by Eva Ibbotson
She finished buffing her nails and rose. ‘We’re going shopping, Henry,’ she said. ‘Come here while I make you tidy.’
‘Could I stay here and read?’
‘No, you couldn’t. We’re going to the dentist afterwards.’
Henry nodded. Shopping and the dentist. A sombre prospect, but not more than he had learned to expect, and he stood patiently while Isobel tugged at his Norfolk jacket with unpractised hands and jammed his cap on his head. The impertinence of that nursemaid, simply walking out without warning just because she had not been paid for a few weeks!
Usually there was nothing Isobel liked better than to shop and her mourning provided an excellent excuse for several new outfits, but there were only a few places now where her credit still held good. To these – little glove shops and hatters in the discreet, quiet streets round St James’s whose owners, accustomed to serving the Brandons, had not learned to defend themselves – she now repaired. If she knew that the exquisite black kid gloves, the jet-beaded reticule and velvet toque she purchased would not be paid for, she concealed any anxiety she might have felt with remarkable success.
It had been hard for Henry to abandon the Nautilus and Captain Nemo, but now he trotted obediently beside his mother studying with scholarly attention the posters on the hoardings, the men digging a hole in the road, the passers-by.
‘Why do they make “Little Liver Pills”?’ Henry wanted to know. ‘If they made them big, wouldn’t people’s livers get better more quickly?’ And: ‘If those men in the road dug and dug and dug, would they be the right way up when they got to Australia, or would they be upside-down?’
‘Oh, Henry, be quiet!’ They had just passed Fort-num’s, in the window of which there was an exquisite ink-dark chenille gown which would have suited her magnificently, but the last time she had tried to charge anything here there had been a most unpleasant scene.
Henry made a heroic effort, forbearing to ask what made the red colour in the glass dome in the chemist’s window and not even suggesting that they stop to give a penny to a beggar on crutches and with a row of medals on his chest. But when two men walked right across the pavement in front of him carrying a big wicker basket into a shop, he found it impossible not to pluck at his mother’s sleeve.
‘Look!’ he said. ‘That’s my name on the basket – one of my names. It’s spelled the same too.’
Isobel looked up, following her son’s pointing finger, and saw on the side of a basket, with its heavy leather straps, the letters R. P. VERNEY.
‘Is something the matter?’ Henry asked anxiously. He had hoped for once to interest his mother, but not to interest her as much as that. She had stopped dead on the pavement, her hand at her throat.
R.P.V.B. Romain Paul Verney Brandon. How often had she seen those initials entwined with her own! Not carved in the bark of trees – Rom allowed no one to despoil his beloved trees – but he had drawn them for her on the clear, fawn sand when they spent a day by the sea; sown them in cress seeds on a bed of earth while the old gardener scratched his head and muttered at the foolishness of the young. If Rom had wanted to forget Stavely – forget her and the Brandons – what more likely than that he had simply dropped his last name – too careless, too arrogant perhaps, to make a more fundamental change?
‘Wait here,’ she said to Henry. ‘I won’t be long. Don’t move and don’t speak to anyone.’
‘Yes,’ said Henry.
There was nothing to be afraid of, Henry told himself as his mother pushed open the door of the shop which was labelled ‘Truscott and Musgrave’: and had windows which were covered up so that one couldn’t see inside.
He knew she wouldn’t forget him; she wouldn’t go out through another door and leave him on the pavement. But nevertheless he began to feel that awful churning in his stomach which meant that soon he was going to be very afraid indeed, which was ridiculous if he wanted to be an explorer. It was more than two years ago when she had told him to wait on a black leather chair in the bank at Harrods, and had gone to meet a friend and left by another door and forgotten him, and it hadn’t really been so bad. When after an hour he had begun to cry – which was silly, but he had been younger then – an old lady had come, and then someone from the shop, and they had fetched a policeman and taken him back to the hotel. And his mother had been very upset and sorry and bought him some marzipan.
Only of course he would rather not be forgotten than have marzipan . . .
