Journey to the River Sea, Page 7

  The canoe was being poled by an Indian boy who stood in the prow and was steering it in an unhurried, easy way so that the water seemed scarcely to be disturbed.

  Maia watched for a moment, not quite believing what she saw; then she stumbled to her feet.

  ‘Please can you help me?’ she shouted, stupidly in English, then desperately in her few words of Portuguese.

  The boy looked at her; he seemed surprised by her look of agitation. Then he brought the canoe silently alongside. Still he did not speak.

  ‘I have to get to Manaus. I have to,’ Maia said, and pointed to where she thought the city was. ‘Manaus is there?’

  The boy smiled, and suddenly he seemed just a boy of about her own age; not a mysterious and possibly threatening stranger, emerged from a curtain of green.

  He shook his head. ‘Manaus,’ he said, and pointed almost in the opposite direction.

  She was utterly crestfallen. So much for her map, her understanding of the jungle – and her hand was bleeding.

  ‘I have to get to Manaus. I promised a friend . . . amigo . . . I have to . . .’ she repeated. What little Portuguese she had learnt seemed to have gone from her. She could only look at him and entreat.

  The boy did not answer. He was dressed in the work clothes worn by the local Indians: a blue cotton shirt faded from washing and cotton trousers – but round his head he wore a broad band which partly covered his thick, coal-black hair, and a pattern of red zigzags was painted on his cheekbones. His skin was a light bronze and his eyes the same colour as Maia’s own, a deep dark brown.

  For a moment he stood upright in the canoe, thinking. Then he stretched out his hand and made a movement of his head which was unmistakable. She was to get into the canoe.

  ‘Will you take me? Oh, will you!’

  She did not know if he understood, but her instinct was to trust him. As he pulled her into the canoe, she winced and he looked down at her hand. Then he took out a big thorn embedded in her palm and she thanked him.

  ‘Sit,’ he said in Portuguese.

  He took the pole and the boat moved with surprising speed down the river. As soon as they were under way, she thought what an idiot she had been. He would hit her on the head . . . he would take her off to his tribe as a slave . . . or worse . . .

  I am thinking like the Carters, Maia told herself.

  The boy had stowed the pole now and was using a paddle. She moved to take the other one but he shook his head, pointing to her injured hand. As he pulled on the paddle, she saw on the inside of his wrist a small, red mark, like a four-leafed clover. A good luck sign? The mark of his tribe?

  But even this sign of his foreignness couldn’t frighten her for long. He moved so gracefully; he was so quiet and companionable. She was an idiot to trust him but she did.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said – in English, in Portuguese. She even remembered the word for ‘thank you’ in the Indian language that the servants spoke. ‘I have to go to the theatre. The Teatro Amazonas.’

  He nodded and they glided on down the river. Sometimes they moved between lush green trees which leant so far over the water that she felt as though they were travelling between the roots of the forest. Birds rose as they went past: scarlet ibis, white herons flapping in slow motion . . . As they took a side branch of the river, Maia cried out because the boy was steering between gigantic leaves from which piebald frogs flopped into the water.

  ‘That’s the Victoria Regia lily, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I’ve read about it.’

  It was difficult to believe that he did not understand her; he had such a listening face.

  Then in an instant the worst happened. The boy gave a wild shout; a shout of pure rage. He put down the paddle, threw himself on top of her, pressing her down against the floorboards of the boat, and kept her there pinioned. She felt his breath on her cheek.

  Then he released her and pointed. They had passed underneath a wicked-looking branch with spikes the size of knives. If he hadn’t forced her down Maia would have been knocked unconscious or even blinded. As he clambered back and picked up the paddle, he was still muttering furiously in his own language and glaring at her. Without deciphering a single word, she knew he was scolding her for her carelessness, trying to explain that one had to be alert the whole time in the jungle.

  ‘Idiota!’ he said finally, and though Senhor and Senhora Olvidares in the phrase book had not used the word, Maia understood it well enough.

