The River Page 9

  There was a rustle in the bamboos behind her, and she jumped so that her skin tingled. It was a bird, a jay. It made a harsh whirring and clapped its wings and flew. Don’t they do that when a snake is near, thought Harriet, and now, where she had been cold, she was wet. She bent and took hold of Bogey’s foot in its sock and brown shoe and gave it a little pull. ‘Bogey,’ she tried to say. ‘Boge. Bogey. Boge.’

  She had not expected Bogey to answer, and he did not answer. He did not move, and she had not expected him to move. The – the warm is gone, thought Harriet. The side of his face she could see was scratched and the skin was blue.

  ‘Blue?’ asked Harriet numbly, staring down at him. ‘Blue? Why should he be blue?’ She went on saying that as she looked and looked and looked. She said it until she heard the gate creak on its hinge. Ram Prasad had come back.

  Then she broke the quiet. She screamed louder than the jay. ‘Look. Look. Look,’ she screamed. ‘Ram Prasad! Ram Prasad! Sarpe. Sarpe. Snake. Snake. Snake.’

  In India, when anyone dies, it is necessary that they are buried at once, and by sunset of that same day Bogey was lying in the small cemetery where the trees that had honey-balls like mimosa dropped their pollen on the old graves and the new graves, on the short earth mound that was Bogey’s, on the stone of the other boy, John Fox, piper, who was fourteen when he died, two hundred years ago.

  With the resource that a small far-away town often shows, a coffin was found and made to fit Bogey by the carpenters in the Works. The Works were stopped; the coolies went home, but the clerks gathered in a silent and respectful throng just inside the gate. The firm’s small launch, the ‘Cormorant’, left her moorings and came up to the jetty; from other jetties, up and down the river, other launches put out, and on them were people from the other Works, and flowers from the other gardens. The gardeners knew what ought to be done; without being told they cut all the white flowers, white petunias and roses and candytuft and dianthus and gypsophila. In Harriet’s garden they sat in the shade making wreaths though no one told them, and they made a cross, too, of yellow roses.

  ‘Why can’t I go out? Why can’t I go out? whined Victoria.

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Hush,’ said Bea.

  People, ladies and gentlemen, gathered under the cork tree. Abdullah and Goffura, who also knew what should be done, carried out chairs and trays of tea, but no one of the family came down to speak to anyone; everyone sat or stood talking in low voices while the cork blossom, that was falling, dropped on their heads or into their cups of tea.

  ‘We haven’t had any tea,’ said Victoria. ‘I want some tea.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Bea.

  Why did all the people come? wondered Harriet. They came as if they had a right to come, as if it were their duty. Now Mr Marshall, who was wearing a grey suit, not whites as he usually did, came and stood talking with a set grave face. They had come for Bogey? Why? ‘Why do – they – all come?’ Harriet asked Bea.

  ‘It is the custom,’ said Bea. ‘Bogey has to be buried.’

  ‘Buried?’ said Harriet startled.

  ‘Yes. You know that,’ said Bea.

  Harriet knew. She had always known, but it had not come to her before. When you died, you did not belong to yourself, nor to your family; you belonged to custom, and places and countries and religions; even a small boy like Bogey. Harriet remembered Father telling her about the Registration of Births and Deaths, the birth and death of a citizen. ‘Then Bogey was a citizen,’ she said aloud.

  They huddled under Bea’s bookshelf, straining to listen, trying to see and not see.

  ‘I want to go out,’ said Victoria. ‘Why can’t I go out?’

  Then Nan came in.

  ‘Why are you not dressed?’ said Nan.

  ‘Dressed?’ They stared.

  ‘Yes. You always get dressed for the afternoon?’

  ‘Yes – but – but—’

  ‘You would think no one had ever taught you how to behave,’ said Nan. ‘Take off that dirty frock, Harriet, and go and wash your face. You too, Bea. Victoria, come here and let me unbutton you.’

  ‘But are we – is – Bogey—’

  ‘Bogey is dressed,’ said Nan with dignity. ‘The house is full of ladies and gentlemen. We must show them that we – we care for him. You will get dressed and then come with me.’

  ‘Shall we – see him?’

  ‘I don’t want to see him,’ said Victoria. ‘Ayah says he is all black.’

