Journey to the River Sea

‘Of course. I won’t be long.’ Finn was going to settle Clovis into his hiding place in the museum and then slip back to the lagoon.

It was already almost dark, but Finn knew the waterways which led to Manaus like the back of his hand. He was going to take Clovis in the canoe by the same route as he had taken Maia. There was plenty of time; Sergei’s party did not start for another couple of hours – and it was not till the party was in full swing that Maia was going to start working on the twins.

Finn had darkened his hair again; he wore his headband and a circlet of beads round his arm. Clovis was dressed in the cap and uniform of the cadets of St Joseph’s school in Manaus. Finn’s father had tried to send him there, but after the first week Finn had come home and told Bernard that if he wanted Finn to go back, he would have to handcuff him and drag him there by the hair.

If anyone caught a glimpse of them in the back-streets of Manaus as they made their way to the museum, they would think it was a boy from the college being taken back to school by his Indian servant.

‘Right; I think we’ve got everything: the keys, a lamp, your satchel, the money so you can get to your foster mother. No, wait. There’s something else.’ Finn felt in his pocket. ‘Here, I want you to have this.’ And he handed him Bernard Taverner’s watch on its silver chain.

Clovis stared, turned it over. ‘I can’t take this. It’s your father’s, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. But if you’re going to be me, you’d better have it,’ said Finn, and turned away quickly for it was far harder than he had expected, giving away the watch he had seen so often in his father’s hands.

They pushed the canoe off and Finn began to paddle out of the lagoon. The dog howled again, but he did not move, and then they were through the rushes and on their way.

It was a silent journey. If they had to speak they did it in whispers. Finn stopped where he had dropped Maia the first time they met, and tied the canoe up to a tree. He would make his way back as soon as Clovis was safe in the hiding place.

They waited for half an hour, till it was entirely dark. There was no moon, and no street lighting, in the small lanes along which Finn led Clovis.

As they came to the back door of the museum, they heard the sound of dance music coming from the Keminskys’ house.

The party had begun.

This time Maia did not feel like Cinderella. She was going to the party as well as the twins, and as she dressed she almost forgot the job that faced her when she reached Sergei’s house. Her dress was new, the last one the matron of the school in London had bought with her before she went away, and it was very pretty. A dark blue, rustling silk cut like an Elizabethan dress, with a very full skirt and a row of tiny pearl buttons on the bodice. Minty had brushed out her waist-length hair and left it loose, and the twins, when they saw her, did not look pleased.

‘You’re too skinny to wear a low neckline.’

‘And your hair will get into a mess.’

‘Shall I plait it again?’ Maia asked Miss Minton, and her governess pursed up her mouth and said, ‘No.’

The twins were dressed in their favourite party pink; rather a fleshy pink, which was perhaps a pity because their short necks coming out of a double row of ruffles made them look a little like those hams one sees on butchers’ slabs near Christmas. They wore several bracelets, so that they tinkled as they walked, and they had had an accident with their mother’s scent. Beatrice had taken some and sprinkled it behind her ears and then Gwendolyn had tried to take it from her and the stopper had come off, so that both of them smelled violently of ‘Passion in the Night’.

Mrs Carter did not mean to stay behind in the bungalow. She had invited herself to play bridge in the club in Manaus. Mr Carter came out to say goodbye, holding a small box containing the eye of a murderer who had been hanged in Pentonville prison. It had arrived that morning and excited him very much.

‘Very nice,’ he said absently, looking at Maia’s dress, and was glared at by his wife. ‘The twins too... very fetching,’ – and he hurried back into his study.

It was nine o’clock before the Carters’ cab drew up at the Keminskys’ house. There were Chinese lanterns strung between the trees; the air smelled of orange blossom; music streamed from the windows.

Maia had never been in such a sumptuous house. The walls were hung with rich tapestries and paintings of Russian saints framed in gold. Tubs of white lilies and crimson poinsettias were massed on the sides of the staircase; hundreds of wax candles glittered in the crystal chandeliers.

Sergei and Olga now came running out to greet them.

‘You look like a beautiful wave with your dress and your hair,’ said Olga, touching the blue silk, and Sergei said she must hurry because they were going to play a polonaise next. ‘And we’re good at polonaises, aren’t we?’