Eva Ibbotson

The Minister for Amazonia had sent for Rom. It was the morning after the banquet. Rom had spent the night at the Casa Branca and had not slept well. The presence of Edward Finch-Dutton at the dinner had been as unexpected as it was unfortunate, and the flushed face and drunken mutterings of Harriet’s erstwhile suitor as he staggered from the room made it clear that all his own efforts to reconcile Harriet’s family to her activities must now be set at naught.

But Harriet’s affairs must wait. He had come to do battle with Alvarez and arriving, punctual to the minute, at the Palace of Justice, he was shown into the room set aside for the Minister.

“Come in, Verney.”

Alvarez, immaculately dressed as always, was sitting at a vast desk shuffling a pile of papers, but he rose and shook Rom’s hand.

“I wanted to see you about the Ombidos report,” he said. “I’ve read it again.”

“Yes.” Rom braced himself for a repetition of the excuses of the previous day.

“And I have decided to go!”

Surprise and relief chased the shadows from Rom’s face.

“You will go yourself?” he repeated incredulously. “To Ombidos? Oh, but that’s splendid! You are the only person who can put things right up there.”

“It means delaying my return to Rio and I am sending home my domestic staff. I want you to take me as far as Santa Maria in the Amethyst; I shall let it be known that we’re off on a fishing trip. Can you spare a few days?”

“Of course.”

“De Silva can meet me there in a government launch with a suitable escort. We’ll go by night and take them by surprise. Nominally it will be merely a courtesy visit, but if naif of what you say is true, then the rest will follow.”

“Would you like me to come all the way to Ombidos? I can bring a dozen of my own men and follow you.”

Alvarez smiled at the eagerness in Rom’s voice, but shook his head.

“I know how you feel, but this is a job for my own countrymen. You have already made quite enough of a reputation as a rescuer of the oppressed. Now it is my turn for some of the glory!”

Rom was not fooled. Alvarez faced a dangerous journey and the hostility of his fellow politicians in Rio, for there were powerful men making money from Ombidos.

“Could I ask you what made you change your mind about going?”

“Yes, you could ask. And I will tell you.” Alvarez sat down again behind the massive desk and motioned Rom to a chair. “It was that girl last night—the girl in the cake.”

“What!” Rom leaned forward, unable to believe his ears.

“Yes, the girl in the cake,” repeated Alvarez. “You can thank her that I’m risking my neck up that hellish river.” He felt in his pocket, brought out a wallet and extracted a faded sepia photograph which he handed to Rom. “Do you see the resemblance?”

The picture showed a young girl in a wedding-dress holding a bouquet of lilies. The portrait was conventional enough, but transcending the stiff pose, the studio props, was the expression on the thin face—a look both brave and eager, as though she could hardly wait for the adventure of her life to begin.

“Yes,” said Rom quietly. “The eyes, particularly.” And then: “Your wife?”

Alvarez nodded. “Her name was Lucia. It was an arranged marriage; she came to me direct from her convent… there was some family connection. But straight away… on the first night… I realized that I had found what half the world is looking for.” He took back the picture, letting it rest in the palm of his hand. “She was no more beautiful than that girl last night was beautiful, but she was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence… they don’t talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good …”

Rom had taken a silver propelling pencil from the desk and was turning it over and over in his hands. “Go on, sir, if you will.”

“I was very young in those days, and very idealistic. I thought Brazil would become the moral leader of the New World. There were a few of us who formed the Green Horizons Party—you may have heard of it. We planned to educate the Indians, build the finest schools and hospitals in the world… oh, all the usual dreams. They thought of me as a leader, but my fervor—even my ideas, many of them—came from my wife.”

“I knew they had great hopes of you.”

“Great hopes,” repeated Alvarez. “We were going to get rid of yellow fever, set up irrigation schemes in Ceará… I was put in charge of a population survey in Pernambuco and Lucia went with me on most of my journeys. She insisted and I let her—selfish swine that I was—because I so hated us to be apart.”

“What happened?”

Alvarez took out a monogrammed silk handkerchief and wiped his brow.