Journey to the River Sea

‘You don’t understand. They’re furious. They’ll have to cancel all the matinées and lose lots of money and I can’t stand it any longer. I’m going to stow away on the boat and go back to England.’

Maia looked at him in dismay. ‘They’ll find you. Stowaways are always found. Haven’t you got an understudy?’

Clovis shook his head. ‘There was a boy in the last place but he got typhoid.’ He got up and really seemed to see Maia for the first time. ‘You’ve got blood on your hand, did you know?’

She shook her head impatiently. ‘It doesn’t matter. Clovis, you’ve got to pull yourself together. It’s such a little thing.’

‘It is to you because you’re not on the stage – and you don’t know the Goodleys.’ He looked at her and there were still tears in his eyes. ‘Maia, I’ve got to get home. Can’t you help me? I’ll do anything to get away.’

‘I’ll try, Clovis. I’ll really try.’

She broke off as a furious voice out in the corridor was heard calling her name. Mrs Carter had tracked her down!

‘I have to go! Look, Clovis, let me think. Just give me time. And don’t be so sad. I’ll help you somehow. There has to be something we can do!’

Chapter Seven

For two days after the matinée, Maia was in disgrace.

‘I couldn’t believe my eyes,’ said Mrs Carter, glaring at her over a dollop of macaroni cheese so solid that she was cutting it with a knife. ‘A girl in my care creeping out secretly, going backstage and looking like a ragamuffin. The girls told me they thought they’d seen you on the way out but I didn’t believe it.’

‘We told you, Mama,’ said Beatrice, smirking.

‘She’s stuck on that actor boy with the bass voice.’

Then they both started doing imitations of Clovis saying Will I have to stop being your little boy? in a deep, growly voice, and laughing. ‘Oh, it was so funny, I thought I was going to die!’

At first Maia had tried to defend Clovis and make them see what the mishap had meant to him. But soon she gave up. Making the twins imagine the feelings of anybody except themselves was a waste of time. Instead, Maia had to put up with Mrs Carter’s threats to send her back to England.

Maia had told her that she had gone to Manaus on a boat ferrying rubber down river and Mrs Carter did not understand why she had not been murdered and thrown overboard. ‘As for Miss Minton, I’m afraid she is really not fit to have charge of young girls. I shall have to replace her as soon as I can find someone suitable.’

In the evening, when Miss Minton came to ‘hear her read’, Maia said, ‘I’m not staying here without you. I shall write to Mr Murray.’

‘I think you will find that at the salary the Carters are paying me, it might take a little while to find someone else,’ said Miss Minton dryly. She picked up Maia’s hairbrush. ‘Don’t tell me you’re doing a hundred strokes a night because I don’t believe it. I’ve told you again and again that you must look after your hair.’ She picked up the brush and brushed fiercely for a while. And then: ‘Do you want to go back, Maia? Back to England?’

‘I did,’ she said, thinking about it. ‘The twins are so awful and there seemed no point in being here, shut up in this house. But not now. I don’t want to go now because I’ve seen that it is there. What I thought was there.’

Miss Minton waited.

‘I mean ... the forest ... the river ... the Amazon ... everything I thought of before I came. And the people who live in it and know about it.’

Then she told Miss Minton about the boy who had taken her into Manaus.

‘He didn’t speak English, but he had such a listening face; I couldn’t believe he didn’t understand everything I said. Oh, Minty, it was such a wonderful journey, like floating through a drowned forest. You can’t believe it’s the same world as the Carters live in.’

‘It isn’t,’ said Miss Minton. ‘People make their own worlds.’

‘I wish I could find him again.’ And then: ‘I will find him again. If they don’t send me away.’

‘They won’t send you away,’ said Miss Minton. Mrs Carter was already waiting greedily for the next month’s allowance for Maia from the bank in Manaus. ‘However, it seems to me we must find a way of getting you out of doors.’ She wrinkled her formidable forehead. ‘I think a disease might be best. Yes. Something that makes it necessary for you to go out and breathe fresh air. Even damp air. Let me think. What about pulmonary spasms?’

Maia stared at her. ‘I’ve never heard of them.’

‘Well no. I’ve just made them up. We’ll tell Mrs Carter that if your lungs get dry from the disinfectant indoors you have spasms. You know what they are, don’t you?’

‘Sort of twitchings and convulsions?’

‘Yes. Convulsions will do. Mrs Carter won’t like them. But I may not always be able to go with you, so please understand that I am trusting you to stay close to the house and to be sensible. Which you do not seem to have been.’