The Doings of David and Peter

X  The House Over The River

Harriet Robins parted the curtains of her bedroom window and stepped back into the room. Invisible from without, she stood motionless, duster suspended in its work on the bed-rail, her whole attention on the house over the river. 

"So they've come, it seems," she said to herself, her eye taking in the laden van, and the horses at rest, their heads in nosebags, their breath steaming on the cold air. A man was slowly lifting the bar that locked the van, his voice came faintly to her as he called his mate a help. Together they let down the back then paused, lit a cigarette apiece,and stooped to coil a dangling rope. Harriet, chafing at the delay, recommenced her polishing with quick, exasperated movements, jerking her head at times to watch the two men. Ah, they were started now. Slowly, so slowly, they were carrying out the little things, the unimportant things, a pail, a box, a roll of rugs. |

"The big stuff'll be at the back," said Harriet to herself,"I could maybe get the other room done before there would be anything." 

Quickly she passed to the back of the house, sweeping and dusting with the firm, sure action of the woman who has worked hard all hér life. As she straightened the curtains, she glanced from habit at the scene beyond - - flat black fields stretching to the faint distant horizon and, over all, over-powering all, the great wide sky. Across it passed the steady procession of clouds, dominating the scene, more real, more alive than the black specks of humanity in the far potato-fields, whose rhythmic step and bend was but as the pecking of birds. 

To Harriet it was all so familiar that her glance at the sky was only the instinctive weather prophesying  of the farmer's wife. 

"May rain before tomorrow," she commented. "She's got a fine day for her moving." 

At the top of the stairs she paused and then, drawn against her will, passed into the front bedroom and took up her old position at the bedrail. In front of her stretched again the endless vista of fen and sky but here two things broke it, the river and the house over the way. The river, tidal and erratic. had here been confined between high banks, and the steep, muddy cleft dropped away almost at her doorstep. Twice a day the tide surged up between those banks, twice a day it dropped to a mere stream never here was it allowed: to sweep over the countryside as it did in its higher, wilder reaches. The rich fen land, had been redeemed at infinite cost, its bountiful crops were too valuable to risk. 

On the farther side of the river ran the mainroad, straight as a ruler, connecting the great Cathedral town many miles to the south with the market town to the north. On its narrow surface it gathered up the whole life of the district, for along it rumbled the heavy market carts, the light delivery vans of the tradesmen, the little red buses that had made market going suddenly so easy for the younger generation and, on sunday (Harriet drew her blinds then in silent disapproval), car chased car in an endless procession as the town dwellers raced for a breath of the sea. 

A busy road, yes, but only a connecting road, for within the whole scope of her vision Harriet could see no other dwelling but the house over the river -- a stone's throw away as distance goes, but as completely cut-off as if it were in the next county, for between lay the steep banks and treacherous mud of the river. Harriet's face relaxed a little as she -remembered the story of the late occupant, a townswoman, used to crowds and gossip; William had met her in market. 

"I’ll run over and see your wife some day," she had said. 

How William had chuckled! "Run if you like, Missis," he had said, "but it's seven miles up to the bridge on your side, and seven miles back on ours”.

It had been a famous joke; William had told it again and again, with chuckles at his own wit. But, fourteen miles notwithstanding, the townswoman once managed to call. Undaunted by Harriet's obvious disapproval of visitors,she had stayed to chat, driven by the desperation of need. The lonely House set in the midst of that endless countryside had become a nightmare to her, she longed for the sympathy and understanding of one who bore it too.

But Harriet could give her none. "We get used to it, I suppose," she said, indifferently. ‘I never was one for gadding about and mixing up with people. Always kept myself to myself, you might say." 

There was more she might have said, had Harriet not so firmly believed that the less said the better. She had, in her earlier days, driven with William to market and enjoyed the companionship, though, being naturally reserved, she had made few friends. Then something had put a. stop to it, something which the other woman, had she been less obsessed by her own troubles  might have discovered. As they stood a moment on the doorstep, a shaft of light caught Harriet's face, revealing & scar that cut deep across one cheek. As the visitor's eye fell on it, Harriet stepped back into the shadow. Never, since the day she had first seen that disfigured face in her mirror, had Harriet willingly mixed with her fellow-women,. William, clumsily consoling, had tried to draw her back into her old life. 

