Journey to the River Sea, Page 9

  ‘You’re Bernard Taverner’s son. The boy who Professor Glastonberry said didn’t exist. But I don’t know your first name.’

  ‘It’s Finn. And you’re Maia, and you sing beautifully but you don’t like beetroot and sums.’

  Maia stared at him. ‘How do you know all that?’

  ‘The Indians tell me. They see everything. Old Lila used to be my nurse when I was a baby. I go and talk to them sometimes – at least I used to before the crows came – but only at night. The Carters have never seen me and they never will.’

  His voice, when he spoke of the Carters, was suddenly full of hatred.

  ‘It was you then,’ said Maia. ‘It was you who whistled ‘Blow the Wind Southerly’ the first night I came! It was such a comfort!’

  Finn turned and said a few quick words to Furo in his own language. ‘He’ll fetch you in a couple of hours,’ he said. ‘Come on, I’ll show you everything. And then I’ll tell you why I sent for you.’ He grinned and pulled himself up. ‘I mean, why I wanted you to come.’

  When Furo disappeared through the narrow channel of rushes the silence seemed overwhelming – yet she heard the noise of the water lapping the Arabella, the whirr of the humming birds’ wings, the dog yawning. It was as though sounds had been freshly invented in this secret place.

  Finn led her to the door of the hut. ‘My father built it and we lived here whenever we weren’t away on collecting trips. I still can’t believe he isn’t coming back, though it’s four months since he was drowned.’

  ‘Do you see him sometimes?’ Maia asked – and he turned sharply because she seemed to have read his thoughts. ‘I see mine. My father. Not a ghost or an apparition . . . just him.’

  ‘Yes. It’s exactly like that. Often he’s showing me something. A new insect or a plant.’

  ‘Mine shows me things too. Little bits of pottery . . . shards. He was an archaeologist.’

  ‘Mine was a naturalist. He collected over a hundred new species.’

  ‘I know – I saw some of the things in the museum. You must be proud of him.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe that’s the point of fathers. They’re people that show you things.’

  The hut was just as Bernard Taverner had left it when he went out with an Indian friend to look for the blue waterlily whose leaves were used as a painkiller. His collecting boxes and specimen jars, his plant press and dissecting kit and microscope, were all stacked neatly on his work table. His carpentry tools were hung carefully on the wooden wall; on the other side of the hut was the tackle for the boat. The khaki sheet still lay folded on his hammock as though he expected to return to sleep that night.

  And in shelves made from palmwood planks were rows of old books – books on natural history, books on exploration and all the well-known classics. But the book that lay open on the table with a marker was Caesar’s Gallic Wars in Latin, and as he looked at it Finn sighed.

  ‘He made me promise to go on with Latin whatever happened. He said there was nothing like it for sharpening the mind. But it’s difficult on one’s own.’

  ‘Yes.’ Maia nodded. ‘Everything’s difficult on one’s own.’

  But she thought she had never seen a place she liked more. The hut was spotlessly clean with a slight smell of woodsmoke and the watery scent of the reeds coming in through the window. There was a small oil stove and a sink, but she could see that mostly the boy cooked outside on the stone fireplace built on a spit of land that ran between the hut and the sandbank.

  ‘You must have been very happy here – you and your father.’

  ‘Yes, we were. I used to wake up every morning and think, “Here I am, exactly where I want to be,” and there aren’t many boys who can say that. I thought of waking up in those awful English boarding schools with a bell shrilling.’

  He took her outside and showed her his oven, the place where the turtles laid their eggs, the bottle full of sugar water that he filled each day for the humming birds, just as his father had done. ‘We’ve had twenty different kinds on that one tree,’ he said. His bow and arrow were hung on a branch, but she had seen a rifle too, propped under the windowsill.

  ‘Do you see that?’ he said, pointing to some marks in the sand. ‘That’s an anteater – he comes down at night to drink.’

  His father had planted a simple garden – manioc and maize and a few sweet potatoes, protected by a wire fence. ‘It’s difficult, keeping the animals out – and keeping it weeded.’

