‘Nothing,’ the man said precisely. ‘People are cursing their very name. They are worthless. They are less than worthless because people do not even want to see them. They blame them for everything. They are saying that they will never grow tulips again in Holland. That they hate the very sight of them.’

‘This is madness,’ John said, struggling to smile. ‘These are the finest flowers that were ever grown. They cannot turn against them, just because the market has gone sour. There is nothing like a tulip –’

‘They never saw them as flowers,’ the courier explained patiently. ‘They saw them as wealth. And while everyone ran mad for them they were wealth itself. But the moment that people don’t want them, they are nothing more than bulbs which grow pretty flowers. I felt a fool carrying these around with me. I felt as foolish as if I were a madman carrying turnips and saying they were treasure.’

He dumped the two pots on the floor. ‘I’m sorry to bring you such bad news. But you should think yourself lucky that you have only two. The men who bought a dozen at the height of their fame are lying in the canals singing to the fish.’

He turned and went out, closing the door behind him. J and his father did not move. The beautiful tulip pots gleamed mockingly, reflected in the shine of the waxed floorboards.

‘Are we ruined?’ J demanded.

‘Please God, no.’

‘Will we lose the house?’

‘We have things we can sell. We can part with some of the rarities. We can trade and stay afloat.’

‘We are at the very edge of bankruptcy.’

John nodded. ‘At the edge. At the edge. But only at the edge, J.’ He rose from his chair and hobbled to the door that led to the terrace and the garden. He opened the door and looked out, careless of the blast of cold air which billowed down the hall and might chill the tulips in their pots.

The saplings of the chestnut trees were as gawky and awkward as colts. Their buds were thick on the slender branches. There would be the tiny palmate leaves and then the magnificent white blossoms, and then the glossy brown nuts hidden soft in their thick casing. John gazed on them as if they were a lifeline.

‘We’ll never be ruined. Not while we have the trees,’ he said.

But they were hard-pressed to make ends meet. All spring and summer they juggled debts, took payments on plants and sent the money out straight away to satisfy the creditors.

‘What we need,’ J said one evening in autumn, as they were lifting bulbs from the bed, brushing them gently with a soft rabbit’s-tail brush, and laying them in long flat crates, ‘is a batch of new rare garden plants that everyone will be desperate to own. A new collection that everyone will want.’