A Company of Swans

16

‘That woman is not fit to have charge of a child,’ said the plump and motherly Sister Concepcion. ‘It’s insufferable the way she paces up and down like a caged animal in front of him. Every time she is with him for an hour, his temperature goes up.’

She put down her cup and glared round the bare, white-walled refectory in which the nuns were taking a brief break. It was midday but the convent, built around a tree-shaded courtyard, had no truck with the noise and bustle of Belem harbour where the Gregory had just docked, down from Manaus, and was taking on cargo before setting off across the Atlantic.

‘Poor little scrap!’ Sister Margharita’s eyes behind their pebble glasses were angry. A schoolteacher before she took the veil, Sister Margharita — who helped Sister Concepcion in the infirmary — spoke a little English and she had formed an excellent opinion of Henry. Not even at the highest point of his fever had the child failed in courtesy to those who nursed him. ‘He needs at least a week convalescing quietly, and a fortnight would not be too much, but she was on again this morning, trying to tell me he was well enough to travel. I shall be glad when the Bernadetto goes out tonight. There isn’t another sailing for a week, so maybe she’ll settle down.’

‘Not her,’ said Sister Concepcion. ‘She’s possessed by some devil.’

‘Or some man,’ said Sister Annunciata. She had been a considerable beauty before she took the veil, but if this made her understand Mrs Brandon better than the others, she judged her no less harshly. Henry had been extremely ill. Bronchitis had set in just as his rash was fading and for a few days they had feared pneumonia, that dreaded aftermath of measles. While the child’s life had been in danger Mrs Brandon had shown a proper concern, but now her restless impatience was once more in full flood. To see Henry’s anxious eyes following his mother round the room, to see the touching way in which the weakened little boy tried to respond to her injunction to sit up properly and endeavour to put his feet on the ground, was to have feelings about the beautiful widow which, as handmaidens of the Lord, they had hoped to have put behind them.

‘Anyway, she is out for the morning,’ said Sister Concepcion. ‘So the child will get some sleep.’

Isobel was, in fact, sitting on the pavement of an elegant harbour-side café eating an ice-cream. Fashionably dressed in black muslin, her hair swept up under a wide-brimmed hat, she attracted a good deal of attention, but she was as indifferent to the admiring glances of the passers-by as she had been to the friendly greetings of the women drinking lemonade at a neighbouring table, or the laughter of the children playing beside the boats. Only the black and scarlet funnel of the Bernadetto, just beginning to take on passengers for the journey to Manaus, pierced her absorption — taunting her with her incarceration in this wretched place. It was a slow boat, taking nine days for the voyage and stopping absolutely everywhere, but at least it would have got her there.

Ever since Henry had mentioned Harriet, Isobel’s need to be on her way had become a kind of frenzy. She had told herself again and again that she was being absurd; Henry could not even have known Rom’s name when he spoke to Harriet in the maze — yet she could not free herself of the image of a young girl crossing the main square of Manaus, walking up the imposing flight of steps to the mansion that must be Follina, being admitted by two powdered footmen… and then the door closing behind her. Closing… but not opening again to let her out. An absurd image, but one which gave Isobel no rest.

But little as Isobel was aware of her surroundings, she did notice a tall man in a crumpled linen suit who had come off the gangway of the Gregory and was now walking in a somewhat dazed manner in her direction. Surely — yes, it was the irritating Englishman who had travelled with her and was now, presumably, on his way home.

‘Dr Finch-Dutton?’

Edward turned, stopped, lifted his hat. He seemed to be overcome with embarrassment, and this was not surprising, for he presented an extraordinary sight. His fingers were criss-crossed with strips of sticking-plaster and another massive piece of plaster traversed his forehead. Two deep scratches ran from the top of his collar to his chin, and a piece was missing from the lobe of his right ear.

‘Good heavens, Dr Finch-Dutton — what on earth has happened to you? Have you been in the jungle?’

‘Yes, I suppose I have. In a sense. Yes, you could say that,’ answered Edward heavily. ‘Blood-poisoning cannot be entirely ruled out, the doctor says.’

‘What kind of animal was it?’ enquired Isobel, puzzled by the doctor’s injuries. Too slight for a jaguar, the scratches had definitely been made by something with long, sharp claws.

‘You may ask,’ said Edward. ‘Yes, Mrs Brandon, you may well ask.’

In response to her nod he took the chair beside her and Isobel, seeing that he was too distraught to place an order himself, asked for a cafezinho. ‘I cannot tell you what I have been through,’ Edward continued. ‘You wouldn’t believe it. Indeed, I find it impossible to believe it myself. But these injuries’ — he held up his fingers, touched his bitten ear — ‘were conferred on me by a human being. A human female. In short… a girl.’

‘Impossible!’

