Journey to the River Sea

  With a cry that seemed to be one cry, the Xanti vanished into the forest, leaving the four Europeans staring in horror at the invaders.

  But it was not the Xanti who were being rounded up.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Miss Minton furiously, to the leader with his blackened face.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Finn.

  Captain Pereia stared. A tall lady, a boy who spoke perfect English, an elderly gentleman, and the girl who sang.

  These must be the people he had been told to rescue . . . but a lady in feathers and human teeth . . . a boy with a painted face! He was shocked. Had they gone native?

  ‘You’re safe now,’ he said. ‘We’ve come to take you back. Don’t worry; you’re safe.’

  Finn looked at the deserted village, the flickering firelight, the feathers dropped by his friends as they fled . . . And then at the men with their blackened faces and their guns.

  ‘We were safe,’ he said bitterly. ‘We were safe with the Xanti. But now . . .’

  It was Miss Minton’s corset that had set off the alarm. For longer than expected, it floated down the Agarapi river. Then, when it was about to sink, it landed on a log of balsa wood and was carried into the Negro itself, where it became entangled in a fishing net.

  The man who found it took it to the local policeman, who sent a report to the police station in the next town where the officer in charge confirmed that it was a British corset and sent it to Colonel da Silva in Manaus.

  When a name-tape saying A. Minton was discovered inside the whalebone bodice, the fat was in the fire. Seeing Miss Minton’s waterlogged corset very much upset the Colonel. He knew Miss Minton and did not think she would have removed her underclothes willingly. She must have been captured by a hostile tribe and if she had been caught so, probably, had the professor and the children they had been pursuing.

  So Captain Pereia of the Brazilian River Police was called and told to pick his men and take the fastest and best-armed of the boats in the patrol fleet and look for them.

  The captain wasted no time. He had led several missions: it was he who had put down a riot of the Talapi Indians when they turned against their employers in the Matto Silver Mine; he had broken up a battle between rival drug traffickers on the Venezuelan border, and rescued a kidnapped missionary from the Kalis shortly before they planned to kill him.

  And less than six hours after he had been sent for, Captain Pereia and twelve of his best men were steaming out of Manaus at a speed which made the urchins on the waterside dig each other proudly in the ribs.

  But now, though his mission had been so successful, Captain Pereia was disappointed. None of the people he had rescued had thanked him. They seemed stunned rather than pleased, and the boy’s wretched dog would not stop barking.

  ‘There’s no gratitude left in the world,’ he grumbled to his second in command. ‘Anyone would think I was taking prisoners instead of freeing them.’

  But they came aboard with him. They even agreed to return on the fast patrol boat and let the spinach boat and the Arabella be brought back by Pereia’s men. It seemed that there were urgent messages waiting for them in Manaus. Maia had thought that Finn might refuse, but he came too.

  The dream was over.

  The messages, when they reached Manaus, pleased no one. Mr Murray had sent no less than three cables ordering Miss Minton to bring Maia back to England at once. He had heard about the fire from the consul, and read about Maia’s flight in the newspaper, and was both alarmed and annoyed. And in an envelope, addressed to the professor, was a frantic note for Finn from Clovis.

  ‘Westwood?’ asked Maia, watching him.

  ‘Yes. Clovis is in trouble.’

  ‘Does he say what kind of trouble?’

  ‘No. But he says he’s desperate and I must come at once.’

  ‘And will you?’

  Finn nodded. ‘One can’t run for ever,’ he said. ‘If Clovis is in trouble, it’s my fault.’

  But Maia had to turn away from the misery in his face.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The three of them travelled back on the same boat as Maia and Minty had come out on: the Cardinal, with her blue funnel and snow-white hull.

  Maia had thought that having Finn with them would make it easier – at least they could all be miserable together – but it didn’t. Finn had disappeared into himself. He was very quiet and stood hunched up over the rail, looking out at the grey sea. The cold surprised him; he would shiver suddenly in the wind.

  He had decided that Westwood was to be his fate.

