Journey to the River Sea

Chapter Fourteen

‘Come and see her,’ said Finn. ‘Come and see your namesake.’

He got into the canoe beside Maia and Miss Minton, and paddled round to the side of the Arabella, so that Miss Minton could see the name painted on the bows.

Miss Minton put up a bony hand to trace the letters. For a while she was silent. Then she said, ‘It’s a better name for a boat than for a governess. Or a housemaid.’

She sniffed and felt for her handkerchief, the same one with the initial ‘A’ on it that she had lent to Maia in the cab — and once again Maia thought what an idiot she had been not to guess what Finn had guessed so quickly.

‘He said if he got away and got himself a boat he’d call her after me,’ Miss Minton went on. ‘I didn’t help him all that much — he’d have done it anyway — but he never forgot a promise.’

They were in the lagoon. It was the day after Clovis had sailed on the Bishop. The twins and Mrs Carter had gone to church. But when Miss Minton had shown Mrs Carter the mysterious bruises on Maia’s arm, she had got permission to keep her at home — and as soon as they were safely away, Furo had come to fetch them.

Back in the hut, Finn began on the questions.

‘How did you know? How did you know who I was as soon as you saw me come out of the trapdoor in the museum?’

‘You’re so like your father. The eyes, the way your voice is pitched. He wasn’t much older than you are now when he ran away from Westwood. And I knew he’d married an Indian woman and had a son; we kept in touch. So when I saw that the crows had caught you, I realized your plan had gone wrong.’

‘You mean you knew what we were planning?’ said Maia — not at all pleased.

‘More or less. Your acting skills are not very great,’ said Miss Minton. ‘And as a liar you are bottom of the class. I made friends with old Lila and when she realized that I knew Bernard, she told me about this place. But you seemed to know what you were doing so I left you to it.’

‘We did know what we were doing,’ said Finn. ‘But Clovis just went berserk when he got down to the cellar. Some skulls came tumbling out of a packing case and he saw these eye sockets staring at him. Then he fell over a throwing spear and the lamp kept going out. There was a weird moaning noise too — it was only the water pipes — but he got hysterical and said he felt sick and he couldn’t go through with it. I suppose it was a sort of stage fright — he really thought the crows were going to hurt him. I’d promised Maia I wouldn’t let him get too scared so I stayed. I meant to make a dash for it when the crows opened the door and lead them away from him. When the sloth fell over he thought it was a bomb!’

‘Poor Clovis,’ said Maia.

‘She’s always sticking up for him,’ said Finn.

‘Still, he gave a fine performance at the end, you must admit,’ said Miss Minton.

Then they asked her about her time at Westwood.

‘I was just a housemaid,’ she said. ‘No one called me Arabella — the butler wouldn’t permit it. I was always Bella, except to Bernard.’

And she told them what had happened after Bernard left.

‘You can’t imagine the uproar. Everyone was stamping about and shouting — but they were angry, not sad. Then very soon after that the butler found me reading in the library — no one read the books at Westwood; I was meant to be dusting them, not reading them — and I was dismissed. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I remembered what Bernard had said — that I should go away and get an education. He said there were colleges where you could study at night and earn your keep during the day. So I went to London and I did just that. It took me six years to get a degree, but I did it.’ Miss Minton looked away and permitted herself a smile — for she had got not just a degree but a First, which no one had done in that college before.

‘So then you became a governess,’ said Maia.

‘Yes. But Bernard wrote to me, and his letters made me want to see the place where he was so happy. I tried hard to save enough for the fare but I never succeeded — and then this job came up with the Carters. Just two weeks after I accepted it, I heard that Bernard had died — the letter came back with a blue cross and ‘deceased’ on the envelope. It was a fearful shock. Then when I came out here and guessed what the crows were up to, I kept my eyes open. I knew how Bernard felt about Westwood and that he would hate his son to be dragged back there against his will.’

‘Well, thank goodness you did,’ said Finn.

But Miss Minton now wanted to see the animals that Bernard had written about.

‘Does the anteater still come?’ she asked, ‘and the capuchin monkey?’, and Finn said yes, and showed her everything — the humming bird bottle, the place where the turtle hauled out of the water, while the dog padded between them.

