Mac propelled a piece of paper and a pen towards her. ‘I can give you a couple of hundred, straightaway. We can sign on it now.’
Katharine regarded the document. When she had told Charles she would continue, she had felt so sure. Now she was filled with new doubt. And then a picture of her mother and father, waving them off at Southampton, leapt into her mind. Their faces had been full of hope, their smiles heaped with encouragement – but in her father’s eyes she’d detected a tinge of anxiety. She had assumed it was just for her and Anselmo, for their safety, had not even imagined what she knew now. That Bill had lent – given, whatever – all his money to Anselmo. There was nothing left. Nothing for a rainy day. Everything he had, all he had spent a lifetime working for, was here, in the Amazon, gambled on rubber and the promise of a fortune. The money Mac was offering was a pittance, nothing like the value of the land. Nowhere near the amount Anselmo had borrowed, using her father’s money as collateral.
Mac was watching her, waiting.
‘You can’t possibly run a rubber estate on your own.’ His tone was gentle, kind and encouraging, as if reminding a young child that they were far too small to climb to the top branch of the tree. ‘You know that, don’t you? Women don’t, a woman never has.’ He shrugged, almost resignedly, as if he regretted this simple fact but knew it to be incontrovertibly true. ‘A woman couldn’t.’
The vision faded but Katharine’s mind was made up anew. The bites had happened for a reason – to save her from the same watery fate that Anselmo had met and to enable her to make sure her father was repaid.
She picked up the document and read it, slowly and carefully, as if making sure to take in every word. With an expression of great relief, Mac proffered her the pen again.
She put the paper down.
‘Thank you very much for the offer, Mac,’ she said, politely and genuinely. She knew he was doing it to enable her to leave before she got in any deeper, and to do so without humiliation. Despite what she had already avowed to Charles, and to herself, quitting would be the sensible thing to do.
But it wasn’t the right thing.
‘I can’t give up now,’ she said, softly but firmly. ‘I came to the Amazon to harvest rubber and that’s what I’m going to do.’
Mac held up his hands in protest.
‘But my dear, that’s simply not how things work here. A woman, on her own…’ His words petered out at the impracticability, the sheer impossibility, of what she was suggesting.
Katharine took a deep breath before meeting his gaze. She needed to phrase things right. Mac was the most powerful man between Manaus and La Paz or Lima. At the moment he was her friend and ally and she needed to keep things that way. ‘I appreciate your concern – I really do. And I understand that it’s not going to be easy. But Charles and Laure are sticking by me and I’m going to continue to the Rio Poderoso and set up the business, just as Anselmo intended.’
Mac sat back in his chair, eyes wide with astonishment, too stunned to say more.
‘Thank you for your help,’ Katharine continued earnestly, as doubt flickered anew. Mac’s dismay indicated to what great degree she was doing something unheard of. ‘And all the hospitality you have shown us. Me. But my husband and I came with a mission and, in his name and for his sake, if for nothing else, I need to fulfil it.’
No need to mention the borrowed money, her family’s life savings.
Mac rolled his eyes in a long-suffering way and grimaced regretfully. ‘Your indomitability is beyond reproach.’ He sighed.
He picked up the document he had wanted her to sign and held the edge towards the candle. It crinkled and browned before flaring up into a wave of red and orange flame. They both watched as the white ash it created drifted down onto the table.
‘One last thing,’ Katharine said, channelling a brazenness she didn’t know she possessed. ‘I’m sure a gentleman such as yourself will honour the agreement you made with Anselmo about passage over the isthmus – for us and for the rubber, once we are producing it. Won’t you?’
Mac inclined his head in tacit agreement. Katharine nodded and got up to leave. She felt suddenly exhausted, needing desperately to sleep.
‘A small matter remains.’ Mac leant back in his chair and brushed invisible ash from his trouser legs before resuming, laconically. ‘Unfortunately, I must still ask for payment for the steamer. Anselmo had already signed on it so I’m afraid he was the legal owner when it went down. I’m happy to take repayment in monthly instalments, as arranged.’ He named a sum so enormous that Katharine had to forcibly stifle a gasp of dismay.
