The River Read online

  ‘Go on? Where?’ asked Harriet, but Nan did not say. Instead, she added in her admonitory seeing-through-Harriet voice, ‘Now you are not to go saying anything to him, Harriet.’

  ‘As if I would,’ said Harriet indignantly, but she knew that Nan was right and that probably her curiosity would get the better of her. A young prince, thought Harriet now. She was not quite so sure that Nan was wrong.

  ‘Captain John,’ said Valerie, ‘will you drop a charm for me?’ Valerie, by courtesy of the family to her place as visitor, had been given the first turn. Why then should she have another so soon?

  ‘It is Harriet’s turn,’ said Captain John crisply, and Harriet heard him, and she knew, warmly, in an instant as she heard this crispness in his voice, that he did not like Valerie either, and did not approve of her. Harriet came closer.

  The smell of live charcoal from the brazier filled the veranda with the smell of hot lead from the charms and the smell of warmth in the starch of Nan’s apron. Ram Prasad, who was always with the children in all their games, blew up the fire as Captain John dropped a charm for Harriet. The lead melted, ran wide, and he caught it in the spoon and lifted it and dropped it again on the plate, but curiously, the pellet ran together, sizzling, again, and formed itself into a round ball.

  ‘It is round,’ said Bogey, ‘like a marble.’

  ‘It is a world,’ said Victoria. They did not understand her until Nan reminded them of the globe of the world on Father’s desk.

  ‘It is a world,’ said Harriet, taking it in her hand now it had cooled. On its rough surface she imagined she saw seas and lands. ‘I wonder what it means?’

  ‘Well, Harriet, are you satisfied? Now you have the whole world?’ said Valerie.

  Harriet gave her a long straight look.

  ‘It is your turn, Captain John,’ she said, wanting to reciprocate. ‘Let us make a charm for you. Let us see what you are going to be.’

  Valerie nudged her sharply. ‘What a silly you are!’ she whispered down Harriet’s neck. ‘You will make him feel awful. How can he be anything?’

  But – he has to be, thought Harriet. Of course he has to be. He didn’t die.

  ‘What do you want to be?’ asked the little Victoria, putting her head back to look at him. ‘What could you be?’

  There was a long silence. No one had any suggestion to make. ‘Oh well,’ said Victoria, ‘I think you had better just stay here with us.’

  ‘Make a charm for Bea,’ said Nan.

  Bea had a loop, a circle, that made a rough little ring. ‘That means you will be loved and married,’ said Nan.

  Bea took the ring and looked at it by the verandah rail, turning it over and over in her fingers. After Captain John gave the saucepan back to Nan, he stood up and stretched, and limped over to Bea.

  ‘What is the name of those flowers?’ he asked Bea, presently.

  ‘Poinsettias,’ said Bea, politely.

  ‘They make me realize I am in India,’ said Captain John. ‘They look so hot and red, even in the rain. And those, those little low pale blue ones on the bushes?’

  ‘Plumbago,’ said Bea.

  ‘This is a lovely garden,’ he said.

  Why, thought Harriet, does he talk to Bea so – earnestly? He was not talking to Bea as if she were a child, but as if she were grown-up. Bea is a little girl, thought Harriet, and why is Bea so polite? There is no need to be so polite to him.

  ‘I am glad you like it,’ said Bea.

  ‘I think it is the most beautiful garden I have ever seen,’ said Captain John, earnestly.

  It was a beautiful garden. The poinsettias grew round the plinth of the house, huge scarlet-fingered flowers with milk sap in their stems: The house was large, square, of grey stucco, with verandas along its double floors and tiers of great green-shuttered windows. It had a flat roof, with a parapet where the children played, and the parapet was carved with huge stone daisies. Can a house, a serious house, be carved with daisies? This was.

  Below the poinsettias was the plumbago; it made hedges of nursery pale blue and the flowerbeds it bordered would later be full of the pansies and verbena and mignonette that were now in seed pans in a seed-table made of bamboo. Along the paths were ranged pots of violets that held the dew. Other pots of chrysanthemums were on the verandah and in a double phalanx down the steps. These chrysanthemums had mammoth heads of flowers that were white and yellow and bronze and pink; some of them were larger than the children’s heads. Later, in their place, there would be potted petunias.

