A Company of Swans

11

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.

The day before Alvarez was due in Manaus, Rom organised an outing on a lake in the forest whose waters were entirely covered by the giant leaves and peonylike flowers of the Victoria Regina water-lily; a still, mysterious place beneath overhanging trees.

‘Magnificent!’ declared Simonova as she sat in the first and most luxurious of the carriages Rom had hired, but she did not feel it necessary to descend. The knowledge that soon she would be leading a purely rural life, the mistress of goats, kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts, made it unnecessary for her to risk the long grass by the water’s edge, and with a commanding gesture she kept Dubrov and Grisha by her side.

‘I wish that someone would stand on a leaf!’ announced Maximov. His magnificent physique outlined by a cream shantung tropical suit, he had loaded the good-natured Kirstin with a tripod and various boxes and was directing his camera at a leaf the size of a table with an upturned edge.

There was a certain lack of response. Olga curled her lip and muttered an oath in Pushtu, the rest of the Russians backed away — and Marie-Claude looked incredulously at the premier danseur. She was in an excellent mood. The Vasco da Gama, docking that morning, had brought a most exciting letter from Vincent. He had found the perfect place for the restaurant: an old auberge in the foothills of the Alpes Maritimes whose proprietor wished to retire at the end of the year. Quite a small sum as a deposit, Vincent had written, would give them the option to buy, and this sum he hoped to have in a couple of months if he was lucky with the tips. The knowledge that he would have it after her eruption on Saturday whether or not he was lucky with the tips had made Marie-Claude extraordinarily happy — but not so happy that she was prepared to risk her filmy white dress by standing on a leaf.

Harriet waited to see if anyone else would come forward. Then…

‘Shall I?’ she said. ‘I could try…’

She picked up her skirt and stepped carefully on to the leaf nearest her, then on to a larger one. She was scarcely heavier than a child and the leaf held. To a spatter of clapping from Lobotsky and the girls, she raised her arms and took the classical attitude of the Winged Mercury, smiling shyly at Maximov as he stooped to his viewfinder. And Rom, standing beside Simonova’s carriage, put a question he had refrained from asking, as though the answer might cause him pain.

‘Has she a future as a dancer?’ he asked. ‘A serious future?’

Dubrov and Simonova exchanged glances, but it was Grisha who spoke.

‘When she came we thought it was too late. She was too much an amateur. We still think it, but we don’t think it as much as we did.’

‘We remember Taglioni, you see,’ added Dubrov.

‘I am afraid I don’t know much about her,’ confessed Rom. ‘She was a great Italian dancer, but that’s all I know.’

‘Her father sent her to Paris to study,’ explained Simonova, ‘while he prepared a great debut for her in Vienna. But when she returned he found that she was entirely unprepared. Weak. Hopeless!’

‘Everyone said cancel the debut,’ put in Dubrov. ‘But he didn’t. He was obstinate. He worked with her and worked with her and worked with her.’

‘Three sessions a day with no food, no water… In the morning, exercises for the legs and feet. At midday, aplomb… At night, the jumps. Again and again. She cried, she collapsed, she fainted,’ said Simonova gleefully. ‘Often she fainted.’

‘But at her debut she was ready,’ finished Grisha. ‘And more than ready.’ He glanced over at Harriet, still posing on her leaf. ‘She was eighteen years old.’

‘I see,’ said Rom. Do I have to do that for her, he thought? No, damn it, I won’t have her fainting. Yet he felt a kind of chill — almost a premonition of something that could touch his happiness.

‘It would not happen now, I think,’ said Simonova. And then: ‘Chort!’ she cried. ‘She is sinking!’

Kirstin had given a little cry and run forward to take the camera from Maximov, who was closest to Harriet, so that he could pull her to safety, but the premier danseur had no intention of risking his new suit and clung firmly to his apparatus. It was Rom, some twenty yards away, who seemed in an instant to be by Harriet’s side. ‘Jump!’ he said and she jumped, laughing and unperturbed, into his arms.

