his groping hands.

After Hattie's recovery, Edward continued to spend a good deal of time in the company of Dr. Gates, who was knowledgeable about a great many fascinating subjects. They discussed Edward's citron scheme and the hot dry Riverside climate so similar to the deserts of Australia; oranges grown in the hot dry climes boasted the highest sugar content. The doctor's face became animated as he contemplated the possibility of irrigated citrus groves in the outback. If he was able to procure suitable cuttings of the citron from Edward, then he was sure of success.

The doctor was about to develop a mine to obtain iron ore and cadmium from a meteor crater in northern Arizona. Perhaps they might come to an agreement for an exchange of live citron cuttings for shares of mining stock as well as premium meteorite specimens, which he could sell for a handsome price.

Edward was delighted at the opportunity to obtain meteorite specimens in large quantity because there was a growing interest in the objects by private collectors, and universities as well. The memory of the odd enclosure full of meteor irons near the market at Tampico returned to him again and again, and he regretted he had not persevered with the hideous blue-face woman; he might have had the lot of them—all quite different from one another, apparently from different locations. The increased interest in meteorites by collectors and researchers signaled a rise in the prices paid for specimens. The trade in meteorites had so many advantages over plants, which must be handled with great care or they were lost.

Edward and Dr. Gates made a tentative agreement to become partners once the citron was secured and they returned to the United States. The doctor generously lent Edward a catalogue of the meteorites in North America published a few years before by the American Academy of Science; it was the same reference the doctor used to locate his most exciting acquisition to date: the two-mile-wide meteor crater in northern Arizona. Edward packed the book for safekeeping until he had the leisure to read it on the return voyage. For now he immersed himself in books about methods of pruning and grafting citrus stock.

The ship docked in Genoa at half past eight in the morning and already Edward could feel a dramatic increase in the temperature, although the air was not as dry as he expected.

Genoa was a port and industrial city similar to Bristol in its congested streets and sweltering bad air, although its dust and soot could not conceal the bright sun or deep blue sky beyond the smoke.

Their arrival was overshadowed by the news of the assassination of the Italian king only three days before, in Milan, by anarchists, to avenge the executions of their comrades. Victor Emmanuel III took the throne, but there were rumors of clashes between dissidents and police.

Genoa appeared calm—no soldiers or barricades in the streets, at least not on the waterfront. While they waited on the pier for Edward to fetch a cab, Hattie and Indigo gazed at the piles of cargo, the pallets of polished granite and marble slabs in all colors, carefully crated for export. Indigo pointed them out to the parrot—a rainbow of colors just like you! she told him. On the pier, bundles of hardwood logs sat next to big clusters of bananas. Suddenly, over the noise of the passengers and street traffic, Indigo heard the unmistakable screeches of parrots from behind a pile of cargo on the pier. Instantly Rainbow gave a deafening screech in reply that left Indigo's ears ringing. As a freight wagon pulled away from the pier, Indigo saw a large iron cage filled with parrots of all colors and sizes. The cries of his own kind were more than Rainbow could endure; he called back and flapped his wings frantically. As the wagon with the parrots passed, they saw sick and dying birds on the bottom of the cage. Indigo watched wide eyed, but the sight was too much for Hattie, who was overcome with nausea just as Edward returned with the cab.