A Company of Swans

6

‘I look like a twig,’ said Harriet a little sadly, gazing into the fly-blown mirror of the room she shared with her friends in the Hotel Metropole.

Marie-Claude and Kirstin did not attempt to deny it.

‘I would like to know what exactly she is like, this Aunt Louisa of yours,’ said Marie-Claude. ‘How can someone actually enter into a shop and buy such a dress?’

It was the day after the opening night of Swan Lake and the girls were preparing for the party at Follina.

‘Brown suits Harriet,’ said Kirstin kindly.

‘Oh, yes. Brown velvet in the winter with frogging, perhaps,’ agreed Marie-Claude. ‘But brown foulard… and the sleeves.’ She laid a bunch of artificial flowers against Harriet’s throat and shook her head. ‘Better not to draw attention…’

She herself was dressed like a dancer — that is to say, like the image of a dancer that the world delights in: a three-quarter-length white dress, satin slippers, a wreath of rosebuds in the loose and curling golden hair.

‘I’ll stand at the back and hold my glass; no one will notice me,’ said Harriet, whose ideas of party-going were conditioned by the dread occasions with which the Master of St Philip’s celebrated events of academic importance.

‘You will do nothing of the kind, ’arriette,’ said Marie-Claude, slipping Vincent’s engagement ring firmly on to her finger. ‘This man is not only an Englishman but the most important—’

‘An Englishman? The chairman of the Opera House trustees? Goodness!’ Harrietwas amazed. ‘I’d imagined a kind old Brazilian with a paunch and a huge waxed moustache.’

‘Whether he has a moustache or not, I cannot say,’ said Marie-Claude, a little offended. ‘Vincent’s moustache is very big and personally I do not find a man attractive without moustaches. But Mr Verney is spoken of as formidably intelligent and since you are the daughter of a professor—’

‘Mr Verney?’ said Harriet, and there was something in her voice which made both girls look at her hard. ‘Is that what he is called? Are you sure?’

‘Certainly I am sure,’ said Marie-Claude, exasperated by the unworldliness of her friend. Harriet had pestered everyone ceaselessly for the names of the flowers, the birds, even the insects they had encountered ever since they left England, yet she had not even troubled to find out the name of the most influential man in Manaus.

But Harriet was lost in remembrance, her hairbrush dangling from her hand.

‘I’m Henry St John Verney Brandon,’ Henry had said to her, turning his small face upwards, trusting her with that all-important thing: his name. And another image… the unpleasant Mr Grunthorpe with his liver-spotted pate and rapacious hands, droning on beside the Van Dyck portrait of Henrietta Verney, who had brought her beauty and her fortune to the house of Brandon.

It didn’t have to mean anything — the name was not uncommon. Yet if Henry’s ‘secret boy’ was some distant connection of the family brought up for some reason at Stavely…? If against all odds she had found him and could plead Henry’s case, what happiness that would be!

No, I’m being absurd, thought Harriet; it’s merely coincidence. But she found herself suddenly looking forward to the evening ahead and — relinquishing the hairbrush to Marie-Claude — submitted with docility to having two side plaits swept on to the crown of her head and wearing the rest loose down her back to reveal what both the other girls regarded as tolerable: her ears.

Though she knew her host was rich, the first sight of the Amethyst waiting at the docks in the afternoon sunshine to take the cast to Follina took her aback — not on account of the schooner’s size, but because of her beauty. She was surprised too to find that a second boat was waiting to convey to the party not only the members of the orchestra but also the technical staff, who were so often forgotten.

‘Very nice,’ said Simonova condescendingly, walking up the gangway in trailing orange chiffon and accepting as her due the attentions of Verney’s staff, for had she not spent many summers on the Black Sea in a similar yacht owned by the Grand Duke Michael? She exclaimed ecstatically at the beauty of the river scene and firmly went below, followed by the other principals and most of the corps, to recline in the luxurious cabins with their bowls of fruit, boxes of chocolates and magazines.

‘You of course will stay on deck and completely disarrange your toilette while we travel?’ suggested Marie-Claude and Harriet, grinning at her friend, admitted that this was so. So she hung over the rails, watching the changing patterns of the islands which lay like jagged ribbons across the smooth, leaf-stained water, until they turned from the dark Negro into her tributary, the Maura.

‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, ‘it is so light!’ And the boatman standing near her with a rope coiled ready in his hand nodded and smiled, understanding not her words but her tone.