‘You have spoiled your dress,’ scolded Marie-Claude, for Harriet was wet almost to her knees.

‘Aunt Louisa’s dresses cannot be spoilt,’ said Harriet. ‘That’s their one advantage.’

‘There might have been pirhanas,’ scolded Lobotsky.

‘Might there?’ Harriet asked Rom.

‘Unlikely.’ But it was not that unlikely; the water was stagnant and deep. She was almost too fearless, he thought, too much at ease in this place.

They picnicked in style and drove back relaxed and comfortable for the evening’s performance of Fille. Rom, who had dutifully accompanied Simonova on the outward journey, was travelling with Harriet and her friends and much enjoying the unquenchable Marie-Claude’s stories of her future as a restaurant proprietress seated behind a big black till.

Their carriage was in the lead as they drove through the outskirts of the city, crossed the Avenida Eduardo Ribeiro — and turned into the square on which stood the Hotel Metropole.

‘Oh, stop! Stop! Please stop!’ It was Harriet’s voice, but scarcely recognisable. She had slumped forward on her seat, covering her face with her hands, and now she sank down on to the floor, almost beside herself with fear.

‘What is it? What is it, my dear?’ Rom was amazed. Could this be the girl who had danced on the lily leaves?

‘That man over there… Don’t let him see me! Oh, can’t we turn back, please… please…’

Rom looked out of the carriage window. A heat-flushed man in a topee and crumpled linen suit was sitting in a cab on the other side of the road. Around him was piled his luggage: a tin trunk, a number of nets and canvas bags, a holdall. His expression was disconsolate, not to say peevish, as he gazed over the head of the flea-bitten horse whose twitchy ears pierced a sombrero with a hibiscus flower on the brim and he was engaged in an altercation with the driver, who, by frequent shrugs and wavings of the arms, indicated that he understood nothing of what was being said and cared even less.

In this apparition Rom recognised a familiar sight: a man recently landed from a liner, defeated by the Golden City’s inexplicable lack of hotels, wondering where he was going to lay his head — but nothing to explain Harriet’s terror.

‘It’s Edward,’ she said, fighting down a sob. ‘He’s come to take me back — my father will have sent him.’

‘Is he a relation?’

‘No. They wanted me to marry him, I think, but I never would have. But it means they know I’m here — my father may be with him too. Oh God, it can’t be over yet, it can’t!’

‘That’s enough, Harriet.’ Rom’s voice was deliberately harsh. ‘He seems to be alone and you are far from friendless — he can hardly carry you off by force.’

‘We’ll help you! We’ll hide you!’ declared Marie-Claude.

Rom ignored this noble sentiment as he had ignored Harriet’s terror.

‘Let me just get this clear, Harriet. Were you engaged to him?’

‘No!’

‘And he has no legal hold over you?’

‘No, but—’

‘All right, that will do.’ He leaned forward and gave some instructions to the driver. ‘The carriage will turn round and take you to the back of the hotel. Meanwhile,’ said Rom, opening the carriage door, ‘I think I will go and introduce myself to your friend.’

Edward had suffered since he had agreed to go in search of Harriet. It had been rotten luck finding that there was no British boat for a fortnight, so that he’d had to cross the Channel and trust himself to foreigners. Then on the voyage there had been the unscrupulous behaviour of Isobel Brandon to contend with; Edward had not seen Mrs Brandon on the recent visit to Stavely, but he had no difficulty in identifying the beautiful red-haired widow listed among the passengers — though why she should seek solace in her bereavement by travelling to the Amazon was hard to understand.

But his friendly gesture in introducing himself and reminding her of his mother’s acquaintance with the General had caused Mrs Brandon to unloose on him — in a totally unbridled manner — her small son. ‘Go and ask Dr Finch-Dutton,’ Edward heard her say a dozen times a day — and presently Henry would appear to ask the kind of questions with which children and philosophers trouble their betters. Why do spiders have eight legs and insects six, Henry wanted to know. Do flying fish have souls? Why is there a green streak in the sky just before the sun goes down… on and on and on.

