Along the Endless River by Rose Alexander

Author:Rose Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

Norwood, 1900

Not long after the purchase of Fortunata at the auction, Jonathan and Santiago returned, triumphant, having sold all the rubber at an excellent price. They’d spent most of the proceeds on paying a mass of bills and debts, but on Katharine’s instructions had also wired a small sum to London. On hearing this news, Katharine breathed a sigh of relief. She was plagued by a constant feeling of guilt at the length of time it was taking to repay her father and although her mother’s letters revealed nothing untoward, she had a sixth sense that something was wrong. Nevertheless, the sending of the money meant she went to bed on the night of their return more contented than she had been for many years.

Meanwhile, as the days, weeks and months passed, Thomas was becoming more and more invaluable. Katharine could not imagine what she had done without him. He was full of interesting plans, considered opinions, new strategies, and they spent many enjoyable hours discussing business, batting ideas and suggestions around. Secretly pleasing, though, was that her command of maths was better than his. Katharine didn’t want her manager to outclass her in absolutely everything.

The flies in the ointment – and there were no shortage of them in the Amazon at any rate – were Mayhew, Antonio and little Fortunata. Antonio would be ten at the end of the year, Fortunata two or three years older, Katharine reckoned. She had grown no taller and was barely any fatter than when Katharine had rescued her, and still regularly ate dirt, an inexplicable habit that was common amongst the forest Indians, especially children and pregnant women. Katharine had tried to find out why they did this, but no one knew, not even the Spanish pharmacist who lived in the town where the slave auction had been held, nor any other passing doctor or scientist she had quizzed about it over the years.

Antonio, on the other hand, was a tall and stocky lad who looked older than he was and whose temper was not improving with the years. He was often obstreperous and difficult, and Katharine was beginning to despair of how to cope with him.

And added to that was Mayhew. While she valued the time he spent with Antonio, he was increasingly becoming an irritant to Katharine. He complained constantly about the food, the house, the Indians, the forest, the isolation. Katharine often looked at him, amazed at how little they had in common even though they were of the same flesh and blood. Having brought Thomas here and imposed him on Katharine and her business he seemed to be oddly jealous of the man, frequently admonishing him and trying to muscle in on plans she and Thomas were hatching. What made him even more annoying was that, when he did put forward ideas for the business, they were invariably rather good ones, revealing a level of business acumen that Katharine hadn’t realised her brother possessed.

It made everything worse to have to concede that Mayhew, on occasion, was right.

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