  The lawns rolled away to the river under the trees, but there were flowers, bougainvillaeas, that spread themselves into clumps and up the trees, orange, purple, magenta and cerise, like Bea’s hair ribbon; there were Marechal-Neil turrets with their small lemon-yellow roses, and other roses in the rose garden, and bushes of the small white Bengali roses tinged with pink. There were standard hibiscus that were out already in pinks, and creams and yellows and reds, and morning glory and other creepers, on the house, over the porch, along screens, up trees: jasmine and orange-keyed begonias, passion flowers and quisqualis that would flower in January and the spring; now there was only the pink-and-white sandwich creeper out and Bea’s bridal creeper over the gate. There were squirrels and lizards in the garden and birds: bulbuls and kingfishers and doves and the magpie robin and sunbirds and tree pies and wagtails and hawks. Birds are little live landmarks and more truthful than flowers; they cannot be transplanted, nor grafted, nor turned blue and pink. The birds were in the flavour of that garden, as the white paddy birds and the vultures were part of the flavour of the fields, and the circling kites and the kingfishers of the river; the garden was full of swallowtail butterflies bigger than the sun-birds and of Bogey’s insects and Bogey’s ants; no one really knew the insects except Bogey. At night there were sometimes jackals on the lawn and fireflies, and there was a bush that used to fill the whole house with its scent in the darkness, a bush called Lady-of-the-Night.

  Harriet’s cork tree stood on the edge of the drive, directly in front of the steps. It was as high as the house. Soon it would bud, then be covered in blossom, and the flowers, when they fell at the end of the winter, would make a circle deep in flowers on the grass. Woodpeckers lived in the cork tree and in season it had Japanese lilies round its foot.

  Now Captain John was looking at it. ‘And that is a most beautiful tree,’ he said.

  ‘It is Harriet’s,’ Bea told him.

  ‘Harriet’s?’ He said it as if he were surprised, and Harriet was suddenly oddly shy, and oddly pleased.

  ‘At least, she says it is hers, though I don’t know why,’ said Bea.

  Harriet felt his look bent on herself for a moment, but when she brought herself to look up, she saw that he had forgotten her; he was looking down at Bea and she had a sudden remembrance of him on Diwali night. She had felt him looking at something then, or someone, and she had followed his look and found it on Bea. Why? Why did he look at Bea? Now he was looking at Bea again with that same extreme gentleness and interest. Then Bea, too, looked up and back at him.

  ‘Let me see your ring,’ he said.

  Bea gave him a curiously startled glance and dropped the ring into his hand from above and walked away to the others.

  Nan had made a charm for Victoria. It was scoop shape.

  ‘It is a bucket,’ said Victoria.

  ‘Or a thimble,’ said Nan.

  Nan and Victoria could not have appeared more different. Victoria was very plump, very blonde, built into a beautiful heavy pink and pearl fleshed body with dimples at the joints and fat bracelets at the joins; especially inviting were the backs of her legs and thighs. She shone by contrast with Nan, the old Anglo-Indian, who was thin, small, very dark, with a fine brown skin that was slack and tired now and showed bluish shadows and pouches under her eyes. Her hands were small and thin and busy, and her fingers were wrinkled and pricked at the tips with a lifetime of washing and sewing. Her hair was black and dry and thin and held, eac
h side of her head, by tortoiseshell combs. She wore a striped dress and an apron that had a convent thinness and cleanness. Her eyes were like Victoria’s, brown and clear; as her body receded it seemed to leave all her life in her eyes.

  Besides their eyes, Nan and Victoria were alike in that, at the moment, they were both perfect. Victoria had reached the stage of completed babyhood; little girls, especially, sometimes linger in this stage for three or four months, and during that time they are quite unconsciously perfect. Victoria had no troubles, she did not trouble anyone, and nor did Nan. Nan had completed her hard womanhood, and she had managed to shed her troubles. She had reclaimed, through living and service, what Victoria had not yet lost.

  Then Nan made Bogey’s charm.

  Sometimes the charms did not act, and now Bogey’s refused to coagulate. It ran and spread on the plate and took no shape at all.

  ‘What is the matter with it?’ said Harriet. ‘How can we tell what it means?’

  ‘It won’t tell,’ said Nan.

  ‘Put it back and try again, Nan.’