Before she had a chance to say anything in response, Mac added, ‘This includes interest, obviously.’
Katharine bit her lip and took a deep breath. Another debt.
Anselmo had taken it on in good faith, to keep their rubber flowing downriver, to Iquitos and Manaus and Pará, to America and to Europe. That was the only goal of anyone in the Amazon, to harvest rubber and to sell it for the highest price. Now it was Katharine’s only goal.
Because she had to pay her father back.
‘I wish you the very best of luck,’ called Mac in a low, soft voice as Katharine walked out of the room. ‘You’re going to need it.’
Chapter Ten
Twenty pounds.
Fifty-five pounds.
Three hundred and thirty pounds.
Five hundred and sixty-three pounds.
Over the next few days, Katharine found out the extent of Anselmo’s borrowing.
His paperwork was well ordered and filed in true Anselmo-style so there was no escaping the scale of the problem. The number of promissory notes seemed endless; they owed thousands of pounds for the purchase of the estradas themselves and the compound of Norwood that went with them, plus all the equipment, for which Anselmo had been charged through the nose by the repellent Mr Phee, and of course wages paid to secure Charles who, as the most senior employee and an experienced clerk, could command a high salary. In addition, there was the fee negotiated between Anselmo and Mac to use his shipping route for the rubber, plus the cost of the sunken steamer, and commission paid in advance to the aviador in Manaus.
The total debt was colossal.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, Katharine could not find the wallet that contained their cash, the £100 they had taken with them to tide them over until the rubber flowed. It must have been washed away when Anselmo drowned, was all she could think. Dropping her head into her hands, she felt despair sweep over her. The idea of ever repaying these vast sums seemed impossible, a Herculean task she simply wasn’t capable of. Just thinking of it was gruelling.
She didn’t know how long she sat like that. Only that the violent squawking of a pandemonium of red and yellow macaws roused her from her catatonic state. Glancing up at them, she wondered how their sight and sound had already become as familiar as the murmuration of starlings that used to gather in the smoke-smudged evening skies above her home in London. How things had changed. She had the sudden feeling that she could not keep up, that she needed the world to slow down to enable her to find her feet, as a widow, mother-to-be, business owner and employer. It was all too much, too soon.
Two days later, Katharine’s dilemma intensified when Jonathan and Santiago rematerialised from the jungle where they had been dispatched before Anselmo’s death to find men and canoes to take the newcomers upriver. They had no idea of the tragedy that had occurred and Katharine had no idea how to tell them. She did not know how they would respond to discovering a woman was now in charge.
Contrary to her concerns, the two men took it in their stride. They and the two-dozen forest Indians they had returned with would take Katharine, her employees and her cargo upriver, portaging them over the cachuelas and steering them through the rapids, just as previously planned.
I suppose white people are all the same to them, Katharine reasoned to herself – the ones who wield the power and tell them what to do. Why should they care if that pe
rson is a man or a woman? But she vowed to herself to stick to her determination that she would not stoop to the whip as the means of control, no matter the example that had been set by others.
Painstakingly, all the equipment that Anselmo had so carefully gathered for the expedition was packed on board the canoes. Katharine had gone through everything to make sure she knew what they had and to ascertain that it was all entirely necessary, and now they were ready to go.
‘I’ll honour our agreements,’ Mac promised, observing her preparations, his desire to buy her out seemingly consigned to history. ‘I’ll keep your supplies moving upriver to Norwood and I’ll keep your rubber moving downriver to – well, to whoever will pay the most for it!’
‘Thank you,’ Katharine said, and meant it. She knew she was lucky to have the friendship and support of someone so powerful and knowledgeable. And someone so rich; he’d lent her cash to replace what had been in the lost wallet. Yet more to be repaid, but utterly necessary. She had to keep them all fed, whatever else they went without.
