Katharine hankered after chicken, a smooth white breast of luscious, juicy flesh, not the stringy, ancient birds they ate here when their useful egg-laying life was over. She hungered for sweet things: chocolate or jelly or a cake made by her mother and sliced into thick helpings oozing with sugar and lemon. She could feel her baby craving it, too, and she wanted to feed it and give it everything it needed for its health and vitality.
With that thought she looked down at the mound beneath her eyes. She could scarcely see her feet any more. She smiled to herself; though she was starving, her baby seemed to be doing absolutely fine.
A few days later, as if in answer to her prayers and longings, a canoe pulled up at the beach below the house. A couple of Indians jumped out whom Katharine recognised from her stay at Mac’s house. They were part of the informal delivery system that existed on the Amazon. People were always travelling up and down and they took the mail and sometimes other supplies if regular deliveries were not possible, using covered canoes called cubertas. These specially designed vessels had raised sides that arched over towards each other, allowing cargo to be piled high above the water line.
As well as letters from home, the Indians unloaded case after case of supplies. Katharine had sent orders for what she needed to pay her rubber tappers and also larder staples for the whole extended household at Norwood – tins of butter, meat, fish, beans and tomatoes, plus wine, beer and lemonade. But she had so little money to spare and, of necessity, had had to calculate quantities exactly so as to have enough to keep them going but nothing extra.
Mac, however, had taken it upon himself to include a plethora of treats: tea, coffee, condensed milk, Gilbey’s gin from London, jerk beef from Argentina, and bacalhau, Portuguese dried salt cod. Unbelievably, there was also a tinned plum pudding; the label promised extra strong liqueur and ‘at least 50 per cent’ fruit filling. The final item that Katharine unloaded was a bottle of French perfume, Violette à Deux Sous by Guerlain, the bottle and the packaging both exquisite, and accompanied by a handwritten note from Mac wishing her a happy Christmas.
I hope you enjoy the gifts, the message ended, and that they bring you happy memories when you are so far from home.
Katharine laid aside the card and looked at the scent. She could not imagine when she would ever wear it. Her life had little use for such luxuries these days. As for the happy memories – well, there were plenty of those, but all tinged with the sorrow of Anselmo’s death, leaving her no one with whom she could share them, or create new ones. She rubbed her hand over her belly. The baby. This new life, when it came, would be her companion, her friend and soulmate.
An Indian arriving with a message from one of the tappers on a far flung estrada distracted her. She put the perfume bottle carefully away in her trunk and forgot about it. She didn’t, however, forget about the glorious abundance of food now in the store hut. Her stomach gurgled in anticipation as she finished the rest of the day’s tasks, one half of her brain planning the evening meal even as she calculated latex yields and transportation costs.
That night they feasted: Katharine, Charles and Laure, together with Jonathan and Santiago and their wives, who were accompanied by numerous children. They could not possibly all originate from these two couples, Katharine reckoned, but must have been attracted by the strong smells from the open air cooking fire.
It was no matter. Every Christmas that Katharine could remember had been a riotous gathering of siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins, together with random neighbours who were invited into number 33 Hawthorn Road because they would otherwise be spending the day alone. She loved that here in the Amazon, so many thousands of miles away, she could enjoy a little of the bonhomie and conviviality she so closely associated with home.
In bed, a stomach ache brought on by eating too much rich food after so long on near-starvation rations made Katharine toss and turn and groan as sleep evaded her. But by the time morning came and the pains were worsening by the hour, she stopped cursing her gluttony and began to suspect that perhaps this was more than indigestion.
She was in labour.
A flash of panicked horror accompanied this realisation, soon wiped away by a searing cramp that tore at her insides. She had avoided thinking about the inevitable necessity of actually giving birth to her baby, especially since that dreadful, beautiful night accompanying Clara’s infant as it made its way into the world. Even after witnessing that event, nothing had prepared Katharine for the pain, the length of time it took, the excrutiating agony of each and every contraction. She felt as if her body were splitting in two, could not believe that her skin and flesh could survive intact after being wrenched apart in this way.
