A Company of Swans

5

For ten days after Harriet’s departure, Aunt Louisa and the Professor went about their business unconcerned over her whereabouts. It was naturally assumed that she was having a pleasant time with Mrs Fairfield and meeting the right people and Edward, though he missed her, had discovered a flea with a totally unexpected bristle on the third tergite and was much occupied in working out the implications of this breakthrough.

This peaceful state of affairs was shattered on the last day of April, when a concerned and friendly note arrived for Aunt Louisa from Mrs Fairfield. She and Betsy had been so sorry, she wrote, that Harriet had had to postpone her visit, but if the Professor’s cousin was now recovered and they were returned from Harrogate, it would give them great pleasure if Harriet could come up for Betsy’s dance. It was quite a small affair, nothing grand, but Betsy would be so very pleased to see her friend…

Aunt Louisa, reading the letter which came by the afternoon post, did not scream or faint. She controlled herself with masterly skill, but she went to ‘the instrument’ and telephoned the lodge of St Phillip’s to ask the porter to find Professor Morton and request him to come home — something she had never done before in her life. After that, and perhaps unwisely, she telephoned her friend Mrs Hermione Belper at Trumpington Villa.

The Professor — arriving in an extremely unpleasant mood, for he had been interrupted while giving what he regarded as one of his most brilliant lectures — found Louisa’s icy hand being chafed by the Tea Circle’s president while other ladies offered sal volatile, tea and commiseration in voices from which they found it impossible to remove an undercurrent of glee.

‘What has happened, Louisa?’ he enquired sternly — and the ladies, responding to his manhood, withdrew into a corner.

Louisa held out Mrs Fairfield’s note and the Professor paled. ‘I don’t understand this. Can Harriet have deliberately deceived us — or has she been abducted?’

‘She has deliberately deceived us, Bernard! I have spoken to Mrs Fairfield on “the instrument” and the note they received with all that tarradiddle about Harrogate was definitely in Harriet’s writing. Betsy knows it well.’

‘Have you informed the police?’

‘No, Bernard, please, not the police. The scandal… Surely there has to be some way of hushing it up? We must think. I suppose someone could have forced her to write that letter, but I don’t feel it was that — she has been so strange lately. Oh, Bernard, I know! I’m sure I know!’ Louisa sat up suddenly and the smelling-salts clattered to the floor. ‘She has run away to that ballet company! She must have done. Do you remember how weirdly she spoke at that dinner-party? About it being the thing she had wanted all her life? That dreadful Russian who came to Madame Lavarre’s…’

‘Try not to be ridiculous, Louisa! My daughter would never disobey my specific orders.’ But his daughter clearly had done so and cracking his pale knuckles, he said, ‘I agree we must hush this up if we can. My position in the University if it got about… Of course, there may be a perfectly simple explanation…’

‘The white slave traffic,’ said Miss Transom, rendered authoritarian by the blessed absence of her mother.

‘I’ve always thought the girl was no better than she should be,’ hissed Millicent Braithwaite in a stage-whisper. She had not forgiven Harriet for making them look foolish at Stavely. For hours they had blundered about in that maze and then found her with a little red-haired boy and both of them laughing their heads off.

‘We must go to see Madame Lavarre at once,’ said the Professor. ‘She will know the whereabouts of that Russian scoundrel.’

‘If it is not too late!’

‘Now remember,’ said the Professor sternly, pointing his finger at the ladies, ‘no word of this must get about. Not one single word!’

‘Of course not, Professor,’ said Mrs Belper soothingly. ‘You can rely on us.’ And so Herculean were the efforts of the ladies to restrain themselves that it was a good twenty-four hours before the milkman, whom Louisa had not tipped in twenty years, was in a position to inform the man who kept the paper shop in Petty Cury that stuffy Professor Morton’s daughter had run away to become a belly-dancer in a ‘house of ill-fame’ in Buenos Aires — and serve the old so-and-so right!

Madame Lavarre — when Professor and Miss Morton were announced — smiled the happy, relaxed smile of a well-fed cougar. She had had a note from Dubrov and knew that the Mortons were too late.

‘No, I know nothing about Harriet, I am afraid,’ she said. ‘Since you have said that she may not come to my classes any more, I have not seen her.’

‘We have reason to think that she may have tried to join the ballet company of that Russian who came to see you — the man who was going up the Amazon. You will oblige me by giving me his name.’

