A Company of Swans

by Eva Ibbotson

  ‘Yes, Henry. I like him very much.’

  ‘Because he likes you a lot. He said we had a . . . mutual friend and that was you. And, Harriet, he told me all the things he’s going to do at Stavely. He’s going to make a tree-house, only not in the Wellingtonia because it’s too high; not that I’d be frightened, but it’s not convenient for it to be so high. And he’s going to get a huge dog – a wolfhound – and show me how to train him – and he’s going to get rid of awful Mr Grunthorpe and let old Nannie come and live in the house again. He told me all that while Mummy was resting, and it’s all because of you, Harriet – otherwise someone else might have bought Stavely first, but you found him and you made everything come right.’

  ‘I’m glad, Henry.’ The pain could definitely be said to be limbering up. She had imagined it often, but there seemed to be aspects that one could not in fact anticipate and the physical part was beginning to be a nuisance: the nausea, the trembling that assailed her limbs – and needing cover, she moved away a little so as to be out of the brightest rays of the lamp.

  ‘Mummy said I could stay awake and tell you all about it as long as I didn’t bother Uncle Rom.’ Henry paused, remembering his mother’s unaccustomed gentleness as she put him to bed. ‘She said I could watch out for you and tell you everything because you’ve been so kind to us.’ He moved closer to Harriet because there was still one anxiety that he needed to share with this best of friends. ‘When she was saying good night, Mummy told me that she had to marry my father when she was young because he made such a dreadful fuss when she said she wouldn’t, but now he’s dead she can marry Uncle Rom. Only Harriet, when she marries him he’ll be my stepfather, won’t he? Like Mr Murdstone in David Copperfield and all those cruel step-people in fairy stories. And Mr Murdstone was nice to David before he married his mother, but then he was awful. Only I don’t see how Uncle Rom could be awful, do you?’

  One last effort and then she could let go . . . crawl away, be sick, howl like Hecuba . . .

  ‘Henry, if you don’t mind my saying so you’re being a little bit silly,’ said Harriet, managing to make her voice matter-of-fact – almost reproving. ‘Surely you have read The Jungle Book?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I have.’ She made no attempt to prompt him, but waited quietly until understanding came. ‘You mean Mowgli!’ cried Henry. ‘Mowgli had a stepfather!’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Yes, he did, didn’t he? An absolutely marvellous stepfather! A proper wolf!’ Henry was radiant. ‘Oh yes – and Uncle Rom’s a bit like a wolf, isn’t he – sort of brave and wild?’ As he smiled up at her she noticed that the gaps in his teeth were almost filled; it was three months since they had met in the maze. ‘Would you like to come and see Mummy?’ he went on. ‘She was in the sitting-room just now, hugging Uncle Rom and everything, but I expect they’ve stopped now.’ He broke off, his russet head tilted in concern. ‘Are you all right, Harriet? You’re not getting the measles?’

  ‘No, Henry. I’m . . . perfectly all right.’

  ‘I’d better go back to bed then or Mummy will be cross.’ He put up his arms and she kissed him for the last time. ‘You’re sure you’re not getting the measles?’ And as she nodded, ‘I’ll see you in the morning. You’re my best friend in the whole world, Harriet.’

  ‘And you are mine.’

  At the top of the terrace he turned. ‘Do you know what I’m sleeping in, Harriet? A hammock! Uncle Rom said I could – honestly!’ said Henry and pattered away towards the house.

  He had gone, but she wasn’t sick and the trembling had stopped. Because of course it couldn’t be true, what Henry had said – it couldn’t be over so suddenly, so completely, without the journey back still to be with Rom. Henry wouldn’t lie, but he must be mistaken. He was so intelligent that it was easy to forget that he was just a little child.

  She went quietly up the last of the steps, made her way towards the windows of the salon. The curtains were open and light streamed out on to the terrace.

  Inside, two figures, unaware of her . . . absorbed.

  (‘I know what it’s like . . . I know how it is to be at a window . . . outside . . . and to look in on a lighted room and not be able to make anyone hear.’

  ‘How do you know? You have not experienced it.’

  ‘Perhaps I am going to one day. There is a man in England who says that time is curved . . .’)

