Eva Ibbotson - Journey to the River Sea

Then after breakfast Maia started lessons with the twins.

They did them in the dining room, sitting at the big oak table. The room was already hot at eight in the morning. They could not use the fan because it blew the pages of the books about and to the smell of insect-killer were added the other morning scents of the house: carbolic soap, Lysol and Jeyes fluid.

Mrs Carter had given clear orders to Miss Minton.

‘The girls work from a set of books by Dr Bullman. As you see, the books cover all the subjects they will need.’

She pointed to Dr Bullman’s English Grammar, Dr Bullman’s English Composition, Dr Bullman’s French Primer, Dr Bullman’s History of England and Dr Bullman’s Geography. All the books had the same brown covers and on each one was a picture of Dr Bullman himself. He had a pointed beard, staring eyes and a bulging forehead, and as Maia looked at him she felt a slight lurching of the stomach.

‘I want you to stick absolutely to the exercises in the books,’ Mrs Carter went on. ‘No making things up. No straying. I have always made this the rule — then when a governess leaves, the next one knows exactly where to take over.’

‘Yes, Mrs Carter.’

‘Every three months a progress report is sent out to Dr Bullman in England. You will of course show me yours before you send it.’ She gave a couple of squirts with the flit gun in the direction of the window where a small fly had appeared. ‘You will find the books very clear and easy to use,’ she said, and left.

The twins were dressed in white again. Today Beatrice had a green ribbon in her hair and Gwendolyn’s was yellow. Seeing them so fresh and pretty made Maia ashamed of her thoughts the night before, and she smiled at them. They would be friends in the end, she was sure of it.

Miss Minton looked at the timetable. English Grammar was first. She opened Dr Bullman at the page with a marker.

‘That’s where we were when Miss Porterhouse left,’ said Beatrice with a sly look at her governess.

‘She left suddenly,’ said Gwendolyn.

‘Mama sent her away.’

Miss Minton gave her a steely glance. ‘Beatrice, read out the paragraph on The Use of the Comma , please.’

‘“The Comma is used… to divide… a sentence into… phrases,” ’ read Beatrice. She read slowly and with difficulty, and Maia looked up surprised, for Beatrice was older than her, and they had done The Use of the Comma two years earlier at the Academy.

‘Now, Gwendolyn. Look at the first exercise. Where does the comma go in that sentence?’

Gwendolyn’s round blue eyes looked puzzled. ‘After… after station…’

‘No. Have another look.’

The morning dragged on. Dr Bullman’s exercises were the most boring Maia had ever seen and the girls worked so slowly that she had to look away so as to hide her expression. But when Miss Minton asked Maia to read a paragraph, she stopped her almost at once. ‘All right, Maia, that will do,’ she said crossly, and Maia looked up, puzzled. It was a ridiculously easy passage, surely she had not read it wrong? But Miss Minton did not ask her to read again.

After English Grammar came English Composition. Dr Bullman did not believe that children should write stories using their imaginations. He gave set subjects, examples of how to begin, how to end, and the number of words they were to use. Then came French — and Maia had to sit in silence while the twins stumbled over phrases she had learnt in her first year.

But the boredom was not as bad as knowing she had upset Miss Minton. The governess gave her no chance to read or take part — she did not even look at her. Maia had begun to think of Miss Minton as her friend, but clearly she was wrong.

At eleven Mrs Carter came back with the flit gun, followed by the sullen maid with a jug of tinned orange juice and four of the dry biscuits they had had the day before.

‘Would you like to take your elevenses in the garden?’ suggested Miss Minton.

The twins looked at her in amazement.

‘We never go out into the garden,’ said Beatrice, looking at the raked square of gravel which an Indian was spraying with something.

‘You get stung,’ offered Gwendolyn.

So they stayed in the hot room with the loudly ticking clock. After break came arithmetic. The twins were better at that, and as it was Maia’s weakest subject she was able to work out the sums without too much boredom. But history, which for Dr Bullman was the History of England and nowhere else, was deadly: the repeal of the Corn Laws and a list of pointless dates. There was not one lesson which touched the lives of the twins in Brazil; Geography was about coach-building in Birmingham, and RI was about a girl who would not read her bible and was struck down by a terrible disease.

After lunch the twins did needlework in the drawing room, watched by their mother, who kept the flit gun by her chair as other women might keep a pet dog — a Dachshund or a Pekinese. Beatrice was embroidering a table mat with primroses, Gwendolyn’s was covered in violets. Maia was given a square of linen and a skein of embroidery thread.

‘What are you going to put on yours?’ asked Beatrice.

‘I thought I’d like to do those big red lilies that grow everywhere here. Canna lilies I think they’re called.’

Beatrice made a face. ‘Oh, you don’t want to do them. They’re native flowers and they’re nasty.’

‘Mother says they’re a Breeding Ground.’

Maia looked up, surprised. ‘What are they a Breeding Ground for?’

‘Horrid things. Things that bite you and make you ill. They crawl out of the inside.’

Another hour of lessons followed. Then Miss Minton suggested they might like to read some poetry, and Maia’s face lit up.

‘Must we?’ asked Beatrice. ‘Can’t we just go on with the exercises?’

‘Very well,’ said Miss Minton, ignoring Maia’s disappointed face.

The afternoon ended with the twins’ piano practice. They did exactly half an hour each, with the metronome set. Scales, arpeggios, The Dance of the Butterflies, The Merry Peasant … And after half an hour exactly they stopped, even if they were in the middle of a bar.

‘And you, Maia?’ asked Mrs Carter. ‘Did you have piano lessons in England?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Maia, looking longingly at the piano.

‘Well tomorrow you shall have your turn to practise. I have rather a headache coming on now.’

As she sat at supper, to which Miss Minton was not allowed to come, it occurred to Maia that the twins had not once been out of doors; not for five minutes to look at the river or take a stroll.

How am I going to stand it? thought Maia, shut up like a prisoner.

Back in her room she turned out the lamp and pushed the chair under the window as she had done the night before. She was beginning to make out the people who lived there. In the middle hut lived Furo the boatman, and Tapi, the sullen maid to whom he was married — but it was from there that the singing had come so there had to be other people living there: so sulky a woman could not have sung such a song.

The girl with the baby lived in the hut on the left: she was the wife of the gardener who sprayed Mrs Carter’s gravel and was half Portuguese, which was why her baby sometimes wore nappies instead of running naked as the Indian babies did. The little dog belonged to her. There was a chicken run behind the huts — an old woman with long grey hair came out sometimes to feed them — and she had heard the grunting of a pig, but all the animal noises were quickly hushed — for fear of the Carters she guessed.

The next three days were exactly the same. The sound of squirting and stamping at dawn, Doctor Bullman’s boring lessons, unspeakable meals — tinned fish in a bluish sauce, endless beetroot, and a cornflour ‘shape’ that seemed to quiver with fear as Tapi brought it to the table. The twins, who always looked so clean and fresh in the morning, were flushed and grumpy by the end of the day. Mr Carter scarcely spoke and disappeared into his study, and whenever it was Maia’s turn at the piano, Mrs Carter had a headache.