The overwhelming emotion she had throughout her confinement was fear.
At times the pain, or possibly the tea the Indian women fed to her in spoonfuls urged between her gritted teeth, caused her to hallucinate. She had visions that she would die and her broken body be eaten by the ants that devoured everything. That the ants would get her baby too, and it would die, if not in the act of being born then soon after, eaten alive, its plaintive cries unheard by its dead mother.
She knew that Laure was there throughout but it was just a vague awareness. There was nothing Laure could do to help other than wipe her sweating brow and hold her hand, and Katharine’s vice-like grip soon made Laure give her a stick to grasp instead.
After hours and hours of labour – fifteen or sixteen in total, Katharine found out later – in the dull light of a cloudy December day, a baby boy burst into the world. One of the Indian women laid him naked upon her chest and Katharine waited. Waited to experience that pure calm that had descended upon Clara that day, to feel that profound love that mothers must feel.
But all she felt at first was relief. That it was over, that they were both alive, and that now she could rest and, soon, sleep. She was so very, very tired.
‘What are you going to call him?’ asked Laure.
Katharine’s eyelids, that had already begun to droop, flickered briefly open. ‘Antonio,’ she said, drowsily. ‘I will name him Antonio.’
It was Anselmo’s second name and one she knew he liked. As she drifted off, it fleetingly crossed her mind how much she had grown up during this journey. She had been eighteen when they set sail and was now nearly twenty. Over all these months, she had learnt so much about the ways of the world – and the importance of always acting in the way she knew to be right.
She had become a widow, and a mother.
Somehow, from somewhere, she had gained the strength to dig deep into the depths of her soul and to get this far. Now all she had to do was keep going.
Chapter Fourteen
Norwood, 1893
The months after Antonio’s birth passed slowly but surely, imperceptibly turning to years. Each day was characterised by hard work and long hours, up with the sun, to bed with the sun, and barely a break during those twelve hours. Katharine was unstinting in her efforts, at first strapping her baby to her back in a shawl and then, once he learnt to walk at ten months old, using a liana rope to tie his wrist to hers so that he could tag along beside her and not run into the forest and get lost. When he got bored, she would hand him over to Rosabel or one of the other Indian women and they would feed him snacks of pineapple and banana and sing him lullabies in their own language.
Throughout each day, the compound bustled with activity. Several of the Indians showed great skill at carpentry so Katharine set up a workshop that could provide them first of all with repairs to the buildings and then with furniture. Gradually, they renovated or rebuilt the main house, offices and storerooms, though maintenance was an ongoing process. The palm thatching did not last long in the onslaught it received from sun and rain; Laure and Charles’ house was being reroofed for the second time already. But there was progress, too – a new guesthouse for visitors was nearly completed and Katharine’s efforts at an orchard were showing signs of success, with what had started as spindly saplings now g
rowing into promising fruit trees.
The few miserable Indian huts that had still existed when Katharine arrived had been torn down and replaced by a dozen or so new ones, neat and generously sized to accommodate growing families. There was a central cookhouse with a covered fire over which Rosabel presided with fercious efficiency and iron discipline. She always knew exactly how many days’ food they had and could calculate quantities in the blink of an eye.
None of it was luxurious, not like Lagona. There were no fine furnishings, no rocking chairs or writing tables imported from England and France, no silver cutlery or porcelain tableware, no damask curtains or bedcovers. Their plates were banana leaves and their furniture, even as the Indian carpenters strove to make it comfortable, was hewn from tree trunks. Katharine joked in her letters to her family that the uneven surfaces of her desk made her handwriting even worse than ever. They did not have much, but what they had was serviceable, and it was enough.
