Journey to the River Sea

Mr Carter had worked in a bank, but he had lost his job and decided to take his family to the Amazon to make his fortune. Many Europeans went out at that time, some to plant coffee or cocoa, some to try and find gold – but most to harvest rubber, the ‘black gold’ of the Amazon. It sounded an easy way to get rich. Rubber trees grew all over the Amazon basin; all one had to do was hire some Indians to collect the sap from the trees, take it to the sheds to be smoked, and send the balls of crude rubber down the river to be exported.

And certainly a lot of people had made their fortunes. There were people in Manaus who lived like princes. But not the Carters. Because to get the juice from the rubber trees you need Indians who know the forest and understand the trees. And Indians are proud people who have their own lives. If you treat them like slaves they don’t revolt or go on strike; they simply melt back into the forest, join their tribes and disappear.

This is what had happened to the Indians which the Carters had employed. Every month Mr Carter lost some of his work force, and far from making his fortune, he was getting poorer and poorer.

So when Mr Murray had written to ask if they would have Maia to live with them, the Carters had been overjoyed. They did not want Maia, they were far too selfish to want anybody, but they needed her.

Or rather they needed the money she brought with her. Mr Murray had never told Maia how much money her father had left her; she knew she did not have to worry about having enough and she seldom thought about it. But the fact was that she was rich now, and would be richer when she was twenty-one. The Carters had explained that life was very expensive on the Amazon; everything had to be shipped from England – every digestive biscuit, every jar of marmalade. So they had asked a very large sum of money for having Maia to live with them.

‘We’d love to have her for nothing,’ Mrs Carter had written, ‘but times are hard.’

Mr Murray had agreed but he was a careful man, as lawyers are. He had sent the first month’s keep with Miss Minton for he knew she could be trusted. Later, Maia’s allowance, and the salary he was paying Miss Minton to look after her, would go straight into a bank in Manaus.

And Miss Minton had only taken a few minutes to realize why the Carters wanted Maia. Mrs Carter had not been able to hide her relief and her greed as Miss Minton counted out the notes the lawyer had trusted her with. As for Beatrice and Gwendolyn, they had been told nothing – only that a distant cousin was coming to stay with them and must be welcomed. But the twins had never welcomed anybody in their lives.

Maia woke next morning not to the sound of bird-song, but to a noise she could not place at first. A sort of swishing, squelching noise followed by thumps and bumps and cries of ‘Out!’

She put her head round the door. In the corridor, wearing a dressing gown and a turban to protect her hair, was Mrs Carter. She had the flit gun in her hand and was carefully squirting every nook and cranny with insect-killer. Then she disappeared into the cloakroom, fetched a broom, and began to thump and bang on the ceiling to get rid of possible spiders. Next came a bucket full of disinfectant and a mop with which she squelched across the tiled floor – and all the time she muttered, ‘Out!’ or ‘That will settle you!’ to the insects that she thought might be there. Mrs Carter did nothing else in the house, but this early morning hunt was one she did not trust to the servants.

Then after breakfast Maia started lessons with the twins.

They did them in the dining room, sitting at the big oak table. The room was already hot at eight in the morning. They could not use the fan because it blew the pages of the books about and to the smell of insect-killer were added the other morning scents of the house: carbolic soap, Lysol and Jeyes fluid.

Mrs Carter had given clear orders to Miss Minton.

‘The girls work from a set of books by Dr Bullman. As you see, the books cover all the subjects they will need.’

She pointed to Dr Bullman’s English Grammar, Dr Bullman’s English Composition, Dr Bullman’s French Primer, Dr Bullman’s History of England and Dr Bullman’s Geography. All the books had the same brown covers and on each one was a picture of Dr Bullman himself. He had a pointed beard, staring eyes and a bulging forehead, and as Maia looked at him she felt a slight lurching of the stomach.

‘I want you to stick absolutely to the exercises in the books,’ Mrs Carter went on. ‘No making things up. No straying. I have always made this the rule – then when a governess leaves, the next one knows exactly where to take over.’

‘Yes, Mrs Carter.’