Bhowani Junction (2 page)

I was in a hurry, but Victoria didn’t move, and then I calmed down because it was nice to know she still loved the station and the railway enough to stand there sniffing the air as if it had been champagne. The 404 Up Passenger from the Bhanas branch was standing over on Platform 3. Travellers, all natives, were struggling out of it. Number 2 Up Mail was due in any minute on the mainline platform, where we were standing. People out of the branch train were hurrying over the footbridge to catch it. Men and women were shouting, eating, dozing on the stones, rushing up and down, yelling for lost children and lost baggage. The goods train, the one I’d seen with the Indian crew, came clanking down the centre line, and stopped.

An engine whistled angrily to the north. Victoria said, ‘Number Two Up Mail.’ She knew. She was a railway girl. The driver had got a signal, and he was whistling because they’d left him standing there among the back walls of the city, half a mile out. It is dirty, squalid out there, and the heat always shimmers above the rooftops like a kind of mirage. That driver was in a bad temper.

At last I took her elbow and said, ‘Now let’s go up to my office and see what the bloody hell has been happening.’

She followed me as I shoved through the crowd. Several Wogs turned and glared at me, and one or two muttered abuse under their breaths, but they didn’t dare speak aloud. Victoria must have heard what they were saying, and that made me angry. They’d all got quite out of hand during the war.

One of the people I pushed out of the way was Surabhai,
the local Congress boss. He always wore a collar and tie, a European coat, a white Gandhi cap, and a white dhoti. That day he was wearing green socks and violet sock-suspenders. I heard Victoria, behind me, say, ‘I’m sorry.’

Surabhai said, ‘
You
are sorry?
He
pushed me, the haughty fellow!’ but he smiled at her. He had a rubbery round face and huge eyes, rather like Eddie Cantor’s. She squeezed past him and came on with me. I wanted to say something—but what?

The crowd on the platform had heard that something was wrong. You can’t keep secrets in Bhowani even if you want to, and a derailment isn’t a secret. I heard them asking each other, ‘What has happened? … What do you know? … What do you hear?’ A toothless old woman with her lips cracked and reddened from betel chewing reached out a hand like a vulture’s claw and grabbed at me as I passed. ‘Brother, brother, what’s happened?’ she whined.

I didn’t answer. I could have sworn at her in Hindustani, which I speak very well, but that would have justified her calling me ‘brother’. Besides, although she certainly meant to insult me by suggesting that I was an Indian like her, can you really insult anyone by calling him your brother? I feel you can’t, and yet I don’t want people to think I’m an Indian.

The stairs to the second storey went up just beyond the Purdah Room. The platform storey all belonged to the stationmaster, but the upper storey was a subdivision of the Delhi Deccan Railway. (Don’t mix it up with the Bhowani Civil District, which was a subdivision of the province—in other words, a part of the government.)

The railway district had 222¾ running miles of line and thirty-four stations, including Bhowani Junction. Up on the second storey there, on either side of a broad middle corridor, were the offices of people like the District Engineer, who looked after the permanent way, and the Assistant Superintendent of Railway Police, and lots of others you don’t need to know about. Except you have to know that the District Traffic Superintendent’s office was there, at the end of the corridor on the right, facing out over the city. The District Traffic Superintendent was the most important man in the
place, and his name at that time was Mr Patrick Taylor—in other words, me.

I pushed into my office. The coolie-messenger was squatting in the doorway, and I kicked him on to his feet as I went by. There were more people crowded inside than I could count. The door was marked clearly: No
ADMITTANCE EXCEPT ON DUTY
, but that wouldn’t make any difference to an Indian, not even a fellow like my new assistant, Kasel, who was supposed to be so efficient.

The short trip on the motor-bike had dried our clothes on us—Victoria and me—but hadn’t cooled us. Now the perspiration broke out again all over me. The electric punkah whirred on the ceiling, its big arms slowly turning round like a windmill. The air was thick as soup, and all the punkah did was turn over the dust and that filthy bitter bidi smoke and the smell of too many Wogs. There were betel-juice stains all over the floorboards, and I noticed how ragged and splintery the boards were. I was imagining how it all would strike Victoria after those luxurious air-conditioned offices in Delhi.