  Nan’s face folded in on itself suddenly, the lines by her mouth and her eyes folded in, and she shut her lids. Then she picked up the brush and without answering began to brush Victoria’s hair. When they were dressed she walked them out on the verandah, between more people who parted and made way for them, and into Father’s room. It was very dim, but Nan had lit two candles on the writing-table. There was only Bogey’s coffin there heaped up with flowers.

  ‘I don’t know what Mother would wish,’ said Nan, ‘and I cannot ask her, but I think you should not see Bogey. You must say goodbye to him here.’

  They stood close in the candlelight, in the smell of flowers where again the roses were the strongest. Why again, wondered Harriet. When – in what age had she thought that before? Then Nan took them out into the garden, away from the people, by the river.

  The river ran with no noise of steam from the Works. It sounded queer.

  Father and Mr Marshall came from the house carrying Bogey in his coffin. They carried him down to the jetty and put him on the deck of the ‘Cormorant’ and the people followed with flowers, till there was a hill of flowers on the deck. Some of the flowerheads fell off into the river, and were floated down and away. Then the ‘Cormorant’ cast off from the jetty and backed and turned in a half circle to go upstream, and the other launches, with their people, cast off too, and followed behind. Each launch left a pointed wake in the water.

  The river can’t close over this, thought Harriet; then she seemed to see again in the water the handful of ashes that had been Ram Prasad’s wife, and she remembered how they had been washed, round and round, gently, on the water, before the current took them away.

  Now the launches had passed out of sight. The colours in the garden were deepening in late afternoon sunlight; it was nearly evening.

  Pieces of the next two days broke through to Harriet.

  They found and killed the snake, hot one but two, two cobras. Harriet saw Ram Prasad stretch them out on the ground when they were dead, one five feet, the other more than four. Bogey had been bitten in the neck, the right side below his cheek, Nan said. ‘He was quickly dead,’ said Nan.

  After the cobras were killed, Harriet began to be sick. She was sick on and off, all those two days. In spite of that there was no respite. There were still things to do. Nan told her to go and find all Bogey’s toys. She was packing his things away, out of Mother’s sight.

  Harriet could not find any toys except an old arrow, thrown down and rusty; she knew where Bogey had buried his soldiers, but she let them stay buried; she found a mud garden under a tree, but you could not pack a mud garden. She wandered round the garden that was the same garden, not changed, not different, but she walked in it not thinking, not touching, merely walking.

  There was no clergyman in the town. Mr Marshall had read the service for Bogey. In the evenings, Mr Marshall and Dr Paget came to be with Mother and Father. One evening Mr Marshall stopped to speak to Harriet who sat on the steps looking at the darkness, not thinking, only looking.

  ‘I expect you miss your brother,’ said Mr Marshall kindly.

  The jackals howled far out on the lawn.

  ‘Well, it is a good thing it wasn’t Victoria,’ said Harriet.

  Mr Marshall seemed slightly taken aback. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Victoria is afraid of jackals,’ Harriet explained. ‘Bogey isn’t.’

  Nan forgot to pack Bogey’s toothbrush. When Harriet was hav
ing her bath she saw it still there: Bea, pink; Harriet, green; Bogey, red; Victoria, blue. Harriet stood up in the hot water and took Bogey’s down.

  ‘What are you hiding in your hand, Harriet?’

  When Harriet showed, Nan turned her back and tidied the towels on the rack.

  ‘You can’t keep that, Harriet,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Harriet agreed forlornly.

  She put her head down on the zinc edge of the bath. Nan stayed by the towels, smoothing them down.

  ‘We don’t need to keep things, Harriet.’

  ‘No,’ said Harriet, not agreeing; then, as she relinquished the toothbrush, it was true. The less she had of Bogey, the more clearly she saw him.

  There began to be shoots of life. Whether they were wanted or not, there were shoots of life.

  Father went back to the Works. Mother came downstairs. Harriet heard her ordering the meals again. ‘Soup. Celery soup with cream,’ said Mother, ‘mutton, mint sauce, peas, the garden peas.’

  ‘Roast potatoes,’ said the cook, entering it in Hindi in his notebook. He was an educated cook.

