Journey to the River Sea

‘I think she likes him. Yes, I’m sure she does. He does cry rather a lot but he’s very decent.’

‘Well, I suppose he would be if he’s your friend.’

They sat for a while in companionable silence. Then Finn said, ‘You don’t happen to know Miss Minton’s Christian name?’

Maia screwed up her face, thinking. ‘She never uses it, but it begins with an ‘‘A’’, I think, because she lent me her handkerchief in the cab and there was an ‘‘A’’ embroidered in the corner.’

Finn nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I thought it might.’

Furo’s canoe now appeared through the reeds, and Maia said quickly, ‘What I don’t understand is how they can make you go back to Westwood. You’re only a child; they don’t lock up children in prisons.’

Finn slapped a mosquito on his arm.

‘They do at Westwood. At Westwood they lock you up as soon as you’re born.’

Chapter Eight

Clovis had come up the river in an old tramp steamer which carried anything from cattle to timber.

He had paid the last of his money to the captain, who had allowed him to crouch on deck between a crate of bleating nanny goats and a leaking sack of maize. But he wouldn’t put Clovis off at the Carters’ landing stage.

‘Bad place,’ he said.

And he made Clovis get out onto an old jetty higher up and walk back along the bank, so that by the time he reached the bungalow he was scratched and tired and very hot.

But now as he made his way up the gravel path to the house, his spirits rose. It was so neat and tidy and quiet. No chickens to give you fleas, no barking dogs running the length of their chains.

Dusk had fallen and two of the windows were lit up. Clovis walked quietly towards them and looked in.

He saw a most comforting sight. The Carters were having supper, sitting around a large table spread with a clean white cloth. He could see Mrs Carter – a kind-looking plump woman in a blue dress with frilly sleeves, serving something onto pudding plates. A pink blancmange; Clovis could see it shaking a little on the dish and his mouth watered. Shape his foster mother had called it. She made it with strawberries and cornflour and milk fresh from the cow. Opposite Mrs Carter was her husband, a thin man in gold rimmed spectacles – and facing him the twins.

They looked just the way Maia had described them on the boat: pretty and dressed in white, with ribbons in their hair. And beside them, Maia... The twins were pretty, but Maia was special with her serious face and kind eyes; he could see her pigtail looped over her shoulder. Just looking at it made him feel safe, as if he could hold on to it and be all right.

Miss Minton didn’t seem to be there. Perhaps it was her day off and she had gone to visit friends.

He stood and looked a little longer, unseen by the people in the room. It was a good name for this house: Tapherini – A Place of Rest. Then he went round to the side of the house and knocked on the door.

It took only a few moments to shatter Clovis’ dream. First came the violent shrilling of an alarm bell. Then a maid with a sullen face led him to the dining room and opened the door – and the twins looked up, stared at him – and exploded. It wasn’t laughter that came from them, not really. It was that awful giggling; that high-pitched, merciless titter that had spread across the footlights in the theatre and set the other children off. Clovis recognized it at once. So it was the twins’ laughter which had hounded him!

‘Oh!’ gasped Beatrice. ‘It’s Little Lord Fauntleroy,’ and then both girls said, ‘Will I have to stop being your little boy?’ in a deep and growly voice and repeated it, their voices getting lower and lower... and in between they choked and spluttered and patted each other on the back, and started taunting him again.

Clovis stood perfectly still by the door. He looked at Maia to see if she too was going to join in, but she looked horrified and now she jumped up and came to stand beside him.

‘Don’t!’ she said passionately to the twins. ‘Please don’t; can’t you see—’

Mrs Carter now took charge. ‘All right, girls,’ she said to her daughters, ‘that will do’, and to Maia, ‘Sit down, please. We have not finished our meal.’

But it took some time for the twins to quieten down. They still growled and gulped, and then Beatrice said, ‘Look at Maia, protecting her boyfriend!’

‘Enough,’ said Mr Carter, dabbing his mouth with his napkin. It was the first word he had spoken at table, and was to be the last, but the twins now managed to control themselves.

‘Now,’ said Mrs Carter, staring at Clovis, ‘might I ask what brings you here?’

Clovis looked at the soft, rounded face. Close to, it did not look kind and motherly as it had done through the window. He felt that under the puffy cheeks one would find stone.

‘I wondered if I could stay with you for a few days. We have to leave the hotel – all of us, and I thought...’ His words died away.