Along the Endless River

by Rose Alexander

  ‘Go now, Joe,’ she demanded. ‘Just go.’

  He slid out of the door and pulled it shut. Mabel sank down into her bed and lay flat on her back. That was how she felt: flattened. Erased, eradicated.

  When the bells rang five a.m., she had not slept a wink. Her whole world had fallen apart. And worst of all, she had been rude to Joe. She hadn’t been able to find the grace in her heart to thank him for letting her know and she hated herself for that.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Norwood, 1901

  A dreadful scream roused Katharine from her bed. It was only a few days after the Spanish pharmacist, on his promised return visit, had declared Thomas and Antonio fully recovered from the malaria that had threatened to kill them, but immediately she assumed that something terrible must have happened to one of them. Once it had infected you, malaria could return at any time.

  She was up, dressed and down the stairs in seconds, sure that Antonio had had a relapse. Oh, please God, not Antonio. And not Thomas either. Nor Jonathan or Santiago, or any of the Indians who lived in the compound and surrounding jungle.

  She reached the ground floor just as a frantic slamming began upon the door. Wrenching it open, she was greeted by the sight of Rosabel’s tear-stained and anguished face.

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ she cried, barely able to get the words out. ‘She dead, she dead.’

  She? So it definitely wasn’t Thomas or Antonio – but who could Rosabel be talking about?

  ‘Who, Rosabel?’ she demanded. ‘Calm down and tell me who.’

  ‘Fortunata,’ sobbed Rosabel, ‘Fortunata is dead.’

  Katharine stared at the distraught woman as her words gradually sank in. A wave of nausea surged through her. She had hardly thought of the girl since the malaria episode had begun, just been aware of her bringing food and water, slipping wordlessly in and out of shadows, hiding herself away from any kind of scrutiny.

  ‘But how?’ she gasped. ‘Why? What happened to her? Did someone hurt her?’

  Rosabel shook her head. ‘No, Mother. She die of thinness. She eat nothing but dirt.’

  The cook took Katharine to the hut where Fortunata slept. She was still in her hammock, looking as if she were asleep. But when Katharine leant over her and felt her brow it was stone cold. In the stillness of death, she could see how emaciated the girl was, more than she had noticed before, all skin and bones and angles, her cheeks pinched so tight they looked as if they might meet in the middle of her mouth.

  ‘Oh God,’ she murmured. ‘Poor, poor girl.’

  Anger flared through her; she remembered the man who had been bidding for her at the auction, the things she’d imagined he wanted to do to her, to use her for. And who knew what the person selling had been doing before that? Fortunata had had a horrendous life before Katharine, so full of big ideas of saving her, of nurturing her, had bought her. And yet here she was, dead, and it was all Katharine’s fault for taking her eye off the ball, for being so concerned with Thomas and Antonio that she had neglected the little girl, hadn’t seen that she had lost an impossible amount of weight.

  She took Fortunata’s hand in hers, feeling her skeletal fingers, like Hansel’s chicken bone that fooled the witch and thought that she, too, had been fooled. She had assumed that bringing Fortunata to a place of safety, away from abuse and neglect, would make her well. She had not understood the depth of the sickness that infected the girl’s soul. Far from making her well, she had let her die.

  This was the Amazon, slipping from life to death in a heartbeat. But this time, it was Katharine’s fault.

  The whole compound attended Fortunata’s funeral, everyone drenched in sadness. Antonio lit a candle and the Indian women sang a song of grieving that they said would send her on her way to the next world, where the catfish were plentiful, huge and juicy and the jaguars slept with the chickens. A peaceful world, with no slavery.

  A world where rubber did not exist.

  ‘I really loved her,’ Katharine murmured to Thomas as they stood by the grave, next to the burial place of the rubber tappers who’d been killed by the hostile tribe, and Po-Po, another lost friend.

  ‘I know you did,’ replied Thomas.

  He had made a cross for Fortunata’s headstone, engraving her name upon it and decorating it with carvings of flowers and leaves.