The sails were furled now. Under engine, the Amethyst came in quietly beside the jetty — and Harriet, drawing in breath, saw what Rom had seen only in his mind’s eye the day he first glimpsed Follina: a low pink-washed, colonnaded house at the end of an avenue of blossoming blue trees — and a garden whose scents and sense of sanctuary reached out like a benison to those who came.

‘The place has style,’ admitted Marie-Claude, emerging immaculate and ravishing from below. ‘But I hope we are not expected to walk to the house.’

They were not. Three cars and a number of carriages waited to take them the half-mile to Verney’s front door. Simonova, Maximov and Dubrov swept into the first of these; Kaufmann, the choleric conductor of the orchestra, got into the second; the others followed.

‘I shall walk,’ said Harriet.

‘In this heat?’ Even the easygoing Kirstin was shocked.

‘Do you wish to arrive entirely dissolved in perspiration?’ reproved Marie-Claude.

‘Please… I must,’ said Harriet, and they shrugged and climbed into one of the carriages and left her.

Rom surveyed his guests with an experienced air and was satisfied. Simonova, reclining on a couch on the terrace, was surrounded by admirers; the dancers and musicians wandered happily between the tables, helping themselves to iced fruit juice or champagne. Standing beside the statue of Aphrodite flanking the stone steps, Marie-Claude was regaling a group of dazed gentlemen with an account of the restaurant she was proposing to start with Vincent in the foothills above Nice. That this entrancing girl was bespoke and visibly virtuous had given Rom a pang of relief, a reaction he had not sought to explain or understand, preferring simply to enjoy the sight of de Silva, Harry Parker (who ran the Sports Club) and a host of others drinking thirstily at these forbidden waters.

During this hour before sundown, the house and the terrace were one. The lilting music from the Viennese trio he had installed in the salon wafted out through the French windows, the jasmine and wisteria climbing his walls laid their heavy, scented branches almost into the rooms themselves. The moment darkness fell he would relinquish his garden to the moths and night birds, close the windows and lead his guests to a dinner as formally served and elaborate as any banquet of state. But this present time was for wandering at will, for letting Follina work its spell, and he intervened only with the lightest of hands — introducing shy Mrs Bennett to the glamorous Maximov; removing the misanthropic conductor, Kaufmann, to the library with its collection of operatic scores.

Yet, though no one could have guessed it, Rom, as he wandered among his guests, was fighting down disappointment. He had been absolutely certain that he would recognise the swan who had sneezed so poignantly at the end of Act Two; it seemed to him that the serious little face with its troubled brown eyes was entirely distinctive, but he had been mistaken. A casual question to Dubrov when the girls arrived elicited the information that all members of the corps had come. ‘No one could miss such an honour,’ Dubrov had assured him, adding that he himself had personally counted heads as the girls came aboard the Amethyst. Therefore she must be in the group of Russians with their dark homesick faces, for she was not with Marie-Claude nor the pale-haired Swedish girl receiving, with evident indifference, the compliments of the Mayor. Well, people looked different without their make-up, he reflected, and shrugging off the matter as of no importance, paused by Simonova’s couch to add his homage to her circle of admirers.

‘Never!’ the ballerina was declaring, throwing out her long, thin hands. ‘Never, never, will I return to Russia! If they came to me crawling in the snow on their hands and knees all the way from Petersburg, I would not come!’

She fanned herself with the ends of her chiffon scarf, and looked at her host from under kohl-tipped lashes. What a man! If only she had not been committed to her art — and of course to Dubrov, though that was more easily arranged… One must go where there is fire, Fokine had once said to her and this devastating man with his deep grey eyes and that look of Tamburlaine the Great was certainly fire. But it was impossible: a night with such a man and one could hardly manage three fouettés, let alone thirty-two…

‘Ah, Madame, what a loss for my country,’ sighed Count Sternov.

‘It is a loss,’ agreed the ballerina complacently. ‘But it is one for which they must take the blame. And in any case soon I am going to retire.’ She waited for the groans, the horrified denials… and when they came, proceeded. ‘Dubrov and I are going to live in the country in absolute simplicity with goats and grow vegetables. I have a great longing,’ she said, spreading tapering fingers which had never touched anything rougher than Maximov’s silvered tights, ‘to get my hands into the earth.’

‘You must allow me to show you over the kitchen gardens,’ said Verney, concealing the smile that had flickered at the corners of his mouth.

‘Yes. Later,’ said Simonova. The plants she had seen on the way up to the house had seemed to her excessive, altogether too much there and looking in some cases as though they might contain insects, which were not in her scheme of things. And she leaned back more comfortably and allowed a servant to refill her glass with champagne.