  ‘It looks fine. All of it.’ She waved her hand over the hut, the boat, the lagoon. ‘It looks like a place where one would want to stay for ever and ever.’

  He gave her a startled glance. ‘Yes. But I can’t stay. I’m going on a journey.’

  ‘Oh!’ For a moment she was devastated. She had only just met him and now he was going away.

  ‘I’m going to find the Xanti.’

  She waited.

  ‘They’re my mother’s tribe. She was Indian. My father brought her here and she died when I was born. I promised him that if anything happened to him, I’d go there. He said they’d keep me safe till I was of age and then no one could make me go back to Westwood. I thought he was making a fuss, but now that the crows have come . . .’

  ‘How will you go?’

  ‘In the Arabella. As soon as the dry season starts properly. The rivers in the north are still flooded now, but it won’t be long.’

  They clambered over the boat together and it was clear that she was the apple of his eye. She was a steam launch, rakish and sturdy, with a tall copper funnel and an awning running the length of her deck.

  ‘My father got her cheap from a rubber baron who’d gone bankrupt. She can do five knots when she’s in a good mood.’

  ‘Can you manage her on your own?’

  ‘Just about. You have to have a lot of wood chopped at the beginning of the day and then you go on pretty steadily. It’ll be difficult because there aren’t any reliable maps for the last part of the journey. I’ll have to go by what my father remembered.’

  Maia put her hand on the tiller. Five minutes ago she had wanted to stay in the lagoon for ever. Now, just as much, she wanted to make this journey with Finn – to go on and on up the unknown rivers . . . not getting there, just going.

  But now the dog, who had been following them silently, jumped back ashore and made his way to the door of the hut which he pushed open with his snout.

  ‘He’s telling us it’s time for afternoon tea.’

  Maia looked at him to see if he was joking, but he wasn’t. Afternoon tea was exactly what Finn now produced. He put on the kettle, warmed the teapot, took down a tea caddy and measured out three spoonfuls of Earl Grey. Then he found a plate, filled it with biscuits – proper ones with sultanas and raisins – put out the sugar tongs and a milk jug; he even handed her a napkin. They might have been in any British drawing room.

  The dog waited. ‘He only drinks China tea,’ said Finn, putting down a saucer and adding a spoonful of sugar. ‘If you give him anything else, he looks at you.’

  While they ate and drank, he made polite conversation; asking her how she liked Manaus, and whether her friend was still upset about the play.

  ‘Clovis, do you mean? Yes, he is. But how do you know everything?’

  He shrugged. ‘The Indians hear, and they tell me. The cleaner in the theatre is old Lila’s cousin.’

  When they had finished and swilled out the cups, he said, ‘Right. I suppose I’d better explain. I think I might need your help, you see.’

  Maia looked at him, flushed with pleasure.

  ‘I’ll do anything.’

  ‘Just like that?’ he asked. ‘Even though I’m on the run?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Finn grinned. ‘They said you weren’t like the porkers.’

  ‘The porkers?’

  ‘That’s what the Indians call the twins. You know, little fat pigs that snuffle and eat.’

  Maia tried to look shocked and failed.

  ‘Are they as bad as people say?’ he asked.

  Maia sighed and stopped trying to be good. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It would be lovely if they were pigs. One could get really fond of pigs.’

  ‘We’ll go outside,’ said Finn. ‘The mosquitoes are fairly quiet at this hour.’

  So they sat side by side on the wooden deck outside the hut, and Finn told her the story of his father’s marriage.

  ‘When he came out here my father was just seventeen. He’d been absolutely wretched in England, but as soon as he came out here he knew it was the place for him. At first he had no money or anything, but he found he could live by collecting plants and berries people needed for medicines and selling them to traders in Manaus. He made friends with the Indians and learnt their languages, and they taught him their skills.

  ‘For nearly ten years he lived like that, exploring the rivers, building his hut. The awful memories of England only bothered him at night, when he was dreaming. He was sure he had got away.’

  Finn was silent, looking out over the lake.

  ‘Then one day he went a very long way – not in the Arabella, in the canoe – and he fell ill with a fever, one of the really awful ones, and he passed out.