‘I see why he was so happy here,’ she said. ‘It’s a wonderful place.’

‘Yes, but Finn’s going away. In the Arabella,’ said Maia. ‘He’s going a long, long way,’ and Minty frowned at the sadness in her voice. ‘And he won’t take me.’

‘No, of course not,’ said Miss Minton. ‘That would hardly do.’

Maia looked up into her face. ‘Wouldn’t you like to go on a great journey? Find a place no one knew about?’

‘What I would like has nothing to do with it. I have my living to earn — and you must get an education.’

But even though she knew that Finn would not take her, Maia was hungry for all the details of his journey.

‘What if they aren’t there any more?’ she wanted to know. ‘The Xanti?’

‘Then I’ll go on till I find them,’ said Finn. ‘They have to be somewhere.’

Miss Minton was silent. It wasn’t strictly true — tribes had been wiped out by illness, or fighting, or been kidnapped. She could not be happy about a boy of his age making such a journey alone, but she had no power to prevent Finn from living his life as he wished. Maia was a different matter. She was wholly responsible for keeping Maia safe and it was out of the question that she should be allowed to go.

It was as they came away from the lagoon in Furo’s canoe that Miss Minton suddenly told Furo to stop. A breeze had sprung up and as the leaves of a tall broad-leafed tree blew to one side, she had seen on its trunk, a large and most exquisite butterfly.

Miss Minton did not chase butterflies, but this one was so enormous and so beautiful — and so still — that she clambered out of the canoe and went to look.

‘My goodness!’ she said.

The butterfly was still because it was dead. Dead, but perfectly preserved in the web of a large spider who had left it there, and would probably come back and eat it later.

Very carefully, Miss Minton took the butterfly from the tree, using her handkerchief so as not to touch it directly, and carried it back.

‘Oh!’ said Maia. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that!’, and even Furo shook his head.

The brilliant yellow and black of the wings ended in two long tails, like the tail of a swallow.

‘It looks special, doesn’t it?’ Maia went on. ‘Professor Glastonberry will know what it is.’

Miss Minton nodded, trying not to feel excited. ‘It is most unlikely that it will turn out to be anything unusual,’ she said firmly, but Maia saw her looking at the creature lying on her lap again and again.

In Manaus it quickly got about that Finn Taverner had been snatched by the crows and taken on board the Bishop, and that it was the Carter twins who had betrayed him.

The reaction of almost everyone was anger. Anger with the crows, anger with the twins.

Colonel da Silva was particularly upset. All the trouble he had taken to lead the crows astray had come to nothing. He felt he had failed his old friend Bernard, and he was going to miss Finn.

‘I’d better go and see what’s to be done about the Arabella,’ he said to his second in command. ‘And all Taverner’s things. The dog’ll go wild, I imagine; he can fend for himself.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll go next week — the Indians will see that no one steals anything. And if those wretched Carter twins come again to ask about the reward, send them away with a flea in their ear. The boy hasn’t been gone three days. Nasty, money-grubbing little worms!’

And he turned aside and spat out of the window, a thing he hadn’t done since he was a young cadet and thought spitting was the thing to do.

Professor Glastonberry had had trouble with the exhibits he was supposed to collect in Obidos and had been late coming home. It was therefore not till nearly a week had passed that he came back to the museum, and found that his first caller was Miss Minton.

Miss Minton had been very distressed when the sloth came crashing to the ground, and although they had been able to right the skeleton before they left there had been no time to examine it.

Now she knocked on the door of the lab and found the professor standing by it with a worried look.

‘I came to ask if there had been any serious damage. We never thought the crows would be so violent.’

‘No. None of the bones are broken — the backbone’s been dislodged, but I can fix that.’

He went out to shut both the lab door and the door of his office. Then he said, ‘I’m not quite clear what happened. They say that Finn’s been caught and dragged back to Westwood. But surely Maia wouldn’t have given away his hiding place?’

‘No, it wasn’t like that. Or only in a sense.’ And she told him the whole story: about the children’s plan, the way it had nearly gone wrong and the happy ending.

The professor was delighted. ‘Good, good. So Finn is safe! And of course I should have guessed that you were Bella — Bernard spoke of you as the only friend he had as a boy. Finn’s keeping out of the way, you say?’

