The River Read online

  She felt crushed. Captain John raised his head.

  ‘What is the matter, Harry?’

  ‘I was thinking – of us – our family.’

  ‘And what did you think of it?’

  ‘Not very much,’ answered Harriet.

  ‘Then I will tell you what I think,’ he said. ‘I think you are the very best family I have ever known.’

  ‘D-do you?’

  ‘Yes, I do. And don’t you forget it,’ said Captain John.

  Something fell with a small soft plop on Harriet’s head. It was a cork-tree flower just breaking into cream petals from its bud.

  ‘Look,’ cried Harriet in an excess of happiness. ‘Look. That means that it is nearly Christmas. The tree is always in flower for Christmas.’ Her face clouded. ‘But it can’t be as good a Christmas this year,’ she said.

  ‘It may be the best you have ever had,’ said Captain John.

  Of the families who keep Christmas, some keep it rather more, some rather less. Harriet’s family kept it implicitly.

  Besides the cork tree, the chrysanthemums were always out for Christmas; their scent was a part of it, like the smell of the withering fir tree and of hot candle wax and raisins and tangerines. Any of those scents, for ever afterwards, filled Harriet with the brand of quivering excitement she had known as a child at Christmas.

  Their Bengali Christmas had its own brand too; it was always perfect weather, the weather of a cool fresh summer day. The day began the night before, as Bogey said, with carols and hanging up stockings; that led to the opening of stockings the next morning and early church in the Masonic Lodge (the town had no church) where the gardeners gave each person, even children, a bunch of violets wired with ferns. Then the merchants and clerks of the works and the district came to call on Father with baskets of fruit and flowers and vegetables and nuts and whisky and Christmas cakes decorated with white icing, tinsel and pink-paper roses. The servants’ children came to see the tree and be given crackers, oranges and four-anna pieces. The young men from the Red House came to lunch and in the evening there was a Christmas tree.

  All this happened every year, but there was, besides this, a thread of holiness, a quiet and pomp that seemed to Harriet to have in it the significance of the Wise King’s gold. It linked Christmas with something larger than itself, something as large as …? Harriet thought it was a largeness that had something to do with the river, that began as a trickle and ended in the sea. Afterwards she wondered if this feeling in Christmas came from Nan. This year, as the time drew on and there was much less of everything, less buying and hiding and writing and planning, it was there again and it was more pronounced.

  Bogey did not want anything for Christmas.

  ‘But you must,’ said Harriet. ‘You must have something. Mother didn’t mean you to have nothing.’

  ‘But I want nothing,’ said Bogey obstinately.

  ‘You can’t want nothing. You must want something.’

  ‘But I don’t. I have what I want.’

  ‘You must want new things,’ argued Harriet.

  ‘I don’t like new things. I like what I have.’

  ‘What have you?’ Bogey did not know. ‘You haven’t anything. You buried all your soldiers.’

  ‘If I get any more I shall bury those,’ said Bogey darkly.

  ‘Pooh! You only like insects and horrid snakes.’

  ‘Harry,’ said Bogey, his face changing. ‘I have been thinking. You know how the snake-charmers play on their pipe things? Well, I am going to play on my whistle. You know my whistle that Captain John gave me? I am going to play like a charmer on that. My snake might like it.’

  This was the season for snake-charmers. This was the time they came walking through the East Bengal towns and villages, black-skinned men with beards, dressed in dark orange clothes. They carried a pole on their shoulders, and from each end of the pole hung down a loop of cloth in which were round shallow baskets that would just hold the coils of a snake. Baskets were piled on baskets, but many of the snakes were great worms, harmless and thick and stupid, not like a cobra with its strong strike and beauty and interesting wickedness. Very often the snake-man would have a mongoose, tied around the neck with a cord, its little red eyes gleaming. The mongoose would be put to stage a fight with a snake. I wish we had a mongoose here, thought Harriet, and he would kill that cobra. ‘I don’t think you ought to play with it, Bogey,’ said Harriet aloud.

  ‘It – doesn’t come now. I think it has gone,’ said Bogey quickly, but he lied.