  ‘Then orange baskets,’ said Mother, and Harriet found herself chiming in, ‘Yes. Can’t we have orange baskets too, Mother? For our supper?’

  Victoria made herself a new kind of house on the verandah table. She said it was a ‘think house’. It was nothing but Victoria herself sitting on the table. ‘Where are the walls? The roof? The front door?’ demanded Harriet.

  ‘It is a think house,’ said Victoria.

  ‘You mean you think it is a house, and it is?’

  Victoria nodded.

  ‘But what can you do with it?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘You can think in it,’ said Victoria, with dignity.

  Lessons began again. Lessons with Mother, with Father. Eating-sleeping-getting-up-going-to-bed-resting-washing-brushing-and-combing-and-doing-your-teeth-reading-swinging-riding-Pearl-knitting. All the outward things went on. Surprisingly, the inward things began to go on too. Nothing had changed. But everything, Harriet thought, has shrunk. Everyone has shrunk somewhere inside themselves, as if they are hiding and you are afraid to find them because you are afraid of what you may find. Occasionally, you would discover. Mother cutting roses, stooped and picked up a lead Highlander off the path. It was one of Bogey’s soldiers that Sally had dug up. Mother went indoors, dropping her scissors and the roses she had picked on the verandah table.

  Harriet came into the nursery and there was Nan just as before, making buttonholes for Victoria. Harriet stopped, and her sickness came back again.

  ‘What is it, Harriet?’

  ‘Is is so – horrid – so cruel,’ Harriet burst out.

  Nan went on with her sewing.

  ‘Going on and on. We go on as if nothing had happened,’ wept Harriet.

  ‘No, we don’t,’ said Nan. ‘All we do is to go on. What else are we to do, Harriet?’

  ‘It is as if we had wiped Bogey away. Look at you, making button-holes!’ wept Harriet.

  ‘What do you think I should do?’ asked Nan quietly.

  ‘That is just it,’ Harriet could not hold her tears. ‘It happens, and then things come round again, begin again, and you can’t stop them. They go on happening, whatever happens.’

  ‘Yes, they go on happening,’ said Nan, ‘over and over again, for everyone, sometime, Harriet.’

  Harriet sat down on the floor, and wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. She felt hollowed with her unhappiness, and then, as she sat there, leaning against Nan’s chair, another astonishing shoot came up in her mind. ‘No,’ said Harriet, horrified at herself. ‘No. No, I can’t. I mustn’t. Write about this? No. No. I can’t,’ but it was already forming inside her head, as Nan stitched buttonholes again, and again she heard the sound of her life, the steam puff-wait-puff and the river. It was true; on the surface, even deeper, it was all exactly and evenly the same.

  The world goes round.

  No, thought Harriet, trying not to listen to herself; it carried her on.

  The river runs, the round world spins.

  Dawn and lamplight, thought Harriet. Midnight. Noon. She shut her eyes and said it over to hear, in the old familiar way, if the words ran. It seemed to her that they ran properly and she went on:

  The river runs, the round world spins.

  Dawn and lamplight. Midnight. Noon.

  Sun follows day. Night, stars and moon.

  The customary happiness and suspense and power filled her. She felt lifted again, as if she were rising up. She was ashamed, she tried to crush the words down, but they could not keep down. They insisted on rising.

  Sun follows day. Night, stars and moon

  … the end begins.

  ‘Nan,’ said Harriet, shocked.

  ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘Nan, how can I be happy? How can I.’

  If surprising things came out of Harriet, no surprises ever came out of Nan.

  ‘It isn’t for us to dictate, Harriet.’

  ‘Oh Nan!’

  ‘That is so,’ said Nan, snipping her thread. ‘If you are happy, you are. You can’t make yourself unhappy. We are something, part of something, larger than ourselves, Harriet.’

  Harriet was silent, remembering Christmas, and how little she had felt below the stars, remembering Bea and what Bea had said about growing smaller as you grew older, only perhaps Bea meant that this otherness grew larger; she thought suddenly of the fish that the kingfisher had taken out of the river and of the splash it had made and of how the splash had gone and the river, with its other fish, its porpoises, its ships, had gone on running on.