‘For the time being — till Clovis is safely out to sea. Then he’ll sail off in the Arabella and I’m afraid Maia’s going to be upset. She has a great thirst for adventure.’

‘And you? Do you have a thirst for adventure?’ the professor asked.

‘Who doesn’t?’ said Miss Minton and shrugged. Then she took out the box in which she had packed the butterfly. ‘I wondered if you knew what this was?’

Very carefully, the professor lifted the layers of cotton wool. ‘Good heavens — don’t tell me you’ve found a Hahnet’s Swallowtail!’ He took the box over to the window. ‘But you have! And perfectly preserved!’

Miss Minton explained about the spider’s web.

‘I could get you a good price for it if you wished to sell it, they’re very rare. I know a collector in Manaus who’s been wanting one. Or I could buy it for the museum. But you’d get a better price from him.’

‘What sort of a price?’

‘In English money, about eighty pounds.’

Miss Minton stared at him. ‘But that’s almost half my yearly wage!’

‘Well that’s what it’s worth. More if you sent it to England. After all, Taverner lived by collecting and selling the things he found, and he’s not the only one.’

Miss Minton was silent, looking into the future. Could it be that a door had opened for her? She would never leave Maia, but one day… Was it possible that she could escape from the drudgery of teaching children like the twins?

The professor, watching her, decided to strike while the iron was hot.

‘I have to go to lunch now,’ he said. ‘I know you don’t care for foreign food, but if you wish I could give you a list of the things that are worth collecting. Some of the plant resins are very valuable — and you don’t have to go after them with a net!’

‘Did I say I didn’t care for foreign food?’ said Miss Minton huffily. ‘I don’t remember saying it. In fact I didn’t say it.’

Up in the bungalow, the twins thought of nothing but the reward. When would it come, what would they do with it, how could they stop their parents from trying to get a share? Maia heard them still whispering about it when they went to bed. Sometimes their voices rose and they seemed to be on the edge of a quarrel, but then they made it up again because they saw themselves as standing alone against the world.

‘And as soon as we get it we can start getting rid of Maia.’

That was the other thing they whispered about. They had got rid of Miss Porterhouse by accusing her of stealing their things, and they had got rid of Miss Chisholm by telling their mother that she had been seen in Manaus with MEN.

They’d have to think of something different for Maia but they would do it, and once Maia went, Miss Minton would go too and they would be free.

And while the twins quarrelled about the reward, Mr and Mrs Carter quarrelled about Maia’s allowance.

‘I tell you,’ said Mr Carter, ‘I have to have this month’s allowance for Maia. It’s no good you hanging on to it like you did last month.’

‘Well, you can’t. The twins need new dancing shoes — and the dentist says they should have braces on their teeth. You know how expensive that is. You don’t want your daughters to grow up with crooked teeth, do you?’

‘If all I had to worry about was my daughters’ teeth I’d be a happy man. That swine Lima has walked out on me — my own agent! If he gangs up with Gonzales I’m finished.’

‘Perhaps if you didn’t spend our money on those ridiculous glass eyes, you wouldn’t be so hard up.’

‘Let me tell you that my collection is worth more than anything else in this house.’

‘Well, why don’t you sell it then and pay your debts? You know I only agreed to have Maia because of the money she brought. It’s I who have to put up with her, not you — you hardly see her. You hardly see your own daughters. And anyway I’ve ordered a new cockroach killer — they’re sending it out from the Army and Navy Stores in London and it’s expensive.’

‘Cockroach killer! I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous. Just throw benzene over them and set them alight.’

‘Really, Clifford — no wonder you can’t run a proper business. Benzene indeed! I shall have to write to Mr Murray and ask him for more money for the girl. She’s not worth keeping for what I get.’

She broke off because Maia had come into the room, carrying her dancing shoes, to say that the launch was ready to go Manaus.

Maia had heard the quarrel — their angry voices echoed through the bungalow. It was a long time since she had thought that the Carters had taken her in because they wanted her, but knowing that she would still be living with these people after Finn had gone was hard to bear.