But Marie-Claude now detached herself from the besotted gentlemen surrounding her and said something to Dubrov, who turned to his host.

‘Marie-Claude is a little concerned about our newest member of the corps. Apparently she decided to walk up from the jetty, but that was quite a time ago and she isn’t here yet.’

‘She is English,’ explained Marie-Claude, turning her incredible eyes on Rom and repressing a sigh. If things had been different… even without moustaches… But they were not and resolutely she continued, ‘And it is impossible to keep her inside. You know how it is: the fresh air, et tout ça. And naturally one would not wish her to be eaten by a boa constrictor.’

‘English!’ said Rom, amazed. ‘You have an English dancer?’ No wonder he had been unable to visualise her in St Petersburg or Kiev.

Dubrov nodded. ‘She only joined us just before we left, without any stage experience; she’s done very well. Last night was her debut.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Rom. ‘I’m sure she’s perfectly all right. But I shall send someone to fetch her.’

This, however, he did not do. Briefing Lorenzo and his assistants, he slipped silently away and made his way down the steps.

She was not on the main avenue, not on any of the terraces, not in the arboretum, not by the pond…

He continued to search, not anxious but a little puzzled. Then from behind the patch of native forest he heard the great Caruso’s voice.

‘Your tiny hand is frozen… is frozen… is frozen…’ sang the incomparable tenor, for the record — the first he had ever bought his Indians — was badly cracked.

Che gelida manina… a record valued even above the ‘Bell Song’ from Lakmé, but seldom played now owing to its fragile state. They had a visitor, then, and one they wanted to honour. With an eagerness which surprised him, Rom made his way between the trees.

The village was bathed in the last rays of the afternoon sun. Hammocks were strung between the dappled trees; a monkey scratched himself on a thatched roof… a small armadillo they had tamed rooted in a patch of canna lillies.

In the circle around the horn of the gramophone sat the women with their children, together with the few men too old to be busy in the plantations or helping at the house. Someone knowing them less well would have assumed that this was just the usual evening concert, but Rom — seeing the fruit set out on painted plates and the cassia juice in gourds on the low carved stool — knew they were welcoming a valued guest.

Only what guest? And where?

At first he could see no one unusual. Then, searching the listening faces, he saw a girl he had at first taken to be one of the tribe, for she wore a dress such as the missionaries forced on their converts and she was holding a baby, cupping a hand round its head — Manuelo’s three-day-old baby whom they were taking to Father Antonio at dawn to be baptised.

Then they saw him; someone took off the needle from the record and as they came towards him, chattering in welcome, she lifted her head and looked directly at him… and over her face there spread a sudden shock of surprise, almost of recognition, as though he was someone she knew from another life.

‘You must be the last of the Company’s swans?’ he said, coming forward. ‘I’m Romain Verney, your host.’

‘Yes,’ she replied, getting to her feet. ‘I’m Harriet Morton.’ The voice was low; scholarly. Old Iquita took the baby from her and he saw how hard it was for her to part with its soft warmth; how she drew her fingertips across the round dark head until the last possible moment, just as Simonova had drawn her fingertips down the arm of her lover before she bourréed backwards into the lake. ‘God must be very brave,’ she said, ‘making babies with fontanelles like that. What if their souls should escape before they’ve joined? What then?’

‘Oh, God is brave all right,’ said Rom lightly. ‘You see Him all the time, chancing His arm.’ But he was startled, for she had smiled as she spoke and everything he had thought about her gravity and seriousness was suddenly set at nought. There was nothing wistful or tentative about that smile. It came slowly, but ended in a total crunching up of her features as though a winged cherub had just flown by and whispered a marvellously funny joke into her ear.

They made their farewells and he began to lead her back.

‘They’ve been so kind to me,’ she said, still not quite in the real world after her hour in the garden and the conviction which had burst from her as he stepped from the trees that this was Henry’s ‘secret boy’. ‘Look what they gave me!’ She took out of her pocket a small carving of a margay and held it out to him.

‘They like to give presents.’ But Rom was surprised, for the carving was one of old José’s, their best craftsman; it was a lovely thing. ‘How did you make yourself understood?’ he asked curiously.

‘I think if you want to, you can always understand people, don’t you? And the ones who had grown up in the mission could follow a little Latin.’

‘Ah, yes; Latin,’ he murmured. ‘A usual accomplishment in ballet dancers?’