"It was nought but an accident after all," he said, "none of your fault. They'd be sorry for you, I don't doubt." 

"I don't doubt it either,” replied Harriet, grimly," and I'm not wanting their pity, thank you." 

So, more and more, she had withdrawn from the world, her horizon narrowed to the house and farm, the sweeping fen and the house over the way.

As time went on, the house over the river came to mean for Harrier her one contact with life. The motorists who sped past meant nothing to her as she meant nothing to them, but over there was life lived as she lived it, the daily round of housework and farming, over there parlours were dusted and poultry fed, the drought that grieved William brought trouble to the man over there. 

For a time there was more immediate Contact. ” The townswoman, of her sheer necessity, would wave a hand or call a half-heard greeting: would send a message from market by William or even a pot of jam, a gift which made Harriet's mouth twitch with the absurdity of it.

"And me having made me own jam before she was born! Well, well, it's not so bad seeing shes a Londoner. I'll keep it while me own's finished.” 

The grey Autumn mists came and hung low over the fens, and the days of November passed into the silent, frost-bound winter. The motorists, safely back in their town houses, passed no more on their way to the sea, and only an occasional tradesmen drove by or stopped, stamping his feet, to exchange -a word, till one day Harriet, watching, saw a frightened woman with a suitcase slip-into a waiting car and drive away from the awful solitude back to the jostling life of the herd. 

She nodded her head once or twice, did Harriet, but she kept her thoughts to herself,yes, even when the man over the way stood desperately searching the road and came to the river bank Pomez change sheng enquiries with William.

"He -says she's gone," and William, returning, and scratched his head in a puzzled way. 

"Ay," said Harriet, "I thought she would." 

Then there had been comings and goings over the way; the postman had called with surprising frequency, and once even a telegraph boy had ridden protestingly out from the market town, battling his way along the raised road in the teeth of the bitter wind that howled unimpeded over miles of flat fen land. Then, one day, there had been vans and the blinds drawn -- the woman had won, he had followed her to the city.

 "So he's sold the farm," reported William, on his return from market. 

"Gone to the city after her, they do say; sold out to a young chap who wants to start on his own." He shook his head pityingly. “Well, well, he'll learn. Farming isn't what it was." 

And now they were moving in. Even now, as Harriet stood with her hand on the bedrail, trying to make herself believe, by desultory movements of the arm, that the was there in the course of her work, the men were carrying in between them the furnishings of a parlour, the sections of a bedstead. Harriet, keen-eyed, gauged it critically - different from the stuff that other woman had brought, but satisfying somehow; homely, that was the word, simple, homely furniture, in keeping with the square, solid house. 

With an effort, Harriet pulled her eyes away. "Wasting time like this," she reprimanded herself,dnd with firm steps descended to the kitchen. a It was strange, though, how often the thought of the house over the way returned to her. In some way it seemed important that this time it should have an owner who would care for it. a real housewife who would redeem the wrong done by the woman who had deserted. Again and again Harriet found herself thinking of the woman who was to come, summing her up by her furniture. 

And then, suddenly, she was there. Stepping into her garden for a sprig of parsley, Harriet caught a glimpse of a plump arm at an upper window and a face half-swathed in folds of white curtains. For a moment Harriet paused as the white folds dropped into place, then she turned back into her kitchen. 

"Keeps her windows nice,” she murmured, approvingly,"not like them striped things that other woman used to hang up!”

She snorted disdainfully then, struck by a thought, she passed up- “stairs to finger critically her owm front window-curtains. Were they as white as curtains should be? Was it possible that beside the fresh whiteness of the house over the way they might look -- almost dingy? With a sweep of her arm, Harriet gathered them together, casting them in a heap on the floor. Then from a chest she one shook out a fresh pair, and hung them in their place. Satisfied, she returned to the kitchen. There had been nothing of rivalry in her action, it was an instinctive gesture of friendship. 

