Journey to the River Sea - 10th Anniversary Edition (17 page)

Did she know what Maia was really doing in the museum? he wondered. Probably not, yet she didn’t look like a person easy to hoodwink. As she bent down to pick up the basket with Mrs Carter’s shopping, he said, ‘Allow me.’

She shook her head. ‘Thank you, but it’s not heavy.’

They began to walk towards the main street with its cafés and shops.

‘I have been thinking about what you said – about the missing bone. Of
Megatherium.
The sloth, I mean.’

‘You have decided to go and look for it?’

‘No, no. But Taverner was also against putting in a false rib. He was a good naturalist and a good man. I miss him.’

‘Yes. I can imagine that. Was it he who found the skeleton?’

‘No. It was found many years ago. It went to a museum in Rio – too important for my little place – but no one had time to assemble it, so they sent it down to me. But Taverner knew the place it came from. Not only that—’ He broke off. ‘His wife came from up there,’ he went on. ‘It’s practically unexplored country.’

‘Did you know his wife?’

‘Yes. She was beautiful and gentle. She died in childbirth because the English doctor wouldn’t come out to an Indian girl at night. As you can imagine, it didn’t make Taverner any more anxious to return to England.’

They walked on for a while without speaking. Then the professor, blushing a little for he was very shy, asked Miss Minton if she would care to join him for lunch. ‘It’s only a little local café but the food is good.’

But as he had expected, she refused. ‘Thank you, I have some sandwiches.’

But at the door of the café, Miss Minton was overcome suddenly by the glorious smell of real, strong Brazilian coffee.

‘Perhaps a cup of coffee,’ she said.

It was a nice café; friendly and cheap and it cost Miss Minton some effort not to allow the professor to buy her a dish of chicken and rice. ‘I lunch here most days,’ he said. ‘Since my wife died.’

‘Was that a long time ago?’

‘Yes. Ten years now. I blame myself, the climate didn’t suit her. I should have taken her back to England.’

Miss Minton frowned. She did not approve of people blaming themselves for what was done.

‘Are the caves difficult to reach? The ones where your sloth came from?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Difficult but not impossible.’

‘Did Taverner think there were more remains there? More bones?’

‘He thought there might be. But that’s neither here nor there. I shall be fifty-eight next year: an old man.’

‘That is the kind of remark I don’t enjoy,’ said Miss Minton cuttingly, and picked up her coffee cup.

When she came back from the museum, Maia found the twins in an even worse mood than usual.

‘What are those supposed to be?’ sneered Beatrice, turning over Maia’s drawings. ‘I can’t make head or tail of them.’

‘I know . . .’ Maia sighed. ‘But birds are really difficult to draw.’

‘Well, why do you have to go and show off in the museum then? I suppose you want everyone to say how clever you are.’

‘And you’ve got a mosquito bite on your forehead,’ said Gwendolyn. ‘It looks like the kind that goes septic.’

‘You’ve probably caught lice too on that Indian boat. You’d better not come near.’

Maia said nothing and went to her room. She had stopped wondering what she had done to annoy them. But to tell the truth, the poor twins had just learnt something which upset them very much, and they had learnt it from their mother.

‘We don’t like Maia, Mummy,’ the twins had said. ‘She’s a prig.’

‘The way she goes on practising the piano when she doesn’t have to.’

‘And she flirts with the boys at the dancing class and shows off the whole time.’

‘And she’s conceited about her hair. The way she brushes it and brushes it.’

‘And she sneaks off to talk to the servants.’

Mrs Carter sighed. ‘I know you don’t like her,’ she said.

‘We
hate
her,’ said Beatrice.

‘When is she going
away
again?’ wailed Gwendolyn.

‘Oh, don’t!’ cried Mrs Carter, caught off her guard. ‘Don’t ever mention her going away. If Maia goes we are undone!’

The twins stared at her. Their small, round mouths hung open.

