Eva Ibbotson - A Company of Swans

‘Nothing personal, you understand. Just a difference of opinion between me and your Aunt Louisa. Later we’ll buy some more. The blue skirt and the white blouse are all right — and your petticoat; you can keep that.’ He grinned down at her. ‘Who knows, after all, when you may get the urge to dance on tables!’

But clothes were not really Harriet’s problem, for the white cloud bed with its mosquito netting — from which she occasionally still rescued the moths that became trapped in its folds — had become her world. She saw it now as a white-sailed ship on which she voyaged with Rom to Monserrat or Venusburg.

‘I think God has made a mistake about love,’ she said to him, lying with her head in the hollow of his arm. ‘If one can find it — all this ecstasy, and seeing the world in a grain of sand like this… then one isn’t going to struggle to be properly religious and good.’

‘If you knew how rare it was, Harriet,’ he said, smoothing back her hair. ‘What we have here. God wasn’t chancing His arm much, I assure you. Not many people are deflected from the pursuit of the good by a requited passion. I have chased it all my adult life — and I found it the day you came.’

‘It’s because they haven’t got you that they don’t find it. But then why should I be given this chance? Why me?’

She could make no sense of this. Wickedness had led to ecstasy. Only temporary ecstasy, of course — she would lose him and she knew how. But already she had had so much more than she was entitled to.

‘Only I’m not completely happy all the time,’ she pointed out, ‘because you won’t let me creep from the foot of the bed into your presence. So perhaps God will let me—’

‘Oh, Harriet, let Him be. He’s not after you, poor God! You’re His suffering creature now bathed in love. Come here and I’ll show you.’

When Rom was working in his study or at the loading bay at São Gabriel, Harriet had baths. Maliki and Rainu presided over these hour-long rituals from which Harriet emerged smelling now of frangipani, now of hibiscus or increasingly — as her helpers became aware of her passion for the scents and unguents of their country — of essences they themselves had compounded from plants which she had not even known existed. Even so, she could never defeat Rom who, after burying his face in her hair only for a moment, would announce firmly, ‘Cedar-wood’ or ‘Cattelya’ or ‘Moon Lily’, before unwinding the snowy towel in which she was wrapped in order to make certain that he had guessed correctly.

When she was not having baths, Harriet ate pomegranates.

It is difficult to speak well of this fruit. Once opened, it disgorges enormous quantities of slimy reddish pips which laboriously have to be consumed because there is little else. Just how many seeds there are in a pomegranate, is hard to discover — more, certainly, than can be counted with ease.

Harriet, however, ate them: seed by seed, forcing them down… at breakfast… at lunch, enduring the insipid taste, the stickiness… for the legend of Persephone was always with her — Persephone, who had been forced to remain in Hades for as many months as she had eaten pomegranate seeds. Not expecting the impossible, Harriet had altered the time-scale: one pomegranate seed, which had kept Persephone with her dark-visaged lover for a month, was to give her one day with Rom.

‘That’s five hundred and twenty-three, I think,’ she told him triumphantly. ‘Five hundred and twenty-three whole days with you sometime in my life—’ and went off to wash her hands.

After a while she took the only sensible course and, watched by her cheerful attendants, she ate her pomegranates in the bath.

When Harriet had been at Follina for a week, Rom went into Manaus where he called first at the police station. He had no fears for Harriet’s safety. Not only had he doubled the guard on his gates, but he had indicated to his Indians that Harriet was not to be unattended in his absence, and as he drove away, a glimpse of Manuelo’s one-eyed uncle, old José with his machete, and Maliki and Rainu with their weaving — all converging on Harriet as she sat reading on the terrace — made it clear that any kidnapper trying to snatch her would have his work cut out.

But the news young Captain Carlos gave him when he enquired about the troublesome English girl was entirely reassuring. Yes, they had taken the girl on to the Gregory and locked her into her cabin. Dr Finch-Dutton had gone on board an hour later — since when neither the girl nor the doctor had been seen.

‘But what a girl!’ said Captain Carlos, shaking his head. ‘No wonder the English are like they are if that is how their women carry on.’ Then, looking anxiously at the influential Mr Verney — known to be Colonel de Silva’s closest friend — he asked, ‘I did right? The Colonel will be pleased?’

‘You did quite right, Carlos,’ said Rom and left the Captain a happy man.

His next call was at his quayside office, where he gave instructions to Miguel to cable Belem and order the overseer to send a man to meet the Gregory , escort the girl travelling with Dr Finch-Dutton to a hotel and return her to Manaus on the next boat.

‘He is to see she has everything she wants for the return journey — no expense spared.’ Then, grinning as if at some private joke, ‘No… better tell him to send two men!’

After which he made his way to the Hotel Metropole.

He found the members of the Company depressed and listless, for Simonova’s accident had affected everyone. Masha Repin, convinced that the world was against her, shut herself into her room between performances; Maximov still needed to be reassured constantly that he was not to blame for the ballerina’s injury; and attendances were falling. It was not of fame and triumph that the tired dancers thought now, but with increased longing of Europe and home.

But Marie-Claude, when Rom found her reading a novel in the lounge, was rapidly transported into a state of bliss by the request Rom made of her.

‘Ah yes , Monsieur, I will be delighted to do that! I know her size exactly and you will not be disappointed.’

‘Good girl,’ said Rom, placing a wad of bank-notes into her hand. ‘I would like one of the dresses to be blue — the colour of that kerchief she wore in Fille.’

Marie-Claude nodded, ‘I will do my best. Madame Pauline has some new stock from Paris: I’ll go there first.’

‘And I would like you to buy a dress for yourself, to compensate you for your trouble. Something not too suitable for a restaurant proprietress!’

Marie-Claude shook her head. ‘No, Monsieur, that is not necessary. Harriet is my friend and I love shopping. I want nothing for myself.’

‘Nevertheless, you will please me very much if you accept. And you will not be so cruel as to deprive Vincent of the pleasure of seeing you beautifully dressed,’ said Rom — and went upstairs to knock on the door of Simonova’s room.

Entering, he found himself in an atmosphere of gothic gloom and hopelessness. The shutters were three-quarters closed; bouquets of heavy-headed flowers sent by well-wishers wilted in vases; a macabre arrangement of electric batteries and spinal pads lay on a table and the sickly smell of chloroform pervaded the air.

Rom had brought some French novels, a basket of fruit, a single spray of the Queen’s Orchid which Harriet had picked dew-fresh at dawn, but as he moved over to the bed he saw that the ballerina was beyond reading or any of the consolations of the sick-room. Even to lift her emaciated hand to kiss it would be to jolt the frail exhausted body.

But Simonova, pain-racked and despairing though she was, could still respond to the presence of a handsome man.