"You like your house to look nice," signalled Harriet's curtains to the house over the river. "So do we here. Welcome to the company of good housewives." 

Never by look or sign did Harriet appear to notice the comings and goings of her neighbour but nothing, small or great, escaped her eye. Her critical glance scanned the line of washing that waved in the breeze on . Monday morning, appraising its whiteness, noting approvingly that the morning ~ was yet early, that the newcomer had followed her by but ten minutes. Again she compared the white simplicity of the house and body linen with the"fanciful fal-lals" of the woman before:

 "Two sheets," she commented. “Will she do that every week, now, or would it be she had one waiting? Never more than one with That Woman, and lucky if it was that!" 

She shrugged her shoulders in disgusted contempt. From her vantage point in the garden she caught a glimpse of the newcomer as she returned with her empty basket, young and comely, with strong arms and wayward hair that tumbled in the wind. She put up a hand to push back a curl and for a moment adopted a pose full of youth and grace. 

"Bonny," said Harriet aloud,unconsciously. Yes, that was the word ~ bonny. The seed of tenderness that had lain dormant for so many years in Harriet's heart gave a stir. Firmly she dealt with it. That one should be "soft" was to her the worst of sins and sternly she seized her tubs and sent their load of suds swilling away, then fiercely attacked her spotless floor. Even had no splash of soap escaped it was unthinkable that the scullery floor should not be scrubbed on a washday. 

"Not the young chap over the way at market to-day?" said William, some days later, as he sat down to his supper. Harriet wielded the teapot and said nothing. She had seen him too, from her window -- very carefully she dovetailed into the picture the scraps of information William dropped. A sensible sort of a chap, William thought him, not one of those young know-alls who thought farming could be learnt in a day. Harriet inwardly approved. That was the right sort of a lad for the girl over the way; she felt glad of it; it seemed to matter that that bonny girl should have a good man at her side.

Without his knowing it, William supplied, week by week, further details of the couple which.Harriet pieced into her pattern. Much she knew by observation alone, as when she watched the baker call once only, and speed by the next day. 

"Lost a good customer, ain't you?" she jeered at his receding.back. "No bought bread for her - knows better, she does." 

Her eyes turned to her own crisp loaves: fresh from the baking. She watched the girl working in the neglected front garden and noted the bright bulbs that opened with the spring. Something else she noticed as the spring sunlight caught the moving figure, and stopped in her work to consider the devastating thought that had come to her. Should she, after att these years, go visiting? Harriet quailed at the thought, yet something had stirred in her, something was urging her.

"Maybe she'd like to know there 's another woman within call," she thought, "in case aught goes wrong." 

Firmly she put the thought behind her. She had kept herself to herself. Was she one to go interfering with her neighbours till they asked her? 

Spring turned to summer and, on a great wave of heat, the strawberry season began. Far away in the fields opposite, Harriet spied a blue sunbonnet and, from her years of experience, shook her head over it.

"He'll have to watch she don't do too much of that," she remarked to William, with a jerk of her head at the blue spot, “ and her in the family way." 

"Is she?" asked William, surprised, and Harriet clicked impatiently. As the day drew on, however, her lips set in a grim line, for the blue dot still moved in the far-away field. The strawberry picking! How she knew it of old. Was anything so unendurable ‘as that sweet, sickly smell in the burning heat, those enticing berries that became, from their very sweetness, so overpoweringly nauseating that the brain reeled and the stomach heaved in the waves of scented heat? That- young chap over there should have know better -- but maybe he had never grown them before. It-was not the sort of job for her anyway, that picking. 

At last, with a sigh of relief, Harriet saw the girl's figure coming home against the sky, bowed with weariness, stumbling a little as it came, and again there came to Harriet the strange, disquieting thought: 

"Will I go over and see her?" 

Someone ought to tell her, she thought, and half-opened her mouth to frame the request that William should drive her round, to shut it again on the thought.