‘Certainly.’ Madame smiled and puffed a cloud of Balkan Sobranie into the Professor’s face. ‘His name is Dubrov. Sasha Dubrov. We are very old friends. In St Petersburg we have often been skating together on the Neva and also riding horses, although of course I could not do very much sport because at the Imperial Ballet School they did not permit it in case of injury to the legs.’

‘His address, please,’ fumed the Professor. ‘You will instantly give me his address!’

‘But certainly: 33 Mikhailovskaya. It is a beautiful apartment — the bathroom is particularly fine and in five minutes one can reach the Winter Palace and also the statue of Peter the Great, though I regard this as not absolutely the best work of Etienne Falconet; there is something a little bit exaggerated in the proportions and—’

‘His address in London is what I want, Madame. Don’t trifle with me!’

‘I regret, Professor, that I do not know—’

‘The woman’s lying!’ shrieked Aunt Louisa — at which point Madame summoned her servant and the Mortons were shown the door.

‘Oh, heavens, Bernard, what shall we do?’ Louisa was so distraught that she omitted to pick up from the pavement a pocket comb with only one tooth missing which, after a good scrubbing, would have done for the spare room.

But back at Scroope Terrace the valiant Hermione Belper waved a newspaper she had just fetched from her home.

‘There!’ she said triumphantly. ‘I thought I’d seen something about a ballet company going up the Amazon. They’re at the Century Theatre, in Blooms-bury.’

The Professor took it from her hand.

‘We must leave for London immediately,’ he announced. ‘This newspaper is five days old and anything might have happened since then.’ His decisiveness sent a flutter of approval through the ladies. ‘If we hurry, we can catch the five fifty-four.’

‘But, Bernard, that could mean a night in a hotel. The expense!’ cried Louisa.

‘Damn the expense!’ said the Professor, and if anyone had doubted that he loved his daughter they could doubt no longer. ‘If this escapade should reach the ears of the Master, with the Senate elections coming up…’

‘Or Edward,’ said Louisa faintly. ‘If Edward came to hear of it…’

And an hour later the Mortons were on the train.

Stage-doorkeepers in general are not renowned for their loving kindness or the enthusiasm with which they greet unauthorised visitors, but even among that well-known band of misanthropes ‘old Bill’ at the Century stood out for the particularly poor view he took of human nature. Even before he had lost an eye in the relief of Khartoum in ’85, his nature had hardly been sanguine, and now — with the aid of a scruffy and paranoid mongrel called Griff, who bit first and asked questions afterwards — he ensured that those who worked in his theatre were seldom unnecessarily disturbed.

‘What d’yer want?’ was his greeting to the Mortons as he stuck out his grizzled head from the window of his cubby-hole.

‘We have come to see Mr Dubrov,’ announced the Professor. ‘The matter is extremely urgent.’

‘Well, he ain’t here. No one’s here at this time of night.’

It seemed unlikely that he was lying; as the Mortons had walked round it, the Century Theatre had been silent and dark.

‘We have come to make enquiries about a girl who may have joined the Company,’ began Louisa, ‘as a dancer.’

‘Shut up!’

Bill was addressing his dog, but without rancour, for in growling even more hideously than usual and baring his yellow teeth, Griff was only confirming Bill’s own view — that as far as people in general went, this toffee-nosed couple were bottom of the heap.

‘She is an English girl,’ persisted Louisa. ‘There cannot be many English girls in such a company.’

‘Not any,’ said Bill laconically. ‘All Russian. All got Russian names. Got to have. No one’ll stand for English names, not in ballet.’

‘But there must have been a girl who spoke English? You must have heard the girls speak?’

‘Me?’ said Bill, ‘Why should I hear them speak? I haven’t got time to stand around chattering. Got me work to do, I have.’

Bowing to the inevitable, the Professor felt in his pocket and extracted a half-crown, which he laid on the counter. ‘Wasn’t there just one girl who spoke to you? Said good morning, perhaps?’

Bill moved the coin slowly across the counter, but did not yet pocket it. Taking a tip could tie you…

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Come to think of it, there was one — a real smasher. Great goo-goo eyes, blonde hair and curves.’ He sketched the delectable Marie-Claude in the air with deliberate crudity.

Louisa shuddered. ‘That is not the girl we are looking for.’