Mrs Carter tried to pull herself together. ‘No, no; it’s not as bad as that. But your father . . . there have been difficulties with the price of rubber . . . and so on . . . Maia’s allowance from her guardian is absolutely necessary to pay the bills.’

‘You mean she’s staying for ever and ever?’ said Beatrice. ‘Just because she’s rich and we’re poor?’

‘It isn’t fair!’

‘Now, please, girls. I’m sure your father will find a way round, and when he does we can send her away. But just for now please try to be nicer to Maia.’

The twins shot her a furious look from under their pale eyelashes.

‘We’ll have to think of something,’ said Beatrice when they were alone again.

‘We certainly will,’ said Gwendolyn.

‘But if we get rid of her we won’t be able to have any new clothes.’

‘Unless we can get hold of the reward for the Taverner boy.’

‘If we get that we won’t need to see Maia ever again,’ said Beatrice gloatingly.

‘I still think she knows something. I’m going to watch her night and day.’

‘I’m going to watch her too.’

When she had first seen Finn’s hut and the lagoon, Maia thought it must be the nicest place in the whole world.

Clovis did not think that at all. He liked being inside the hut, especially at meal-times, but he found the surrounding jungle most alarming. The anteater lumbering down to drink like a grey tank sent Clovis rushing back indoors, and the chattering of the monkeys in the trees kept him awake at night.

Finn made him help with all the chores. Clovis had to keep the hut clean, scrub out the saucepans, and help get the
Arabella
ready for her journey. Clovis liked the humming birds; he learnt to refill their bottles of sugar water, and he didn’t mind painting the boat – he was used to painting scenery – but cleaning the bilges and burying the kitchen waste was not to his taste at all.

But if Clovis wasn’t very good at rough work, he was absolutely first-class at learning his lines. Every morning and every afternoon, he sat down with the old red notebook in which Finn had written down all that his father had told him about Westwood, and when Finn tested him he found Clovis word-perfect.

‘There isn’t very much,’ Finn had told him at the beginning. ‘Because my father never talked about Westwood if he could help it. And remember, they won’t expect you to know anything – they probably think you’ve been brought up a savage. All the same, if you’re going to stay for a week or two without being found out, it might help you to know a little.’

So Clovis sat by the table in the hut, twisting a curl round his finger, and studied the notebook, and every hour or two Finn came and tested him.

‘What does the front of the house look like?’

‘It was built by Sir John Vanbrugh. There are two wings, an East Wing and a West Wing, and in the middle is a block with six stone columns where the main rooms are.’

‘What about statues?’

‘There’s a statue of Hercules strangling a snake in front of the West Wing and a statue of St George spearing a dragon in front of the East Wing.’

‘Now go through the front door. Think of yourself as coming back to where your father grew up. Think of yourself as Bernard Taverner’s son,’ said Finn – and had to turn his face away as he remembered how good it had been really to be his father’s son, and how much he missed him.

‘You go into a Great Hall which is always cold, with stone flags, and a big oak chest into which Dudley shut your father for a whole night when he was three years old—’ Clovis broke off. ‘Dudley
is
dead, isn’t he?’

‘Of course he’s dead,’ said Finn impatiently. ‘That’s what all the fuss is about. Go on. Go upstairs.’

‘There’s a Long Gallery with a knight’s armour, very tall, which used to shine in the dark. Once Dudley got in and made it raise its arm and a housemaid fainted. And there’s a picture of a Taverner ancestor who went to the crusade, with the head of a Turk impaled on his lance.’

Clovis sighed. Westwood did not sound cosy.

‘What about Joan?’ Finn went on. ‘Remember she’s your Aunt Joan really. Where was her room?’

‘On the next floor, overlooking the stables. The walls were completely covered with rosettes she’d won for riding – red ones and yellow ones and blue ones, and she had a fox’s tail with dried blood on it nailed above her bed. Only it isn’t called a tail, it’s called a brush.’

‘And what was her nickname?’