Two hours later she was playing the piano to Mr Haltmann and had forgotten her misery. She was getting on well, but the best part of her lesson came at the end when Haltmann made her sing. She still wouldn’t listen when he suggested that she had her voice trained, but she asked him about the Indian tribes — had their songs been collected, could she get hold of them?

‘I mean the Indians that live in tribes in the forest, not the ones near the towns.’

‘A few of them have been collected,’ he answered. ‘Only a very few — and there is much work to be done there. But you would find these songs very different and not at all easy to write down.’

‘But it could be done?’

‘Yes… with patience and a good ear.’ He smiled at Maia’s eager face. ‘And you have both, I think?’

At the dancing class everyone knew that Finn Taverner had been caught by the crows, that the twins had betrayed his hiding place and that he was on his way to England and the dreaded Westwood.

Everyone was sorry and no one would speak to the twins — not that they noticed. Even before the news of the reward the twins had lived in a world of their own.

Sergei was not there, his father had taken him on a journey upriver, but Mademoiselle Lille had brought Olga.

The Keminskys’ governess had come with red-rimmed eyes and the news that her father had died back in France, and that she was sailing home on the next boat to Europe.

‘I am thinking,’ she whispered to Miss Minton as they sat and watched the children dance, ‘why don’t you come and take my job? The Keminskys are excellent employers — well, you have seen.’

‘Yes, I can imagine no one better to work for,’ said Miss Minton. ‘But I couldn’t leave Maia.’

‘Perhaps they would have Maia also. The children are very fond of her — Sergei in particular.’

‘When do you leave?’

‘In two weeks. My poor mother is quite distraught.’

‘I’ll think about it. Thank you,’ said Miss Minton.

But she doubted whether Mr Murray would give permission for Maia to go and live with an unknown family of Russians. She would say nothing to Maia — there was no point in raising her hopes.

Though Finn had made it clear that he would not take Maia with him, she could not stop dreaming. It seemed to her that there could be nothing better than to travel on the Arabella on and on and on… To wake at dawn and cook breakfast over a Primus and watch the herons and cormorants dive for fish… to feed logs into the firebox and smell the wood smoke as they caught… And then to chug up the still, dark rivers with the trees leaning over to give shade, or across the sudden white-water lagoons where the water was milky in the sunlight.

This was what she had imagined that evening in the school library, sitting on top of the ladder and reading about the treasures that the Amazon would pour into the lap of those who were not afraid.

But she had not then imagined Finn. Finn was obstinate; he could be bad-tempered and curt and he was far too full of his own opinions — but she had fallen into friendship with him as surely as the soppy older girls at school had fallen into love. And now he was going, and Clovis had gone, and she would be left alone with the twins.

At first, hoping that Finn would change his mind and let her come, she had worked extra-hard helping him with the Arabella, but after a while she became so interested that she helped for its own sake.

‘Have you got any books about boats?’ she asked Minty.

‘One doesn’t learn about boats from books,’ said Miss Minton, but she found a manual about the maintenance of steam launches in the second-hand bookshop in Manaus.

‘What do you think they’ll be like, the Xanti?’ Maia asked Finn, and he shrugged.

‘My father said they were the kindest people he’d ever met. And they knew everything there was to know about healing. I’d like to learn that from them; after all, three-quarters of the medicines we use come from plants, and most of them come from the forest here.’ He hesitated. ‘I thought maybe one day I could become a doctor, but not the kind that just gives people pills.’

Maia nodded. Finn would make a good doctor, she could see that. ‘Did he say if they had any songs?’

‘They’ll have songs all right. All Indians sing, especially when they’re travelling.’

Maia sighed. She wanted to learn about the songs like Finn wanted to learn about the plants.

But it was hopeless. ‘It’s too dangerous,’ was all Finn would say, and that was that. She tried to put it out of her mind but she couldn’t. There were girls at school who wanted to ride, and others who wanted to go on the stage, and there was a girl who had made a terrible fuss till she was allowed to learn the oboe — not the flute, not the clarinet, it had to be the oboe. They knew that these things were for them; and Maia knew that boats were for her. Boats, and going on and on and not arriving unless one wanted to.

