Journey to the River Sea

Chapter Nine

‘It might easily have been a prison,’ began Finn. ‘It had towers and a moat and battlements and it stood in acres of land ringed by a high stone wall stuck full of spikes.’

But it wasn’t. Westwood was a large country house — a stately home — which had belonged to the Taverners since the time of the crusades. The head of the family was a stiff-necked, snooty landowner, Sir Aubrey Taverner, who brayed at people and spoke to the servants as if they were deaf.

Sir Aubrey’s eldest son was called Dudley and he was exactly like his father: arrogant and snooty and certain that the Taverners were the most important people on earth. Dudley too shouted at the servants; he went off to his prep school without a murmur; he rode horses with large behinds, he shot things — and of course he was the apple of his father’s eye.

The next child born to the Taverners was a girl whom they called Joan. She wasn’t much good in some ways because only males were allowed to inherit Westwood, but all the same she was a true Taverner with a voice like a foghorn. Joan bullied other children who had the bad luck not to be Taverners, and she too rode about on horses with large behinds, and Sir Aubrey liked her well enough.

But then came Bernard.

Bernard was the last of Sir Aubrey’s children. His mother died soon after he was born and he was a disaster. Bernard was afraid of loud voices. He was afraid of the dark. He was afraid of his brother Dudley who tried to make a man of him, and he was afraid of his sister Joan who threw him in the lake and held his head under the water to make him swim. When Bernard spoke to the maids he did it quietly and he said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ — and sometimes, though he was a boy and a Taverner, he cried.

His father, of course, was desperate. A boy like Bernard had never happened in his family before. He sent him away to the toughest school he could find, but though the teachers caned him even more than his father had done, and the boys did interesting things to him like squeezing lemon juice into his eyes and piercing the soles of his feet with compass needles, it seemed to make no difference. Bernard went on being quiet, and he went on being terrified of his family, and he went on saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to the maids.

But there were some things Bernard was not afraid of. He was not afraid of spiders — when the servants screamed because there was a large one in the bath, it was to Bernard they went, and he would put a glass over it and let it out in the garden, admiring its furry legs and complicated eyes. He was not afraid of the adders that hissed on the moor. He liked the adders with their zigzag markings and flickering tongues. Bernard did not mind the rats in the cellars and he did not mind the horses. He minded the people on the horses — his sister Joan with her braying voice and his brother Dudley with his whip — but if he met the horses quietly in a field he got on well enough with them.

It was one of the maids who showed him that there might be a way of escaping from Westwood. She was an ugly, gawky girl not much older than Bernard, and as much of a misfit among the servants as he was among his family. Bella was always reading the books she should have been dusting and was constantly in trouble, but she was the only friend Bernard had.

‘There’s people who make their living with animals,’ she said. ‘Naturalists they’re called. You could be one of them.’

‘From then on my father knew what he wanted to do,’ said Finn. ‘He wanted to get as far away from his family as it was possible to go, and live with animals.’

When you know what you want you usually get it. It took Bernard seven years and all that time he said nothing to anyone, but saved every penny he could. He saved his Christmas money and he saved his pocket money. He never bought so much as a lollipop or a chocolate bar. And slowly, very slowly, his hoard built up. The maid who was his friend hid it for him in the cage of a stuffed owl in the attic, and all the time Dudley went on bullying him and his father went on beating him and his sister Joan went on jeering at him, but now Bernard had somewhere to go inside his head.

Then a month after Bernard’s sixteenth birthday, Sir Aubrey came down to breakfast and so did Dudley and so did Joan. They helped themselves to kedgeree and scrambled eggs and kidneys and bacon. And then Sir Aubrey rang for the footman to bring fresh coffee and said, ‘Where’s Bernard? The wretched boy is late again.’

But Bernard wasn’t late — he was gone, and nobody from Westwood ever set eyes on him again.

He caught a banana boat bound for Brazil and travelled up the Amazon, and he was as happy there as he had been wretched in England. He’d been terrified of the butler but alligators didn’t trouble him. He made friends with the Indians; he found it easy to make a living as a collector. The only time he was unhappy and afraid was when he was asleep in his hammock and dreamt he was back at Westwood or at school. And when Finn was born, he decided to bring him up to love and respect the Indians, and never ever let anyone drive him back to his old home.

And so the years passed. Sir Aubrey wrote off his youngest son; he was probably in a gutter somewhere and serve him right. Dudley was the best person to inherit Westwood.

But then something awful happened. Dudley was killed in the hunting field. The horse was all right and people were glad of that because it was a good horse, but Dudley wasn’t. He broke his neck.

Sir Aubrey was exceedingly upset. Who would take over from him when he was dead and look after Westwood with its two lakes and its three woods and its farm, and who would give orders in the house with its forty-seven rooms?

He thought about this and then he decided that what mattered was that whoever it was should have the Taverner BLOOD. Sir Aubrey was very keen on blood and always had been. His daughter Joan had it of course, but she was married to a man called Smith and had already given birth to three daughters, one after the other, and daughters were no good. It was only males who could inherit Westwood.

Sir Aubrey decided to give her one more chance. Joan lived on the edge of the estate. If her fourth child was a boy, he would leave Westwood to him, though of course he would have to change his name to Smith-Taverner.

But it was not to be. When the midwife came out of Joan’s bedroom and said, ‘It’s another lovely little girl,’ Sir Aubrey was driven away from his daughter’s house in a dreadful temper and for weeks people were afraid to speak to him.

