Along the Endless River

by Rose Alexander

  Eventually, she and Thomas helped Mabel to bed. She’d asked for brandy and Katharine had fetched her some. For the shock, Mabel had said, and Katharine didn’t know how to refuse her.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she repeated, over and over, ‘I just can’t believe it. He’s my friend, he was my friend, he knew full well who Mabel was when he employed her on his daughter’s behalf…’

  ‘Calm, calm,’ soothed Thomas. ‘No good can come of getting all worked up. We need to be strong, and solid, for Mabel. Everything else can wait until another time.’

  But Katharine could not be pacified. Her anger was like an erupting volcano, unstoppable, red hot, all-consuming.

  ‘He’ll pay for this,’ she raged, ‘If it’s the last thing I do I swear I’ll make him pay. However long it takes.’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Mabel was changed after that first revelation. It was as if, once the biggest truth was out, the floodgates opened. Katharine discovered that her sister found it easier to talk when she was walking, or out on the river, Katharine paddling the canoe and Mabel sitting behind her, trailing her fingers in the silky water.

  It was in this way that Katharine discovered the stories behind a myriad more mysteries.

  ‘He said there were others,’ Mabel blurted out, as the prow cut a swathe through the glassy surface, ‘Indian girls, young ones. He said he liked them young, that I was too old really but so beautiful it didn’t matter. He told me that one of them died after she’d had a baby.’

  Katharine paddled on, staring straight ahead. A kingfisher darted for a fish. They’re such a disappointment, after British ones, Katharine thought as she always did, their colours nowhere near as bright and vibrant.

  It was hard to listen to what Mabel was saying. To hear that Mac was guilty, not only of impregnating Mabel, but others too. And not just women, but children.

  ‘He said he didn’t know why the girl died. Quite a few of them had his children and they just went back to live in the forest or in Iquitos. But this one got sick, he said she got a fever and the women couldn’t cure it and eventually she got so weak that she died. He doesn’t know what happened to the baby.’

  A catfish came to the surface and took a fly. Katharine wanted to hit it with the paddle, to batter it as she would like to batter Mac. But it was just a fish. It had done nothing wrong.

  ‘The girl’s name was Esperanza.’

  Katharine’s hands around the paddle tightened. Her fingernails cut into her palms and she liked the pain. It was a small echo of that which was in her heart due to the injustice done to Mabel, to Esperanza and all the others whose lives Mac had ruined or blighted or ended. Little Esperanza. She had wondered where she had gone, just as she had wondered at the age of the other pregnant girl at that Christmas visit when she had met Alexandra. She had not had the faintest inkling that those girls had fallen victim to Mac.

  Abruptly, she turned her head to face Mabel.

  ‘He’s disgusting. He’s foul, nothing better than vermin. But you’re never going to see him again. When he finds out you’re here, he’ll never dare set foot in the Amazon again. I’ll make sure of that, don’t you worry.’

  As she spoke, she had no idea how she could actually keep that promise. But for the moment, it was what Mabel needed to hear. ‘We’ll take care of you, Mabel. That’s all you have to worry about now.’

  And inside, silently, We have plenty of time to take revenge. Years, if need be. But take it we will.

  Back on shore, Katharine retrieved Lily from Thomas’ care. She took the child, now twenty months old, and carried her to where Mabel was sitting, quietly weeping. She placed Lily in her sister’s arms and watched as Mabel smiled down at her, her sadness lifting and her luminous beauty shining through once more. Mabel kissed the infant’s cheeks and fingers and each of her ten little toes.

  ‘She’s so perfect, Katharine,’ she breathed, unable to tear her eyes away from her niece. ‘So lovely.’

  Katharine leant towards her. ‘And your baby will be, too,’ she assured her. ‘We will look after it and love it, no matter what. That’s all you have to think about just now.’

  Mabel nodded. ‘I’ll try.’

  Katharine thought that Mabel would have nothing else to tell. But the disclosures continued. Over the time she spent at Norwood, Mabel came to trust Thomas as much as she did her sister. And one evening, as the three of them strolled through the orchard, Mabel began to talk once more.