‘You might think so. But I assure you I speak the truth.’

‘Good heavens!’ Isobel, trying not to laugh, looked at him in mock concern. ‘Would it help you to tell me about it?’

‘Yes,’ said Edward, nodding gratefully, ‘I think it would. To tell the truth, I’m at my wits’ end and I simply don’t know what to do. I can’t keep going up and down the Amazon like a yo-yo. I suppose I ought to take her back to Manaus, but I don’t know if that’s what she wants. A couple of men came from Verney’s office just now to transfer her to the Bernadetto and she just kicked them in the shins and shut herself into her cabin. They—’

‘Verney?’ said Isobel, her heart pounding. ‘Who is… this Verney?’

‘A good point,’ said Edward mournfully. ‘I don’t know. I thought he was a friend, but now I think perhaps he was double-crossing me all along. I fancied I caught a glimpse of him on the stage in all that mist… only then I decided I must have been mistaken, because the fellow hadn’t shaved. Very well-turned-out fellow, Verney, you see. But now I wonder — maybe he snatched her. Got in first, so to speak?’

‘Snatched who?’

‘This girl I came to save. Decent girl, well-brought-up, only she went to pieces out here. Verney told me she was in good hands, but now I ask myself whether it wasn’t he who made her come out of a cake.’

‘Out of a cake?’

‘Yes, incredible, isn’t it? So I thought I’d bring her back by force — for her own good, of course. It was what her father wanted. Only those idiots seized the wrong girl. Well, it was I who told them to, but I could have sworn it was her. She used to tie her shoes just like that… only of course, they all tie their shoes like that in the ballet — you can see it in those paintings by that French fellow, the way they bend over. And they all whiten their arms and scrape back their hair — it’s the absolute devil trying to make out who is who.’

‘So you got the wrong girl?’

‘Yes. Only I didn’t realise it until we were a good hundred miles down the river. The stewardess gave her a sleeping draught, she kicked up such a shindy. And of course she talked Russian all the time, but we thought she was just putting it on. And then at last I went down to open the cabin door…’ He fell silent, remembering the moment of exaltation up there on the deck before he went below to forgive Harriet. ‘And then she simply flew at me. She just went for me like a tigress — biting, scratching, kicking. There was no way I could defend myself. But that wasn’t all — my injuries are nothing; it’s what she did to—’

He swallowed. It seemed he could not yet say the creature’s name without being overcome by emotion.

‘To what?’

‘Peripatus,’ Edward brought out. ‘I had it with me in a travelling case — you can’t leave something as valuable as that lying about in a cabin. And she tore the box from my hand and threw it on the ground and then when the bottle rolled out she…’ He fought for control once more. ‘She stepped on it. Deliberately. Ground it into the floor with her heel. The specimen is totally destroyed.’

‘What on earth is Peripatus?’

Edward told her. ‘I can’t tell you what a knock it is. I wouldn’t have thought anyone could do that… deliberately.’

‘Well, the creature was dead, wasn’t it? So it didn’t suffer?’

‘I suffered,’ said Edward. ‘I don’t think I shall ever get over it. There are things a chap never forgets. And now what am I to do with her? She doesn’t speak a word of English and just kicks anyone who comes near her; she’s raving mad. Of course she’s had a bad time, I can see that. She keeps saying all these names — Yussop and Grigory and Alexi — over and over again, and passing her finger across her neck, so I suppose she means they’re her brothers and they will cut my throat. But if she comes from a large family, maybe she’s homesick?’

Olga had got a splinter of glass into her foot through grinding the tube into the ground with her ballet shoes. She’d gone quite quiet while he took the splinter out of her heel — such a hard, muscular foot she had. All of her was hard and muscular, which was not what he had expected; well, not quite all of her… But then when he’d finished she’d started wrestling with him again. Verney’s men had thought it a great joke when she wouldn’t go with them, but what the devil was he to do?

‘And what of the girl you came to save?’ Isobel asked.

Edward shrugged wearily. ‘What can I do? She’s completely depraved. Mind you, there is no way Harriet could have done that to Peripatus. She may come out of cakes—’

‘Harriet! Is that her name?’

Edward nodded. No good trying to shield Harriet now, things had gone well beyond that. ‘Her name is Harriet Morton. Her father’s a professor at my own college, St Philip’s, and she used to be a thoroughly decent girl. At least, I thought she was. As a matter of fact, we were at Stavely only three months ago.’

‘Tell me about her. All about her,’ said Isobel, forcing herself to look appealingly into his eyes.

So Edward told her the story of his courtship and pursuit, the distress Harriet had caused to him and her father, and the part that Verney had played in the story while Isobel listened, here and there putting in a question, and storing away everything she heard, for knowledge was power and power she now needed desperately.

‘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.