Journey to the River Sea - 10th Anniversary Edition (4 page)

But whatever Miss Minton said made no difference. In Maia’s head the twins paddled their boat between giant water lilies, trekked fearlessly through the jungle, and at night played piano duets, sending the music out into the velvet night.

‘They’ll know the names of everything too, won’t they? Those orange lilies; no one seems to know what they’re called,’ said Maia.

‘The names will be in a book,’ said Miss Minton quellingly, but she might have spared her breath as Maia wandered further and further into the lives of Gwendolyn and Beatrice.

‘They’ll shorten their own names, do you think? Gwen perhaps? And Beattie?’

It occurred to Maia that Miss Minton knew quite a lot about the creatures they came across along the river, and when her governess pointed out fresh water dolphins swimming ahead of them, she plucked up courage to ask what had made her decide to come out to the Amazon.

Miss Minton stared out over the rails. At first she did not answer and Maia blushed, feeling she had been impertinent. Then she said, ‘I knew somebody once who came to live out here. He wrote to me once in a while. It made me want to see for myself.’

‘Oh.’ Maia was pleased. Perhaps Miss Minton had a friend here and would not be lonely. ‘Is he still here, your friend?’

The pause this time was longer.

‘No,’ said Miss Minton. ‘He died.’

After a week of sailing down the river they stopped at Santarem, a port where a big market had been set up. The passengers were allowed ashore and it was now that Maia heard the familiar ‘snap’ and saw that Miss Minton had opened her large black handbag.

‘Mr Murray gave me some money for you to spend on the journey. Is there anything you want to buy?’

Maia’s eyes shone. ‘Presents for the twins. And perhaps for Mr and Mrs Carter. I should have done it in England, but it was all such a rush. Have I got enough?’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Minton dryly, handing over a packet of notes. She would have been glad to earn in three months what Mr Murray had given Maia, yet she had to admit that Maia seemed to be quite unspoilt.

The market was dazzling. There were watermelons bigger than babies, and green bananas and yellow ones and some that were almost orange. There were piles of nuts heaped on barrows, and pineapples and peppers and freshly caught fish and fish that had been dried. There were animals tugging at their ropes, and delicate lacework and silverware and woven baskets and leather bags. And selling them, talking and laughing, were beautiful black women in brilliantly coloured bandannas, and Indians in European clothes and Indians with painted chests and feathers, and slender Brazilian girls with golden skins.

But buying presents for the twins was far from easy because Maia was sure that what they would really like were some fluffy baby chicks or a duckling or even a white mouse.

‘Things that are alive are always the best presents,’ she said, but Miss Minton was firm.

‘You can’t buy them animals till you know what pets they have already. You don’t want to get your present eaten on the first day.’

So Maia bought two lace collars for the twins and an embroidered shawl for Mrs Carter, and for Mr Carter a leather wallet with a picture of a jaguar on it.

Then she disappeared and Miss Minton was just getting anxious when she came back, carrying a blue fringed parasol with a carved handle.

‘Because you ruined your umbrella on Henry Hartington,’ she said, ‘and this will be better for the sun.’

‘And you, Maia? What did you get for yourself?’

But the only thing Maia wanted was a mongrel puppy scratching its fleas in a wicker basket, and once again Miss Minton was firm.

‘They’ll probably have a dog already, to guard the house,’ she said. ‘Several I dare say,’ – and Maia had to be content with that.

They still had a few days to travel down the brown, leaf-stained river. Then a few hours before they were due to dock at Manaus, the passengers were called on deck by a loudspeaker and shown a famous sight.

They had come to the Wedding of the Waters, where the brown waters of the Amazon joined the black waters of the river Negro and they could see the two rivers flowing distinct and side by side.

Then as they steamed up the Negro, Maia saw the green and gold dome of the theatre; she saw church spires, and the yellow building of the customs house.

They had reached Manaus. They had arrived.

Maia had been certain that the twins would be at the docks to meet them, but there was no sign of them or of their parents.

