Bhowani Junction (8 page)

For a few minutes I couldn’t concentrate. I didn’t know what to believe about the Kasel business. I tried to catch Victoria’s eye, but she did not look at me once, and there was no expression on her face. When she got her note-pad and pencil out I shook my head to try to forget it and think of why we’d come here.

Govindaswami and Savage had introduced themselves by then, and Govindaswami was beginning to go over the same story he’d told Lanson, Williams, me, and Victoria the week before. Savage listened without speaking.

Then Savage explained how and why he had positioned his men, and about our patrol in the night. Savage finished by saying, ‘So I can keep the line well patrolled. I can destroy any attack in force. But it doesn’t look to me as if that’s the principal danger. I can’t prevent one or two men pulling a rail or loosening a fish-plate in the middle of the night. And it’s going to be difficult for me to keep proper military secrecy about the movements of my patrols and other activities. Too many railway people have to know about them.’

‘You fear saboteurs, or their collaborators, within the railway organization?’ Govindaswami asked.

‘Yes. But your police are supposed to keep me informed, aren’t they? Meantime I’m going to treat all the railway people with suspicion—except the Anglo-Indians.’ It was funny to hear myself talked about like that, especially to an Indian.

The Collector said, ‘The present danger is that men whose aims are constitutional may be used by men whose aims are anti-constitutional—the danger that Congress man A gets information and passes it on to Congress men B, C, and D, in order that they may organize a legitimate protest of some kind. Whereupon Congress man D—or Congress-hanger-on D—uses that information to blow up a train.’

‘Your innocent Congress man A being secret Congress man Ranjit Singh Kasel, for instance? Or do you think he’s D, the wrecker?’ Savage said.

‘I don’t know about him for certain,’ Govindaswami said. ‘But I do know that the Congress high command has just passed us word, most secretly, that K. P. Roy is certainly somewhere in this province. It might easily have been him you shot at last night.’

Savage said, ‘That’s the same Roy who went to Japan with Bose in nineteen forty, isn’t it?’

Govindaswami said, ‘Yes. After that, though, he went to Russia. He left Russia last year.’

Savage said, ‘I’ll recognize him again if I meet him in the same circumstances. That is, if it was Roy I shot at last night.’

I opened my mouth, ready to say, How could you? It was nothing but a shape, a change of light, that we had seen on the hill outside that village. I was ready to protest that no one could recognize it again. But I held my tongue because Savage’s words reminded me of something I had felt out there—that Savage used the darkness the way other people use tools or pens. It wasn’t exactly that he could see very well at night, though he could. It was the
using
as an instrument, like a good shikari or a cat burglar or a photographer in a dark room—or a leopard.

Govindaswami said, ‘Good. But there’s other trouble brewing—a U.R.W.I. strike.’

The Union of Railway Workers of India was an Indian trade union. None of
us
belonged to it, though they kept trying to get us to join. We had our own federation, which covered us, whatever job we were in. Sir Meredith Sullivan was the head of it.

Govindaswami said, ‘The union’s central committee is meeting in Calcutta now. They’ve got some genuine grievances. The main one they’re concentrating on is that European and Anglo-Indian train crews are excused from duty on shunting and van trains where there is no separate running room for them. That is the case, isn’t it, Mr Taylor?’

‘We always have been,’ I said. ‘How can they expect our
train crews to pass the night in an Indian running room, among——’

Govindaswami said, ‘Well, the U.R.W.I. think you shouldn’t be excused any more. You understand, Savage, a problem like that can’t be settled out of hand. At least, it can be, but only in one way—by making all running rooms common to all communities. That is a big step, which the Railway Board is not willing to take yet. So this strike is brewing, and I’m trying to find out what is known about it here. The chairman of the union’s Bhowani branch is a fellow called Kartar Singh—another Sikh. He’s a—what is he, Mr Taylor?’

‘A signals fitter,’ I said. Kartar Singh was a Bolshie bastard, always making trouble. I knew him.

Savage waited, and Govindaswami said, ‘I’d like Miss Jones to talk to Kartar Singh.’ His gold tooth glittered when he talked.

‘What good’s that? He must know she’s with the Army,’ Savage said.

‘Yes. But he also knows that she’s a sensible and sympathetic young woman. He’s a sensible fellow himself, though he can’t often afford to show it, or he’d lose his union position. Do you mind, Miss Jones?’