Which did not mean that Edward was pleased to see him carried off the boat at Belem. There was no real harm in the child and the relief of travelling on alone had been vitiated by the appalling heat as soon as they left the fresh Atlantic breezes. And now in Manaus, where he had hoped for a cool bath and a chance to muster his forces, his troubles seemed only to have begun.

‘Good afternoon.’ Rom had reached Edward’s side and stood looking up at the cab with amused friendliness. ‘Can I help at all? Are you in trouble?’

‘Oh, I say! Yes! That’s jolly decent of you. Didn’t expect to see a fellow countryman here,’ said Edward. ‘My name’s Finch-Dutton — Dr Edward Finch-Dutton, from Cambridge. The truth is, I’m in a bit of a fix. I’ve just come off the Vasco da Gama and spent the whole afternoon driving round trying to find somewhere to stay. I tried the Hotel Metropole, but it’s booked to the roof — so is the Europa, not that I’d put a dog there. And then that scoundrel’ — he glared at the driver, busy spitting melon seeds into the road — ‘drove me to a place he said was a hotel—’ But there Edward broke off, unable to speak of what had happened after he had asked for a room at Madame Anita’s. ‘And now he proposes to dump me and my luggage and charge me a perfectly ludicrous sum which I have not the slightest intention of paying.’

Rom turned and fired off half-a-dozen rapid sentences at the cabby, who became servile and explanatory. The Englishman had not understood: he had tried to tell him that the hotels were always full when a company was performing at the theatre but the man would not listen. He himself had done his best, but he now wished to receive his fare and attend the festivities for his niece’s confirmation at which he was already overdue.

‘Your niece’s festivities — which interest me little — will, however, have to wait,’ said Rom pleasantly. ‘And if you don’t want to lose your licence, you will stop spitting into the road.’ He turned back to Edward. ‘Perhaps I can help. My name’s Verney, by the way. I’m on my way to the Sports Club to pick up a message; it’s quite a decent place, run by an Englishman — Harry Parker. They sometimes accommodate travellers for a few days — members of expeditions and so on. I can’t promise anything, but I daresay he might fit you in.’

‘I used to know a Harry Parker at my prep school,’ said Edward. ‘He kept a weasel in his tuck-box. Don’t suppose it’s the same chap.’ But he brightened visibly at the thought of someone in this steam-bath of a city who might conceivably have been at Fallowfield Preparatory School on the bracing and healthy Sussex Downs.

‘You’re a zoologist, I see,’ said Rom, giving the driver his orders and climbing over Edward’s collecting gear and large tin trunk — for Edward was not a person who travelled light or thought that field work excused one from appearing decently dressed for dinner.

‘Well, yes. Entomology’s my field, actually. The Aphaniptera in particular. Fleas,’ explained Edward. ‘I’m a Fellow of St Philip’s.’

‘So you’ll be staying a while?’

‘Yes… Well, not too long, I hope. I mean…’ He looked at the man who had come to his rescue. Handsome; a bit foreign-looking but obviously a thoroughgoing gentleman by his voice and his clothes, and the cab-driver had become positively servile in his presence. So Edward, who had manfully kept his secret on the long journey, now said, ‘I don’t mind telling you that I’m also here for another reason — not just collecting. I’m looking for a girl who has run away from home. A dreadful business. Her father’s the Merlin Professor of Classics, and I… well, before this happened I was interested in the girl myself. Not now of course,’ he added hastily. ‘We think she’s with the ballet company which is playing here at the Opera House. As soon as I’m settled and have got rid of my stuff, I intend to start making enquiries.’

‘What is her name?’

Edward hesitated, but his rescuer’s face as he looked out at the street showed only the most polite and casual interest.

