A Swans - Eva Ibbotson

“No.”

“You can do that,” explained Henry. “You can buy places without being there. You send a cable and it goes snaking out along a tube at the bottom of the sea—and then the bank gives people money and you buy their houses. He did it just as soon as you told him about us, and it’s because of you that someone else didn’t buy it first. I told Mummy you’d find him; I told her!”

“She’s here then, your mother?” asked Harriet, noting her own idiocy. Where else would she be, the mother of such a child? The pain was beginning now—not unendurable yet… just mustering.

“Yes! And she’s so happy! She hasn’t been cross all day—well, only when I asked Uncle Rom a lot of questions, but he said I had a refreshing mind.” Henry paused and beamed up at her. The discovery that he had a refreshing mind had set the seal on this joyous and successful day. “He’s so nice , isn’t he—Uncle Rom? He’s just right for a ‘secret boy,’ even though he’s grown-up. I thought uncles might be… well, you know, uncles … but he isn’t. He showed me the manatees and some poisoned arrows he got from an Indian and the coati took a nut from my hand.” His attention caught by something in her expression, he said anxiously, “You do like him too, don’t you, Harriet?” ‘ “Yes, Henry. I like him very much.”

“Because he likes you a lot . He said we had a… mutual friend and that was you. And, Harriet, he told me all the things he’s going to do at Stavely. He’s going to make a tree-house, only not in the Wellingtonia because it’s too high; not that I’d be frightened, but it’s not convenient for it to be so high. And he’s going to get a huge dog—a wolfhound—and show me how to train him—and he’s going to get rid of awful Mr. Grunthorpe and let old Nannie come and live in the house again. He told me all that while Mummy was resting, and it’s all because of you, Harriet—otherwise someone else might have bought Stavely first, but you found him and you made everything come right.”

“I’m glad, Henry.” The pain could definitely be said to be limbering up. She had imagined it often, but there seemed to be aspects that one could not in fact anticipate and the physical part was beginning to be a nuisance: the nausea, the trembling that assailed her limbs—and needing cover, she moved away a little so as to be out of the brightest rays of the lamp.

“Mummy said I could stay awake and tell you all about it as long as I didn’t bother Uncle Rom.” Henry paused, remembering his mother’s unaccustomed gentleness as she put him to bed. “She said I could watch out for you and tell you everything because you’ve been so kind to us.” He moved closer to Harriet because there was still one anxiety that he needed to share with this best of friends. “When she was saying good night, Mummy told me that she had to marry my father when she was young because he made such a dreadful fuss when she said she wouldn’t, but now he’s dead she can marry Uncle Rom. Only Harriet, when she marries him he’ll be my stepfather, won’t he? Like Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield and all those cruel step-people in fairy stories. And Mr. Murdstone was nice to David before he married his mother, but then he was awful . Only I don’t see how Uncle Rom could be awful, do you?”

One last effort and then she could let go… crawl away, be sick, howl like Hecuba…

“Henry, if you don’t mind my saying so you’re being a little bit silly,” said Harriet, managing to make her voice matter-of-fact—almost reproving. “Surely you have read the Jungle Book ?”

“Yes. Yes, I have.” She made no attempt to prompt him, but waited quietly until understanding came. “You mean Mowgli!” cried Henry. “Mowgli had a stepfather!”

“Exactly.”

“Yes, he did, didn’t he? An absolutely marvelous stepfather! A proper wolf!” Henry was radiant. “Oh yes—and Uncle Rom’s a bit like a wolf, isn’t he—sort of brave and wild?” As he smiled up at her she noticed that the gaps in his teeth were almost filled; it was three months since they had met in the maze. “Would you like to come and see Mummy?” he went on. “She was in the sitting room just now, hugging Uncle Rom and everything, but I expect they’ve stopped now.” He broke off, his russet head tilted in concern. “Are you all right, Harriet? You’re not getting the measles?”

“No, Henry. I’m… perfectly all right.”

“I’d better go back to bed then or Mummy will be cross.” He put up his arms and she kissed him for the last time. “You’re sure you’re not getting the measles?” And as she nodded, “I’ll see you in the morning. You’re my best friend in the whole world, Harriet.”

“And you are mine.”

At the top of the terrace he turned. “Do you know what I’m sleeping in, Harriet? A hammock ! Uncle Rom said I could—honestly!” said Henry and pattered away toward the house.

He had gone, but she wasn’t sick and the trembling had stopped. Because of course it couldn’t be true, what Henry had said—it couldn’t be over so suddenly, so completely, without the journey back still to be with Rom. Henry wouldn’t lie, but he must be mistaken. He was so intelligent that it was easy to forget that he was just a little child.

She went quietly up the last of the steps, made her way toward the windows of the salon. The curtains were open and light streamed out onto the terrace.

Inside, two figures, unaware of her… absorbed.

(“I know what it’s like… I know how it is to be at a window… outside… and to look in on a lighted room and not be able to make anyone hear.”

“How do you know? You have not experienced it.”

“Perhaps I am going to one day. There is a man in England who says that time is curved…”)

Rom stood with his back to her, the dark head bent, one arm resting on a bookcase. Isobel faced him, almost as tall as he, and for a moment it seemed to Harriet that she looked straight at her, but of course she could not have seen her in the darkness—that was absurd. She had loosened the beautiful red hair which flowed like a river over her black gown and as she leaned toward Rom, smiling, putting a hand on his arm, their sense of kinship came across to Harriet as clearly as if she had proclaimed, “We belong, this man and I! We inhabit the same world!”

Then, perhaps responding to something Rom had said, she moved forward, stumbled a little… seemed as if she might fall—and as he moved quickly toward her, her arms went around him and her head came to rest against his shoulder. And as she stood thus in sanctuary, staring past the place where Harriet stood, her face was transfigured by pride and happiness and love.

“It is only necessary to do the steps,” Marie-Claude had said.

But there were no steps for this: no piteous undulations of the arms, no bounces backward. Just a slow turning to stone… a nothingness… a death.

Then she turned and walked away—moving, this lightest of dancers, like an old, old woman—and vanished into the dark.

“No! No! No!” yelled Grisha, whacking at Harriet’s shins with his cane. “You are a durak—an idiot! Why do you bend your knees like a carthorse? The line must be smooth, smooth …” He demonstrated, flicked his fingers at the old accompanist—and in the cleared Palm Lounge of the Lafayette , Harriet resumed her assembles .

She had been working for two hours and before that there had been class and Grisha, formerly so kind, had bullied and shouted and despaired of her as he had done each day of their journey across the calm Atlantic. For Harriet was no longer just a girl in the corps— Simonova was taking her to Russia; she was to be a serious dancer and for a girl thus singled out there could be no mercy and no rest.