‘I will do my best,’ Victoria said, but not very enthusiastically. We all looked at her. I wondered whether she was still thinking of the Kasel business.

Govindaswami stood up. He said to Savage, almost as though he wanted to change the subject, ‘I’m afraid we’re in for a thin time, Savage.’

Savage stood up. He said, ‘In fact, Collector, you suspect there will be dastardly outrages?’ He spoke in a funny, precise way.

Govindaswami stroked his chin and said, ‘I am sure of it, Savage.’

Savage said, ‘Govindaswami, you are marvellous.’

Govindaswami said, ‘Elementary, my dear Savage. I rely on you, old fellow. The scoundrels will stop at nothing.’

Savage was smiling by then. He said, ‘Cheltenham and Balliol?’

Govindaswami said, ‘Correct. Wellington and Sandhurst?’

Savage said, ‘Correct—but that’s not a guess, that’s a bloody certainty. I’ve got to go. You’d better see Rartar Singh right away, Miss Jones.’

‘Very good, sir,’ she said, and we went out.

As soon as we were outside I said to Victoria, ‘What were they talking about at the end there? Why were they speaking in that funny way?’

She looked at me and said, ‘It is a joke. An English joke.’

I can see a joke as well as the next man, I hope—in fact I have a jolly good sense of humour—but I didn’t see anything funny about it, although I thought for a few moments.

Then I went ahead on the Norton to the station. I wanted to find Kartar Singh before Victoria arrived on her bicycle. Govindaswami hadn’t asked me, a railway officer, to speak to the fellow, which was just like his damned nerve, but I was going to be there all the same.

By the time I’d found that Kartar Singh was somewhere round the North Box, Victoria had arrived. I met her on the platform. It was a little after six o’clock; the sun was low and the rails empty and shining. Ninety-Seven Down Express was the next passenger train due, in about twenty minutes. Number 2 platform was already crowded.

I told Victoria where Kartar Singh would be, and I also said, because I was fed up with everything, ‘The U.R.W.I. people are always talking of strikes. The Collector has got the wind up, that’s all, I think.’

She said, ‘Oh?’ and stepped down to the footpath to walk along to the North Box. I stepped down after her. She said, ‘There’s no need for you to come.’

I said, ‘He may refuse to answer you. He’ll talk to me. He is just a stuck-up coolie.’

She must have seen that I had made up my mind, so we started out. She did not talk at all as we walked up there alongside the batteries of point bars and the sheafs of signal wires and the lamps and the low ground shunt signals. Soon we came to the foot of the tall north gantry and, a few yards after that, to the signal box.

I have been on or near railways all my life, but I hope the time will never come that I will be bored in a signal box. From the windows of Bhowani North Box you can see all the lines and over the platform canopy into the yards. The row of big shiny steel levers stretches along under the front windows, and the block instruments are just above the windows. The lights move on the track-circuiting diagram whenever a train moves about within the station limits, and the telegraph bells ring,
ding-ding,
and you can hear the clank of buffers and smell the engine smoke.

One of the telegraphs was ringing the call-attention beat when I spotted Kartar Singh. He was under the far windows, and I beckoned to him. The signalman took no notice of us. He was busy.

Kartar Singh is stocky and strong and has a thick black beard. He always wears a dark-blue turban, and his legs are short and thick and hairy. His face is broad and usually expressionless.

I told him that the miss-sahiba wanted to speak to him. He looked at Victoria and said, ‘What does the lieutenant miss-sahiba want to speak to me about? I am only a coolie.’

He was actually smiling at her—like his damned cheek—and Victoria smiled too and said, ‘I’m not really a lieutenant, Kartar. I’m Driver Jones’s daughter. You know me, surely?’

‘Jones-sahib is a good man and a good driver,’ Kartar Singh said.

Victoria said, ‘Well, it’s about him. About the railway. I’d like to speak to you. Can you come outside a minute? It’s very busy in here.’

The telegraph bells kept ringing, and the lights were moving on the diagram. The signalman put his bare foot up against the lever frame and hauled back with all his might with both hands on a lever, and it slammed back.

Kartar Singh said, ‘Very well, miss-sahiba,’ and followed us down the steep steps to the ground. When we got down Victoria said, ‘There’s no need for you to stay, Patrick.’

