Eva Ibbotson - A Company of Swans

The day before Alvarez was due in Manaus, Rom organised an outing on a lake in the forest whose waters were entirely covered by the giant leaves and peonylike flowers of the Victoria Regina water-lily; a still, mysterious place beneath overhanging trees.

‘Magnificent!’ declared Simonova as she sat in the first and most luxurious of the carriages Rom had hired, but she did not feel it necessary to descend. The knowledge that soon she would be leading a purely rural life, the mistress of goats, kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts, made it unnecessary for her to risk the long grass by the water’s edge, and with a commanding gesture she kept Dubrov and Grisha by her side.

‘I wish that someone would stand on a leaf!’ announced Maximov. His magnificent physique outlined by a cream shantung tropical suit, he had loaded the good-natured Kirstin with a tripod and various boxes and was directing his camera at a leaf the size of a table with an upturned edge.

There was a certain lack of response. Olga curled her lip and muttered an oath in Pushtu, the rest of the Russians backed away — and Marie-Claude looked incredulously at the premier danseur. She was in an excellent mood. The Vasco da Gama , docking that morning, had brought a most exciting letter from Vincent. He had found the perfect place for the restaurant: an old auberge in the foothills of the Alpes Maritimes whose proprietor wished to retire at the end of the year. Quite a small sum as a deposit, Vincent had written, would give them the option to buy, and this sum he hoped to have in a couple of months if he was lucky with the tips. The knowledge that he would have it after her eruption on Saturday whether or not he was lucky with the tips had made Marie-Claude extraordinarily happy — but not so happy that she was prepared to risk her filmy white dress by standing on a leaf.

Harriet waited to see if anyone else would come forward. Then…

‘Shall I?’ she said. ‘I could try…’

She picked up her skirt and stepped carefully on to the leaf nearest her, then on to a larger one. She was scarcely heavier than a child and the leaf held. To a spatter of clapping from Lobotsky and the girls, she raised her arms and took the classical attitude of the Winged Mercury, smiling shyly at Maximov as he stooped to his viewfinder. And Rom, standing beside Simonova’s carriage, put a question he had refrained from asking, as though the answer might cause him pain.

‘Has she a future as a dancer?’ he asked. ‘A serious future?’

Dubrov and Simonova exchanged glances, but it was Grisha who spoke.

‘When she came we thought it was too late. She was too much an amateur. We still think it, but we don’t think it as much as we did.’

‘We remember Taglioni, you see,’ added Dubrov.

‘I am afraid I don’t know much about her,’ confessed Rom. ‘She was a great Italian dancer, but that’s all I know.’

‘Her father sent her to Paris to study,’ explained Simonova, ‘while he prepared a great debut for her in Vienna. But when she returned he found that she was entirely unprepared. Weak. Hopeless!’

‘Everyone said cancel the debut,’ put in Dubrov. ‘But he didn’t. He was obstinate. He worked with her and worked with her and worked with her.’

‘Three sessions a day with no food, no water… In the morning, exercises for the legs and feet. At midday, aplomb… At night, the jumps. Again and again. She cried, she collapsed, she fainted,’ said Simonova gleefully. ‘Often she fainted.’

‘But at her debut she was ready,’ finished Grisha. ‘And more than ready.’ He glanced over at Harriet, still posing on her leaf. ‘She was eighteen years old.’

‘I see,’ said Rom. Do I have to do that for her, he thought? No, damn it, I won’t have her fainting. Yet he felt a kind of chill — almost a premonition of something that could touch his happiness.

‘It would not happen now, I think,’ said Simonova. And then: ‘Chort!’ she cried. ‘She is sinking!’

Kirstin had given a little cry and run forward to take the camera from Maximov, who was closest to Harriet, so that he could pull her to safety, but the premier danseur had no intention of risking his new suit and clung firmly to his apparatus. It was Rom, some twenty yards away, who seemed in an instant to be by Harriet’s side. ‘Jump!’ he said and she jumped, laughing and unperturbed, into his arms.

‘You have spoiled your dress,’ scolded Marie-Claude, for Harriet was wet almost to her knees.

‘Aunt Louisa’s dresses cannot be spoilt,’ said Harriet. ‘That’s their one advantage.’

‘There might have been pirhanas,’ scolded Lobotsky.

‘Might there?’ Harriet asked Rom.

‘Unlikely.’ But it was not that unlikely; the water was stagnant and deep. She was almost too fearless, he thought, too much at ease in this place.

They picnicked in style and drove back relaxed and comfortable for the evening’s performance of Fille. Rom, who had dutifully accompanied Simonova on the outward journey, was travelling with Harriet and her friends and much enjoying the unquenchable Marie-Claude’s stories of her future as a restaurant proprietress seated behind a big black till.

Their carriage was in the lead as they drove through the outskirts of the city, crossed the Avenida Eduardo Ribeiro — and turned into the square on which stood the Hotel Metropole.

‘Oh, stop! Stop! Please stop!’ It was Harriet’s voice, but scarcely recognisable. She had slumped forward on her seat, covering her face with her hands, and now she sank down on to the floor, almost beside herself with fear.

‘What is it? What is it, my dear?’ Rom was amazed. Could this be the girl who had danced on the lily leaves?

‘That man over there… Don’t let him see me! Oh, can’t we turn back, please… please …’

Rom looked out of the carriage window. A heat-flushed man in a topee and crumpled linen suit was sitting in a cab on the other side of the road. Around him was piled his luggage: a tin trunk, a number of nets and canvas bags, a holdall. His expression was disconsolate, not to say peevish, as he gazed over the head of the flea-bitten horse whose twitchy ears pierced a sombrero with a hibiscus flower on the brim and he was engaged in an altercation with the driver, who, by frequent shrugs and wavings of the arms, indicated that he understood nothing of what was being said and cared even less.

In this apparition Rom recognised a familiar sight: a man recently landed from a liner, defeated by the Golden City’s inexplicable lack of hotels, wondering where he was going to lay his head — but nothing to explain Harriet’s terror.

‘It’s Edward,’ she said, fighting down a sob. ‘He’s come to take me back — my father will have sent him.’

‘Is he a relation?’

‘No. They wanted me to marry him, I think, but I never would have. But it means they know I’m here — my father may be with him too. Oh God, it can’t be over yet, it can’t!’

‘That’s enough, Harriet.’ Rom’s voice was deliberately harsh. ‘He seems to be alone and you are far from friendless — he can hardly carry you off by force.’

‘We’ll help you! We’ll hide you!’ declared Marie-Claude.

Rom ignored this noble sentiment as he had ignored Harriet’s terror.

‘Let me just get this clear, Harriet. Were you engaged to him?’

‘No!’

‘And he has no legal hold over you?’

‘No, but—’

‘All right, that will do.’ He leaned forward and gave some instructions to the driver. ‘The carriage will turn round and take you to the back of the hotel. Meanwhile,’ said Rom, opening the carriage door, ‘I think I will go and introduce myself to your friend.’