  ‘But I didn’t do nearly enough for her.’

  ‘You rescued her from that – that man,’ he reminded her, gently comforting her. ‘You made her last months the best since she was stolen from her family. She had nothing to fear here.’

  ‘Yes, but she shouldn’t have been stolen in the first place, should she?’ Katharine was shouting now, enraged by the injustices she saw all around her, the heartbreak that rubber and greed and the thirst for more was inflicting on the Amazon. ‘It’s not fair!’

  Thomas grimaced resignedly. Katharine bit her tongue. She was conscious of sounding like a child. And how insensitive of her to remark on what was fair and what was not to Thomas, whose own family history, culture and ancestry had long ago been lost, obliterated by the scourge of slavery.

  ‘You did what you could,’ said Thomas, his tone as measured and reassuring as ever. ‘And that’s all any of us can do.’

  His words were a comfort, his solid, indomitable presence even more so. But with Fortunata’s death, following so closely on from his and Antonio’s near fatal illness, Katharine saw afresh the myriad dangers of the Amazon, and she became fearful in a way she had never been before.

  A few days after Fortunata’s funeral, the budget brought a letter from Mayhew. The rubber price had risen again. He was on his way to Norwood from Manaus – what a city! What an establishment he had set up there! – to discuss the twin issues of their increasing rubber production and Antonio.

  Katharine showed the letter to Thomas.

  ‘He wants to talk about rubber and Antonio,’ she said, her voice a dull monotone. ‘And I don’t know what either has got to do with him.’

  Thomas laughed. He understood the antipathy that often flared up between the siblings and he was always good at calming Katharine down and helping her to laugh off some of Mayhew’s most objectionable and annoying traits.

  ‘Just humour him,’ he advised. ‘And don’t let him get to you. When he sees you rise to him, it only makes him worse.’

  Katharine put her head in her hands. The thing was that Mayhew might be right that talking about Antonio was necessary. There was fighting again not far away in Anzo province, and yet another yellow fever epidemic. The jungle seemed to be becoming ever more dangerous. Maybe it would be best to get Antonio well away from this place.

  It was broad daylight and everyone was out and about – Katharine could hear the chattering of the women around the cooking fires, the men lolling in their hammocks having good-natured arguments, the children grubbing in the sandy earth – but they were all some way away from the office. She turned to Thomas, needing him, his warmth and strength and solidity, wanting it so much that, even though she knew she shouldn’t, she went to him now and laid her cheek against his shoulder.

  She had taken so many decisions alone over the years, coped with so much that had been thrown at her. She was weary. She needed help.

  ‘Hold me,’ she whispered, ‘please hold me tight.’

  Thomas did as she asked, fastening his arms around her.

  ‘Love me,’ she murmured, ‘love me above all else. Love me like I love you.’

  Her eyes flickered open and shut, and briefly the light through the window dimmed and then re-illuminated. For a fleeting second, she wasn’t sure if it had been her closed lids that had caused the light to go, or a shadow from a passing figure. But then Thomas pulled her further into him, kissing her forehead, her nose and then her lips, softly at first and then with an increasing urgency, and Katharine dismissed as fanciful, the product of a guilty imagination, that there had been anyone prying from outside.

  * * *

  Taking them all by su
rprise, Mayhew arrived only a week later.

  ‘I left early,’ he told Katharine, breezily, as he instructed the Indian canoeists to carry his luggage up to the house.

  Antonio ran to greet him. He’d been exceptionally surly over the last few days, hardly speaking to Katharine or Thomas. Katharine’s heart usually sank at the thought of a prolonged period of time spent with Mayhew, and she’d not been happy at the prospect of this visit, but now she was actually genuinely glad to see him. He, at least, always seemed to be able to communicate with Antonio, and Katharine was grateful that her brother could bring her son out of himself and his solitary nature.

  ‘He’s a youngster,’ Thomas reassured her. ‘It’s a phase. He’ll get over it.’