I know what she was thinking—that Kartar Singh didn’t like me, and she’d get more out of him if I wasn’t there. That’s
what Govindaswami had thought too, when he didn’t ask me to investigate the strike. But they were wrong. Natives like Kartar Singh don’t respect you unless you keep them in their place. I wasn’t going to leave Victoria alone with that fellow to be insulted.

I said, ‘I will stay, Victoria. I have nothing else to do.’

‘Very well,’ she said. She turned to Kartar Singh. We were standing dose together under the north wall of the box. Victoria made a couple of false starts—she didn’t know what was the best way to begin—and then she thought, I suppose, that she’d better get straight down to brass tacks. She said, ‘Kartar, is there going to be a U.R.W.I. strike here?’

It was twilight then, and the sky was turning grey-blue. The electric lights came on in the station and in the box above us. Kartar looked at her without moving a muscle of his face, and without speaking.

I said, ‘Answer the lady!’

Victoria said, ‘Patrick, will you please shut up?’

Kartar said to her, ‘Why do you want to know particularly? Your father will get paid whether there’s a strike or not. They will not lay off the sahib drivers and firemen and guards.’

She said, ‘It’s not that. You know I’m working for the Army. They’re worried in case a strike might lead to violence. They have to be ready to help the police, and you know how unsettled people are everywhere.’

‘We in the nnion will not be violent,’ Kartar Singh said. ‘But we will not be forced to work, either. That has happened in the past.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but, Kartar, there
may
be violence if there is a strike. You want to help prevent any possibility of that, don’t you?’

‘Not a bit of it,’ I said then. ‘Karter Singh would like to cut everybody’s throat, wouldn’t you?’ I said it with a laugh to show that I was making a joke.

Kartar Singh looked at me and said, ‘Some people’s throats, yes. Everybody’s, no.’

Victoria said, ‘Can you tell us about the strike, then? Surely it’s not secret.’

‘I can’t tell you, miss-sahiba.’ He looked at her, and she looked at him. Then he looked at me, and then she looked at me. He said, ‘We have cause to strike.’

This was too jolly much. I said, ‘No, you don’t, no cause at all! You are just getting jolly well too big for your boots, that’s all.’

Victoria turned to Kartar Singh and said very politely, ‘Would you mind waiting here a minute? I’ll be right back.’

Kartar Singh nodded. Victoria took my arm and led me a little apart. It was obvious that she had a plan to make him talk. I thought, She will suggest that we take him up the line and then I beat him up until he tells the truth. That was the way to deal with him.

When we got fifty yards or so away from the North Box she said, ‘Patrick, I came back from Delhi ready to love you. And I found you were everything I didn’t want to be. When I’m in trouble, you don’t notice. When I’m happy, you spoil it. When I’m depressed, you are more depressed. When I ask you to do something, you don’t do it. When I ask you not to do something, you do it. You allow Colonel Savage to make a fool of me. You think I was necking with Ranjit last night—oh, I know you do, don’t try to deny it. And now you’re preventing me from doing my work.’

I stammered, ‘B-but, Victoria——’

She whispered angrily, ‘Don’t “but” me, you
fool
! You’re a bully, and you’re self-satisfied, and—and, oh, you’re a bloody cheechee! Now go away. I don’t want to see you again except on duty.’

‘But, Victoria——’ I said.

She was gone, walking quickly back toward the North Box.

I sat for a long time in the refreshment room, drinking beer. At first I was crying and trying to hide my face by turning my back to the room. It was empty, I think. There may have been someone in there; I can’t remember. Victoria and I were going off on separate lines, and we used to have such fun together. I had tried to bring her back to our line, the only main line possible for Anglo-Indians, but she wouldn’t come. And I couldn’t go where she seemed to want to go.

I drank more beer. With the beer, I began to get angry. She would not come back to me because she had become a fast, loose girl in the Army, that was the truth. She had slept with this Captain Tallent, and she was necking with Macaulay and making eyes at Kasel—a Wog, my God—and she thought
we
were finished. She hated me and did not care what happened to me. I said to myself, My God, I will show her she can’t push me around!

That was a time of the evening when, before Victoria came back, I often used to take Rose Mary out for a ride. I left the refreshment room and drove the Norton like hell to Number 4 Collett Road. Rose Mary was in. She was reading, which she never did. It was just as though she’d been waiting for me.