Journey to the River Sea

  All the same, he felt he should not have left her. He remembered Clovis saying, ‘But Maia shouldn’t live in a house that’s been cursed.’

  Only that was silly. He had told Furo and the others to look after her and they had promised.

  It was that other side of him, the Indian side, which went in for rubbish like premonitions and inklings, and things you felt without knowing why. Suddenly furious with himself, Finn crawled to his haversack, turned up the lamp, and took out Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

  ‘After marching from the country of the Menapii . . .’ he translated. And became an ordinary English schoolboy doing his homework.

  When Finn had been gone for nearly a week, the Great Event which the twins had been expecting actually happened. Colonel da Silva arrived in the police launch, bringing the reward for the capture of Bernard Taverner’s son.

  He brought it as he had promised, in Brazilian notes so that it could be divided into two equal parts, but he warned the twins to get it into a bank as soon as possible.

  ‘If you don’t have an account your parents could bank it for you.’

  But the twins did not mean to do that. As da Silva left, they were already counting out their separate heaps on the dining room table.

  Twenty thousand milreis . . . each.

  For a short time, Beatrice and Gwendolyn were perfectly happy.

  Miss Minton and the professor had become friends. He had taken the butterfly she had found to the collector in Manaus who had paid her. He had also lent her a collecting tin and some preservative, and though so far she had not found anything else worth selling, she was secretly proud of having become a naturalist.

  Because Maia now had lunch with the Haltmanns after her music lesson, Miss Minton lunched with the professor in the little café he had shown her. But being friends did not mean blabbing out one’s troubles and Miss Minton was slow to share with the professor her anxieties about Maia. It was only when he particularly asked about her that she said, ‘I’m not happy about the way things are going at the Carters. The twins are bullying Maia more openly now and their mother seems to live in a fantasy world. She talks to the portrait of Lady Parsons and sometimes I’m afraid she—’

  But Miss Minton stopped there, not liking to admit that her employer was possibly losing her mind.

  ‘They will have anxieties about Mr Carter’s business,’ said the professor. ‘I understand that Gonzales is baying for Carter’s blood. He certainly seems to owe enormous sums of money. Isn’t there anywhere else that you can take Maia?’

  Miss Minton hesitated. Even to the professor she preferred not to reveal her plan before she was sure it could be carried out. ‘I’ve written to Mr Murray,’ was all she said.

  She then asked about his work and he sighed deeply. ‘Carruthers is dead,’ he said, and his large, pink forehead creased into lines like a mournful pug’s.

  Miss Minton waited. She didn’t think she had heard about Carruthers.

  ‘He was a brilliant man; knew more about extinct animals than anyone I know, but they hounded him.’

  ‘Who hounded him?’

  ‘The “proper” scientists. You should have seen what they wrote about him in the papers. “An unrealistic dreamer, a man who let himself be led away by myths and stories – always searching for the impossible . . .” ’

  ‘What was he searching for?’

  The professor put down his fork. He seemed to be looking into the distance. Then he said, ‘The giant sloth.’

  ‘The bones, you mean? The skeleton? Like your rib?’

  ‘No, the beast itself. He was convinced it wasn’t extinct. The natives have always had stories about it – they call it the Maupugari, a great creature with reddish hair which walks on its curved claws. You get sightings of it every so often.’ He sighed. ‘It was Carruthers who got me interested in sloths – we were friends in Cambridge. And now . . .’

  ‘How did he die?’

  The professor shrugged. ‘He was searching somewhere in the Matto Grosso and got a fever. It’s not so difficult to die out here. Personally I think they broke his heart.’

  Miss Minton waited while he dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief. Then she said, ‘Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad way to go. Still working, still searching . . . Better than dying in hospital with strangers.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, you’re right. But I wish . . .’

  Something now occurred to Miss Minton. ‘You don’t think he was right, do you? That the sloth is not extinct. You don’t agree with him?’

  The professor blushed. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s most unlikely.’

  But he didn’t meet her eyes.