  She was very careful after that, keeping a proper lookout, but nothing could quite quell her delight in the beauty she saw about her. It was as though she was taking the journey she had imagined on top of the library ladder the day she heard about her new life.

  Then the stream became wider, the current stronger, and she caught a glimpse of low, colour-washed houses and heard a dog bark.

  ‘Manaus,’ he said. He drew up to the bank and helped her out. She took out her purse but he wouldn’t take her money, nor would he listen to her thanks. ‘Teatro Amazonas,’ he said, pointing straight ahead.

  He would go no further towards civilization.

  The boy watched her as she ran off. She looked back once and waved but he had already turned the boat.

  He poled swiftly back through the maze of waterways. When he reached the place where he had found Maia, he smiled and half shook his head. Then he set the canoe hard at the curtain of green and vanished into his secret world.

  Chapter Six

  The police chief was in a bad temper. He had hoped to go to the matinee of Little Lord Fauntleroy. Colonel da Silva was in his fifties, a crack shot, and a man of steel with an amazing moustache, but he loved the theatre. Opera, ballet, stories about little boys melting the heart of ancient earls, it was all the same to him.

  But he had had a cable from police headquarters in London asking him to give help to Mr Low and Mr Trapwood, who had come to the Amazon to find a missing boy and bring him back to England. The detectives were acting for an Important Person in Britain, the message had said, and he was to do everything he could to make their search easier.

  It wasn’t the first time that the unpleasant Englishmen had been to see him. They had asked him to put up notices in the police station, and on hoardings in the city, asking for news of the son of Bernard Taverner, and they had made him put the amount of the reward on the notice. Not that he expected anyone to come forward.

  ‘I am not prepared to go on like this any longer,’ said Mr Trapwood, whose face had turned a livid puce in the heat. ‘We’ve talked to a hundred people and no one knows about the boy. It’s ridiculous! It’s a conspiracy!’

  ‘We have to get back to England,’ croaked Mr Low in a hoarse voice. He had swallowed the backbone of a spiny fish in his breakfast stew and it had scratched his throat. ‘The boy must be brought to Westwood. There’s no time to be lost.’

  Both men glared at Colonel da Silva who looked at the clock and realized that he was going to miss the play.

  ‘I tell you, no one knows of such a boy. Unless . . . perhaps – ah yes . . . wait . . . I think I heard something; I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t sure . . . There is a boy living with the Ombuda Indians. Some say he is Mr Taverner’s son and he left him there to be looked after.’

  ‘To be looked after by Indians!’ Both men stared at him, outraged. ‘Let me tell you, sir, that Taverner may have been a wastrel, but he was born a British gentleman.’

  The Colonel opened his mouth and shut it again. The less the crows knew the better. Then: ‘I too am a gentleman, senhors, and I have an Indian grandmother; a woman of great wisdom who brought me up. There are many mixed marriages here and we are proud of all our ancestors.’

  Mr Low and Mr Trapwood put their heads together. ‘You have good evidence that the boy might be Taverner’s son?’

  Colonel da Silva shrugged. ‘It is rumoured. He is said to be a handsome boy, and fair. I will show you the place on the map. It is only two days on the riverboat, it will not take you long to find out. And the Ombuda people are very gentle,’ he said, producing a crumpled chart and wondering why he hadn’t sent them to the Curacara who had been cannibals for generations. ‘The boat goes at nine in the morning,’ he said. ‘I will send an interpreter with you and I hope your journey will be a success.’

  When they had left, the Colonel picked up a toothpick and watched them out of the window. At least that would get them out of the way for a few days. Not that he expected anyone to give Finn away. What Westwood had done to Bernard Taverner was well-known to his friends. Taverner had been fearless in the jungle, but those who had camped with him on his collecting trips remembered nights when he had woken in terror after a dream, with the name ‘Westwood’ on his lips.

  After a while the Colonel opened the door to his office.

  ‘Go to the museum and tell Professor Glastonberry that I’ve sent the Englishmen upriver,’ he said to the policeman there. ‘But he’s to tell Finn to stay where he is – I don’t know how long they’ll be away.’

