by Eva Ibbotson
The day before Alvarez was due in Manaus, Rom organised an outing on a lake in the forest whose waters were entirely covered by the giant leaves and peonylike flowers of the Victoria Regina water-lily; a still, mysterious place beneath overhanging trees.
‘Magnificent!’ declared Simonova as she sat in the first and most luxurious of the carriages Rom had hired, but she did not feel it necessary to descend. The knowledge that soon she would be leading a purely rural life, the mistress of goats, kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts, made it unnecessary for her to risk the long grass by the water’s edge, and with a commanding gesture she kept Dubrov and Grisha by her side.
‘I wish that someone would stand on a leaf!’ announced Maximov. His magnificent physique outlined by a cream shantung tropical suit, he had loaded the good-natured Kirstin with a tripod and various boxes and was directing his camera at a leaf the size of a table with an upturned edge.
There was a certain lack of response. Olga curled her lip and muttered an oath in Pushtu, the rest of the Russians backed away – and Marie-Claude looked incredulously at the premier danseur. She was in an excellent mood. The Vasco da Gama, docking that morning, had brought a most exciting letter from Vincent. He had found the perfect place for the restaurant: an old auberge in the foothills of the Alpes Maritimes whose proprietor wished to retire at the end of the year. Quite a small sum as a deposit, Vincent had written, would give them the option to buy, and this sum he hoped to have in a couple of months if he was lucky with the tips. The knowledge that he would have it after her eruption on Saturday whether or not he was lucky with the tips had made Marie-Claude extraordinarily happy – but not so happy that she was prepared to risk her filmy white dress by standing on a leaf.
Harriet waited to see if anyone else would come forward. Then . . .
‘Shall I?’ she said. ‘I could try . . .’
She picked up her skirt and stepped carefully on to the leaf nearest her, then on to a larger one. She was scarcely heavier than a child and the leaf held. To a spatter of clapping from Lobotsky and the girls, she raised her arms and took the classical attitude of the Winged Mercury, smiling shyly at Maximov as he stooped to his viewfinder. And Rom, standing beside Simonova’s carriage, put a question he had refrained from asking, as though the answer might cause him pain.
‘Has she a future as a dancer?’ he asked. ‘A serious future?’
Dubrov and Simonova exchanged glances, but it was Grisha who spoke.
‘When she came we thought it was too late. She was too much an amateur. We still think it, but we don’t think it as much as we did.’
‘We remember Taglioni, you see,’ added Dubrov.
‘I am afraid I don’t know much about her,’ confessed Rom. ‘She was a great Italian dancer, but that’s all I know.’
‘Her father sent her to Paris to study,’ explained Simonova, ‘while he prepared a great debut for her in Vienna. But when she returned he found that she was entirely unprepared. Weak. Hopeless!’
‘Everyone said cancel the debut,’ put in Dubrov. ‘But he didn’t. He was obstinate. He worked with her and worked with her and worked with her.’
‘Three sessions a day with no food, no water . . . In the morning, exercises for the legs and feet. At midday, aplomb . . . At night, the jumps. Again and again. She cried, she collapsed, she fainted,’ said Simonova gleefully. ‘Often she fainted.’
‘But at her debut she was ready,’ finished Grisha. ‘And more than ready.’ He glanced over at Harriet, still posing on her leaf. ‘She was eighteen years old.’
‘I see,’ said Rom. Do I have to do that for her, he thought? No, damn it, I won’t have her fainting. Yet he felt a kind of chill – almost a premonition of something that could touch his happiness.
‘It would not happen now, I think,’ said Simonova. And then: ‘Chort!’ she cried. ‘She is sinking!’
Kirstin had given a little cry and run forward to take the camera from Maximov, who was closest to Harriet, so that he could pull her to safety, but the premier danseur had no intention of risking his new suit and clung firmly to his apparatus. It was Rom, some twenty yards away, who seemed in an instant to be by Harriet’s side. ‘Jump!’ he said and she jumped, laughing and unperturbed, into his arms.