‘Harriet Morton. This is strictly between you and me, of course.’

‘Well, she may be here,’ said Rom lazily. ‘But as I understand it, all the girls are Russian. However, perhaps I may be able to help you. I happen to be the chairman of the Opera House trustees and the director might let me have information he would not disclose to a casual enquirer. The girls are very strictly guarded, you see.’

‘I say, that’s terribly decent of you! It’s for her own good, but she must be brought back and the whole thing hushed up if possible.’

Rom turned his head. ‘Hushed up?’ he said, surprised. ‘One would rather imagine it to be a cause for boasting, to have a daughter accepted by such a distinguished company.’

Before Edward could digest this unexpected remark, they had reached the Club. The Harry Parker who welcomed them was not the one who had kept a weasel in his tuck-box and Edward had not really expected such a stroke of fortune, but all was not lost for it turned out that the Featherstonehaugh for whom Parker had fagged at Stowe had mentioned being related to a Finch-Dutton of Goring-on-Thames who had stroked for Cambridge in the year in which they sank.

‘My father,’ said Edward with quiet pride.

Rom’s patronage would have secured for Edward one of the rooms in the annexe in any case, but these revelations made it certain that in Harry Parker he had found a lifelong friend.

‘Well, I shall leave you to settle in,’ said Rom, ‘and see what I can find out for you. The great thing is not to hang round the stage-door or go to the theatre by yourself. Monsieur Dubrov is apt to set the police on stage-door johnnies!’

And waving away Edward’s thanks, he climbed back into the cab — whose driver had disclaimed all interest in his niece’s confirmation — and was driven back to the theatre.

‘Well,’ said Dubrov, ‘what’s the position?’ News of Harriet’s pursuer had spread through the cast like wildfire.

‘He’s certainly after Harriet and has been instructed to bring her home. As you may have gathered, he once intended to become her fiancé. However, he himself has no legal power and he is also an oaf. If we can keep him quiet, I see no reason why Harriet shouldn’t finish her tour in peace… and then we shall see.’

Dubrov looked at him curiously. ‘Might I ask why you are taking so much trouble over Harriet’s career as a dancer when…’

He left the sentence unfinished, but Rom did not pretend to misunderstand him.

‘I want her to have a choice. She’s eighteen, Dubrov, and I don’t want her to come to me because there’s nowhere else for her to go. However, I’m sure we can manage — only if her father gives orders to have her repatriated could there be trouble, and I cannot see why he should do that. Above all, he seems anxious to avoid a scandal and if he starts involving the law he can hardly do that. As a matter of fact, I have an idea which might serve. If Madame Simonova would cooperate…?’

He outlined his plan to Dubrov, who burst out laughing. ‘Well, nothing can be lost by trying it. Will you speak to Harriet? She is very upset.’

‘Yes, I will speak to Harriet.’

She came already dressed for her part in Fille, wearing a white dirndl with a laced bodice, a blue apron and a blue kerchief round her neck.

‘You look charming. That blue is a perfect foil for your eyes.’

She tried to smile, but her face was wretchedly anxious.

‘Is he… does he know I’m here?’

‘Not yet, but he will do very soon because I am about to tell him!’

‘Oh no! Oh please, please, no!’ She put a hand entreatingly on his arm. ‘I know it can’t go on for ever… being happy… but just a little longer!’

‘Harriet, you cannot hide night and day for as long as he chooses to pursue you. He seems to be a very persistent and obstinate young man. I think it would be much better if, so to speak, we turned the tables on him.’

‘How? I don’t understand. How could we do that?’

‘Leave it to me. And have courage, my silly little swan. You’re so intrepid, paddling about among the pirhanas, yet you let an oaf like that frighten you.’

‘It’s not just him; it’s my father. I’m under age, you see, and if he chose—’

‘But he won’t choose; we’ll see to that. You will go back to England at the appointed time and with your head held high — if that is what you wish. You might even get your father’s blessing on your career as a dancer.’

