Bhowani Junction (31 page)

I said, ‘So far, so good. But I think you will all realize that there are people, some of them not a thousand miles from here, who are
not
pleased with that telegram or the things it says. These people I am talking about do not like the A.F.I., and would welcome any chance to discredit it.’ I paused a long time, then added, ‘Although they don’t mind using it when they need it.’

I paused again. The men muttered to one another in the ranks. It was obvious that my hint could mean only Govindaswami. Patrick stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at my shoulder a couple of feet from him, and the sweat was pouring down his face.

‘One of the handles these people are trying to use against the A.F.I.,’ I went on, ‘is this business of arms being carried off parade. I authorized that.’ I suddenly turned my head a fraction and looked hard at Patrick. Again he flushed. I went on, ‘But when I did that, I hadn’t thought the matter out carefully enough. Nor did I realize how very anxious some people are to get the A.F.I. totally done away with. They do not like either the A.F.I. or the community which supports it.
Such people will use any incidents in which members of the community are involved to harden their attitude. For instance, they will be able to use one single incident to finish off St Thomas’s for good.’

Taylor said loudly, ‘St Thomas’s is done for already. Sir Meredith Sullivan is dead, and the Trust are going to sell the school.’ A lot of men cried out in agreement with him.

Carefully I played my highest card. I said, ‘No, St Thomas’s is not done for—yet There is still hope. I will be happy to write to Mr Wallingford, backing you up, and trying to make him realize what an injustice it would be to sell the school—if one of you will go down in person and explain how strong your feelings are. You need a new leader.
But,
’ I went on quickly, ‘for your sakes, and for the sake of St Thomas’s, I am going to rescind the authorization I gave last week. All A.F.I. weapons will be kept in the kote. They will not be drawn out except by men who are going on a regular parade with an officer. Mr Taylor!’

Patrick started and said, ‘Sir?’

I said, ‘Some arms and ammunition are in the possession of men not now on parade. You will see that they are handed in to the kote by two p.m. to-day. Bring the kote corporal and his book up to my office at that time.’

Patrick stared straight in front of him but did not answer.

A man in the ranks spoke up uncertainly. ‘But sir——’ He stopped.

I said, ‘Yes?’

He said, ‘The Wogs are throwing stones at our womenfolk, sir. They’re doing dirty things in front of them and shouting filthy remarks. A lady isn’t safe outside her house here, and we’re not getting any protection from the authorities.’

A strong murmur rose from the ranks, Patrick shifted his position convulsively. His right hand kept straying to his pistol butt as though he needed reassurance that the weapon was still in its holster. He had half closed his eyes. Like that he could probably imagine me naked on the berth with Victoria, instead of armed with a star and crown on each shoulder.

‘I know what’s been happening,’ I said, ‘and I’m going to
put a platoon of my regiment in the Old Lines here, as from tonight.’ I spoke quickly and a little louder than before, and didn’t give them a chance to speak again until I had finished. I said, ‘I’m going to have that platoon down here by tea-time—if it costs me my commission.’

Again I paused. Only one person in Bhowani could complain if a platoon of Gurkhas was used to give specific protection to the Anglo-Indian community. That person was good old black Sammy.

I said, ‘Now you all know what Gurkhas are, and
I
know how generous you are. But please, for heaven’s sake, don’t give them any rum, and damned little beer. That includes you, Tench.’

Tench was pure English, a gang supervisor. I’d met him at the Institute a couple of times. He’d been a regular private of British infantry, Ortheris-type, and gone to the railway with twenty-one years behind him and sixteen pages of red ink in his conduct sheet—all drunkenness. He joined in the laughter. I went on. ‘Now let’s get these arms back in the kote before Mr—well, someone—sends an alarmist telegram and has the Black Watch parachuting down to take them away from us.’

An old driver spoke, a man who looked ludicrously out of place in his lance corporal’s uniform. ‘Will we be able to get at the arms if we need them, sir?’

I said, ‘Of course. I told you. For any parade under an officer.’ I wondered for a second how I was able to stand there arguing with soldiers in the ranks. But I’m a hell of a clever fellow.

Private Tench spoke up. ‘Sir, is this the emergency what we were fell in for, then, sir?’

I grinned and said, ‘Yes.’