‘Now look here, my man; I am the girl’s father and this is her aunt. If you know anything about her and conceal the fact, we shall have not the slightest hesitation in reporting you to the police.’

Bill lifted his eye-patch to scratch his forehead. Then slowly he slipped the half-crown into his pocket. It was doubtful if the old gaffer could do much, but there was never any point in getting mixed up with the police.

‘The girl we want is plain,’ said Louisa firmly. ‘With straight brown hair and brown eyes. A plain girl.’

‘Aye, there was a girl like that. Little thin thing. But she wasn’t plain.’ Bill remembered her well — had done so from the start. She had brought a large mutton bone for Griff all the way from the hostel where she was staying and talked proper sense to the dog. Griff had let her put the bone right into the bowl for him and that was rare enough. She was the one who stayed behind too, on the last night, helping the stage-hands get the stuff packed. ‘Nothing plain about her,’ he said, inexplicably furious with the pair. ‘Had the sweetest smile you’ve ever seen.’

‘Where is she, man? Hurry! Where is the Company staying?’

Over Bill’s face there now spread a look of unalloyed pleasure. Even his eye-patch seemed to lighten.

‘On the Atlantic Ocean, sir,’ he said. ‘They’ve been gone the best part of a week…’ and shut the hatch.

‘There must be something we can do,’ said Louisa, ‘without making it public that she has gone.’

The Mortons had not slept well and now sat at breakfast in their dining-room, removing with bony fingers the tops of their slightly sulphurous boiled eggs.

The Professor did not answer. While the possibility had existed that Harriet was in danger his rage had been modified by anxiety. Now sheer choler made it difficult for him to speak.

‘You don’t think… I mean, if she is so desperately keen to be a dancer, should one… simply wash one’s hands of her?’ asked Louisa.

The Professor put down his napkin. ‘Are you suggesting that I permit my daughter — my daughter — deliberately to flout my wishes? Do you want me to be the laughing-stock of the University? Harriet is under age; she will be brought back and she will be punished.’

‘Yes, dear. Of course. You are perfectly right. Only how?’

There was a pause, then the Professor gave a bark of inspiration.

‘Edward!’ he pronounced. ‘Edward must show himself in his true colours.’

Identical furrows appeared on the long pale foreheads of the Mortons as they considered the true colours of Edward Finch-Dutton.

‘You mean—’

‘I mean,’ said the Professor, ‘that he must go in pursuit of Harriet and bring her back. He is young. I myself,’ he lied, ‘would have welcomed such an opportunity at his age.’

‘But, Bernard, surely that could not be considered respectable? If he were to return with Harriet, everyone would think… The gossip would be unendurable. She would be ruined.’

‘She is ruined already,’ said the Professor savagely. ‘In my eyes she has put herself beyond the pale. But it shouldn’t be impossible to think of something.’

‘Mrs Fairfield would be willing to say that Harriet has been with them all the time in London — I am sure of it; she hinted as much on “the instrument”. So that if we met the ship and brought her back to Cambridge, everyone would simply think we had been fetching her from her friend,’ said Louisa, mercifully unaware of the rumours even now flying round the city.

‘And Edward would only need to say he had been on an entomological expedition,’ put in the Professor. ‘Those natural scientists think nothing of wasting months in pointless field trips. But there is not a moment to lose — she already has nearly a week’s start and who knows where that scoundrel might take her next — Rio de Janeiro, even New York… We have no evidence that he means to bring her back to England. Edward must leave at once.’

‘Let us go to him,’ said Louisa.

This was not a suggestion she would normally have made, and as they passed down long laboratory corridors and into rooms where Edward might have been — but wasn’t — she was continually affronted by sights which she would have preferred to be spared. Young men in running shorts pedalled on stationary bicycles while pointers inscribed the furious zig-zag of their heartbeats on smoked drums… An appallingly identifiable yellow liquid bubbled fiendishly through a system of flasks, filter funnels and rubber tubing… In a glass-fronted altitude chamber, a bearded research assistant was slowly turning blue.

Term was over, but Edward was in the teaching lab sorting out demonstration slides. However, one glimpse of the Mortons advancing with set faces caused the colour to drain from his face.

‘Harriet!’ he said. ‘She is ill? She has had an accident?’

