Bhowani Junction (30 page)

I saw her once look down at her sari. She giggled to herself, and we three men smiled at her because she was a lovely woman, and laughing. She didn’t tell us why she was giggling, and we didn’t ask. It was all natural and wonderful for her. She had to do nothing—not think or worry or wonder—just sit back and smile and be a beautiful woman, her love visible and obvious in ber eyes and in her smooth skin and flat belly and long-stretched embracing legs. By the time we got out of there I was in love.

Number 1 Down Mail rode slowly into the station, and Victoria stood talking to Bill while I got the conductor-guard to unlock a locked coupé. It was nearly midnight, but she didn’t care a damn by then about getting into a compartment with me. She stepped up ahead of me and leaned out of the window to say good-bye to Heatherington. Late passengers hurried by, and station coolies struggled past with boxes on their heads. After the usual bouts of whistling the train began to move. She waved at Bill for an unconscionable time, but
when she couldn’t see him any more she turned and closed all the windows.

I said, ‘Patrick’s on the train.’

She said, ‘Oh?’ she was fiddling with her back hair in front of the mirror, turning her head this way and that. The pupils of her eyes were big and soft, and there were small dark rings under the lower lids. Her skin was the colour of dark ivory or pale milky coffee, and quite matt, unwrinkled, and calm. She said, ‘I’ll lock the doors.’ She bent down to each door in turn and then pulled all the blinds.

She stood in the narrow space over me, and I saw her eyes begin to glisten. I used to see them as bedroom eyes, and they were, but they had all Victoria in them, so there was a lot of guts and kindness there as well as bed. She said, ‘Rodney, I’m afraid. I love you.’

I said, ‘I know.’ It was impossible to imagine that this was all there could be for us. I undressed her carefully, with the love flowing out of my fingertips. She stood upright, proud as Diana, her legs braced apart against the rocking of the train.

We lay on the lower berth, struggling and sleeping and then struggling again. Jesus Christ, I thought again, it’s impossible that all this flood of affection, and the shelter I’ve given her against fear, should come from just norhing but sex. She fell finally asleep at last, but I lay awake with my arm round her, listening to the night rushing by like a torrent, and listening to the wheels hammering, and thinking of her, and India, and the fellow up there, one of her people, as awake as I, who was taking us on behind the searching light of Number 1 Down Mail.

At Bhowani it was good to see Victoria getting out of a compartment down the train. I’d woken up at Shahpur and put her there from some damned silly idea of protecting her good name. It was too late for that by then, and I know that secretly she would have preferred to stay with me—not to flaunt me, but simply because she wanted to be near me.

I was standing on the platform talking to the Collector. Govindaswami looked very black in that clear morning. His complexion was as unshiny as if he’d powdered it, and there was no sun to pick out the highlights on his cheekbones and jaw and frontal bones. I thought, Perhaps he does use powder. I wondered what shade would produce that strange strongly-grained surface, which was almost purple in this placid lighting.

During the night Victoria had told me that K. P. Roy, in the guise of one Ghanshyam, had been hiding in the Sirdarnisahiba’s house. Ought I to tell Govindaswami this? I decided not to, because Sammy had always been sure of it anyway, and because Roy wasn’t there now—we’d searched the place.

I beckoned to Victoria. When she came up I said to Govindaswami, ‘Victoria ran away from the Khalsa, Sammy. But she’s feeling better now. She burned her feet.’

Govindaswami looked at her keenly. He missed nothing. He was disappointed about what had happened to her, but I think he understood. He’d been through the same thing himself. He said to her, ‘You tried, anyway. You’ll both come and breakfast with me?’

Victoria began to say she really ought to be going, et cetera, but I said, ‘Come along. We’re going to talk shop, and I’m sure the Collector can lend you a notebook and pencil.’ She made a gesture with her hands. She wanted to put on a skirt and a shirt, both clean, and get a pair of shoes on her feet, but she wouldn’t leave me for that.

