A Company of Swans

by Eva Ibbotson

  ‘Oh God!’ said Rom under his breath. ‘You!’ and the dark face was suddenly creased with weariness.

  ‘Mr Verney, I am very sorry to trouble you, but could I talk to you, please?’

  He had looked away, missing the fear in her eyes and the way she laced her fingers to stop them trembling.

  This girl, then, like all the others . . . this girl who in the garden had held out such different promise. The oldest ruse, the stalest trick of them all. Staying behind because something had been ‘forgotten’, because the boat had been ‘missed’.

  From the same doorway, after the other guests had gone, had stepped Marina in her bare feet, her blouse pulled off one shoulder, tossing her russet hair . . . And Dolores, the Spanish girl from the troupe he had nursed, whimsically wrapped in one of his Persian rugs because someone had told her that Cleopatra had been brought to Caesar wrapped in a carpet. Millie Trant too, who had used the same formula as Harriet: ‘Let’s you and I have a little talk, Mr Verney.’ But Millie had been honest – there was no mistaking her intentions from the start.

  He could laugh now to think how careful he had been not to talk to Harriet again once they came in from the garden, determined not to make her conspicuous. Yet he had watched her unnoticed; seen how she drew out Mrs Bennett, asking quiet questions about the absent child. Later Dubrov had told him a little of her story. Well, was it surprising that a girl who had run away from a good academic home should turn out to be what, seemingly, she was?

  ‘Very well,’ he said, fighting down his weariness, his desire to humiliate her by turning on his heel and leaving her. ‘If you wish it, we will . . . talk.’

  He pulled the bell-rope and Lorenzo, sleepy and surprised, appeared. ‘Take Miss Morton up to the Blue suite and send someone to see that she has what she requires,’ he said in rapid Portuguese. And to Harriet, who had not understood him, ‘I will join you in half an hour.’

  She was very tired and this made her confused – this and not knowing the customs of the country, Harriet told herself. Once in Cambridge she had been to a fund-raising luncheon with her Aunt Louisa in a very grand house, and afterwards the hostess had swept up all the ladies and taken them upstairs to a very cold bathroom. Harriet had not needed to do any of the things the other ladies needed to do, but this had not helped her. One went there; it was what one did.

  So perhaps in the Amazon – where it was true one became extremely sticky – it was customary to offer people to whom one was going to talk not only the chance to wash their hands and tidy their hair and so on . . . but actually . . . a bath.

  At first she had hoped that the room to which she was taken was not a bathroom; it was so large and contained things which she had not thought could be present in a bathroom: an alabaster urn full of lilies, a marble statue on a plinth, a deep white carpet. Not to mention mirrors . . . so very many mirrors in their gilt frames.

  But the bath, surrounded by mahogany and absolutely huge, was unmistakably . . . a bath. What is more, not one but two servants were standing beside it – one adjusting the water which gushed from the great brass taps, another pouring rose-coloured crystals from a cut-glass jar into the foam – and both at frequent intervals pausing to nod and smile encouragingly in her direction. For Lorenzo, discovering that his master’s latest acquisition was the girl who had played with Andrelhino’s crippled boy and made old José laugh almost until he dropped by showing him the dances she did on one toe in the Teatro Amazonas, had not sent up the usual impersonal Rio-trained chambermaid who waited on ladies in the Blue Suite. Instead, he had tipped out of their hammocks not only his wife but also his niece and told them to attend her.

  And attend her they did! Lorenzo might be a sophisticated cabaclo who spoke Portuguese and English and had once worked in a hotel, but for a wife he had turned to the Xanti, that gentle primitive tribe renowned for their knowledge of plant lore and the pleasure they take in the daily rituals of life.

  So now Maliki nodded and smiled and beckoned, setting her nose ornament a-jingle, and her welcoming gestures were echoed by her pig-tailed niece. It was awaiting her, this lovely thing, this bath – she might approach!

  ‘No,’ said Harriet loudly. ‘I don’t want a bath!’