  ‘You wrote to the family about Anselmo dying,’ she began, tentatively. ‘Even though I was still so young, I remember when Mother got that letter, how she cried, how she wrung her hands for you. And for him.’

  ‘I’m sorry you had to hear that, Mabel,’ replied Katharine. ‘It must have been shocking and frightening for you.’

  ‘I never forgot it,’ Mabel continued. ‘When Mac started to speak about it, I thought he wanted to get it off his chest, to talk about how distressing it was, how terrible.’

  Katharine nodded.

  ‘But it wasn’t that at all.’ Mabel paused, before her next words came splurting out. ‘He wanted to confess what he did – that he sank the boat deliberately, an act of sabotage. He punched a hole in the hull so that it would ship water and sink. He scuttled it on purpose.’

  For a moment, no one spoke. The silence was filled by the thrum of the rainforest, the unceasing noise, the constant throb of life, the singing of the river as it bowled towards the sea. Life and death, slipping from one to the other in a heartbeat.

  But Mac had caused the death of Anselmo and the others on that steamer, had done it deliberately. Katharine felt faint, hot and cold and lightheaded. Thomas caught her as she was about to fall, held her until her head stopped spinning.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she murmured. ‘And yet I knew it. I knew there was something strange. Something he said – I remember the exact words – when a boat starts shipping water, there’s no chance. As if he had known in advance what was going to happen, that the steamer wasn’t going to make the journey. Those words always stayed with me; I sensed that there was something wrong about them but I couldn’t work out what it was. I suppose it was impossible to think that anyone would intentionally do such a thing.’

  She clutched Thomas’ hands. ‘But it’s true. It wasn’t an accident.’

  Thomas’ eyes darkened, and Katharine could see disbelief in them, combined with anger. Mabel was slumped against a tree trunk, motionless.

  ‘But why, Katharine? Why would he do that?’ she asked, her voice plaintive, pleading.

  Her bewilderment broke Katharine’s heart.

  Katharine took a deep breath. ‘Mac wanted Anselmo dead, out of the way. He didn’t want the competition. He thought that without my husband, I’d give up, sell to him for a pittance.’ She paused, running her hands over her face and through her hair. ‘I trusted him. I believed him when he said he was on my side, that he’d help me any way he could, lending me money, sending me gifts. How could I have been so stupid?’

  Thomas grimaced and turned his steely gaze towards the forest, the endless, limitless forest. It knew no bounds, just as Mac’s evil knew no bounds.

  ‘He fooled everyone, Katharine. Absolutely everyone. Beguiled us all, pulled the wool over our eyes. You can’t blame yourself for being taken in.’

  Mabel stirred, stood up straight and pointed to the river. ‘Let’s go down to the water.’

  They sat in a row in the sand, Mabel in the middle. ‘I wanted to write to you, Katharine. But Mac said he’d know if I did, that he had me followed, that he’d intercept any letters I tried to send. I believed him and I was scared.’ She leant her head on Katharine’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’

  They stared out at the river that, as usual, took no notice. It was just the river, intent on running to the sea, no other aim in mind. It paid no regard to human folly.

  ‘Katharine.’ Mabel spoke, then immediately faltered.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘T
hat’s not all.’

  Katharine almost laughed. Not more. Not something else.

  ‘Sinking the ship isn’t the only thing Mac did,’ Mabel muttered, hesitantly, and then, the decision to reveal all made the words came rushing out in a torrent. ‘He – he organised the incursion by the tribe, the destruction of your compound, burning the huts, pushing all the rubber into the river. He paid them handsomely for it, apparently, with a lifetime’s supply of weapons, cachaça and everything else they could possibly want.’

  The words fell, like coconuts from a tall palm tree, thudding to the ground with the weight of bombs. Mabel paused, aware of both Katharine and Thomas staring at her, astounded.

  ‘He asked them to make especially sure they killed your pet bird. He’d forgotten its name. But it was Po-Po, wasn’t it?’