‘My father taught me,’ she said briefly and a shadow passed over her face. But the next moment she was entranced again: ‘Oh, that tree! That colour… and the way the flowers grow right on the trunk like that!’

‘Yes, that’s Aspidosperma silenium — pollinated by opossums, believe it or not!’

She liked that, wrinkling her nose. ‘It’s lovely that you know the names. I kept asking and asking, but nobody did.’

‘Is it important that you know the names of things?’

‘Yes. I feel… discourteous if I don’t know. As though I’ve failed them somehow. Is that stupid?’

‘No, I understand. But it’s the devil naming things out here. There are literally hundreds of species of trees and only a handful have been classified. I was like a child in a sweet-shop when I first came out, not knowing where to begin.’ He described briefly his discovery of Follina and her eyes grew wide at the wonder of it.

They had reached the edge of the arboretum and a great urn in which there grew a magical orchid — delicate, yet abundant with an overpowering scent.

‘That’s the Queen’s Orchid. The caracara, the Indians call it. Some people find it a bit overwhelming.’

‘Oh no, not against those dark bushes; they cool it.’ She was running her fingers softly along the edge of the petals, tracing lightly the intricate shape of the stamens. He had never seen in a European such a physical response to things that grew. ‘And over there, in the pool? That blue? That’s not a water hyacinth, is it? They grow in drifts?’

‘No — it’s a kind of lobelia. An incredible colour, isn’t it? The water gardens are a perpetual headache; you have to keep the water running all the time, otherwise the mosquitos breed, and that’s the devil. I’ve installed a kind of cataract there…’

He explained, led her here and there. She was utterly enthralled and both of them had completely forgotten the time.

‘I thought it would be all dark,’ she said wonderingly. ‘A dark forest and rows and rows of rubber trees.’

‘There are rubber trees — thousands of them, mostly wild. I’ve made plantations too, but this garden is my folly.’ And as she stood waiting for him to continue, he said, ‘I fight a battle like some idiot crusader against the Amazon disease — the disease of all South America, if it comes to that. I call it the Eldorado illness.’

She turned to him, her eyes alert. ‘The belief that there is a promised land?’

‘Yes. Partly. Everyone here searches… the Indians, the Portuguese settlers, the people who came later. For gold, for coffee, for the green stones that the Amazon women gave their lovers… for groves of cinnamon trees — and now for rubber. They search and they find because the country is so abundant. But then someone comes along from some other country who is not content just to search. Someone who plants coffee or hardwoods, who mines gold systematically instead of picking the nuggets off the ground. And then the searchers are bankrupt, the villages become derelict and the people starve. It will be the same with rubber; you’ll see. I’ve diversified; I run a gold mine at Serra Deloso, I export bauxite and manganese, I’ve organised a timber business. I shall be all right, but if the price of rubber really drops — and it is dropping as they bring it in from the East — then God knows how many of my friends I shall be able to save. Not enough.’

‘It’s always been so, hasn’t it?’ she said quietly. ‘All through history. Solon trying to warn Croesus… don’t lean back on your riches, he said, but no one listened. People don’t.’

You do, Rom wanted to say. You listen as I have never known anyone listen. And he remembered how as a small boy at Stavely walking along the gravel paths absently scuffing the stones, he would suddenly — for no reason that he knew of — bend down to pick up one pebble, just one, and keep it in his pocket. He had never found it hard to share his toys, but no one had been allowed to touch such a pebble; it became his treasure and his talisman.

It had been like that, he now admitted, when he ran his opera glasses down the line of swans. ‘This one,’ a voice had said inside him. ‘This one is for me.’

As they passed a clump of bamboo they heard a rustling and Rom stopped and gave a low whistle. The rustling ceased, began again… An inquisitive snout appeared, a pair of bright eyes… then the coati’s gleaming chestnut body and stripy tail.

‘He’s offended,’ said Rom. ‘I give orders to have him kept out of the house when I have guests. You watch him deciding whether or not he will speak to us.’

The performance which followed would have done credit to a venerable Rotarian whom nobody had invited to make an after-dinner speech. The coati moved forward, thought better of it, sat up on his haunches and pretended to investigate a non-existent nut with busy forepaws… Once more he approached, once more he sat down — and at last, but with evident condescension, came to rub himself against Rom’s legs.

‘How tame he is!’

‘Most things can be tamed if you take the time,’ he said, sending the little creature off again with a pat on its rump. ‘I found him when he was a few days old. Come, if you like animals I’ll show you one more thing and then we really must get back.’

