The Blue Poppy

THE BLUE POPPY

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

Auguries of Innocence

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Origin of ‘Science’ - “from Latin scientia knowledge, from sciens … , present participle of scire to know...”

[Chambers Dictionary of Etymology]

BEGINNINGS

Twenty years ago - Summer

The child lay on her belly in the grass, running her fingers along the smooth green stems. The colour was vibrant against the black shadows and the dark soil beneath. Delicate veins ran in mesmerising lines from the tip to base of each blade. All around her tiny white daisies tilted their heads upwards, following the sun across the sky. From east to west, as they did every day.

So perfect, she thought. This was her world, and it was magical.

She rolled onto her back and stared up at the blue expanse above her. It reflected on the water of the river that ran by her side. Filling her mind and flooding her with happiness. Blue was her mother’s favourite colour, and Gill thought it might be hers too.

Her mother wasn’t happy, not all the time, Gill knew that. No one was. But there were some days when her mother’s mind got stuck, in a wasteland without colour or light. Gill could see it in her eyes, feel it in her touch.

On the good days they searched for something that would help. Her mother knew about plants and how they could heal. Ground into paste or drunk as tea. So they scoured the verges and woods, hunting down seeds and cuttings, looking for one flower in particular.

‘What does it look like?’ Gill would ask. ‘Is it big or little? Is it red, or yellow, or green? Does it smell?’

‘So many questions,’ her mother would say. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll know.’

‘But, how?’ Gill would fetch flower after flower. Tiny periwinkles, prickly gorse that smelled of coconut in the sun, furry catkins. She would shove her hands into the soil, climb over sharp bushes, up the side of rocky slopes. Graze her knees and rip her jeans. Then thrust her findings under her mother’s nose.

‘Is it this one? Is it this one?’

‘Hush,’ her mother would smile and keep on walking.

Sometimes, Gill felt her head would burst in frustration. She wanted to stamp her feet, run back to the boat and refuse to carry on. It was impossible to search for something when you had no idea what it even looked like. But, Gill discovered as she grew, it was worse not to search at all. So they went out every morning and hunted for the flower. And, on days her mother wasn’t well enough, Gill went out on her own. She promised herself that one day she would find it. She would cross oceans and mountains, barefoot if she had to. Learn the name of every plant in the world and examine them all.

Then her mother would never again go to that place where Gill was scared to follow. And they could live together forever, happily ever after.

With these plants, beneath this sky. And their world need never change.

CHAPTER 1 – LEMON BALM

London, Friday 18 January

When she arrived at the porter’s lodge early that morning, the box was waiting for her on the scratched oak counter. It was a standard size. The type of bland packing box you would find in any corporate post room. The label was smudged and the carboard battered. There was no brand logo printed on the side, but a strip of garish red tape said ‘This way up’. A part of her couldn’t help but wonder if this was a belated Christmas present. Though she couldn’t think of anyone, friend or family, who might want to send her one.

‘Are you expecting anything?’ the porter asked, his breath curling into the cold air. He wore a dark blue suit with a blue and gold peaked cap. His fingers and face were lined from decades of cigarette smoke. He was always there, however early she arrived. With a ready smile and his single yellow tooth on display. As reliable as the exhibits in the museum.

‘No, I don’t think so.’ She adjusted her glasses and peered at the box. She had no idea what it contained. It wasn’t likely to be online shopping, she wasn’t the type. The last item she’d bought had been a new triplet loupe hand lens, after she’d dropped her old one down the side of a cliff searching for an orchid on the North York Moors. It had arrived before the holidays and hadn’t left her side since. Occasionally, the airport sent her confiscated plants. Most recently a hoard of peyote cactuses, three of which she’d sneaked home and were now growing on her bathroom windowsill. But the airport always telephoned her first.

She bent low and examined the label. It was indeed addressed to her, Dr Gillian Pearce, Assistant Keeper of Botany, The King’s University, London. This was unusual in itself. Most specimens were addressed to the professor. As Keeper of the Herbarium, Professor Joseph Bright was known across the country for his expertise in all things green. Gill, however, had only switched from being a post graduate to an employee less than six months ago. She doubted whether many people knew her name outside the solid university walls.

