Journey to the River Sea

It was here that the Pilgrim Players left the ship. They disembarked with as many shouts and armwavings as when they came on board. Maia and Clovis hugged each other; she was really sorry to see him go. She gave him her address at the Carters’ so that he could come and see her as soon as he arrived in Manaus.

‘The name of the house is Tapherini. That means “A Place of Rest”, Miss Minton says, so it’s sure to be beautiful,’ she said. ‘The twins will be excited to see a proper actor.’

‘And you’ll come and see me in the play?’

‘I promise,’ said Maia. ‘I absolutely promise.’

Clovis didn’t just hug Maia, he hugged Miss Minton too. It struck Maia that though he was afraid of so many things, he didn’t seem to be afraid of her fierce-looking governess.

The journey down the Amazon was one that Maia never forgot. In places the river was so wide that she understood why it was called the River Sea and they sailed between distant lines of trees. But sometimes they made their way between islands and then, on the sandbanks, they saw some of the creatures that Maia had read about. Once a litter of capybaras lumbered after their mother and they were close enough to see their funny snouts and sandy fur. Once they passed a tree whose roots had been killed by the rise of the water, and its bare branches were full of scarlet and blue parakeets which flew up, screeching, when the boat came past. And once Maia saw a grey log lying in the shallows which suddenly came to life.

‘Oh look,’ she said, ‘A croc— I mean an alligator. My first one!’, and a man standing close by nodded, and said he was glad that she knew there were no crocodiles in this part of the world. ‘You’d be surprised how many people never learn.’

They passed plantations of rubber trees and Indian villages with the houses built on stilts to stop them being flooded when the river rose. The Indian children came out onto the landing stage and waved and called out, and Maia waved back and didn’t stop till they were out of sight.

Sometimes the boat went close enough to the shore for them to pass by old houses owned by the sugar planters or coffee exporters; they could see the verandas with the families taking tea, and dogs stretched out in the shade, and hanging baskets of scarlet flowers.

‘Will it be like that?’ Maia kept asking. ‘They’re sure to have a veranda, aren’t they – perhaps we can do lessons looking out over the river?’

She was becoming more and more excited. The colour, the friendly waving Indians, the flashing birds, all delighted her, and she was not troubled by the heat. But at the centre of all her thoughts were the twins. She saw them in white dresses with coloured sashes like pictures in a book, laughing and welcoming and friendly. She imagined them getting ready for bed, brushing each other’s hair, and lying in a hammock with a basket full of kittens on their laps, or picking flowers for the house.

‘They’ll have a big garden going down to the river, don’t you think?’ she asked Miss Minton, ‘and a boat with a striped awning probably. I don’t really like fishing because of the hooks but if they showed me ... I suppose you can live off the land in a place like that.’

Since the letter the twins had written to her was only two sentences long, Maia was free to make up their lives, and she did this endlessly.

‘I wonder if they’ve tamed a lot of animals? I should think they would have, wouldn’t you? Coatis get very tame – or maybe they’ll have a pet monkey? A little capuchin that sits on their shoulders? And a parakeet?’ she asked Miss Minton, who told her to wait and see, and set her another exercise in her Portuguese grammar.

But whatever Miss Minton said made no difference. In Maia’s head the twins paddled their boat between giant water lilies, trekked fearlessly through the jungle, and at night played piano duets, sending the music out into the velvet night.

‘They’ll know the names of everything too, won’t they? Those orange lilies; no one seems to know what they’re called,’ said Maia.

‘The names will be in a book,’ said Miss Minton quellingly, but she might have spared her breath as Maia wandered further and further into the lives of Gwendolyn and Beatrice.

‘They’ll shorten their own names, do you think? Gwen perhaps? And Beattie?’

It occurred to Maia that Miss Minton knew quite a lot about the creatures they came across along the river, and when her governess pointed out fresh water dolphins swimming ahead of them, she plucked up courage to ask what had made her decide to come out to the Amazon.

Miss Minton stared out over the rails. At first she did not answer and Maia blushed, feeling she had been impertinent. Then she said, ‘I knew somebody once who came to live out here. He wrote to me once in a while. It made me want to see for myself.’

‘Oh.’ Maia was pleased. Perhaps Miss Minton had a friend here and would not be lonely. ‘Is he still here, your friend?’

The pause this time was longer.

‘No,’ said Miss Minton. ‘He died.’