  Katharine let out a loud, long, ironic laugh.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ she intoned hollowly, blaspheming in a way she never normally did. She buried her head in her hands, grinding her teeth as she remembered that horrendous time, arriving home to find home annihilated.

  ‘Again, why didn’t I see? But Jonathan and Santiago – they knew, I know they did. When they said that not all snakes in the jungle come in serpent form, they meant Mac.’ She looked around her wonderingly, at the peaceful compound and the waving leaves of banana trees, everything in order, just as it should be. It looked suddenly different. Alien. Things had gone on here that she had fundamentally misunderstood and that knowledge changed everything. ‘They must have been so afraid of Mac and his evil that, in all these years, they never said a word.’

  ‘Oh, Katharine,’ cried Thomas, his face contorted with concern for his wife. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through all this alone. You are so brave, you know that, don’t you?’

  Katharine shook her head. All Mac’s friendliness, his offers of assistance, his protestations that he admired her – all had been fake, just a means to an end. ‘I don’t think so. I just didn’t have a choice. I had to keep going, for Antonio and to pay my father back. But Mac – he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Worse than that. When I think back now, I remember him asking me how much rubber I had, one night at Lagona. And – oh God – I answered truthfully! I was proud to share that information with him so that he’d see that I was competent, successful. When all he wanted was to know whether it was worth invading my compound yet.’

  A wind blew up, ruffling the river’s surface. ‘I see now that his price rises were imposed whenever I achieved a success, whenever I threatened his pre-eminence in the upper Amazon. If he couldn’t break me with guns and fires, or by buying me out, he’d break me financially. He’d sap my spirit and my will. He’d stop at nothing.’

  She looked at Mabel and Thomas. ‘Even murder.’

  Katharine stood up, took a stone from the beach and skimmed it into the water. It failed miserably, plopping through the surface and sinking without a single jump.

  ‘And to think I saved his pitiful bloody life when he fell into the river! He drowned my husband and I prevented him from drowning. I wish I’d left him to die.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Mabel, ‘I know it’s awful. But I had to tell you. I was right to tell you, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Katharine knelt beside her and took her hands. ‘You were absolutely right.’

  ‘I think he wasn’t feeling well,’ continued Mabel. ‘He seemed to need to spill it all out. Sometimes I didn’t want to hear any more, but I couldn’t get him to stop.’

  Katharine gave a disdainful snort. ‘Expiation, of a sort. Admission, acknowledgement, atonement, I don’t know. As if he could make it all better by telling a poor innocent girl he was busy destroying.’

  Lily came toddling towards them, accompanied by Rosabel, a welcome distraction. Mabel seized the little girl in her arms and held her tight.

  ‘I just want to forget him,’ she muttered into Lily’s curly hair, ‘just never have to think of him again.’

  ‘I think we all feel like that,’ replied Katharine. But, she thought, it’s simply not possible.

  Chapter Fifty

  They say that holding an infant brings on labour, so when Katharine woke in the night to the sound of a woman’s screams, she knew that Mabel’s time had come. Leaping up, she looked around for Thomas. His bed was empty. Rushing to the door and flinging it open, she followed the direction of the noise to Mabel’s room. Halfway along the corridor Thomas appeared, looking uncharacteristically flushed and agitated.

  ‘The baby,’ he said, ‘it’s on its way.’ His voice was low and Katharine could sense an element of ‘oh no, not again’ in his tone. So soon after Lily’s hazardous delivery, she was not surprised he was apprehensive. Neither of them wanted to go through that horror a second time. She cursed that none of the help she’d organised had arrived – not Senhor Garcia nor the midwife from Iquitos – but in such a short amount of time, with such distances to travel, it would have been impossible.

  Telling Thomas to go to the compound and rouse the servants, she rushed into Mabel’s bedroom. She recognised immediately the flush of pain upon her face, the sweat streaked across her brow.

  ‘How long has it been going on?’ she asked, insistently. ‘Why didn’t you come and get me?’

  ‘I thought it was stomach ache,’ moaned Mabel. ‘The food, you know, my tummy has been unsettled for days and…’ She was silenced as a contraction came on, at its height starting once more to yelp in agony.

