River of Smoke(23)

Just as he had expected, this ended the argument: the Mistries accepted his terms and Bahram went immediately to work.

Over the years he had nurtured and cultivated an extensive network of connections among the petty traders, caravan-masters and money-lenders who were responsible for transporting opium from the market towns of western and central India to Bombay. Now his couriers and emissaries fanned out to Gwalior, Indore, Bhopal, Dewas, Baroda, Jaipur, Jodhpur and Kota, spreading the word that there was only one seth in Bombay who was offering a fair price for opium this year. In the meanwhile, in order to raise the money for these purchases, Bahram liquidated his savings and drew upon every source of credit that was available to him. When these measures proved inadequate, he mortgaged – in the teeth of his wife’s opposition – their jointly owned lands and sold off their gold, silver and jewellery.

But even after all this, he would not have succeeded in putting together a shipment that was equal to his ambitions: that he was able to do so was the result of an unforeseen development. By the end of the monsoons, when the bulk of the trading fleet usually left for Canton, the rumours of impending trouble in China had grown so insistent as to send commodity prices spiralling downwards. When everyone stopped buying, Bahram stepped in.

That was how he succeeded in assembling the shipment that ran amuck in the storm of September 1838. Its total value, if the price was what Bahram expected it to be, would be well over a million Chinese taels of silver – equivalent to about forty English tons of the precious metal.

How much of this was lost in the storm? As he lay in his bed, in the Owners’ Cabin, dazed by the after-effects of the opium, Bahram was tormented with anxiety. Every time Vico made an appearance he would ask: How much, Vico? Kitna? How much is gone?

Still counting, patrão; don’t know yet.

When at last Vico was ready with his final count it proved to be both better and worse than expected: his estimate was that they had lost about three hundred chests – about ten per cent of their cargo.

To lose the equivalent of five tons of silver was a devastating blow, undoubtedly, but Bahram knew it could have been much worse. With the insurance factored in, he still had enough left to pay off his investors and earn a handsome profit.

It was only a question now of how he played his cards; they were in his hand and the table was ready.

*

To watch a girl cry was very difficult, almost unbearable for Fitcher. After tugging mightily at his beard, and clearing his throat many times, he said, suddenly: ‘Ee may be surprised to hear this, Miss Paulette, but I was acquainted with eer father. Ee features him mightily, I might say.’

Paulette looked up and dried her eyes.

‘But that is incroyable, sir: where could you have met my father?’

‘Here. In Pimple-mouse. In this very garden …’

It had happened over thirty years ago, when Fitcher was on his way back to England after his first voyage to China. The journey had been a difficult one: his old-fashioned ‘plant-cabin’ had been damaged in a hailstorm; the plants had been spattered with seawater and battered by winds. Having already lost half his collection, he had made the journey to Pamplemousses in a state of despair. But there, in one of the storage sheds near the garden’s entrance, he had made the acquaintance of Pierre Lambert: the botanist was young, freshly arrived from France, and on the way over he had begun to experiment with a new kind of carrying case for plants: he’d removed a few panels from the casing of an old wooden trunk and replaced them with panes of thick glass. He gave Fitcher two of these cases and would accept no payment.

‘I always wanted to thank eer father, but I never saw him again. Right sorry I am to know that he’s gone.’

At this Paulette’s composure dissolved and her story came pouring out: she told Fitcher that her father’s death, in Calcutta, had left her destitute; she had decided to travel to Mauritius, where her family had once had connections and had succeeded in smuggling herself on to a coolie ship, the Ibis; the journey had been calamitous in many ways but because of the kindness of a few crew-members she had been able to make her way safely ashore; the vessel’s second mate, Zachary Reid, had lent her the clothes she was wearing, but he was now under arrest and soon to be shipped off to Calcutta to stand trial for mutiny; finding herself penniless, she had walked to the Botanical Gardens, where her father had once worked – but only to find it abandoned; having nowhere else to go she had taken shelter in the abandoned cottage and had spent the last few days there, foraging for food.

‘So what will ee do now? D’ee know?’