  The snake-man’s pipe was a pipe on a gourd that made a sound like a bagpipe, sinuous and mournful. Bogey’s whistle sounded merely hopeful after it.

  ‘Why do you want to whistle if it has gone?’ said Harriet sternly.

  His eyes flickered. ‘Oh … just ’cos.’

  ‘If a snake-charmer hears about your snake,’ said Harriet, ‘he will come and take it away. They are always looking for cobras. You had better take care.’

  ‘I should like to be a snake-charmer,’ said Bogey dreamily.

  Harriet was tired and cross with her own preparations, which were always elaborate and always caused her family a good deal of tribulation before they were given.

  ‘And what are you giving, Victoria?’ she asked.

  ‘I?’ said Victoria, surprised. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But Victoria, you must give people things.’

  ‘Must I?’

  ‘Yes. You can’t take things and not give them.’

  ‘But I like taking, not giving,’ said Victoria contentedly.

  Bea had made a handkerchief for Captain John and hemmed it with even small stitches and competently embroidered his initials in the corner. ‘But – I haven’t anything nice to give him,’ wailed Harriet.

  ‘Why should you give him anything?’ said Mother calmly. ‘He is more Bea’s friend than yours.’

  Harriet knew that, but for some reason, to hear Mother say it, filled her with a storm of torment and rage. ‘I – I – hate Bea!’ she cried, but fortunately Mother had gone out of earshot and Harriet was left to swallow it alone.

  All her auguries were for a miserable Christmas, but still that holy quiet persisted, even in her, and beside she had a secret, a secret iron in the fire. She tried to be gloomy about that too, but she could not; the warmth of her secret persisted in the quiet.

  Every year Nan made a crib with a set of old German figures of the Nativity. They were of painted wood, older than Nan knew. Harriet could never see them without a great fascination, and now, when they were brought out of their boxes, ten days before Christmas, to stand in their cave of moss and sawdust lit by candles, Harriet’s imagination was touched again. In her restlessness and unhappiness they touched her so deeply that a familiar urge rose up in her. ‘I am going to write about them,’ said Harriet suddenly. What shall I write about them? A Carol? A hymn? An Opera, thought Harriet modestly. Or an ‘Ode to the Three Wise Men’? But there were so many odes.

  There was a blue angel kneeling with a lap full of roses. Her legs and her face were salmon pink, she had a gilt halo with blue in its diadem and she was always the one Harriet remembered best, for the expression of pain and smugness on her face. She looked as if she had a remarkable headache. What is the matter with her? thought Harriet now as she had thought every Christmas. Is she too good? she wondered. Why does she pull that face? And an idea came to her and filled her mind, so that she went straight away into the Secret Hole and wrote down her idea in her book. It took most of the day, but when it was finished and she read it over, she was not surprised as she had been when she read her poem; she was tickled and delighted, as she had thought she would be. ‘Good,’ said Harriet, biting her pencil. (She bit her pencils so badly that Nan said her inside must be like the floor of a carpenter’s shop.) Now, as she remembered to take her pencil out of her mouth, a second idea, an idea of what to do with her idea, came to her, and this was of such dimensions that she was dazzled. ‘But – could I?’ asked
Harriet. ‘How could I?’ and she looked doubtfully at the pencil-writing in her round handwriting in the book. ‘Could I?’ and then her face and her voice hardened. ‘I could,’ said Harriet. ‘I shall.’

  Captain John was staying with them for Christmas. She went to find Captain John.

  ‘Come into Father’s office,’ said Harriet to him. ‘I want to speak to you.’

  He obligingly came, but like Bea, he kept his finger in his book. ‘Put your book down,’ said Harriet. ‘I need you.’

  ‘But—’ he said. ‘But—’ he said again when she had explained.

  ‘It is no use saying “but”,’ said Harriet firmly, and she began to uncover Father’s typewriter that she was forbidden to touch. ‘You can type,’ she said. ‘You said you could. This must catch tomorrow’s steamer. And you must write a letter for me too.’

  ‘But – the Speaker is a grown-ups’ paper,’ objected Captain John.

  ‘This is a grown-ups’ story,’ said Harriet. ‘And they do put things like this in at Christmas-time.’

