Along the Endless River

by Rose Alexander

  In a state of nervous collapse, Katharine retired to her room. Heavily, as if her limbs weighed a ton, she stood on the veranda. On the balustrade, a silk moth casually unfolded its wings, revealing a pair of forbidding hyacinth blue eyes flecked with silver, immense and unfathomable. Katharine shuddered. It was as if those blank eyes could see into her soul and, looking, found nothing left.

  She glanced away, towards the endless expanse of trees, craving silence, time to think, to plan what to do next – but the deafening noise of the forest surrounded her and precluded thought, the cacophonous screeching and chirping and calling and tweeting and the endless, endless din.

  ‘Shut up!’ she shouted. ‘Just shut up and let me think.’

  They’d think she was mad, screaming at the jungle. Jonathan, Santiago, the other Indians, Antonio. They’d all think she’d gone stark, staring mad. And perhaps she had. Sometimes it felt that way. Right now it definitely did.

  Her rubber. Her money. Her clerk and his wife. Antonio’s future. Her father’s loan. It was gone. All gone. She was defeated. The Amazon had beaten her.

  It had got what it had always wanted.

  * * *

  Katharine stayed in bed for three days, Rosabel sending meals she hardly touched and Antonio, unable to comprehend her mood, seeking more congenial company elsewhere. On the third night, she lay watching a firefly circumnavigate her bedroom again and again, winging its delicate way round and round as if locked in its own never-ending dance. Eventually, Katharine fell asleep, the bright pinprick of light still burning behind her retinas. Maybe it was hunger that caused her to hallucinate, but in her dreams, her little sister Mabel appeared before her, riding a huge anaconda that was bridled and saddled like a horse. Mabel was smiling beatifically and laughing her gurgling, water-down-a-drainpipe laugh, impervious to the bucking and rearing of the serpent horse beneath her.

  ‘Don’t give up, Katharine,’ urged the vision of Mabel. ‘You know you always told me to never give up.’

  Then the anaconda neighed and slithered away into the distance as fast as any galloping steed.

  When Katharine woke the next morning, she felt miraculously clear-headed and refreshed, renewed. Climbing purposefully out of bed, she ran down the stairs and out into the compound. The sky was clear and freshly laundered linen hung cheerfully from the washing line. Already, new greenery sprouted from the charred branches of those fruit trees that still stood. This was the wonder of the Amazon. Destruction could be quick, but regrowth was even quicker. In the sunshine, everything looked fresher, brighter, more hopeful.

  It was clear that the Amazon demanded blood if you wanted to be successful; the blood of hands blistered by sawing and chopping wood for building and cooking, the blood of a thousand insect bites, the blood of sacrifices of chickens and goats made by the feiticeiro to bring them good fortune. The only way to combat it was to play it at its own game. Katharine would redouble her efforts, working harder and longer than ever before.

  She gathered all the Indians around her to tell them what she had decided.

  ‘Jonathan and Santiago,’ she said, her clear voice carrying right to the furthest waiting ears, ‘you will be my new clerks, replacing Charles. There is work enough for two these days and you have earned your right to promotion.’

  She paused, and looked around at the expectant faces. ‘Everyone else, we have two weeks to get this place cleared and rebuilt. During this period, wages are doubled – you will be paid the extra money at the end of the fortnight. Providing,’ she added, ‘the work is all done.’

  Nods and grins and smiles of desultory appreciation greeted her words; applause and wild displays of emotion were not the Indian way. Even so, Katharine expected some action. Smoothing down her dress, she surveyed the crowd. No one was moving, no one was going anywhere.

  ‘So,’ she called, raising her voice very slightly, ‘what are you waiting for? Off you go! Let’s get Norwood back into business!’

  And with that, her audience moved off as one, all setting purposefully to their tasks. Soon the compound rang with the sound of axe and machete blows, hammering and chiselling, shouting and whistling.

  Jonathan came to her. ‘Well done, Mother,’ he said, admiringly. ‘You are changed! Like a new person now. Perhaps you took a potion from the witch doctor?’

