Bhowani Junction (15 page)

The woman rocked back on her feet, which were so strongly set against the floor, and her square hands swung round—left, right,
bang-bang
on my face. My cheeks stung, and the teeth rattled in my head. She took hold of my arms at the elbows
and said quietly to Ranjit, ‘Whom did she kill, son?’

‘A British officer of the Gurkhas. Lieutenant Macaulay. In the yards. He was a beastly swine.’

She said, ‘Is he still there? Do you think he will have been discovered yet?’

He said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

I could not cry now. My hysteria had gone. I stood in the woman’s grip so tired that I couldn’t tremble, I said, ‘He tried to rape me.’

She said, ‘Ah. Son, call our friend.’

Ranjit wiped his forehead with his hand and shuffled his feet. He said, ‘Do you think it would be wise, Mother? I mean, to tell anyone else? The fewer people——’

Tell? Tell! Of course. I knew there was something I had to do. I said, ‘I must go and tell the Collector, And Mr Lanson. At once.’

She said, ‘Why did you come here if you want to go and tell the Collector? What will he think when he knows you came straight here? Eh?’ Her voice was strong, not harsh but full and deep and firm. She said, ‘Now hurry and fetch our friend, son.’

Ranjit still hesitated, but his mother turned to look at him, and he went out with a little movement of defeat. The door closed behind him.

The woman led me through a side door into a small bare room. A lamp, a newar charpoy, and a tin trunk were its only furniture. She said, ‘Now get those clothes off, girl. Be quick.’

I took off my skirt and shirt and stood shivering in the hot, close room. Thre was no window. Faint sounds and a little starlight filtered in through a high skylight. The woman said, ‘Take everything off. Was he trying to undress you? Some of your things may be torn or bloodstained.’

I took off the rest of my clothes and stood naked. The woman gave me a pair of bloomers, an Indian-style bodice, and a sari, and helped me to get into them. As I dressed I heard the creak of foosteps in the other room, and the mutter of men’s voices. The woman opened the door an inch and called through, ‘Water. Basin. Soap. Sigri. That stain remover.’ She came
back and fingered over my discarded chothes. Her hands moved quickly, and her eyes darted from side to side. She left some on the floor and carried the rest back into the big room, pushing me in front of her.

Ranjit was there with a short pale Indian in a loincloth. Ranjit stared at me as if I was a ghost. The woman said to the other man, ‘You know what’s happened?’

The Indian said, ‘Yes. I’ll go at once. I ought to be back in half an hour at the most.’

He walked quickly to the door. I said, ‘What are you going to do? I must tell the Collector. I must——’

The woman said, ‘You must not tell the Collector. Who do you think they will put the guilt on? My son. It won’t matter what you say. Do you want to go through examination in court, cross-examination? Are you a virgin? If they don’t fix it on my son, they’ll say you led the Englishman on and then asked him for money. They’ll say anything to protect his reputation. Our friend will arrange it so that they will never find out who did it.’

The Indian went out. I listened but could not hear his feet on the long stairs. The invisible charcoal fumes from the sigri tingled in my nostrils.

The woman squatted in the middle of the floor and began to rub the marks of blood out of my clothes. As she worked she said, ‘Sit down, girl. I am this one’s mother. I am a widow—the Sirdarni Amrita Kasel. Mrs Kasel, you would probably say. You should call me Beji when you speak to me.’

I hardly heard her. I sank slowly on to a cheap rickety chair. I said, ‘You don’t seem to realize. I’ve killed somebody. I’ve
got
to go and tell the Collector. I tried to speak firmly, but it came out in a hoarse whisper.

She said, ‘You’ve killed an Englishman, an Army officer. That is not a person. That is an animal. Give her a drink, son. Our friend keeps several bottles in his place.’

Obediently Ranjit hurried out and soon came back with a half-full bottle of Solan whisky and two glasses. Shakily he poured out half a glass for me and as much for himself. I gulped it down and watched him drink in slow shuddering sips.

The Sirdarni said, ‘Why should you support the British law? You’re half Indian, aren’t you?’ She held up the front of my skirt in front of the sigri. ‘Get the iron,’ she ordered Ranjit, and when he brought it she put it on the sigri to heat.