  Katharine appreciated his efforts to put her mind at rest but wasn’t convinced. At the same time, there was much to catch up on with the business. Though she had offered Mayhew the position of her representative in Manaus as a last resort, and had not thought it through at all, it had turned out to be a fortuitous decision. Everyone in the city loved money, but none more so than her brother. Motivated by the deal he and Katharine had struck where he got a percentage of the profits Norwood Enterprises made, he had every incentive to work hard and had proved to be an astute businessman.

  Going through the accounts, completing entries in the profit and loss book and making price graphs absorbed all of the siblings’ time for a few days. For a while, everything went smoothly. No arguments, not too many disagreements. But Katharine knew it was too good to last and so it proved to be. What she hadn’t bargained for, or rather had chosen to ignore, was Mayhew’s unfailing ability to sniff out a secret. It was as if he could sense the illicit on the air, and then follow it like a bloodhound.

  ‘Thomas is shaping up as a good manager, isn’t he?’ he questioned as they sat by the river one darkening evening, watching egrets, herons and storks pick morsels from the shallows. ‘You were so quick to say you didn’t need anyone – now I don’t think you could do without him, could you?’

  Katharine sighed in agreement. ‘No, I couldn’t. I concede that you were right.’ She turned to face him and smiled. It couldn’t hurt to humour him every now and again. ‘Thank you for being so wise.’

  ‘I brought him here to help you keep the Indians in their place, show them who’s boss,’ continued Mayhew, living up to Katharine’s expectations that he would always be the brother who knew it all. He paused, threw a stone into the water and watched the ripples as it sank.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d end up fornicating with him.’

  Katharine’s mouth fell open, her eyes widening in horror.

  ‘Hah!’ gloated Mayhew. As he’d suspected, the gossip Mac had shared with him in Manaus was true, not just idle rumour. The bush telegraph was surprisingly efficient, despite everything else in the jungle being so primeval and rudimentary.

  ‘I thought as much,’ he continued. ‘I had no proof – none at all – but I’ve noticed the way you look at him, and him at you, full of lust.’ There was no need to mention to Katharine that it was Mac who’d let him in on the secret. Let her think it was his intuition. Then she’d be less ready to keep secrets from him. ‘And the fact that you contrive to spend every possible minute with him.’

  Katharine gulped. Fear had stilled the blood in her veins and she was cursing herself for giving herself away so easily.

  ‘It’s – it’s not what you think,’ she said, lamely, and immediately hated herself for being so weak, for pandering to his prejudices, for making it sound as if she were ashamed of her relationship with Thomas. The problem was that, exposed to the light of ‘civilised’ society, she did feel shame – but only because society told her she should.

  As if reading her mind, Mayhew continued. ‘You’ve been away from civilisation for too long – you’ve forgotten what it is. You’re no better than those savages out in the woods, living in the dirt, engaging in all sorts of filthy practices.’

  Katharine held back a sharp retort. From what she remembered of Manaus, it was the city dwellers who were engaged in filthy practices if anyone was but she refrained from saying so. There was no point in provoking an argument. She’d just sit tight, let Mayhew get it all off his chest. And then hopefully he’d get bored again and rush off back to the so-called civilised city and leave her alone.

  But Mayhew showed no inclination to move on from this particular subject.

  ‘A so-called respectable widow canoodling with…! I don’t need to say more. But then, I suppose it’s no surprise you’ve gone native. I mean, what else is there to do here?’

  There was a short silence while Mayhew lit a cigarette. The packet bore the imprint of a French brand, imported and sold at a huge mark up in Manaus, Katharine supposed. Of course, Mayhew couldn’t slum it by smoking a local variety. She thought about getting up and walking off, leaving him alone with his vile suppositions. But she didn’t want to let bad feeling curdle. Perhaps smoking would calm him down and they’d be able to have a rational discussion.

  When he spoke again, he had completely changed track.

  ‘Antonio’s asked me to take him to England to school.’

  Katharine’s mouth fell open again.

