The River Read online

  Harriet lay on her bed, her face turned to the wall.

  Nan came in.

  ‘Harriet,’ said Nan.

  ‘Please go away.’

  ‘Harriet,’ said Nan, ‘I think you should get up.’

  ‘I – can’t.’ Harriet’s voice was muffled.

  ‘You will have to get up some time,’ said Nan reasonably, ‘so I should get up now.’

  ‘I can’t, Nan. How can I?’

  ‘With a girl like Valerie,’ said Nan, ‘a spiteful girl, you have to be very proud. You should not let her see she can hurt you.’

  ‘It isn’t only Valerie,’ cried Harriet in despair. ‘You didn’t hear what she said. Oh, Nan, does everyone know? Does everyone say – that?’

  ‘I expect they do,’ said Nan calmly. ‘You have to expect that because it is partly true, Harriet.’

  ‘Yes, but – who could have thought—’

  ‘You could have thought,’ said Nan. ‘You didn’t use your sense. You know you didn’t, and for that a cruel lesson has been given.’ Her voice trembled and she looked with indescribable pity at Harriet, but she went on. ‘Very cruel, but perfectly just,’ said Nan. ‘You can’t complain about it. You must not.’

  ‘What am I to do? What can I do?’ cried Harriet.

  ‘It is a thing that will have to pass away from you, Harriet.’

  ‘It never will, Nan. Never! Never!’

  ‘Yes, Harriet, it will,’ said Nan. ‘You have plenty of courage and you are strong. I have faith that it will,’ and she pressed Harriet gently on the thigh and said, ‘Get up now and face that Valerie.’

  She rustled gently out, but Harriet did not get up. She lay on her bed engulfed with misery. All the sounds of the late afternoon came up to her and she could identify each one, but she lay cut off from them all. ‘I feel as if I had thorns in my heart,’ said Harriet. ‘How hard Nan is. How hard,’ she said. Now she could not be unhappy for Bogey by himself any more. Mixed with him, irretrievably, was the guilt and indictment, public not private, so that they were not by themselves any more. ‘I wish I had died with Bogey,’ whispered Harriet.

  There was a knock on the shutters behind the curtain.

  ‘Harriet, can I come in?’

  ‘Captain John!’ cried Harriet, shrinking in her bed.

  ‘Yes. Can I come in?’

  ‘No. Please no.’

  ‘I am coming in,’ said Captain John.

  He came in. Made dim by the shadow of the room, he looked large, his movements very jerky. Harriet could not see his face.

  ‘I have brought your book,’ he said, and laid it at the foot of her bed.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She did not move. She did not want him to see her face.

  ‘Don’t you want it?’

  Harriet shook her head. ‘I won’t be doing any writing any more,’ she said.

  He did not answer that. Instead he said, ‘I have come to take you for a walk.’

  ‘Me?’ said Harriet.

  ‘Yes. Along by the river. It is beautiful there in the evening. Nan says you can come. Come along, Harriet.’

  ‘But—’ Harriet sat up and put her legs down over the edge of the bed, ‘don’t you want to be with Bea?’

  ‘No,’ said Captain John, ‘I want to be with you.’

  They went downstairs together and out along the drive and past the jetty and along the footpath, that lay beside the river.

  The up steamer and the down steamer, the mail steamers, had passed for the day and the river flowed calm and untroubled between its banks. Now under the bank it showed shallows of light, yellow, where the late sun struck down into it; further out the water was deeply green, and beyond, in midstream, it showed only a surface with flat pale colours. On the further bank, a mile across stream, there was a line of unbroken brilliant yellow above a line of white, the mustard fields in flower above the river’s edge of sand. The temple showed its roof among the trees and country boats, their sails set square, moved gently down before the current and the wind. Other boats passed, towed upstream by boatmen leaning on long towing lines. A peasant was washing the flanks of his cows in the river above the garden, and on the sand and in the mud lay the halves of empty shells, bleached white, that had baked all day in the hot sun.

  ‘How beautiful it is,’ said Harriet. Its beauty penetrated into the heat and the ache of the hollowness inside her. It had a quiet unhurriedness, a time beat that was infinitely soothing to Harriet. ‘You can’t stop days or rivers,’ not stop them, and not hurry them. Her cheeks grew cool and the ferment in her heart grew quieter too, more slow.