  ‘Yes. But … you are far too late. They choose articles for their Christmas number weeks before.’

  ‘They may have kept a little space,’ argued Harriet. ‘And mine may be so much better than the things they have, that they may put it in after all.’

  ‘That isn’t very likely,’ said Captain John.

  ‘No, but it is possible,’ said Harriet.

  He put out his hand for her story as he had for her poem once before. Harriet gave him the book and waited, quiveringly expectant.

  ‘The Halo that was too Tight,’ read Captain John. He glanced up at Harriet with a twinkle in his eyes and down again. ‘An angel complained that her halo was too tight.’ He read on and his lips twitched, and once he laughed.

  When he had finished it he did not say anything, except, ‘Very well, I will type it for you,’ but he gave her shoulder a small squeeze.

  ‘I expect I am a nuisance,’ said Harriet humbly.

  ‘Yes. You are,’ he said, sitting down to the typewriter.

  ‘I expect you will have to alter the spelling a bit, if you don’t mind,’ said Harriet happily.

  ‘I expect I will,’ said Captain John.

  On occasions, very occasionally, things happen as you feel they will, as you feel in your bones they will. Once or twice more in her life, Harriet was to know that calm certainty, that power of will, and have it answered. She was quite right to be certain. There was a surety of touch in that small story; it was small to change, to crystallize and confirm, as it did, Harriet’s whole life, but she had known it could not go wrong, and on Christmas morning, when the mail bag was brought in to Father as they were having breakfast, he stopped as he looked over the letters and said, ‘Why, Harriet. There is one for you.’ Then he looked at it more closely. ‘It can’t be for her,’ he said. ‘It is from the Speaker. There must be a mistake,’ and he was raising his knife to slit it open when Harriet called out in agony, ‘But it is for me. Don’t open it, Father. It is for me. I … I am expecting it.’

  Everyone turned to look at her.

  Father, still doubtful, handed it to her, and now she learned what facing an inquisition meant; no one spoke; they waited for her to open it. The envelope was buff coloured, addressed in typescript; in its corner was printed, Speaker Ltd., Speaker House, Calcutta. The blood began to drum oddly in Harriet’s ears. I-expect-I-am-sure-it-is-only-to-say-it-is-no-good-to-send-it-back, she thought rapidly to herself. She wanted to hide the envelope quickly in her hand and rush away with it and open it by herself.

  ‘Go on. Open it, Harriet,’ said Father. ‘We are dying of curiosity.’

  Harriet gave one appealing glance at Mother and opened it. A typed letter and pink cheque form fluttered out.

  ‘Harriet! What have you been up to,’ said Mother sternly.

  ‘I haven’t been up to anything,’ said Harriet. ‘I – I don’t understand what it says.’ And she burst into tears.

  It was quite true. Father read the letter aloud, and then Captain John came limping in with a paper in his hand. Harriet’s story had been there all the time in the folded Christmas edition of the Speaker by Father’s plate. ‘Well. I am absolutely damned!’ said Father.

  The rest of the day passed in bliss. ‘I never want it to end,’ said Harriet, and when it had run its full gamut it stayed, still perfect, in her mind. ‘It will stay with me for ever,’ she said. ‘It is my new beginning. Today I have been born again,’ said Harriet, ‘as Captain John said.’

  Father had cut the story out and pasted it into his scrapbook. He showed Harriet what he had written. Harriet’s first published work, and the date. ‘First!’ With the feeling of elation there came to Harriet a feeling of responsibility. She had avowed herself. She had signed herself away. It was public now. She was different. With all the glory, she wished she could have kept herself a secret.

  That night she could not sleep. She was too excited to sleep. She lay listening to the pulse of the steam escape and to the river; she looked out through the doors, where Mother had left the curtains looped, where the light was clear moon blue. There must be a moon, thought Harriet. I can see branches, but I can’t see the top of the tree. I wonder … What she wondered she did not say. From Bea’s bed there came the sound of a sob. She listened. There came another.

  ‘Bea!’

  Instant silence.

  ‘Bea. Are you crying?’

  Silence.