‘No… never! You don’t know what he’s like.’ She tried to smile. ‘I must go. Will you be watching? No, of course, you saw the première.’

‘All the same, I’ll be there, holding my breath while you thread the ribbons like everybody else.’ He lifted a corner of the kerchief. ‘You should wear blue,’ he said. And, breaking his rule, ‘You shall wear blue,’ he said — and left her.

Edward was in the bar drinking with Harry Parker and a few of the regulars, when a servant came with a message to say that Mr Verney would be pleased if Dr Finch-Dutton would join him in his box at the theatre at eight o’clock.

‘I say,’ said Harry Parker, ‘that’s a real honour. Verney nearly always watches alone.’

‘Yes, but I didn’t bring my tails,’ said Edward, fingering his black tie anxiously.

‘If you’re with Verney you could go in plus-fours,’ said Harry Parker. ‘There’s nothing you can’t carry off when you’re with him.’

Edward had seen the Opera House during his fruitless search for a hotel, but the sheer opulence of the foyer and the clothes and jewels of the patrons here in this place amazed him.

‘Ah, there you are!’ Rom detached himself from a group of friends and came forward. ‘Look, we only have a few moments. Better come up to my box, where we can talk quietly.’ And as they went, he continued, ‘Your girl is here. She’s known as Natasha Alexandrovna, but there is no doubt she is the girl you’re looking for; I’ve checked with Dubrov. Only you must be very careful: your coming here could make things extremely awkward for her.’

‘For her?’ said Edward, dumbfounded, and stumbled on a marble step.

‘Naturally, for her. One hint that she is being pursued by a man and her position in the Company might be seriously jeopardised. Followers are strictly forbidden and Madame Simonova is an absolute stickler.’

‘But I’m not pursuing her! I’m trying to save her!’ cried Edward.

‘Better not put it like that to the Company. Or to anyone in the audience. I’m afraid Professor Morton is under a misapprehension regarding—’ He broke off. ‘Ah, here come the Sternovs!’ and he led Edward towards his friends. ‘Allow me to introduce Dr Finch-Dutton, just out from England. Count and Countess Sternov and the Countess Sophie.’

By the time they were seated in Verney’s box, Edward’s head was spinning. The Countess had taken him aside to confide that her sixteen-year-old daughter was ballet-mad and quite heartbroken because an inequality of the toes prevented her from being accepted by the Dubrov Company. A young Englishwoman, Mrs Bennett, had congratulated him on being allowed to see these dedicated and unapproachable dancers perform. Was it possible that the Professor really was mistaken about the status of ballet girls in polite society, thought Edward, unaware that Rom’s friends would have done a great deal more for him than utter a few white lies.

But now the conductor entered, the house lights dimmed and all thoughts vanished from Edward’s mind except one. After the long, exhausting journey, the sorrow and wrath she had caused him, he was going to see Harriet again.

Or was he?

The curtain went up on a farmyard and a ballet of chickens of whom Harriet was not one… A funny lady who was really a man came and chided her daughter for dancing with a handsome farmer… It was all rather jolly and the tunes were nice.

And now a lot of village girls came on and danced with the heroine. Pretty girls in white dresses, each with a different-coloured apron and scarf around her throat.

‘Well, what do you think of your friend?’ whispered Rom. ‘They are very pleased with her work in the Company.’

Edward frowned with concentration. Harriet must be on stage then — and indeed there were so many village maidens that one of them was bound really to be her. He leaned forward, peering intently at the twisting, shifting patterns made by the girls with their twirling skirts. There was a thin girl with brown hair at the end on the right, but there was another one at the front and a third just vanishing behind a hay-cart.

‘It is a bit difficult to pick her out, actually. I’m not used to dancing,’ he said helplessly.

Rom shot him a look of contempt and handed him the opera glasses. But the glasses only made things worse. One got a head here and an arm there and then they were gone. Edward tracked now this girl, now that, before handing back the glasses with a disconsolate shake of the head.