  They understood not her words, but her tone. A look of hurt, of despair passed over both faces. The aunt approached the niece; they conferred in low agitated voices . . . came to a conclusion . . . rallied. Maliki rushed to the bath taps, turned off the hot and ran the cold to full. Rauni replaced the stopper of the cut-glass jar, ran to fetch another, tipped out a handful of green crystals and held them under Harriet’s nose.

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘Very nice. It smells lovely. Only I—’

  But the change in her voice, the obvious pleasure she took in the scent of ‘Forest Fern’, wrought a transformation in her attendants. They smiled, they were transported with relief; they threw up their hands to show how silly they had been not to realise that she wanted the water cooler and did not care for the smell of frangipani. And before Harriet could gather herself together for another effort Maliki had come forward and pulled the loose sack-like dress over her head, while Rauni – bending tenderly to her feet – removed her stockings and shoes.

  I suppose I should kick and scream and shout, thought Harriet. But she was very tired and the women – who had announced their names with ritual thumping of the chest – were very kind. And surely it could not be that the man who had been so much her friend in the garden might intend her any harm? Surely a vile seducer could not have pulled aside the thorny branches of an acacia to reveal for her a nest of fledgling flycatchers with golden breasts?

  The water was lovely – cool, soft, up to her chin. In Scroope Terrace it had been bad manners even to be on the same floor as someone taking their weekly bath, but her attendants showed no signs of departure. On the contrary, this delightful experience was clearly one to be shared. Maliki picked up a loofah and rubbed her back. Rauni ran back and forth proffering a succession of brightly coloured soaps; then bent to massage the soles of Harriet’s feet with pumice stone . . .

  And presently Maliki gathered up Harriet’s crumpled clothes and carried them carefully to the door which led to the corridor.

  ‘No!’ Harriet sat up suddenly. ‘No! Not my clothes. Leave them here!’

  But this time the women did not panic. They knew now how to soothe her, how to make everything right. Of course they would not leave her without clothes, they gestured, sketching reassuring garments in the air. How could she think it?

  And they did not! Maliki, removing Harriet’s brown foulard, returned almost immediately and together aunt and niece held up, with pardonable pride, what Harriet was to wear.

  Everything in Verney’s house was of the best and so was this negligée – a confection of creamy Venetian lace with scalloped sleeves, soft ruffles at the throat and hem and a row of tiny satin-covered buttons.

  What now? thought Harriet ten minutes later as she stood dried, powdered and perfumed in front of the largest of the mirrors, looking at a girl she did not recognise. Her eyes were huge, smudged with apprehension and fatigue; Maliki had brushed her loose hair forward to lie in damp strands across the creamy lace covering her breasts.

  ‘Oh, Marie-Claude, I have been such a fool,’ said Harriet, bereft and very frightened and homesick – not for the home she had never had, but for the company of her new-found friends.

  But there seemed to be no way now but forward. Leaning towards the mirror she undid, with fingers she could scarcely keep from trembling, the top button of the negligée where it rested against her throat.

  ‘I am ready,’ said Harriet.

  If she had still hoped that she might be mistaken, that hope was instantly dashed as her gratified attendants pushed her forward through the double doors and closed them behind her. The room, panelled in blue damask and richly carpeted, was dominated by the largest bed that Harriet had ever seen – a four-poster billowing with snow-white netting and cove
red with an embroidered counterpane the corners of which were undoubtedly turned back. And now rising from an armchair by the window was her host, Rom Verney, wearing over his dress shirt and evening trousers a black silk dressing-gown tied loosely – extremely loosely – with a silken cord.

  Strangely it was not the way he was dressed that made the trembling which assailed her almost uncontrollable. It was the disdain, the hard look in the grey eyes. Was it a trick played by the shaded lamps or did he suddenly hate her?

  ‘I hope you enjoyed your bath?’ The voice was cold, icily mocking.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  Was that part of what was to happen next – that he should detest her?

  She managed to take a few more steps forward, to reach the bedpost to which she put out a hand. At the same time her bare feet under the frothy hem arranged themselves instinctively in the first position dégagé, as though she was about to begin a long and taxing exercise.

