A Company of Swans

15

‘I am ruined,’ said Harriet, waking in the great white-netted bed. The word seemed to her so beautiful that she spoke it again to herself, very softly: ‘Ruined. I am a fallen woman.’

She turned her head on the pillow. Rom’s dark head was half-buried in the sheet, one arm thrown out in sleep. The problem now was what to do with so much happiness; how to contain it and not let it spill out and disturb him. Happiness like this could almost certainly disturb people and Rom must not be woken by her. Not ever woken…

I have put myself beyond the reach of decent women, thought Harriet, trying out different variations of her fall and smiling at the ceiling.

A new world lay before her — a world at whose existence she had not even guessed. The mystics knew it, and perhaps God Himself and possibly Johann Sebastian Bach in places… but none of them had been ruined by Rom, so they could not know it as she knew it.

Moving very slowly, very carefully, she put one foot on the ground, looking at it speculatively because the foot, like the rest of her, had been ruined and felt totally beautiful and totally good, as though each separate toe had shared the extraordinary bliss of the previous night. The negligée that Maliki had wrapped around her after her bath was lying across a chair and she put it on, because she was not yet accustomed to being a loose woman and was not certain that she ought to walk around the room with nothing on. Moreover she was going on a pilgrimage, and pilgrimages were better conducted in negligées.

Because she had to remember this room. It was Rom’s own room, to which he had carried her from the Blue Suite, and she had to remember every single thing in it so that years later she could come back here in her mind. Even on her deathbed she must be able to come back here and walk across the deep white carpet, knowing that behind her Rom still slept… Particularly on her deathbed. She had to remember this chair on which his clothes lay and the pattern made by his shirt against the gold brocaded silk… and she traced with one finger the fleurs de lys woven in Lyons two hundred years ago so that she, a ruined girl and the happiest person in the world, could delight in their intricacy.

She had to remember for always the shape of the carved handles on the chest of drawers and the glint of the carriage clock, its hands at ten to six. She had to remember the books lying on the low table — three books with leather bindings and beside them a small bronze dragon and Rom’s fountain pen. She had to remember the Persian rug spread on the carpet and that was going to be difficult: she must work and work at remembering that, for the squares and diamonds of cinnamon and amethyst and pearl were unbelievably complex.

She must remember how it felt to walk barefoot to the window and lift the curtain a little… The mosquito netting had trapped a moth, which must not die because nothing was allowed to die on the morning of her ruin, and which she freed and saw flutter up to the lamp. Which meant that she must study the lamp too: five petals of rosy glass held by a silver chain…

‘Who gave you permission to leave my side?’

She spun round. Rom was leaning on one arm, looking at her. He was awake, alive — he had not perished in the night!

‘I was getting to know the room,’ she said.

‘So I saw. But you happen to be further away than I care for.’

‘Then I will come back.’ She came to him and hung her head, for what she saw in his eyes was too much even for a woman as officially depraved as she now was.

‘I thought perhaps I should get dressed?’ she suggested.

‘No, I’m not very keen on that,’ said Rom in conversational tones.

‘Actually it’s difficult, because I only have my Wili costume. But I can’t go out into the garden without my clothes.’

‘Ah… But you aren’t going into the garden.’

‘Am I not?’ She considered this. Then her face crunched into the urchin smile which had so surprised him when he first saw her with Manuelo’s baby under the trees. ‘Well, I will come back — only I would like to creep from the foot of the bed into your presence, like the odalisques did with Suleiman the Great.’

‘Over my dead body will you creep!’

‘But if I wanted to?’

He pulled her down so that she lay against his shoulder. ‘It’s bad for people to get what they want — it deprives them of their dreams. I’ll explain it to you. Later…’

Harriet lifted her head. ‘How many times a day can one be ruined?’ she asked — not in any way displeased, just interested.

‘We shall have to find out.’ And his mouth suddenly twisted: ‘Oh, God, I have ruined you too, you gallant girl, but I swear—’

She had begun obediently to put up a hand to the buttons of her negligée, was beginning to undo the one at the top.

‘How dare you?’ he said roughly, pulling her fingers away. ‘Leave it alone! That button is mine!’

In the days that followed, Harriet became somewhat beautiful. Her skin glowed, her hair — Rom swore it — grew thicker and heavier almost by the hour and like most lovers he both rejoiced in what improved her and swore that he wanted nothing about her to change.