The passengers had all left the ship; their luggage had gone through customs; the bustle of the quayside had died away, and still no one came up to them.

‘Do you think they’ve forgotten us?’ said Maia, trying to sound off-hand. Suddenly she felt very forlorn and incredibly far away from everyone she knew.

‘Don’t be silly,’ snapped Miss Minton, but her nose looked even sharper than usual as she turned her head from side to side, searching the quayside.

They had waited for over an hour when a man in a crumpled cream suit and a Panama hat came up to them.

‘I am Rafael Lima, the agent of Mr Carter,’ he said. He had a sad yellow face and a drooping moustache, and his hand, as he shook theirs, was moist and limp. ‘Mr Carter has sent the boat for you. He could not come himself.’

They followed him and the porter to a floating dock on which were moored boats of every kind: dug-out canoes, fleet sailing boats with names like
Firefly
and
Swallow
, and trim launches with gaily striped awnings and gleaming paint.

But the Carters’ boat was painted a serious dark green, like spinach; the awning was dark green too and there was no name painted on the side, only the word CARTER to show who owned it.

As they came up to the boat, an Indian who had been perched on one of the bales of rubber waiting to be loaded, got up and threw away his cigarette.

‘This is Furo, the Carter’s boatman. It is he who will take you there.’ And with another limp handshake, Lima was gone.

Furo was not like the Indians they had passed, smiling and waving; not like the sailors on the boat with whom Maia had joked. He showed them into the cabin and shrugged when they said they wanted to sit out on the deck. Then he started the engine, lit another cigarette and stared, unsmiling, out at the dark river.

They travelled for an hour up the Negro, leaving all signs of the town behind them. Without realizing it, Maia had edged closer to Miss Minton. It was oddly different, this stretch of the river: straight and silent with no sandbanks or islands and no animals to be seen, and the Indians working the rubber trees who looked up as the boat passed, and turned away ...

Then Furo pointed to the right-hand bank and they saw a low, wooden house painted the same dark green as the boat, with a veranda running its length.

And down on the jetty, waiting to greet them, were four people: a woman holding a parasol, a man in a sunhat – and two girls!

‘The twins!’ cried Maia, her face alight. ‘Oh look, there they are!’

Her spirits rose with a bound. They were there and everything was going to be all right. Miss Minton gathered up their belongings, the boat came in quietly, and without waiting for Furo to help her, Maia jumped out onto the jetty.

Remembering her manners, she went first to Mrs Carter and curtsied. The twins’ mother was plump with a heavily powdered face, a double chin and carefully waved hair. She looked like the sort of person who would smell of violets or lavender, but to Maia’s surprise she smelled strongly of Lysol. It was a smell Maia knew well because it was what the maids had used at school to disinfect the lavatories.

‘I trust you had a good journey,’ she said, and looked taken aback when Maia said it had been lovely. Then she called, ‘Clifford!’ and her husband, who had been giving orders about the boat, turned round to do his duty. Mr Carter was a thin, gloomy-looking man with gold-rimmed spectacles. He was wearing long khaki shorts and mosquito boots and did not seem very interested in the arrival either of Maia or her governess.

And now, as Miss Minton, in her turn, shook hands with the Carters, Maia was free to turn to the twins.

She had imagined them well. They were fair, they were pretty and they were dressed in white.

They wore straw hats, each with a different coloured ribbon round the rim, one pink, one blue, and the sashes round their flounced dresses matched their hats. Their fair ringlets, a little limp in the heat, touched their collars, their round cheeks were flushed, their light blue eyes were framed by pale, almost colourless lashes.

‘I’m Beatrice,’ said the one with the pink ribbon and the pink sash. She gave Maia her hand. Even so short a distance from her house, she was wearing gloves.