But as she followed him Harriet, in her mind, had left this magical garden and was back at Stavely while Henry told her what the family’s disagreeable butler had said about the ‘secret boy’: ‘Grunthorpe didn’t like him… he said he was a changeling… because he could talk to animals, Grunthorpe said…’

She was sure, really — and had been from the moment she saw him step out from the trees. A straight line ran from the boy who had built a tree-house in the Wellingtonia and owned a dog who was his shadow, to this man, but oh, for proof!

They had reached the igarape and he led her on to the bridge which crossed it.

‘I’ve told you how important it is to keep the water moving. Well, here is one of the methods I use.’ He leaned over and slapped the surface of the water with his hand. ‘Agatha!’ he called. ‘Come here. I’ve brought you a visitor!’

Harriet looked down into the water. At first she could make out nothing. Then slowly from under a patch of weed there appeared a mass of mottled grey and white whiskers, a snout… A soft blowing and snuffling noise followed; the almond-shaped nostrils twitched and opened… Then the head lifted and Harriet found herself looking into a pair of round, liquid, unutterably soulful eyes.

‘Oh, what is it? What is it?’ Harriet, who had taught herself never to touch anyone for fear of rebuff, had taken this stranger’s arm. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s not a seal?’

‘It’s a manatee,’ said Verney softly. ‘A kind of sea cow. The sailors say that this is the basis for the stories of mermaids. Have you ever seen a more human face? More human than most humans, I always think.’

Harriet could not take her eyes from the trusting beast which was now looking at her unperturbed, a bunch of water hyacinths dangling like a dotty bouquet from her mouth. ‘They’re sacred to some of the Indian tribes,’ said Rom, ‘and anyone who tries to poach them on my land is in trouble. They keep the channels running clear, you see, by eating the water-weed.’

‘A manatee!’ said Harriet raptly. ‘I’ve seen a manatee!’ She turned away to trace the pattern of the creeper which had laid its stippled leaves along the hand-rail of the bridge, but not before he had seen the glint of tears on her lashes.

‘What is it?’ he asked gently. ‘Is anything the matter?’

She gave a small shake of the head. ‘It’s just that everything is so beautiful… so right… And it was here all the time, this rightness… While I was in Scroope Terrace in that cold dark house. If only I’d known how to come out — if only I’d known that a place like this existed.’

‘You know now,’ said Verney lightly. ‘And I have to tell you that there is absolutely nothing right about Agatha’s husband; he’s an entirely different kettle of fish — a nasty servile beast perpetually on the lookout for gratuities. In fact, I doubt if he’ll come at all since I haven’t brought any biscuits. No… wait; I’ve maligned him. Here he is!’

The animal which now surfaced did indeed look quite different from the gentle domestic-looking creature still staring lovingly out of the water. The male manatee’s eyes seemed incorrigibly greedy; the short snorts he gave had a vaguely petulant air and the round head which imparted to Agatha such a benign and soothing look was covered, in his case, by large liver-coloured spots.

And as Rom had intended, Harriet laughed and said, ‘I see what you mean.’

Furious at the lack of largesse, the male manatee nudged his wife a couple of times, gave a snort of disgust… and sank.

‘Does he have a name?’ asked Harriet.

‘I call him Grunthorpe,’ said Rom — and led her back to the house.

The party was in full swing. Sitting at damask-covered tables decked with exquisite silver, the guests ate roast tapir more delicate than pork, forest grouse wrapped in plantain leaves, a fricassee of turtle meat served in the upturned shell… Only where wine was concerned did Verney turn to Europe, serving a Chateauneuf du Pape which had Dubrov and Count Sternov exchanging a glance of solemnity and awe.

So now I know, thought Harriet, sitting with the girls of the corps at a long table. I have proof. He is Henry’s ‘secret boy’ and that means I must speak to him, even though I don’t know why he left Stavely or what scandal or grief may be hidden in his past. I must tell him how bad things are there and I must plead for Henry even if I am rebuffed and snubbed, because that was what I promised I would do.

She looked at the top table where Verney was sitting, saying something to Simonova which made her throw back her head and laugh, and a stab of pity ran through her for the red-haired child who had turned to her with such trust. ‘If you find him, Harriet, ask him to come back,’ Henry had said, but this man would never return to England. She had never seen anyone who belonged to a place so utterly as he did here.

She accepted a second helping of an unknown but delicious fish. Beside her, the indomitable Olga was crunching to smithereens a leg of roasted guinea-fowl. Tatiana, who spoke no word of English, was bent over her plate.