I’ll count up to a hundred, thought Henry, and then another hundred and another and then she’ll come. Sinclair of the Scouts, in the Boy’s Own Paper – he wouldn’t have made a fuss because he had to stand and wait for his mother in the street . . . and anyway they were going to the dentist. She might forget him but she would not forget the dentist. . .
Inside the shop Isobel had made an entirely hypothetical enquiry about laundering the damask for Stavely, receiving from the grey-haired and serious Mr Truscott a courteous and considered reply, and taken down some notes. If Mr Truscott was surprised that a woman of quality should attend to these matters herself rather than send her housekeeper, he kept this to himself. Then, as she was putting on her gloves, she said almost casually, ‘I noticed your men bringing in a basket just now and it seemed to me that I knew the name. Verney was a family name of my husband’s and he had a distant cousin named Paul.’
‘It might well be, Mrs Brandon. I have never met Mr Verney myself, but we have dealt with his linen for eight years now. An excellent customer, always very prompt with his payment.’
‘He lives in London, then?’
‘London? Oh dear me, no! Far from it.’ Mr Truscott smiled, for the legend of Mr Verney’s washing did much to brighten the monotony of life in the shop. He paused, enjoying himself, and said, ‘He lives in Brazil. In Manaus, one thousand miles up the River Amazon.’
‘The Amazon!’ Isobel’s heart began to pound, but the implications of what she had just heard were too extraordinary. ‘But he cannot send his washing home from the Amazon! He cannot!’
‘Well, that’s exactly what he does do, Madam. Beautiful linen, quite outstanding workmanship. Every three weeks when the liner docks at Manaus, his servants put a basket on the ship. Then at Liverpool they put it on the train and we send our cart to Euston and return the clean linen. Oh yes, it’s quite an event when Mr Verney’s linen basket comes!’
‘But it must cost a fortune!’
‘Well, not a fortune, Madam, but certainly a fair sum. However, I imagine Mr Verney would have no regard to that. All the gentlemen out there live like princes and he is one of the richest, they say. It’s the rubber, you see.’
He launched into a description of the rubber trade to which Isobel listened absently, her mind racing.
‘And Mrs Verney – does she send her washing home too?’
‘I have not heard of there being a Mrs Verney, Madam. Certainly we don’t get her linen. But of course, we are more of a gentlemen’s service on the whole.’
Isobel thanked him and promised to let him know about the Stavely damask. Enquiries would have to be made, of course, but that should not be difficult; Bertie Freeman worked in the Consulate at Rio and a cable to him should elicit the necessary facts. But if it was Rom – and really she had no doubt of it – then all her troubles were over. If Rom lived and was rich, her future glittered as brightly as a star. Rom would save Stavely – she had never seen in anyone such a feeling for a piece of land – and he would save her! Even if there was a dreary wife somewhere, she would not be able to prevent it. And as she made her way out of the shop, Isobel’s lips curved into the special smile which belonged to her time with that extraordinary and brilliant boy.
Henry was standing obediently where she had left him and when he saw her his face lit up in a way which tugged at her consciousness, absorbed as she was. There was something not unpleasing about Henry – something a little wistful. A man with Rom’s protective instincts might well be moved by the plight of such a fath
erless young child.
‘Would you like to go on a journey, Henry?’ she asked now. ‘A long one?’
And Henry said, ‘Yes.’
8
‘Thank you,’ said Harriet tenderly to the waiter, who was placing before her a fried egg swimming in grease and a mound of peppery beans. ‘Obrigado. Gosto muito!’
Breakfast at the Hotel Metropole was not normally a beautiful experience; the same food appeared at all meals, the sluggish fan scarcely stirred the fetid air, swollen black flies buzzed on the overcrowded flypapers. But the morning after the party at Follina the world, for Harriet, was bathed in an all-embracing golden light.
She had returned unnoticed the night before; both Kirstin and Marie-Claude had been fast asleep – her adventure was unknown to anyone but herself. And Mr Verney had said that today he would come to find her. She must not depend on it. . . but he had said it.
‘It is not necessary to give thanks for such a breakfast,’ said Marie-Claude, shuddering. But she herself was in a good mood, for her encounter with Harry Parker, the secretary of the Sports Club, had turned out to be extremely fortunate. She had been offered, and at very little personal inconvenience, a chance to augment by an appreciable sum the savings she and Vincent were amassing for the purchase of the restaurant.
