Bhowani Junction (32 page)

Henry turned his head slowly and looked at them. He said in surprise, The “Midnight Steeplechase?” Well, personally I rather like them, but Rodney says he’s collecting a fund to be awarded to the first mess or club that hasn’t got them.’

Molly overheard and shrieked, ‘Do you mean to say you’ve never seen
those
horrible things before? Wherever have you been? Oh dear, that was silly of me, wasn’t it? Don’t mind me, Victoria. I’ve got a brain like a sparrow.’

‘Like a hen sparrow in April,’ I said, but I’m damned sure she said it on purpose, to underline some of Victoria’s difficulties for her. I could see she liked Victoria a damned sight better than she liked me.

The brigadier wandered in, a glass of
crème de menthe
wavering like a green tulip bud on the ends of his slender fingers. Henry and I got up. I said, ‘Good evening, Nigel. I didn’t know you were here.’

He said, ‘Good evening to you, Rodney. Good evening. I’m on my way back to Kishanpur from another of those eternal conferences at Agra. You don’t have any problems, do you? Good, good.’

I wilted; even Henry tried to act decadent; and Victoria cheered up as she listened. I assured the brig that all was well, although life was quite too wearing and coarse-making. He hoped I wouldn’t be rude to Reginald again. Reginald had come to him almost in tears, he said. Reginald was a very clever young man, but shy and sensitive. And of course he wasn’t a soldier, thank heaven, so he didn’t understand. Absently People-Psmythe let his hand fall on Victoria’s knee. Later he gave her the yellow carnation from his buttonhole. He was not in uniform. She pinned it in her hair. He drifted off.

I said, ‘One day I’m going to put a grenade in People-
Psmythe’s thunderbox, and I hope to God Reginald’s on it with him at the time.’

Govindaswami was there in a mixed British and Indian party. Later he asked Victoria to dance with him. I wondered what I would do if he started making trouble for her about the Macaulay business. He was a damned good chap, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to double-cross him.

Our group in the murghi-khana kept changing. People talked about India a bit, but mainly it was the war, or England, or their future plans—cottages in Devonshire, future meetings at the Berkeley Buttery, prospects for the Grand Military at Sandown. The younger fellows talked to Victoria, and they were a little too young to know how not to be patronizing. Others did it deliberately. She was obviously a blackie-white and obviously in tow of me. There were plenty of people who didn’t like me, and I saw at once that they were taking this perfect opportunity to get at me through her. She saw it too. My armour was too good for them as a rule—I mean the gongs and the rank and my war record and other things; the right ties, the right cries—but to them Victoria seemed a big hole in it, right under my heart. Right under my fighting arm, anyway.

Howland and Rose Mary were dancing cheek to cheek. Howland waved violently to Victoria across the floor while she was dancing with me, and shouted, ‘Wotcher, Vicky!’

But on the whole it was no worse than I had expected. There were the nice ones, like the Dicksons and young Chris Glass; and the neutral ones, like Turnbull and Clewiston and Lanson; and the spiteful ones, like Mrs Lanson. She sat a long time with us, talking about England, and every time Molly tried to turn the conversation into some channel where Victoria could join in, Mrs Lanson switched it back to England. She was working on a deliberate plan, because finally she did turn to Victoria and say in acid mock-apology, ‘All this talk of Home must be awfully boring for you, Miss——?’

‘Jones,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes, Miss Jones. But you see, this club was supposed to be a place where we could get together and never see an Indian
face—except the servants, of course—and remember our homes so far away.’

‘Miss Jones is half Indian,’ I said, ‘but wholly a lady.’ I stared straight into Mrs Lanson’s eyes, daring her to answer back. I had to show her, and others like her, that I could fight even if I was in love with a cheechee. Also I was so angry when I saw Victoria’s face that I wanted to use a saw-bayonet on the woman. She flushed and stuttered, ‘Why, she—why, you——’ But she just didn’t have the nerve to say out loud that Victoria was my mistress and therefore a tart.

Lanson said, ‘Come on, ’Tricia. Let’s dance,’ and took her away.

Victoria sat with her head up, meeting no one’s eyes, until Molly muttered, ‘Oh, for God’s sake let’s have some bubbly to get
that
taste out of our mouths.’

Then Victoria asked me how I thought Patrick would get on in Bombay. He’d left on the mail at three o’clock.