  Two Indian women arrived, with clean cloths and hot water and the comforting manner of those who have seen many babies born in the past and expect to see many more in the future. But their air of confidence gradually diminished as the labour continued and Mabel’s pain became relentless and unbearable.

  ‘This isn’t right,’ Katharine kept thinking, ‘it’s not right.’

  Having Antonio, when she had been a similar age to Mabel now, had been tough, no denying that – but not like this. The birth of Clara’s baby had been a walk in the park compared to this.

  ‘The baby is upside down,’ said one of the Indian women, after extensive feeling of Mabel’s distended belly. ‘That is why so difficult.’

  A breech baby. Anyone knew that this was dangerous. That often the babies didn’t survive.

  The labour went on and on. Mabel burnt with fever but as her temperature rose, her screams diminished. Katharine could sense her weakening, losing the will to carry on the fight. By the evening of the next day, Mabel was exhausted. This was beyond the limits of human endurance. Katharine steeled herself to what she felt was inevitable; the baby was unlikely to make it.

  Eventually, when Katharine herself was hallucinating with tiredness, Mabel’s baby was born. It was a little girl. She was blue and still and no cries disturbed the evening darkness, just the habitual sounds of monkeys, birds, frogs and insects.

  The Indian woman who’d pulled the baby out handed her to Katharine, shaking her head sorrowfully. Though she knew it was hopeless, Katharine rubbed her little back and frail limbs, and blew in her mouth, but there was no response. A few tears fell upon the baby’s blanket. But then a shriek and cries for help made her put the child down on the floor behind her and leap to Mabel’s side.

  The Indian women were bent over her sister, both pairs of eyes wide with terrified alarm. Mabel’s own eyes had rolled back into their sockets and her head lay at an awkward angle, as if she had no control over it. Her lips were barely moving but Katharine could hear her moaning something and bent forward to listen.

  ‘My baby, my baby,’ she was muttering, over and over. Katharine recalled her own fear on waking up and not knowing where Lily was, what had happened to her. She didn’t know what to say. Mabel’s little girl was born on the Sabbath and as the traditional rhyme would have it, would be bonny and blithe and good and gay.

  Except that she was stillborn, already gone to a better place.

  Katharine held her sister’s hand and kissed her cheeks and had absolutely no idea how to b
reak this terrible news to her. As she stroked Mabel’s hair and soothed her fevered brow, Katharine felt her hand go limp, her fingers lose their grasp. Mabel’s face blanched from pale pink to blue-tinged white. Looking around in alarm, Katharine saw blood soaking the blankets Mabel was lying on, more and more blood, blood that kept on flowing.

  As she watched, the stain spread, as fast as a flood in the rainy season, wide and dark and drenching.

  The Indian women saw it, too, and snatched up towels and sheets to try to staunch the flow. They mopped and mopped but the blood continued to pour out in a torrent, an endless snake of blood that became a river and then a tidal wave.

  ‘What’s happening? What’s happening to her?’ Katharine shrieked, no longer able to keep calm for Mabel’s sake.

  The Indian women just shook their heads and the blood kept coming, inexorably. Katharine could not believe that one body could hold so much blood.

  Mabel stirred, her eyes fluttering open and closed. Her lips moved. Katharine bent in low, straining to hear her sister’s feeble voice.

  ‘There’s… more.’ Mabel’s breath was laboured, catching in her throat. But suddenly her voice was crystal clear. ‘I need to tell you… about – about Archie… and the money. He didn’t steal it, Katharine, he didn’t… and about…’

  But then the words trailed away and became inaudible. Mabel fell silent, her porcelain skin covered with a sheen of sweat. Her lips trembled once more and were still.

  ‘What, Mabel, what?’ cried Katharine, frantic, panicking. ‘Who is Archie, and who said he stole money? What else is there to tell?’

  But Mabel’s eyelids had closed like the final slamming of a prison door. Katharine took her wrist and felt for a pulse, laid her ear close to her mouth.

  There was nothing.

  Her beautiful sister. Her brave, mistreated sister was dead.

  Part III

  1910