  Then what is the good of my writing my poem, thought Harriet, if it is all so big and I am so small? It wouldn’t make a mark as big as a – a fly’s leg against the whole world. I shan’t write anything.

  The river runs – it immediately began again.

  ‘I have to go to the Secret Hole, Nan,’ said Harriet, jumping up from the floor. ‘I have a poem that I have to write down.’

  But when she reached the Secret Hole, her box was empty. Her book was not there.

  She came downstairs, hurtling down, and there was Valerie reading her book on the lawn.

  ‘What are you doing with my book?’ Harriet was scarlet.

  ‘Reading it,’ said Valerie, absolutely cool. Bea was standing by as if she did not quite know what Valerie was doing; she made no attempt to stop her reading Harriet’s book, and worst of all, Captain John was reading his own book near lying on the grass.

  ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘No, I shan’t,’ said Valerie, turning over a page. ‘I think it is very funny. Listen, Bea: When I have thoughts they hum. I might have I think a little top in the top of my head—’

  ‘Bea. Make her give it to me.’

  ‘Valerie. It is Harriet’s private book.’

  ‘Yes. I should think so,’ said Valerie giggling. ‘How could you, Harriet? There are all kinds of things in it. Captain John, here’s one about you. There are a great many about you,’ and she read out, ‘I think that Captain John’s face is like one of those plants that you touch …’

  ‘You are not to read it. You are not to,’ screamed Harriet, flying at Valerie, but Valerie dodged away, nearer to Captain John, who had lifted his head to listen and look at them.

  ‘Captain John’s face is like one of those plants that if you touch roughly they shrink and close up. I think it is true. Father calls him a “sensitive plant”. Oh, Captain John!’ laughed Valerie, and Bea had to laugh too.

  ‘You beast!’ screamed Harriet. ‘You beastly girl.’

  ‘I think he is like Antinous whose face you never do forget,’ read Valerie, dodging Harriet. ‘Today I am so alive I am glad I am me and am born—’ Valerie ended in a shriek as Harriet tore the book away and pulled her hair.

  ‘Harriet. You mustn’t hurt her.’

  ‘She has hurt me,’ shouted Harriet, ‘the mean sneaking hateful beastly pig. How dare she.’

&
nbsp; ‘I don’t want to read your silly diary,’ said Valerie, rubbing her shoulder where Harriet had wrenched her. She put back her hair and fastened her tortoiseshell slide that had come undone. Harriet hated her fuzzy brown hair and she hated her face, which looked considerably heated and a little uncomfortable. ‘Why be so angry?’ said Valerie lightly.

  ‘It was her private book,’ said Bea.

  ‘She is quite right to be angry,’ said Captain John, who with difficulty had risen from the grass and come to them. ‘You had no right to take it, Valerie.’ He looked almost as angry as Harriet, and Valerie saw that everyone was against her. She looked hotter than ever and her eyes grew bright with spite.

  ‘I don’t see why Harriet should be so haughty,’ said Valerie, ‘when everyone knows it was her fault Bogey died.’

  It was said.

  There was complete silence in front of the steps, except again, in this pause, the steam puff and the river. Then Harriet turned and ran upstairs.

  No one had spoken very much to Harriet about the cobra. She knew and they knew, and they knew that she knew. Father had questioned her. Her face and her voice had shown him how guilty and wretched she was, and he did not punish her. ‘What,’ said his whole attitude as he turned away, ‘is the use of punishing now?’ and that had twisted Harriet’s heart more than any words.

  Mother had said nothing either till Harriet had come and stood in front of her. ‘Mother – I – I knew about – the – the – cobra – Mother.’

  ‘Yes, Harriet. ‘I know you did,’ said Mother.

  ‘Mother – I—’

  ‘It is no use talking about it now,’ said Mother.

  There had been shocks. Ram Prasad was sent away. ‘But why?’ demanded Harriet. ‘Why? He only knew it was there. He didn’t know that Bogey—’

  ‘There is no excuse for Ram Prasad. No excuse at all,’ said Nan hardly.

  Ram Prasad was, later, forgiven and reinstated, but that had given Harriet a glimpse of how people felt. Did they, then, think as hardly of her? She had only, so far, thought hardly of herself. Now Valerie’s words burnt into her. Everyone knows. Everyone knows.