She couldn’t stop thinking of him. The more trouble he got into, the more she’d feel that she was the only person who could look after him. Hearing her ask that was like hearing the referee on his way to counting you out—
four!
Well, there was time yet, and I had begun, faintly, to realize where the danger lay.

The next time I had her in my bungalow was late Friday afternoon, two days after the dance. She’d been to tea with Molly and came along to me afterwards. It was almost dark when the bearer showed her in, but a full moon was rising. It was quite dark when we’d got over the immediate urgency, and the moon was shining in at my drawing-room windows.

She was subdued, and I asked her whether Molly had been
telling her too many obstetrical horrors. She shook her head and said, ‘No. She was asking whether you and I are serious.’

I said, ‘I trust you told her what she could do with it?’

She said, ‘No, Rodney. We talked a bit. She’s very kindhearted, and she was nice to me in Delhi when she didn’t have to be. I mean, you weren’t there with Henry Dickson as your second-in-command.’

That was a nasty dig. I gave her a drink, sat down, and said, ‘Tell me. Come and sit here.’ She sat next to me on the big sofa, curled her feet up under her in the way women can, and leaned against me inside my arm. She kissed my ear suddenly and then settled back.

She said, ‘As I turned into the Dicksons’ drive I was thinking about the Club the other night, and not looking where I was going. You know I went there directly from the office. I collided with a Chinese box wallah who was coming out. It was funny, really. The Chinaman keeled over slowly, holding on to his handlebars all the time, until he crashed; then the huge box on his carrier burst open, and green and purple and silver silks and satins poured out into the dust under that gold mohur tree. I wasn’t hurt, which made me all the more frightened, and I yelled at him and called him names and asked him why he didn’t look where he was going, and told him he might have broken my leg.’

It was an interesting game to work out—since I knew Victoria’s worries quite well—what this was leading to.

Then she said, ‘Well, Molly was standing on the verandah when I got to the bungalow, and she’d heard the crash and me shouting at the Chinaman. When we got inside she said, “You know, while you were ticking him off down there I thought for one awful minute it was your sister. I thought, Oh God, Rose Mary is coming to pay a social call.” I asked her why Rose Mary should call on her. She said, “Because she is going to marry Master George Albert Howland or the in the attempt.” I didn’t say anything because, you know, it does look as if she’s right, doesn’t it?’

I said, ‘It does.’

She went on, ‘Then Molly said, rather carefully for her. “It
would be an awful pity, I think, don’t you?” and then she started to ask questions about us—I mean, were we serious—was I, and——’

I said, ‘You poor girl. You must never get into a talk like that again without some reserve ammunition—which you must not fire off except in the last resort. Here.’ I got down and knelt on the floor beside her. I said, ‘Victoria, my intentions are to reach your heart by the shortest and least heavily defended route, which God has provided for the purpose, and then to ask you to marry me.’ I got back on the sofa, but she knew I wasn’t joking. She put her head against mine and kept it there and didn’t speak or move for a long time.

She said, ‘Molly intended to find out. I
did
want to tell her to mind her own business. I thought, We’ll never find out what’s good and what’s no good under this continuous pressure—will we?’

I bit her ear to save myself from saying that perhaps the pressure was part of our problem. Without it, the problem would be altered. It wouldn’t be the one we faced, so any answer we came to might be the wrong answer.

Victoria said, ‘But even her inquisitiveness was helpful, really, because it made me think. I had to ask myself how important this is. I had to think about it all, and I decided that sometimes I was carried away by love, so it must be love. But at other times, when I’m not with you, I know I’ve been calculating what it would mean.’

‘For you?’ I said.

She said, ‘Yes, I don’t know what it would mean for you. How can I? You would work that out for yourself, wouldn’t you? You hadn’t asked me to marry you, and——’

‘I
haven’t,
’ I said.

She went on as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘And I don’t know whether you will. You never make a mistake, do you?’

I was going to say something to make her jump, but, goddam it, I found my self purring complacently. I said in a pompous way, ‘Oh, I make mistakes. Was Molly hinting that people can be lonely in marriage if they don’t belong to the same clubs? Even if their bed does work overtime?’