He had sent word to the Company that she was safe and Marie-Claude, the sensible girl, had packed Harriet’s clothes and taken them to Verney’s office for Miguel to send to Follina. However, this helped Harriet little, for Rom promptly gave orders to have them burned.

‘Nothing personal, you understand. Just a difference of opinion between me and your Aunt Louisa. Later we’ll buy some more. The blue skirt and the white blouse are all right — and your petticoat; you can keep that.’ He grinned down at her. ‘Who knows, after all, when you may get the urge to dance on tables!’

But clothes were not really Harriet’s problem, for the white cloud bed with its mosquito netting — from which she occasionally still rescued the moths that became trapped in its folds — had become her world. She saw it now as a white-sailed ship on which she voyaged with Rom to Monserrat or Venusburg.

‘I think God has made a mistake about love,’ she said to him, lying with her head in the hollow of his arm. ‘If one can find it — all this ecstasy, and seeing the world in a grain of sand like this… then one isn’t going to struggle to be properly religious and good.’

‘If you knew how rare it was, Harriet,’ he said, smoothing back her hair. ‘What we have here. God wasn’t chancing His arm much, I assure you. Not many people are deflected from the pursuit of the good by a requited passion. I have chased it all my adult life — and I found it the day you came.’

‘It’s because they haven’t got you that they don’t find it. But then why should I be given this chance? Why me?’

She could make no sense of this. Wickedness had led to ecstasy. Only temporary ecstasy, of course — she would lose him and she knew how. But already she had had so much more than she was entitled to.

‘Only I’m not completely happy all the time,’ she pointed out, ‘because you won’t let me creep from the foot of the bed into your presence. So perhaps God will let me—’

‘Oh, Harriet, let Him be. He’s not after you, poor God! You’re His suffering creature now bathed in love. Come here and I’ll show you.’

When Rom was working in his study or at the loading bay at São Gabriel, Harriet had baths. Maliki and Rainu presided over these hour-long rituals from which Harriet emerged smelling now of frangipani, now of hibiscus or increasingly — as her helpers became aware of her passion for the scents and unguents of their country — of essences they themselves had compounded from plants which she had not even known existed. Even so, she could never defeat Rom who, after burying his face in her hair only for a moment, would announce firmly, ‘Cedar-wood’ or ‘Cattelya’ or ‘Moon Lily’, before unwinding the snowy towel in which she was wrapped in order to make certain that he had guessed correctly.

When she was not having baths, Harriet ate pomegranates.

It is difficult to speak well of this fruit. Once opened, it disgorges enormous quantities of slimy reddish pips which laboriously have to be consumed because there is little else. Just how many seeds there are in a pomegranate, is hard to discover — more, certainly, than can be counted with ease.

Harriet, however, ate them: seed by seed, forcing them down… at breakfast… at lunch, enduring the insipid taste, the stickiness… for the legend of Persephone was always with her — Persephone, who had been forced to remain in Hades for as many months as she had eaten pomegranate seeds. Not expecting the impossible, Harriet had altered the time-scale: one pomegranate seed, which had kept Persephone with her dark-visaged lover for a month, was to give her one day with Rom.

‘That’s five hundred and twenty-three, I think,’ she told him triumphantly. ‘Five hundred and twenty-three whole days with you sometime in my life—’ and went off to wash her hands.

After a while she took the only sensible course and, watched by her cheerful attendants, she ate her pomegranates in the bath.

When Harriet had been at Follina for a week, Rom went into Manaus where he called first at the police station. He had no fears for Harriet’s safety. Not only had he doubled the guard on his gates, but he had indicated to his Indians that Harriet was not to be unattended in his absence, and as he drove away, a glimpse of Manuelo’s one-eyed uncle, old José with his machete, and Maliki and Rainu with their weaving — all converging on Harriet as she sat reading on the terrace — made it clear that any kidnapper trying to snatch her would have his work cut out.

But the news young Captain Carlos gave him when he enquired about the troublesome English girl was entirely reassuring. Yes, they had taken the girl on to the Gregory and locked her into her cabin. Dr Finch-Dutton had gone on board an hour later — since when neither the girl nor the doctor had been seen.

‘But what a girl!’ said Captain Carlos, shaking his head. ‘No wonder the English are like they are if that is how their women carry on.’ Then, looking anxiously at the influential Mr Verney — known to be Colonel de Silva’s closest friend — he asked, ‘I did right? The Colonel will be pleased?’

‘You did quite right, Carlos,’ said Rom and left the Captain a happy man.