  She was silent trying to think of it: then, ‘I feel better already,’ she said sadly.

  ‘Don’t you want to feel better?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ and she said with the same forlornness, ‘I need some time to be unhappy.’

  He did not answer, but he bent and took her hand, and holding his hand, she went on walking beside the river, her steps made a little jerky by his. His hand was very comforting to her.

  ‘Soon – you will be going away though – won’t you?’ said Harriet.

  ‘Yes,’ said Captain John.

  ‘What will you do? Do you know?’

  ‘I don’t know yet, but something.’

  When the sun had gone, they turned and came back. Now the colours had drawn in to tints of themselves in the water and in the sky, but the mustard still showed its brilliant clashing yellow; the last clouds of the sunset hung over the temple. ‘They are like cherubs’ wings,’ said Harriet. ‘We always call them cherubs’ wings.’

  He made no answer to that.

  They heard all the Indian evening sounds, sounds that were alien to him, utterly homely and familiar to Harriet: the gongs beating far off in the temple in the bazaar, the creak and knock of the ferryman’s paddle as the ferry came near the bank; the sound of cooking pots being scoured with mud and of a calf bellowing while its mother was milked. There was an evening smell of cooking too, pungent, too raw for their noses with its ghee and garlic and mustard oil; there was the smell of dung fuel burning, and, as they came near the house again, they smelled the cork-tree flowers on the air.

  ‘Those flowers are falling off the tree,’ said Captain John.

  ‘It is nearly the end of the cold weather, of the winter then,’ said Harriet.

  ‘I must go,’ said Captain John, but he did not go. ‘Harriet, will you come for another walk with me?’ he said.

  ‘Of course. Can we go for a walk when it is dark, and look at the fireflies? I have always wanted to do that,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Yes.’ He still lingered. Then he said, ‘Harry. Put your book back in its place. Promise.’

  Harriet nodded.

  ‘I like to think of it back in its place. And I am glad I am in it,’ said Captain John.

  As Harriet came into the nursery, where the lights were already on, Nan and Bea were kneeling on sheets of newspaper spread round Victoria’s old basket cot. They were painting it with fresh white paint.

  Harriet stood rooted to the threshold, staring.

  ‘Goodness!’ she said. ‘My goodness!’ And she asked startled, ‘Is the baby coming then?’

  They laughed at her startled face. ‘Didn’t you think it would?’ asked Bea.

  Harriet came slowly into the room, still staring.

  ‘There,’ said Nan, standing up and cleaning her brush in the jar of turpentine. ‘That will be dry tomorrow. It is such excellent enamel,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘Look, it is nearly dry already.’

  Harriet looked at Nan sharply. There was no sign in Nan’s face of anything but satisfaction over the excellence of the enamel. ‘Nan is like a clock,’ said Harriet to herself. ‘Every minute she ticks just that minute. Nothing else.’ She said it irritably, but she sensed that all the other minutes were in Nan as well, a tremendous aggregate of minutes.

  She said slowly, ‘Nan, have you seen hundreds of babies born?’

  ‘Not hundred
s,’ said Nan, ‘but many. Very many.’

  ‘And have you seen a great many people die?’

  ‘Don’t, Harriet,’ said Bea sharply.

  ‘But have you, Nan?’

  ‘A great many, Harriet.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Harriet more slowly. ‘I don’t understand how you keep yourself so clear.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ said Nan, but she did not tell them. ‘I must go and see about your suppers,’ she said.

  After she had gone Harriet was left alone with Bea. Bea was still painting a leg of the cot, working the paint very carefully into the basketwork.

  ‘Captain John has been so nice to me,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Has he?’ said Bea.

  ‘He took me for a walk.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Bea.

  ‘He is – different, Bea.’

  ‘Is he?’

  Bea did not seem interested. She painted with small firm even strokes. Harriet could not see her face for her fall of hair.

  ‘Bea,’ said Harriet, ‘are you unhappy?’

  ‘Well, we all are,’ said Bea, without looking up.

  Harriet did not think it wise to continue, but she did. She could not go away.