  Miss Minton now gathered up her belongings. ‘I have to fetch Maia from her piano lesson,’ she said.

  But when she left the restaurant, she did not go straight to the Haltmanns. She crossed the square, turned down the street to the Keminskys’ mansion, and asked to speak to the countess.

  The professor was right about Gonzales. He arrived at the Carters the next day, along with two unpleasant-looking henchmen.

  Gonzales was a Brazilian who had traded in the Amazon for many years. He was not a nice man, but he dealt fairly in business and Mr Carter had now exhausted his patience.

  Mr Carter took him into the study, but the walls were thin and it was almost impossible not to hear what Gonzales was saying.

  ‘I’ve had enough,’ he said in Portuguese. ‘Either you let me have what you owe me in full, or I will take legal action.’

  Then Carter’s voice, low, whining. ‘I only need a few more weeks. They’re bringing in a big batch of rubber from the north of the estate. It will fetch a good price.’

  ‘That is not what I have heard,’ said Gonzales.

  The voices went on for a while longer: Gonzales’ loud, Carter’s a low mumble. Then Gonzales threw open the door, bowed to Mrs Carter, gathered his henchmen – and was gone.

  For two days after Gonzales had come, Mr Carter tried to sort out his papers and his bills. He even went out into the forest, a thing he did not often do, to encourage those workers who were still with him.

  But then a little packet came from England, with the greatest prize he had yet seen; a double set of navy blue eyes.

  ‘They’re from a captain in the French Army. He was blown up in a battle. Look how they match; it’s incredible!’

  And he disappeared again into his study and wasn’t seen except for meals.

  Mrs Carter had started to write to Lady Parsons in England, covering the paper with her hand when anyone came into the room. She wrote several of these letters and tore them up. But in the end she was satisfied with what she had written, and posted the letter herself in Manaus.

  As for the twins, their happiness did not last long. At first they made lists of what they would buy: the dresses, the shoes, the hats, the boxes of chocolate. If Beatrice decided to order a flounced party dress in pink organdie, Gwendolyn decided to order one in blue. When Beatrice thought she would buy some proper scent, Gwendolyn said she was sick of boring lavender water and said she would have some too.

  ‘You don’t have to copy me,’ said Beatrice crossly, and Gwendolyn looked at her blankly. The twins had always copied each other.

  Mrs Carter had asked them to share some of the money with their parents.

  ‘Your father is having a hard time, girls. I think it would be kind to let the whole family join in your good fortune,’ she said.

  But the twins absolutely refused.

  ‘It’s ours. We need it. We don’t want Maia to have money and not us. We want her to go.’

  So now the twins became suspicious, first of their mother, then of the servants.

  ‘They’re always hanging about,’ they said fretfully.

  This was true. Tapi and the others, remembering their promise to Finn, took every chance they could to see that Maia was all right.

  Hiding their money became the most important thing to the twins. At night, Beatrice hid her banknotes in an o
ld doll’s pram which she kept by her bed. Gwendolyn slept with hers under her mattress.

  They took the money with them to the lavatory, they brought it into the dining room when they were doing their lessons.

  By now they had stopped planning how to spend the money. They just wanted to look at it and count it and gloat over it.

  From being suspicious of everyone else, the twins became suspicious of each other. They suspended a piece of cotton between their beds so that one of them couldn’t creep out at night without waking the other. Then Beatrice developed a septic throat and couldn’t go to the dancing class, and Gwendolyn wouldn’t go without her in case her sister stole the money while she was away.

  But what worried Maia was not the way the twins behaved. The twins had always been odd. What worried her was the feeling that Minty was hiding something from her. That her governess had a secret.

  A few days after Gonzales had come, she knocked on Miss Minton’s door and opened it, to find her kneeling on the floor putting books into her tin trunk.

  She looked up quickly and shut the lid, but for the first time Maia felt she was interrupting something private.

  ‘I’m putting some of these away. I’ve found some ants in the Shakespeare.’

  ‘They must be really tough ants,’ said Maia, ‘to hold out against Mrs Carter’s sprays.’

