Eva Ibbotson - A Company of Swans

She looked up, amazed. ‘But I never even met him! And if I had, I wouldn’t plead for a grown man who had deserted his family. It would be none of my business… well, it isn’t anyway, I suppose. But if you had seen Henry — my Henry — he’s lost all his milk teeth and he worries about wearing spectacles and he had this image of you. I think the idea of you somehow kept him going.’

She fell silent, realising how uncannily accurate the child’s description of Rom had been. Rom could save Stavely; he could save anything or anyone he chose.

‘Yes, I see. I’m afraid it’s a case of Romeo and the chicken feather,’ he said ruefully. ‘I should have thought — it was obvious really — but I was too angry. I have no reason to be fond of my half-brother.’ There was a pause. Then, ‘Did you see Isobel Brandon?’

‘I saw her for a moment through a doorway. She seemed very distressed. And very beautiful.’

‘Yes, I can imagine she would still be beautiful.’ He looked about for something to help him through what was to come, found Harriet’s hand and appropriated it, feeling it to be his due. ‘I think it’s time I told you about my youth at Stavely. I was once engaged to Isobel, you see.’

He began to speak then, and in the hour that followed he held back nothing.

Harriet learned of his childhood, his veneration for his father, the desolation he had felt at his mother’s death. Of his brother he could not speak even now without hatred, but the passage of time made it possible for him to be fair to Isobel. He emphasised her youth, the agony she had experienced when her grandfather was ruined.

‘I saw only her betrayal,’ he said. ‘Now I see that she must have suffered. I expected too much from someone so young.’

‘No.’ Harriet’s denial was scarcely audible, but he caught it and smiled, unfolding her fingers to make a fan, which he spread out on the satinwood table.

‘I was penniless, futureless; she wanted to be safe.’

He went on then to tell Harriet of the kindness of Madeleine de la Tour, of his early adventures on the river. But there remained with Harriet the image of a woman, beautiful and high-born, whom he had passionately loved — a woman who belonged to his own world — and a place for which he still craved. And she saw that in calling up help for Isobel’s child, she had also invoked help for Isobel, whose first — and surely last — love he had been.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Henry in a small, croaking voice. It hurt him to speak, his head throbbed and though the nuns had closed the shutters of the long windows of the sanatorium, a ray of light entering through a crack pierced his eyes as if it were a dagger. ‘I’m awfully sorry I’m ill,’ said Henry to his mother.

‘Don’t be silly, Henry,’ said Isobel, sitting beside his bed. ‘It’s not your fault.’

But she found it hard to conceal her impatience. It was there behind her words, in her quick, restless movements so different from the gentle movements of the nuns in their white habits. Feverish as he was, Henry knew them all: Sister Concepcion, round and soft and soothing; Sister Annunciata, beautiful and stately with hands that seemed cool even in the dreadful heat; tall, bony Sister Margharita with her pebble glasses, who could make the pillow stop wrinkling and the medicine slip down his aching throat.

Oh, why did I bring the child, thought Isobel for the hundredth time. It was unbearable being trapped here in Belem, with a thousand miles still to travel down the Amazon. Henry had been good on the Atlantic crossing, it had to be admitted, making friends with the Portuguese crew in spite of the language barrier and not troubling her much — which was as well, for the only other British passenger, a rather ludicrous entomologist, had not been at all helpful about amusing the child. Dr Finch-Dutton had been pleased enough to introduce himself as an erstwhile visitor to Stavely, but when it came to answering Henry’s questions or making himself useful, that was another matter. But as they approached the coast of Brazil, Henry had become evidently and unconcealably ill.

The doctor of the Vasco da Gama, only too aware of the lethal fevers which raged in that part of the world, had greeted with unconcealed relief the appearance, the day before they were due to dock at Belem, of the tell-tale white spots inside Henry’s mouth.

‘Measles, Madame, without a doubt,’ he said in excellent English. ‘You must be extremely relieved…’

‘Yes, indeed. Now we can travel on down to Manaus. I have friends there who can make him comfortable.’

‘Travel on!’ The doctor was shocked. ‘Certainly not! There is no question of subjecting the child to the river journey in this heat. He needs careful nursing — and I have my other passengers to think of.’

‘It is probably the other passengers he caught it from,’ flashed Isobel. ‘Those dirty people in the steerage.’

But the doctor was adamant. ‘I hope there will be no complications, but damage to the eyes or the chest cannot be entirely ruled out. We shall ask the nuns of the Sacred Heart to take him in. They are excellent nurses and will not, I think, refuse the child.’

And the nuns, seeing Henry with streaming eyes and a temperature of 104 degrees, had not refused.

‘I’m absolutely all right.’ Henry’s painful croak came once more from the high white bed. ‘You don’t have to stay.’

‘I shall stay until Sister Concepcion comes back,’ said Isobel. But she took her watch surreptitiously from her pocket and looked at it. There was really nothing to do for Henry — all the proper nursing was done by the nuns — and it made these vigils very long.

How dreadfully unattractive he looked, poor scrap. His rash was at its blotchiest; his hair, darkened by sweat, clung to his scalp. The nuns had removed his glasses and the grey eyes were swollen and streaming. Would Rom be put off by such a charge? After all, Henry was the child of a man he had every reason to detest. She had rehearsed so often her appearance before Rom — helpless, a little penitent, holding her defenceless child by the hand.

But not a child who looked as Henry looked now.