His next call was at his quayside office, where he gave instructions to Miguel to cable Belem and order the overseer to send a man to meet the Gregory, escort the girl travelling with Dr Finch-Dutton to a hotel and return her to Manaus on the next boat.

‘He is to see she has everything she wants for the return journey — no expense spared.’ Then, grinning as if at some private joke, ‘No… better tell him to send two men!’

After which he made his way to the Hotel Metropole.

He found the members of the Company depressed and listless, for Simonova’s accident had affected everyone. Masha Repin, convinced that the world was against her, shut herself into her room between performances; Maximov still needed to be reassured constantly that he was not to blame for the ballerina’s injury; and attendances were falling. It was not of fame and triumph that the tired dancers thought now, but with increased longing of Europe and home.

But Marie-Claude, when Rom found her reading a novel in the lounge, was rapidly transported into a state of bliss by the request Rom made of her.

‘Ah yes, Monsieur, I will be delighted to do that! I know her size exactly and you will not be disappointed.’

‘Good girl,’ said Rom, placing a wad of bank-notes into her hand. ‘I would like one of the dresses to be blue — the colour of that kerchief she wore in Fille.’

Marie-Claude nodded, ‘I will do my best. Madame Pauline has some new stock from Paris: I’ll go there first.’

‘And I would like you to buy a dress for yourself, to compensate you for your trouble. Something not too suitable for a restaurant proprietress!’

Marie-Claude shook her head. ‘No, Monsieur, that is not necessary. Harriet is my friend and I love shopping. I want nothing for myself.’

‘Nevertheless, you will please me very much if you accept. And you will not be so cruel as to deprive Vincent of the pleasure of seeing you beautifully dressed,’ said Rom — and went upstairs to knock on the door of Simonova’s room.

Entering, he found himself in an atmosphere of gothic gloom and hopelessness. The shutters were three-quarters closed; bouquets of heavy-headed flowers sent by well-wishers wilted in vases; a macabre arrangement of electric batteries and spinal pads lay on a table and the sickly smell of chloroform pervaded the air.

Rom had brought some French novels, a basket of fruit, a single spray of the Queen’s Orchid which Harriet had picked dew-fresh at dawn, but as he moved over to the bed he saw that the ballerina was beyond reading or any of the consolations of the sick-room. Even to lift her emaciated hand to kiss it would be to jolt the frail exhausted body.

But Simonova, pain-racked and despairing though she was, could still respond to the presence of a handsome man.

‘So! You have taken the only girl who might have made a serious dancer. I hope you are ashamed of yourself!’

He smiled, shook his head. ‘No, Madame; I am not ashamed.’

‘Well, you are right,’ she said, relapsing into apathy. ‘See how it ends.’

Rom turned to Dubrov, who was keeping watch as always in his chair. ‘I came to offer you the Casa Branca, but I imagine it would be difficult for Madame to be moved?’

‘Impossible,’ came Simonova’s weak voice from the bed. ‘I cannot even turn over by myself. To be carried to the boat will be bad enough.’

‘And the doctors have no suggestions?’

Dubrov shrugged. ‘One says it’s a haemorrhage into the spinal column, another that it’s a compression of the intervertebral space… Yesterday a young German came from the hospital and said she had torn the lumbar nerves… We are only anxious now to reach Leblanc in Paris; we think perhaps he can operate.’

Rom frowned. Without a diagnosis, a back operation on a woman as exhausted as this seemed a recipe for disaster. But he hid his disquiet and for a quarter of an hour set himself to amuse and please Simonova — talking of her triumphs, flirting with her, until a little colour came back into the hollow cheeks.

‘Bring the child to say goodbye to me,’ she said, as he made his farewells.

Outside in the corridor, Rom spoke to Dubrov. ‘It seems strange to me that the doctors can’t find the cause of her injury. Many of them are fools, but not all. Dr Stolz from the hospital has an excellent reputation. You were there when Madame was injured. Can you tell me exactly how it happened?’

Dubrov described the accident, but Rom’s puzzlement only increased.

‘There is something there that I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Something that doesn’t fit… Meanwhile, let me know in what way I can be of service to you. I’m well aware that in depriving you of two Wilis I have a debt to pay.’

Dubrov shook his head. ‘It’s of no importance now. We are only filling in time. But perhaps if you could have a word with the people in the shipping office? We’re trying to alter some of our bookings so as to go back on the Lafayette on the fourteenth — it’s a question of getting Madame straight to Cherbourg — and they are not being too cooperative.’