They’d sent down my station wagon, one of those ugly steel boxes sitting two feet above the axles, and it was waiting in the yard with Howland at the wheel and Tula, the driver, in the back. Govindaswami murmured his thanks to me for my thoughtfulness in sending the wagon to pick him up on its way to the station—the Austin was always tricky to start first thing, he said.

I jerked my head, and Howland let go of the wheel unwillingly and moved back. I drove; Govindaswami sat beside me; Victoria sat with Howland in the second row of seats, and Birkhe with Tula in the third. As we left the yard I glanced over my shoulder and saw Patrick Taylor standing under the station arch, staring after us. Victoria saw him too.

Govindaswami and I talked in the front seat, but not about the A.F.I. situation. I did my best to keep up my end of the conversation and at the same time listen to Howland and Victoria behind me. I heard Master Albert say, ‘Bee-yootiful plates a’ meat you got, sis.’ The little sod was eyeing her bare feet, and I thought, If I’m getting jealous over Howland, of all the impossible people in the world, I’m in for trouble.

Then Howland muttered, ‘Don’t be so snooty, Vicky. We’ll be seeing lots of each other.’ She said politely, ‘I’m afraid not, Albert. I’ll be released any day now.’ Then I had to answer some question of Govindaswami’s, and the next thing I heard was Howland saying, ‘I’m walking aht wiv yer big sis, if you want to know. We go to the pitchers and ’old ’ands. She’s a nice piece of homework, if you ask me.’

I was a fool not to see then and there how the situation was taking shape. I noted that Howland was trying to go to bed with Rose Mary. I noted that Rose Mary was a good deal smarter than Master Albert, so he’d probably finish up by getting married to her. I noted that Patrick had now been deserted by Rose Mary, in whom he obviously used to find a safety valve when Victoria left him. What I did not see, like the clever swine I am, was that the troubles were beginning to pile up too thickly on Patrick, and troubles were his trumps.

We got out at the Collector’s bungalow. Behind Govindaswami we filed into the dining-room. Howland took the station
wagon back to the lines with Birkhe and my small kit. After breakfast we moved to the study and sat down in the familiar, comfortable chairs. Sammy’s authentic Oxford chamber-pot stood on its table in the window, full of flowers. The sun came up behind the trees along the railway line.

I put my hands behind my head and settled back. I caught Victoria looking fondly at me before she dropped her eyes to her notebook. Then we began. I said, ‘I take it this A.F.I. business is just an excuse, Sammy. What’s really happened? Has Surabhai laid an information against you for selling pardons after hours?’

Sammy didn’t laugh. He said seriously, ‘No, it’s the A.F.I. A nice two-way hate. First, as you know, there’s been a good deal of anti-European feeling in the city. Some of it is peaceful, and some of it, stirred up by Roy’s people, is vicious. There has been no incident reported to me of an actual assault on or by a European.’ He glanced at me and paused. I stared blandly back. I had never reported the bottle-throwing and the beating-up of the youths the night Molly Dickson came, but Sammy obviously knew. He went on, The Europeans, however, live up here in cantonments with a few hundred Gurkhas round the corner, and they seldom go into the city. The bad feeling has found a vulnerable target in the Anglo-Indians—stone-throwing, minor assaults, pushing and shoving in the street, abuse, and so on. Well, Taylor came to see me and claimed they weren’t getting proper protection from the police. It’s true enough, because we just don’t have enough police.

‘And the second factor is that Sir Meredith Sullivan has died, and Wallingford, the chairman of the Education Trust down in Bombay, has taken the opportunity to announce that he intends to proceed with the sale of St Thomas’s.’

At that point a faint unidentifiable glimmering of real understanding must have come to me, because I remember thinking, It’s really piling up on Taylor—and being sorry for him, and admiring him for fighting.

I asked Sammy what sort of man Wallingford was, besides being a Bombay box wallah, and Sammy said, ‘He gets a lakh
a month. He is an elderly white gentleman, very white, and a pillar of the Yacht Club.’

I said, ‘I see,’ and I did.