It was something she needed to work on. A lifelong fascination with plants didn’t automatically translate into a successful career as a botanist, however much she wished it could. For that, she needed to prove herself. It was a challenge, juggling her daytime responsibilities – keeping the collections in order and responding to queries – with producing her own work. But Gill was determined.

Her specialism was the chemistry of medicinal plants. Over the summer, she’d had a paper published by the British Botanical Journal. At the time she’d been euphoric, hoping it would be the start of something big. A chain of research that would bring funding in for the university, prove the relevance of botany to a world that believed it was a dying profession. But since then her research had been frustratingly slow.

Perhaps this delivery was a promising sign.

The porter fetched her keys from the cubby rack that stretched along the back wall, moving slowly as though his bones were as old as those in the fossil gallery. Beneath him was a bank of black and white TV screens showing images from across the university and its adjacent museum. A man unloading crates from an iron cage lift, shadowy tanks in the aquarium, a stuffed monkey hovering above a manta ray in the grand atrium. Not many people around this early on a winter’s morning, which was just how Gill liked it.

She wrapped both arms around the box and lifted it up. It was light, barely any weight at all. Gill gave the box a little shake and instantly regretted it. Dried specimens were fragile. A crinkly edge or pointed tip could make all the difference to the correct identification. That was one of the most important parts of her job, identifying and classifying plants. Knowing exactly where they fit into each plant family, genus and geographical area. This knowledge, Gill had found, gave her own life an order. A structure that held everything together.

Hooking her keys over a spare finger, she thanked the porter and left the lodge. She skirted around the edge of the old quadrangle towards the square tower in the corner. The tower housed the university’s natural science departments. Geology, zoology and botany at the very top. Gill had loved the building from the first moment she saw it, ivy creeping up its redbrick walls. It was perfect for her, close enough to the city to benefit from the buzz of the best academic minds but far enough from the streets that she had space to think.

She entered the tower through its plain wooden double doors and raced up the stone stairs two at a time. Her keys jangled in her hand, the bright sound echoing off the walls around her like tiny bells. Gill didn’t slow, not even as she passed zoology where her friend Jeff worked. They’d shared a flat in their undergraduate years, along with a few others, and stayed friends ever since. She was looking forward to meeting him for drinks at the Ship that evening, if she could get through her task list in time.

Finally, she reached the top. Wisps of slightly greasy hair escaped her elasticated bobble and clung to her damp forehead. Balancing the box awkwardly on her knee, she unlocked the heavy security door. The sweet chemical smell of old specimens and floor polish welcomed her as she entered the Herbarium. Sunlight streamed down from the high rows of gothic windows, illuminating the white Formica worktop that spanned the length of the main hall. Gill carried out most of her plant work here, luxuriating in the space and light. But this morning she didn’t want to be disturbed. Instead, she took the box to her makeshift office on the far side of the tower.

Nestled beneath the eaves, it was accessed by one of two long corridors that led from either end of the main hall. Both corridors were lined with floor to ceiling cabinets containing the Herbarium’s collection of plant specimens. Hundreds and thousands of folios, filled with dried and preserved plants from across the world. Gill spent hours standing at the long, central worktops. Turning over the waxed sheets. Following a chain of research, or simply looking at the specimens. Memorising Latin names and key features. Building the mental database that was the most important asset to every botanist.

She opened the box with a sharp silver dissecting blade, sliding the point through the brown plastic tape with a quiet roar. The folded sides sprang open and the sweet tang of lemon groves flooded into the room. The scent wound around her mind, at once soothing and sharpening her senses. Inside the box were three bunches of a herb, tied together with string. They were still fresh, she noticed, the base of their stems wrapped with wet kitchen roll in a ziplocked bag. Tucked to one side was a sheet of flowers and a note written in scratchy, looping ink.

‘A mutation or magic? Paracelsus would be proud.’

There was no signature or return address.