When they weren’t working on the boat, Finn took her into the forest. He showed her which nuts to pick and which to avoid, how to get fruit down from the high branches and how to walk quietly, picking up her feet higher than usual, not thumping and blundering about. Once he brought down a paca with his bow and arrow.

‘They’re good to eat,’ he said. ‘You have to be able to kill for food if necessary,’ — and he waited for Maia to make a fuss, but though she turned pale when the little rodent twitched on his arrow, she said nothing. He showed her how to make body paint from urucu berries, and how to fetch water from the river without getting scum into the kettle — and the more she learnt the more she wanted to learn, and the more she dreaded the day of his departure.

But he wasn’t gone yet. Not quite. She could still come into the lagoon and hear him whistling as he did his chores. And she would have been very surprised if she had known that Finn too was fearful of the parting and of making the journey by himself.

Then just two weeks after the Bishop had left Manaus, the liner came out of the maze of waterways at the head of the Amazon delta and headed out for the open sea. Even if Clovis had been found out there would be no chance now of sending him back before they reached England.

‘There’s no point in waiting any longer,’ said Finn. ‘The boat is as ready as she’ll ever be. If we clear the reeds away, she’ll just get through.’

We, thought Maia bitterly. Obviously he expected her to help him clear the passage out of the lagoon, and then he’d wave goodbye and she’d never see him again.

‘If it had been the other way round, I’d have taken you,’ she said.

‘I suppose you think that makes it easier for me,’ said Finn angrily.

‘I wasn’t trying to make it easier for you,’ said Maia, and stalked away.

But Finn did not go immediately. It was as though the Arabella wasn’t so sure if she wanted to go adventuring after her quiet time in the lagoon. First they found a small leak through the hull under the floorboards, and then Finn dropped the washer for the valve which regulated the amount of steam to go into the boiler. He didn’t just drop it, he dropped it into the deepest part of the lake, and though he and Maia dived for it again and again they couldn’t find it. Furo went into Manaus to get a replacement but before they could put it in, another week had passed.

It was harder for Miss Minton to get away to the lagoon. When she did manage it, she bullied Finn about Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

‘Those legions are never going to get across the bridge at this rate,’ she said, looking at the book, still open at page fifty-seven. But when she had finished lecturing Finn about the importance of Latin to someone who wanted to collect plants, she lent a hand with the chores, scrubbing the floor of the hut to whiteness.

‘Having been a housemaid always comes in useful,’ she said.

One afternoon when the children were on their own, they saw that the macaws on the tree that guarded the entrance had flown up, squawking.

But it was not Furo come to fetch Maia. It was Colonel da Silva with his second in command, come to take charge of Bernard Taverner’s possessions.

‘Dios!’ he said paddling up to the hut. ‘What is this?’

So Finn explained and when he had finished the colonel was laughing so much, he looked as if he was going to fall into the water. The idea of the crows bringing a penniless actor to Westwood was the best thing he had heard in ages. ‘And you, senhorita,’ he said to Maia. ‘A heroine no less.’

He told them that instructions to pay out the reward for Finn’s capture had been telegraphed from the Bishop so there could be no suspicion that they did not have the right boy.

Then came the day Maia had dreaded. The last of the provisions were loaded onto the Arabella — manioc flour and dried beans and oil for the Primus and gifts for the Indians.

That night Finn came to say goodbye to Furo and the others.

‘You’re to look after Maia,’ he told them. ‘Promise me you will not let any harm come to her.’

And Furo, who had been sulking because he too wanted to go with Finn, gave his promise, as did Tapi and Conchita. Only old Lila was inconsolable, weeping and rocking back and forth and declaring that she would be dead before he returned.

Watching from her window, Maia saw him come out of Lila’s hut, and for a moment she thought he was going to go without saying goodbye. Then he walked across the compound and stood under her window and she heard him whistle the tune that he had whistled on the night she came.

She ran outside then and hugged him and wished him luck, and she did not cry.

‘You’re not to spoil it for him,’ Minty had said, and she didn’t.

But when he had gone, she stood for a long time by the window, trying to remember the words of the song. It was a song begging the wind to bring back someone who had gone away in a ship, but she did not think it ended happily.

Well, why should it? Why should the wind care if she never saw Finn again?