Victoria said, ‘Yes, she pointed that out. But then she said’—and she imitated Molly—‘ “My God, I think sometimes I’d be happier with a Hottentot than with Henry—with
any
one who just
once
a year,
some
how, made me want to stand on my head and wiggle my toes in the air.” And then she said, “I’m telling you all this just to muddle you.” But she was really trying to warn me that everything isn’t wonderful for Anglo-Indians in England, not in the upper classes. Then she was reminding me that if we had children one might be as white as you and the other very dark, darker than Mater.’

I said, ‘Mrs Mendel-bloody-Dickson wants a good——’ and Victoria said, ‘Now, Rodney, it was you who called me Miss Starkie.’ She was quite right. So was I, that first time. The fate of Miss Starkie was one of our hurdles. I thought of two kids in England—brothers at Wellington, say—one white, one dark. People would blink when they saw them. They’d force themselves to treat the dark one the same as the other, and he’d be bound to feel it. Jesus, if a dark one was born to us, people would go round saying Victoria had got into bed with a Negro at the docks for money. They’d say anything if they thought she and her children were a danger to their own lilywhite sons and daughters.

Victoria said, ‘But what Molly didn’t say, which would be very important, I think, is that you would be thinking you had to look after me and protect me all the time. Like you did in the club.’

She began to talk about Molly’s kids. They were nice-looking kids, both of them, both fair-haired and white-skinned and blue-eyed. And of course she hadn’t changed the subject.

That gave me an idea. I could make a mistake, and go on making mistakes until we got results. I mean, I could make sure Victoria got pregnant by me. Then she wouldn’t have to think any more, because in her society mistakes of that kind are not rare. There is a well-organized way of dealing with them—an unhysterical marriage. There would also be a fine astringent irony, for me, in the resulting situation, when my numerous ill-wishers would joyfully conclude that I’d been trapped at last, and by a cheechee girl. If the child happened to be a little
brown-skinned, they’d decide with still more pleasure that it wasn’t my doing at all, but some other Anglo-Indian’s—probably Patrick’s—or an Indian’s.

As I’ve said before, I was beginning to realize how many trumps Patrick Taylor held. A child would give me the ace, though. And yet—in spite of her willowy figure and full brassiere and bedroom eyes—Victoria was a wise woman. She’d be capable of taking the baby to the man she really wanted to marry and saying, I love this baby and I have loved the man who fathered it on me. But I want to marry
you
.

I said, ‘I’ll take you home.’

She said, ‘But I thought you——’ and I said, ‘Yes. We’ll walk. I’ll push your ruddy bike.’

Some of my subalterns, particularly Master Albert Howland, had been mishandling the battalion vehicles when they’d taken them out for private purposes. So I’d just cancelled my general permission for officers to use them. Of course I could have taken my jeep just the same. A C.O. doesn’t have to obey his own orders; often he can’t. But I’m a wary sod, and I keep honest on the principle that every peccadillo and minor carelessness gives someone a hold over me.

We set out at once but didn’t hurry. We walked through cantonments, holding hands in a most unmilitary way. A lot of men saw us, and one or two smiled as they saluted, but they weren’t being superior. For some reason the Gurks like me as much as I like them, and as they are also believers in the religious merit of copulation I thought some of the little blighters were going to throw garlands or flowers at us, they looked so pleased and congratulatory. I thought suddenly, How much longer am I going to be surrounded by people like this? I wanted to leave Victoria and go off and play cards in the N.C.O.s’ club.

We strolled on down the Pike. The moon was full, and the city shone brilliantly dear on our left front. On the right the day’s dust over the fields and the mist above the river were full of moonlight. My thoughts couldn’t have been farther from Burma and the late unpleasantness, but listening and noticing had become a habit, so I heard the pi-dogs barking crazily on
the edge of the city about three hundred yards away across the Pike. I stopped and listened to see if I could hear anything more, but I couldn’t. Victoria waited patiently, and then we went on again, but I was uneasy.

As we passed the Collector’s garden a tonga trotted up the Pike from the city toward our lines, with seven Gurks jammed in it. I recognized Mandhoj’s voice; he was a little devil in B Company who would always find any mischief there was going. He had put a frog in my boots once, in recruits’ camp. They recognized me, of course, in that light, and all tried to salute, sitting three deep in one another’s laps. The clip-clop of the pony’s hoofs got fainter up the Pike, and we went on down.