  ‘I don’t want to . . . make excuses,’ she brought out. ‘I understand that ignorance is no defence . . . and that one is punished just the same.’ And not wishing to be rude even in this extremity of fear, she added, ‘I mean, I know that there are consequences of being ignorant . . . and that one must not try to escape them.’

  He had moved towards her and seen how she trembled, and a hope as intense as it was absurd leapt in his breast.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t entirely follow you,’ he said, but the mockery had left his voice and she was able to say:

  ‘I mean you have only to look at Ancient Greece to see . . . that not knowing what you were doing didn’t let you off. Oedipus didn’t know that Jocasta was his mother when he married her, yet the punishment was terrible – gouging out his eyes. Not that this is as bad as that, I expect . . .’ She made a small forlorn gesture towards the bed and her impending fate. ‘And poor Actaeon – he didn’t mean to spy on Diana bathing with her nymphs; he didn’t even know she was there, he just wanted a drink – yet look what happened to him! Turned into a stag and torn to pieces by his own dogs!’

  ‘Go on.’ He had moved still closer, but the moment of her doom was seemingly not yet upon her and she took a gulp of air and went on:

  ‘I only mean . . . that I’m not trying to . . . get out of anything. If what I did . . . staying behind to talk to you . . . telling Marie-Claude I was taking the other boat. . . thinking I could go back with Manuelo’s wife when she takes the baby to be christened . . .’ She broke off and tried again. ‘Only I think you are going to be very disappointed because I don’t know what to do.’ Her voice was rising dangerously. She was very close to tears. ‘For example, if you were Suleiman the Great it would be correct for me to creep from the foot of the bed into your presence. Only I can’t believe . . .’

  ‘I would prefer you not to creep,’ he said gently.

  But the return of the kindness he had shown her in the garden made everything somehow worse, and it was with tears trembling on her lashes that she said desperately, ‘I only mean that at Scroope Terrace there was never any opportunity for being . . . ruined and ravished . . . and so on. And I don’t know how to behave.’ She could hold back no longer now and the tears ran steadily down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t even know that you had to go to bed with the top button of your nightdress undone,’ sobbed Harriet, ‘not until Marie-Claude told me.’

  Rom made no attempt to comfort her. Instead he turned abruptly away from her and walked over to the window in the grip of a fierce and unremitting joy. She is good, he thought exultantly. I was right to feel what I felt. She is innocent and virtuous and good!

  He went over to her then and, taking out his handkerchief, very gently wiped away her tears. And then his fingers moved slowly down, brushing her throat, until they found their object: the buttons on her negligée.

  And in that moment, when rape and ruin was upon her . . . was inevitable . . . Harriet’s terror melted like snow in the sun and she knew with absolute certainty that no ruin was possible here; that what this man wished she would wish also, and would always wish – and she moved towards him with a little sigh and lifted her face with perfect trust to his.

  Which made it difficult for Rom to do what he intended – more difficult than he would have believed. But he mastered himself, and smiled down at her and smoothed her rumpled hair. Then carefully, methodically, he did up the small round button at the top of her negligée and kissed her once briefly on the tip of her nose.

  ‘Now,’ he said, taking her hand as one would take the hand of a child, ‘I’m going to send you home. Tomorrow I shall come into Manaus and we’ll talk, but now you must go.’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘Yes, my dear. At once.’ And his voice suddenly rough, ‘No breath of scandal shall touch you while I live.’

  7

  The letter which Stavely’s young bailiff had brought to Isobel Brandon’s room on the day that the Trumpington Tea Circle ladies were touring the house came from Hathersage and Climpton, the London accountants who had looked after the Brandons’ financial affairs for many years, and accompanied a detailed report, the results of which were unequivocal. As the result of the present owner’s extravagances and speculations, the estate was now encumbered to the point of no return. If bankruptcy and disgrace were to be avoided, Stavely must be sold and sold immediately.

