Bhowani Junction (4 page)

The noise on Number 1 platform while we were waiting for Sir Meredith Sullivan—that is, me and the reception committee—was perfectly terrible. It reminded me of the monkey house at the Calcutta Zoological Gardens. I checked my watch two or three times against the station clock. I was nervous. I even shouted at the natives to keep quiet, although everyone knows that is quite hopeless.

I was nervous because of Victoria. She stood there with us, but somehow not looking as if she was with us. She watched us, and I couldn’t tell whether it was a friendly recognition, like when I meet an old St Thomasian, or something else.

Williams, our railway policeman, was there, and, of course, Mrs Williams. Govindaswami was not there, and we were arguing about that while we waited. Mrs Fitzpatrick, the wife of the Train Controller, said, ‘I think he ought to have come. After all, he is the head of the district, officially, and Sir Meredith Sullivan is a knight and a very important gentleman.’

Mrs Williams agreed with her, but I don’t think she really cared one way or the other, because while she was speaking she was also putting on more lipstick, violet-coloured stuff. She had made her mouth into an O, and talked indistinctly through it She dyes her hair, and her topi is always very small and looks funny sitting on top of all that pile of golden curls.

Victoria asked whether her pater was going to bring the train in on time. I said, ‘He’s six and a half minutes late through Bargaon.’ The stationmaster had just told me. Bargaon was the next station down the line toward Delhi, and only three miles away, so the train would be in very soon.

Then I saw two little girls carrying bouquets of zinnias. There was supposed to be only one. I asked Mrs Williams. ‘Violet,’ I said, ‘who is supposed to present the bouquet to Sir Meredith Sullivan? Jane or Mavis? Look.’

Mrs Williams looked at the children and began to shout. Mrs Fitzpatrick began to shout. Williams joined in. So did I. There was a terrible noise, with us shouting, ‘Jane, who told you to come here with a bouquet of flowers?’ and ‘Mavis, what are you doing here, man?’ and ‘Patrick, you said clearly that Jane——’ and ‘I never said such a thing! It was left to the committee, clearly, to——’ and ‘Let go, let go! My mother told me not to give the flowers to anyone but the old sahib who got off the train,’ and ‘Oh, my God, be quick, here is the express!’

I was ashamed because Victoria stood there with that queer look on her face, and we were making more noise than the Wogs. We always do when we get excited. The English people never do. It put me in a bad temper with myself, deep down.

When I turned to Victoria she was looking down the line. We saw the black smoke above the houses far away. The line curved gently to the left. The smoke we saw was by the old temple beyond cantonments. About there the drivers on the mails and expresses always cut off steam. They’d close the regulator and open the drifting valve and coast in with the smoke trailing low along the carriage roofs. We’d watched them often, Victoria and I, in the evenings. When the sun was low it seemed to paint the carriage sides, which are dull red, with a brighter orange colour. Then a train of dust always whirled along behind the real train of carriages, and that would hang over the rails and for a long time afterward settle slowly on the crops and the patches of jungle and the huts in the fields. Beside the line the leaves on the trees were always grey or dusty red, not green or brown.

The engine whistled. That was for the cantonment level crossing where the Kishanpur road crossed, where we’d gone yesterday on the way to Pathoda. The train came in sight. The next time she whistled I saw the jet of steam from her whistle, counted, and then heard the whistle. It was for the Street of the Farriers, a narrow dirty crossing in the depths of the city, where there are low mud walls and the backs of filthy tenements on both sides. She wouldn’t whistle again until she reached the platform.

The engine came to the points under the signal gantry, and we watched the bogie lurch. It found the points and steadied, then the heavy locomotive frame swung over and steadied She whistled for the platform. She rolled clanging past.

Victoria waved her hand and shouted, ‘Pater!’ She left us and squeezed breathlessly away along the platform. It was years since she had seen him on an engine, and I knew it must be a good feeling. When we are on our jobs we are real men, as good as any Englishman, especially the drivers. Mr Jones looked pale and a bit grey and lined and bent in the shoulders, and his eyes were ringed and tired, but, my God, he was the man on the footplate, the driver of the engine, and he had brought 98 Up Express from Muttra and would take it on to Gondwara.