  Rom stood with his back to her, the dark head bent, one arm resting on a bookcase. Isobel faced him, almost as tall as he, and for a moment it seemed to Harriet that she looked straight at her, but of course she could not have seen her in the darkness – that was absurd. She had loosened the beautiful red hair which flowed like a river over her black gown and as she leaned towards Rom, smiling, putting a hand on his arm, their sense of kinship came across to Harriet as clearly as if she had proclaimed, ‘We belong, this man and I! We inhabit the same world!’

  Then, perhaps responding to something Rom had said, she moved forward, stumbled a little . . . seemed as if she might fall – and as he moved quickly towards her, her arms went round him and her head came to rest against his shoulder. And as she stood thus in sanctuary, staring past the place where Harriet stood, her face was transfigured by pride and happiness and love.

  ‘It is only necessary to do the steps,’ Marie-Claude had said.

  But there were no steps for this: no piteous undulations of the arms, no bourrées backwards. Just a slow turning to stone . . . a nothingness . . . a death.

  Then she turned and walked away – moving, this lightest of dancers, like an old, old woman – and vanished into the dark.

  ‘No! No! No!’ yelled Grisha, whacking at Harriet’s shins with his cane. ‘You are a durak – an idiot! Why do you bend your knees like a carthorse? The line must be smooth, smooth . . .’ He demonstrated, flicked his fingers at the old accompanist – and in the cleared Palm Lounge of the Lafayette, Harriet resumed her assemblés.

  She had been working for two hours and before that there had been class and Grisha, formerly so kind, had bullied and shouted and despaired of her as he had done each day of their journey across the calm Atlantic. For Harriet was no longer just a girl in the corps – Simonova was taking her to Russia; she was to be a serious dancer and for a girl thus singled out there could be no mercy and no rest.

  Nor did Harriet want rest. Every muscle ached, the perspiration ran down her back, but she dreaded the moment when Grisha would dismiss her. She would have liked to collapse with exhaustion, to weep like Taglioni and faint like Taglioni. To faint particularly, and thus find the oblivion that sleep did not bring as in her dreams she tore through bramble thickets, clawed at stone walls, searching in vain for Rom.

  ‘Sixteen grandes battements – then twelve ronds de jambe en l’air,’ said Grisha viciously as Simonova swept in to study the progress of her future pupil. It had been a brilliant idea to take Harriet along. For Cremorra no longer figured in Simonova’s itinerary. A triumph at the Maryinsky and then a return to Paris to open a school and become, as she had been the world’s greatest ballerina, its greatest teacher of the dance – this was what she now intended. And who was better suited to be a show pupil than this work-hungry English girl?

  ‘You may go,’ said Grisha. ‘Return at two.’ Even before Harriet had risen from her curtsey it had seized her again, the pain, tearing and clawing – and embarrassed by the unseemliness of an agony so unremitting, she stole off to her favourite hiding place between the life-boat and the railing of the deck.

  At least she had caught the boat, she told herself for the hundredth time. Stumbling away from Follina, still numb with shock, she had found the Raimondo brothers fishing with flares in the bay off São Gabriel and given them the last of Rom’s money to take her to the Lafayette before it sailed. Because of that she had this chance. Many people had nothing to do with grief like hers, whereas she could turn it into art. Dubrov had explained this when he had told her that they would take her to Russia. He had been quit
e confident about it all; the Russian girls had travelled on a group ticket and there had been no sign of Olga at Belem. No one would ask for names if the numbers were right – and aghast at Harriet’s state, he had found for her the only consolation she could accept.

  Only now, standing with her hands folded across her chest so that what was happening inside her could not escape and make people recoil from her, she wondered if it could be done. If this beast tearing at her entrails could be transformed into those moments of high art when Odette lets her fingertips run lightly down the Prince’s arm before she vanishes for ever into the lake. How many years would have to pass? How many aeons?

  ‘’ariette, you must eat!’ scolded Marie-Claude, coming to find her as she always did and taking her down to the dining-room – and at two she was back with Grisha, welcoming the ache in her limbs, the soreness, which people who did not understand were stupid enough to confuse with pain.

