Journey to the River Sea - 10th Anniversary Edition (22 page)

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.