Then I had to turn and watch out for Sir Meredith Sullivan. I had never seen him in the flesh, and now I did, and I was very shocked. He was dying, and he was not really old. He wore a grey suit, collar, tie, and topi. Mrs Williams and Mrs Fitzpatrick and the little girls were tripping over one another to give him posies and introduce themselves and tell his bearer what to do with the suitcases; but Sir Meredith Sullivan was dying. His face was heavy, and the skin on it all slack and greeny white. He moved and smiled and shook hands as if he had already been dead some time.

Victoria came up with her father. It was my job to introduce him, so I said, ‘Sir Meredith Sullivan, this is Mr Thomas Jones. He is the driver of your train.’

Sir Meredith Sullivan said, ‘How are you, Thomas?’ and put his hand out. ‘It’s a long time since the Allahabad days.’

Mr Jones didn’t like to shake hands because he was dirty. He said, ‘A long time, yes, sir, it is a long time. Thank you, sir. Thank you. I must be getting back to my engine.’

Sir Meredith Sullivan said, ‘Good-bye, Thomas.’ I noticed he did not say I hope I’ll see you again soon, or anything like that. He was beyond that, and it made me feel cold. Not for him, but for all of us.

Mr Jones and Victoria noticed it too. Mr Jones’s face was pitted with dirt and coal dust. His eyes shone out of white
circles in the dirt He was wearing the red and white spotted bandanna handkerchief he always wore on his head when he was driving, tied at the back into a little tail, and he had a mess of cotton waste in his hands. He rolled it nervously, looking at Sir Meredith Sullivan, and rather frightened of what he saw, I think; then he went back to his engine.

I had begun to guide Sir Meredith toward the exit when the stationmaster pushed up to us and whispered in my ear. He said that two English officers on the train wanted to see me. I told him, ‘Not now, man! Later!’

The stationmaster said, ‘But they say it is urgent, Mr Taylor. They have a telegram.’

Then I saw I’d have to go, so I asked Sir Meredith Sullivan to excuse me.

‘Railway business comes first,’ he said.

I stood there with the perspiration wet on my forehead until the party had left the platform. Then I noticed Victoria. I mean, I saw her; I’d never forgotten she was there somewhere near. She would be thinking I was just a stooge at the beck and call of every piddling little officer. So I shouted, ‘Ah! Now let’s see these bloody people. I’ll teach them to waste my time. You watch me!’ I led the way as fast as I could go toward the back of the train.

The natives in the third-class were caterwauling, and their carriages were packed full, and more people were scrambling in on the top of the ones already there. The sun burned down on the carriage roofs and on the platform canopy. The carriage sides were like radiators sending out waves of heat over the platform. Indians shouted at me because I was pushing, and I shouted back at them. Several men were squatting on the platform edge, as usual, relieving themselves under the train.

The stationmaster said, ‘Here, Mr Taylor.’

There were a couple of dusty green valises side by side on the platform, and half a dozen suitcases and three or four guncases and a fishing-rod case. Two Gurkha soldiers with slung tommy-guns stood over the kit to prevent anyone from treading on it. An old bearer in white drill livery was waiting on the top step of a first-class compartment. When I came up he
turned his head and said in Hindustani to someone inside; ‘The railway person has come, sahib.’

‘The railway person!’ When I heard that, and Victoria there with me, it was the last straw.

The bearer stood aside. A pansy-looking, rather fat young man came out. He wore dark glasses and he had a big fair moustache. He was a lieutenant. He said in a very hoity-toity voice to me, ‘I say, are you in charge here? Didn’t you get the colonel’s telegram? There don’t seem to be any arrangements, do there?’

He had full, curved, red lips. I noticed them most particularly because they made me feel funny. Victoria stared at them too. Apart from the lips, which were frightening on a man, I’d seen plenty like him. He was hot and tired, and he was acting superior because I’m an Anglo-Indian.

Well, I was hot and tired, and I’d had enough. I waved my finger at him and shouted, ‘Why should there be any arrangements, mister? Did you want the whole staff of the Bhowani district to be lined up here on parade? You people in the military department think that the whole work of the railway department must stop for your benefit, but I tell you the war is over, and I tell you it is high time you knew that!’

The lieutenant blinked as though I’d hit him. He went red and said, ‘Here, who do you think you’re talking to?’ but he wasn’t sure of himself. I can always tell, because I’m never sure of myself. When I felt that about him I really felt on top.