  ‘To school?’ she spluttered, as if she’d never heard of such a place. ‘In England? Why? Where?’

  The evening was taking on shades of a nightmare, Mayhew doling out one horrific shock after the other.

  ‘What does he know of England? Or of school, for that matter?’ she added, frantically, helplessly. Even though she’d thought about it often enough herself, it was something completely different coming from Mayhew.

  ‘He wants to get away from – this.’ Mayhew waved his arm vaguely around him. ‘And in all honesty, Katharine, I think it would be good for him. He’s becoming a lily-livered mummy’s boy.’

  Rage exploded in Katharine’s chest. Lily-livered? Nothing could be further from the facts; Antonio was brave and courageous to a fault, scared of nothing and no one.

  The only scintilla of doubt was about the ‘mummy’s boy’. Could it be true? Was she stifling him, holding onto him for her benefit but not for his? She had never considered this before. But perhaps Mayhew was right. Perhaps it was pure selfishness to keep him here. Maybe it was precisely her suffocating love that was making him so uncooperative and difficult.

  ‘I’ve told him about the schools in England, the kind of place he could go to,’ Mayhew continued.

  ‘What kind of place would that be?’ Katharine thought of the school in Clerkenwell that she and her brothers and sister – including Mayhew – had all attended. It was hardly anything to boast about.

  ‘Winchester, I think would be best, or perhaps Eton or Harrow.’

  Katharine gazed at him in bemusement and then burst out laughing. Mayhew was being ridiculous. People like them didn’t go to the oldest, most elite, most expensive public schools in the country.

  Mayhew shot her a look that managed to be angry and patronising at the same time. ‘Of course. Why not?’

  ‘Winchester? Eton? Are you out of your mind? Those schools are not for people like us. We can’t send him somewhere like that! It’s ridiculous.’

  Mayhew dismissed Katharine’s protestations with an irritated tsk. ‘I have money. Plenty of money.’ He still had cash squirrelled away from his long defunct pyramid scheme, not that Katharine knew anything about that. She would undoubtedly disapprove. He’d been cautious about unearthing the funds in case anyone was onto his fake disappearance and watching him. But he reckoned it was all long enough in the past now.

  ‘But I’m not wasting it on my siblings before you suggest that,’ he continued. ‘It’s the next generation I wish to invest in.’

  ‘Right.’ Katharine was stumped. She didn’t know what to think. Or perhaps she did. School abroad was probably the best thing. She just hadn’t had the courage to face up to that fact yet.

  ‘It’s a chance for him to rise up in life,’ continued her brother, h
is tone gentler now, encouraging, cajoling. ‘Against all odds, you’ve made something of yourself. So have I. Now he can make something even better. If only I’d had the opportunity for the best education money could buy – just think what I could have done.’

  Katharine hardly dared to. Surely he couldn’t be even more of a bully?

  ‘All I want to do is help my nephew. I know we don’t always see eye to eye and we have – well – a lot of differences. But we both know that our parents put family above all else. And this is something I can do for a child I really love. It can’t be easy for him, not having a father and all.’ Mayhew sighed and pursed his lips, shaking his head as if evaluating Antonio’s parlous situation. ‘Let me do what I can for the boy, I implore you.’

  Katharine nodded sadly. Of course, she wanted the best for Antonio. Keeping him here was selfish, to do with her needs, not his. Sending him to England for a few years would be for the best – and after all, it was only what everyone did, all the ‘traditional’ colonialists who lived in India or Kenya or Ceylon.

  Mayhew was offering a golden chance to Antonio. How could she possibly say no?

  ‘I think we should change his name to Anthony,’ Mayhew concluded, assuming Katharine’s silence as acquiescence. ‘Make him sound more English. It’s always best that way.’

  Katharine stared sightlessly ahead, unable to look at her brother. She rubbed her eyes as if she could erase the inevitability of what was going to happen. But when she glanced up again, it was all still there. Mayhew surrounded by his plume of blue smoke, and Norwood, soon to be missing her son.

  Chapter Thirty-Four