‘She’s the one with the dark red kerchief,’ said Rom maliciously.

‘Oh, yes. Yes, of course! I see now,’ said Edward gratefully.

And for the rest of the evening, Rom had the satisfaction of seeing the moron who had professed an interest in Harriet devoutly pursuing Olga Narukov across the stage.

As Rom had expected, he experienced no difficulty in setting up the luncheon which was to put Edward in his place once and for all. In every ballerina there smoulders the conviction that she is also a great actress; Rom’s plan had only to be outlined and Simonova was already planning her costume and instructing her underlings, and by the time he returned to the theatre at noon with a case of Chateauneuf du Pape as a thank-offering, the transformation from glamorous ballerina to fierce duenna was already complete.

‘The girls know what they have to do,’ she said, ‘and everything is ready. My clothes are good, you think?’

‘Indeed I do.’ Simonova wore black to the throat; a black hat with a veil shielded her face and a jet-handled parasol lay on the chair. He bent for a moment over her hand. ‘I am truly grateful, Madame. Not everyone would go to such trouble for a girl in the corps.’

Simonova shrugged. ‘She is a good child… though she does not have Natasha’s ears,’ she murmured mysteriously, and swept out into the corridor, where she could be heard yelling instructions at the girls.

Rom had called at the Club earlier to brief Edward. ‘It’s a great honour you understand, this invitation? In fact, I know of no one else who has been allowed to lunch with Madame and the girls.’ And he went on to caution Edward to be extremely careful in his use of language and not to mention that he was staying at the Sports Club, which would certainly be considered flighty.

‘I myself,’ said Rom with perfect accuracy, ‘never mention my connection with the Club to any lady of my acquaintance.’

At a quarter to one, therefore, Edward — in his new light-weight suit — made his way towards the theatre. He had imagined his first meeting with Harriet a hundred times. He had visualised her abandoned in a hovel, backstage in a scandalously short skirt, or driving with a rich protector in a carriage. But he had not imagined her crossing the Opera Square in crocodile with twenty other girls, wearing a straw hat and long-sleeved foulard dress, in the wake of a formidable woman in black and a portly gentleman in a frock-coat.

Edward approached, raised his hat.

‘Ah. You are Dr Dunch-Fitton,’ stated Simonova. The procession came to a halt while she raked him with her charcoal eyes. ‘Mr Verney has asked that you may join us at luncheon, but it is out of the question that my girls can be seen walking through the town accompanied by a man. You may meet us at the Restaurant Guida in ten minutes. In the private room, naturally.’

And leaving the flabbergasted Edward standing, the row of girls with their parasols held aloft passed with downcast eyes across the square.

In the restaurant, Verney’s instructions had been obeyed to the letter. A private room, totally screened from the rest of the patrons, had been prepared; white cloths and virginal white flowers decorated the tables; a portrait of Carmen expiring at the feet of her matador had been replaced by a Madonna and Child.

The girls filed in under Simonova’s eye. Edward, arriving confused and perspiring, was permitted to sit on her left with Harriet on his right. Marie-Claude and Kirstin sat opposite; the Russian girls stretched away on either side.

The first course arrived: platters of hot prawns in a steaming aromatic sauce. Edward, who was hungry, leaned forward.

‘We will say Grace,’ said Simonova.

Everybody rose. There followed nearly ten minutes of an old Russian thanksgiving prayer during which Lydia, giggling into her handkerchief at the ballerina’s unusual embellishments to the sombre and simple words, was kicked into silence by Olga. Then they all sat down and Edward glanced hopefully at the prawns.

‘And now you, Harriet.’

So everyone rose again and Harriet folded her hands. ‘Oculi omnium in te respiciunt, Domine,’ she began — and thus it was that the first words Edward heard the abandoned girl pronounce were those which preceded every meal at High Table in St Philip’s.