  ‘No,’ said Nan. ‘If it won’t tell, it won’t. I am sorry, Bogey.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ said Bogey, cheerfully. He picked up the still soft lead and rolled it into a ball like Harriet’s and began to play marbles with it.

  Harriet left the others and went away. It was Valerie’s turn for another charm and she did not want to see Valerie’s turn. She went on to the drive and under the cork tree, and looked up at it, thinking of how Captain John had admired it. She herself did not think it was as beautiful as the jacaranda trees, for instance, or even as the peepul tree in the wall by Ram Prasad’s house that stood at the gate. ‘But I like it,’ said Harriet aloud.

  She saw a crevice in the trunk low enough for her to reach. Stepping over the lilies, she fitted her charm neatly into it, and the ball rolled down and lay in the five-inch hollow at the bottom. She could reach it with her fingers, but she left it there. That is a safe place, thought Harriet. Now I can find it again. Bogey might play marbles with his charm, but she was sure that hers was an omen.

  Each year there were nests in the garden. There was always a sunbird’s nest in the bougainvillaea that grew up the house wall; a long untidy tear-shaped nest made of fibres and dried leaves with the sunbirds shimmering in and out. Now there was a dove’s nest in the creeper above the verandah; you could see her sitting on her nest; she would sit there quiet for hours; her breast was grey, flecked with brown.

  ‘What is she doing?’ asked Victoria.

  ‘Brooding,’ said Captain John. He spoke often, and very kindly, to Victoria.

  He was staying in the house. Mother had made him come over from the Red House so that she and Nan could look after him, because the wound in his good leg had opened and was discharging.

  ‘It can’t be very good then,’ said Harriet.

  ‘It isn’t, but it is the best I have,’ said Captain John.

  ‘He shouldn’t work here, in this climate,’ Harriet heard Father say. ‘It is cruelty,’ but Captain John managed to work, though he looked ill and frayed and stiff and worn, and he managed to speak kindly to Victoria, though he did lose his temper with the rest of them.

  ‘Brooding?’ said Victoria, looking up at the nest. ‘Is that brooding?’ she said. ‘She looks … happy.’

  ‘I think she is,’ said Captain John, seriously. ‘She sits on her nest and she feels the whole world going round her, and she takes everything she wants from the world and puts it into her eggs.’

  ‘You shouldn’t tell Victoria things like that,’ said Bea. ‘She thinks they are true.’

  ‘But they are true,’ said Captain John.

  ‘How queer you are,’ said Bea. ‘You say such queer things,’ and Captain John’s thin cheek suddenly burnt and he put up his hand to smooth his hair, which was a trick he had to hide his stiffness. His hand was shaking again. Why does he mind Bea? thought Harriet. She knew, then, that it was too tiring for him to speak as he wanted to do, to Bea. It was much more restful for him to bark, as he barked to Harriet, ‘Blast you, Harry. Take your great hand off my leg. You hurt me.’ He would never say that to Bea. ‘And he isn’t queer,’ said Harriet. ‘That about the dove was nice.’

  ‘Are we in eggs?’ asked Victoria.

  ‘You are,’ said Harriet, teasing her. ‘Father says you are still in the egg, Victoria.’

  It was funny to think that she, Harriet, who was still a child herself, could remember a time when Victoria, standing so large and solid on the verandah beside them, was not. Then there was no Victoria. And there was no gap before, thought Harriet, puzzled. There was no empty place and yet we fitted her in. It was funny, and notable, that families always did fit the babies in. Then she remembered, what she was supposed to know and had been told and still could not yet realize, that soon, in a month or two, or three or was it four, they, the family, were to have another baby themselves.

  ‘Did you know that?’ she asked Captain John.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘How do you expect people to understand what you are talking of, if you go thinking in between?’ said Valerie. Bea did not defend Harriet, but looked at her severely too.

  Harriet left them.

  ‘Are we in eggs?’ Victoria had asked. Fancy asking that, thought Harriet, wandering away, but it would be funny if we were. As she said it, she was frightened. She had too often this feeling of being enclosed, shut in a small shape like a dome, and, if it were an egg, she had no beak to break it. ‘How can I get out? I never can get out,’ she was just going to say in a panic, and then she remembered that, if she were in an egg, just like the chick, she would grow too big for it and break it. The thing is to grow very quickly, said Harriet to herself, and she said aloud, ‘Nan says we change our skin seven times in our lives. Perhaps this is the same idea.’