  ‘It’s what you said in the museum,’ he told Miss Minton. ‘ “Come out, Finn Taverner and be a man.” I thought I could run away for ever, but if Clovis is in trouble, I’ve got to help him.’

  It was his time with the Xanti which had changed him. They thought that everyone’s life was like a river; you had to flow with the current and not struggle, which wasted breath and made you more likely to drown. And the river of life seemed to be carrying him back to Westwood.

  He had left his dog behind with Furo because of the quarantine. Rob would never endure six months shut up in kennels. As soon as they knew Maia was safe, the Carters’ servants, with Old Lila, had returned, offering to work unpaid, and Miss Minton had set them to repaint the spinach boat which she had christened River Queen.

  As for Maia, she was to go back to school.

  ‘She will be safe there for a few years till she is ready to go out into the world,’ Mr Murray had written to Miss Minton.

  So now Maia was collecting her memories.

  ‘We mustn’t only remember the good bits,’ she said. ‘We must remember the bad bits too so that we know it was real.’

  But there weren’t really any bad bits once she had escaped from the twins. The fried termites which the Xanti had cooked for them hadn’t tasted very nice, and there had been a tame bush turkey which woke them up at an unearthly hour with its screeching.

  ‘But it was all part of it,’ said Maia. ‘It belonged.’

  Miss Minton knew she was going to be dismissed, and she thought this was perfectly fair. A governess who let her charges sail up the rivers of the Amazon and live with Indian tribes could hardly expect to keep her job.

  She missed the professor.

  ‘Would you like to marry me?’ he had asked her politely before they sailed, and she had thanked him and said she did not think she would be very good at being married.

  When the boat docked at Liverpool they went their different ways. Finn was determined to go to Westwood quite alone. He had never bought a train ticket nor looked at a timetable, but he seemed to know what to do and he would let no one help him.

  ‘I wish he didn’t look as though he was going to have his head cut off,’ said Maia.

  The moment when the children said goodbye passed quickly. Finn was taking the train to York; Maia and Minty were bound for London. The bustle of getting their luggage on and finding their seats muffled everything. Only when the train steamed out did Maia realize that she might not see Finn again – and heard the snap of Miss Minton’s handbag as she had heard it on the day they left England, and was again handed Minty’s large white handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

  The school, as they drove up to it, was just the same. The brass plate saying THE MAYFAIR ACADEMY FOR YOUNG LADIES; the row of desks she could see through the window. In Classroom B, Miss Carlisle was probably still teaching the source of the river Thames.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ said Miss Minton, and drove quickly away. Mr Murray was coming to interview her at the school on the following afternoon.

  Everyone was so welcoming and friendly, and somehow that made it worse. The girls clustered round Maia; Melanie had painted a picture of her with a boa constrictor round her neck, and they’d made a banner saying: WELCOME BACK. Some of them had read about the police boat sent to find her and thought she was a heroine.

  ‘What was it like being rescued?’ they wanted to know.

&nb
sp; ‘It was like being rescued from Paradise,’ said Maia, but no one believed her.

  They listened while she tried to describe the journey in the Arabella, and life with the Xanti, but they couldn’t take it in.

  ‘Aren’t you glad to be back?’ they kept asking her. ‘It must have been so scary!’ and they told her that she had been given her old bed back and that there was a new history teacher who dyed her hair.

  So Maia gave up. She realized that adventures, once they were over, were things that had to stay inside one – that no one else could quite understand.

  The headmistress, Miss Banks, and her sister Emily, understood a little better. They were happy to take Maia back, but they thought it might not be easy for her to settle down again.

  ‘You must give yourself time,’ they said kindly, and Maia patted the spaniel and remembered the howls of Finn’s dog as he was left behind with Furo.

  But in the evening, when at last she had a moment alone, she slipped in to the library and leant her head against the mahogany steps she had climbed the day she knew she was going to the Amazon. The dream she had dreamt there had been a true one. She had found a land whose riches she had never before imagined, and she had found Finn.

  Well, now it was over. In ten minutes the bell would ring for them to go to their dormitories, then another bell for them to kneel and pray. And why not? How else was one supposed to run a school?