  ‘Does Captain John make you more unhappy, Bea?’

  ‘No,’ said Bea shortly.

  ‘What do you do when you are unhappy?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Oh, what a lot of questions you ask, Harriet. What is there to do? I am unhappy, that is all.’

  She finished the leg and stood up and began to put her brush away with Nan’s.

  ‘I can’t believe in this baby,’ said Harriet, looking at the cot.

  ‘It will be born all the same.’

  ‘What happens, Bea?’

  ‘Don’t you remember when Victoria was born?’

  All Harriet could remember was a story she had heard. When Victoria was born the head clerk of the Works, Sett Babu, came to Father and said, ‘Sir, I hear you have another little calamity.’ That was because Victoria was a girl and a girl to Sett Babu meant a dowry to be given when she was married. ‘Do we have to have them?’ she asked aloud.

  ‘Have what? Babies?’

  ‘Dowries,’ said Harriet, but Bea did not answer.

  ‘I don’t see how we can,’ said Harriet. ‘How can we?’

  ‘What? Have dowries?’ asked Bea irritably.

  ‘How can we be expected to have another baby and to like it? That is asking too much,’ said Harriet. ‘How can Mother?’

  ‘If she is, she can. That is the answer,’ said Bea. ‘Harry, we ought to go and wash for supper.’

  Harriet was silent, thinking, and then she said, ‘It is too hard to be a person. You don’t only have to go on and on. You have to be—’ she looked for the word she needed and could not find it. Then, ‘You have to be tall as well,’ said Harriet.

  In spite of the sadness and the quiet in the house there began to be a thread of expectation; then a stir.

  The nurse came, Sister Silver, and Bea and Harriet were moved out of their room. Harriet went to sleep with Nan and Victoria; Bea went to stay with Valerie.

  Then – will Captain John go there – to see her? thought Harriet. ‘Won’t he come here any more?’ said Harriet.

  An overwhelming loneliness filled her and the old misunderstood pain. She went again to the Secret Hole and again sat there by her soap-box, with her knees under her chin, brooding. Am I always going to be lonely? thought Harriet, and the right answer seemed to be, Yes, I expect I am.

  She had kept her promise and put her book back and now she picked it up, but all the writing in it seemed broken and flat. How silly I was when I wrote it, thought Harriet. Valerie was right. It was all babyish and silly or else crude; the funny bits were not funny; the beautiful bits were too beautiful. ‘I hate my writing,’ said Harriet.

  The day ends, the end begins.

  She had not finished the poem. She looked at it. ‘Nothing leaves off,’ said Harriet crossly. ‘But I shall leave off,’ and she threw the book back in the box.

  In the night she did not sleep well. She did not often sleep well now. Her dreams were too intimately concerned with Bogey, with the cobra. That night she woke in her customary cold sweat, and slowly, as she forced open her eyes, she saw that she had not woken to the frightening darkness when everything had long lithe shapes and might, or might not, be sliding, coming, moving, towards her. The light was on, and what had woken her was not a dream, but the sound of heavy treads. They came along the verandah and up the stairs past the nursery, and she heard a commonplace loud and cheerful voice, Dr Paget’s voice. She lay and listened to it sleepily; then in a moment she sat up.

  ‘Nan,’ she said, ‘is it the baby? Is the baby born?’

  ‘Shsh,’ said Nan’s voice. ‘You will wake Victoria.’

  ‘Nan. What is—’

  Harriet’s voice stopped when she saw what Nan was doing. In front of a hot low brazier, Nan was airing the small clothes Harriet had often seen put away in Mother’s trunk; Harriet looked dumbfounded. Washed, ironed and ready, a vest, a flannel nightgown, a coat, a white shawl, were airing there. ‘It is the baby,’ said Harriet in awe. ‘The baby is going to come.’

  Outside, in the night, a gong struck once.

  Harriet listened. One. No more. It was the Works’ gong, beaten at the hours. ‘It is one o’clock in the middle of the night,’ said Harriet. ‘Is the baby born?’

  ‘Not yet. Come,’ said Nan. ‘Get up. As you are awake. You shall help me make some tea.’

  ‘Tea? Now? In the middle of the night?’

