She did not know whether to answer yes or no, so she kept quiet.
Captain James Lowinger flat out laughed here, heartily and in a way not exactly mirthful. And as he laughed, water spurted from the corners of his eyes and he picked up the thin paper napkin that Roberta had dispensed with the Danish pastry, and wiped the water from his cheeks.
‘And there are a lot of men who wished that was true!’
He laughed down into his chest, and picked at the remaining bits of Danish on his plate.
‘Mind you,’ he said again, settling back, ‘these breeder pearls are just as tiny as a pinhead. So–’ His hands fell flat on the tabletop ‘–what’s the use of that? The Chinese grind them for medicine.’
They drank their coffee then. Roberta leaned on her cash register and stared gloomily out of the window into the Vancouver rain. But she was only pretending to stare; Vera could tell she was actually listening.
‘Well, do you believe it?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said.
‘So, you don’t believe it?’ He peered at her.
‘Well,’ she began to doubt herself. ‘Maybe a little–’
‘When Columbus came to America, you know, he found that the natives on this continent believed it too. They had pearls galore, so many pearls, do you know? Pearls were not just in the Orient. No, not at all. When Fernando de Soto got to Florida he found the dead embalmed in wooden coffins with baskets of pearls beside them. In Montezuma’s temple, the walls were all laden with pearls. The Temple of Tolomecco had walls and roof of mother-of-pearl and strings of pearls hung from the walls.’
‘Where did they come from?’
‘Quite literally, they grew on trees. You didn’t know that, did you, Vera?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Yes. In the Gulf of Paria, Columbus found oysters clinging to the branches of trees, their shells gaping open. Do you believe that?’
‘No,’ she breathed. This time she had to have guessed right.
‘Wrong!’ he roared. Roberta looked back at them, her reverie interrupted, and grinned to see the old man teasing his granddaughter, and Vera’s pale face heating up again to the roots of her nearly white hair.
‘Oysters really did grow on trees.’ He went all scientific on her then. ‘The oyster in question is Dendrostrea, or Tree Oyster, a mollusc that is to be found upon roots or branches of mangrove trees overhanging the water.’
She was reduced to silence.
‘There, I fooled you. But you got me going. What did you want to know? What were you asking about?’
‘Ceylon. You went to Ceylon.’
‘Oh, everyone went to Ceylon. My father too. Way back in the 1860s. That’s a long time ago, you can’t imagine how long, my dear.’
‘Of course I can. Seventy years ago.’ She was better at arithmetic now.
‘Give or take a decade, that’s how old your grandfather is. My father was away with the pearling ships when I was born.’
‘Just like my father was away when I was born,’ Vera offered this as a bond.
‘But I came to see you, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, you did.’
Captain Lowinger banged his thick cup on the table. It bounced. The windowpanes seemed to rock in their frames. ‘Consider yourself lucky. My father never came to see me. I am sure I remember being born. I looked around and he wasn’t there. I had to wait years to see him, as far as I can remember. When he saw me, he was not really satisfied. Later, he took me along to make a man of me.’
He rubbed the tips of his forefinger and thumb together. The good eye steadily gazed into Vera’s face. The other one saw her too, but she must have had a white cloud over her head. ‘It’s the way of men in our family. Seafaring men. Go off and leave the woman at home, minding things. It’s a good deal if you’re the man. Mind you, it never worked for me. I tried it with your grandmother, but she was not the type of woman who’d wait around. For that, I lost her and I lost your mother too.’
He looked sad. Roberta brought fresh coffee and he took a long slurp. ‘But we were talking about fathers.’
10 February 1860
Night was falling as they landed at the British garrison in the Strait of Manaar. Before they left the deck of their little vessel, Papa Lowinger took the boy to one side, looking away from the streaky red of the setting sun. That was his first memory.
‘Do you see that land there?’ Papa said to James, pointing into the darkness. The white waving beach and dark hills above were two miles away. ‘That is the island of Ceylon. The people here believe that it was Paradise, the Garden of Eden. Up in the hills lives the King of Candy.’
That impressed James, and he focused his sleepy eyes on it. The small base they had come to was separated from Ceylon only by a shallow arm of the sea, full of sandbars. Candy looked remote. Paradise was closer.
‘At low tide you can nearly walk there,’ Papa said. ‘There’s a string of sandbars called Adam’s Bridge. The people say it was the very spot Adam crossed over when he was expelled from Paradise.’
The bridge was a series of white sand circles and they gleamed under the moon as the water surrounding them went darker and darker. It glistened and seemed to beckon him. James knew that Papa was laying on an enchantment. He did that to people. His voice became like a swallow: it rose and dipped and winged its way into your heart, and then it took fright and flapped upwards and was gone.
The sand fleas were biting. Soldiers stood at the water’s edge, swinging their storm lamps by the handle, luring their boat in. James was bundled up and put in to bed. Through the wall he heard one of those tight-lipped voices. He didn’t know how men got them–at Sandhurst he supposed. His mother wanted him to go there when he grew up. But his father wanted to teach him the pearling business. He was still in the larval stage, white as a fish and squeaky-voiced.
The leader of the garrison talked on.
‘Time and again Ceylon’s conquerors have exhausted the great pearling grounds. First the Portuguese, then the Dutch. We’ve let the banks rest now for four years. Each year we’ve made a survey to see if the oysters were ready,’ the barking voice went on. ‘Some years they are invisible, some years too small. We can’t wait much longer; at seven years of age, an oyster is too old: it will have vomited its pearl.’
Seven was James’s age. Too old!
‘We mean to auction off leases on the pearl fishery.’ That was a different English voice, also clipped, but lower.
The roar of laughter came from his father. He was European in origin, Papa. You could hear a husky German or Austrian in there if you listened. He was a man who left country and religion behind to journey after the pearl. He spoke in his peculiar way, hearty and learned, but rough-edged until he wanted to persuade you; then he was smooth as satin ‘The manner of getting pearls has always been a mad amalgam of religious rituals and native cunning. Now the British Army believes it can apply science to the problem?’
‘This year the fishery will again be great,’ continued the clipped voice in an unhurried way. ‘This is why we have invited you. I tell you, everyone has come to see.’
In