Margaret rose in the dawn. The returning light provides refreshed awareness of her delicate beauty. Soft morning highlights, prisms of dew catching, flashing and recasting diamonds across her being. I make a mental note to bring my camera tomorrow.
There is a hint of orange about her throat, an irresistible attraction for all who look; a space that demands further investigation, to confirm that these genetic traits are fixed, are heralding a successful new entity.
Eight years: I have the date marked in my diary, as if I would ever need that physical prompt to confirm when I embarked on this exercise! What a ride it has been!
Those first tentative ideas, wildly ambitious suggestions; collegial mockery, public ridicule; scoffing at my suggestion that it would be possible to take material from two distantly related, but unique species, and bring forth a third, independent, sustainable body.
I privately admit to self-doubt, more so in those early months. The faculty is shunned; there are overheard, none-too-subtle sniggers in the canteen, “Ah yes, …Joseph’s off playing God, again…” and similar taunts, that eventually have me working and living alone. There is nobody even to share my joyous recreation!
But I have a personal beacon drawing me ever forward; a siren on the headland, an irresistible muse. I know Margaret’s issue will be, and it’s that conviction keeping me at the laboratory long past home time, burning candles at both ends to challenge the dark.
I initially conduct trials with the Murray-bred rose, then with that sombre Lionel variety. But in hindsight, I conclude that both are from the wrong side of the tracks.
I know a breakthrough is close, but then … Jesu mio – disaster. The ‘truck’ runs off the road. Eight years’ worth of notes, detailed, annotated research gone in an instant. I have found an obscure 19th-century paper by Gregor Mendel. Fascinating stuff, quite gobsmacking to think that two centuries earlier, he is actually writing up the rules that continue to govern geneticists today.
I go to bookmark the site for further analysis. There is an upgrade for the App and with only half my brain in gear, I press the ‘continue’ button. Away went my Magnum Opus – gone into a cloud, or somewhere!
“Margaret, Margaret, come back”, I wail, hitting the Undo button repeatedly. I can’t believe it. How could I have just done this?
In a daze, I wander for hours around the laboratory, through the hothouses, into the gardens, back inside, outside again, tears of despair and frustration running down my cheeks.
On my third or fourth pass through the hothouse, I look wistfully at the trays. Several thousand cuttings, grouped in numbered batches, each in beakers of sterile medium. But the key to which group are in which medium is gone into Fantasyland!
Hang on. I look closer. My heart misses a beat. There is a label, and I see a millimetre of greenery extending from several grafts. Saints be praised, Margaret Rose cometh!