Likewise, though there was never a day without difficulty – a problem on an estrada with unreliable tappers, a snake bite, a fall – somehow they managed to weather them, and survive to see the next day and the next challenge.
* * *
One October afternoon three years after their arrival, Katharine and Charles were in the office as usual, working on rubber tapping plans. Antonio was running around outside with a big stick, shouting and looking for snakes. Po-Po, Katharine’s faithful bird who had stayed with them through everything, was strutting after him, snatching – in his usual dignified way – any insects Antonio’s flailing weapon unearthed.
A contented feeling surged in Katharine’s veins. All was well. Antonio, approaching his third birthday, was healthy if a bit of a handful, the business was building and, though she hadn’t acutally made any money yet, she would – very soon. It just took time to get up and running, to get the rubber rolling.
On her desk lay a pile of letters, all to do with business, or so she thought. She picked up the top one, recognising it as from Mac.
‘We have an invitation,’ she remarked, as her eyes scanned across the words.
Charles raised his eyebrows in his usual polite but non-committal way. ‘Oh yes?’ he questioned, clearly only half-concentrating.
‘To spend Christmas at Lagona.’
Katharine folded the letter and rested her chin on her bent arm. It might be good to get away for a while.
‘That’s a surprise,’ remarked Charles. ‘But a pleasant one, nonetheless.’
Katharine nodded. ‘Yes, Charles,’ she replied. ‘It is. And it would be a change of scene.’
Not that the scenery was substantially different at Lagona – it was still the forest, gloomy, dark and forbidding at times, green, verdant and welcoming at others. But there would be other visitors there, and conversation, as well as news of the wider world that wasn’t six months out of date, unlike the newspapers and magazines she received in the post. Katharine gorged herself on any reading material that happened her way, and when she had finished with it the ants and termites did the same. Nothing lasted long in the Amazon: nature was always lurking, waiting to reclaim everything.
She went back to reading the remainder of the letter and was intrigued to find that Mac’s eldest daughter would be staying at Lagona; she was spending some time with her father before being presented in London and doing the season the following year. Katharine was interested to meet one of Mac’s children, especially one so clearly urbane and cosmopolitan, and it made her more intent on making the trip.
‘I think we should go,’ she stated, definitively.
Charles frowned. ‘I suppose we could leave Jonathan and Santiago in charge for a few weeks. They’ve become very competent in office matters as well as supervising the tappers.’
Katharine’s plan to encourage workers to her estradas had not lost its efficacy and she was nearly fully staffed now, with all but a few estradas manned.
‘They have,’ she mused. ‘And it might be good for them to have the experience of coping alone. It will show them that they are trusted.’
And so it was decided. The journey would take a little less time than it had when they had first travelled to Norwood as the water lever was higher and tributaries that had been impassable at low water were now navigable. They would be able to bring supplies back with them; she would write out her order and a letter accepting Mac’s invitation straightaway, and give it to the Indians who had brought the news.
Making her list, of fabric and clothing they desperately needed, foodstuffs, tools, alcohol and everything else she could think of, Katharine swallowed down the queasy feeling in her stomach that tended to arise whenever she had to spend yet more money. Despite the fact that things were going well, her debt had done nothing but increase. Their expenses, though minimal, all added up and though they were nearly in full production of rubber, it had taken three years to get this far, during which time nothing had been paid off. She’d even had to borrow again from Mac to tide them over, a fact she hated as she did not want to rely on him, or to impose on his goodwill and generosity. Nor did she want him to think she wasn’t up to the job. But there had been no other option.
Taking a deep breath, she forced herself not to dwell on her finances. She was so deeply in hock to just about everyone, what difference did a little more make? And soon, very, very soon in fact, when they got back from Lagona and the river was ripe all the way to Pará for shipping the rubber, they’d be sending a huge consignment of bolachas to the aviador Anselmo had chosen. When Katharine had been paid for her goods, and despite the aviador’s cut and the hefty taxes levied by the Brazilian government – then they’d be well on the way to profit.