Only when? thought Harriet, thus left free to pursue her thoughts. When do I speak to him? After tonight I won’t see him again, not ever, she thought — wondering why the exotic fish she was consuming seemed, after all, not to be in the least delicious. Verney might go to the other performances at the Opera House, but he would hardly trouble to seek out a humble member of the corps.

The entrée was cleared; bowls of pomegranates, paw-paws and pineapples were set out. Sorbets arrived in tall glasses and a concoction of meringue and passion fruit… The wine changed to the lightest of Muscadels…

But Harriet’s appetite had suddenly deserted her, for the result of her deliberations had become inescapable. If she wanted to plead for the child who had so inexplicably wound himself round her heart, there was only one way to do it — alone. And only one time — tonight.

As a host Verney might appear relaxed to the point of being casual, but the ingredients which made up his famous parties — the food, the wine, the lights, the music — were most precisely calculated. So after the formality of the dinner he loosed his guests into the flower-filled enfilade of rooms which ran along the terrace and replaced the Viennese trio who had played earlier by a group of Brazilian musicians, knowing that guests too shy to waltz or polka in the presence of these professionals would soon be caught by the syncopated rhythm of Los Olvideros. And soon Maximov was dancing with young Mrs Bennett, the sharp-faced Harry Parker beat all other contestants for the hand of Marie-Claude and Simonova herself had led the enraptured Count on to the floor.

But a man who knows exactly when to welcome and feed and amuse his guests, knows also when to send them back. At midnight his servants came with jugs of steaming coffee, and with a flourish the curtains were drawn aside — to reveal a shining avenue of light from lamps strung between the jacaranda trees and at its end the Amethyst glowing with welcome, waiting to take them home.

‘That went off very well, Lorenzo,’ said Rom. ‘You can clear up in the morning. I’m going to bed.’

But he lingered for a while, enjoying the silent house; relishing that moment of well-being which attacks even the most hospitable of men when their guests have gone. He opened a French window to let in the coati. The night was clear — the Milky Way spectacularly bright and Pegasus, up-ended and undignified to someone from another hemisphere, pointing to the north and what had once been home.

He was just about to make his way upstairs when he caught a movement in the doorway leading to the adjoining room. He turned — and a girl stepped forward into the light.

‘Oh God!’ said Rom under his breath. ‘You!’ and the dark face was suddenly creased with weariness.

‘Mr Verney, I am very sorry to trouble you, but could I talk to you, please?’

He had looked away, missing the fear in her eyes and the way she laced her fingers to stop them trembling.

This girl, then, like all the others… this girl who in the garden had held out such different promise. The oldest ruse, the stalest trick of them all. Staying behind because something had been ‘forgotten’, because the boat had been ‘missed’.

From the same doorway, after the other guests had gone, had stepped Marina in her bare feet, her blouse pulled off one shoulder, tossing her russet hair… And Dolores, the Spanish girl from the troupe he had nursed, whimsically wrapped in one of his Persian rugs because someone had told her that Cleopatra had been brought to Caesar wrapped in a carpet. Millie Trant too, who had used the same formula as Harriet: ‘Let’s you and I have a little talk, Mr Verney.’ But Millie had been honest — there was no mistaking her intentions from the start.

He could laugh now to think how careful he had been not to talk to Harriet again once they came in from the garden, determined not to make her conspicuous. Yet he had watched her unnoticed; seen how she drew out Mrs Bennett, asking quiet questions about the absent child. Later Dubrov had told him a little of her story. Well, was it surprising that a girl who had run away from a good academic home should turn out to be what, seemingly, she was?

‘Very well,’ he said, fighting down his weariness, his desire to humiliate her by turning on his heel and leaving her. ‘If you wish it, we will… talk.’

He pulled the bell-rope and Lorenzo, sleepy and surprised, appeared. ‘Take Miss Morton up to the Blue suite and send someone to see that she has what she requires,’ he said in rapid Portuguese. And to Harriet, who had not understood him, ‘I will join you in half an hour.’

She was very tired and this made her confused — this and not knowing the customs of the country, Harriet told herself. Once in Cambridge she had been to a fund-raising luncheon with her Aunt Louisa in a very grand house, and afterwards the hostess had swept up all the ladies and taken them upstairs to a very cold bathroom. Harriet had not needed to do any of the things the other ladies needed to do, but this had not helped her. One went there; it was what one did.

So perhaps in the Amazon — where it was true one became extremely sticky — it was customary to offer people to whom one was going to talk not only the chance to wash their hands and tidy their hair and so on… but actually… a bath.