Tench said in a loud aside to the man next to him—hell, it’s no use trying to record what he said because no one except a soldier will understand that he was paying me a wry compliment.

‘Tench, there is a lady present,’ I said.

Tench shouted, ‘Sorry, Vicky. But ’e’s a proper one, ain’t ’e? Worse nor my old Sar’n’t-Major Sparrow in the Brum
magems.’

I told them to be quiet. Then I said, ‘Let me see if the A.F.I. can act like real soldiers for a change. I know your jobs are much more difficult, much more valuable, and much more important than being a poor bloody infantryman like me, but——’ I hardened my voice, so obviously that it was like a semi-joke, a challenge. It would do them good to think of me as a proper red-necked colonel of infantry. I roared, ‘Let me see if you can pretend for five minutes to be soldiers. Mr Taylor, carry on!’

I turned away. I heard Patrick’s boots crunch on the crushed rubble of the tennis court. I, and every man on parade, and Victoria on the verandah, heard his mouthed, mutilated abuse. ‘You rotter, I’ll show you, I’ll … man to man.’

Victoria shrieked, ‘Rodney, look out!’

I turned slowly round, very slowly. I saw Tench, the old soldier, with the reflexes of seven thousand nights in edgy barrack rooms behind him, step forward and raise his rifle and aim at the middle of Taylor’s back. I heard the rapid click of his bolt, and his shout—‘Look out, sir!’

Taylor’s face was white in the shadow of his huge topi, and his lips were moving. His fingers jerked on the butt of the pistol, and his whole hand trembled. He had the muzzle unsteadily aimed at the pit of my stomach, and only five feet away. Tench kept up a steady soft blasphemy.

I looked Patrick in the eye. If I did the right thing, he’d fire. As he was aiming at my stomach he’d probably hit my arm, or miss altogether. In another of those illuminating flashes, I felt that I ought to let him wound me, preferably quite badly. But my brain and the animal will to win were still too strong, and I was beginning to feel angry with this oaf who kept coming between me and Victoria. I wanted to finish him for good.

After a long wait I stretched out my hand and said, ‘I’ll take your pistol now, Mr Taylor.’ I stepped forward and took hold of the muzzle. For ten seconds both of us held the pistol—Patrick the butt, me the muzzle, which was pointing at my stomach.

I didn’t pull, but suddenly I felt the weight of the pistol in my hand, and Taylor was stumbling off the parade ground, and there was a long sibilant
ssspheew
of men breathing. I said, ‘Sergeant Donoghue, carry on with fifteen minutes of close-order drill, please.’

Donoghue quavered, ‘Yes, sir.’ I saw Victoria slump down in a chak and cover her face with her hands.

I went after Taylor and caught up with him as he was wandering about in the middle of Limit Road like a man with sunstroke. I hadn’t finished with him yet. There were a couple more inches of the knife to get in under his liver.

I went up to him and said, ‘Taylor.’

He stopped, looked at me, and mumbled, ‘Can’t you leave me alone?’

I gave him the pistol and said, ‘It’s still loaded. You are an officer, and you may keep it. But I want your promise that you will not fire it at
anyone
—except me.’ He looked at the pistol and at me, and gave up trying to understand. He said, ‘I will shoot myself.’

I said, ‘No, you won’t. Only me. If you had an ounce of guts you’d go down to Bombay and see Mr Wallingford.’

He shouted, ‘I have got the guts! I am not a coward! But I would only make things worse. You don’t understand.’

I understood only too well. Whatever he did went wrong. That was the last two inches of knife. I said, ‘How do you expect anyone to stand up for you if you won’t stand up for yourselves?’

He said, ‘I cannot get leave from the railway in time.’

I said, ‘Of course you can. Or go without leave.’

He said, ‘By God, I
will
go, Mister Colonel Savage! I’ll show you! You watch me!’

I went with him then and there into the Institute, wrote a letter to Wallingford, and gave it to him.

Don’t forget I loved Victoria. Don’t forget I wasn’t ninety-six and as wise as Bernard Shaw. I was just a man who didn’t realize that if you don’t temper the wind to the shorn lamb a hell of a lot of nice people are going to want to take the lamb right under their overcoats.