Antonio ran in, bellowing loudly, as he was wont to do, confirming to Katharine that her decision to go to Lagona was the right one. He might benefit from spending some time in rather more refined company than he was used to. He was frequently stubborn and obstinant, with a will of his own and a refusal to bend to his mother’s. She worried that he lacked a father figure, and was growing up wild, learning not polite manners and fine habits but jungle ways: how to track a monkey, shoot an arrow, gut a fish. Useful in Norwood, no doubt – but Katharine hoped for a future for him back in Europe, where perhaps the money she would make (because she would make money, eventually, wouldn’t she?) would equip him to set up in business for himself, to buy a comfortable house in a nice suburb and marry a lovely woman so that Katharine would have lots of grandchildren to dote on.
Pushing her tree stump chair backwards, she stood up abruptly. Daydreaming again! She should not map out Antonio’s future like this, it wasn’t fair on the poor boy. She was acutely aware that all of her maternal attention was focused on him because she had no other children and never would have. It was so different from her own family, when the siblings had come along every two or three years with remakable regularity. But that door had firmly closed with Anselmo’s death and it would never open again. She contented herself with Antonio’s admittedly sometimes truculent company, and busied herself with the mountain of daily tasks that faced her, so that matters of the heart need never surface. If she were honest, food preoccupied her mind to a far greater extent than romance – and she would have had a fruitless search if she tried to find a lover in Norwood. Under a banana leaf, perhaps? Behind a jauarí palm? Up in the branches of the towering Brazil nut tree? She smiled to herself at such thoughts and then dismissed them, as fanciful nonsense should be dismissed.
What couldn’t be so easily pushed aside, though, was Antonio’s more immediate future – and the small matter of his education. Katharine could teach him to a certain extent when the time was right and he was a bit older – but Latin? Greek? These were – quite literally – closed books to her. The prospect of sending Antonio all the way back to England for his schooling filled Katharine with horror; he was all she had, she couldn’t bear to let him go.
Calling to the little boy, she took hold of his hand and walked with him beside her to g
ive her letter of reply for Mac to the waiting canoe. She wouldn’t think that far into the future right now. They would go to Lagona for Christmas.
They would have some fun.
Chapter Fifteen
Lagona, 1893–4
As the boat departed, Katharine took a long lingering look at her home. Her house, being two storeys tall, was still visible nestling in its forest clearing, but many of the low Indian huts had vanished behind the piles of bolachas lined up along the riverbank. Teams of her workers had been bringing them in for months now and there were hundreds of pounds worth of rubber awaiting collection in the new year.
In the canoe with her, Katharine had one small but perfectly formed ball of dry, fine Pará, the best quality rubber in the world, to show Mac. Usually, each bolacha weighed seventy to ninety pounds but Katharine had had a petite one made for easy transport to Lagona. Taking it was part of some subliminal need to prove to Mac what she had told him that evening when she refused his offer to sell her estradas to him – that she could cope, that she could run a successful rubber business when so many others failed, and that she could do so even though she was a woman.
She patted the bolacha proudly with one hand, while the other kept a protective grip on Antonio. But, unlike inert balls of rubber, lively little boys do not generally like to be restrained. Antonio soon pulled himself free of his mother’s grasp and, reluctantly, she let him go. In all truth, she didn’t know why she went through the motions of holding him back.
He’d been born by this river and knew it like the back of his hand. Knew how to swim like a dolphin, knew where piranhas lurked, knew the places where it was safe to frolic and splash and bathe. Already he was well versed in jungle lore; for example, never urinate in the river as the miniature catfish, the candiru, will swim up the stream of nitrogen and lodge in the urethra, causing intense pain. He was much more attuned to his surroundings than she was; it was all he’d ever known, and he was so independent already. Sometimes the fleeting thought crossed Katharine’s mind that he seemed to have no need for her at all.
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