‘I’ll certainly do that. The captain of the Lafayette is a good friend of mine — there shouldn’t be any trouble. And you ought to have Olga back by the end of next week.’ He raised enquiring eyebrows at Dubrov. ‘It was Olga Narukov, wasn’t it, that Edward took?’

‘Yes,’ said Dubrov, ‘it was Olga,’ and for the first time since Simonova’s accident he laughed.

Rom had taken his hat from the stand and was about to leave when Dubrov said, ‘And Harriet? I have a ticket for her on the boat.’ He was silent, thinking of the girl he had picked out at Madame Lavarre’s and wanted against all odds, seeing from the start the dedication, the intelligence. ‘She stays with you?’

‘Yes,’ said Rom. ‘What I have, I hold. I’m through with scruples.’

At Follina, Harriet’s ruin continued. Her happiness spread in ripples through the house, the gardens, the village… Returning after a morning’s work, Rom would hear bursts of laughter from behind the trees and find her teaching old José how to do an entrechat or pretending to be a lone swan which had got out of step with the music. Manuclo’s baby was said to have smiled his first undoubted smile at her; Manuelo’s mother-in-law gave her a charm against rheumatism: a pleasing confection of batskins, jaguar claws and human teeth. Even Grunthorpe, the ill-tempered manatee, was unable to resist such evident radiance and occasionally condescended to surface at her behest.

For Rom, since he had snatched Harriet from the stage, there had been no moment of hesitation, no second when he did not know his mind and heart. She was everything to him — beloved companion, intellectual equal and passionate mistress — one of the world’s naturals for that mysterious act which human beings use to break down the barriers of the self. Nor could he doubt her love. Love streamed from her — it was in every word she spoke, every breath she drew. Yet he could not get her to speak of the future. This girl whom he had discovered throwing scraps to a wicked-looking caiman in the creek grew visibly terrified when he spoke of the time when they would leave Follina.

Three days after he had been to Manaus, the expected confirmation arrived from MacPherson in London. The technicalities were now completed and Stavely was his. A letter to Professor Morton, asking permission to marry his daughter, lay ready on Rom’s desk.

That morning he took her out in the Firefly. He was teaching her to handle the little boat; she was quick to learn and never happier than when she was on the river helping him to feed logs into the temperamental fire-box, wrinkling her nose at the lovely smell of woodsmoke and steam or handling the tiller with that grave concentration that was her hallmark.

It was a magical day, free of the sullen rain-clouds that so often mustered by noon; the clear, calm water mirrored the peaceful sky.

‘The Maura must be the most beautiful river in the world,’ said Harriet blissfully. She was wearing the old blue skirt and white blouse she had saved from the holocaust, not trusting her new clothes to Firefly’s whims. There was a smut on her cheek, but Rom had decided against removing it; it was a becoming smut, dear to his heart. ‘Oh, look — isn’t that your otter?’

He nodded. ‘That’s the male. They’ve been in that bank since I came — a most faithful pair. In a moment you’ll see a clump of palms on the left leaning over the water — there’s usually a sun bittern there… Yes, look, he’s just flying up now. Incredible, isn’t it, the orange and gold…’

‘You know it all,’ said Harriet wonderingly. ‘You give people this river.’

Rom shook his head, turning to adjust the throttle. Not people, he could have said: just you.

He came over to sit beside her, putting his hand over hers on the tiller, not because she needed help but because he wanted to be where she was.

‘Harriet, I know you love Follina and being here and God knows I do too. I’ll do everything I can to hang on to the place — but it is time to think of the next step. If I am to put Stavely on its feet, I can’t delay too long.’

Feeling her grow tense, he laid an arm across her shoulders. The bullet graze from Ombidos was almost healed and even in her panic she smiled at that. ‘If it’s any consolation to you, I think the good times are almost over out here. My own fortune is safe — I have seen this coming for some time and shifted my interests to Europe — but there’s going to be real hardship and little enough one can do to help.’

He was silent, seeing goats grazing in the parks of the Golden City, the Opera House closed, the ‘black gold’ that was rubber lying unclaimed on the docks because the world could buy it at half the price from the new plantations in the East.

‘Yes. I know, Rom. I understand that you… that one has to go back. And I promise I won’t make a fuss when it happens — how could I, when it was I who begged you to save Stavely? Henry needs you, he really does, and Stavely’s beautiful — there’s nowhere more beautiful in the world. And… Mrs Brandon will be so grateful to have your help in bringing up Henry.’

Rom smiled down at her, his face alight with tenderness. It touched him very much, this incessant concern for the child. ‘You think I would be a good example to him, do you?’