  Katharine smiled wryly and shook her head. ‘No.’ She looked around at Norwood, her home, her livelihood. ‘No, Jonathan, nothing magic, no spells or incantations.’ She breathed in deeply, smelling the earth fresh from the overnight rain, the breeze that came all the way from the high Andes. ‘Just my love of this place and all of you – and my promise that I won’t let you down.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Norwood, 1899

  Over the next few years, everyone at Norwood worked without cease. In the office, Katharine, Jonathan and Santiago huddled over plans and maps, working out how to rotate the tappers across the estradas to maximise production, the best routes to bring the rubber to the compound, the most advantageous time to send it to Manaus and Pará.

  Out in the forest, the seringueiros, alone or in groups of two, three or four, slashed the bark, climbed the trees, collected the latex and sat for days over palm nut fires, smoking the growing balls of rubber. They had to be constantly monitored to ensure that they tapped responsibly. In the quest for greater production, the temptation was always to cut too often and too deep, which led to rapid deterioration of a tree’s health. Too many estates had suffered from the urge to make a quick buck.

  They had their fair share of difficulties, with yellow fever epidemics, which always took some victims to their graves, as well as insect, snake and vampire bat bites, and only slightly less infrequent accidents with knives or machetes. Together, they endured rains of biblical strength, hunger when their food ran out and the supply canoes could not reach them, plagues of mosquitoes and the dreaded ‘manta blanca’ – dense blankets of microscopic midges that covered every square inch of flesh and inflicted bites that itched tortuously for days after.

  All of this they went through.

  Until, eventually, a couple of years after the raid, success rather than disaster once more looked them in the face. They were shipping rubber two, three, six times a year and finally Katharine was paying off her debts. She’d even managed to send a small amount of money home, enough to fix the roof and windows of the draughty house in Clerkenwell and install a tap in the kitchen, which would save her mother the time and energy involved in fetching water from the pump in the street.

  But she was still some way from being able to make a sizeable dent in repaying her father’s life savings. Every now and again, she allowed herself to feel a scintilla of resentment towards Mayhew, who several years ago had made an advantageous marriage, or so she understood, and was running a successful financial business in New York. His letters continued to extol the merits of America and everything about it, though Katharine had noticed a slight change in tone recently. A certain circumspection had replaced the previously overriding tone of triumphalism. She wondered if everything were quite as marvellous as he made out. But in any case, he persisted in absolving himself of any involvement in the family back home in London. Why couldn’t he help out a bit, she sometimes asked herself. But then she would shake her head in self-recrimination. It was not her brother who had borrowed from their parents, it was her husband and, by default, herself.

  It was her task, and hers alone, to put things right.

  Mac, on the other hand, carried on being both friend and supporter. On a sunny morning in May, a letter arrived annoncing that he was travelling to Anzo province to view some estradas and would like to stay a few days at Norwood on his way. Anzo, a vast area between its eponymous river and the Pura, was known to be the rubber El Dorado, an as yet untapped region where virgin trees in their thousands were ripe for exploitation. But it was also a dangerous place, desperate flagelados from the destitute Brazilian north-east region were flooding in on a daily bas
is and coming into conflict with those already there. Fighting broke out frequently, and every now and again bodies floating down river bore testament to it. Katharine considered Mac brave to be venturing there – but, as she already knew, Mac hadn’t made his millions by shrinking from risk.

  True to form, Mac arrived with an entourage of canoes and canoeists, and, immediately on arrival at Norwood’s dock, had the Indians unloading delicious treats from Europe to alleviate the fish, farinha and bush meat diet of the rainforest.

  They ate well that night and, to celebrate the occasion, Katharine even opened the bottle of perfume he’d sent her all those years ago and applied it delicately to her wrists and neck in defiance of the mosquitoes. Over a sumptuous dinner of paté, confit de canard and petit pois, followed by crème brûlée, all from imported tins, Katharine asked Mac about his plans.

  ‘You are really considering buying land in Anzo?’ she asked. ‘You’ve been here so long and done so well. Are you not tempted to ease off a bit rather than taking on yet more work, tackling another challenge?’