At four o’clock that afternoon Victoria came through to my office with some damned piece of bumf or other, and found me smoking a cheroot with my feet up on the desk. My heart did a climbing turn when I saw her again—about an hour since I’d seen her last in there—and I said, ‘Is this all you can find to do?’

She stood by the desk, smiling at me. I swung my feet down, picked up my hat, and told Chris I was going back to my bungalow. I told Victoria to come along.

She said, ‘I told Mater I would be home early.’

I said, ‘Come on,’ and held the door open for her. She ducked under my arm and got into the jeep ahead of me. Her skirt looked very tight and full of Victoria, after the saris. I remembered that Taylor had a pair of her pants. I wondered if he’d thrown them away or was keeping them in his pocket. Probably keeping them.

As we drove off I could feel her relax. I had taken charge, and for the moment that probably meant more than anything else to her. There comes a point when anyone says, I’ve had enough of deciding. The road swept smoothly past, riflemen jumped to attention and saluted me, the quarter-guard sentries presented arms. She tucked up her back hak as the wind tugged it out from under her cap.

I felt her glancing at me. My God, it was written on my face plainly enough that I was going to take her straight to bed as soon as we reached the bungalow. She huddled closer to herself on the bouncing seat. She was glad that I had taken charge, but still——! She was deciding to jump up as soon as the jeep stopped, and cry, ‘No, darling! You have to make me want to, first. It says so in Marie Stopes.’ But I could make her want to, without moving a muscle or even looking at her. That was what Taylor had been up against in the morning—certainty against uncertainty. When he pulled out his pistol he
was really asking me whether it was right for him to shoot a man who insulted him, knocked him out with an inkwell, and went to bed with his girl. As I have explained, I damned nearly told him it was.

I stopped the jeep, and Victoria’s skirt was shivering on her thighs. Her face was hot, and her eyes big and uncertain. I touched her elbow and walked slowly beside her to the bedroom. I closed the door gently, turned to her, and took her hands in mine.

I didn’t say anything, because I’m not built to ask favours. But I was asking her, all the same. I could feel my face slackening, and cursed and swore at myself for being so weak. She ran into my arms and overwhelmed me with kisses. Then she undressed quickly, and it was me who shivered and she who whispered, ‘There, there!’

When we had made love I slowly recovered my wits. I told her to have a bath. The tub was full of cold water.

The sheets were soaked with our sweat, and she got up quickly. Lying back on the bed, I said, ‘The towels are in the bathroom. Victoria, what are you going to do if it does have to be me?’

She said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never felt like this before.’ But I think she had. She was all female and never counted and never remembered.

She went into the bathroom, and I heard her splashing about. Then she began to sing. ‘It had to be you, it had to be you, it
had
to be yoooou!’ She could not sing well.

I went in quietly. The cold water had brought out goosepimples all over that satin skin. I said, ‘Don’t we know any more words to that damned song?’

She looked up and laughed, and her breasts wiggled, shaking off drops of water. I said, ‘Move up. Get your great bottom over,’ and climbed into the zinc tub with her. Those things are only four feet long, if that. She shrieked, ‘Look out! There’s no room. It’s going to tip
over
! Oah,
Rodney
!’

We lay on the stone floor while the bathwater sloshed over us and soaked the towels. I splashed her and began to scrub her back with a hard brush. She yelled, ‘No, no, it hurts! You
are a baby, really.’

‘Oah, I am a babee, am I?’ I said. I teased her, and her eyes went soft, and I knew she would the for me then, because it was I who had given her the power to laugh about that accent. She got herself under control and said, very ladylike, ‘Please stop scrubbing me with that brush, Colonel Savage. You are making me bleed.’

I held down my hand and hauled her upright. The sex was over for the moment, and I worshipped her, and warnings of being without her were going like butterflies in my stomach. I suddenly stepped in and took her as tightly in my arms as I could. She was cold and wet and fresh against me, and I was cold and wet and fresh against her, and all our nerve ends tingled, and our faces shone, and cold water ran down our foreheads and into our mouths as we kissed.

I went out and left her to finish drying by herself. She was so happy she could not even sing. She found me in the livingroom.

Ramsaran, my bearer, came in with the tea tray and went out again. I motioned to Victoria to pour. I said, ‘Tell me about the sari.’