But then a brave old lady, a second cousin, came to see him and said, ‘Don’t forget, Aubrey, that you still have another son.’

‘If you mean Bernard, he is not my son any longer. He was an ungrateful, cowardly scoundrel and if he darkens my door again, I’ll take my whip to him.’

But the cousin said blood was blood and why didn’t he try to find Bernard, and after a while Sir Aubrey saw the sense of this. Blood was blood; there was no getting round it. Better that Bernard should inherit Westwood than a total stranger.

Only where was Bernard? They put an advertisement in The Times, and a lot of other newspapers, asking Bernard Taverner to come forward and he would hear something to his advantage, but for a long time nothing happened.

Then, when they had almost given up hope, they had a letter from the editor of a magazine called The Naturalist which was published in New York, and printed learned articles about animals and plants. This is what the editor wrote:

Needless to say, this letter caused great excitement.

‘By Jove, he had a son then,’ said Sir Aubrey. ‘Well, our problems are solved. We’ll send for the boy and train him up to run Westwood — it shouldn’t take long to knock him into shape. No reason to suppose he’ll be a namby-pamby like his father.’

But how to find the boy was another matter. There was no address on the letter and the only thing the editor knew was that Bernard’s mail went to a postbox in Manaus. That’s not where he lives though, he wrote. He was always travelling. I believe he had an Indian wife.

But this Sir Aubrey refused to believe. Instead, he wrote two letters addressed to The Son of Bernard Taverner, one to the postbox in Manaus and one care of the bank manager who had looked after Bernard’s account. In both the letters he explained what had happened at Westwood and said that the way was now open for Bernard’s son to come back and take up his inheritance.

Finn got both the letters and did not answer either of them. Instead, he began to get the Arabella ready for her journey to the Xanti. Nothing Sir Aubrey had written made him feel that he could ever return to his father’s home.

Sir Aubrey wrote again and sent a cable. Then, losing patience, he got in touch with the director of the firm of Wesley and Kinnear, Private Detectives, and asked them to send two of their best men out to the Amazon to find the boy and bring him back.

And two months later, the crows arrived in Manaus.

In the hut beside the lagoon, Finn had fallen silent.

Then Clovis said, ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go back to be master of Westwood? Rather than—’ he broke off as a capuchin monkey screeched suddenly in the trees.

‘Rather than live like a savage?’ finished Finn, grinning. ‘Yes. Quite sure.’

Maia too had wondered. Sir Aubrey must be an old man by now; Finn would probably be able to stand up to him better than his father had done, and when he died Finn could take over and do anything he liked with Westwood.

‘Let’s get this clear,’ said Finn. ‘Whether you decide to help me or not, I’m never going back to Westwood. Never. And if the crows come here to this place I’ll shoot them and go to jail. This was my father’s sanctuary and they’re not going to set foot in it.’

Maia and Clovis looked at each other. At times like this one remembered the Indian side of Finn.

‘So how does it work?’ asked Maia. ‘The crows find Clovis and think he’s you?’

Finn sat with his hands round his knees, frowning as he thought. ‘I want them to find Clovis just before the boat sails: late on the night before, if possible. So that there’s no time to trail him round Manaus — someone’s sure to recognize him from the theatre.’

‘Yes, but how?’

‘They must know by now that I don’t want to come to England. That I’m trying to hide until they’ve gone. So I will hide. Somewhere near the docks. But my hiding place will be betrayed. They’ll hear that a boy is hiding and come to grab him in the night. Only it won’t be me; it’ll be Clovis. If Maia gets the timing right they’ll find him just before the boat sails and take him straight on board.’

‘If I do what?’

‘Betray me. Give me away by mistake. It’s no good going to the police — they’re on my side. You must let it slip to someone who is sure to go to the crows. Someone who’ll do anything for money.’

‘Who?’

‘Oh, for goodness sake, surely it’s obvious.’

Maia nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘The twins.’

‘I’ll explain it all properly. It’ll work, I promise you.’

‘Yes, but what will happen when they find out I’m not you?’ said poor Clovis, who had turned pale.

‘They won’t. Not till you get to England. Not even then if you don’t want them to. I’ll give you a sealed letter saying I bullied you into taking my place. That I threatened you with torture. It takes six weeks to get to England — if you can hold out for another week or two at Westwood that will give me plenty of time to get away. By the time they find out, I’ll be with the Xanti and you can go to your foster mother.’

‘Where is Clovis going to hide?’ asked Maia.

‘I’ve got a good place near the harbour, and absolutely safe. You will have to set it up because Clovis and I must stay here out of sight.’

But Clovis was looking very doubtful. ‘What was the food like?’

‘Where?’ asked Finn.

‘At Westwood. Did your father say?’

Finn shrugged impatiently. ‘No. But it’ll be the usual British stodge, I expect,’ he said, looking at the bowl of fresh fruit he had picked that morning. ‘Steak and kidney pies and suet pudding and dumplings.’

‘Really? Suet puddings do you think?’ said Clovis wistfully. ‘My foster mother used to make them with treacle.’ He thought of the Goodleys, off to Columbia and Peru, if they weren’t thrown in jail. ‘And it wouldn’t be hot?’ he said.

‘No, it certainly wouldn’t be hot. Westwood’s in the north of England. They get a lot of snow.’

‘Snow,’ said Clovis, his eyes dreamy. ‘Not that I’d be staying.’ And then: ‘All right. I’ll give it a try.’