  Mac, intent on scooping up the last of his dessert, did not reply for a moment. When he did, his answer was brusque, as if brushing Katharine’s enquiry off. ‘Oh no, not at all. Not ready to be put out to grass quite yet.’

  Katharine smiled inwardly at the thought of Mac placidly and contentedly grazing the green fields of Highgate and offered him some more wine. He could have it so easy but chose not to, which did seem strange. But lots of people in the Amazon were peculiar to various degrees. She had almost certainly become odd herself, after all this time.

  The next day, she had a lot of office work to deal with so she didn’t see Mac in the morning. In the early afternoon, needing to clear her head from all the figures and calculations that were tying themselves in knots, she strolled down to the river to be confronted with a sight that made her double over in laughter.

  Jonathan had built a rope swing for Antonio; it hung on a liana from a high branch of a mighty Brazil nut tree and the seat was, of course, made from rubber. But rather than Antonio sitting on the seat and sailing back and forth over the river, it was Mac. His pale limbs and sandy hair glowed in the equatorial sun as he performed graceful oscillations back and forth. Every time he reached the exact right spot over the water, Antonio shouted, ‘now!’ and every time, Mac failed to loosen his grasp and swung straight back to the bank again.

  In between his ever more frantic exhortations for Mac to let go, Antonio was also laughing, a carefree, joyous laugh that Katharine had rarely heard before. It gladdened her heart to see her son so happy, for he was prone to sulks and tantrums.

  Eventually, after four or five more failed attempts, Mac finally detached himself from the swing, plunging down to the turbid water beneath him. But he had misjudged the jump, preempting Antonio’s command by a second or so, so that rather than being on the turn of the swing, heading for dry land, he was beyond the safe point, pitching directly into the place where the current was strong beneath the surface.

  Any object in the water there was dragged ever further out and eventually underneath the surface, never to reappear. For one dreadful moment, Katharine was frozen to the spot, unable to think, unable to move.

  And then she was racing down the beach and along the dock, untying a canoe, jumping into it and paddling for all she was worth. As she strove to go faster, she saw Antonio grab the liana rope, hoist himself upon the seat and fly through the air. Instead of waiting until he was at the safe spot for letting go, he did what Mac had done, throwing himself down at the exact same place. He landed in the water with a tumultous splash.

  Immediately, Mac was reaching out his arms to him, clutching him as if he were a buoy. Katharine, barely able to breathe for the exertion of paddling, watched in appalled horror as the full-grown man clung to her small son and their heads disappeared under the deceptively smooth surface of the capricious river.

  She paddled harder, so hard that her arms screamed in protest and her heart all but burst in pain. The two heads reappeared, gasping for breath. Mac was panicking and Antonio was trying to calm him so that he could keep him afloat. But Mac was so much bigger, so much heavier, that Antonio, for all his superhuman effort, could stop neither Mac nor himself from sinking. And all the while they were being swept out, into the current, and held under the water for ever longer amounts of time.

  Katharine, in a haze of dread and terror, unable to fully register what was happening, paddled on.

  After what seemed like hours but was in fact only seconds, she got to the spot where she thought she’d last seen them. She’d lined it up with a palm tree on the bank and tried not to take her eyes off the place but even so, the water just looked like water; it had no distinguishing features. For a moment, she ceased paddling, falling forward as her breath came in ragged, painful gasps. Whatever was happening here she refused to believe. She could not lose her son, nor her friend. This river had taken her husband; it was not taking any others.

  The canoe was turning on the current, the river wanting to snatch it up and send it oceanward. As it began to spin, a disturbance rippled the surface just a few feet away. Bubbles rose, and then a head emerged, just enough to take a breath before it was submerged once more. Mac. He was still alive. But Antonio?

  Katharine plunged the paddle downwards, sweeping it backwards with such force she arrived at the spot with one stroke. The head rose up again, but this time there were two of them. Katharine cried out in relief, ‘Antonio! Mac! Here, I’m here.’