My God, I felt fed up. I stood inside the door and bawled, ‘Get out!
Hut jao,
you black bastards!’ Some of the people edged out, others edged in. I reached the desk and said, ‘My God, Kasel, what the hell is going on here? What are all these people doing in here? What has bloody well happened?’ I tell you I was mad, and so ashamed for what Victoria had seen of my office.

Kasel was a slight, tall Indian with a thin face. He was about thirty years old and always wore a turban because he was a Sikh. He had a high-bridged nose and always looked so damned sad I could kick him. He got up quickly when he saw us, and bowed to Victoria. Then he sat down again, twiddling a pencil in his hands, and said, ‘The coal train, Number Two-O-Four-Three, ran off the rails at Pathoda. No one was hurt. The District Engineer said——’

I didn’t want to know what the D.E, had said or done. I wanted to know what
he
had done. I asked him.

He said, ‘I have informed Transportation, Civil, Mechanical, Medical, and Police. I’m holding all branch line traffic,
but Four-O-Five is here now and ready to go. I was proposing to send her up to Pathoda on time. She can change passengers there with Four-O-Six. Then I have sent for a light engine from Bhanas to pull the wagons back from the derailment,’ and he went on about what he had done.

It sounded all right, so I said to him, ‘What the hell are these people doing in here? It is like a bloody circus.’ Again I shouted at everyone to get out.

Surabhai, the Congress fellow who looked like Eddie Cantor, had found his way up there He faced me and joined his palms together and said, ‘We are only poor natives, good sir. Forgive us for it. We have come to ask when, by your favour, we may expect to be allowed to entrain on those trains for which we have bought tickets.’ He was very excited. He fairly danced around, like a boxer, as he spoke.

I think Victoria wanted to laugh, but I did not see anything to laugh at. It was disgraceful, the whole thing. I said to Surabhai, ‘You’ll hear in good time. Now get out of here, all of you.
Bahar jao, ek
dum!
’

Surabhai danced forward again, his eyes popping at me and his mouth opening, and I was getting ready to be really rude to him. Then Kasel at the desk said, ‘
Please,
Mr Surabhai,’ and the fellow subsided, and after a few mutterings followed the others out of the room.

Kasel got out of the chair behind the desk, and I sat down. It was my chair, and I didn’t like the way he had butted in with Surabhai. I told him to get a chair for Victoria—‘For Miss Jones,’ I said. Then I told him to give me more details. I wanted to know first whether it was an accident or sabotage.

He stood there beside my table, and Victoria smiled at him to thank him for getting the chair. If he heard my question he didn’t answer it. He was smiling back at her, almost ogling her. So I said, ‘Well?’ as sharply as I could. That took the smile off his face.

He said. ‘We don’t know yet. The District Engineer has gone up on the trolley with the District Mechanical Engineer and one or two others. The breakdown train’s gone to Pathoda.’

I stubbed out the cigarette that I’d only just lit. I was getting angrier all the time. ‘Well—oh, damn it,’ I said, ‘I suppose I’d better go up. I bet you it was sabotage, and I bet you the bloody Congress did it.’ I said that because I was sure as eggs that Kasel was secretly a Congressman. Railway officers were not allowed to join political parties in those days, but I was sure.

He said—and he spoke quite hotly for him—‘We don’t know enough about it yet to say, Mr Taylor.’

‘Oh, but I am betting you,’ I said. Kasel looked like a boy of about twelve who is hurt over something but trying not to show it.

Then I had an idea that I might still be able to save some fun out of the day. I asked Victoria to come to Pathoda with me. We would go on the Norton. She thought about it a minute. Then she nodded, and I slapped her on the back. I said, ‘Good girl! Come on!’ I got up right away and went to the door, but she turned to say good-bye to Kasel. There was no need for her to do that.

The ride was hot and dusty. I drove fast because I was in a hurry to get up there, get the work over with, and get on with our picnic. That was a good bike, and I was strong enough to hold it down. We roared past everything—villagers on foot, bullock carts, children playing among the houses, old women, donkeys. The bumping rattled my teeth—and Victoria’s too, I suppose. The dust hung in a long spreading cloud behind us. The fields and huts seemed to race toward me, then passed in a flash and disappeared in the dust. The exhaust made a terrific racket against the houses, and I felt a lot better.