  ‘When he came round he was with the Xanti. He’d heard of them – they were supposed to be special; very gentle and full of knowledge about healing, but they were very shy and mostly stayed hidden. Not many people had seen them.

  ‘He said waking up there was like waking up in Paradise: the kind, quiet people, the dappled trees. One girl in particular nursed him – her name was Yara – and when he was better the Xanti let her marry him, which was an honour.

  ‘He brought her back here, but when I was due to be born, the English doctor wouldn’t come out to an Indian woman in the night and she died.’

  He paused. ‘After that he didn’t have much to do with his own people. He found Lila to nurse me and we got on all right, though I think he never got over my mother’s death. But we were good friends.’ His voice faltered for a moment. ‘I can stay here and live as he did, finding medicines, selling stuff to museums . . . oh, lots of things. But he said if anyone came for me from England I was to fight for my life. I was to go back to the Xanti. He never went back himself, but he said the tribe would know me.’ And he turned his wrist to show her the mark she had noticed in the canoe. ‘The trouble is, I’ve got to get away without being seen and the crows seem to be everywhere, and no one knows how long they’re going to stay and hunt around. The Indians won’t give me away, but it’s a big reward they’re offering and there are people in Manaus who are very poor.’

  ‘You said perhaps I could help you?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve got an idea but I don’t know if it will work.’ He pulled the dog closer and began to scratch his ear.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll help you anyway.’

  ‘It isn’t that; it’s just that I haven’t thought out the details yet. And anyway it doesn’t depend only on me. What I’d like you to do now, is tell me about your friend. About Clovis. Where did you meet him? What’s he like?’

  So Maia told him about meeting Clovis on the boat, how homesick he was and how upset he’d been about his voice breaking. ‘All he wants is to get back to England. He says he’s going to stow away.’

  ‘It won’t work. They search the boats with a fine toothcomb. People keep trying to smuggle out rubber seedlings so they can grow them somewhere else, which would kill the rubber trade here. He’s sure to be caught.’

  ‘That’s what Miss Minton says.’

  ‘Ah yes, Miss Minton. What does she think of Clovis?’

  ‘I think she likes him. Yes, I’m sure she does. He does cry rather a lot but he’s very decent.’

  ‘Well, I suppose he would be if he’s your friend.’

  They sat for a while in companionable silence. Then Finn said, ‘You don’t happen to know Miss Minton’s Christian name?’

  Maia screwed up her face, thinking. ‘She never uses it, but it begins with an “A”, I think, because she lent me her handkerchief in the cab and there was an “A” embroidered in the corner.’

  Finn nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I thought it might.’

  Furo’s canoe now appeared through the reeds, and Maia said quickly, ‘What I don’t understand is how they can make you go back to Westwood. You’re only a child; they don’t lock up children in prisons.’

  Finn slapped a mosquito on his arm.

  ‘They do at Westwood. At Westwood they lock you up as soon as you’re born.’

  Chapter Eight

  Clovis had come up the river in an old tramp steamer which carried anything from cattle to timber.

  He had paid the last of his money to the captain, who had allowed him to crouch on deck between a crate of bleating nanny goats and a leaking sack of maize. But he wouldn’t put Clovis off at the Carters’ landing stage.

  ‘Bad place,’ he said.

  And he made Clovis get out onto an old jetty higher up and walk back along the bank, so that by the time he reached the bungalow he was scratched and tired and very hot.

  But now as he made his way up the gravel path to the house, his spirits rose. It was so neat and tidy and quiet. No chickens to give you fleas, no barking dogs running the length of their chains.

  Dusk had fallen and two of the windows were lit up. Clovis walked quietly towards them and looked in.

  He saw a most comforting sight. The Carters were having supper, sitting around a large table spread with a clean white cloth. He could see Mrs Carter – a kind-looking plump woman in a blue dress with frilly sleeves, serving something onto pudding plates. A pink blancmange; Clovis could see it shaking a little on the dish and his mouth watered. Shape his foster mother had called it. She made it with strawberries and cornflour and milk fresh from the cow. Opposite Mrs Carter was her husband, a thin man in gold rimmed spectacles – and facing him the twins.