‘We Europeans have to stick together, so we do,’ Mac insisted, and Katharine gratefully acknowledged this truth.
On her last night at Lagona, she ate heartily, filling her belly with imported delicacies of confit de canard and champagne. This would be the last good meal she would have until such time as they were established at Norwood, and she wanted to make the most of it. She and her unborn child needed all the nourishment they could get for the gargantuan task that lay before them.
Mac didn’t see them off the next day. He’d set off before dawn on a visit to his estradas, leaving Katharine a note assuring her that he was there to help, that she could call on him any time if she needed anything. As they all climbed aboard the canoes, Philippe and Clara lingered on the bank, the baby wrapped in a shawl and cradled in Clara’s arms.
‘You need to get in now,’ called Katharine from the first canoe. ‘We should be off.’
Clara and Philippe exchanged a glance.
‘We’re not coming,’ answered Clara, bluntly.
Philippe nodded and gave a Gallic shrug to accompany her words.
‘We’ve decided it’s too risky – with the baby and everything. There’s yellow fever upriver, and malaria, as well as all the savages. And who knows what state the house will be in by the time we get there,’ continued Clara.
‘But what about your job?’ Katharine asked Philippe. ‘What will you do for work?’
Even as she spoke, she knew she was not going to persuade the couple to make a different decision. There was plenty of work in Iquitos, Manaus, Pará. Philippe and Clara had no need to follow her to the depths of a dangerous and disease-ridden jungle in order to earn a living.
‘We will be fine,’ answered Clara, and Katharine knew they would. They had each other, and that was always a greater guarantee of success than being alone as she now was.
‘Goodbye then,’ she called. ‘And good luck.’
As the Indians stowed the last few items, she folded her hands around her belly. She needed to keep her own child safe just as Phillippe and Clara were protecting theirs. But its embryonic life made doing the sensible thing and going back to England even less possible than it ever had been. To turn up in Clerkenwell not only having denuded the family’s savings account but also as a widow with an extra mouth to feed couldn’t be contemplated.
Suddenly overwhelmed, tears pricked behind her eyes and a sense of utter despondency descended like the tropical rain clouds overhead. She had no one with whom to share this adventure, the future, now Anselmo was gone. Most likely she never would again. She would have to go through it all alone, make all the decisions, earn all the money to pay back Anselmo’s numerous borrowings, all by herself.
Katharine wanted to buckle and collapse, to sink to the floor and hammer her fists into the ground, berating Anselmo for taking such risks with her father’s money. She hated him for his profligacy, was furious at him for dying and leaving her alone, and she missed him so desperately she thought her heart might break with the pain. There was no one to call her Katy any more, no one to stand by her side – not now, and not when her baby was born.
She looked back at Philippe and Clara standing on the quay, holding tight to their precious infant, and allowed herself a moment of jealousy, a moment to long that she still had what they had.
But she didn’t.
With an immense effort of will, Katharine banished her self-pity, which could do her no good. She gave a last wave to those who had gathered to see them off, including the little servant who had been like a shadow for the duration of her stay. Most of the onlookers were waving dutifully and mechanically, but suddenly Esperanza rushed forward, right to the water’s edge and stood teetering there, tears welling in her eyes. Katharine looked at her helplessly. If only she could take her with her, this silent child. But she belonged to Mac and in any case, Katharine didn’t want such a young servant of her own, no matter how often she saw others in the Amazon adopt this custom. It made her feel uncomfortable in a way she hadn’t had time to digest or interpret yet.
Just as Jonathan was casting off, a scuttle in the undergrowth and a streak of colour, followed by a soft, long-drawn-out whistle, caught Katharine’s attention. A familiar figure with dainty, poised gait emerged from the bushes.
‘Po-Po,’ she cried out, as the little bird advanced towards the river. ‘Are you coming too?’