  This letter, which drew from Isobel the exclamation that Harriet overheard, was in fact only a copy of the original which reached Henry Brandon in the Toulouse lodgings to which he had retreated in order to avoid his creditors. After which, conventional to the last, he retired to his bedroom, took out his father’s army revolver and blew out his brains.

  It was thus as a widow of ten days’ standing that Isobel Brandon sat in front of the mirror in her suite at the Hotel Astor in London, pinning up the rich red braids of her hair. Black suited her, thank heavens, for she would be in mourning for at least a year; the velvet jacket, bought in one of the few shops where her credit still held good, brought out the whiteness of her skin; she was one of those fortunate redheads untroubled by freckles.

  But the sight of her reflection was the only thing of comfort in the bleak wilderness that her life had become, for it did not occur to her to find solace in the small, bespectacled child curled up in an arm-chair with his nose, as always, in a book. Henry, with his pale, pinched little face, his unmanly terrors, was not at all the kind of son she had hoped for – and suddenly exasperated by his concentration, his inability to see what she was enduring, she said, ‘Really, Henry, you don’t seem to realise at all what is at stake. It’s your heritage I’m trying to save. Do you want us to go and live in a sordid little hut somewhere?’

  With a tremendous effort of will, Henry rose twenty thousand leagues from the bottom of the sea, abandoning brave Captain Nemo who had just sighted a frightful monster with bristling jaws, and considered her question.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’d like that. With a palm-leaf roof. The ubussu palm is best; it keeps the hut cool when the weather’s hot and doesn’t let in the rain at all. I’d go out every day and shoot animals for food. And I’d fish in the river. I’d look after you,’ said Henry to his mother.

  ‘Oh, God!’

  The child’s face fell. He’d got it wrong again; his mother didn’t believe he could provide for her. Harriet would have believed it . . . Harriet, who had said that spectacles were an advantage . . .

  For a while he waited, wondering if this was the moment to ask what ‘sordid’ meant – was it some kind of hut – but his mother’s face had that closed look again, and with a small sigh Henry sank back and rejoined his companions on the ocean bed.

  Why did that plain little son of hers have to inherit the General’s wide grey eyes, thought Isobel – eyes that her husband had missed, but that had so curiously lightened Rom’s vivid dark face. But here she veered away, as always, from the memory of that quicksilver, brilliant boy she had loved so idiotically. It was ten years since anyone had heard from Rom and he mig
ht as well be dead.

  Had it been such a crime to marry sensibly, thought Isobel, jabbing pins into the fiery coils of her hair? To want Stavely? Land outlasted passion, everybody knew that. Henry, then, had seemed a wise choice. Dear God, to let the mind overrule the heart – was that something she should have paid for with such misery only to be left a pauper at the end?

  Who could have foreseen that this prudent marriage would turn out to be the kind of nightmare it had done? That she, who had hardly been able to let Rom out of her sight, would be unable to endure the caresses of his half-brother. And who could have foreseen that Henry, faced with her disgust, would go to the dogs as thoroughly and conventionally as he had formerly played the country gentleman? Even before she had shut him out of her bedroom he had begun to drink, to gamble, and afterwards . . .

  She lifted her hand to the bell in order to ring for the manicurist who usually did her nails but dropped it again, remembering the appraising glance of the maître d’hôtel as he had noted – even while he bent over her hand, murmuring condolences on her loss – that she had come without her maid or a nurse for the child. He knew, as did the rest of London, that the sands were running out for the Brandons. Not that she had actually been refused a room, but there were none of the attentions she was accustomed to when she came to the Astor: no bowls of fruit or baskets of roses . . . and in the dining-room she had been shown to an obscure table in the corner.

  Oh, God, it was impossible, intolerable! There had to be some way out of the trap. And like one of those awful recurring dreams from which one thinks one has awoken, only to find it start again, she recalled the interview she had had with old Mr Hathersage the previous day in his fusty office behind St Paul’s.

  ‘I’m afraid there is absolutely no help for it, Mrs Brandon. You must know that if there was any other way my accountants would have found it. But the figures are inescapable. You must sell, Mrs Brandon; you must sell for what you can get, and you must do so quickly.’