Journey to the River Sea

Really, the likeness was extraordinary! The nose, the eyes, the mouth, the way his hair fell over his forehead – all of it was the same as in the boy who had come today.

It happened sometimes that a likeness skipped a few generations and then showed up stronger than ever, thought Sir Aubrey. That was the amazing thing about The Blood.

Chapter Sixteen

Finn had been gone three days and life in the bungalow seemed even more dismal than when Maia first came.

Miss Minton saw that lessons went on, but though Maia worked as hard as she had done before, she did so without joy. She didn’t want to read about plants and animals any longer, she wanted to find them. She wanted to be out there in the forest starting a real life, and much as Miss Minton loved books, she understood her.

The weather, as the dry season got under way, became even hotter. In her room, Miss Minton took off her corset and put it on again. Not because she was afraid of Mrs Carter, but because she knew that British women did not throw off their underclothes – and because she had told Maia not to make a fuss when Finn went away. If Maia could behave well over the parting, she could behave well about the heat rash spreading up her back.

Meanwhile she watched Maia carefully, because there was no doubt that the Carters were becoming very strange indeed. As Mr Carter’s business went from bad to worse, he spent more and more time in his study, peering at his glass eyes – and since his own family would not look at them, he called in Maia.

‘Look at that one,’ he said to her. ‘It’s the left eye of a tramp found dead in a ditch on Wimbledon Common. Look at the way those blood vessels are painted! You wouldn’t imagine a tramp could afford an eye like that.’

‘Perhaps he was a very important person before he became a tramp,’ suggested Maia – but the eyes were beginning to get into her dreams.

Mrs Carter had set up what she called her ‘larder’ in a cupboard in the hall, but it was not a larder to store food. Instead of bottles of plums or pats of butter, the shelves held flasks labelled POISON, and masks for protecting the face, and rubber gloves. There were glass jars of chloral hydrate, and spray cans with nozzles, and a new very large bottle labelled COCKROACH KILLER – KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE.

‘We’ll be safe now,’ she told the girls. ‘No creepy-crawlies will get past us now.’

She had also started to talk to the picture of Lady Parsons on the wall of the drawing room.

‘You were right,’ Maia heard her say to the lady’s fierce, red face. ‘I should have let Clifford go to prison instead of bringing him out here. Look what we have come to!’

And one morning Maia came into the drawing room and found the portrait wreathed in red ribbon.

‘I hope you haven’t forgotten that today is Lady Parsons’ birthday,’ Mrs Carter said to the twins. ‘Do you remember when she allowed you to share her cake?’

‘Yes, Mama, we wouldn’t forget.’

‘What kind of cake was it?’ asked Maia. She had spoken without thinking, wanting to be polite. There was certainly nothing she was less interested in than the cake which Lady Parsons had shared with Beatrice and Gwendolyn when they were still in England.

The twins glared at her. Lady Parsons was theirs; Maia had no business even to ask.

‘It was a sponge cake with pink icing,’ said Mrs Carter.

‘No, it wasn’t, Mother. It had white icing,’ corrected Beatrice.

‘No, it didn’t; it was covered with marzipan and grated chocolate,’ said Gwendolyn.

They went on arguing, but Maia had forgotten them again, following Finn in her mind.

Where was he? Did he have enough wood for the firebox, were his maps accurate? Did he miss her at all?

Finn did miss her – she would have been surprised to know how much. He had never sailed the Arabella alone for any distance and it wasn’t as easy as he’d hoped. While she was under way he managed well, but when it came to anchoring in the evening or setting off at dawn, he would have given anything for another pair of hands. Not any pair of hands – Maia’s. She had obeyed his orders quickly but not blindly; he had learnt to trust her completely.

And she was nice. Fun. Quick to catch a joke and so interested in everything – asking about the birds, the plants. This morning he had found himself starting to say, ‘Look, Maia!’ when he saw an umbrella bird strutting along a branch, and when he realized that she wasn’t there, the exotic creature, with its sunshade of feathers, had seemed somehow less exciting. After all, sharing was something everyone wanted to do. He could hear his father’s voice calling, ‘Look, Finn, over there!’ a dozen times a day.

But his father was dead and he had left Maia, and suddenly being alone, which he had always enjoyed, turned into loneliness, which was a very different thing.