The River by Rumer Godden

Author:Rumer Godden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2016-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

In, the early afternoon, everyone rested. Father snatched an hour before he went back to the office, Mother rested monumental on her bed from two till four; Harriet and Bea read, Bogey was banished to a camp cot in Father’s room, while Victoria slept and Nan sat in her chair in the darkened nursery and sewed under the window and sometimes dozed off. It was the servants’ siesta time; even the birds were silent; even the lizards lay asleep in the sun.

If, however, Harriet had any pressing business she did not postpone it; she left her book and slipped off her bed and no one was any the wiser. ‘I am going to rest in the Secret Hole,’ she said to Bea. She was not, but Bea nodded quietly. Then Harriet went downstairs and almost always, as she passed Father’s room, Bogey’s camp cot was likewise empty.

This was Bogey’s supreme time for his adventures, when there was no one to see him or hinder him or even be aware of him. It was the time, too, when the garden was least disturbed, when his insects and his reptile friends were most accessible. Harriet never remembered yet getting up and finding him in bed.

One afternoon, in late February, Harriet needed Bogey. She went downstairs to find him, but of course he was not there. She could not see him in the garden either as she stood on the verandah.

‘Bother,’ said Harriet, ‘I shall have to go out,’ and she went on tiptoe to the nursery to fetch her hat.

Nan was asleep. On her lap lay a pair of Victoria’s knickers into which she was putting new buttonholes as Victoria grew too fat for the old; she still held her needle and her lips, as she slept, blew gently in and out. Harriet fetched her hat and went out.

She could not see Bogey anywhere. ‘He is playing Going-round-the-garden-without-being-seen,’ said Harriet, annoyed, and she began to follow him over the customary tracks that only she and Bogey knew. The garden was empty, brilliant with sun. Its colour blazed at Harriet. Here, as she went between the plinth of the house and the poinsettias, their flowers, as big as plates, long-fingered, scarlet, looked into her face as she passed; she half expected to see Bogey’s face amongst them, Bogey’s face screwed up in the sun, under his shock of hair. She crept between the poinsettias and the house just as he crept, but there was no Bogey there. He was not by the morning glory screen trumpeting its blue and purple flowers in the sun, nor under the swinging orange creeper at the house corner. He was not in the bougainvillaea clumps nor anywhere near the rose turrets, nor under the jacaranda trees, nor by the tank. Harriet went into the vegetable garden between the rows of peas and white-flowering beans, and pushed through the tomato bed, malodorous with its yellow flowers, but he was not there. He was not in the stable where Pearl stood looking stupidly out of her stall, half asleep herself.

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