The Orchid Shroud (11 page)

“What’s wrong with just gravel?” Pierre complained.

“It’s boring.”

“What does that matter?”

That was how they started off. Pierre proved, as the morning wore on, indifferent to the vibrant vista of form and color that Julian proposed and positively hostile to the anticipated cost of the project. He sat opposite Julian at a table in one corner of the new pavilion, wheezing in and out and taking a sadistic pleasure in crossing out whole sections of the landscaping plan that Julian had worked hours on and that now lay in tatters, so to speak, between them.

“This goes,” Pierre said peremptorily, tapping the spot where the water feature was to be.

Julian started out of his chair. “But it’s the centerpiece of the whole thing. Your father specifically agreed on a natural rock waterfall as a kind of signature piece for your Domaine de la Source. It’s your leading label, after all—”

“Julian, Julian”—Pierre raised a hand—“I’m afraid you’re going
to have to get one thing through your head. You’re dealing with me. Now, if Papa wants this waterfall, I’m willing to consider it, but first
you’re
going to have to convince
me
that it’s worth the additional expense.”

Julian subsided, simmering. He thought he would much rather be dealing with Pierre’s sister, Denise, a tall, sleek woman whom he had seen passing back and forth. She handled, he gathered, public relations and marketing.

“Giving you grief, is he?” she interceded at one point as she breezed by on her way to a display area she was setting up, showing the history of Coteaux de Bonfond. She took in at a glance Julian and the plan Julian was trying to defend.

“Get lost, Denise,” said her brother.

“Get stuffed,” she retorted over her shoulder. She, like her brother, was dark, but in a polished, glamorous way. There was also something very tough about her. “I want something better than a car park, Pierre, and you’d better see I get it. We haven’t spent a fortune on this building to slap asphalt around it.”

Work on the interior of the pavilion was still going on around them. Carpenters were finishing the area that was to be the site of tasting events. Denise seemed to be able to oversee the men, do her own job, and find time to antagonize her brother without breaking stride.

A moment later, she was back and leaning seductively over Julian.

“Don’t let the little
crotte
talk you out of a thing,” she urged. The frown lines on her carefully made-up face were more deeply grooved than the laugh lines. “I’ll back you with Papa. I want this place absolutely outstanding for my marketing launch next month. Look at it this way: if you shoot your budget, Big Brother here will merely blow a valve. If I’m not happy with your landscaping, I’ll have your hide. Take your choice.”

“Denise,” her brother yelled. He threw down his pencil and lurched to his feet. He looked like a man trying to swallow a hedgehog. “Piss off! I mean it.”

“Yes, darling.” She mouthed him a kiss and sashayed away.

Unfortunately for Julian, this interchange put the Crotte (the epithet, which meant “turd,” was going to stick, as far as Julian was concerned) in a foul temper.

“I can’t work under these conditions,” Pierre shouted to no one in particular, revealing a wet, purple expanse of gums that Julian, despite his dislike of the man, found momentarily fascinating. The carpenters paused to look their way. “See me Friday—no, not Friday—next week. And you’d better have a scaled-down plan and a reasonable budget or the whole things is off.”

“I’d like to point out,” Julian argued hotly, “that your father approved this plan. His only requirement was that the work be completed by June. I have very little time to work with as it is. Delaying until next week is going to seriously jeopardize—”

“I don’t give a damn,” Pierre snarled, showing more mouth lining. “He’s turned the whole thing over to me, and you do what I say, when I say, or you can take your shovel—”

“My, my, sweetums,” murmured Denise on her way past again. She was carrying stacks of brochures this time. “Tossing your weight around? Don’t give yourself a hernia.”

Pierre leaned forward threateningly on his fists. “Haven’t you anything better to do?”

Julian rolled up his plan and walked swiftly out of the pavilion.

H
e sat fuming in his van and wondering if his fight with Pierre was going to bring on another of his stress headaches. Thumpers, he called them. He had expected to spend the better part of the day at Coteaux de Bonfond doing preliminaries for the project. Now, as he gunned the engine and drove off, Julian wasn’t even sure if there was going to be a project. Or if he wanted any
part of it. By the time he reached the main road, however, his blood pressure had eased and the thumper seemed less of a threat.

Cooling down, Julian realized that the Crotte had simply been feeling his own importance. And his sister had taken immense pleasure in goading him. He wondered about Denise. There was something restless and predatory about her, a kind of hipless, reptilian allure. He remembered the quick tap-tapping of her sharp heels as she strode back and forth across the wooden pavilion floor, her narrow face, her large, black, malicious eyes. A vivid, disturbing woman. He wondered briefly if she could be an ally. On reflection, he decided that it would be like bedding down with a cobra.

It was a little past one. Nothing for him to do but go home, have a bite, and spend the rest of the day revising the plan. Trim a little here, a bit there, reduce the bottom line. Something to placate Pierre. Anything so he could get on with the work. It was early May, and he would have to go like the clappers to get everything ready in time for Denise’s marketing launch.

He drove out of the valley, again taking by preference the network of small roads that linked the villages, hamlets, and farms of the Dordogne. About him spread a peaceful landscape of planted fields, market gardens of broad beans and artichokes, and grassy meadows where blond cows grazed. A lone tractor worked its way over the brow of a distant hill. As he took the turnoff toward home, he rolled down the window to smell the last of the lilacs, sweet on the wind. In the village of Grissac, climbing roses were coming into bloom against old stone walls. The roofs of the houses, steeply pitched and hipped, created their own peculiarly Périgordine outline against the cloudless sky.