Harriet had been badly frightened at the thought of this encounter, but the incredible way the Company had rallied to her support — and above all, Rom’s quick pressure on her hand as they set off — had given her the courage to play her part and when they were all seated at last she turned to Edward and said composedly, ‘I trust you found my father well?’

‘No, Harriet, I did not. I found him deeply distressed by your conduct. How could you run away like that?’

‘Run away?’ Simonova’s lynx-like ears caught the phrase and she fixed her hooded eyes on Edward. ‘Natasha Alexandrovna did not run away. She was called!’

‘All of us were called,’ said Kirstin. Her gentle sad face and soft blue eyes were making an excellent impression on Edward. ‘Many of us struggled, but God was too strong.’

‘It is a vocation,’ pronouced Simonova. ‘Nuns and dancers, we are sisters. We give up everything: friends, family, love…’ Her eyes slid sideways to Dubrov. ‘Particularly love!’

Edward, temporarily nonplussed, tried again. ‘Yes, but dash it—’

Simonova raised a peremptory hand. ‘Please, Dr Funch-Dutton — no language before my girls! I am like the Abbess of a sisterhood. Tatiana!’ she suddenly called sharply down the table. ‘Where are your elbows?’

‘Yes, but… I mean, poor Professor Morton,’ stammered Edward. ‘The anxiety… and naturally I myself felt—’

‘Yes, yes, you feel; it is understandable. When Teresa of Avila left her home there must have been many who suffered. Yes, there are always tears when a pure young soul offers herself to higher things: the Dance, the Church — it is all one. Consider St Francis of Assisi—’

But here Dubrov pressed her foot in warning, remembering — as she would presently — that the gentle saint had signalled his conversion by removing all his clothes and setting off naked for the hills.

The entrée was brought. Fresh mineral water was poured into the glasses.

‘You like being here, then?’ asked Edward, turning once more to Harriet and noting with a pang that even after all she had done, her ears still peeped out from between the soft strands of her hair just as they had done in King’s College Chapel.

‘I like it in one sense,’ said Harriet carefully. ‘It is such a privilege to be under Madame’s tutelage. But naturally I miss the freedom of Cambridge.’ She glanced sideways under her lashes to see if she had gone too far, but Edward’s face was devoid of incredulity.

‘The freedom?’

‘Well, in Cambridge my Aunt Louisa sometimes allowed me to walk alone on the Backs and I was occasionally permitted to go to tea with my friends. Here nothing like that is possible. We are chaperoned and watched night and day. But I feel I must accept these restrictions, knowing they are for my own good.’

‘But Harriet… I mean, you are coming back, aren’t you?’ said Edward, his long face falling. Aware that the situation was out of hand, that his intention to carry her back — covered in shame and contrition — had somehow misfired, he fumbled for words. ‘I thought… I mean, I was going to take you to the May Ball and all that.’

At this point Marie-Claude, who had been unusually silent, intervened. Harriet could be relied upon not to lose her nerve while the young man was pompous and self-important, but if he turned pathetic anything might happen.

Pushing her golden curls firmly behind her ears, Marie-Claude addressed Edward. She addressed him exclusively and she addressed him in French, rightly concluding that a man expensively educated at a British public school would understand about as much of what she said as a backward two-year-old, and the effect on Edward was considerable. Though aware that people born abroad could sometimes speak their native language, to hear this beautiful girl pour forth sentence after sonorous, unhesitating sentence when he himself had suffered such torments over his French exercises, filled him with awe. Moreover, such words as he did understand — bois, for example, and campagne — seemed to indicate that her discourse concerned the beauties of nature, than which no topic could be more suitable. And indeed he was quite right, for it was of the outside amenities of the auberge above Nice that Marie-Claude spoke: of the grove of pine trees where Vincent intended to put tables in the summer and the freshness of the country produce he would use to prepare his famous dishes.

The meal ended, as it had begun, with Grace and then Edward was dismissed by Simonova.