  ‘That is snakes, not people,’ said Bogey. ‘Harry, Ram Prasad says there is a cobra under the peepul tree, but you are not to tell. We are going to watch it. Perhaps we shall see it change its skin,’ said Bogey.

  ‘Ugh!’ said Harriet. She had none of Bogey’s freemasonry with insects and reptiles, but in fascinated horror she went with him to the peepul tree. The garden wall was built each side, into its trunk, so that it formed part of the wall and half of it was in the garden and half in the road outside. Harriet knew why the cobra, if there were a cobra, had come there. It was because the front part of the tree in the road was a shrine with a whitewashed plinth and the villagers used to put saucers of milk on it with offerings of rice and burnt sugar and curd. Snakes like milk, and Harriet guessed it had come there for that.

  She and Bogey squatted on their heels, watching the roots, but nothing stirred. At any moment Harriet expected the horrid bronze-grey lengths of the snake to come flowing out, over, and under, the roots. ‘Ugh!’ shuddered Harriet, and when at last she tired and stood up, her hands and the backs of her knees where she had folded them were wet. ‘I don’t want to see it,’ she said. ‘Bogey. You know I am sure we ought to tell. We are supposed to tell if we see a snake in the garden.’

  Bogey had not heard. He was still squatting, still waiting, the whole of him intent on the snake hole. It was not that Bogey was disobedient as much as blithely unaware he had been told. ‘Oh well,’ said Harriet, ‘we haven’t seen it yet, and it isn’t really in the garden. It is in the peepul tree.’

  She went back to the house, and on her way she passed Victoria with her doll. ‘I play so beautifully with my baby,’ she said to Harriet as Harriet passed. ‘She was born again yesterday.’

  ‘You are always having her born,’ said Harriet scornfully.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Victoria. ‘You can be born again and again, can’t you?’

  It was puzzling. Every time Harriet examined somebody’s silly remark, it seemed not to be so silly. ‘I don’t understand it,’ she said, and she wondered who could explain it to her; its surface silliness was such that she doubted if she would find anyone to whom
she could make clear what she wanted to ask. Then she made up her mind; she would risk a chance and ask Captain John.

  He may swear at me, thought Harriet. He likes Bea, but never mind, he can talk to me for once, thought Harriet. If he laughs at me, he laughs at me. Never mind. And she wavered no more, but went to look for him.

  He was leaning on the verandah rail, idling, looking at the sun and the flowers, quiet and dreaming.

  ‘Captain John,’ said Harriet, interrupting him, ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Must you?’ he said lazily.

  ‘Yes, I must; about being born.’

  He still did not seem willing. ‘Can’t you talk to Bea or Nan about that, Harriet? I can’t talk about being born.’

  ‘Oh, but you can,’ said Harriet, putting a compelling hand on him. ‘I don’t want to be told anything. I want to talk.’

  He looked down at her, his face lazy, not at all stiff.

  ‘Do you know, your eyes have speckles in them, flecks?’ he said.

  ‘Like the dove’s breast?’ asked Harriet.

  He looked at her more particularly. ‘What dove?’

  ‘The dove on her nest. I liked that – what you said.’

  ‘Did you?’ he said, and he seemed pleased. Talking to Harriet he had not changed his lounging, dreaming attitude, and he forgot to smooth his hair and pull his tie straight. He looked down into her eyes lazily without thinking of himself.

  ‘Listen,’ said Harriet, and leaning on the rail beside him, she told him of what she was thinking, puzzling over, and it came in words that were unusually clear, almost crystalline. She told him of Victoria’s remark and of how it was silly and yet it rang true; of his own remark that Bea said was queer and yet was true too. ‘Is everything a bit true then?’ asked Harriet.

  She could see the peepul tree over the bamboo clumps that hid its lower half, and she wondered idly if the cobra had come out. ‘Ugh!’ said Harriet again, and moved her shoulders in a shudder while she waited for Captain John to speak.

  ‘My idea,’ said Captain John, ‘isn’t very different from Victoria’s, though she didn’t mean hers in this way. I have an idea,’ said Captain John, his eyes looking now, not at Harriet, but across the rail to the garden, ‘that we go on being born again and again because we have to, with each thing that happens to us, each new episode.’