‘The Basher. Because she bashed people.’ He looked anxiously at Finn. ‘But she isn’t there now, is she? You promised.’

‘No, of course not. She’s married to a man called Smith and has four daughters.’

But he could see that Clovis was looking far from happy so he flicked over the pages of the notebook to find the few things at Westwood which Bernard had liked.

‘What about the bluebell wood?’

‘It’s on the far side of the lake – not where Joan held his head under the water. On a slope down to the river. There was a pair of woodpeckers nesting there, and a badger sett.’

‘And the garden?’

‘There was a walled kitchen garden and the gardener was nice. He used to let your father pick strawberries, but he had a stammer and Dudley used to imitate him and—’

‘Never mind Dudley,’ said Finn quickly. ‘He’s dead. What about the other servants?’

‘The butler was called Young, but he wasn’t young he was old, with liver spots on his hands and everyone was scared of him. He got a maid sacked for reading the books in the library – the one that helped your father.’

‘And the dining room?’

Clovis rattled through every detail of the dining room. It always cheered him up thinking of English food and English meals.

But as often as he felt brave and forward-looking, Clovis felt scared and told Finn he couldn’t do it.

‘I wish Maia would come,’ he kept saying, which annoyed Finn. Finn wished it too. Till Maia came they would not know what had happened in the museum and whether their plan would work.

But when she did come, the next day, they saw by her face that all was well.

To get away from the Carters, Maia had needed to work hard at her pulmonary spasms. She had had a spasm at breakfast, wheezing and twitching, and another one in the drawing room when she was doing her embroidery. They were good spasms, she thought, but it wasn’t till the third one, just before tea, that Mrs Carter said icily that if her lungs were giving her so much trouble she had better go out.

Since it was raining – the heavy, dark rain that fell so often in the afternoons – she thought Maia might refuse, but she was out of the house in minutes.

And Furo, thank heaven, was in his hut and ready to take her to Finn.

This time the dog greeted her as a friend, placing his cold nose in her hand, and the happiness she always felt when she came to this place rose up in her.

‘It’s all settled,’ she said. ‘The professor was wonderful – he showed me everything. And I stole the keys,’ she added proudly. ‘At least I think I did, though he did tell me where they were so that may not be proper stealing.’

She handed them to Finn, hoping for praise, but he had obviously expected her to do what he had asked.

‘Good. The trapdoor may be difficult to lift, we’d better take some oil. It’s still under the sloth, is it?’

‘Yes. And the professor is still worried about the missing rib. How’s Clovis?’

‘He’s washing his hair. He’s always washing it,’ said Finn gloomily. ‘I thought you might cut it for him.’

‘I’ve never cut anyone’s hair before.’

‘There’s always a first time.’

Clovis came out of the hut then, with a towel round his head and very pleased to see Maia.

‘She’s done it,’ said Finn. ‘The hiding place is set up, she’s got the keys. The boat goes at dawn on Saturday, so on Friday we’ll get you settled there. We’ll need blankets, a lamp, some food. I’m going to let everyone think it’s me hiding there, even the Indians; that will make it safer. I’ll tell them that the crows have heard about the lagoon.’

But Clovis was looking definitely green. ‘How long do I have to be in the cellar?’ he asked fearfully.

‘Not even a whole night. The crows are due back on Friday afternoon; they’ll come looking for you almost straight away. You’ll see it will work.’

‘Clovis, it’s the best thing, honestly,’ said Maia. ‘The Goodleys have been turned back at the border. They’ve been locked up until they can sell their assets and clear their debts. They think you’re staying with me so they won’t bother about you any more.’

‘I suppose I could stay here,’ said Clovis doubtfully, looking round the hut.

‘No, you couldn’t,’ said Finn. ‘I won’t be here, I told you. I’m setting off in the
Arabella
.’ He turned to Maia. ‘Come and see her,’ he said. ‘We’ve done quite a bit to her.’