The Professor looked round the lab to make sure that it was empty before saying, ‘It might be better if she had.’

Five minutes later, Edward, still holding the slide of a liver fluke he had been putting away when disaster struck, leaned against Henderson’s parsnip tank, a broken man. Harriet had done this thing! Harriet whom he worshipped, whom he had selected from all the girls he knew for her gentleness and docility… Harriet had run away, had defied her father and was even now perhaps kicking up her legs in some hot theatre while greasy dagos watched her and licked their lips.

‘I don’t know what to say.. ’ He put down the slide on the bench and stood shaking his head. ‘It’s a blow… the Mater…’ Stunned and wretched, Edward saw years of careful planning brought suddenly to nought. The proposal at the May Ball; a visit to Goring-on-Thames to introduce Harriet to his mother… the little house in Madingley or Grantchester. ‘She has put herself beyond the reach of a decent man.’

‘No, Edward,’ said Louisa, ‘it may not be too late. She has been headstrong and foolish, but you may still be able to save here. Not to forgive her, perhaps — we do not ask that of you — but to restore her to safety and the parental home. We think,’ she continued, coming down to earth, ‘that we could hush things up so that no one need know of her flight.’

Edward was silent, still, shaking his long head sadly from side to side. Images of Harriet floated through his mind: the demure brown head; the clear and docile brow; the small ears peeping — rather wistfully, he had always thought — through her hair. Harriet’s soft voice, her slow smile…

‘How?’ he said at last. ‘How could it be hushed up?’

The Professor fixed him with a steely look. ‘We want you to go after her, Edward. To bring her back. If you do this, we can avoid a scandal.’ He explained about the Fairfields, while Edward stared at him dumbfounded.

‘You want me to go to Manaus? But that’s impossible! It’s quite impossible. No one could ask it of me.’

‘We would not expect you to marry her any longer, Edward,’ said Louisa, laying her skeletal hand on his arm. ‘Nor even to forgive her. Only to save her from her folly… and to save her family.’

‘To show yourself a man,’ stated the Professor.

‘No.’ Edward was resolute. Yet as he stood there, images of Harriet continued to jostle each other in his brain. The way she had laughed when that little baby had set off in its nappies across the sacrosanct Fellows’ Lawn at King’s. The way she had pulled down a branch of white lilac behind St Benet’s Church and let the rain-drops run down her face. And now perhaps she was ill with some jungle fever… or abandoned. ‘Edward,’ she would say when she saw him. ‘Oh, Edward, you have come!’

‘And in any case,’ he said, ‘I have my work.’

But that was a mistake. Images of Harriet were replaced by others more lurid, more feverish and, to a professional entomologist, reekingly desirable. The Brazilian rhinoceros beetle which stretched the length of a man’s hand… the Morpho butterfly, like an iridescent blue dinner-plate, beating its way through the leaf canopy… fireflies by whose light it was possible to read. To say nothing of the wholly virgin territory of the Amazonian flea…

Implacable, with their characteristic look of having just stepped down from a cut-price sarcophagus, the Mortons stood before him.

‘I would never be able to get leave,’ said Edward.

That, however, was not necessarily true. He only had two practicals in the summer term; Henderson would do those for him and the head of his department was a great believer in field work — in getting what he called ‘nose to nose with the insect’.

The images came faster. The Goliath beetle, six inches from mouth to sternum… the ‘88’ butterfly, a brilliant airborne hieroglyphic for which private collectors would give their ears… Harriet lying on a pillow, her hair spread out; her limp body acquiescent as he carried her to safety up the gangplank of the ship… And Peripatus — ah, Peripatus! Edward’s blue eyes grew soft as he thought of this seemingly insignificant creature, half-worm, half-insect, the world’s oldest living fossil, crawling — as it had crawled since the dawn of time — through the unchanging debris of the rain-forest floor.

Torn beyond endurance, he gazed into the tank where Henderson’s lone parsnip continued to respire silently in the cause of science. ‘Look at my fate,’ the captive vegetable seemed to be saying. ‘Free yourself. Show yourself a hero. Be a man.’ Making a final stand, Edward turned back to the Professor. ‘And there is the fare,’ said Edward, ‘I cannot possibly afford the fare.’

A grimace, a convulsion of the thin lips, a kind of spasm — and then the Merlin Professor looked straight at Edward and said, ‘I will pay the fare.’