  So the ship steamed eastwards and Harriet worked and pledged herself to make it come at last: the day when, contained in the iron framework of a flawless technique, she could reveal to those who watched her the heartbreak and the glory of an immutable love.

  Four weeks after they left Brazil, punctual to the hour, the Lafayette steamed into Cherbourg. Harriet had scarcely thought of Cambridge or her home and she walked unthinkingly off the ship with her friends, bound for the custom sheds and the train to Paris.

  Waiting at the bottom of the gangway – black-clad, menacing, flanked by two gendarmes with truncheons – stood her father and her aunt.

  18

  Harriet had been locked in her attic for nearly a month. Her clothes had been removed; she was conveyed to and from the bathroom by Aunt Louisa or those of the Trumpington Tea Circle ladies who came to take over when Miss Morton had to go shopping or merely needed a break. A doctor had been to examine her – not the old family doctor who had once recommended dancing classes, but a new man suggested by Hermione Belper – and had confirmed the Mortons’ worst fears. Pending further treatment of the unfortunate girl, Dr Smithson had given instructions for her to be kept in a darkened room and on a meatless diet to avoid over-stimulation – instructions which Louisa obeyed meticulously, feeding her niece mostly on semolina and rusks of oven-baked stale bread.

  The purpose of this regime was reasonable enough: to break Harriet’s will, to make her understand the enormity of what she had done, and to confess it.

  ‘And then?’ asked Louisa as the days passed and Harriet remained silent. ‘What is to be done with her then?’ She had enjoyed the drama of the original recapture and imprisonment, but the daily task of keeping Harriet guarded fell on her, and the whispers in the town – the suggestion that the Mortons had gone too far in inflicting punishment – were far from pleasant.

  ‘We shall see,’ Professor Morton had replied. Obsessed with the idea of a grovelling, weeping daughter begging for mercy, he could think no further than Harriet’s utter subjugation.

  In deciding how best to deal with Harriet, the Mortons were under the disadvantage of knowing nothing of her life in Manaus, for Edward Finch-Dutton, on whom they had relied, seemed to have disappeared. It was not Harriet’s former suitor who had informed them that she was arriving in Cherbourg, but an anonymous well-wisher who had been kind enough to cable St Philip’s from Manaus.

  And Harriet would say nothing. She was willing only to apologise for having caused them anxiety by running away, and for nothing else.

  ‘I was happy there,’ she had said at the beginning. ‘I did nothing of which I am ashamed. It was the best part of my life and I would as soon apologise for breathing.’

  And incredibly the weeks of confinement, the near-starvation, the appalling monotony – for they had taken away her books – had not weakened her resolution.

  ‘The name of your seducer!’ Professor Morton yelled at her on the rare occasions when he visited his daughter. ‘Assuming there was only one!’

  But she had shaken her head and as day followed wretched day she neither broke down nor admitted her wrong.

  Harriet endured because she had been loved by Rom. This honour had been accorded her, this ultimate benison, and she must not let them break her because to do so would be to denigrate his love.

  So she kept herself sane and she did it by remembering. Not a haphazard wallowing in past happiness, but a disciplined, orderly progression through the rooms of Follina, through its gardens . . . along the banks of the river. Waking hungry in her cold and dismal room, Harriet, in her mind, rose from the cloud-netted bed where Rom still slept, felt the softness of the carpet beneath her feet . . . took three steps – exactly three – to the brocaded chair to trace the pattern of the golden fleur de lys . . . read the titles of the books on the low table: The Collected Works of John Donne; The Stones of Venice; The Orchid Grower’s Manual . . . moved to the window to draw aside the curtains and name, with the same rigorous precision she had once accorded her work at the barre, the plants that grew on the terrace beneath.

  While she could do this – while she could drift in the Firefly past the bank where the otters played and see the sun bittern fly into the light – they could not touch her, and knowing she had to keep well so as to garner these memories, to make them part of her for ever, she ate every morsel of the food she was given and kept her muscles active with exercises as she well knew how to do.