Oh, God, the frustration of being baulked when she was so close to her goal! Should she have sent a message to Rom by Doctor Finch-Dutton, who had travelled on with scant concern — it seemed to her — for the fate of his stranded countrywoman? No… Her instinct to surprise Rom was sound, she was sure. Warned of her appearance he might refuse to see her; she had not forgotten his face that last day at Stavely. To keep the reason for her journey secret from everyone, even the child, had been wise, she was certain.

Henry moved his aching head on the pillow. His mother’s impatience came across to him as tangibly as if she was pacing the floor or biting her nails. Yesterday, knowing how badly he had failed her, he had tried to get out of bed and find some of that white stuff which the nuns put on his rash to make it itch less. He had thought that if he covered his face with it properly, they might think he was better and let him travel on — and then his mother would be happy again. It was a silly thing to think, but measles made you muddled… and anyway it hadn’t worked, because before he could get to the cupboard the room had begun to spin round and Sister Concepcion had come and scolded him and carried him back to bed.

Only I must get better quicker, thought Henry. It was awful, letting down his mother when she had taken him on a proper adventure. The ship had been lovely; everyone had been so kind. They had seen dolphins and flying fish and the captain had let him go on the bridge. And then, just when the best bit was about to begin — the journey down the Amazon — God had sent him the measles.

But it wasn’t only that he had spoiled the journey. Though she had said nothing, Henry knew why his mother was so impatient — she wanted to get on quickly and find ‘the Boy’. He had known from the start that they were going to look for him. It had been his name on the washing basket and he was on the Amazon, as Henry had known. Suddenly his mother hadn’t minded speaking about him — she had wanted to — and the stories she told him were better even than old Nannie’s.

All the while as they prepared for the journey, his mother had been in a good mood, talking and laughing and looking so beautiful in her black dresses. Even when they came and put up boards to say that Stavely was for sale, she hadn’t seemed to mind. ‘We’re just going on a holiday,’ she had kept on saying, but Henry knew better.

And now he had spoiled everything. Now it was like it had been before when he could do nothing right.

A spasm of coughing seized him, painful and dry.

‘Henry, you mustn’t cough in people’s faces. Where is your handkerchief?’

Where indeed? He groped under the hot sheet, eventually found a crumpled handkerchief and covered his mouth. It was odd how everything could hurt at once: his head, his chest, his throat, even the backs of his legs…

Would it help if he told his mother that it was all right? That ‘the Boy’ was probably found already and knew how much they needed him? Harriet had promised she would try to find him and he trusted Harriet as he trusted no one in the world. So far he had said nothing, since he was not supposed to know the reason for their journey, but surely anything was better than to have her so worried.

He cleared his throat. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said, ‘because of Harriet. Harriet will have found him.’

‘Found who?’

‘“The Boy”.’ Aware that his idol was now grown-up and had a name, Henry still clung to the old usage.

‘Harriet?’ His mother’s sharp voice made Henry close his eyes. ‘Who is Harriet?’

‘She was in the maze.’ Henry was very tired now. ‘With the “tea ladies”. Only she wasn’t a tea lady; she was a girl.’

‘And what has she to do with all this?’

Henry moistened his cracked lips. ‘She said she was going to the Amazon… And I said would she find him and tell him… about Stavely. And she said she would.’

‘What sort of a girl? Grown-up?’

‘Yes.’ Under his eyelids Henry saw Harriet as she had been in the maze, looking down at him so tenderly. He could see her white blouse and her blue skirt with the bands round the hem and her crunchy, friendly smile. ‘She was lovely,’ Henry said now. ‘She was really beautiful.’

Fury gripped Isobel. She remembered now catching a glimpse of one young girl among the dreadful spinsters and overdressed matrons who had tramped through Stavely. She had stood for a moment, watching from the corridor. Not pretty, of course; perfectly plain and ordinary, but young — eighteen, perhaps.

Oh, God, that wretched child, what had he done now? Henry had not known Rom’s name at the time and could hardly have told her much, but a determined girl asking for an Englishman of Rom’s wealth and status could find him easily enough and worm her way into his house. If she found Rom closeted with some prissy English girl, what then?

‘You had absolutely no right to do that, Henry,’ said Isobel. ‘Blabbing about our affairs to a stranger. I’m ashamed of you.’

A tear forced its way between Henry’s lids and ran down his cheek. He would always get it wrong — always. Well, at least with the measles one’s eyes were always streaming. No one could prove that one was crying, thought Henry, and turned his face to the wall.

True to his word Rom cabled once more to MacPherson, his representative in London, for news of the occupants of Stavely. He received a reassuring reply. Mrs Brandon and her son were believed to be in good health and travelling abroad. However, MacPherson added another piece of information over which Rom pondered in silence, standing with his back to his cluttered office and looking out over the riverside. Then he wrote out one more cable. Considering that it contained the blueprint for his future life it was surprisingly short — scarcely a dozen words — but Rom did not employ agents who needed pettifogging instructions in order to carry out their work.

After which he set himself to the amusement of the Dubrov Ballet Company.

Though it was customary for the chairman of the Opera House trustees to entertain visiting companies once at Follina, it was not customary for him to organise excursions to the Tumura Falls, the ‘wedding of the waters’ and islands on which scarlet ibis nested in their hundreds. No one, from Simonova herself to the most bovine of the Russian girls, was deceived as to the reason for these outings to which everyone except Masha Repin and her clique came — no one except (as Verney had intended) Harriet herself. Her humility made it impossible for her to conceive that she could seriously interest a man such as himself, and Rom was content to have it so. Not to use his power over her, not to hurry or hustle her, young as she was, was his main concern and it took all his strength, for with every hour he spent in her company he grew more certain that in this unobtrusive and scholarly girl he had found his solace and delight.