  The professor would send the little lad from the fish market, who was Tapi’s nephew, up to the huts behind the Carters’ house. The Indians there would do anything for Taverner’s son.

  In the beautiful theatre in Manaus, with its crimson and gold decorations, its pillars and statues, the audience was waiting for the curtain to go up on Little Lord Fauntleroy.

  Beatrice and Gwendolyn were in the front stalls with their mother. The box of chocolates they were guzzling was on the arm of the seat between them and their plump fingers stirred the tissue paper as they dug for their favourite centres, making a loud, rustling sound.

  ‘I wanted that one,’ complained Gwendolyn as Beatrice’s jaws moved up and down on the hazel nougat. ‘Mama, why can’t we have two boxes of chocolates? We ought to have one each.’

  Mrs Carter was craning her head, peering at the people in the audience.

  ‘Look at that ridiculous Russian woman,’ she said as Sergei’s mother came down the aisle, ‘wearing her emeralds in the middle of the afternoon. And they’re bringing their governess – giving her ideas!’

  As he passed the twins, Sergei turned and said, ‘Where’s Maia?’

  ‘She couldn’t come. She isn’t well,’ said Beatrice.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Is it anything serious?’

  The twins shook their heads – both together, left to right, right to left – and Sergei moved on.

  ‘Doesn’t Netta look silly in that dirndl?’ said Gwendolyn. ‘I suppose her parents couldn’t afford a proper party frock.’

  It wasn’t true that there were no seats left, they could have bought a ticket for Maia quite easily. All the same the theatre was nearly full. The Pilgrim Players might have been a small company that no one had ever heard of, but out here people went to everything. Old ladies had come to see Little Lord Fauntleroy even without a grandchild in tow, and army colonels with fierce moustaches . . . and of course every child whose parents could afford a ticket was there.

  Mrs Carter opened her programme. There was a picture of Clovis King inside; it had been taken three years earlier and he looked very sweet.

  ‘I bet Maia doesn’t really know him. I bet she made it up,’ said Gwendolyn.

  ‘Clovis King in the part he has made particularly his own,’ read Mrs Carter.

  Clovis was Cedric, the American boy who finds he is heir to his grandfather’s title and has to leave his simple life in New York, where he is friends with the grocer and the shoe-shine boy, and travel to England to start a new life as an aristocrat.

  ‘With his beautiful mother, Dearest, he melts the heart of his stern old grandfather, the earl, and starts doing good to the peasants on the estate. But there is a dastardly plot—’

  ‘What’s dastardly?’ said Beatrice, her mouth full of chocolate.

  ‘Wicked,’ said Mrs Carter, ‘. . . dastardly plot to usurp Little Lord Fauntleroy’s place which is foiled . . .’

  But the house lights had dimmed. The curtains parted. The play had begun.

  Maia ran across the empty square towards the theatre. She was out of breath, her efforts to scrub the blood off her hand and tidy herself up had not been very successful, but she thought of nothing except to keep her promise to Clovis.

  But she was too late. Everyone had been sucked into the theatre; there were a few beggars on the steps, an old woman selling peanuts. Nobody else.

  She ran round to the side of the building and found the stage door, which she pushed open. She was in luck. The Goodleys’ nephew was sitting in the cubby hole, with his feet on the desk, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Oh please,’ said Maia trying to get her breath. ‘I promised Clovis I’d be here for his opening – we met on the boat. Would you let me wait for him?’

  ‘Sure. But why don’t you go out front and see the show? I’ll tell him you’re here.’

  ‘I can’t. There aren’t any tickets.’

  The youth raised his eyebrows. ‘Who told you that?’ He turned to the noticeboard and took down an envelope. ‘Here – front row of the stalls. Saved for the police chief but he hasn’t turned up. Eaten by a croc, most likely.’

  ‘Would that be all right?’ asked Maia, not wanting to waste time in explaining about crocodiles on the Amazon. ‘But I don’t know if I’ve got enough money.’