  ‘Bea. You are crying.’

  No answer.

  Harriet left her bed and went across in her nightgown to Bea’s. It was cold and Bea made no move to let her in, but she remained sitting on the edge of Bea’s bed. It was shaken slightly up and down every second. Bea was crying.

  ‘Are you – feeling sick?’

  No answer.

  ‘Is it – because – is it anything to do with today?’

  No answer.

  ‘Did anyone get angry with you?’

  Only a shake in the bed.

  ‘Is it Valerie?’ asked Harriet angrily.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it … Bea, is it because I wrote the story and you didn’t?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘Is it – is it anything to do with Captain John?’ said Harriet delicately.

  Silence and complete stillness.

  ‘What is it about him, Bea?’

  ‘It is – it is—’

  ‘You made up your quarrel, didn’t you?’

  ‘It – wasn’t a – real – quarrel.’

  ‘Shall I call Mother?’ asked Harriet out of her depth.

  ‘N-no. W-we mustn’t d-disturb her. You kn-know that.’

  ‘But you can’t go on crying,’ said Harriet.

  Bea made an effort to be quiet. She sat up, but the sobs began again.

  ‘Tell, Bea.’

  ‘He … he is … going away,’ said Bea, in a rush, without any breath.

  ‘Is he?’ said Harriet stunned. ‘Going away,’ and she went on repeating ‘Going away. Going away,’ till the words felt like two hammers hitting a sore place. ‘Ouch!’ said Harriet, wincing.

  ‘Yes. He is going away. We sh-shan’t see him any more.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Harriet. ‘Then we shan’t.’ She sat on the bed feeling more sore, more than ever cold and separated. ‘But not yet, Bea,’ she said, ‘not yet. Not now.’

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Bea, but she cried as hard as ever.

  ‘Bea, don’t cry so hard. Don’t, Bea. He isn’t going yet.’

  ‘I am not crying because he is going,’ said Bea. ‘I am crying because …’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because it is going,’ said Bea in another rush.

  ‘It? What “it”, Bea?’

  ‘It is all going so quickly,’ said Bea. ‘Too quickly. It is going far too fast.’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Harriet, beginning to understand.

  ‘Much too quickly and too fast,’ cried Bea. ‘It is all changing, and
I don’t w-want it to change.’

  ‘But it hasn’t changed,’ said Harriet. As she said that she knew that it was false. How much had changed even since this morning? Everything had changed.

  ‘I like it to stay as it is,’ said Bea. ‘I don’t want this to end, ever. I want it to stay like this always, but it won’t.’

  ‘No, it won’t.’ Harriet had to agree again sadly. There was nothing else for her to do.

  ‘We can’t keep it, and today was so l-lovely – happy.’ Bea’s head went down in her pillow again. ‘I want to be like this for ever and ever,’ she cried.

  So did Harriet. She sat hurt and cold and silent on Bea’s bed until Bea put out a hand to her. ‘Don’t you stay, Harry,’ she said. ‘There isn’t anything we can do, you’re c-cold. Your hand feels like a frog.’

  Harriet crept, cold and helpless, back to bed, but long after Bea was quiet, she lay awake. She thought Bea was awake too, and this was the first time they had ever lain awake without talking. The day was gone. However they might lie awake and cry or ache, they could not claim it back again. Who was it who had said you could not stop days or rivers? Harriet could hear the river running in the dark, that was not really dark but moonlight. She shivered. In six or seven weeks perhaps he will go away. She tried to make herself believe that, but it did not seem, nor feel, true. What will Bea feel then? wondered Harriet. Will she feel worse than I shall? In books people are happy for ever and for ever. But those books are nonsense. Nothing is for ever and for ever, thought Harriet. It all goes away. But does it? Again she was struck by a doubt. Does it all go, be lost and ended – or in some way do you have it still? Could that be true? ‘Is everything a bit true?’ she had said to Captain John. Then she lost that hope. No. It is gone, thought Harriet. I didn’t notice it before, but now I see. I see it – horribly. Why didn’t I see it before? Because I was little? And aloud she said, ‘Bea. Are you asleep?’

  ‘No,’ said Bea.