Journey to the River Sea

‘I wasn’t trying to make it easier for you,’ said Maia, and stalked away.

  But Finn did not go immediately. It was as though the Arabella wasn’t so sure if she wanted to go adventuring after her quiet time in the lagoon. First they found a small leak through the hull under the floorboards, and then Finn dropped the washer for the valve which regulated the amount of steam to go into the boiler. He didn’t just drop it, he dropped it into the deepest part of the lake, and though he and Maia dived for it again and again they couldn’t find it. Furo went into Manaus to get a replacement but before they could put it in, another week had passed.

  It was harder for Miss Minton to get away to the lagoon. When she did manage it, she bullied Finn about Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

  ‘Those legions are never going to get across the bridge at this rate,’ she said, looking at the book, still open at page fifty-seven. But when she had finished lecturing Finn about the importance of Latin to someone who wanted to collect plants, she lent a hand with the chores, scrubbing the floor of the hut to whiteness.

  ‘Having been a housemaid always comes in useful,’ she said.

  One afternoon when the children were on their own, they saw that the macaws on the tree that guarded the entrance had flown up, squawking.

  But it was not Furo come to fetch Maia. It was Colonel da Silva with his second in command, come to take charge of Bernard Taverner’s possessions.

  ‘Dios!’ he said paddling up to the hut. ‘What is this?’

  So Finn explained and when he had finished the Colonel was laughing so much, he looked as if he was going to fall into the water. The idea of the crows bringing a penniless actor to Westwood was the best thing he had heard in ages. ‘And you, senhorita,’ he said to Maia. ‘A heroine no less.’

  He told them that instructions to pay out the reward for Finn’s capture had been telegraphed from the Bishop so there could be no suspicion that they did not have the right boy.

  Then came the day Maia had dreaded. The last of the provisions were loaded onto the Arabella – manioc flour and dried beans and oil for the Primus and gifts for the Indians.

  That night Finn came to say goodbye to Furo and the others.

  ‘You’re to look after Maia,’ he told them. ‘Promise me you will not let any harm come to her.’

  And Furo, who had been sulking because he too wanted to go with Finn, gave his promise, as did Tapi and Conchita. Only old Lila was inconsolable, weeping and rocking back and forth and declaring that she would be dead before he returned.

  Watching from her window, Maia saw him come out of Lila’s hut, and for a moment she thought he was going to go without saying goodbye. Then he walked across the compound and stood under her window and she heard him whistle the tune that he had whistled on the night she came.

  ‘Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly,

  Blow the wind south o’er the bonny blue sea . . .’

  She ran outside then and hugged him and wished him luck, and she did not cry.

  ‘You’re not to spoil it for him,’ Minty had said, and she didn’t.

  But when he had gone, she stood for a long time by the window, trying to remember the words of the song. It was a song begging the wind to bring back someone who had gone away in a ship, but she did not think it ended happily.

  Well, why should it? Why should the wind care if she never saw Finn again?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sir Aubrey had sent the carriage to the station. He himself was going to wait for his grandson in the drawing room.

  If it was his grandson.

  Clovis sat between Mr Trapwood and Mr Low. The crows were going to hand him over personally before returning to town.

  It was cool. It was in fact very cool with an east wind blowing off Westwood Moor, and Clovis drank in the air with relief. No sticky heat, and no insects. He was in England at last.

  They had driven for at least twenty minutes down an avenue of lime trees. Clovis could see the glimmer of water between the coppices. That must be the lake where the Basher had held Bernard’s head under water.

  Then suddenly the carriage curved round a bend and Westwood lay before him.

  It was exactly as Finn had described it: an East Wing, a West Wing, and a block in the middle – but it was very large: larger than he had been able to imagine.

  For a moment Clovis found his stomach lurching. The crows were easy to hoodwink; they had fawned on him all through the journey and spent their spare time in the bar. But Finn’s grandfather would see through him; he was sure of that.

  They passed the fountain with the person on it who was strangling a snake. He seemed to have lost his head, which was a pity. Then the carriage stopped outside the main entrance.