  In the dining-room the tea things were laid out, sandwiches were cut. Harriet was astounded and Nan laughed at her face as she put on the kettle. ‘Whom do you think I first put the kettle on for, here, in the middle of the night?’ asked Nan.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘For you, Harriet.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Yes. You were born just after I came here.’

  ‘And then – Bogey?’

  ‘Then Bogey.’ Nan said his name as if it were the same as anyone else’s.

  ‘Nan, you have seen so many babies,’ said Harriet. ‘Do they always seem new and exciting, like this, to you?’

  ‘Always new,’ said Nan, ‘and exciting.’

  ‘Every time?’

  ‘Every time.’

  Harriet pondered. ‘But we don’t want another boy, do we?’ she said jealously.

  ‘That isn’t left to us,’ said Nan. ‘It won’t be another anything. It will be itself.’

  Sister Silver came down.

  ‘Is the baby born?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Why isn’t that child in bed?’ said Sister. ‘Nurse, I think we shall want those clothes soon.’

  ‘I am ready,’ said Nan. She had poured out a cup of tea before she took up the tray. ‘Now, Harriet, here is a cup of tea for you. Can I trust you not to wake Victoria?’

  Harriet took her tea and went to sit by the brazier that shed a dim, warm circle of light in the nursery. Even the tea had a different flavour in the middle of the night, dark and strong and hot. It was too hot. She put the cup down and went to look out of the window.

  The house was so warm and sheltered, so full of light and hush and life, that it did not know the night. At the window, Harriet met the chill of the early hours. There was no freshness in it yet, the dew had not fallen; the night was still strong. Far away, over and over again, she could hear the jackals howling and the two sounds, always present, always reminding her: puff-wait-puff, and the running of the river.

  The strong night scent came to her again from the Lady-of-the-Night; it was heavy, more than ever drenching, in the dark. She did not like it. She shivered.

  Usually now all of them in the family would have been asleep, like any sleeping family. She thought of all the families safely and unadventurously asleep and then of how her own was scattered. Only Victoria was in her place. Mother’s room was out of bounds, she could not know what
was happening to Mother; Father was awake, walking between the verandah and the drawing-room, she had heard him while Nan poured out tea. Bea was across the river and she herself was standing here tied with excitement so that she felt as if she had a knot in her stomach with the coldness of the night blowing on her forehead and the cold howling of the jackals in her ears. And Bogey … where was Bogey? The warm of him was gone. It didn’t stay – it wasn’t made blue by the cobra … then where … where? Harriet knew that it would be better, much better, not to think of Bogey now, in the middle of the night.

  ‘If you are cold,’ she told herself reasonably, ‘why not drink your tea?’ She went back to the heater and sat warming herself, her hands cold on the cup, her lips shivering as she drank. She could hear footsteps going backwards and forwards over her head in Mother’s room.

  Then she decided she would go out on the verandah and wait there. It was nearer. She could hear more clearly there.

  The verandah showed her the night and now she saw the stars behind the cork tree, but the tree did not appear to be moving at all. ‘But it is,’ argued Harriet. ‘It is, because it always does.’ The scent of the night bush was softened here by the circle of cork-tree flowers, by the thin dew scent of Mother’s petunias in the pots.

  She is very quiet, thought Harriet. I thought people screamed and shrieked and cried when they had babies. She strained to hear and went to the foot of the stairs. No sound at all. Nothing. She began to walk upstairs.

  It was dark on the centre landing, but the upper flight was lit and the lights were on outside Mother’s room as well. Harriet kept in the shadow of the banisters. She could hear Father’s steps, and cautiously she raised her head to look up. At that moment Sister Silver came out of Mother’s room. She had her sleeves rolled, her face looked busy. As Harriet saw her, she saw Harriet.

  ‘What are you doing up here?’

  ‘Is it born?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘You go downstairs directly, Miss,’ said Sister sharply, and Harriet retreated.

  She did not retreat far, about nine steps. There she waited, and presently, when she judged it was safe, she came up again.

  Then down the stairs a smell filtered to Harriet. She sniffed it. She knew it, and she had known what it was going to be. It was chloroform. She knew it from her operation for tonsils. There was no mistaking it. She came a little further up the stairs.