About a hundred men and women swept silently out from between the houses on the left of the Pike. I saw them before they saw me, and thought of running—but there was nowhere to run to. Victoria stiffened beside me, gasped, ‘Rodney, look at——’ and then they were all round us. I saw that each man carried a stave—a big balk of wood, rather—and noticed a couple of men with steel crowbars. They didn’t touch us, but they were all round us and saying nothing. I didn’t have my carbine with me.

Mr Surabhai forced his way through, peered into our faces, and hissed, ‘Sssst! or you are a dead man—and a dead lady, of course. Good evenings, Miss Jones and Colonel Savage, it is indeed a pleasure to meet you here.’ He shook us by the hand in turn. Then he glanced conspiratorially up and down the moonlit Pike and whispered, ‘On, on! We must take this lady and gentleman with us, as they are of the opposition party and will be otherwise in duty bound to give intimation of our progress to the authorities. Please to come with me. Keep close at hand, and do not make one effort to escape!’

We crossed the Pike with them, and I saw the Kutcherry ahead and knew what they were going to do. We hurried across a patch of fallow land and stopped at the side of the Kutcherry, behind the offices.

Mr Surabhai waved his umbrella—he was not carrying a club—and said, ‘We have had enough high-handed behaviour
on your parts. It is scandalous that the Sirdarni-sahiba should be held in prison without bail. We are going to release her from vile durance.’

I said, ‘Good show,’ and edged closer to Victoria. I looked around carelessly, trying to sum up the faces. This was an operation anyone could be proud of. The people must have left their houses at different times and gone by different paths to a rendezvous outside the city. Then they had moved across country, using the full moon, and here they were, unsuspected, on the blind flank of the Kutcherry. Surabhai was the leader, but he hadn’t arranged this. There was a pale intense-looking young fellow near him, who, I thought, was Roy’s hand in this particular job. I did not think the crowd would hurt Victoria or me, but the police sentry at the jail had a rifle, and once he fired, God knew what would happen.

The intense young man whispered to Surabhai, ‘Comrade, hold the woman and walk with her in front of you to the jail. Tell the sentry she will be hurt if he fires or does anything to call for help.’

He had a quick mind, that fellow. Obviously meeting us couldn’t have been in the original plan. Surabhai said, ‘But my dear fellow, we couldn’t do that. That would not be chivalrous.’

The young man swore, but he realized at once that he wouldn’t shift Surabhai, so he said, ‘Hold the man then.’

Doubtfully Surabhai said to me, ‘Would you mind that, Colonel?’ and I said, ‘Not a bit. A pleasure.’ The young fellow grabbed my arms and twisted them behind me, and we and Surabhai and a few others walked round toward the main gate. I told Victoria to stay back, but she wouldn’t.

The police sentry was not placed to prevent people from getting into the jail from outside, but to prevent the prisoners from getting out. The jail is merely a row of cells leading off a verandah. That is one side of the Kutcherry, and the Treasury and offices occupy two other sides. The fourth side is open, but bounded by a fence of high iron railings. The big double gate in the fence is the only way to get into the Kutcherry.

We reached the gate, and Surabhai called the sentry. He wandered over, trailing his rifle butt on the ground behind
him, and said, ‘What’s the matter, brother?’ He was a stolid bullock of a U.P. Moslem.

Surabhai said, his voice breaking with excitement, ‘Open, comrade, in the name of freedom.’

The constable said, ‘What’s that, what did you say? What’s the hurry?’ The lights were kept burning all night along the jail verandah, and I saw the Sirdarni’s face at the bars of her cell, the one farthest from the gate.

The young fellow said, ‘Open, you swine, or we will batter these English people’s heads in.’

The sentry was beginning to get annoyed. He said, ‘I can’t open for you. There is no order. Who are you, anyway? It’s Mr Surabhai, isn’t it?’

Surabhai screamed, ‘Yes, yes, open, comrade! We have come to rescue——’ and the young man whistled between his teeth, and the rest of the crowd ran forward with the staves and crowbars. Surabhai at last succeeded in making the constable understand that we would be hurt if he took any action, so he stood still and glared angrily at Surabhai. His blood was up by then. The crowd began to push and batter at the gates. all together. The young fellow saw me moving over to get close to Victoria again and shouted, ‘Stand still, or I’ll kill you,’ and Surabhai wailed, ‘Oh, no, don’t do that, dear fellow, not on any account!’