‘In two weeks’ time,’ she said now, lowering her voice, for the rest of the Company was sitting at tables close by, ‘I am going to burst at the Sports Club! From a cake! For seven hundred and fifty milreis in cash.’ And as Kirstin and Harriet looked at her with raised eyebrows, she added, ‘Mr Parker invited me: it is a thing that is very much done in gentlemen’s clubs when there is a special dinner of some kind. This one is for the Minister for Amazonia, who is coming from Rio to discuss the organisation of river transport or some such thing. The cake is wheeled in for dessert and – hoop la!’ She put down her fork to sketch in the air the deliciously titillating eruption which would follow.
Harriet was impressed. ‘From a real cake, Marie-Claude?’
‘No, idiot! It’s an enormous wooden affair – generally pink and decorated with candles. Sometimes they release white doves at the same time, though then of course there are problems with the feathers and the excretion and so on. Sometimes there are men with trumpets who accompany the cake and a chef who plunges in the knife . . . and of course always balloons and streamers and a great deal of champagne.’
‘Will Vincent like it?’ enquired Kirstin.
‘It is precisely for Vincent that I am doing it,’ flashed Marie-Claude. But a pensive look spread for a moment over her heart-shaped face, for it was true that she had not precisely explained to Vincent the means she employed to increase their joint savings. Vincent himself was strait-laced and his family – notably his cousin Pierre under whom Vincent had trained – was positively gothic. Still, what could one do? It was necessary to be practical. ‘You won’t mention it to anyone?’ she pleaded. ‘The dinner begins very late; after the curtain goes down. No one at the theatre need know.’
‘Of course not.’ Harriet was overawed. Thus, she was sure, had Messalina erupted in the last days of Imperial Rome. ‘Only, Marie-Claude, when you come out of the cake won’t the gentlemen become overexcited and – you know?’
‘Over-excitement is something I do not permit,’ said Marie-Claude, pushing away her egg with a moue of disgust. ‘I made this absolutely clear to Mr Parker. I burst; I dance a little on the table; I sit for a moment in the lap of the Minister – and that is all.’
‘What will you wear?’ asked Kirstin.
‘Not very much,’ Marie-Claude admitted. ‘Mr Parker insisted on this. But there is always my hair which covers most things, and I have a special garter with a large rosette in which my Tante Berthe’s hat-pin can be concealed. Not that it will be necessary, I assure you. The whole affair is strictly a matter of art – a kind of tableau vivant – and anyway, the Minister is old.’ She paused and fixed her enormous eyes on Harriet. ‘There is, however, a problem,’ she said, lowering her voice still further and glancing over her shoulder at the alcove where Dubrov and those of the principals who could face the Metropole dining-room at breakfast were sitting. ‘I have to see Mr Parker at eleven thirty this morning to make the arrangements.’
‘But it’s the costume rehearsal for The Nutcracker,’ said Harriet.
‘Exactly. So you, Harriet, must be for me a mouse,’ said Marie-Claude.
‘Oh, Marie-Claude, I couldn’t,’ said Harriet, aghast. ‘I’ve never been a mouse; I don’t know the steps or anything!’
‘There are no steps,’ said Marie-Claude contemptuously. ‘One scampers and runs about and bites toy soldiers in the legs.’ She poured herself another cup of coffee and contemplated with gloom the bizarre events on which Tchaikovsky had wasted some of his loveliest music. And indeed it is not easy to see why little Clara is so delighted to get a nutcracker for Christmas nor why, almost at once, there is a battle between toy soldiers and some hitherto unsuspected mice.
‘I’ll help you, Harriet,’ offered Kirstin. A little taller than the others, she was doomed to be a soldier and smite the attacking rodents with a wooden sword. ‘And in any case the rehearsal will be chaos; everyone will be in hysterics long before lunch.’
She spoke no less than the truth. The Nutcracker was the only ballet in which Simonova did not star, but in ceding the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy to Masha Repin, Simonova was by no means quitting the field. She was going to supervise rehearsals, she was going to put her experience at the service of the younger girl; she was going to help.