Gill squinted at the note. The reference to magic annoyed her, irrationally so. She resisted the urge to crumple the note in the palm of her hand and chuck it in the bin. What would’ve been useful was a precise record of where the specimen had been collected. Full field notes on what the flowers looked like before they’d been picked and pressed. A photograph of their habitat, at the very least.

She took a deep breath and blew it back out. The note aside, there was something about the specimen that intrigued her. The flowers, in particular. It was probably from one of the elderly members of the British Herb Society. Gill had a soft spot for the eccentric, and often wildly intelligent, characters who met twice a year to discuss all things herb related. She remembered lying flat on her stomach next to one of them at the last field meeting, investigating a particularly interesting specimen of the silver moss Bryum argenteum, and being quizzed on whether she was doing enough adventurous things with her life. Apparently, she wasn’t.

Carefully she unpacked the herb, unbinding it and trimming an inch from the base of the stems before placing them in three separate flasks of water. The stems were thick and hairy, abundant with yellowish green leaves. Taking a fresh blade, she prepared cuttings from five of them, pleased when healthy shoots came away cleanly. She dabbed the wounds with rooting powder and planted them in a row of small black plastic pots. As she pressed the damp soil down, tiny grains of it clung to the whorls of her fingertips.

She placed a plastic dome over the pots. Unable to resist before she left the room, Gill peered into the dome to see if there were any signs that the cuttings would take. For a moment, she imagined she heard the faintest whisper. The crackle of growth as cells began to divide beneath the soil to form a complex root system.

But, of course, the cuttings remained exactly as she’d planted them. The small shoots each with one or two tender young leaves pointing alert to the roof of the dome. She brushed her jeans down briskly, irritated with herself at the fanciful thought, and left the room.

‘What’re you working on?’ the professor said from above her.

It took a moment for his words to sink in. After potting the cuttings, Gill had prepared a cross section of one of the leaves and was half way through a cellular examination in the main hall. She peered into her microscope, one hand resting on the metal of the focussing wheel and the other clutching a pencil. Lost in the repeating pattern of box-like and hexagonal cells.

‘Prof.,’ she looked up with a grin. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’

Gill was always happy to see the professor. During the four years he had mentored her PhD, she’d come to see him as family and the Herbarium as her home. She’d worked part time for him throughout her studies, helping him to keep the collections in return for a small pay cheque and access to the facilities. He and his wife, Jane, had been there for her when her own family had not. They’d thrown parties to celebrate her academic milestones, cooked cosy suppers and held birthday drinks in their pretty yellow cottage near the river in Richmond. When he’d taken her on as his assistant, it had been a formality. But one she’d appreciated for the security that came with it.

She leant to one side and slid a flask towards him. ‘This specimen came in the overnight post. What do you think?’

The professor removed his wire rimmed glasses with one bony hand then stooped and lifted the flask with the other before closely examining one of the leaves. Curiously he rubbed it, releasing the citrus scent. The lines at the corners of his eyes deepened in appreciation.

‘It looks like lemon balm. Melissa officinalis,’ she said. ‘But the colour’s wrong.’

He put the flask down. The water around the stems tilted with the movement and caught the sun, refracting and splintering a bright flash of light into the colours of the rainbow. Replacing his glasses, he picked up the sheet of pressed flowers. ‘Incredible. What is it? Cobalt, ultramarine?’ Lemon balm flowers were usually white or lilac.

She took the sheet from him. The vivid colour popped off the page, tiny blue trumpets waiting to be played by fairy fingers and fairy lips. Her fingers itched to touch the petals, to see if their colour was an illusion. Perhaps when her fingertip made contact with it, the illusion would be shattered and the colour would disappear. She resisted the urge to exclaim out loud in wonder and, instead, put it down.

‘I remember seeing flowers this colour when I was a child,’ she said.

It was true. The memory struck her without warning, intense and pure. Gill had always thought it was a trick of her mind. That the few times she allowed herself to look back, she’d exaggerated the clarity and colours of those days. The flowers her mother had grown over the deck of the houseboat they lived in. A bright tumble of blue, ranging from pale robin’s egg to vibrant azure. But never the exact colour that her mother had searched for.

