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"It's a houseplant," Biggles said, probably unnecessarily.
Von Stalhein, standing on the doorstep of his small, bare Kensington flat, looked down at the pot in Biggles's hands and the cheerful-looking little cluster of leaves and purple flowers growing in it.
"Yes," he said. "I can see that. Are you, er—keeping it for someone?"
"It's a gift," Biggles said. "A flatwarming present, of sorts. If you want it."
It was something he had been thinking about for a while, and finally, on a complete whim, had stopped into a plant shop on his way to Kensington to consult about a case and bought the first plant that caught his eye, an African violet. He had seen a similar one on the desk of Air Commodore Raymond's secretary and thought it appeared to brighten up the place.
It wasn't that von Stalhein's flat was dreary, exactly, or at least Biggles had no specific reason for thinking so, based on the handful of times that Biggles had been inside. It received cheery sun through an east-facing window, and it was clean and tidy, almost immaculately so. But "dreary" was still the impression he had received. It was sterile and empty, nearly devoid of personal touches. In the months that von Stalhein had lived there, a few personal items had turned up out of necessity—a shelf of books, mostly for von Stalhein's translations; some items of inexpensive crockery—but there was nothing homelike about any of it.
A plant, Biggles had thought, could only help. Now he was starting to regret it.
Von Stalhein looked from the gift to Biggles's face. For a moment, his usual reserve dissolved into absolute confusion. "You got me a plant?"
"It's a way of saying, welcome to the neighbourhood."
"I'm not even in your neighbourhood," von Stalhein said.
"That's fine, I can take it back to the Mount Street flat," Biggles said, privately wondering what everyone else would say about it. The plant would probably have a lifespan measured in weeks. They had tried a few times, over the years, but the only thing that had somehow survived was a rubber plant Bertie had acquired somewhere (Biggles had a private suspicion he had dug it up on one of their cases) and had now taken over an entire corner of the sitting room. Mrs Symes had to be watering it, because Biggles didn't think any of the rest of them were.
His hands were abruptly lighter by one African violet.
"It's thoughtful," von Stalhein said, holding it like a politician who had been handed an unruly baby. "I'll ... er ... put it in water."
"No, don't do that!" Biggles said hastily. "Here." He dug in his pockets and held out a slightly crumpled sheet of manila paper. "There's a pamphlet that came with it, I assume it has instructions."
Von Stalhein shifted his grip on the pot to one-handed and took the pamphlet. "I see," he said. "Is that—all?"
"No," Biggles said hastily, "no, I wanted to ask you some questions about a diamond smuggling ring possibly operating through a Soviet base," and von Stalhein, back on familiar ground, visibly relaxed.
*
So there was a violet on his windowsill now when Biggles came to call.
It did brighten things up, Biggles was pleased to see. There was just something more homelike about a flat with a plant on the window.
The instruction sheet was folded up neatly on the windowsill beside the plant. Biggles could easily imagine it being consulted for precise timing of watering and the like.
He wouldn't have been offended if the plant had died, but instead it seemed to thrive, and interestingly, so did von Stalhein. It was as if the plant had, in some very minor way, broken a dam and opened the way to more. It wasn't that the flat immediately filled up with bric-a-brac, but Biggles began to notice a few touches that were not strictly utilitarian. Once when he came to call, he noticed a print had appeared on the wall, a delicate ink drawing of a marketplace in old Prussia, lightly tinted with watercolour. A nice porcelain teapot, decorated with flowers, showed up in the cabinet that held the china, there to be used when Biggles stopped by.
The sparse bookshelf with its handful of dictionaries and treatises on grammar began to have a few more interesting items, such as books of poetry and history, a few on horse-breeding, and a slim volume, tucked between two fat dictionaries as if to hide it, on the care and feeding of common houseplants.
One day, as von Stalhein poured out tea for both of them and Biggles laid down a file folder he had brought over from the Yard with some case notes and letters from Raymond to be translated, he almost did a double take.
"Your plant has a friend."
Von Stalhein looked up from arranging the tea things. He had become very precise about it, although Biggles had told him that it wasn't as if someone who had come up drinking canteen tea during the war was going to care; but he seemed to like playing host. "Oh. Yes. The neighbour downstairs was moving out and was just going to set it at the kerb. I believe she said it's a jade plant."
The new plant was more sprawling than the violet, with knobby, fat leaves. Biggles found it somewhat odd, but it was von Stalhein's flat, after all, and he made the polite noises that seemed to be expected.
"She said that you can take cuttings and root them in water," von Stalhein said. "I might try it. You could have one."
Biggles imagined the sitting room with one end entirely overtaken by rubber plant and the other draped in whatever this was. "None of us have a green thumb in the slightest," he said hastily. "I'm impressed you do."
"Well," von Stalhein said dryly, "it was that or let it die. Are you aware African violets are actually rather particular about their growing conditions?"
"No," Biggles said in perfect honesty. "I thought it looked cheerful."
Von Stalhein gave him a crooked smile. "It is," he said.
*
The African violet found some more friends.
They were an odd assortment: a geranium with bright red flowers, something large in a pot in the corner, a small, spiky plant that lived in a cracked teacup on the edge of his desk, and more.
Biggles sat on the guest chair, nibbling on a bun (he had brought a small sack of them, picked up from a vendor on the corner) and watched von Stalhein pottering about with a watering can. He couldn't help thinking that Ginger had anticipated the two of them having dinner together, but it was impossible to anticipate this.
"Sorry, I'll be done in a moment," von Stalhein said. "The ficus was dry, and you know how it is."
"No, it's fine, no hurry." It was actually very peaceful in here, Biggles realised. The foliage in the window softened the light slanting through it. There were some more small pieces of art on the walls, and a framed studio photo of Fritz and a solemn-faced woman who was probably his mother. Through the open door to the bedroom, Biggles glimpsed that the bed, while immaculately fixed with military precision, had a colourful quilt folded on the foot of it. And there were, unsurprisingly, more plants. The flat must have about a dozen of them now.
It was quixotic and a bit chaotic and not at all what he would have thought von Stalhein would want. But what was a home but a collection of things that made a person feel at home? And the sense of home was there. It had crept in without Biggles even noticing, but it was there now.
"Are you sure you don't want a jade plant?" von Stalhein asked, gesturing to a mismatched assortment of small jars that held scraps of greenery with sprawling roots questing into the water. "All you have to do is put it in a pot. I might have a spare one for it."
Biggles grinned. He could imagine it on the windowsill of the sitting room. The idea of having the window taken over by its odd, lobe-shaped leaves was not an unpleasant one after all; he liked how the light filtered through the plants in von Stalhein's window. "Yes, I'd love one."