  ‘Oh, Finn,’ said Maia. ‘How am I going to bear it, day after day after day?’

  When he reached York, Finn changed onto a very small train which stopped, after a while, at Westwood Halt.

  Clovis had said he would meet him there but there was no sign of him. Finn left his bag in the ticket office and began to walk.

  It was a cold, dank afternoon and however fast he walked, he could not get warm. The light was already going – or perhaps on this bleak day it had never really come.

  He saw the high pile of his ancestral home from a long way off. It looked unspeakably dismal, with its useless turrets and jagged battlements. He tried to imagine living there year in and year out, and had to clench his teeth so as not to panic.

  The gate, when he reached it, was closed and surmounted by jagged spikes.

  As he stood there the lodge keeper came out. ‘This is private property,’ he said. ‘No loitering. You’d best be getting along.’

  Finn glared at him. The rudeness and snobbishness was just what he had expected from this awful place. But before he could tell the man what he thought of him, he saw Clovis hurrying down the drive. He wore a tweed suit and a cap – but round his neck was a large white bandage.

  ‘Oh God,’ thought Finn. ‘Have they tried to cut his throat?’

  Clovis came up to the gates and the lodge keeper touched his cap in a humble manner and said, ‘Are you going out, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Jarvis,’ said Clovis. ‘I’m going into the village.’

  As he came through the gate, Finn saw that the white thing round his neck was not a bandage but a scarf – rather a bumpy one knitted in white wool.

  ‘I thought they’d cut your throat.’

  Clovis shook his head. The scarf was a present from the middle banshee who had taken up knitting. ‘There’s a tea place just down the road. No one goes there much on a weekday – we can be alone.’

  The tea shop was a tiny room in the front parlour of a brick cottage. The lady who ran it greeted Clovis as respectfully as the lodge keeper had done, and asked after Sir Aubrey.

  ‘You’d better tell me exactly what’s happened,’ said Finn, after they had given their order. ‘You said you were in a mess. Well, I’ll help you out – but I must know. Obviously you haven’t told him who you really are. You haven’t confessed.’

  ‘But I have,’ said Clovis. ‘I have – and it was absolutely awful.’

  So then he told Finn what had happened when at last he found Sir Aubrey alone and willing to listen to him.

  ‘I told him I wasn’t Finn Taverner and it was all a mistake. I was going to explain everything properly, but as soon as I said I wasn’t really his grandson he went a ghastly sort of blue colour and started clutching his chest, and then he crumpled up and fell on the floor. I knew his heart wasn’t good, but I didn’t imagine . . .’ Clovis shook his head, remembering the horror of that moment. ‘I was sure he was going to die and that I’d killed him. The servants came and carried him off to bed and the doctor said he’d had some sort of a shock and I wasn’t allowed to see him.’

  Clovis picked up a cut-glass ashtray and started fiddling with it.

  ‘When they did let me in,’ he went on, ‘he tried to sit up in bed, and then he said, “You were only joking, boy, weren’t you? Tell me it was a joke and you’re really my grandson. Boys like to play jokes, I know.” ’

  ‘And?’ Finn’s voice was sharp. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, yes of course it was a joke. Of course I was Bernard’s son and his grandson. I know I shouldn’t have done, but if you’d seen his face . . . And then he began to get better quite quickly. But he wants to make everything legal because I don’t have a birth certificate or anything. He wants to name me officially as heir to Westwood and give me an allowance – quite a big one. And I don’t know what to do. He’s absolutely certain I’m his grandson – there’s a painting of some admiral who’s supposed to have my nose . . .’

  Finn was leaning across the table, staring at him intently. ‘And you don’t want it? You don’t want Westwood or the money or anything? That’s why you asked me to come?’

  The lady brought their muffins and the teapot in a knitted cosy. When they were alone again, Clovis said, ‘It isn’t that I don’t want it – the old man’s been very good to me and well . . . there are things I could do. I’d like to bring my foster mother here to cook – she’s always wanted to work in a house like this, and the cook we’ve got is leaving. And my – your – cousins are nice. The Basher’s girls. You wouldn’t think she’d have nice children but she has. But I couldn’t take it from you for the rest of your life. For always. How could I live in a great house and take the money that’s really yours when you live in a wooden hut . . . I mean, now that you’ve seen it, surely—?’