  And Clovis saw a crowd of people massed on the stone steps which led to the front door! There were women in blue aprons, women in black dresses, men in livery and overalls and tailcoats . . .

  Of course! The servants all lined up to greet him!

  Clovis’ panic grew worse. He hadn’t realized that there could be so many servants in the world. Then he remembered that this had happened in Little Lord Fauntleroy when Ceddie arrived from America, and in a play called The Young Master when the lost heir returned to his home.

  The coachman opened the door. Mr Low and Mr Trapwood waited respectfully for him to get out first.

  Clovis squared his shoulders. He took a deep breath as he had always done before he went on stage, and moved forward.

  And upstairs, in the drawing room, Sir Aubrey put his telescope to his eye.

  When the boat docked at Liverpool, the crows had stopped at a gentleman’s outfitter and bought a tweed suit and cap for Clovis – the best that the shop could supply. Now, as he peered through the eyepiece, Sir Aubrey saw a handsome lad, blue-eyed and sturdy, who carried himself like a prince. The boy shook hands with the butler, the housekeeper and the cook, exactly as he should have done; then, at the top of the steps, he turned and thanked the lesser servants for their welcome before following the butler into the house.

  And Sir Aubrey’s heart leapt. He had been worried, no good denying it – Bernard might have produced anything – but this boy looked splendid. He would not chatter to the servants as his father had done; he was gracious but he kept his distance.

  In the Hall the steward waited to show Mr Low and Mr Trapwood into the office. The crows had hoped to be asked to stay to supper, but Sir Aubrey did not dine with detectives. However, they were paid off and got their bonus, along with a glass of beer, before they said goodbye to Clovis and were driven back to the station for the London train. The butler (who was not the old one who had sacked Bella but a younger man with black hair) now led Clovis past the chest into which Dudley had locked Bernard, past the knight in armour out of which Dudley had jumped, and the picture of the man with the Turk’s head impaled on a lance. Then he knocked on a heavy oaken door, announced, ‘Master Taverner, Sir Aubrey,’ and withdrew.

  Over what seemed like acres and acres of rich, dark carpet, Clovis looked at Sir Aubrey Taverner – and Sir Aubrey Taverner looked at him. Clovis saw a stout, red-faced man with a white moustache and bushy eyebrows. He was leaning on a stick so Clovis thought he must have gout; everyone older than fifty seemed to have gout in the sort of plays Clovis had acted in, and he decided to be very careful and not bump into him.

  Sir Aubrey, on the other hand, saw the grandson of his dreams. Clovis’ eyes were very blue, his hair was thick and golden; he bowed low over the hand stretched out to him. (The Goodleys had been very keen on proper bowing.)

  ‘Well, my boy, here you are at last. What made you hide away so long?’

  Clovis had thought of the answer to this one.

  ‘Because I was afraid I was not . . . worthy to fulfil my role.’ He looked at Sir Aubrey to see if he had overdone it but he hadn’t.

  ‘Nonsense. You’ll soon learn, my boy.’ And then: ‘You’re not at all like your father. Not at all.’

  ‘I believe I take after
my mother, sir,’ said Clovis. Since he had never seen his mother, who had dumped him in an orphanage as soon as he was born, he felt quite safe in saying this.

  ‘All the same, you remind me of someone. Now, who can it be?’

  Clovis waited nervously.

  Then: ‘I know,’ said Sir Aubrey. ‘Yes. Your great-great uncle Alwin. He was an admiral in Nelson’s navy. Went down with his ship at the Battle of the Nile. There’s a portrait of him in the gallery; I’ll show it to you later.’

  Clovis then asked what had happened to the head of the man who was strangling a snake and Sir Aubrey said that Dudley had blasted it with a shotgun.

  ‘He was after some poachers,’ he said, and fell silent, looking very sad. ‘Splendid chap, Dudley. Ask anyone.’

  Clovis said that he had heard from his father how strong Dudley was, and tried to think if he had heard anything nice about Dudley, but he hadn’t. Fortunately, since Sir Aubrey was looking very upset, the butler announced Mrs Smith and her three older daughters. The youngest daughter, Prudence, was still in nappies and did not go out to dinner.