  She felt for her purse but the boy waved it away. ‘It’s free for friends of the company. Better hurry up, it’s started.’

  Slipping into her seat, Maia was glad the theatre was dark. The twins couldn’t stop her coming exactly, but she didn’t want to be seen by them all the same.

  Then in an instant she was in New York, in a grocer’s shop where little Cedric was talking to his friend the grocer about the wickedness of the aristocracy.

  Clovis was good. He didn’t look seven of course – or even eight or nine – but in his sailor suit with his wig of long fair curls, he certainly looked like an appealing little boy. And his voice was steady – a clear, high treble. Maia could feel the children in the audience hanging on his words.

  Now a gentleman from England came on stage – a lawyer rather like her own Mr Murray – and with him was Dearest, Cedric’s mother, who explained to her son that he was really a lord. Clovis was being very good about calling his mother Dearest – even better than on the boat.

  Maia forgot her worries and settled down to enjoy the play. Soppy or not, Little Lord Fauntleroy was a good story, and when the little boy was given a lot of money which he gave to his poor friends and did not keep for himself, a great sigh went round the audience.

  Maia stayed in her seat during the first interval, and kept her head down. The twins were several rows further back and hadn’t seen her, but she could hear them giggling about something and then nagging their mother to buy them some more chocolates.

  In the second act, little Lord Fauntleroy and Dearest reach the great castle which he will inherit and Cedric melts the hard heart of the old aristocrat, his grandfather. In the book he also made friends with a large, fierce dog but the Goodleys had left the dog out which was a pity. It was really very touching how just by believing that his grandfather was a good man, Cedric was making him become good, and Maia wondered if it might work with the twins. If she really believed they were kind, would they become kind? By now Maia had forgotten all her anxieties; Clovis was really a very good actor and the audience was loving him.

  The last act, as in most plays, is the exciting one. A wicked woman turns up at the earl’s castle and pretends that her son is the real Lord Fauntleroy. Of course it turns out not to be true, but everyone is very much upset, though Cedric, needless to say, behaves beautifully. When he thinks he may not be the real Lord Fauntleroy, Cedric doesn’t worry at all about not being rich and grand any more – all that worries him is the thought that his grandfather might stop loving him. And he turns to him and puts his hand on the old man’s knee and says, ‘Will I have to stop being your little boy?’

  And it was on this moving sentence that it happened. Clovis turned his face to the old man, and began his speech – and suddenly his voice cracked. He stopped, tried again . . . and this time he said, ‘Will I have to stop being your little boy?’ in a deep bass voice.

  If no one had taken any notice, it would probably have righted itself. Everyone was on Clovis’ side. But the twins started it; they giggled and tittered; their titters grew louder, and then the other children who had held back joined in and in a moment the audience was laughing and the children were falling about. Not all of them. Not Netta, not Sergei . . . certainly not Maia, who sat with her hand over her mouth.

  But enough of them. Enough to go on jeering and laughing through the next two speeches – and then Clovis gave a gasp, and turned and ran away into the wings.

  And the curtain came down.

  Maia had been standing outside the stage door for half an hour. She had no idea how she was going to get home, but she couldn’t leave Clovis in this state of misery. Many of the actors had gone past, but not him. At last she pushed open the door. There was a babble of loud voices talking about cancellation, about financial losses and disaster and disgrace. Everyone was angry, everyone was in a state.

  ‘Can I see Clovis?’ she asked bravely, and they motioned with their heads to the stairs which led to the dressing rooms.

  It took her a while to find him in the huge theatre, but at last she pushed open the right door and found her friend, face down on a couch, with his shoulders heaving.

  ‘Clovis, don’t! You mustn’t be like that. It’s something that can happen to anyone and you were terribly good until then.’

  He sat up. His face was blotched; he was still crying.

  ‘You don’t understand. They’re furious. They’ll have to cancel all the matinées and lose lots of money and I can’t stand it any longer. I’m going to stow away on the boat and go back to England.’

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