Maia turned from one to the other. Though they were so alike, down to the slight droop of their shoulders, she thought she would always be able to tell them apart. Beatrice was just a little plumper and taller; her eyes had a little more colour, her scanty ringlets had more body than Gwendolyn’s and she had a tiny mole on her neck. It was as though Beatrice was the mould from which Gwendolyn had been taken and she guessed that Beatrice was the older, if only by a few minutes.

But now Gwendolyn held out her hand. She had taken off her glove and her hand stayed in Maia’s a little longer than Beatrice’s had done.

Then they turned to follow their parents into the house. But Maia lingered for a moment, looking down at the palm of her outstretched hand. Then she shook her head, ashamed of her thoughts, and ran off after the others.

An hour later, Maia and Miss Minton sat on upright chairs on the veranda, having afternoon tea with the family.

The veranda was a narrow, wooden structure which faced the river but was completely sealed off from it by wire netting and glass. No breath of wind came from outside, no scent of growing things. Two fly-papers hung down on either side, on which dying insects buzzed frantically, trying to free their wings. On low tables were set bowls of methylated spirit in which a number of mosquitoes had drowned, or were still drowning. The wooden walls were painted the same dark clinical green as the house and the boat. It was like being in the corridor of a hospital; Maia would not have been surprised to see people lying about on stretchers waiting for their operations.

Mrs Carter sat at a wicker table, pouring tea and adding powdered milk. There was a plate of small, dry biscuits with little holes in them and nothing else.

‘We have them sent specially from England,’ said Mrs Carter, looking at the biscuits, and Maia could not help wondering why they had taken so much trouble. She had never tasted anything so dull. ‘You will never find Native Food served at my table,’ Mrs Carter went on. ‘There are people here who go to markets and buy the food the Indians eat, but I would never permit it. Nothing is clean, everything is full of germs.’

The word ‘germs’ made her mouth pinch up into a disapproving ‘O’.

‘Couldn’t it be washed?’ asked Maia, remembering the lovely fruit and vegetables she had seen in the market, but Mrs Carter said washing was not enough. ‘We disinfect everything in any case, but it doesn’t help. The Indians are filthy. And if one is to survive out here,
the jungle must be kept at bay
.’

The jungle certainly had been kept at bay. There were no plants on the windowsills – none of the lovely orchids and crimson flame flowers that had been on the balconies of the houses they had passed along the shore, and the garden was a square of raked gravel.

‘In England I always had cut flowers in the house,’ Mrs Carter went on. ‘Lady Parsons used to say that no one could arrange roses better than me, didn’t she, girls?’

The twins nodded in exactly the same way, once down, once up ...

‘Yes, Mama,’ they said.

‘But not here.’ She sighed. ‘Lady Parsons is a relation,’ she explained. ‘A second cousin on my mother’s side.’

‘Do you have any pets?’ Maia shyly asked Gwendolyn, who was sitting next to her. There seemed to be no kittens, no dogs, no canary singing in a cage anywhere in the dark house. In the corner, propped up against a chair was a large flit gun full of fly spray.

Gwendolyn turned to Beatrice. Maia had noticed already that it was usually Beatrice who spoke first.

‘No, we certainly don’t have any pets,’ she said.

‘Pets bring in fleas and lice and jiggers,’ said Gwendolyn, smoothing down her spotless white dress.

‘And horrible worms,’ said Beatrice.

‘All right, girls, that will do,’ said Mrs Carter.

A maid came to bring more hot water; she had two gold teeth and the same sulky closed look as Furo the boatman, and when Maia smiled at her she did not smile back.

‘Did you bring us any presents?’ Beatrice asked, and Maia said, yes, and asked if she could get them from her case.

‘Oh, but those are made here; they’re market things,’ said the girls when she came back. ‘We want proper presents from England.’

Maia tried not to feel snubbed. Then she caught Miss Minton’s eye and said, ‘I wanted to bring some baby chicks,’ – and the twins shuddered.

‘Now, Miss Minton, if you will come with me, I will inform you of your duties,’ said Mrs Carter. ‘Beatrice and Gwendolyn will show Maia where she is to sleep.’