  Again Clovis had no difficulty in recognizing Mrs Smith as the Basher, and her daughters as the ones who were no use to Sir Aubrey because they were the wrong sex.

  ‘How do you do, Aunt Joan,’ said Clovis, smiling winningly and hoping that the Basher had settled down since her marriage.

  ‘Well, you led us quite a dance,’ brayed Joan, and introduced her daughters.

  The girls were very thin and frail with straight fair hair and woebegone expressions, like banshees. Hope, who was eleven, had buck teeth; Faith, who was nine, had trouble breathing through her nose; and Charity was so frightened of her mother that she stammered, but they were nice girls all the same.

  All three of them looked anxiously at Clovis. Their mother had said that one of them would have to marry him when they grew up so that their family could get a share of Westwood. The girls knew that Bernard had been mad and had run away from home and talked to housemaids and to rats, so the idea of marrying his son made them feel very frightened. But now, as Clovis smiled and shook hands with them, they felt better. He did not look like a boy who ran away from home and talked to housemaids.

  The butler now announced that dinner was served. Clovis offered his arm to the Basher (which he knew was correct because of all the plays with dinner parties that he had acted in) and they crossed the gallery and went down the great carved stairway to the dining room.

  As soon as he saw the table with its snow-white cloth and smelled the faint, warm smell of fresh rolls and roasting meat, Clovis knew it was going to be all right. He remembered the Hotel Paradiso and all the other places where he had eaten vile food, and a smile which made his face look very beautiful passed over his face. Even his foster mother couldn’t have cooked a better meal. The asparagus soup was delicate and creamy, the roast beef was brown and crisp on the outside, and just a little pink in the middle, the potatoes melted in the mouth. And for dessert, they had bread and butter pudding with dollops of cream . . .

  Clovis ate, and as he did so he decided he could probably hold out for a week, or even two, before he gave himself up. Finn would be glad of the extra time and it would be a pity not to stay for the other things: ginger pudding, and boiled mutton with capers perhaps . . . and there’d be proper crackling on the pork.

  As for the little banshees, when they returned home they too were satisfied.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind marrying him,’ said the eldest, Hope.

  ‘I wouldn’t either,’ said Faith.

  ‘Nor me,’ said Charity. ‘I w-wouldn’t . . . mind too.’

  Then they sighed. ‘Mother will tell us which one it’s going to be,’ said Hope. ‘As long as it’s not Prudence.’

  Prudence was still in nappies and far too small to be in the running, but she had curls and a dimple and her sisters hated her.

  As for Clovis, he lay freshly bathed in a linen nightshirt between cool and spotless sheets. No mosquito netting, no fly paper, no beetles . . . yes, he would definitely hold out for at least a week. He had promised Finn and he would do it.

  But Sir Aubrey was not yet in bed. He had limped up to the Picture Gallery at the top of the house and stood for a long time looking at the portrait of Alwin Taverner in his naval uniform.

  Really, the likeness was extraordinary! The nose, the eyes, the mouth, the way his hair fell over his forehead – all of it was the same as in the boy who had come today.

  It happened sometimes that a likeness skipped a few generations and then showed up stronger than ever, thought Sir Aubrey. That was the amazing thing about The Blood.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Finn had been gone three days and life in the bungalow seemed even more dismal than when Maia first came.

  Miss Minton saw that lessons went on, but though Maia worked as hard as she had done before, she did so without joy. She didn’t want to read about plants and animals any longer, she wanted to find them. She wanted to be out there in the forest starting a real life, and much as Miss Minton loved books, she understood her.

  The weather, as the dry season got under way, became even hotter. In her room, Miss Minton took off her corset and put it on again. Not because she was afraid of Mrs Carter, but because she knew that British women did not throw off their underclothes – and because she had told Maia not to make a fuss when Finn went away. If Maia could behave well over the parting, she could behave well about the heat rash spreading up her back.

  Meanwhile she watched Maia carefully, because there was no doubt that the Carters were becoming very strange indeed. As Mr Carter’s business went from bad to worse, he spent more and more time in his study, peering at his glass eyes – and since his own family would not look at them, he called in Maia.