We got to Pathoda in twenty-four minutes. I leaned the Norton on its stand, went into the station, and shouted for the stationmaster, a fat fool called Bhansi Lall. He wasn’t there. Victoria and I walked along the platform. Pathoda’s a hill village, and the platform is just a levelled gravel standing, faced with brick on the line side and about a foot high. The station is on a curve.

The coal train was standing there, and you couldn’t see anything wrong at first because the engine was hidden by the
curve of the train. But when we got up past the end of the platform we saw that the engine was standing in the ballast. Twisted rails stuck out like wires from under the tender and the first few wagons. The wood was broken and splintered, and ballast stones had been shot about everywhere. The engine had sunk in a foot or more so that the bottoms of its driving wheels were hidden. A group of railway people stood in a bunch round it, and thirty or forty villagers were squatting on the low embankment opposite, watching. The breakdown train had come up from Bhowani and was on the line in front of the derailed engine. Its crane was swinging round as we arrived. They’d lifted the inspection trolley off the rails.

‘That was a narrow escape,’ Victoria said, and pointed.

I nodded. Twenty yards in front of the derailed engine the line crossed a stream on a girder bridge. There were check rails, of course, but they wouldn’t have been enough. The stream ran about forty feet down in a shady gorge. I saw some red flowers down there, and the water was green and cold and noisy, and from thinking about the engine falling down into it I began to think again about Victoria in a bathing suit.

I went over to the District Engineer, but there wasn’t much I could do, and soon I went back to Victoria. I found Bhansi Lall, the Pathoda stationmaster, talking to her. He’s very fat and he was trembling with fright and excitement. He was saying, ‘I say, you know District Engineer is saying this is
sabot
age? Sabotage, here in my station, Pathoda, my goodness, what next?’

I asked him what he meant, sabotage. His eyes rolled round, and he licked his lips. He said, ‘District Engineer is being rude to me! My God, my job! He is asking, how can bloody
sabot
age-men pull up line in broad daylight without you seeing? He is saying, you must have seen. But Miss Jones, Mr Taylor, I am seeing nothing! Look, station is
there,
and rail was pulled
here,
round curve, under embankment. How can
I
be seeing that villainy? Beside, rascals did not pull up rail but merely loosened fish-plates on two rails—there, there, on inside of curve. Oh, goodness me!’

I looked up and down and I had to agree with him although
I didn’t like him. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he was another of these secret Congress wallahs.

Then an engine whistled to the east, down the line behind the derailed train. Bhansi Lall unfurled his red and green flags—he had them in his hands and he’d been using them to gesticulate with. He said, ‘Oh, goodness me, hark! Relief engine has come to pull back wagons. Good-bye! Excuse please.’

We watched him waddle away along the path beside the line. Victoria put her hand on her head, said, ‘
Phew!
’ and moved in under the trees. She sat down there and looked at the little river below us. I said, ‘There’s nothing for me to do here. I knew there wouldn’t be. Why don’t we have our picnic here? A little farther away from the bridge, of course.’

She looked at the water and she hesitated. She never used to hesitate so much, to think so carefully about what she was doing or going to do. Then she said, ‘All right.’ I hurried back to fetch our bathing togs from the motor-bike.

Some way downstream we found a nice pool, about ten feet across, and there was a little waterfall at the top. It was a good place for a cool bathe; Victoria agreed with me.

She went a long way away from me to undress, into some thick bushes. I didn’t mind that, of course. People ought not to look at each other naked. But later, when it wasn’t so hot and we were back in our clothes, I leaned over and kissed her. I kissed her properly that time and thought I would melt inside.

She kissed me back the same way for a bit, then she turned her head away and looked up at the sky through the leaves. We could hear the clanking and banging from the bridge, but we couldn’t see them and they couldn’t see us. I stroked her cheek with my hand and said, ‘I love you, Victoria.’

She looked at me, and I waited for her to say, ‘I love you too, Patrick,’ but she didn’t say that. She said, ‘Do you think I’ve changed?’

She hadn’t changed to look at, except that she was smarter, more English-looking, somehow. But she
had
changed. She spoke la-di-da like the British officers in the regiments, and she didn’t smile so much. She looked at you without saying anything, often, and when she was standing up she stood up
straight and tall to her full height. It struck me that she was thinking all the time, and noticing us and her home and her people as if she’d never seen us before.