At first she had hoped that the room to which she was taken was not a bathroom; it was so large and contained things which she had not thought could be present in a bathroom: an alabaster urn full of lilies, a marble statue on a plinth, a deep white carpet. Not to mention mirrors… so very many mirrors in their gilt frames.

But the bath, surrounded by mahogany and absolutely huge, was unmistakably… a bath. What is more, not one but two servants were standing beside it — one adjusting the water which gushed from the great brass taps, another pouring rose-coloured crystals from a cut-glass jar into the foam — and both at frequent intervals pausing to nod and smile encouragingly in her direction. For Lorenzo, discovering that his master’s latest acquisition was the girl who had played with Andrelhino’s crippled boy and made old José laugh almost until he dropped by showing him the dances she did on one toe in the Teatro Amazonas, had not sent up the usual impersonal Rio-trained chambermaid who waited on ladies in the Blue Suite. Instead, he had tipped out of their hammocks not only his wife but also his niece and told them to attend her.

And attend her they did! Lorenzo might be a sophisticated cabaclo who spoke Portuguese and English and had once worked in a hotel, but for a wife he had turned to the Xanti, that gentle primitive tribe renowned for their knowledge of plant lore and the pleasure they take in the daily rituals of life.

So now Maliki nodded and smiled and beckoned, setting her nose ornament a-jingle, and her welcoming gestures were echoed by her pig-tailed niece. It was awaiting her, this lovely thing, this bath — she might approach!

‘No,’ said Harriet loudly. ‘I don’t want a bath!’

They understood not her words, but her tone. A look of hurt, of despair passed over both faces. The aunt approached the niece; they conferred in low agitated voices… came to a conclusion… rallied. Maliki rushed to the bath taps, turned off the hot and ran the cold to full. Rauni replaced the stopper of the cut-glass jar, ran to fetch another, tipped out a handful of green crystals and held them under Harriet’s nose.

‘Yes,’ said Harriet. ‘Very nice. It smells lovely. Only I—’

But the change in her voice, the obvious pleasure she took in the scent of ‘Forest Fern’, wrought a transformation in her attendants. They smiled, they were transported with relief; they threw up their hands to show how silly they had been not to realise that she wanted the water cooler and did not care for the smell of frangipani. And before Harriet could gather herself together for another effort Maliki had come forward and pulled the loose sack-like dress over her head, while Rauni — bending tenderly to her feet — removed her stockings and shoes.

I suppose I should kick and scream and shout, thought Harriet. But she was very tired and the women — who had announced their names with ritual thumping of the chest — were very kind. And surely it could not be that the man who had been so much her friend in the garden might intend her any harm? Surely a vile seducer could not have pulled aside the thorny branches of an acacia to reveal for her a nest of fledgling flycatchers with golden breasts?

The water was lovely — cool, soft, up to her chin. In Scroope Terrace it had been bad manners even to be on the same floor as someone taking their weekly bath, but her attendants showed no signs of departure. On the contrary, this delightful experience was clearly one to be shared. Maliki picked up a loofah and rubbed her back. Rauni ran back and forth proffering a succession of brightly coloured soaps; then bent to massage the soles of Harriet’s feet with pumice stone…

And presently Maliki gathered up Harriet’s crumpled clothes and carried them carefully to the door which led to the corridor.

‘No!’ Harriet sat up suddenly. ‘No! Not my clothes. Leave them here!’

But this time the women did not panic. They knew now how to soothe her, how to make everything right. Of course they would not leave her without clothes, they gestured, sketching reassuring garments in the air. How could she think it?

And they did not! Maliki, removing Harriet’s brown foulard, returned almost immediately and together aunt and niece held up, with pardonable pride, what Harriet was to wear.

Everything in Verney’s house was of the best and so was this negligée — a confection of creamy Venetian lace with scalloped sleeves, soft ruffles at the throat and hem and a row of tiny satin-covered buttons.

What now? thought Harriet ten minutes later as she stood dried, powdered and perfumed in front of the largest of the mirrors, looking at a girl she did not recognise. Her eyes were huge, smudged with apprehension and fatigue; Maliki had brushed her loose hair forward to lie in damp strands across the creamy lace covering her breasts.

‘Oh, Marie-Claude, I have been such a fool,’ said Harriet, bereft and very frightened and homesick — not for the home she had never had, but for the company of her new-found friends.

But there seemed to be no way now but forward. Leaning towards the mirror she undid, with fingers she could scarcely keep from trembling, the top button of the negligée where it rested against her throat.

