Journey to the River Sea

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’.