The whisky began to smoke in my head. I felt loose and large and on the edge of something enormous. I had to tell them about it. I said, ‘He tried before. He was awful.’

The Sirdarni said, ‘Quiet!’

My voice had been trembling, edging up the scale in little high shivers. The Sirdarni looked at me and said, ‘My child, you have done a great thing. Now you are a heroine of the new India. I seldom drink, but I will drink to you now. Fill her glass again, son.’ She carefully propped the clothes on a bench and a box so that they faced the sigri, and took the whisky bottle from Ranjit. She said, ‘
Jai Hind!
’ and poured a lot of whisky down her throat. I watched her throat muscles moving up and down as she swallowed. She handed the bottle back. I drank again and shook my head and shivered.

‘We’ll have to check our stories,’ the Sirdarni said.

I said, ‘I must——’

She cut in. ‘
You must!
’ She stood, feet apart, by the sigri and fixed her eyes on me. She said, ‘Have you ever met an Englishman who didn’t insult you? Haven’t your people worked for them for a hundred years? And now how are they going to reward you? You know. They’re going to leave you here to us. And what do you think
we
’
re
going to do? We’re going to make you realize that you are Indians—inferior Indians, possibly disloyal Indians, because you’ve spent a hundred years licking England’s boots and kicking us with your own boots that you’re so proud of wearing.
I
saw the soldiers pissing on our people at the station. I saw you. You didn’t look happy. Why don’t you see that you’re an Indian, and act like one? We’re strong now. We’ll look after you.’

My teeth chattered on the rim of the glass. Ranjit stood there fidgeting in front of me but as silent as a dummy. Why didn’t he say something?

The Sirdarni said, These chothes are nearly dry. We’re all moving together, moving forward. Soon the British will go,
and we are hurrying them up. We don’t all agree among ourselves—some are conservatives and reactionaries—but we’re on the move, we are marching. That fool Surabhai, and me, and our friend—millions of us, all moving. Coming with us. Here. Look!’

She picked up a mirror from the gimcrack table behind her and held it in front of my eyes. I gasped and stared. I saw an oval pale brown face and large eyes framed in the gold and green curve of the sari. I knew why Ranjit had been staring at me. I moved my head and opened my lips and spread my fingers. It was me, but this person in the mirror was more beautiful than me. She was a beautiful Indian girl in her own clothes. I could appraise her as honestly as if she had been any other woman I might see in the street, because she was not ‘me’, Victoria Jones, the Anglo-Indian.

The Sirdarni took the mirror away, and I was looking at the sigri and the foolish, short, hard-edged skirt, the masculine shirt. I have always hated the short skirts. I had to wear them and I had got used to them, but now I
saw
them for the first time. The Sirdarni said softly, ‘India is your home, my child. The dawn is breaking now—our dawn, our sun, our freedom. We will stand by you always, whatever you do, once you find that you are an Indian. Trust us.’

I met her eyes, and I did trust her. My roots had been in bitter soil, and then for a time I had been without roots. Searching for home, I had not found home—only Home and a house.

Home was where the English came from and went back to, though I never could. Home was where they did not have a city and a cantonment in every big town, so that the officers could laugh themselves sick at an Anglo-Indian who talked about how he was going ‘Home to Southampton Cantonment’. Our house was Number 4 Collett Road, a bungalow sitting on a tired piece of land belonging to a country which Pater and everyone who lived in the house repudiated.

The presence of Macaulay was very strongly on me. He was typical of the British. He was pleasant when it suited him, cold when it suited him, and all the time selfish, cunning, lord of all he wanted to take. I know he was unbalanced, but I
didn’t take that into account then. Colonel Savage was a cruel bully. Johnny Tallent pretended to love me and then told all his friends I was free for the taking. Patrick was as bad as any of them, and a bigger fool besides. Rose Mary. Mrs Williams, Sir Meredith Sullivan.

An overpowering nervous excitement filled me, coming up like a high fear that choked me in my throat. All those people I had been thinking of stood on one side, and on the other—the dawn. I realized that it was not fear that I felt, but triumph, which is so often the same as fear.

My boat was moving fast to shore then.

The strange Indian came back. His face was pale and smooth and without expression. His eyes were calm. He had large ears, set low, and he wore a big shapeless moustache. Both his moustache and the untidy hair showing below his turban were pepper-and-salt, black and grey. The Sirdarni said, ‘This is our friend, Ghanshyam. And you are Victoria Jones. My son has spoken of you.’

