Eva Ibbotson - A Company of Swans

‘To show yourself a man,’ stated the Professor.

‘No.’ Edward was resolute. Yet as he stood there, images of Harriet continued to jostle each other in his brain. The way she had laughed when that little baby had set off in its nappies across the sacrosanct Fellows’ Lawn at King’s. The way she had pulled down a branch of white lilac behind St Benet’s Church and let the rain-drops run down her face. And now perhaps she was ill with some jungle fever… or abandoned. ‘Edward,’ she would say when she saw him. ‘Oh, Edward, you have come!’

‘And in any case,’ he said, ‘I have my work.’

But that was a mistake. Images of Harriet were replaced by others more lurid, more feverish and, to a professional entomologist, reekingly desirable. The Brazilian rhinoceros beetle which stretched the length of a man’s hand… the Morpho butterfly, like an iridescent blue dinner-plate, beating its way through the leaf canopy… fireflies by whose light it was possible to read. To say nothing of the wholly virgin territory of the Amazonian flea…

Implacable, with their characteristic look of having just stepped down from a cut-price sarcophagus, the Mortons stood before him.

‘I would never be able to get leave,’ said Edward.

That, however, was not necessarily true. He only had two practicals in the summer term; Henderson would do those for him and the head of his department was a great believer in field work — in getting what he called ‘nose to nose with the insect’.

The images came faster. The Goliath beetle, six inches from mouth to sternum… the ‘88’ butterfly, a brilliant airborne hieroglyphic for which private collectors would give their ears… Harriet lying on a pillow, her hair spread out; her limp body acquiescent as he carried her to safety up the gangplank of the ship… And Peripatus — ah, Peripatus! Edward’s blue eyes grew soft as he thought of this seemingly insignificant creature, half-worm, half-insect, the world’s oldest living fossil, crawling — as it had crawled since the dawn of time — through the unchanging debris of the rain-forest floor.

Torn beyond endurance, he gazed into the tank where Henderson’s lone parsnip continued to respire silently in the cause of science. ‘Look at my fate,’ the captive vegetable seemed to be saying. ‘Free yourself. Show yourself a hero. Be a man.’ Making a final stand, Edward turned back to the Professor. ‘And there is the fare,’ said Edward, ‘I cannot possibly afford the fare.’

A grimace, a convulsion of the thin lips, a kind of spasm — and then the Merlin Professor looked straight at Edward and said, ‘ I will pay the fare.’

‘I look like a twig,’ said Harriet a little sadly, gazing into the fly-blown mirror of the room she shared with her friends in the Hotel Metropole.

Marie-Claude and Kirstin did not attempt to deny it.

‘I would like to know what exactly she is like , this Aunt Louisa of yours,’ said Marie-Claude. ‘How can someone actually enter into a shop and buy such a dress?’

It was the day after the opening night of Swan Lake and the girls were preparing for the party at Follina.

‘Brown suits Harriet,’ said Kirstin kindly.

‘Oh, yes. Brown velvet in the winter with frogging, perhaps,’ agreed Marie-Claude. ‘But brown foulard… and the sleeves.’ She laid a bunch of artificial flowers against Harriet’s throat and shook her head. ‘Better not to draw attention…’

She herself was dressed like a dancer — that is to say, like the image of a dancer that the world delights in: a three-quarter-length white dress, satin slippers, a wreath of rosebuds in the loose and curling golden hair.

‘I’ll stand at the back and hold my glass; no one will notice me,’ said Harriet, whose ideas of party-going were conditioned by the dread occasions with which the Master of St Philip’s celebrated events of academic importance.

‘You will do nothing of the kind, ’arriette,’ said Marie-Claude, slipping Vincent’s engagement ring firmly on to her finger. ‘This man is not only an Englishman but the most important—’

‘An Englishman? The chairman of the Opera House trustees? Goodness!’ Harrietwas amazed. ‘I’d imagined a kind old Brazilian with a paunch and a huge waxed moustache.’

‘Whether he has a moustache or not, I cannot say,’ said Marie-Claude, a little offended. ‘Vincent’s moustache is very big and personally I do not find a man attractive without moustaches. But Mr Verney is spoken of as formidably intelligent and since you are the daughter of a professor—’

‘Mr Verney?’ said Harriet, and there was something in her voice which made both girls look at her hard. ‘Is that what he is called? Are you sure?’

‘Certainly I am sure,’ said Marie-Claude, exasperated by the unworldliness of her friend. Harriet had pestered everyone ceaselessly for the names of the flowers, the birds, even the insects they had encountered ever since they left England, yet she had not even troubled to find out the name of the most influential man in Manaus.

But Harriet was lost in remembrance, her hairbrush dangling from her hand.

‘I’m Henry St John Verney Brandon,’ Henry had said to her, turning his small face upwards, trusting her with that all-important thing: his name. And another image… the unpleasant Mr Grunthorpe with his liver-spotted pate and rapacious hands, droning on beside the Van Dyck portrait of Henrietta Verney, who had brought her beauty and her fortune to the house of Brandon.

It didn’t have to mean anything — the name was not uncommon. Yet if Henry’s ‘secret boy’ was some distant connection of the family brought up for some reason at Stavely…? If against all odds she had found him and could plead Henry’s case, what happiness that would be!

No, I’m being absurd, thought Harriet; it’s merely coincidence. But she found herself suddenly looking forward to the evening ahead and — relinquishing the hairbrush to Marie-Claude — submitted with docility to having two side plaits swept on to the crown of her head and wearing the rest loose down her back to reveal what both the other girls regarded as tolerable: her ears.

Though she knew her host was rich, the first sight of the Amethyst waiting at the docks in the afternoon sunshine to take the cast to Follina took her aback — not on account of the schooner’s size, but because of her beauty. She was surprised too to find that a second boat was waiting to convey to the party not only the members of the orchestra but also the technical staff, who were so often forgotten.

‘Very nice,’ said Simonova condescendingly, walking up the gangway in trailing orange chiffon and accepting as her due the attentions of Verney’s staff, for had she not spent many summers on the Black Sea in a similar yacht owned by the Grand Duke Michael? She exclaimed ecstatically at the beauty of the river scene and firmly went below, followed by the other principals and most of the corps , to recline in the luxurious cabins with their bowls of fruit, boxes of chocolates and magazines.

‘You of course will stay on deck and completely disarrange your toilette while we travel?’ suggested Marie-Claude and Harriet, grinning at her friend, admitted that this was so. So she hung over the rails, watching the changing patterns of the islands which lay like jagged ribbons across the smooth, leaf-stained water, until they turned from the dark Negro into her tributary, the Maura.

‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, ‘it is so light!’ And the boatman standing near her with a rope coiled ready in his hand nodded and smiled, understanding not her words but her tone.