Gill jigged her leg irritably beneath the worktop. She hated looking back. There was no point, it only led to irrational thoughts. She shifted her attention back to the professor as he spoke.

‘Could the colour be down to the mineral content of the soil?’ His gaze lingered on the flowers.

‘I’m not sure where it was grown. Postmark looks like somewhere in Herefordshire, or Hertfordshire, it’s difficult to tell.’

‘Shame. Why don’t you take some cuttings, then you’ll get root samples at least?’ he suggested.

‘Done already. They should grow to a decent size in six weeks,’ Gill said.

‘Excellent,’ he nodded. The professor looked at his watch and picked up his briefcase. His gnarled fingers gripped the tan handle, his knuckles and finger joints whitening as they tensed around the thin leather. ‘Can I get you a cup of something?’

‘I’ll come with you.’ Gill pushed back her stool and followed him to the tea room. It was a tall, narrow space carved out of a corner of the tower next to the Keeper’s office. The single, fluorescent light flickered on iron struts above them.

She perched against the counter whilst he flicked the kettle on to boil.

‘You’re right.’ She tapped the biscuit tin in a quick, spiky rhythm as she thought. ‘The colour can be explained. Strong acid in the soil can bring out the blue tones. If the cellular examination doesn’t show anything, I should probably just wrap up. Stop wasting my time.’ There were plenty of other jobs to be getting on with. A long list of loan requests, an archiving project of old Himalayan specimens she’d started work on the week before.

She glanced sideways at the professor, expecting him to jump in with an encouraging word or clever suggestion. But he didn’t seem to hear. He opened his thermos and spooned in coffee granules with a tarnished teaspoon.

‘Are you off out?’ She noticed he still wore his dark brown winter Macintosh.

‘Yes, to Hertfordshire,’ he hesitated. ‘Phoenix’s HQ.’ He fetched her mug from the draining rack and dropped a teabag in.

‘Phoenix, the pharmaceutical company?’

The kettle began to hiss and spit behind her, droplets of steam settling onto her glasses.

‘We need companies like Phoenix to survive, Gill.’

‘I know,’ she looked down. When she was an undergraduate she’d read a news article about Phoenix dumping chemical waste into rivers. A few weeks later, she’d found herself joining a group of activists at a gallery opening sponsored by them, waving a placard saying ‘Say no to toxic pharmas! Unfuck our waterways!’ The dean had called her into his office and told her she’d be expelled if she ever tried a stunt like that again. It hadn’t been Phoenix anyway, he’d explained, but one of their suppliers who’d dumped the chemicals.

Gill and the professor had never spoken directly about the incident, although he’d since made the odd jovial reference to it in passing. She got the impression he didn’t altogether disapprove of what she’d done, but was too senior to openly acknowledge it. He’d once had a close relationship with Phoenix, she knew. It was almost certainly the reason for his meteoric early career rise. The fact he’d been able to establish the Herbarium as a centre of plant excellence, when his predecessors had struggled to find the funds to keep it going at all. But, as far as she was aware, he hadn’t had anything to do with them for several years. She’d assumed he’d consciously distanced himself from Phoenix, for much the same reasons she had. But perhaps she’d misread the situation.

She picked up her tea and they headed back to the hall in silence.

‘Gill?’ He stopped by the lemon balm and plucked a heart shaped leaf from the flask. He held it under his nose, rolling and crushing it between his thumb and forefinger.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m not always right, you know, there are steps I’ve taken to keep the Herbarium open I’m not proud of. But someone has to shake hands with the right people, laugh at the right jokes. Remind the world we have something to offer that isn’t just valuable to future generations. Not everyone sees the point in preserving specimens when a place like this could be turned into flats.’

Gill put her mug down, unsure as to what he was saying. The vaulted ceiling rose above their heads like a cathedral.