  They looked just the way Maia had described them on the boat: pretty and dressed in white, with ribbons in their hair. And beside them, Maia . . . The twins were pretty, but Maia was special with her serious face and kind eyes; he could see her pigtail looped over her shoulder. Just looking at it made him feel safe, as if he could hold on to it and be all right.

  Miss Minton didn’t seem to be there. Perhaps it was her day off and she had gone to visit friends.

  He stood and looked a little longer, unseen by the people in the room. It was a good name for this house: Tapherini – A Place of Rest. Then he went round to the side of the house and knocked on the door.

  It took only a few moments to shatter Clovis’ dream. First came the violent shrilling of an alarm bell. Then a maid with a sullen face led him to the dining room and opened the door – and the twins looked up, stared at him – and exploded. It wasn’t laughter that came from them, not really. It was that awful giggling; that high-pitched, merciless titter that had spread across the footlights in the theatre and set the other children off. Clovis recognized it at once. So it was the twins’ laughter which had hounded him!

  ‘Oh!’ gasped Beatrice. ‘It’s Little Lord Fauntleroy,’ and then both girls said, ‘Will I have to stop being your little boy?’ in a deep and growly voice and repeated it, their voices getting lower and lower . . . and in between they choked and spluttered and patted each other on the back, and started taunting him again.

  Clovis stood perfectly still by the door. He looked at Maia to see if she too was going to join in, but she looked horrified and now she jumped up and came to stand beside him.

  ‘Don’t!’ she said passionately to the twins. ‘Please don’t; can’t you see—’

  Mrs Carter now took charge. ‘All right, girls,’ she said to her daughters, ‘that will do’, and to Maia, ‘Sit down, please. We have not finished our meal.’

  But it took some time for the twins to quieten down. They still growled and gulped, and then Beatrice said, ‘Look at Maia, protecting her boyfriend!’

  ‘Enough,’ said Mr Carter, dabbing his mouth with his napkin. It was the first word he had spoken at table, and was to be the last, but the twins now managed to control themselves.

  ‘Now,’ said Mrs Carter, staring at Clovis, ‘might I ask what brings you here?’

  Clovis looked at the soft, rounded face. Close to, it did not look kind and motherly as it had done through the window. He felt that under the puffy cheeks one would find stone.

  ‘I wondered if I could stay with you for a few days. We have to leave the hotel – all of us, and I thought . . .’ His words died away.

  Maia now turned to Mrs Carter and stretched out her hands to her as if she was begging for her life. ‘Oh please, please, Mrs Carter, couldn’t he stay? He could have my room and I’d go and sleep with Miss Minton. I’m sure Mr Murray will help him to—’

  ‘Stay?’ Mrs Carter interrupted in a horrified voice.

  ‘Stay with us?’ said Beatrice. ‘We don’t have actors to stay, do we, Gwendolyn?’

  Both twins shook their heads slowly, left to right and right to left. They reminded Maia of the women knitting by the guillotine during the French Revolution, while heads rolled into baskets.

  ‘Heaven knows what he might have picked up in the Paradiso,’ said Mrs Carter. And to Clovis, ‘What are those bites on your leg? Fleas or bedbugs?’

  Clovis flushed. There were bedbugs at the Paradiso; he minded it just as much as Mrs Carter. But it was true that he no longer looked like a boy wonder on the stage. It had been impossible to get hot water at the hotel. His long hair was unwashed; his clothes were too small for him, and stained.

  ‘We can’t just turn him out,’ said Maia desperately.

  ‘I hope you don’t think we can take in every verminous stray that comes to the door. The boy must go back. Beatrice, go and fetch Miss Minton.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Maia quickly.

  ‘No. I asked Beatrice.’

  But Gwendolyn, who wouldn’t even go to the bathroom by herself, had slipped out after her sister.

  Maia had not sat down again; she stood beside Clovis as though she could come between him and his misery. In its bowl in the centre of the table, the pink ‘shape’, which had looked so good through the window, had sunk into a watery mush.

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