  ‘Look at that one,’ he said to her. ‘It’s the left eye of a tramp found dead in a ditch on Wimbledon Common. Look at the way those blood vessels are painted! You wouldn’t imagine a tramp could afford an eye like that.’

  ‘Perhaps he was a very important person before he became a tramp,’ suggested Maia – but the eyes were beginning to get into her dreams.

  Mrs Carter had set up what she called her ‘larder’ in a cupboard in the hall, but it was not a larder to store food. Instead of bottles of plums or pats of butter, the shelves held flasks labelled POISON, and masks for protecting the face, and rubber gloves. There were glass jars of chloral hydrate, and spray cans with nozzles, and a new very large bottle labelled COCKROACH KILLER – KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE.

  ‘We’ll be safe now,’ she told the girls. ‘No creepy-crawlies will get past us now.’

  She had also started to talk to the picture of Lady Parsons on the wall of the drawing room.

  ‘You were right,’ Maia heard her say to the lady’s fierce, red face. ‘I should have let Clifford go to prison instead of bringing him out here. Look what we have come to!’

  And one morning Maia came into the drawing room and found the portrait wreathed in red ribbon.

  ‘I hope you haven’t forgotten that today is Lady Parsons’ birthday,’ Mrs Carter said to the twins. ‘Do you remember when she allowed you to share her cake?’

  ‘Yes, Mama, we wouldn’t forget.’

  ‘What kind of cake was it?’ asked Maia. She had spoken without thinking, wanting to be polite. There was certainly nothing she was less interested in than the cake which Lady Parsons had shared with Beatrice and Gwendolyn when they were still in England.

  The twins glared at her. Lady Parsons was theirs; Maia had no business even to ask.

  ‘It was a sponge cake with pink icing,’ said Mrs Carter.

  ‘No, it wasn’t, Mother. It had white icing,’ corrected Beatrice.

  ‘No, it didn’t; it was covered with marzipan and grated chocolate,’ said Gwendolyn.

  They went on arguing, but Maia had forgotten them again, following Finn in her mind.

  Where was he? Did he have enough wood for the firebox, were his maps accurate? Did h
e miss her at all?

  Finn did miss her – she would have been surprised to know how much. He had never sailed the Arabella alone for any distance and it wasn’t as easy as he’d hoped. While she was under way he managed well, but when it came to anchoring in the evening or setting off at dawn, he would have given anything for another pair of hands. Not any pair of hands – Maia’s. She had obeyed his orders quickly but not blindly; he had learnt to trust her completely.

  And she was nice. Fun. Quick to catch a joke and so interested in everything – asking about the birds, the plants. This morning he had found himself starting to say, ‘Look, Maia!’ when he saw an umbrella bird strutting along a branch, and when he realized that she wasn’t there, the exotic creature, with its sunshade of feathers, had seemed somehow less exciting. After all, sharing was something everyone wanted to do. He could hear his father’s voice calling, ‘Look, Finn, over there!’ a dozen times a day.

  But his father was dead and he had left Maia, and suddenly being alone, which he had always enjoyed, turned into loneliness, which was a very different thing.

  He had anchored close to a sandbank, a beautiful place sheltered by large-fronded palms, and found a nest of turtle eggs. A shoal of black-banded fishes glided past the boat; he had caught some earlier, using pieces of banana to bait his line, and they made a delicious supper. He had hardly touched his stores – and the Arabella was going steadily.

  ‘What’s the matter with me?’ said Finn.

  He was doing what his father had suggested. He was going to see the Xanti – but now he wondered what it was all about. They were just as likely to put an arrow through him as to welcome him with open arms.

  The dog, who had been curled up on the foredeck, thumped once with his tail, then got to his feet and offered him a wet nose for comfort.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Finn to his dog. ‘It’s all right, Rob.’

  But there was more to his unease than loneliness. He knew he could not have taken Maia – he had no idea how the journey was going to end, and in any case Miss Minton would never have allowed her to come.