by Eva Ibbotson
‘Anyway, she is out for the morning,’ said Sister Concepcion. ‘So the child will get some sleep.’
Isobel was, in fact, sitting on the pavement of an elegant harbour-side café eating an ice-cream. Fashionably dressed in black muslin, her hair swept up under a wide-brimmed hat, she attracted a good deal of attention, but she was as indifferent to the admiring glances of the passers-by as she had been to the friendly greetings of the women drinking lemonade at a neighbouring table, or the laughter of the children playing beside the boats. Only the black and scarlet funnel of the Bernadetto, just beginning to take on passengers for the journey to Manaus, pierced her absorption – taunting her with her incarceration in this wretched place. It was a slow boat, taking nine days for the voyage and stopping absolutely everywhere, but at least it would have got her there.
Ever since Henry had mentioned Harriet, Isobel’s need to be on her way had become a kind of frenzy. She had told herself again and again that she was being absurd; Henry could not even have known Rom’s name when he spoke to Harriet in the maze – yet she could not free herself of the image of a young girl crossing the main square of Manaus, walking up the imposing flight of steps to the mansion that must be Follina, being admitted by two powdered footmen . . . and then the door closing behind her. Closing . . . but not opening again to let her out. An absurd image, but one which gave Isobel no rest.
But little as Isobel was aware of her surroundings, she did notice a tall man in a crumpled linen suit who had come off the gangway of the Gregory and was now walking in a somewhat dazed manner in her direction. Surely – yes, it was the irritating Englishman who had travelled with her and was now, presumably, on his way home.
‘Dr Finch-Dutton?’
Edward turned, stopped, lifted his hat. He seemed to be overcome with embarrassment, and this was not surprising, for he presented an extraordinary sight. His fingers were criss-crossed with strips of sticking-plaster and another massive piece of plaster traversed his forehead. Two deep scratches ran from the top of his collar to his chin, and a piece was missing from the lobe of his right ear.
‘Good heavens, Dr Finch-Dutton – what on earth has happened to you? Have you been in the jungle?’
‘Yes, I suppose I have. In a sense. Yes, you could say that,’ answered Edward heavily. ‘Blood-poisoning cannot be entirely ruled out, the doctor says.’
‘What kind of animal was it?’ enquired Isobel, puzzled by the doctor’s injuries. Too slight for a jaguar, the scratches had definitely been made by something with long, sharp claws.
‘You may ask,’ said Edward. ‘Yes, Mrs Brandon, you may well ask.’
In response to her nod he took the chair beside her and Isobel, seeing that he was too distraught to place an order himself, asked for a cafezinho. ‘I cannot tell you what I have been through,’ Edward continued. ‘You wouldn’t believe it. Indeed, I find it impossible to believe it myself. But these injuries’ – he held up his fingers, touched his bitten ear – ‘were conferred on me by a human being. A human female. In short. . . a girl.’
‘Impossible!’
‘You might think so. But I assure you I speak the truth.’
‘Good heavens!’ Isobel, trying not to laugh, looked at him in mock concern. ‘Would it help you to tell me about it?’
‘Yes,’ said Edward, nodding gratefully, ‘I think it would. To tell the truth, I’m at my wits’ end and I simply don’t know what to do. I can’t keep going up and down the Amazon like a yo-yo. I suppose I ought to take her back to Manaus, but I don’t know if that’s what she wants. A couple of men came from Verney’s office just now to transfer her to the Bernadetto and she just kicked them in the shins and shut herself into her cabin. They—’
‘Verney?’ said Isobel, her heart pounding. ‘Who is . . . this Verney?’
‘A good point,’ said Edward mournfully. ‘I don’t know. I thought he was a friend, but now I think perhaps he was double-crossing me all along. I fancied I caught a glimpse of him on the stage in all that mist. . . only then I decided I must have been mistaken, because the fellow hadn’t shaved. Very well-turned-out fellow, Verney, you see. But now I wonder – maybe he snatched her. Got in first, so to speak?’