Sammy went on, ‘The Anglo-Indians are extremely resentful. The community is in a worse temper than I ever remember knowing it. And it is leaderless, not only here but all over India, with Sullivan dead. And then Taylor went off—this was the day before yesterday, in the morning—and the next I heard was when Lanson told me he saw Tupper, the telegraphist, in the bazaar, brandishing a revolver at a shopkeeper who’d given him some back-chat.’

‘Was Tupper in uniform?’ I asked quickly.

Sammy said, ‘Yes.’

I told him he couldn’t stop a soldier in uniform from carrying arms if his officer ordered him to.

He said, ‘I know. But it’s obviously just a ruse. The point is that some of the Anglo-Indians—not all—now carry arms when they are not in proper military formation or under proper military command. Sooner or later there will be a thoroughly unpleasant incident. Someone will be shot—an innocent bystander, if Taylor is involved—and someone will be lynched.’

‘And K. P. Roy will be very happy,’ I said.

He said, ‘Yes.
Did
you give Taylor any such authority?’

I thought. Taylor had wanted to keep a guard over the armoured car while things were tense. He had talked about the difficulties of opening the rifle kote at odd hours, and the distance between the kote at the station and the armoured car in the Old Lines. I had suggested keeping the car in front of my quarter guard, and he was very insulted. So I told him his guards could keep their arms by them at night—chained to their bodies, the same as we do on the Frontier—until some fixed time every morning when the kote must be opened and the arms properly checked and returned. I told this to Sammy.

Sammy said, ‘H’m. He put a pretty wide interpretation on that.’

I said, ‘Why can’t people mind their own bloody business?’

Sammy said, ‘Running the trains? While you and I run the
country? How you can smoke those cheroots at this time of the morning, I don’t know. I want to get those arms back into the kote, and I don’t want our A.F.I. here—or even Taylor—to get into bad odour with the Army or the railway. They’re on the dirty end of the stick—in the dirty middle, as a matter of fact. What do you think’s the best thing to do?’

The Collector’s pencils were soft BBs. They blunted in no time and smeared under Victoria’s hand as she wrote. She grimaced in the pause of our talk and stole another look at me. I’d have liked to know what she was thinking about. She may have been remembering I’d seduced her by filling her with whisky. I bet half a hundred old hags down there in the Old Lines had warned her of the vileness of such a trick. (Unlady-like behaviour will always get you into trouble, my dear. Fail to extend the little finger of the right hand when drinking a cup of tea, my dear, and you might just as well reserve your bed in the maternity ward.) Or she may have been thinking of Patrick’s new trouble.

‘I did discuss this with Dickson yesterday,’ Sammy said.

I said, ‘And he was willing to obey orders? He’s a good chap, though, Collector.’

‘A better fellow never stepped,’ Sammy said, the smile suddenly and startlingly splitting his black face in two.

I said, ‘Yes, but this needs the services of a four-letter man, and I know just the one.’

‘What are you proposing to do?’ he asked.

I said, ‘My God, haven’t you got the decency to pretend you don’t know who I mean? I propose to talk to them.’

He said, ‘Do you think that’ll work? Taylor is not an admirer of yours.’

He was wrong there. Taylor did admire me, for the wrong reasons. I said, thinking quickly, ‘I’d like you to write an urgent message to Taylor, telling him you fear there may be a big riot in the city to-day. Tell him to have all his A.F.I. fallen in, armed, at’—I glanced at my watch—‘ten o’clock. I’ll go down then.’

Sammy said, ‘My dear Rodney, you must tell me more than that. I am on the receiving end of a too efficient telephone
connection to an efficient governor and his officious chief secretary.’

I said, ‘I’m going to tell them to put their arms back where they belong, and I’m going to explain that brickbats are a sign of affection in the Land of the Robin.’

‘The Land of the Robin?’ Sammy said.

I said, ‘You see, you don’t know everything about this country in spite of your correct coloration. The Indian robin carries his red breast on his bottom, Collector.’

He laughed and said, ‘Are you going alone?’

I said, ‘Yes. This is a melodrama, isn’t it?’

Then he said, suddenly quite harsh, ‘Very well. Don’t make a mess of it.’

