They pored together over the herd of large, somewhat absurd rodents basking on a sand-bank. Not all the pictures were very clear, for the intrepid Colonel had wielded his Kodak under conditions of quite spectacular hardship, but to Harriet and Henry each and every one was of absorbing interest. There was one of a steamer of the Amazon Navigation Company going down the river; one of a rubber gatherer, a seringueiro, crossing a creek on a felled tree… And several of the author: a splendid man in a topee, lying in his hammock at a bivouac, standing with his gun astride a dead jaguar… arm-in-arm with an Indian chief in a lip-disc who came scarcely to his waist.
‘It doesn’t hurt them, having their mouths like that,’ explained Henry reassuringly. ‘They like it — they sort of stretch their lips gradually. It’s an honour.’
Harriet nodded, as entranced as the little boy. ‘Is there a picture of Manaus, Henry?’
‘Yes, there is.’ Enormously pleased to be able to oblige her, he turned the pages carefully, his square-tipped fingers uncannily like those of old General Brandon in the portrait the gloomy Mr Grunthorpe had shown them in the Long Gallery. ‘Look, here it is! It’s called the “Golden City”. Why is it called that, do you know?’
‘I think it’s because everyone there is so rich,’ answered Harriet thoughtfully. ‘But I’m not sure. People have always thought about gold in South America and searched for it. Golden cities with golden roofs; golden palaces where there’s hidden treasure. “Eldorado”, they call it.’
She gazed at the picture — an elegant cathedral, a flight of steps, a park with palm trees. In the distance, blurred, some other buildings. Was that faint crisscrossing in front of one of them a line of scaffolding? The book was dated 1890 — just about the time that the Opera House was begun… Avidly she began to read the text, only to be recalled by a small sigh from Henry. Glad as he was to have found for her the city she had requested, he yearned inevitably for the tree sloth and giant electric eel which awaited them.
‘What I don’t understand, Henry, is why you are not supposed to read this book,’ said Harriet when they had studied all the pictures. ‘Surely it’s a good book for someone young to read? A book about adventures?’
There was a pause while Henry pondered, evidently putting her through some final test.
‘It’s because it belonged to “the Boy”.’ He spoke with a curious awe, looking up at her to gauge the effect of his words. ‘He’s a secret, you see. No one’s allowed to talk about him and if I ask anyone, Mama gets cross. I took it from old Nannie in the Lodge, when she was asleep. It was his absolutely favourite book and he left it for her when he went away.’
‘He lived here, then?’
‘Oh, yes. But he did something bad, I think, and they sent him away. Before I was born, this was — about when Grandfather died. He had the book for his ninth birthday, Nannie said. Sometimes she tells me a bit about him when she’s had her medicine.’
‘Her medicine?’
Henry nodded. ‘It’s called Gordon’s Gin and it’s in a big bottle by her bed; when she’s had some, she tells me about him. She just calls him “the Boy”, as though there weren’t any other boys in the world. He was very wild and very brave. He climbed the oak tree by the gatehouse roof and swung over to the parapet — and he had a huge black dog that followed him everywhere and when he went away the dog stopped eating and died.’ The child’s eyes shone with hero-worship. ‘He had a cross-bow too and he could shoot for miles and he didn’t wear spectacles and he wasn’t afraid of the dark. At least, I don’t think he was — Nannie didn’t say.’
‘I expect he was older than you, Henry,’ said Harriet gently. ‘I expect when you’re his age you will be just like him.’
‘No.’ Henry shook a resigned head. ‘Cook says I’m as clever as a cartload of monkeys, but he was clever and brave. He could ride anything.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t ride anything. I fell off Porridge, who’s only a Shetland pony; the girths slipped. He made a tree-house in the Wellingtonia; that’s about a hundred feet high — you can still see some of the planks at the top — and he built a dug-out canoe like Colonel Bush’s and launched it on the river and got as far as Appleby Meadows before it sank.’
Harriet turned back the pages to glance at the flyleaf. ‘July 5th 1891’, she read. If ‘the Boy’ had been nine years old then, he would be a man approaching thirty now, but she said nothing, realising that to Henry it was necessary that this magical being should exist outside the rules of time.
‘Grunthorpe knew him. That’s our butler. He didn’t like him; he said he was a changeling.’
‘A changeling? Why, Henry?’
The child sighed. ‘Because he could talk to animals. It wasn’t natural, Grunthorpe said.’ There was a pause before Henry added in a carefully expressionless voice, ‘I told Grunthorpe I was going to be an explorer when I grew up and join an expedition, but he said I couldn’t because explorers don’t wear spectacles.’
Needing a few moments to control her anger, Harriet fixed her gaze on the mildewed statue of the faun. ‘I find that a most extraordinary remark, Henry,’ she said presently in a detached, calm voice. ‘Consider, for example, the insects. For you must admit that the insects are a trouble. The mosquitoes, the blackfly and this one here’ — she searched for the page in which Colonel Bush had devoted a paragraph to the ravages of the tabanid fly. ‘It would seem to me perfectly obvious that insects like that could get into a person’s eyes, and that would be very awkward if he was paddling a canoe. Now if I was in charge of an expedition, the man I would put in front — in the very front of any boat — would be the man with glasses.’
Henry said nothing, but after a moment — while not exactly coming to lean against her — he moved along the stone bench so that even the small space which had been between them was there no longer, and when Harriet turned to look at him she found herself staring at the riot of impending incisors and cavernous gaps which betokened Henry’s peculiarly ravishing smile.
For a while they sat together in companionable silence. Then: ‘Sometimes I think he’ll come back. “The Boy”, I mean,’ said Henry shyly. ‘And then everything will be all right again.’
‘Isn’t it all right now?’
‘No. Because Papa has deserted us and Mama gets angry and the servants keep leaving and we have to have “Tea Ladies” going through the rooms.’
‘Yes, I see. That isn’t very nice.’
‘I don’t think it’s my fault?’ said Henry, his small face pinched and anxious once again.
‘How could it be your fault, Henry,’ she answered passionately. ‘How could it be?’
So far they had felt themselves quite alone, but now the voices of the agitated ladies calling her name seemed to be getting closer and, conscious of limited time, Harriet said, ‘Henry, you may think this quite incredible, but only a week ago I was offered a job to go out to the Amazon, as a dancer. To Manaus. To this very place.’ She pointed to the book, open once more at the picture of the ‘Golden City’. ‘Only they won’t let me go.’
Somehow it seemed perfectly natural to talk to this diminutive child as though he was a fully-fledged adult.
Henry turned towards her, a puzzled look on his face.
‘But Harriet,’ he said, pronouncing her name with professorial clarity and a certain reproach, ‘you’re grown-up, aren’t you? You can do what you like?’
She looked down at his russet head, tilted up at her trustfully as he proclaimed her adult status. And suddenly she was flooded with a feeling of the most extraordinary power and elation. So strong was this feeling that she rose to her feet and in a voice entirely different from the one she had used hitherto, she said, ‘Yes. You are perfectly right, Henry. I am grown-up.’