Bismuth emerged from the bushes just as Julian pulled up alongside his cottage. Julian liked dogs, but had his doubts about this one. He had originally named the animal Rugby, in honor of his favorite sport, but later renamed him Bismuth (pronounced
“Beez-mute” in French) because the dog had so often caused Julian to reach for an antacid. Julian’s grievances against his dog were many: he was ungainly, with a rangy body, large feet, and a bony tail; in puppyhood he had soiled every carpet in the house, gnawed the bindings off books (he liked the glue), and destroyed Julian’s favorite hiking boots; finally, the beast wore an air of constant, timid apology (“hang-dog” suited him well), as if he knew he was destined always to be in the wrong, at least where his master was concerned, and this served only to make Julian feel guilty. Besides, Bismuth still chewed things. It was unfortunate from Julian’s viewpoint that Bismuth could not be got rid of. He was the gift of a neighboring goat-farmer who owned Bismuth’s mother, Edith. And his sire was Mara’s own dog, Jazz. It was a situation typical of life in the Dordogne, Julian thought resignedly. Everyone was related, things were inextricably intertwined, and the consequences of acting badly were endless.

Bismuth looked doubtfully at Julian, sensing that his owner was not in a good mood.

“You might at least have got lunch ready,” Julian growled as they went in. His cottage was a low, square stone structure with a leaky roof. Its best features were a spacious kitchen with a flagstone floor and a front room with a fireplace that sometimes did not smoke. The rest of the rooms were dim and poky. A general air of disorder bespoke its owner’s untidy habits.

Julian rummaged around in the shelves and found a tin of cassoulet. He cranked it open, scooped the contents into a bowl, and heated it on high for four minutes in the microwave. He dumped the bean-and-meat mixture onto a plate. Bismuth watched him longingly. Julian tried to ignore him, but a long line of drool was now dropping from the corner of the dog’s mouth onto the floor.

“For Christ’s sake.” Julian gave in irritably and scraped a portion of his meal into Bismuth’s bowl. The food was gone before Julian had even seated himself.

After lunch, Julian realized that he did not feel at all like dealing with the Coteaux de Bonfond landscaping plan. He decided instead to call on Iris. He had purposely put off seeing her until he knew how the media would treat Baby Blue, or, more precisely, the child’s accoutrements. To his relief, attention had been focused entirely on the baby, with only passing mention of the rosary and the shawl, and little or no reference to the embroidered orchid motif. He felt safe going back with the sketch of
Cypripedium incognitum
and advising her how to complete it without giving anything away to Géraud. He was surprised, when he came out of the house, to find that clouds were banking up in the northwest. The smell of rain hung heavy in the air. Before he even reached the main road, fat droplets were spattering his windshield. By the time he reached Malpech, rain was sheeting across the fields.

Iris received him cheerfully as usual and gave him a towel to dry off with—he’d had to gallop through the downpour from his car to the house. Géraud for a change was in surprisingly good humor. The drawback to this, however, was that Iris did not shoo him away, and though Géraud did not sit down with them in the front room, he hung about, fiddling with this and that.

“Don’t let me stop you,” he said blandly. “I’m just puttering.”

“The slipper is larger than you have it.” Julian peered at Iris’s new sketch, which she had put before him on the coffee table. He was uncomfortably aware of his botanical nemesis hovering in the background. “And strongly veined. You have the color about right, but the veining needs to be more pronounced, a kind of reddish maroon.”

This produced a soft snort from Géraud.

“Honestly, you must have X-ray vision,” Iris marveled, “because I looked at that photo until my eyes hurt, and I really couldn’t make anything of it.”

“Yes. Well, I viewed it again under—er—ultra-high magnification and—er—made a few extrapolations.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.
He had looked at the print through a magnifying glass, but that had only increased the blurring of the flower without providing more information.

“And there’s one other thing.” Julian stopped, wishing desperately that Géraud would vanish.

“Yes?”

“The bottom sepals. In the sketch you have them joined.”

“You told me to.”

“I know, but I’ve revised my opinion. I believe now that they should be shown as—er—separated.”

“What?” Géraud exploded, giving up all pretense of being otherwise engaged. “You’re mad. Every species of
Cypripedium
except
arietinum
and
plectrochilum”—
Géraud insisted on taxonomical names—“has the ventral sepals united mostly or all the way to the tip.”

“This one is different.”

Géraud surged forward. “Then it’s a case of peloria, anomalous reversion to the norm.”

“No, it’s not,” Julian said stubbornly. His hunch was that the embroidery had been modeled on a typical plant rather than that the embroiderer had purposely depicted an aberration. He appealed to the woman. “Look, Iris, I’d like you to draw them as separate, hanging down one on either side of the labellum.”

Iris shook her head. “Julian, the lower half of the flower is mostly obliterated by that streak running across the photo. Even ultra-high magnification can’t show you something that isn’t there.”

“Ha! You see?” Géraud crowed. “Even she won’t go along with this poppycock.”

Julian rose to go. “Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.”

All at once, Géraud was suspicious. His nostrils flared as if he had caught a telltale odor. “You’re awfully sure of yourself all of a
sudden. What’s going on? Have you found out something? Why the mystery?”

“Will you do it for me, Iris?” Julian pleaded.

“If you’re sure,
chéri,”
she sighed.

He gave her a kiss on her weathered cheek.

“This whole thing’s a monstrous scam,” roared Géraud, trailing him to the door. “Your publisher should be told what you’re trying to do. You won’t get away with it. Don’t forget, claiming credit for a new species involves more than a trumped-up sketch. You have to photograph the plant
in situ
, you have to dry-press a specimen, present an authentic
—authentic
, mind you—botanical drawing, and you have to publish your find. The only thing you won’t have difficulty with is naming it, since I’m sure you intend to call it
Cypripedium woodianum
. Ha! You’ll never get away with it. You’ll be a laughingstock. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

With Géraud’s abuse ringing in his ears, Julian almost ran from the house.