I pushed in closer to him and shouted louder. ‘I do not care who you are, mister. I tell you I do not know anything about a telegram. You did not send any telegram here!’

Then he said, ‘Take your paws off me, you damned cheechee!’ I took a pace back and began to swing at him. I would have lost my job, but a job’s not everything. I’m six feet two inches, and I weigh fourteen and a half stone. I would have wiped the floor with him.

But someone by my ear said, ‘That’s enough.’ I stopped where I was. The man who spoke was very bitter, and he was as sure of himself as a tiger. I looked at him and saw at once
that he wasn’t trying to make himself unpleasant, and still his voice hit you like an electric shock.

He wasn’t wearing a hat or dark glasses. His eyes were pale blue, bloodshot, and rimmed with dust, and there were crow’s-foot wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and his forehead was lined. His hair was thick and dark. He was thin, about five feet ten inches tall, and clean-shaven. His face was quite long and became narrow below. He wore a single row of medal ribbons on his jungle-green bush shirt. I thought he was ill, of malaria perhaps. I was much bigger than he was, but I never remembered it, not even that first time.

He said to me, ‘My name is Savage. I command the First Battalion of the Thirteenth Gurkha Rifles. Have you had a telegram from General Headquarters, Delhi, or from the Railway Board, or from anyone else, warning you that my battalion is on its way here?’

It was like a cold hose being turned on me. I forgot the lieutenant and the crowd, and even Victoria. My mouth opened and shut, and I said, ‘Telegram from General Headquarters? Battalion? Here?’

Colonel Savage stared at me. His mouth tightened, and his eyes began to glitter. He said, ‘I see you haven’t. Nor have you had my telegram from Delhi telling you I was arriving on this train with my adjutant, Mr Macaulay here.’

I stammered, ‘Adjutant? Oh, my God, has that bloody man Kasel forgotten to tell me this?’ I took off my topi and wiped my forehead.

The colonel said, ‘I want to talk to you in your office.’

‘But Colonel——’ I said. What was the use of talking to me if I knew nothing?

‘Don’t say “but” to me. Five hundred Gurkha riflemen of my regiment are in the train now—in two trains. It is no joke to be in a troop train in this heat. If the arrangements for their reception are not completed in good time I’ll see that you, at least, suffer for it,’ he said. He held his Gurkha hat, the wide-brimmed felt hat, tightly in his hand. It was most unfair, what he said.

‘But, sir,’ I said and beat the top of my topi with my hand,
‘I don’t understand how—it is impossible——’

Victoria saw what a jam I was in. She said with a little laugh, ‘I worked in Transportation Directorate at General Headquarters, Patrick, and I’m afraid it’s possible enough. The man who sends those telegrams from Transportation is awfully nice, but he often forgets to send copies to everyone concerned. We’ve had trouble about that before.’

The colonel’s blue eyes came slowly round to her. He looked her up and down. His nostrils were pinched and his lips quite white. She laughed again, trying to make us all less tense, and said, ‘I expect you know, Colonel.’

He said, ‘You worked in Transportation Directorate? As a WAC (I)? Recently?’ He said it the Army way—‘Wack-eye.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Were you an officer or an auxiliary?’ he said.

‘I was a subaltern. I’m on leave pending release,’ she said.

He said, ‘You’d better come along to the office with us.’

The stationmaster was still there. He edged forward and said, ‘May I let the express go, sahib?’ It was impossible to tell whether he had spoken to me or the colonel, because he spoke to the air half-way between us. Only he usually called me Mr Taylor.

I looked at the colonel. The colonel said, ‘As far as I’m concerned.’ I said, ‘Let her go.’ The stationmaster waved his hand. The guard blew his whistle. Victoria stepped back a few paces to wave to her father. He was just climbing up on to the footplate with a billy of fresh tea. He saw her and waved, then disappeared into the cab. The first exhaust stroke boomed up, and the express started to move along the platform. The rumbling of the wheels got louder and quicker. Then the lines stood there empty under the sun, and we had to go up to my office.

Kasel stood up behind the desk when he saw us coming in. I said, ‘Kasel, there are two military troop specials on the way here. Find out where they are.’

Kasel smiled shyly at Victoria before turning to answer me. He said, ‘I know, Mr Taylor. One is at——’

It was too much. I felt myself going pale with anger, and I shouted, ‘What the hell do you mean, you know? How do you
know? Why didn’t you tell me?’