‘You have spoiled your dress,’ scolded Marie-Claude, for Harriet was wet almost to her knees.
‘Aunt Louisa’s dresses cannot be spoilt,’ said Harriet. ‘That’s their one advantage.’
‘There might have been pirhanas,’ scolded Lobotsky.
‘Might there?’ Harriet asked Rom.
‘Unlikely.’ But it was not that unlikely; the water was stagnant and deep. She was almost too fearless, he thought, too much at ease in this place.
They picnicked in style and drove back relaxed and comfortable for the evening’s performance of Fille. Rom, who had dutifully accompanied Simonova on the outward journey, was travelling with Harriet and her friends and much enjoying the unquenchable Marie-Claude’s stories of her future as a restaurant proprietress seated behind a big black till.
Their carriage was in the lead as they drove through the outskirts of the city, crossed the Avenida Eduardo Ribeiro – and turned into the square on which stood the Hotel Metropole.
‘Oh, stop! Stop! Please stop!’ It was Harriet’s voice, but scarcely recognisable. She had slumped forward on her seat, covering her face with her hands, and now she sank down on to the floor, almost beside herself with fear.
‘What is it? What is it, my dear?’ Rom was amazed. Could this be the girl who had danced on the lily leaves?
‘That man over there . . . Don’t let him see me! Oh, can’t we turn back, please . . . please . . .’
Rom looked out of the carriage window. A heat-flushed man in a topee and crumpled linen suit was sitting in a cab on the other side of the road. Around him was piled his luggage: a tin trunk, a number of nets and canvas bags, a holdall. His expression was disconsolate, not to say peevish, as he gazed over the head of the flea-bitten horse whose twitchy ears pierced a sombrero with a hibiscus flower on the brim and he was engaged in an altercation with the driver, who, by frequent shrugs and wavings of the arms, indicated that he understood nothing of what was being said and cared even less.
In this apparition Rom recognised a familiar sight: a man recently landed from a liner, defeated by the Golden City’s inexplicable lack of hotels, wondering where he was going to lay his head – but nothing to explain Harriet’s terror.
‘It’s Edward,’ she said, fighting down a sob. ‘He’s come to take me back – my father will have sent him.’
‘Is he a relation?’
‘No. They wanted me to marry him, I think, but I never would have. But it means they know I’m here – my father may be with him too. Oh God, it can’t be over yet, it can’t!’
‘That’s enough, Harriet.’ Rom’s voice was deliberately harsh. ‘He seems to be alone and you are far from friendless – he can hardly carry you off by force.’
‘We’ll help you! We’ll hide you!’ declared Marie-Claude.
Rom ignored this noble sentiment as he had ignored Harriet’s terror.
‘Let me just get this clear, Harriet. Were you engaged to him?’
‘No!’
‘And he has no legal hold over you?’
‘No, but—’
‘All right, that will do.’ He leaned forward and gave some instructions to the driver. ‘The carriage will turn round and take you to the back of the hotel. Meanwhile,’ said Rom, opening the carriage door, ‘I think I will go and introduce myself to your friend.’
Edward had suffered since he had agreed to go in search of Harriet. It had been rotten luck finding that there was no British boat for a fortnight, so that he’d had to cross the Channel and trust himself to foreigners. Then on the voyage there had been the unscrupulous behaviour of Isobel Brandon to contend with; Edward had not seen Mrs Brandon on the recent visit to Stavely, but he had no difficulty in identifying the beautiful red-haire
d widow listed among the passengers – though why she should seek solace in her bereavement by travelling to the Amazon was hard to understand.
But his friendly gesture in introducing himself and reminding her of his mother’s acquaintance with the General had caused Mrs Brandon to unloose on him – in a totally unbridled manner – her small son. ‘Go and ask Dr Finch-Dutton,’ Edward heard her say a dozen times a day – and presently Henry would appear to ask the kind of questions with which children and philosophers trouble their betters. Why do spiders have eight legs and insects six, Henry wanted to know. Do flying fish have souls? Why is there a green streak in the sky just before the sun goes down . . . on and on and on.