‘I am ready,’ said Harriet.

If she had still hoped that she might be mistaken, that hope was instantly dashed as her gratified attendants pushed her forward through the double doors and closed them behind her. The room, panelled in blue damask and richly carpeted, was dominated by the largest bed that Harriet had ever seen — a four-poster billowing with snow-white netting and covered with an embroidered counterpane the corners of which were undoubtedly turned back. And now rising from an armchair by the window was her host, Rom Verney, wearing over his dress shirt and evening trousers a black silk dressing-gown tied loosely — extremely loosely — with a silken cord.

Strangely it was not the way he was dressed that made the trembling which assailed her almost uncontrollable. It was the disdain, the hard look in the grey eyes. Was it a trick played by the shaded lamps or did he suddenly hate her?

‘I hope you enjoyed your bath?’ The voice was cold, icily mocking.

‘Yes, thank you.’

Was that part of what was to happen next — that he should detest her?

She managed to take a few more steps forward, to reach the bedpost to which she put out a hand. At the same time her bare feet under the frothy hem arranged themselves instinctively in the first position dégagé, as though she was about to begin a long and taxing exercise.

‘I don’t want to… make excuses,’ she brought out. ‘I understand that ignorance is no defence… and that one is punished just the same.’ And not wishing to be rude even in this extremity of fear, she added, ‘I mean, I know that there are consequences of being ignorant… and that one must not try to escape them.’

He had moved towards her and seen how she trembled, and a hope as intense as it was absurd leapt in his breast.

‘I’m afraid I don’t entirely follow you,’ he said, but the mockery had left his voice and she was able to say:

‘I mean you have only to look at Ancient Greece to see… that not knowing what you were doing didn’t let you off. Oedipus didn’t know that Jocasta was his mother when he married her, yet the punishment was terrible — gouging out his eyes. Not that this is as bad as that, I expect…’ She made a small forlorn gesture towards the bed and her impending fate. ‘And poor Actaeon — he didn’t mean to spy on Diana bathing with her nymphs; he didn’t even know she was there, he just wanted a drink — yet look what happened to him! Turned into a stag and torn to pieces by his own dogs!’

‘Go on.’ He had moved still closer, but the moment of her doom was seemingly not yet upon her and she took a gulp of air and went on:

‘I only mean… that I’m not trying to… get out of anything. If what I did… staying behind to talk to you… telling Marie-Claude I was taking the other boat… thinking I could go back with Manuelo’s wife when she takes the baby to be christened…’ She broke off and tried again. ‘Only I think you are going to be very disappointed because I don’t know what to do.’ Her voice was rising dangerously. She was very close to tears. ‘For example, if you were Suleiman the Great it would be correct for me to creep from the foot of the bed into your presence. Only I can’t believe…’

‘I would prefer you not to creep,’ he said gently.

But the return of the kindness he had shown her in the garden made everything somehow worse, and it was with tears trembling on her lashes that she said desperately, ‘I only mean that at Scroope Terrace there was never any opportunity for being… ruined and ravished… and so on. And I don’t know how to behave.’ She could hold back no longer now and the tears ran steadily down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t even know that you had to go to bed with the top button of your nightdress undone,’ sobbed Harriet, ‘not until Marie-Claude told me.’

Rom made no attempt to comfort her. Instead he turned abruptly away from her and walked over to the window in the grip of a fierce and unremitting joy. She is good, he thought exultantly. I was right to feel what I felt. She is innocent and virtuous and good!

He went over to her then and, taking out his handkerchief, very gently wiped away her tears. And then his fingers moved slowly down, brushing her throat, until they found their object: the buttons on her negligée.

And in that moment, when rape and ruin was upon her… was inevitable… Harriet’s terror melted like snow in the sun and she knew with absolute certainty that no ruin was possible here; that what this man wished she would wish also, and would always wish — and she moved towards him with a little sigh and lifted her face with perfect trust to his.

Which made it difficult for Rom to do what he intended — more difficult than he would have believed. But he mastered himself, and smiled down at her and smoothed her rumpled hair. Then carefully, methodically, he did up the small round button at the top of her negligée and kissed her once briefly on the tip of her nose.

‘Now,’ he said, taking her hand as one would take the hand of a child, ‘I’m going to send you home. Tomorrow I shall come into Manaus and we’ll talk, but now you must go.’

‘Must I?’

‘Yes, my dear. At once.’ And his voice suddenly rough, ‘No breath of scandal shall touch you while I live.’