‘Yes. I do think that, as a matter of fact.’ She had seen his eyes grow soft at the mention of Isobel’s name and it became necessary to take a few deep and steadying breaths. ‘I think that a child who had your example before him would grow up to be…’ But she could not go on. It was overwhelming her — this image of the woman he had so passionately loved welcoming him as saviour of her home — and the tears she was powerless to check spilled over, making a channel through the smudges on her cheek.

‘My darling… oh, my love.’ He wiped her face, took the tiller from her and gathered her to him with his free arm. ‘What is it, Harriet? What are you frightened of? Tell me, my heart, for I swear that whatever it is—’

‘Nothing… honestly, Rom, nothing. I have everything anyone could want. I am probably the happiest person in the world. Only please, please, could we not talk about… what comes next? Could we just live each day fully and properly, savouring every second like in Marcus Aurelius?’ And again, ‘I promise not to make a fuss when the time comes to leave. I promise.’

He left it then. ‘Of course,’ he said cheerfully, giving her the tiller once more. ‘There is not the slightest need to think about it now. Steer for the far side of that little island — there’s a wonderful spot there for our picnic. That was a turtle which just plopped into the water. Maybe we’ll find some eggs and have an orgy…’

But that night, long after she was sleeping in his arms, he lay awake puzzling out the reason for her fear. Did she feel herself incompetent to run Stavely? She must know that he would help her in every way, that she would have a first-class staff. Was it something to do with Isobel? She seemed to pronounce her name with difficulty. He had meant to offer Isobel Paradise Farm — there seemed no other way to keep an eye on Henry and that he should do so was clearly Harriet’s dearest wish. Did she imagine that Isobel as an older woman would interfere in her affairs? Surely she must know that he would never permit that? Or was it her love for Follina that made the thought of leaving such a dread?

No, there was nothing there to account for Harriet’s terror. It had to be something far deeper than that. And as he lay wakeful in the dark, there came to him the image of Harriet balancing on her leaf by the lake with the Victoria Regina lilies — and the answer Simonova and the others had given to the question he had found it so hard to ask.

‘When she came, we thought it was too late… But we don’t think it as much as we did… We remember Taglioni, you see.’

And three days ago in Simonova’s sick-room: ‘You have taken the only girl who might have made a serious dancer.’

Did Harriet know how good she was? Was that it? That much as she loved him, she couldn’t bear to give up dancing? Once at Stavely he had found his mother sitting at the piano, her hands on the silent keys and a blind, lost look on her face. God knows she had loved her husband if any woman had, but had she paid too great a price?

Now it was Rom’s turn to be afraid. He looked down at Harriet and she seemed to sense his regard, for without opening her eyes she burrowed deep into his shoulder with a sleep-drugged sigh of utter contentment.

No, thought Rom, banishing his spectres. I don’t believe it.

The next day he left early to inspect a consignment of redwoods unloaded at São Gabriel. Returning earlier than expected, he let himself silently into his drawing-room.

From the horn of the gramophone came the sound of a Brahms impromptu. Harriet was standing with her back to him, her fingertips resting on the arms of a chair.

He had often seen her dance… for his delighted villagers, for Maliki and Rainu, creating a ‘ballet of the bath’ in which, suffocated with mirth, they brought her towels en pointe — and once, unforgettably, at night in his room after love when she had spun like a dervish, expressing her ecstasy in movement; for she was not a girl who suffered from the tristesse that is supposed to follow passion.

But now she was working. Relentlessly, steadily, Harriet practised her pliés… bending… rising… bending… while he watched her straight, slim back, the tendrils of soft hair lapping her neck. His territory — his — and now turned away from him in the iron discipline of class.

He stood for some time in the doorway, his face taut. It seemed to him that it would have been easier to see her absorbed in another man than to watch this impersonal dedication, this being lost to everything except the need to perfect each movement. Then he went out silently and made his way to his study.

Harriet had woken that morning chiding herself for letting her happiness make her soft. She must keep her muscles supple, her body in shape, for she must not be a burden to Rom. She must be able to find work as a dancer — if possible far away, for she did not think she could bear to be in Cambridge knowing he was so close. The others had gone without complaint, those girls he had brought to Follina and honoured with his love. She would not be less brave, less competent than they.

And so she worked, murmuring instructions to herself, and saw him neither come nor go, while in his study Rom stood looking down at the letter he had written to Professor Morton… and then tore it slowly into shreds.