  And so the days passed and nothing the Mortons could do deflected her, though her stricken eyes seemed to grow ever larger in her face. Then, during the fifth week of her incarceration, she woke as usual and in her mind walked as usual across Rom’s room, drew aside the curtains, turned to cross the Persian rug so as to make her way back to the bed where he waited . . . and found that she could not remember the pattern of that rug. She had known it would be hard to remember, but she had studied it so carefully – so very carefully. Was it the outer border that was amethyst, with diamonds and zig-zags of bronze? Or was it the pearl-grey rim with its stylised flowers that came first? Desperate, she sat up in bed, her heart pounding. She had to remember, she had to! If she could forget one thing, she could forget it all – she could forget even Rom, and then there would be nothing left to live for in the world.

  But the pattern would not be recalled. In her exhausted brain shapes and colours swam in an indistinguishable blur and whatever she did she could not reassemble them.

  It was Hermione Belper who came that day to remove Harriet’s luncheon tray, and when she came down again she had good news for Louisa, who was returning from the shops.

  ‘She is weeping uncontrollably, Louisa – and she has not touched her food. It seems her spirit is broken at last. How thankful you must be!’

  And the Mortons were thankful. But if Harriet now lay listlessly on the pillow and showed none of her former defiance, she still did not speak of her time in Manaus and she was growing so thin that it was not easy to see how she could, as it were, be ‘produced’ again in public. Moreover they themselves were being subjected to an increasing amount of unpleasantness. It was easy enough to discount the smear campaign of a woman like Madame Lavarre, but when the Provost of St Anne’s crossed the road rather than speak to the Professor, the Mortons were increasingly compelled to seek ways out of their dilemma.

  It was at this point – just two weeks before the beginning of the Michaelmas term – that the Professor came home in a state of more than usual indignation.

  ‘Do you know who I met today? Edward Finch-Dutton! He was creeping round the walls of the Fountain Courtyard and trying to avoid me, I’m sure.’

  ‘Good heavens! But why has he not been in touch with us ?’

  ‘I have no idea. Apparently he tried to bring Harriet back and it went wrong. He had a black eye and his nose was covered in sticking-plaster; I can only conclude that he has taken to the bottle. But I will tell you this, Louisa. I asked him what had made him send that second cable and he said it was because Harriet came out of a cake. In her underclothes.’ And as Louisa
stared at him, speechless with incredulity: ‘That’s what he said. In her underclothes. Then he mumbled some nonsense about her perhaps not having meant any harm and bolted. I tell you the fellow was drunk; he will have to resign his Fellowship, no doubt about that.’

  But the news had given Louisa her cue. ‘Bernard, don’t you think we ought to face the fact that Harriet is seriously unbalanced? I have thought so all along, but this really decides the matter. Isn’t it time we found a good institution where she can be helped? Homes for the mentally ill are extremely liberal these days: wholesome food, fresh air, basketwork . . . Dr Smithson knows of a specialist in London who has made a study of cases like hers. If Mr Fortescue certified that Harriet is not in her right mind, Smithson would second the diagnosis and her removal to somewhere suitable would follow automatically.’ And as the Professor still seemed to hesitate, she concluded, ‘I am thinking only of Harriet. She needs professional care and attention if she is to be healed. To refuse her that would be very selfish, would it not?’

  This was a plea to which the Professor could scarcely be deaf. Dr Smithson accordingly was appealed to, and contacted his eminent colleague in Harley Street and it was arranged that Mr Fortescue would come down as soon as possible in order to examine Harriet.

  After which, having got her way, Louisa was really quite kind to Harriet and sent up jam with her semolina and butter with her rusks, but for Harriet – slipping away into the shadows – these attentions came a little late.

  Fate had played into Isobel’s hands in a most remarkable way. The Raimondo brothers, who had taken Harriet back to Manaus to catch the Lafayette, took the absurdly large sum she had given them, collected two girls from Madame Anita’s brothel and set off for their home town of Iquitos in Peru. The seraphic urchin to whom she had entrusted the note for Furo had been less seraphic than he appeared; he got into a fight in an alley on the way to the Casa Branca, lost the note and bolted for home. Thus Furo, waiting in increasing anxiety for Harriet, had not returned to Follina until the small hours and by the time Rom was back in the city to see what had become of her, the Lafayette had sailed.