Journey to the River Sea

His father, of course, was desperate. A boy like Bernard had never happened in his family before. He sent him away to the toughest school he could find, but though the teachers caned him even more than his father had done, and the boys did interesting things to him like squeezing lemon juice into his eyes and piercing the soles of his feet with compass needles, it seemed to make no difference. Bernard went on being quiet, and he went on being terrified of his family, and he went on saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to the maids.

But there were some things Bernard was not afraid of. He was not afraid of spiders – when the servants screamed because there was a large one in the bath, it was to Bernard they went, and he would put a glass over it and let it out in the garden, admiring its furry legs and complicated eyes. He was not afraid of the adders that hissed on the moor. He liked the adders with their zigzag markings and flickering tongues. Bernard did not mind the rats in the cellars and he did not mind the horses. He minded the people on the horses – his sister Joan with her braying voice and his brother Dudley with his whip – but if he met the horses quietly in a field he got on well enough with them.

It was one of the maids who showed him that there might be a way of escaping from Westwood. She was an ugly, gawky girl not much older than Bernard, and as much of a misfit among the servants as he was among his family. Bella was always reading the books she should have been dusting and was constantly in trouble, but she was the only friend Bernard had.

‘There’s people who make their living with animals,’ she said. ‘Naturalists they’re called. You could be one of them.’

‘From then on my father knew what he wanted to do,’ said Finn. ‘He wanted to get as far away from his family as it was possible to go, and live with animals.’

When you know what you want you usually get it. It took Bernard seven years and all that time he said nothing to anyone, but saved every penny he could. He saved his Christmas money and he saved his pocket money. He never bought so much as a lollipop or a chocolate bar. And slowly, very slowly, his hoard built up. The maid who was his friend hid it for him in the cage of a stuffed owl in the attic, and all the time Dudley went on bullying him and his father went on beating him and his sister Joan went on jeering at him, but now Bernard had somewhere to go inside his head.

Then a month after Bernard’s sixteenth birthday, Sir Aubrey came down to breakfast and so did Dudley and so did Joan. They helped themselves to kedgeree and scrambled eggs and kidneys and bacon. And then Sir Aubrey rang for the footman to bring fresh coffee and said, ‘Where’s Bernard? The wretched boy is late again.’

But Bernard wasn’t late – he was gone, and nobody from Westwood ever set eyes on him again.

He caught a banana boat bound for Brazil and travelled up the Amazon, and he was as happy there as he had been wretched in England. He’d been terrified of the butler but alligators didn’t trouble him. He made friends with the Indians; he found it easy to make a living as a collector. The only time he was unhappy and afraid was when he was asleep in his hammock and dreamt he was back at Westwood or at school. And when Finn was born, he decided to bring him up to love and respect the Indians, and never ever let anyone drive him back to his old home.

And so the years passed. Sir Aubrey wrote off his youngest son; he was probably in a gutter somewhere and serve him right. Dudley was the best person to inherit Westwood.

But then something awful happened. Dudley was killed in the hunting field. The horse was all right and people were glad of that because it was a good horse, but Dudley wasn’t. He broke his neck.

Sir Aubrey was exceedingly upset. Who would take over from him when he was dead and look after Westwood with its two lakes and its three woods and its farm, and who would give orders in the house with its forty-seven rooms?

He thought about this and then he decided that what mattered was that whoever it was should have the Taverner BLOOD. Sir Aubrey was very keen on blood and always had been. His daughter Joan had it of course, but she was married to a man called Smith and had already given birth to three daughters, one after the other, and daughters were no good. It was only males who could inherit Westwood.

Sir Aubrey decided to give her one more chance. Joan lived on the edge of the estate. If her fourth child was a boy, he would leave Westwood to him, though of course he would have to change his name to Smith-Taverner.

But it was not to be. When the midwife came out of Joan’s bedroom and said, ‘It’s another lovely little girl,’ Sir Aubrey was driven away from his daughter’s house in a dreadful temper and for weeks people were afraid to speak to him.

But then a brave old lady, a second cousin, came to see him and said, ‘Don’t forget, Aubrey, that you still have another son.’