‘Snatched who?’
‘This girl I came to save. Decent girl, well-brought-up, only she went to pieces out here. Verney told me she was in good hands, but now I ask myself whether it wasn’t he who made her come out of a cake.’
‘Out of a cake?’
‘Yes, incredible, isn’t it? So I thought I’d bring her back by force – for her own good, of course. It was what her father wanted. Only those idiots seized the wrong girl. Well, it was I who told them to, but I could have sworn it was her. She used to tie her shoes just like that. . . only of course, they all tie their shoes like that in the ballet – you can see it in those paintings by that French fellow, the way they bend over. And they all whiten their arms and scrape back their hair – it’s the absolute devil trying to make out who is who.’
‘So you got the wrong girl?’
‘Yes. Only I didn’t realise it until we were a good hundred miles down the river. The stewardess gave her a sleeping draught, she kicked up such a shindy. And of course she talked Russian all the time, but we thought she was just putting it on. And then at last I went down to open the cabin door . . .’ He fell silent, remembering the moment of exaltation up there on the deck before he went below to forgive Harriet. ‘And then she simply flew at me. She just went for me like a tigress – biting, scratching, kicking. There was no way I could defend myself. But that wasn’t all – my injuries are nothing; it’s what she did to—’
He swallowed. It seemed he could not yet say the creature’s name without being overcome by emotion.
‘To what?’
‘Peripatus,’ Edward brought out. ‘I had it with me in a travelling case – you can’t leave something as valuable as that lying about in a cabin. And she tore the box from my hand and threw it on the ground and then when the bottle rolled out she . . .’ He fought for control once more. ‘She stepped on it. Deliberately. Ground it into the floor with her heel. The specimen is totally destroyed.’
‘What on earth is Peripatus?’
Edward told her. ‘I can’t tell you what a knock it is. I wouldn’t have thought anyone could do that . . . deliberately.’
‘Well, the creature was dead, wasn’t it? So it didn’t suffer?’
‘I suffered,’ said Edward. ‘I don’t think I shall ever get over it. There are things a chap never forgets. And now what am I to do with her? She doesn’t speak a word of English and just kicks anyone who comes near her; she’s raving mad. Of course she’s had a bad time, I can see that. She keeps saying all these names – Yussop and Grigory and Alexi – over and over again, and passing her finger across her neck, so I suppose she means they’re her brothers and they will cut my throat. But if she comes from a large family, maybe she’s homesick?’
Olga had got a splinter of glass into her foot through grinding the tube into the ground with her ballet shoes. She’d gone quite quiet while he took the splinter out of her heel – such a hard, muscular foot she had. All of her was hard and muscular, which was not what he had expected; well, not quite all of her . . . But then when he’d finished she’d started wrestling with him again. Verney’s men had thought it a great joke when she wouldn’t go with them, but what the devil was he to do?
‘And what of the girl you came to save?’ Isobel asked.
Edward shrugged wearily. ‘What can I do? She’s completely depraved. Mind you, there is no way Harriet could have done that to Peripatus. She may come out of cakes—’
‘Harriet! Is that her name?’
Edward nodded. No good trying to shield Harriet now, things had gone well beyond that. ‘Her name is Harriet Morton. Her father’s a professor at my own college, St Philip’s, and she used to be a thoroughly decent girl. At least, I thought she was. As a matter of fact, we were at Stavely only three months ago.’
So Edward told her the story of his courtship and pursuit, the distress Harriet had caused to him and her father, and the part that Verney had played in the story while Isobel listened, here and there putting in a question, and storing away everything she heard, for knowledge was power and power she now needed desperately.
‘And you think she’s still in Manaus?’
‘I’m sure she is. And I’ll bet Verney’s got hold of her. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that it was him I saw behind that rock. You mark my words, he wants her for himself!’
Isobel had risen, was putting on her gloves and unhooking her parasol from the back of the chair. ‘Well, if I can find out anything more for you, I’ll let you know. You say her father wants her back?’