‘Please, Harriet?’ begged Marie-Claude, laying a pearl-tipped hand on Harriet’s arm. ‘I would ask Olga, but she was sick in the night and the other Russian girls are such prigs.’
Of such a request there could only be one outcome. Harriet might hate deceiving Monsieur Dubrov and be frightened of the consequences, but it was out of the question that she should refuse to help her friend. Thus two hours later, entirely enveloped (at a temperature of ninety-two degrees) in simulated fur, her face covered by a mask, she was on stage being a belligerent and really rather unpleasant mouse.
Rom came in the little Firefly, a sentimental gesture which almost doubled his travelling time, and tying up at his private jetty made his way along the quayside, acknowledging the salutations of his men, who were trundling their black ‘biscuits’ of rubber towards the lighters. He passed quickly through his warehouses and entered the chaotic office – with its maps, samples of cahuchu, telegraph machine and stained coffee-cups – from which his manager attended the needs of the Verney empire.
‘All is well, Coronel?’ asked Miguel, lifting his pince-nez and removing a pile of files from a chair for his employer. But the question was rhetorical. Miguel, rescued from schoolmastering, had served Verney since he first came to the Amazon and it was clear that this morning his master was very well indeed. Was this the moment, Miguel wondered, to put in a word for his nephew who was just out of school and looking for a job?
But Verney was in a hurry. ‘I have an appointment,’ he said. ‘We’ll just do the most urgent things. I want the Pittsburg contract and the projection of the hardwood requirements for Bernard Fils in Marseilles. The rest can wait.’
Miguel nodded and produced the documents in an instant from the apparent confusion of his desk. ‘One of de Silva’s clerks came in this morning with a copy of the Ombidos report. He said you wanted to see it before the visit of the Minister.’
‘That’s right.’ Rom’s face was momentarily sombre at the mention of Ombidos, that plague spot from which rumours of ill-treatment and butchery of the Indians continued to filter through. ‘I’ll take it home.’
Less than an hour later Verney left the office, crossed the narrow harbour-side road and climbed a steep flight of steps to enter, through a blue door in a high wall, the bougainvillea-covered Casa Branca.
It was the smallest of houses – a toy place high above the huddle of buildings that looked out over the river
; a white box with blue shutters and a handkerchief of a terrace with a fig tree. An unlikely dwelling for a rubber baron, but it was the first home Rom had owned and he had kept it, finding it useful when he had to spend a night in the city. Carmen looked after the house; Pedro acted as chauffeur for the Cadillac he kept in a neighbouring mews. No women came to the Casa Branca but it was here under the fig tree in the little courtyard suspended over the harbour that he had decided to give Harriet lunch. She would like the view; she would like Pedro and Carmen – and he did not want her exposed to the stares and nudges of the other diners in fashionable restaurants.
‘A light meal, Carmen,’ he said. ‘An avocado mousse, some fish . . . And the Frascati to drink.’
‘Will you want the motor, Senhor?’
‘No.’
He went upstairs to shower and fifteen minutes later was letting himself into the Teatro Amazonas by a side door.
Dubrov, watching out front, turned and half rose as Rom slipped into a seat beside him.
‘You should have told us you were coming,’ he said, pushing a hand through his dishevelled hair. ‘Simonova would have wished to welcome you herself.’ (She would have wished to . . . but he had left the ballerina in her dressing-room, screaming with rage at Masha Repin’s refusal to be coached.)
‘I’ve come to take Harriet out to lunch,’ said Rom in a low voice, fascinated by the antics on the stage. ‘If that’s convenient? When do you expect a break?’
‘It shouldn’t be long now. There have been a few . . . difficulties.’ So Mr Verney was interested in Harriet? Flattering; very flattering. ‘It will do her good to get out,’ said the impresario. ‘She works so hard.’
‘She certainly seems to be dancing with great aplomb. It must be very hot under those pelts.’
Dubrov smiled tolerantly. Mr Verney was a man of formidable intelligence, but no connoisseur of the ballet. ‘Harriet is not dancing at the moment. Later you will see her; she is a snowflake.’