The bird halted, turning its delicate head one way and another as if considering what to do. And then it sauntered at a leisurely pace up to Katharine’s canoe and stepped aboard, taking up a perch on the stern and gazing imperiously back at Lagona as it faded into the distance behind them.
Katharine was ridiculously glad to see her friend, who had disappeared the day of the storm and not been seen since. She’d assumed he had tired of human company and gone back to the jungle; his return aroused the faintest scintilla of hope. With or without Anselmo, Philippe and Clara, she had to carry on.
There was simply no other option.
Chapter Eleven
The Amazon, 1890
Just before they left Lagona, the mail arrived. There were five letters addressed to Katharine, as well as a few for Anselmo. Those with Spanish postmarks Katharine judged to be from his parents, siblings or other relatives. They were weeks or months old, written with no thought that Anselmo might not be alive to receive them. She fingered them gingerly before putting them away to deal with later. She needed to be strong to look at these, and even stronger to write the replies in which she explained what had happened to her husband.
As the convoy of canoes made their stately progress upriver, Katharine devoured her own letters greedily, two from her mother, one from Mabel, another from a friend called Elsie whom she’d met when working at Fortnums, and amazingly the last one from her errant brother Mayhew. Katharine read Mabel’s first, savouring the words as if they were manna from heaven, eating them up voraciously. Mabel’s handwriting was surprisingly well formed, despite her young age, and her childish voice sounded in Katharine’s head just as if she were sitting right beside her. She wrote of the weather, and dad’s cough, and school that she had only just started and loved every minute of. She described the travelling band that had played at the end of the street last Sunday, the organ grinder accompanied by a monkey in a little red woollen jacket.
Do you see monkeys in the jungle? Mabel wrote. Can you send one home for me?
Katharine smiled to herself and raised her eyes to the riverbank, where a family of capuchins frolicked in the boughs of a barrigona palm.
Elsie’s letter had been penned in March, soon after Katharine and Anselmo had left, and it was now August. In Green Park, where she and Elsie used to walk in their lunch breaks, the mown grass would be parched by the summer sun, and in Hyde Park the flowers in the beds would droop and wither in the sere heat. Here in the Amazon, nothing was ever dry. Sudden deluges occurred almost every day and night all year round, and in the rainy season
even more frequently.
Elsie talked of the usual things – the annoying manager who always tried to cut short their lunch breaks, the demanding customers who had more money than sense, the cold in the old building’s basement where the staff changing rooms were located, a music hall concert she had attended. Katharine had a lurching surge of nostalgia for that old, familiar life, for its monotony and mundanity which also meant safety and surety, for the cool smell of long summer evenings, the taste of a cup of tea with fresh cow’s milk, the sound of cartwheels on cobbled streets. She longed for crowds and noise and voices and composed music, instead of the constant, haunting, unchained melody of the rainforest.
Her mother’s letters were short but loving, and though she never complained, Katharine was acutely aware of the responsibility that lay on her shoulders. Mary and Bill were getting older and they were tired, but with their retirement fund in the hands of the banks and businesses of the Amazon, they would have to continue working for some time yet.
Mayhew’s letter, on the other hand, infuriated Katharine in equal measure to Mary’s pulling on her heart strings. He was full of himself as always, living the high life in New York, waxing lyrical over the virtues of the Elevated Railway, apartments with steam heating and that marvellous invention the telephone that was already revolutionising communication in the most civilised parts of the world.
It was clear that he found her emigration to Brazil unfathomable, though he wrote that the jungle would probably keep her amused for a while, as she had such limited sophistication. New York would no doubt be too intimidating for an ex-shop girl such as her.
After Katharine had stopped fuming, and a sudden rainstorm had dampened the steam coming from her ears, she managed to smile to herself. At least Mayhew’s arrogance had taken her mind off Anselmo’s death, even if only for a few minutes. But her spirits soon fell again as they spent hours travelling through the dark gloom of the melancholy forest and she could not reach out her hand and feel her husband’s reassuring presence beside her.
Along the Endless River Page 7