She said slowly, ‘It was going to be like a magic carpet. It was going to take me away from all the squabbling, and the topis that have to have waterproof covers on, and the betel-nut stains that mater tries to hide.’

(And was my bed going to be a better magic carpet, my totem pole a better magic lamp? The answer was yes.)

She said sadly, ‘It worked. The sari carried me away all right. But the place it took me to turned out to be foreign and frightening, and full of strangers.’

(If a girl who is half Indian and half English proves to herself that she is not at all Indian, may it not logically be argued that she must therefore be entirely English? It can indeed so be argued.)

I said, ‘They’ve opened the Club to non-Europeans.’

She, ‘They—who?’

I said, ‘The Club committee.’ I sipped my tea. It was hot as hell.

She said, ‘But they can’t do that.’

I said, ‘What do you mean, they can’t? Do you think it’s against the law?’

She said, ‘No, but——’

I knew what she meant. In practice, clubs were for Europeans only, or for Indians only, or for Anglo-Indians only. There were exceptions—the Willingdon in Bombay, for instance—but generally that was the custom. No one had the power to abolish a custom.

I said, ‘Well, they’ve done it here. Tonight the Collector, lord and master of Bhowani, is going to be allowed to enter the Bhowani Club as a member. Unless he’s blackballed or doesn’t pay his dues, anyone will be allowed in. Only Indians are going to be allowed to blackball other Indians, once it has got started.’

She said, ‘Our people would have been blackballed if we’d ever tried to join. We didn’t, though. Some of the girls have been taken there as guests, during the war. Even the girls never used to go before the war. Is it true that the young officers would get into trouble if they took one of us to the club?’

I told her that they’d be invited to transfer to the R.I.A.S.C., which is trouble enough, I suppose. I said, ‘Anyway, there’s a dance tonight, and I will drink myself insensible if you don’t come with me. Will you?’

She put down her teacup. Already the candour and carelessness of the bath were a long way back for both of us. Why couldn’t we spend our lives in beds and baths and trains? They were all closed compartments, the rest of the world shut out. She said, ‘Must we go?’

I said, ‘You mean you’d rather keep me in my proper place—bed?’

She said, ‘No, Rodney. I just think it will be awkward for you and for me. I’ve been so unhappy, I don’t want to——’

I said, ‘Victoria, bed is wonderful, but don’t you feel that there ought to be something behind it or beyond it?’

She said, ‘There is! I admire you so much, darling.’

I told her to commit intimacy with her admiration. She
winced and begged me with her eyes not to go sticking knives into her, because she would have to love me whatever I did. But I do keep one rule and that is, no deception. I always want to win, but I discovered long ago, at Wellington, that it’s no good winning on false pretences. I don’t win just to win, but to have. I’d massacre Taylor to the best of my ability, but if Victoria married me she must know
me,
and know she was marrying Rodney Savage, not a dear sweet kind polite cuddly little teddy bear. She had a bad influence on me. Ever since I saw her I’d kept wanting to be polite and kind to her. It took a large physical effort to be myself—well, shall we say the kind of myself I had long ago made up my mind to see in my mirror: cold, cruel, efficient, ice-blue eyes, all steel and sex. Ha!

I said, ‘Don’t you think we ought to find out more about each other? How we live, how we think, what we are? I know your geography pretty well now, all your hills and valleys. Hadn’t we better study each other’s sociology and anthropology?’

‘There’ll be history too,’ she said sadly.

I sat back. That was the wisest thing she’d ever said. I said, ‘Please come. Long dress. Ten o’clock. I’ll fetch you.’

She asked if I’d be in evening dress, with a true female’s desire to see her man looking unnaturally distinguished. I said, The Auk stopped all that frivolity at the beginning of the war. Please don’t think I despise Patrick.’ I made her wrench her mind on to it, but she saw at once that I had not really changed the subject.

She said, ‘No, I don’t think that. You were marvellous with him.

I said, ‘I was a c-a-d, and you know it, but I didn’t have much choice this time.’

Everyone had run true to form—the uncertain Anglo-Indians, looking for a leader; Govindaswami the wise and black, shouldering the abuse; myself; Victoria.