  ‘Ants are tough,’ said Miss Minton, and changed the subject.

  But Maia continued to feel uneasy, for she had the feeling that what Miss Minton had been doing was packing.

  Oh, Finn, thought Maia, I know I should be glad you’re free and happy, and I am glad. Only I really don’t know what to do here any more.

  But Finn wasn’t happy. Both he and the boat seemed somehow sluggish – and he couldn’t quite get rid of the knot in his stomach.

  He had moored by a huge dyewood tree. The water flowed quietly in a deep channel; nowhere better could be found.

  So why? He’d had his supper of beans and roasted maize; the deck was piled with chopped wood; the dog had gone ashore to find his own supper and came back with a smug expression and blood on his jaws.

  Everything was fine.

  A group of howler monkeys came swinging through the trees, making their evening racket, half-screech, half-laughter, and stopped when they saw the Arabella.

  ‘Perhaps I should have gone to Westwood,’ thought Finn. ‘They’d have knocked all this rubbish out of me. Foreseeing disasters . . .’

  What did he think could happen to Maia in the Carters’ bungalow? The whole point about the Carters’ bungalow was that nothing happened in it. It was the most boring house in the world – and the Indians had promised to look after her. ‘No harm will come to your friend,’ Furo had said.

  So why did the unease get worse all the time?

  He remembered saying goodbye to Maia. She had come out of the house in her dressing gown; she ran so lightly, but when he’d hugged her she felt wonderfully solid.

  No, Maia would be all right.

  ‘I’m not going back,’ said Finn aloud – and in the trees, the monkeys threw back their heads and roared with laughter.

  Chapter Seventeen

  One of the things Clovis had been most afraid of was being forced to ride. He had seen the horses in the stables and they looked large and twitchy. If Sir Aubrey put him in the saddle, Clovis meant to confess straight away and take the money Finn had given him to run away to his foster mother.

  But the week after he arrived at Westwood, Sir Aubrey asked Clovis to come into the library because he had some bad news for him.

  ‘Now I want you to be brave about this, my boy. I want you to take this like a man and a Taverner.’

  Clovis’ heart began to thump. Could someone have died – Maia perhaps, or his foster mother — and if so, how did Sir Aubrey know? Or was it just that he had been found out?

  ‘I won’t hide from you the fact that the Basher – your Aunt Joan, I mean – disagrees with me. She was all ready to teach you. She had picked out a fine mettlesome filly to start you on; nothing sluggish or second-rate. A real thoroughbred. You’d be going over jumps in a couple of weeks. But I’m afraid I cannot allow it.’

  ‘Can’t allow what, sir?’ asked Clovis.

  ‘Can’t allow you to ride. Can’t allow you to go on a horse. You can imagine what it cost me to come to this decision; the Taverner children have always been up in the saddle from when they were two years old. But after Dudley’s terrible accident . . .’ Tears came into Sir Aubrey’s eyes. He turned away. ‘If there was anyone else to inherit Westwood, I would let you take your chance, but with Bernard and Dudley both gone . . .’ He pressed Clovis’ shoulder. ‘You’re taking this very well, my boy. Very well indeed. You’re taking it like a man. I confess I expected arguments, even tantrums.’

  ‘Well, it is a disappointment,’ said Clovis, wondering whether to break down and cry, a thing all actors learn to do at the drop of a hat. But in the end he just gave a brave gulp instead. ‘I had of course been looking forward . . .’ He looked out of the window to where the Basher, mounted on a bruising chestnut, was galloping across a field. ‘But I do understand. One must always think of Westwood.’

  Sir Aubrey nodded. ‘You’re a good lad. Of course no one will ever take Dudley’s place but . . .’ He took out his handkerchief and blew into it fiercely. ‘There’s another thing. About your schooling. Bernard was very weedy about his school, but then Bernard was weedy about everything. All the same, I think you’re a bit old to be sent away now. Boys usually leave home at about seven or eight, you know, and you’d feel out of it. So I’m going to engage a tutor for you. He’ll come next month when you’re settled in.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Clovis. And then: ‘I’m afraid I’m not very clever.’