‘Now, Dr Dinch-Futton, tomorrow is a special day of quiet for the girls while we prepare for The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky is for us a sacred composer and there can be no frivolity. But as Mr Verney has assured us of your good character, you may see Harriet for half an hour between four thirty and five — in the presence of a chaperone, of course.’

And before Edward could think of anything suitable to say, gloves had been donned, parasols unfurled and two-by-two the girls set off across the square.

His luncheon with the Company left Edward deeply confused. He went to the post office to send a cable to the Mortons and tried at least five different variations before settling for: HARRIET SAFE FURTHER NEWS FOLLOWS. This at least would set their minds at rest and give him time to think. For of course Harriet must be returned to her father’s house — only it was not easy to see how.

‘Do you think I ought to put the whole thing to the British Consul?’ Edward had asked Verney. But it seemed the Consul was on leave in São Paulo and Verney advised most strongly against Edward taking the matter into his own hands. ‘Quite honestly, if you tried to force her to return with you they would think you were abducting her for your own purposes and you might well find yourself cooling your heels in the local gaol. Now you are here, why don’t you concentrate on your work? In any case, there’s no sailing for another week. I would be very happy to help with transport and in any other way I can.’

This was advice Edward was inclined to take. He had replenished his collection of fleas most effectively on the boat — there had been fleas on the crew, fleas on the passengers, fleas on the captain’s fox terrier… But he had glimpsed, here in Manaus, insects as fabulous as any he had dreamed of in Cambridge.

The annexe of the Sports Club, in which Edward slept, was a low wooden building edging on to the forest. On the morning after his luncheon with Harriet, he took his nets, his collecting bottles and his tins — and entered his heritage.

He had expected the morphos, the nymphalids, the humming-bird hawk moths — but their sheer size, their musculature, the power it needed to kill them, intoxicated him. In an hour, on the track leading from the back of the Club, he collected enough specimens to line the walls of his little research room at Cambridge and for the first time in his life he felt a catch of butterflies as weight. The heat was staggering and he was not only the hunter but the hunted as sand-flies, tabanids and piums feasted on his crimsoning skin. But Edward hardly noticed the discomfort. That butterfly with the red wing-eye — he had never seen that described anywhere… And to fill his cup of happiness to overflowing, there on a cluster of sloth droppings was what he could see, even with the naked eye, as an entirely new species of flea.

His meeting with Harriet the next day only confirmed what he had learned at luncheon: that she was as closely guarded as a religious postulant. Harriet had been polite and friendly, but it was clear that nothing less than brute force would get her to leave the Company and at the moment he could see no justification for applying it, nor any likelihood of success should he attempt it.

This being so, Edward felt free to accept the invitation from two German naturalists, who had arrived at the Club annexe on the previous night, to join them in an expedition to a valley above the Tamura Falls. Even without a sighting of that fabulous missing link, the ‘insect-worm’ Peripatus, he felt confident of adding to his collection in a way which would gratify the head of his department and make the whole journey worth-while.

‘So you see,’ said Rom, reporting to Harriet on the morning of Alvarez’ arrival, ‘everything is going splendidly. With luck he’ll be away until Tuesday at least and you can concentrate on supporting Madame Simonova through her ordeal!’ For the dreaded première of Nutcracker, with all that it implied, was almost upon them.

Harriet smiled. ‘Yes… I suppose it’s wrong to hope that Masha Repin doesn’t have too much of a success, but I can’t help hoping it just the same.’ She looked up at him, her eyes warm with gratitude. ‘You have been so kind. I still can’t believe that it can come right… that they will just let me dance. But at least you have shown me how not to be frightened.’

‘There’s a lot more to show you still,’ said Rom lightly. ‘I shall be tied up with business for the next two days.’ Even to Harriet, he could not speak of Ombidos and his determination to make Alvarez see what went on there. ‘But after that I intend to take you out in the Firefly. Just you, this time. If you will come?’

‘I will come,’ said Harriet.