Eva Ibbotson - A Company of Swans

‘What I have to say will upset and sadden you,’ he began and she made a movement of acquiescence. Anything he said while he still looked so angry and bitter would do just that. ‘But I felt you should know while you were out here and had a chance to… forget a little. Henry is dead, Harriet. Henry Brandon. He died a week after you left England.’

Her reaction was worse than anything he could have imagined. The colour drained from her face and she shrank back in the tall chair. She was completely stricken.

‘No… Oh, no, he can’t be! God couldn’t…’

She had really loved him then, that pale deceitful slug of a man, thought Rom, noting with detached surprise the degree of his own wretchedness.

‘I’m afraid it’s true, Harriet. I cabled for confirmation.’

‘He was perfectly all right when I saw him… he was in the maze… he was reading your book,’ she said wildly. ‘He admired you so much.’ Her mouth began to tremble and she bit her lip with a desperate effort at control. ‘How did he die?’ she managed to say. ‘What happened?’

He had decided to tell her only if she asked. ‘He shot himself.’

Her head jerked up. ‘Shot himself? But that’s impossible! How can a little child shoot himself? Did they let him play in the gun-room? Surely even that horrible Mr Grunthorpe wouldn’t have let—’

‘Wait!’ Rom took a steadying breath. At the same time everything suddenly grew lighter — the room, the lowering sky outside. ‘Harriet, I am talking of Henry Brandon, the owner of Stavely — Isobel’s husband. A man of thirty-eight.’

‘A man? Oh, I suppose that’s his father. I never met him. My Henry will be eight in June.’ Her face as she took in what Rom had said became transfigured. ‘It’s all right, then? My Henry is all right?’

‘Yes, I’m sure he is. We’ll cable anyway, but there’s not the slightest reason to assume otherwise.’ He had been standing, needing to be distanced from her grief. Now he pulled out a chair in order to sit beside her. ‘I didn’t know there was a child,’ he said slowly. ‘I took good care to know nothing about what went on at Stavely.’ He stared for a while at the swirling clouds outside, massing for the afternoon downpour. Then: ‘When you talked of meeting Henry… of loving him… it was of my brother that I thought you spoke. Of the man who has just died.’

She looked up, amazed. ‘But I never even met him! And if I had, I wouldn’t plead for a grown man who had deserted his family. It would be none of my business… well, it isn’t anyway, I suppose. But if you had seen Henry — my Henry — he’s lost all his milk teeth and he worries about wearing spectacles and he had this image of you. I think the idea of you somehow kept him going.’

She fell silent, realising how uncannily accurate the child’s description of Rom had been. Rom could save Stavely; he could save anything or anyone he chose.

‘Yes, I see. I’m afraid it’s a case of Romeo and the chicken feather,’ he said ruefully. ‘I should have thought — it was obvious really — but I was too angry. I have no reason to be fond of my half-brother.’ There was a pause. Then, ‘Did you see Isobel Brandon?’

‘I saw her for a moment through a doorway. She seemed very distressed. And very beautiful.’

‘Yes, I can imagine she would still be beautiful.’ He looked about for something to help him through what was to come, found Harriet’s hand and appropriated it, feeling it to be his due. ‘I think it’s time I told you about my youth at Stavely. I was once engaged to Isobel, you see.’

He began to speak then, and in the hour that followed he held back nothing.

Harriet learned of his childhood, his veneration for his father, the desolation he had felt at his mother’s death. Of his brother he could not speak even now without hatred, but the passage of time made it possible for him to be fair to Isobel. He emphasised her youth, the agony she had experienced when her grandfather was ruined.

‘I saw only her betrayal,’ he said. ‘Now I see that she must have suffered. I expected too much from someone so young.’

‘No.’ Harriet’s denial was scarcely audible, but he caught it and smiled, unfolding her fingers to make a fan, which he spread out on the satinwood table.

‘I was penniless, futureless; she wanted to be safe.’

He went on then to tell Harriet of the kindness of Madeleine de la Tour, of his early adventures on the river. But there remained with Harriet the image of a woman, beautiful and high-born, whom he had passionately loved — a woman who belonged to his own world — and a place for which he still craved. And she saw that in calling up help for Isobel’s child, she had also invoked help for Isobel, whose first — and surely last — love he had been.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Henry in a small, croaking voice. It hurt him to speak, his head throbbed and though the nuns had closed the shutters of the long windows of the sanatorium, a ray of light entering through a crack pierced his eyes as if it were a dagger. ‘I’m awfully sorry I’m ill,’ said Henry to his mother.

‘Don’t be silly, Henry,’ said Isobel, sitting beside his bed. ‘It’s not your fault.’

But she found it hard to conceal her impatience. It was there behind her words, in her quick, restless movements so different from the gentle movements of the nuns in their white habits. Feverish as he was, Henry knew them all: Sister Concepcion, round and soft and soothing; Sister Annunciata, beautiful and stately with hands that seemed cool even in the dreadful heat; tall, bony Sister Margharita with her pebble glasses, who could make the pillow stop wrinkling and the medicine slip down his aching throat.

Oh, why did I bring the child, thought Isobel for the hundredth time. It was unbearable being trapped here in Belem, with a thousand miles still to travel down the Amazon. Henry had been good on the Atlantic crossing, it had to be admitted, making friends with the Portuguese crew in spite of the language barrier and not troubling her much — which was as well, for the only other British passenger, a rather ludicrous entomologist, had not been at all helpful about amusing the child. Dr Finch-Dutton had been pleased enough to introduce himself as an erstwhile visitor to Stavely, but when it came to answering Henry’s questions or making himself useful, that was another matter. But as they approached the coast of Brazil, Henry had become evidently and unconcealably ill.

The doctor of the Vasco da Gama , only too aware of the lethal fevers which raged in that part of the world, had greeted with unconcealed relief the appearance, the day before they were due to dock at Belem, of the tell-tale white spots inside Henry’s mouth.

‘Measles, Madame, without a doubt,’ he said in excellent English. ‘You must be extremely relieved…’

‘Yes, indeed. Now we can travel on down to Manaus. I have friends there who can make him comfortable.’

‘Travel on!’ The doctor was shocked. ‘Certainly not! There is no question of subjecting the child to the river journey in this heat. He needs careful nursing — and I have my other passengers to think of.’

‘It is probably the other passengers he caught it from,’ flashed Isobel. ‘Those dirty people in the steerage.’

But the doctor was adamant. ‘I hope there will be no complications, but damage to the eyes or the chest cannot be entirely ruled out. We shall ask the nuns of the Sacred Heart to take him in. They are excellent nurses and will not, I think, refuse the child.’

And the nuns, seeing Henry with streaming eyes and a temperature of 104 degrees, had not refused.

‘I’m absolutely all right.’ Henry’s painful croak came once more from the high white bed. ‘You don’t have to stay.’