  Sir Aubrey looked shocked. ‘Good heavens, boy, I should hope not! The Taverners have never been bookish. Except your poor father, and look what happened to him.’

  Clovis went downstairs and out into the garden where the little banshees were waiting for him to play ball with them. If he didn’t have to ride, maybe he could hold out another week or two before he confessed. The idea of confessing was nasty; not just because everyone would be so angry with him, but because Sir Aubrey would be disappointed. He’d obviously mellowed a lot since Bernard was a boy – old gentlemen did that, Clovis knew, at the end of their lives.

  It was while they were having lunch that Clovis decided he would find a way of visiting his foster mother in the next few days. She would know what to do for the best – and he wanted to make sure that she was still there, in her cottage on the village green, before he gave himself up.

  The butler took away Clovis’ pudding plate and filled it up with a second helping of apple crumble. The way the young master enjoyed his food gave great pleasure below stairs. It was a pity that the cook was engaged to be married and would soon be leaving.

  Mrs Bates, Clovis’ foster mother, lived in the end cottage of a row of small farm cottages on Stanton Green. Her husband had died even before she took in Clovis, but she was thrifty and hard-working and though she had to go out to work in some of the big houses in the neighbourhood, she kept her house and her garden spotless.

  Clovis had come by bus. Sir Aubrey had given him a ten-shilling note for pocket money, so there was no need for him to use the money Finn had given him.

  As he crossed the green, it seemed to Clovis that nothing had changed. The well was still there in the centre of the common, and the old oak tree, and some boys were kicking a football on the grass. He had been gone four years; they were too young to remember him.

  But when he knocked on the door of the cottage and opened it, Mrs Bates went red and then white and hugged him while the tears ran from her eyes.

  ‘Jimmy,’ she kept saying. ‘Well, well, you’re back, Jimmy! And how you’ve grown. And my, don’t you look well, and so smart! So those Goodleys did right by you after all!’

  ‘Well, not exactly. The company folded up
so I came back.’

  ‘Aye, and don’t you speak nicely. Oh, I can’t believe it! I was thinking as how I wouldn’t ever see you again. Sit down, boy. There’s some scones in the oven, they’ll be done in a jiffy. And there’s some buttermilk fresh from the cow.’

  While she spoke, he looked round the room. He’d been Jimmy Bates, and then Clovis King and now was Finn Taverner – but here nothing had changed. The cross stitch sampler was still above the mantelpiece, the brass kettle was on the hob, there was a pink geranium on the windowsill. But everything looked smaller, and . . . poorer, somehow. Had things been hard for his foster mother? Her apron was neatly darned but there seemed to be more darns than cloth – and had the rug always been so threadbare? ‘Have you been all right, Mother?’ he asked her.

  ‘Oh aye, times aren’t easy, but I do some cooking for people in the village and I manage, with the garden and all. Oh yes, I manage fine.’

  She went to the oven and took out the scones.

  ‘Well, now,’ she said, putting out the butter and the home-made strawberry jam. ‘You start talking, boy. You start right from when those Goodleys took you away. I want to know everything.’

  So Clovis began. He told her about the years of travelling, the discomfort, the low pay – but also some good times at the beginning when the Goodleys had made a pet of him, and he’d enjoyed acting. ‘I sent you some postcards but they’d never remember to let me have stamps.’

  ‘I just got the one,’ said Mrs Bates. ‘Oh, I did miss you, Jimmy boy.’

  ‘And I missed you,’ said Clovis, biting into a scone. The scones at Westwood were very good but these were better.

  And then he told her about his last voyage out to the Amazon, about meeting Maia and Miss Minton, and about the disaster of the Lord Fauntleroy matinée.

  To Mrs Bates it was like a fairy story. ‘Go on. Go on,’ she kept saying.

  So Clovis went on to what had happened with Finn at the lagoon, and the plan they had worked out to set Finn free and get Clovis back to England.

  But now poor Mrs Bates began to be very muddled and very upset.