  Antonio flung out an arm and caught hold of the paddle. With the other hand, he dragged Mac towards him until he, too, had managed to fold his fingers around the wood. With all her strength, Katharine pulled the paddle towards the canoe, the two gasping swimmers attached to it. She heaved Mac into the boat where he fell on the bottom, retching and crying. Antonio, nimbly and without help, pulled himself up and over the side and sank into his mother’s waiting arms.

  ‘Oh, Antonio, my Antonio,’ Katharine sobbed. ‘You’re alive, I can’t believe you’re alive.’

  Antonio spat a mouthful of water into the river. ‘Just about,’ he agreed. His eyes were sunken with exhaustion and shock.

  ‘You’re a hero,’ said Katharine, ‘my hero. You saved a man’s life.’

  Antonio shrugged, no breath left to speak.

  Mac sat up, revived, rubbing his knuckles into his eyes, still coughing. ‘What the bloody hell kind of game is that?’ he demanded. ‘I’ve never felt such a bleeding fool in my whole life, so I haven’t.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Antonio, sternly. ‘You’re never going on my swing again, at least not if I’ve got anything to do with it.’

  And his tone was so reprimanding and, despite his young age and unbroken voice, so serious, that all three of them burst out laughing, a laughter that started slowly but, by the time they got back to the dock, had become hysterical.

  That night Katharine wept for Anselmo in a way she hadn’t for many years. If only she had been able to save him as she had managed to save Mac and Antonio. How different this past decade would have been, if that had been so.

  If only.

  Part II

  1900 – 1909

  Chapter Twenty

  New York, 1900

  The advert on the front page of the New York Times caught Mayhew Bird’s eye as he ate his habitual breakfast kipper and drank his morning cup of coffee.

  Amazonian Rubber Company Inc.

  Millions of rubber trees ready for tapping NOW.

  75% return for life on all investments; this is one that cannot fail.

  Not being overly troubled by close attachments or familial bonds, Mayhew didn’t often think about his sister Katharine and the life she was trying to build in that god-forsaken country she had disappeared off to with that foreign husband of hers. But Katharine had gone in pursuit of rubber and rubber meant money and money… well, money was what made Mayhew’s world go round.

  Avarice had driven him
throughout his life and, combined with his shame over his hardworking parents and their humble home in Hawthorn Road, avarice had propelled him to set sail for America to make his fortune the moment he’d turned eighteen. He wanted to be rich and he also wanted to be a gentleman, to be what he considered ‘better’ than the place he’d come from. To achieve his aims, he’d set as a goal finding a society heiress to marry, and, being extremely goodlooking, much taller than the average Englishman and in possession of charm in abundance, he had succeeded.

  He had wooed the richest, plainest girl he had found in New York City, beguiling her with his perfect British accent and perfect British manners, taking her to the opera, the theatre, to literary soirées and art exhibitions, talking knowledgeably about the hottest new writers and most groundbreaking artists. When he wanted to, Mayhew Bird could enchant and seduce with ease.

  His marriage to heiress Amy-Joanne Burnett had been a triumph of those enchantment and seduction skills. The ceremony had taken place in Grace Church on Broadway five years ago, preceded by a long engagement, necessary, his mother-in-law Emily had insisted, not just for propriety, but also to allow time for the preparation of the required number of dozens – the monogrammed and embroidered linens, handkerchiefs and underwear that all the best brides must have.

  It had cost a huge sum of money, the wedding and the dozens, plus the Park Avenue town house and the country estate, but money was no object. The death of Mrs Burnett’s husband had left her a millionaire and, as the only child, Amy-Joanne was set to inherit it all. She also had a substantial trust fund to keep the wolf from the door until such time as Mrs Burnett should pass on to a better world. Though there was no sign of that happening any time soon. As was often the way with widows, Emily Burnett boasted the rudest health, never suffering anything worse than a head cold. Her daughter, Mayhew’s wife, was similarly robust, aided, Mayhew always supposed, by the ample layers of fat that encompassed her pudgy form.