Which did not mean that Edward was pleased to see him carried off the boat at Belem. There was no real harm in the child and the relief of travelling on alone had been vitiated by the appalling heat as soon as they left the fresh Atlantic breezes. And now in Manaus, where he had hoped for a cool bath and a chance to muster his forces, his troubles seemed only to have begun.
‘Good afternoon.’ Rom had reached Edward’s side and stood looking up at the cab with amused friendliness. ‘Can I help at all? Are you in trouble?’
‘Oh, I say! Yes! That’s jolly decent of you. Didn’t expect to see a fellow countryman here,’ said Edward. ‘My name’s Finch-Dutton – Dr Edward Finch-Dutton, from Cambridge. The truth is, I’m in a bit of a fix. I’ve just come off the Vasco da Gama and spent the whole afternoon driving round trying to find somewhere to stay. I tried the Hotel Metropole, but it’s booked to the roof – so is the Europa, not that I’d put a dog there. And then that scoundrel’ – he glared at the driver, busy spitting melon seeds into the road – ‘drove me to a place he said was a hotel—’ But there Edward broke off, unable to speak of what had happened after he had asked for a room at Madame Anita’s. ‘And now he proposes to dump me and my luggage and charge me a perfectly ludicrous sum which I have not the slightest intention of paying.’
Rom turned and fired off half-a-dozen rapid sentences at the cabby, who became servile and explanatory. The Englishman had not understood: he had tried to tell him that the hotels were always full when a company was performing at the theatre but the man would not listen. He himself had done his best, but he now wished to receive his fare and attend the festivities for his niece’s confirmation at which he was already overdue.
‘Your niece’s festivities – which interest me little – will, however, have to wait,’ said Rom pleasantly. ‘And if you don’t want to lose your licence, you will stop spitting into the road.’ He turned back to Edward. ‘Perhaps I can help. My name’s Verney, by the way. I’m on my way to the Sports Club to pick up a message; it’s quite a decent place, run by an Englishman – Harry Parker. They sometimes accommodate travellers for a few days – members of expeditions and so on. I can’t promise anything, but I daresay he might fit you in.’
‘I used to know a Harry Parker at my prep school,’ said Edward. ‘He kept a weasel in his tuck-box. Don’t suppose it’s the same chap.’ But he brightened visibly at the thought of someone in this steam-bath of a city who might conceivably have been at Fallowfield Preparatory School on the bracing and healthy Sussex Downs.
‘You’re a zoologist, I see,’ said Rom, giving the driver his orders and climbing over Edward’s collecting gear and large tin trunk – for Edward was not a person who travelled light or thought that field work excused one from appearing decently dressed for dinner.
‘Well, yes. Entomology’s my field, actually. The Aphaniptera in particular. Fleas,’ explained Edward. ‘I’m a Fellow of St Philip’s.’
‘So you’ll be staying a while?’
‘Yes . . . Well, not too long, I hope. I mean . . .’ He looked at the man who had come to his rescue. Handsome; a bit foreign-looking but obviously a thoroughgoing gentleman by his voice and his clothes, and the cab-driver had become positively servile in his presence. So Edward, who had manfully kept his secret on the long journey, now said, ‘I don’t mind telling you that I’m also here for another reason – not just collecting. I’m looking for a girl who has run away from home. A dreadful business. Her father’s the Merlin Professor of Classics, and I . . . well, before this happened I was interested in the girl myself. Not now of course,’ he added hastily. ‘We think she’s with the ballet company which is playing here at the Opera House. As soon as I’m settled and have got rid of my stuff, I intend to start making enquiries.’
‘What is her name?’
Edward hesitated, but his rescuer’s face as he looked out at the street showed only the most polite and casual interest.
‘Harriet Morton. This is strictly between you and me, of course.’
‘Well, she may be here,’ said Rom lazily. ‘But as I understand it, all the girls are Russian. However, perhaps I may be able to help you. I happen to be the chairman of the Opera House trustees and the director might let me have information he would not disclose to a casual enquirer. The girls are very strictly guarded, you see.’