The professor continued. ‘What I mean is, if you think it’s worth continuing this examination then do it. If I’ve achieved one thing, I’d like to think it’s that I’ve created the space for botanists like you to continue their work. Botanists with a true passion for what they do. A connection to nature of the type that’s too rarely seen these days. I never had that gift myself. My strengths lie elsewhere. In finding funding. Connections. To keep us going.’ He hefted his briefcase in his hand, as if it had grown heavier with every word he’d spoken, and turned to the door.

‘Wait!’ she called him back, intending to correct him. To remind him that his reputation was unparalleled. That she didn’t have a connection to nature, no more than he or anyone else. She worked hard and loved plants, that was all. But, before she spoke, a part of her recognised that his comments about her had only been secondary. There was something else going on, something that ran beneath his words like a cold current deep beneath the sea.

It was unlike the professor to talk in such vague terms. He was always so precise and scientific, never blurring the line between fact and fantasy. They often discussed the significance of empirical evidence and how mystical ideas, such as faith or belief in the otherworld, were nothing more than social constructs. Things that had survived only because they bound people together, made them stronger as a community. Purely evolutionary phenomena. She was grateful for his clarity of thought and speech. More than that, it was something she had come to rely upon.

He twisted his head to her, his shoulders hunched. She saw for the first time how dishevelled he looked. Short strands of white hair stuck out haphazardly over his ears, blown around by the events of the morning and left uncombed. The professor was usually immaculately groomed. Beige cotton trousers and checked shirt hanging smoothly off his lean form, hair washed and fluffy as a school boy’s. Gill, who showered once weekly if she was lucky, normally felt positively scruffy in comparison.

‘Is everything OK?’ She blinked, feeling her glasses begin to slip down her nose.

He looked at her, as though weighing up whether to answer her question or not. He shifted his briefcase to his other hand. Gill wanted him to put it down, to come back and talk to her properly. It was hard to follow what he was saying whilst he hovered in the doorway, only half of him present. Like an empty body, his mind already on the meeting ahead.

‘The university council has received an offer for our collection, our specimens,’ he said, eventually. He spoke slowly, the heavy words sliding out of their own volition.

‘What. All of them?’ She span her stool towards him, knocking her mug with her elbow. Hot tea spilled over the side, through her shirt. Scalding her skin. She swiped at her arm, not taking her eyes off the professor.

‘We’d be left with digital specimens. That’s all.’

‘They can’t do that. Can they?’

‘I’m afraid so. Realtors will be visiting over the weekend to make a valuation of the tower.’

‘They’re selling the building too?’ Gill felt sick. Even though she hadn’t officially been Assistant Keeper for long, she’d assumed this was where she would spend the rest of her career. She couldn’t imagine doing her job anywhere else, without being surrounded by hundreds and thousands of dried plants gathered from all around the world. Plants that she had only just begun to get to know.

‘With the specimens gone, we won’t need the space,’ he said.

‘What about zoology?’

‘I guess they’ll move all of natural sciences into a newbuild.’

Gill tipped her head back and stared upwards. She wasn’t sure she could cope if the Herbarium was closed down. At times, her job and the professor’s support had been the only things that stopped her from feeling she was going entirely mad. That she hadn’t wasted years trying to build a new life for herself.

‘What can we do?’ she asked, making an effort to keep her voice steady.

He dropped the lemon balm and straightened his back. ‘I need you to stay here, focus on the specimens. Queries like this. That’s what’s important.’

She paused. The query didn’t feel important at all. Not now the future of the entire Herbarium was in question. What they needed was funding. A corporate sponsor with a big name. An entity who could stand up to the council. ‘That’s why you’re going to Phoenix?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry Gill, I can’t be late.’

‘Take me with you.’ She stood up and patted her pocket for her keys. They weren’t there. Perhaps she’d left them in her office.

‘No.’ He lifted his free hand to halt her. ‘Like I said, I need you here. Working the collections. We can’t afford to let that slip, now more than ever.’ He pulled open the heavy Herbarium door and left. It eased shut on its mechanical arm and Gill stared blankly at the dark green panels.