I glnced at Ranjit and smiled proudly. He did not smile back. He was silent and troubled and could not stand still for more than a few seconds at a time.

Ghanshyam, the pale Indian, said, ‘I have brought the body into the city and hidden it in a dungheap, where it should not be found for several days. The Gurkhas did not see me. I have buried the piece of fishplate, first washing it clean. No one saw me.’ He spoke in a soft, careful, polite voice.

The Sirdarni said, ‘Good. Now we must get our stories straight. Do not worry at all, my child, there is nothing to worry about. You are an Indian, and because you have struck a blow for us—for yourself—we will see that you come to no harm. What happened?’

I told her. The excitement was dying away in me; the effect of the whisky had passed; but my boat was moving on a new clear course. All this was nothing but sensible people sensibly planning.

The Sirdarni said, ‘Then only my son knew that this Macaulay was going to see you to your house? And those who saw you leave the station with Macaulay would be—several
Gurkhas and coolies on the platform, the two sentries who challenged you. Those sentries would also know that you got as far as the beginning of the yards together. Then the same sentries saw my son following you very shortly afterwards. Yes?’

Ranjit said, ‘I didn’t see any sentries in the yards.’

His mother said, ‘They may have seen you though, and remained hidden, recognizing you?’

‘No, they would have challenged,’ I said.

The Sirdarni said, ‘I do not think it matters.’ She walked once up and down the room and stopped in front of Ghanshyam. She asked him, ‘What do you think?’

Ghanshyam said, ‘It is not difficult, Beji. Lieutenant Macaulay and Miss Jones went on along the line, just inside the yards, without being challenged again. Ranjit went after them because his work was finished and Miss Jones had left her bag behind. He caught them up near the Loco Shed junction and gave Miss Jones her handbag. Then he came home here, there being no reason for him to return to the station. Lieutenant Macaulay left Miss Jones by the signal outside her home. She at once went into her garden, and that was the last she saw of him.

‘But after that why didn’t I go into the house?’ I asked quickly.

Ghanshyam looked at me with a little nod of approval. He said, ‘Because you decided you could not face your sister—or your mother. Because you had personal problems you wanted to think over in peace. About your position as an Anglo-Indian, for instance. About Mr Taylor, perhaps.’

I said slowly, ‘Yes. I had things to think about, and I wanted peace and quiet.’

‘Very well,’ Ghanshyam continued. ‘Now where did you go for, say, two and a half hours? It is not late even now—a quarter to nine.’

I would have said it was nearer midnight.

Where on earth could I have been hiding for two and a half hours at this time of the evening? I wouldn’t have crept into the bushes like a jackal; that didn’t make sense. It had to be
some quiet but ordinary place. It had to be the reading-room of the Institute. I said it aloud, and Ghanshyam asked, ‘Did you do any reading?’

I said, ‘I had a magazine in my hand. I hardly remember what it was. I was just sitting there thinking of Patrick, thinking that I couldn’t marry him. I was thinking of Colonel Savage. I was deciding the Anglo-Indians were wrong not to throw in their lot with the Indians.’

Ghanshyam said, The lights would be on all the time? There is a place you could be, where a person glancing in from the door
might
not see you?’

I said, ‘Yes, but——’ I had no regrets, no qualms, and I was glad I had killed Macaulay, but it was becoming risky, of a sudden.

Ghanshyam said, ‘You must remember that it is almost impossible to get anyone to swear that a person was
not
in a particular place at a particular time. Witnesses will only swear that someone
was
somewhere. You walked round a bit. You went to the ladies’ room—there is no ayah permanently on duty there?’

I said, ‘Only on week-ends. For dances and whist drives.’

He said, ‘Good. You will go to the Institute now, and use the bathroom in case the sweeper should later recall that no one did. It is very important that you should be able to prove that you were not in the reading-room all the time. All this is merely precautionary. Lieutenant Macaulay will be seen at about this hour, now, in a house of ill fame at the other end of the city. He will leave it at eleven o’clock—that is, in two hours from now, more or less.’

‘The doctors will be able to tell better from the body,’ the Sirdarni said sharply.