Journey to the River Sea

But Finn said no. ‘Minty really cares about you. The professor told me she nearly went mad when she thought you’d been killed in the fire. You can’t play tricks on her – or on him. They’re good people. It’s just ... oh, why can’t grown-ups understand that we might know what is right for us just as well as they do?’

The children slept at last – but on the boat without a name, Miss Minton lay awake.

After a while she got up and went out onto the deck. Everything had turned out as she had hoped. She had found Maia, and Maia was safe and well. Not only safe and well, but happy – at least she had been. Finn too – they had kept the boat tidy, labelled their specimens properly, taken their quinine. Bernard would have been proud of his son.

So why did she feel so ... uncomfortable?

Behind her, the professor stirred in his sleep.

‘Are you awake?’ she asked him.

He opened his eyes. ‘I am now,’ he said.

‘I need to talk to you,’ Miss Minton said. ‘I’ll go and make us some tea.’

The children slept late, and washed and dressed almost in silence. Both of them were afraid to speak.

Maia packed her belongings in an old canvas bag and stroked the dog.

‘I’ll come over in a minute and say goodbye,’ said Finn.

The Carters’ boat was ready to leave, breakfast tidied away, ropes coiled. The professor was riddling the firebox and feeding in fresh logs. Miss Minton, sitting in the stern, had a parcel wrapped in sacking on her knees.

‘I’m ready,’ said Maia trying to keep her voice steady. She mustn’t cry; above all, she mustn’t sulk. ‘Finn’s coming over to say goodbye.’

‘No need,’ said Miss Minton.

‘He’d like to.’

‘All the same, there is no need.’

Maia looked at her governess. Miss Minton seemed different ... Softer? Rounder? More at peace?

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why is there no need?’

‘Because we’re coming with you. We’re going on. Get back on the Arabella and tell Finn we’ll follow three lengths behind.’

As Maia turned to go, hardly believing that there could be such happiness, she heard a loud splash. Miss Minton was leaning over the side, watching the parcel she had held on her knee floating away downriver.

‘What was that?’ asked Maia.

Miss Minton straightened herself.

‘If you must know,’ she said, ‘it was my corset.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘Now, Beatrice!’ boomed Lady Parsons. ‘How often have I told you that Kiki’s jacket must be buttoned up right to his little neck? You don’t want the little doggy to catch a chill, do you?’

Beatrice glared at the shivering animal, standing on the hall table getting ready for his afternoon walk.

Beatrice did want him to catch a chill. She wanted him to catch a chill and then pneumonia and then die.

But she said nothing, and did up the top button of the tartan waistcoat that he always wore for his afternoon walk, since he did not have enough hair, or enough sense, to keep warm.

‘Now the lead,’ ordered Lady Parsons, and Beatrice fetched the lead and clipped it on, while Kiki snapped at her fingers.

‘There you are, my little treasure,’ said Lady Parsons to the dog. And to Beatrice: ‘Now you’re to take him at least three times up and down the Promenade; I shall know if you’ve only taken him twice because Mrs Tandry will be looking out of the window. And he must not be allowed to sniff at other dogs.’

It was a grey, windy day; the waves beat drearily on Littleford’s shingle beach. But there was nothing to be done. Since they had arrived in England, Beatrice had had to walk Kiki every afternoon and Gwendolyn had to walk him every morning.

While Beatrice tugged the little dog sulkily along the windswept beach, Gwendolyn was in the pantry pouring boiling water into Lady Parsons’ stone hot-water bottle, ready for Lady Parsons’ afternoon sleep. When she had finished, she carried it upstairs to the big bedroom with its Turkey carpet and lace-covered tables, and the pictures of Sir Hector Parsons who had been shot by mistake in Kenya while trying to shoot lions. If she hurried downstairs now she could get half an hour to look at a comic she had found in the kitchen drawer before it was time to lay the tea.

‘Gwendolyn!’ came Lady Parsons’ angry voice from her bedroom. ‘Come back at once! How many times have I told you that the bottle must be wrapped in my shawl. Do you want me to burn my feet?’

Gwendolyn did want it, she wanted it just as much as Beatrice had wanted the little dog to get pneumonia, but after nearly a month in Lady Parson’s house she knew she was helpless. The Carters were penniless; there was nowhere else to go.

‘I hope I don’t have to tell you which of my shawls the bottle must be wrapped in?’

‘No, Lady Parsons. It’s the violet crochet one in the second drawer down.’

‘Well, if you know, why don’t you do it straight away?’ said Lady Parsons. ‘And tell your mother to hurry up with turning the collar on my blue velvet. I’m going to wear it for my bridge party tonight.’