I stood up. I heard the jeep come. I sent Victoria home in it and, after fixing a few things with Sammy, I walked over to the offices. I told Henry to get the battalion fallen in at ten for Internal Security action, placards and all. Then I went to my bungalow, bathed and shaved, and told my bearer to iron the uniform I was wearing.

A few minutes before ten I got out of the jeep, on the Pike, and began to walk down the long road toward the Railway Institute. I could see the A.F.I. fallen in on the tennis courts with the armoured car on their right flank and Patrick wandering up and down in front.

I also saw Victoria standing in the shade of the Institute verandah. She had changed into a skirt. I thought she had come to see me deal with a ticklish situation.

I heard someone shout, ‘Thee colonel is coming!’ That was Dunphy from the turret of the armoured car. I walked on, alone, down the middle of the road toward them, the sun in my face. Patrick tried to keep up a nonchalant flow of chatter with the men standing easy in the ranks, but they were watching me. I was the man who’d come to give them a chance to have a good crack at the Indians in the city. The silence grew until Patrick had to swing round and, like them, watch me. He was chewing his lip continually. He was working out in his mind what to say to the man he had seen naked in bed with his girl.

I reached their makeshift parade ground and stopped, my hands behind me. The jumbled houses of the city squatted on the rise of land across the line there, the roofs pulled down over their heads so that they seemed to be asleep under a sheet of dust. There was a smell of coal from an engine in the yards, and a drift of smoke tinged the wavering air above the railway lines.

I stood still, looking at Taylor. He came to his senses with a start, turned clumsily round on his heel, nearly overbalancing, and shouted, ‘Platoon, ’shun!’

He swung round again, saluted, and yelled, ‘Number three platoon, Third Battalion, the Delhi Deccan Railway Regiment, present and correct, sir!’

‘What is your parade state, Mr Taylor?’ I asked him, speaking very quietly.

He said, ‘Oh, the parade state. Mr Donoghue, what is the parade state?’

The sergeant said, ‘One officer, three sergeants, twenty-one rank and file, sir.’

Patrick said, ‘That’s it, sir. Oh, yes, and one armoured car.’

I said, ‘Stand easy, please.’

He swung round, remembered he had not saluted, swung round, saluted, swung round. He shouted, ‘Platoon, stand at ease! Stand—easy!’ Once more he swung round, then stood at ease, stood easy. Someone in the ranks tittered. The essence of my business was to transfer the hopes of the Anglo-Indians from Patrick to myself. He was certainly helping me.

I strolled forward, smiling genially. I said, ‘We’ll have to get Mr Taylor a jab on the turntable, won’t we?’

Patrick flushed furiously, and I got a glimpse of Victoria’s white face.
Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat
. I thought she was trying to tell me that Patrick had a loaded pistol in his holster. Perhaps she thought she was. But the men were already much more relaxed. A voice from the rear rank said, ‘Some of those traffic graphs look as if that’s where he made them anyway, sir—on the turntable.’

I smiled and stopped. The tittering and talking stopped. I said, ‘Gentlemen, I’ve come here, first, to thank you for your
work in the emergency last week. I haven’t had a chance to see you since then. I’m speaking for myself and all ranks of my battalion. Thank you. Now I will read you a telegram which has just arrived. It is from His Excellency the Governor. It says: “Please convey to Lieutenant Taylor and all ranks of Number Three Platoon, Third Battalion, the Delhi Deccan Railway Regiment, A.F.I., my appreciation of their steadiness in the recent emergency, and my thanks for the invaluable help they gave to the cause of law and order on that occasion.” Here, you’d better frame this in the drill-room.’ I folded up the telegram and gave it to Taylor. From the corners of my eyes I saw Victoria knotting and unknotting her fingers. The telegram had been sent less than half an hour ago, at my urgent request. Actually, the Governor had not been at all pleased with Number 3 Platoon, 3rd Battalion, the Delhi Deccan Railway Regiment, A.F.I., especially not with Patrick. His Excellency had heard about the shooting and the inkwell. I was the fellow he was pleased with.