Eva Ibbotson - A Company of Swans

‘And you think she’s still in Manaus?’

‘I’m sure she is. And I’ll bet Verney’s got hold of her. The more I think about it, the more certain I am that it was him I saw behind that rock. You mark my words, he wants her for himself!’

Isobel had risen, was putting on her gloves and unhooking her parasol from the back of the chair. ‘Well, if I can find out anything more for you, I’ll let you know. You say her father wants her back?’

‘Yes… That is, I think so. Yes, I’m sure he does. But it’s Olga I’m thinking about. The Gregory leaves again in a few hours and I simply don’t know what to do. I suppose you can’t advise me?’

‘I’m afraid not, Dr Finch-Dutton,’ said Isobel coldly. ‘The matter is one that you must decide for yourself.’ There was nothing more to be got from this fool and very little time now in which to act.

It was only as Isobel was bidding him goodbye that Edward thought to ask after Henry. ‘How’s the little chap? Getting on all right?’

‘Henry is quite better, thank you,’ said Isobel firmly and walked away quickly in the direction of the shipping office, leaving Edward to pay for her ice-cream.

An hour later, she was back in the convent.

‘I have made up my mind,’ she informed Sisters Concepcion and Margharita, who were giving Henry a blanket bath. ‘We are travelling on to Manaus tonight. There’s a spare cabin on the Bernadetto — a nice breezy one,’ she lied. And as they stared at her incredulously she went on firmly, ‘It will do him good to be in the fresh air; he can lie in a deck-chair and drink beef tea. We don’t mollycoddle our children in England like you do out here. And Henry will wish to travel on, won’t you, Henry?’

‘Yes.’ Henry’s hoarse croak came with incredible gallantry from the bed. He did want to travel on; he longed, as a matter of fact, for alligators and boa constrictors. It was only the dark and his mother’s anger that Henry feared. Only it was going to be a little bit difficult. Even sitting up seemed to make his head go round and round.

‘It’s an outrage!’ stormed Sister Concepcion, returning to the refectory. ‘The child hasn’t even been out of bed! I shall call Dr Gonzales.’

But even Dr Gonzales, when he came, could not make Isobel change her mind. It was, she told herself, Henry’s own heritage that she was trying to save; it was because of Henry and Stavely that she must find Rom at once and get rid of the hussy, who had, after all, managed to make herself known to him. To be soft now, decided Isobel, turning away from the white face and dark-ringed eyes of her small son, would be to do Henry no service. Even now some dreadful school or institution might be making an offer for Stavely and those wretched trustees would accept anything to get their money.

So Henry was dressed, his things packed — and presently he sat on his bed waiting for the cab that was to take them to the harbour. His legs, thinner than ever, dangled from the high white bed and every so often he coughed — a racking, prolonged cough that shook his small frame — but he sat as straight as a ramrod and when his mother said, as she did from time to time, ‘You feel better now, don’t you, Henry?’ he answered, ‘Yes, thank you,’ in as convincing a voice as he could manage. And sometimes he was rewarded by her smile.

The cab arrived. Sister Concepcion bustled in, her face creased with concern, and kissed Henry, who clung to her in a way which Isobel thought excessive. Sister Annunciata picked up Henry’s case.

‘Thank you,’ said Isobel to the nuns, holding out her hand. ‘You have been very kind and I am grateful. When I get back to England, I will make a donation to your Order.’

Sister Margharita murmured a suitable acknowledgement, while Henry slipped off the side of the bed and stood up. This turned out to be more difficult than he had expected, but it was possible. And it had to be possible, too, to walk to the door. One simply put out one foot and then the other .. I can do it, said Henry to himself. But he couldn’t — not quite. Far more weakened by his illness than he realised, he swayed as the room spun round and would have fallen, but that Sister Concepcion caught him in her motherly arms and carried him out to the cab.

Isobel, walking ahead, had seen nothing.

Those who believe that nuns are gentle soft-voiced souls who speak ill of no one, would have been surprised could they have heard Sister Concepcion and her two helpers in the Convent of the Sacred Heart after the evening meal. But by that time Isobel and her son had steamed out of harbour and were once more en route for the Golden City.

‘I must say I think they have it all wrong, the people who say that to part is to die a little. It seems to me,’ said Harriet, ‘that to part is to die really quite a lot. I mean, thirty-six hours without you…’

She stood on the terrace wearing the extraordinarily becoming blue dress that Marie-Claude had bought, waiting for Furo to bring round the black car in order to drive her to Manaus. For the Company was leaving the following day, due to embark on the Lafayette on Friday evening ready to sail at dawn, and she was going to say goodbye to Madame Simonova and spend a last night with her friends at the Metropole.

Rom stood beside her, troubled for no reason he could understand. She holds my shadow , he thought, quoting the phrase his Indians used to describe someone who had them in their power. Once it had seemed to him that this country was the ‘incomparable remedy’. Now it was this quiet, unspectacular girl, whose loss would utterly diminish him.

But why should he lose her?

‘Do you want me to go back with the Company?’ Harriet had asked a few days earlier. ‘Would that be… the right thing to do?’

‘Want you to go back? Want you to? God, Harriet, do you have to ask me that?’ Rom had replied. ‘Do you want to go with them?’

‘No, I don’t. I would like to stay… if it is convenient.’

‘Convenient? Sometimes I think you’re a little mad. Perhaps you should come upstairs,’ he had said furiously. ‘I don’t seem to be able to make you understand anything when you’re on your feet.’

Since then she had abandoned herself to a degree of creative loving which exceeded anything he had ever imagined, her passionate physical response balanced by a respect for his work that gave him both rest and stimulus. But for her solitary practice sessions each morning at her makeshift barre , he would have sworn that she was utterly content.

‘I wish I could have gone with you,’ he said yet again. ‘I hate you to go alone.’

He had intended to take Harriet to Manaus himself and make good his promise to Simonova to bring her to say goodbye, but Alvarez — his work at Ombidos completed — was calling at São Gabriel on his way home, and to Alvarez Rom owed a debt that must be paid. There was no question of Harriet being in danger. Edward had been seen standing on the deck of the Gregory as she steamed away from Belem, and it was most unlikely that a man who had made such an idiot of himself once would return to the attack. Moreover de Silva was back in Manaus and well able to control the antics of his men.

Why, then, this unease?

‘You’ve given me too much money,’ protested Harriet. ‘Even if I buy presents for absolutely everybody, I can’t spend it.’

‘It is not for buying presents for absolutely everybody,’ he said sternly. ‘It’s for you.’

She shook her head and reached for his hand, counting the knuckles carefully, checking them off one by one with her fingertips to make sure that everything was as it should be and that she would not forget — in the day and night she was to be away — the configuration of his little fingernail or the exact place where a vein to which she was particularly devoted changed its course.