"I'll wait while tomorrow," said she, and on the morrow waited in vain for the blue dot to appear. 

"Thought better of it," said Harriet to herself, “and a good thing too.' 

But a lingering doubt remained as the day passed and no sign of the blue sunbonnet was seen about the garden or fields. Then suddenly, with the haste of urgency, came the young chap and drove recklessly away up the road. Harriet's hand went to her heart as it jumped sickeningly. 

"Her time's come," said she quietly," we should have told her about the picking." 

Slowly, reluctantly, she was taking off her apron. There ought to be a woman there, came the thought, appalling her by its urgency. With dragging steps: she mounted to her room and opened her cupboard for long unused clothing. As she put it on her mind planned creakily. There was an old punt on the river higher up -- it could be used in an emergency they said, if it was still sound. When had it last been used? She could not remember, and her mind shuddered at the greasy banks and the old leaky craft. But something pushed her, the old call of woman to woman in the hour  of need, and it drew her to the door. 

Twilight was falling, and a faint mist was. rising over the dykes. She passed through the garden and made her way along the bank. Far up the road twin lights shone, growing bigger and bigger as a car sped nearer. There was a jerk, a grinding of brakes, clearly audible in the still air, and Harriet, with a throb of thankfulness, stood arrested. The doctor's car. It was all right then ... but was it? ... would the young chip manage? there was the child ... 

Slowly Harriet dragged to the place where the punt was moored, stopped and took one last desperate look up the road. A little light flickered, coming slowly nearer and, even as Harriet's foot ventured on the slippery mud, it halted across the way and , calm and competent, the district nurse dismounted from her bicycle and passed into the house. Relief and disappointment fought one another in as relief that she need not, after all these years, make contact with the world again; regret that this great effort, this sudden rush of friendship, should die unfulfilled. Reluctantly she returned and stripped off coat and hat, covering them carefully with their dustproof wrappers. She felt shaken and upset and her old determination to despise all softness had forsaken her when she needed it most. 

Welding for the moment, she fetched the kettle and made tea, trying, as she drank it, to reason with herself that this strange shaken feeling was but the excitement of effort. Her poise returned in some measure and she set about the preparation of William's supper with her usual calm efficiency. Over the road, a light shone in the bedroom and shadows passed against the blind. Harriet left her curtains undrawn; there was little she could learn from the shadows, but the light drew her eyes.

Lying sleepless at William's side, she could still see its reflection, and time and again she slipped across the room as if trying to wrest the secret from the lighted window. With the dawn she started from a fitful sleep at the sound of a car starting up, and saw that the light had gone.

"Maybe she’s sleeping now," said Harriet's reason, but surely and certainly her inner self knew that it was not so.

By morning the news had passed from one to another and William brought it to the back door. "Seems the young woman over the way died last night," said he bluntly, "Lost the child too, so they say. A boy it was -- hard on the young chap." 

He looked down, scraping the mud from his boot awkwardly. 

“Yes," said Harriet, standing straight and remote. 

"She was a bonny girl," said William. "I used to see her at market often enough. Cheerful sort -- always laughing and chaffing the young chap." 

He meditated, as if conjuring her up in his memory, while Harriet waited, motionless. Becoming aware of her stillness, William looked up and faltered: 

"Well, well -- a bonny girl, but there, you wouldn't know her, not going in to market these days."

“No,” said Harriet.

Her eyes turned involuntarily to the house over the river, blank, still with its drawn blinds, turned limpened. Then as if she too drew down blind, her face became once more withdrawn and unresponsive.

“No,” she said again, quietly, “I never knew her.”

Turning on her heal, she went with firm tread back to her kitchen, and took up the thread of her interrupted routine.

Currently I only have this image of "The House Over The River" from its original publication in the London Daily News in 1936.

Published: Saturday 04 January 1936

Newspaper: Daily News (London)

County: London, England

From the British Newspaper Archive

The House Over The River appears to have been a bit of a break through story for Doris'. As shown in the letters below, this story signalled the start of a break into getting her more formal short stories published, rather than her regular "Seeing the funny side" pieces.