  He broke off. Finn was looking very odd. Different. He reached for Clovis’ hand.

  ‘Clovis, do you swear that you don’t mind staying here as Master of Westwood? Do you absolutely swear it?’

  ‘I swear it.’

  Finn, as he walked back with his friend to the station, seemed to be made of something quite different. Not muscle and bone – feathers and air . . . and lightness. He did not actually intend to fly because that would have been showing off, but he could have done so if he’d wanted to.

  ‘You’ll never know what you’ve done for me,’ he said as they reached the gates of the level crossing. ‘If there’s anything you want—’

  Clovis grinned. ‘Can I have Maia when she’s grown up?’

  Finn’s smile vanished in an instant.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Oh well . . .’

  Maia would probably want to go off adventuring again one day, thought Clovis, and that wouldn’t suit him. He’d settle for one of the Basher’s banshees. There was plenty of time to decide which one.

  At two o’clock, Maia saw Mr Murray’s motor stop outside the school. Five minutes later, Miss Minton arrived, walking across the square.

  The interview took place in Miss Banks’ private sitting room while Maia waited in the hall, and as soon as she saw Mr Murray’s face, Miss Minton knew there was no hope. She would not even be allowed to look after Maia in the holidays. She was in complete disgrace.

  Miss Minton had spent the night with her sister and bought another corset because the good times were gone. She sat up very straight and before Mr Murray could begin she opened her purse and took out ten sovereigns.

  ‘This is Maia’s money,’ she said. ‘We sold the things we had collected on the journey, and since there were four of us it s
eemed proper to divide everything we earned by four.’

  Mr Murray looked at the heap of coins in surprise.

  ‘And I have of course kept a list of expenses. Anything I bought for Maia out of her allowance, I have written down here.’

  ‘Yes, yes . . .’ Mr Murray had no doubt about Miss Minton’s honesty. It was her sanity he was not sure about. He cleared his throat. ‘I have to tell you that before this . . . escapade . . . I was considering making you joint guardian with me of Maia. I’m getting old, and a woman would be able to help her with the problems she might soon meet. But now I’m afraid I shall have to dismiss you and arrange for Maia to spend her holidays at school.’

  Miss Minton bowed her head. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was expecting that.’

  Mr Murray pushed back his chair.

  ‘Miss Minton, what on earth made you let a young girl travel up the Amazon and spend weeks living with savages? What made you do it? The British consul thinks that you must all have been drugged.’

  ‘Perhaps. Yes, perhaps we were drugged. Not by the things the Xanti smoked – none of us touched them – but by . . . peace . . . by happiness. By a different sense of time.’

  ‘I don’t think you have explained why you let Maia—’

  Miss Minton interrupted him. ‘I will explain. At least I will try to. You see, I have looked after some truly dreadful children in my time and it was easy not to get fond of them. After all, a governess is not a mother. But Maia . . . well, I’m afraid I grew to love her. And that meant I began to think what I would do if she was my child.’

  ‘And you would let her—’ began Mr Murray.

  But Miss Minton stopped him. ‘I would let her . . . have adventures. I would let her . . . choose her path. It would be hard . . . it was hard . . . but I would do it. Oh, not completely, of course. Some things have to go on. Cleaning one’s teeth, arithmetic. But Maia fell in love with the Amazon. It happens. The place was for her – and the people. Of course there was some danger, but there is danger everywhere. Two years ago, in this school, there was an outbreak of typhus and three girls died. Children are knocked down and killed by horses every week, here in these streets.’ She broke off, gathering her thoughts. ‘When she was travelling and exploring . . . and finding her songs Maia wasn’t just happy; she was . . . herself. I think something broke in Maia when her parents died, and out there it was healed. Perhaps I’m mad – and the professor too – but I think children must lead big lives . . . if it is in them to do so. And it is in Maia.’