‘I say, that’s terribly decent of you! It’s for her own good, but she must be brought back and the whole thing hushed up if possible.’
Rom turned his head. ‘Hushed up?’ he said, surprised. ‘One would rather imagine it to be a cause for boasting, to have a daughter accepted by such a distinguished company.’
Before Edward could digest this unexpected remark, they had reached the Club. The Harry Parker who welcomed them was not the one who had kept a weasel in his tuck-box and Edward had not really expected such a stroke of fortune, but all was not lost for it turned out that the Featherstonehaugh for whom Parker had fagged at Stowe had mentioned being related to a Finch-Dutton of Goring-on-Thames who had stroked for Cambridge in the year in which they sank.
‘My father,’ said Edward with quiet pride.
Rom’s patronage would have secured for Edward one of the rooms in the annexe in any case, but these revelations made it certain that in Harry Parker he had found a lifelong friend.
‘Well, I shall leave you to settle in,’ said Rom, ‘and see what I can find out for you. The great thing is not to hang round the stage-door or go to the theatre by yourself. Monsieur Dubrov is apt to set the police on stage-door johnnies!’
And waving away Edward’s thanks, he climbed back into the cab – whose driver had disclaimed all interest in his niece’s confirmation – and was driven back to the theatre.
‘Well,’ said Dubrov, ‘what’s the position?’ News of Harriet’s pursuer had spread through the cast like wildfire.
‘He’s certainly after Harriet and has been instructed to bring her home. As you may have gathered, he once intended to become her fiancé. However, he himself has no legal power and he is also an oaf. If we can keep him quiet, I see no reason why Harriet shouldn’t finish her tour in peace . . . and then we shall see.’
Dubrov looked at him curiously. ‘Might I ask why you are taking so much trouble over Harriet’s career as a dancer when . . .’
He left the sentence unfinished, but Rom did not pretend to misunderstand him.
‘I want her to have a choice. She’s eighteen, Dubrov, and I don’t want her to come to me because there’s nowhere else for her to go. However, I’m sure we can manage – only if her father gives orders to have her repatriated could there be trouble, and I cannot see why he should do that. Above all, he seems anxious to avoid a scandal and if he starts involving the law he can hardly do that. As a matter of fact, I have an idea which might serve. If Madame Simonova would cooperate . . . ?’
He outlined his plan to Dubrov, who burst out laughing. ‘Well, nothing can be lost by trying it. Will you speak to Harriet? She is very upset.’
‘Yes, I will speak to Harriet.’
She came already dressed for her part in Fille, wearing a white dirndl with a laced bodice, a blue apron and a blue kerchief round her neck.
‘You look charming. That blue is a perfect foil for your eyes.’
She tried to smile, but her face was
wretchedly anxious.
‘Is he . . . does he know I’m here?’
‘Not yet, but he will do very soon because I am about to tell him!’
‘Oh no! Oh please, please, no!’ She put a hand entreatingly on his arm. ‘I know it can’t go on for ever . . . being happy . . . but just a little longer!’
‘Harriet, you cannot hide night and day for as long as he chooses to pursue you. He seems to be a very persistent and obstinate young man. I think it would be much better if, so to speak, we turned the tables on him.’
‘How? I don’t understand. How could we do that?’
‘Leave it to me. And have courage, my silly little swan. You’re so intrepid, paddling about among the pirhanas, yet you let an oaf like that frighten you.’
‘It’s not just him; it’s my father. I’m under age, you see, and if he chose—’
‘But he won’t choose; we’ll see to that. You will go back to England at the appointed time and with your head held high – if that is what you wish. You might even get your father’s blessing on your career as a dancer.’
‘No . . . never! You don’t know what he’s like.’ She tried to smile. ‘I must go. Will you be watching? No, of course, you saw the première.’
‘All the same, I’ll be there, holding my breath while you thread the ribbons like everybody else.’ He lifted a corner of the kerchief. ‘You should wear blue,’ he said. And, breaking his rule, ‘You shall wear blue,’ he said – and left her.