I felt a powerful longing to ask her the usual insane questions that people in love do ask each other. ‘When did you first think you’—sigh—‘liked me, darling?’ ‘I loved you the first
moment I saw you, I think, darling—but I suppose I pretended to myself’—sigh—‘that I hated you, darling. I was afraid of being hurt, darling.’

I took the letter out of my pocket and handed it across to her and said, ‘I think you ought to know why I was in such a hurry to get you into bed this afternoon.’

She read it and asked slowly, ‘When did this come?’

I told her, ‘This morning.’

The letter was from G.H.Q. It terminated her duty with my battalion w.e.f. June the twelfth. It announced that on the same date she was to begin again on her three months’ leave pending release from the service. To-day was June the twelfth.

I said, ‘But I’ll be willing to
pay
when you’re a civilian. Quote a rate. Piecework, or time and overtime.’

She said absently, ‘Don’t be nasty, dear,’ and I felt as unstable as a plate of jelly.

She stirred her tea. I could see her mind slowly ticking over. She thought she ought to get out while she could. She thought it was foolish to hope that any thing would come of this beyond what had already come—peace and sexual ecstasy. And confidence. She didn’t think I had any intention of marrying her. She wondered what she would feel like when it ended. But she said, ‘I’ll stay with the battalion until the three months are up, Rodney—if you want me to.’

‘You’ll get no pay,’ I told her.

She said, ‘I get full pay while I’m on leave pending.’

I said, ‘Okay. I’m sure I can fix Nigel. Of course I want you to. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d have an I.O. who could fill out an intelligence report
and
a brassiere. Just for that, I’ve put you in for the M.B.E.’ I went over to her and ran my fingers up under her hair. I pressed and released the loose skin of her scalp, and she sat back, moving her neck comfortably and purring.

I could still feel her head under my fingers when I reached her house a few minutes before ten o’clock that evening. I ran up the walk and knocked. Through the door I heard her mother say, ‘Don’t keep the colonel waiting, Victoria.’ I heard her snap, ‘Why not?’ and grinned to myself. She was a woman
with no parts missing.

I heard mumbling inside. Mrs Jones’s voice said, That is a very noisy little car he has. What is it? Will he give you one?’

Victoria muttered, ‘Shhh! Mumble, mumble … oh, Mater, why
should
he mumble mumble? Good night.’ The door opened, and they came out. The hall light glinted on the grease in Mrs Jones’s stringy hair. Her stockings were hanging in wrinkles on her legs, and she was wearing felt bedroom slippers. She told me that Rose Mary would also be at the Bhowani Eur
ope
an Club.

On the way to the club I asked Victoria what was the latest on Rose Mary. She said, ‘She’s having dinner with Howland—at the Sudder Savoy, I believe. Afterward they’re coming to the dance at the Club.’ She sat glumly beside me, worrying about it. She asked suddenly, ‘Is it true that Howland owns a big trading concern in England?’

He had told me that often enough, but I didn’t believe him. I didn’t know whether to be sorrier for Howland or Rose Mary in that set-up.

As we neared the club I made up my mind that I intended to marry Victoria. She was learning who I was. She must now be given a fair chance to see what I was, in the terms of my society, and decide whether she wanted to try and fit in there. There must be no deception, positively no mirrors.

She had never been inside the Club. As we went in she braced herself as though she expected to face a battery of insolent monocles, but in the hall the only starers were the glass eyes of a pair of buffalo heads. I waited there for her until she came out of the Ladies’ and then told her we were meeting the Dicksons in the murghi-khana.

She laughed cheerfully. It seemed a fine joke to her to call the lounge the henhouse. I looked at her curiously, and she stopped laughing. It was a very old joke, but how was she to know? In the Institute people were ladies and gentlemen.

Molly Dickson greeted us with a shriek. ‘Vic
tor
ia! You look
beau
tiful.
Rod
ney,
dar
ling! Do you like my dress?’ She was wearing a black sheath with no shoulder-straps and no back.
Her back was not good; the spine and shoulder-blades showed clearly. I could never understand how such a fool could know so easily when I was acting and when I wasn’t.

Victoria sank back in a chair and looked round. Henry Dickson stared at her, his brow furrowed. He was trying to think of something to say. She decided she had to help him. She said, Those are lovely pictures,’ and pointed at the wall.