‘Yes . . . That is, I think so. Yes, I’m sure he does. But it’s Olga I’m thinking about. The Gregory leaves again in a few hours and I simply don’t know what to do. I suppose you can’t advise me?’
‘I’m afraid not, Dr Finch-Dutton,’ said Isobel coldly. ‘The matter is one that you must decide for yourself.’ There was nothing more to be got from this fool and very little time now in which to act.
It was only as Isobel was bidding him goodbye that Edward thought to ask after Henry. ‘How’s the little chap? Getting on all right?’
‘Henry is quite better, thank you,’ said Isobel firmly and walked away quickly in the direction of the shipping office, leaving Edward to pay for her ice-cream.
An hour later, she was back in the convent.
‘I have made up my mind,’ she informed Sisters Concepcion and Margharita, who were giving Henry a blanket bath. ‘We are travelling on to Manaus tonight. There’s a spare cabin on the Bernadetto – a nice breezy one,’ she lied. And as they stared at her incredulously she went on firmly, ‘It will do him good to be in the fresh air; he can lie in a deck-chair and drink beef tea. We don’t mollycoddle our children in England like you do out here. And Henry will wish to travel on, won’t you, Henry?’
‘Yes.’ Henry’s hoarse croak came with incredible gallantry from the bed. He did want to travel on; he longed, as a matter of fact, for alligators and boa constrictors. It was only the dark and his mother’s anger that Henry feared. Only it was going to be a little bit difficult. Even sitting up seemed to make his head go round and round.
‘It’s an outrage!’ stormed Sister Concepcion, returning to the refectory. ‘The child hasn’t even been out of bed! I shall call Dr Gonzales.’
But even Dr Gonzales, when he came, could not make Isobel change her mind. It was, she told herself, Henry’s own heritage that she was trying to save; it was because of Henry and Stavely that she must find Rom at once and get rid of the hussy, who had, after all, managed to make herself known to him. To be soft now, decided Isobel, turning away from the white face and dark-ringed eyes of her small son, would be to do Henry no service. Even now some dreadful school or institution might be making an offer for Stavely and those wretched trustees would accept anything to get their money.
So Henry was dressed, his things packed – and presently he sat on his bed waiting for the cab that was to take them to the harbour. His legs, thinner than ever, dangled from the high white bed and every so often he coughed – a racking, prolonged cough that shook his small frame – but he sat as straight as a ramrod and when his mother said, as she did from time to time, ‘You feel better now, don’t you, Henry?’ he answered, ‘Yes, thank you,’ in as convincing a voice as he could manage. And sometimes he was rewarded by her smile.
The cab arrived. Sister Concepcion bustled in, her face creased with concern, and kissed Henry, who clung to her in a way which Isobel thought excessive. Sister Annunciata picked up Henry’s case.
‘Thank you,’ said Isobel to the nuns, holding out her hand. ‘You have been very kind and I am grateful. When I get back to England, I will make a donation to your Order.’
Sister Margharita murmured a suitable acknowledgement, while Henry slipped off the side of the bed and stood up. This turned out to be more difficult than he had expected, but it was possible. And it had to be possible, too, to walk to the door. One simply put out one foot and then the other .. .I can do it, said Henry to himself. But he couldn’t – not quite. Far more weakened by his illness than he realised, he swayed as the room spun round and would have fallen, but that Sister Concepcion caught him in her motherly arms and carried him out to the cab.
Isobel, walking ahead, had seen nothing.
Those who believe that nuns are gentle soft-voiced souls who speak ill of no one, would have been surprised could they have heard Sister Concepcion and her two helpers in the Convent of the Sacred Heart after the evening meal. But by that time Isobel and her son had steamed out of harbour and were once more en route for the Golden City.
17
‘I must say I think they have it all wrong, the people who say that to part is to die a little. It seems to me,’ said Harriet, ‘that to part is to die really quite a lot. I mean, thirty-six hours without you . . .’
