Eva Ibbotson - A Company of Swans

He was just about to make his way upstairs when he caught a movement in the doorway leading to the adjoining room. He turned — and a girl stepped forward into the light.

‘Oh God!’ said Rom under his breath. ‘You!’ and the dark face was suddenly creased with weariness.

‘Mr Verney, I am very sorry to trouble you, but could I talk to you, please?’

He had looked away, missing the fear in her eyes and the way she laced her fingers to stop them trembling.

This girl, then, like all the others… this girl who in the garden had held out such different promise. The oldest ruse, the stalest trick of them all. Staying behind because something had been ‘forgotten’, because the boat had been ‘missed’.

From the same doorway, after the other guests had gone, had stepped Marina in her bare feet, her blouse pulled off one shoulder, tossing her russet hair… And Dolores, the Spanish girl from the troupe he had nursed, whimsically wrapped in one of his Persian rugs because someone had told her that Cleopatra had been brought to Caesar wrapped in a carpet. Millie Trant too, who had used the same formula as Harriet: ‘Let’s you and I have a little talk, Mr Verney.’ But Millie had been honest — there was no mistaking her intentions from the start.

He could laugh now to think how careful he had been not to talk to Harriet again once they came in from the garden, determined not to make her conspicuous. Yet he had watched her unnoticed; seen how she drew out Mrs Bennett, asking quiet questions about the absent child. Later Dubrov had told him a little of her story. Well, was it surprising that a girl who had run away from a good academic home should turn out to be what, seemingly, she was?

‘Very well,’ he said, fighting down his weariness, his desire to humiliate her by turning on his heel and leaving her. ‘If you wish it, we will… talk.’

He pulled the bell-rope and Lorenzo, sleepy and surprised, appeared. ‘Take Miss Morton up to the Blue suite and send someone to see that she has what she requires,’ he said in rapid Portuguese. And to Harriet, who had not understood him, ‘I will join you in half an hour.’

She was very tired and this made her confused — this and not knowing the customs of the country, Harriet told herself. Once in Cambridge she had been to a fund-raising luncheon with her Aunt Louisa in a very grand house, and afterwards the hostess had swept up all the ladies and taken them upstairs to a very cold bathroom. Harriet had not needed to do any of the things the other ladies needed to do, but this had not helped her. One went there; it was what one did.

So perhaps in the Amazon — where it was true one became extremely sticky — it was customary to offer people to whom one was going to talk not only the chance to wash their hands and tidy their hair and so on… but actually… a bath.

At first she had hoped that the room to which she was taken was not a bathroom; it was so large and contained things which she had not thought could be present in a bathroom: an alabaster urn full of lilies, a marble statue on a plinth, a deep white carpet. Not to mention mirrors… so very many mirrors in their gilt frames.

But the bath, surrounded by mahogany and absolutely huge, was unmistakably… a bath. What is more, not one but two servants were standing beside it — one adjusting the water which gushed from the great brass taps, another pouring rose-coloured crystals from a cut-glass jar into the foam — and both at frequent intervals pausing to nod and smile encouragingly in her direction. For Lorenzo, discovering that his master’s latest acquisition was the girl who had played with Andrelhino’s crippled boy and made old José laugh almost until he dropped by showing him the dances she did on one toe in the Teatro Amazonas, had not sent up the usual impersonal Rio-trained chambermaid who waited on ladies in the Blue Suite. Instead, he had tipped out of their hammocks not only his wife but also his niece and told them to attend her.

And attend her they did! Lorenzo might be a sophisticated cabaclo who spoke Portuguese and English and had once worked in a hotel, but for a wife he had turned to the Xanti, that gentle primitive tribe renowned for their knowledge of plant lore and the pleasure they take in the daily rituals of life.

So now Maliki nodded and smiled and beckoned, setting her nose ornament a-jingle, and her welcoming gestures were echoed by her pig-tailed niece. It was awaiting her, this lovely thing, this bath — she might approach!

‘No,’ said Harriet loudly. ‘I don’t want a bath!’

They understood not her words, but her tone. A look of hurt, of despair passed over both faces. The aunt approached the niece; they conferred in low agitated voices… came to a conclusion… rallied. Maliki rushed to the bath taps, turned off the hot and ran the cold to full. Rauni replaced the stopper of the cut-glass jar, ran to fetch another, tipped out a handful of green crystals and held them under Harriet’s nose.

‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘Very nice. It smells lovely. Only I—’

But the change in her voice, the obvious pleasure she took in the scent of ‘Forest Fern’, wrought a transformation in her attendants. They smiled, they were transported with relief; they threw up their hands to show how silly they had been not to realise that she wanted the water cooler and did not care for the smell of frangipani. And before Harriet could gather herself together for another effort Maliki had come forward and pulled the loose sack-like dress over her head, while Rauni — bending tenderly to her feet — removed her stockings and shoes.

I suppose I should kick and scream and shout, thought Harriet. But she was very tired and the women — who had announced their names with ritual thumping of the chest — were very kind. And surely it could not be that the man who had been so much her friend in the garden might intend her any harm? Surely a vile seducer could not have pulled aside the thorny branches of an acacia to reveal for her a nest of fledgling flycatchers with golden breasts?

The water was lovely — cool, soft, up to her chin. In Scroope Terrace it had been bad manners even to be on the same floor as someone taking their weekly bath, but her attendants showed no signs of departure. On the contrary, this delightful experience was clearly one to be shared. Maliki picked up a loofah and rubbed her back. Rauni ran back and forth proffering a succession of brightly coloured soaps; then bent to massage the soles of Harriet’s feet with pumice stone…

And presently Maliki gathered up Harriet’s crumpled clothes and carried them carefully to the door which led to the corridor.

‘No!’ Harriet sat up suddenly. ‘No! Not my clothes. Leave them here!’

But this time the women did not panic. They knew now how to soothe her, how to make everything right. Of course they would not leave her without clothes, they gestured, sketching reassuring garments in the air. How could she think it?

And they did not! Maliki, removing Harriet’s brown foulard, returned almost immediately and together aunt and niece held up, with pardonable pride, what Harriet was to wear.

Everything in Verney’s house was of the best and so was this negligée — a confection of creamy Venetian lace with scalloped sleeves, soft ruffles at the throat and hem and a row of tiny satin-covered buttons.

What now? thought Harriet ten minutes later as she stood dried, powdered and perfumed in front of the largest of the mirrors, looking at a girl she did not recognise. Her eyes were huge, smudged with apprehension and fatigue; Maliki had brushed her loose hair forward to lie in damp strands across the creamy lace covering her breasts.

‘Oh, Marie-Claude, I have been such a fool ,’ said Harriet, bereft and very frightened and homesick — not for the home she had never had, but for the company of her new-found friends.