She stood on the terrace wearing the extraordinarily becoming blue dress that Marie-Claude had bought, waiting for Furo to bring round the black car in order to drive her to Manaus. For the Company was leaving the following day, due to embark on the Lafayette on Friday evening ready to sail at dawn, and she was going to say goodbye to Madame Simonova and spend a last night with her friends at the Metropole.
Rom stood beside her, troubled for no reason he could understand. She holds my shadow, he thought, quoting the phrase his Indians used to describe someone who had them in their power. Once it had seemed to him that this country was the ‘incomparable remedy’. Now it was this quiet, unspectacular girl, whose loss would utterly diminish him.
But why should he lose her?
‘Do you want me to go back with the Company?’ Harriet had asked a few days earlier. ‘Would that be . . . the right thing to do?’
‘Want you to go back? Want you to? God, Harriet, do you have to ask me that?’ Rom had replied. ‘Do you want to go with them?’
‘No, I don’t. I would like to stay . . . if it is convenient.’
‘Convenient? Sometimes I think you’re a little mad. Perhaps you should come upstairs,’ he had said furiously. ‘I don’t seem to be able to make you understand anything when you’re on your feet.’
Since then she had abandoned herself to a degree of creative loving which exceeded anything he had ever imagined, her passionate physical response balanced by a respect for his work that gave him both rest and stimulus. But for her solitary practice sessions each morning at her makeshift barre, he would have sworn that she was utterly content.
‘I wish I could have gone with you,’ he said yet again. ‘I hate you to go alone.’
He had intended to take Harriet to Manaus himself and make good his promise to Simonova to bring her to say goodbye, but Alvarez – his work at Ombidos completed – was calling at São Gabriel on his way home, and to Alvarez Rom owed a debt that must be paid. There was no question of Harriet being in danger. Edward had been seen standing on the deck of the Gregory as she steamed away from Belem, and it was most unlikely that a man who had made such an idiot of himself once would return to the attack. Moreover de Silva was back in Manaus and well able to control the antics of his men.
Why, then, this unease?
‘You’ve given me too much money,’ protested Harriet. ‘Even if I buy presents for absolutely everybody, I can’t spend it.’
‘It is not for buying presents for absolutely everybody,’ he said sternly. ‘It’s for you.’
She shook her head and reached for his hand, counting the knuckles carefully, checking them off one by one with her fingertips to make sure that everything was as it should be and that she would not forget – in the day and night she was to be away – the configuration of his little fingernail or the exact place where a vein to which she was
particularly devoted changed its course.
‘I got to one thousand and forty-three seeds last night,’ she said. ‘In the bath. So it’s absolutely all right.’
‘Of course it’s all right,’ he said roughly. ‘All the passengers have to be on board by eight o’clock, so you’ll be back in time for a splendid supper. I’m putting a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on ice – no doubt you will merely get hiccups again, but we must persevere.’
But now they were back, his Indians. He had shooed them away twice before, explaining that Harriet was only going to Manaus and would be back tomorrow, but here again were old José, Andrelinho with his crippled boy, Manuelo with his wife, his baby . . . and that old witch, Manuelo’s mother-in-law, who now wore her boa of anaconda skins over Harriet’s brown foulard .. .
The missionaries had taught them to wave – prolonged goodbyes were one of their accomplishments, but there were too many of them today and Maliki and Rainu were snivelling. And now Lorenzo, who was an educated man and should have known better, came forward with a gift for Harriet which he placed in her hand – and which made Rom turn on him angrily with a few low words in his own dialect.
‘Is there something wrong?’ asked Harriet, troubled, looking up from the tiny, perfectly carved wooden canoe with paddles the size of splintered matchsticks and an intricate pattern of blue and scarlet painted across its bows. ‘Should I not take it?’
Rom shook his head. ‘It’s all right.’ But as Harriet thanked Lorenzo, his sense of wretchedness increased. The gift was one traditionally given to ensure safety for those travelling far away across water – and Harriet wasn’t even going in the Amethyst, Lorenzo knew that perfectly well. What the devil had got into them all?