Authors: John Masters
Steve Ellington was due to come through Bhowani at 1644 on Friday—that was on Number 98 Up. Steven had commanded a British battalion next to us for a good spell of Burma, and though I do not like the majority of British Service types, I liked Ellington and his battalion. Now he was on his way back to England with three or four officers and a lot of B.O.R.s, who’d all fallen due for Python at the same time.
We’d arranged to give them a reception in the thirteen minutes Up spent at Bhowani Junction.
These railway-station parties used to be quite common before the war. The cause of them was always the same—someone going home to England. We’d sing up and down the platform and drink a lot in the refreshment room and make a great nuisance of ourselves. The Indian passengers enjoyed the show as much as we did. The Anglo-Indian station and train staffs were much glummer. No one could or would arrest us in those days. It was all very lordly and magnificent. I suppose the railway people felt about our antics much as we felt about their A.F.I.—that they were ludicrous and rather shameful, but you couldn’t do anything about them.
The monsoon had broken, and it was raining like hell when we got to the station, Victoria and I and all my officers in a large group. The part of the platform sheltered by the canopy was crowded with would-be passengers. We were early, and then we found that Number 98 was going to be twenty minutes late. In a mob we forced into the European refreshment room and shouted for whiskies and sodas. We left the mess orderlies on the platform, guarding a tin trunk full of ice and champagne bottles. The orderlies kept a clear space round themselves by waving their hands and spouting ‘shoo!’ at everybody, as to goats. The jemadar-adjutant was there with a few N.C.O.s and a few crates of beer. The rain beat steadily down on the edge of the platform and ran off in a stream down the gutter between the rails.
There is nothing depressing about the first month of monsoon rain. It takes at least that long to get over the delight of seeing it and feeling it. But I suddenly decided I couldn’t stand the noise and wet capes over the backs of the chairs and the damned jollity in the refreshment room. I said, ‘Here, I’ve had enough of this. Let’s get out on the platform.’ I drank my whisky and got up. Victoria came with me.
We struggled out through the crowd. Rose Mary was there with Howland. Howland raised his glass as I passed him, and shouted, ‘Wotcher, chief! Have one on me, Colonel. I’ll be on this train in a month.’ A momentary anxiety crossed Rose
Mary’s face, a quick calculation. She would have to make sure within that month that she would be on the same train. Any sensitive girl would think twice before doing anything that Rose Mary was doing.
I stopped by Howland and said, ‘Thank you, no. And I’ve told you before that in this regiment subalterns address field officers as “Sir”, not “Major”, or “Colonel”, or even “Chief’. You are not in the Royal Army Pay Corps, unfortunately.’
Howland edged back from me. His beefy face, already flushed, settled into hurt resentfulness. Victoria followed me out, and as she passed them I heard Rose Mary mutter, not too loudly, ‘Your boy friend’s got a liver this afternoon, hasn’t he?’
Outside, I didn’t wait for Victoria to speak, though I don’t suppose she was going to. As we pushed through the mob I said, ‘If you’re about to ask me to be nice to Howland, don’t. I’ve always been the same, and he’s always been the same. He’s convinced that I don’t see his good qualities because I’m a narrow-minded regular. I’m convinced that he’s one of the most naturally talented blighters I’ve ever come across. He will go far in civilian life. And he and Rose Mary will make a fine pair.’
There was no doubt that Rose Mary had hooked him. He’d asked to see me early that morning, as man to man. It was an interview which would have driven me to a yammering incoherence of fury at the best of times. He asked me to give him my considered opinion on the wisdom of marrying an Anglo-Indian. Did I think it would work out all right? ‘You’re so wise, Colonel. I know you don’t like me, Colonel, but I do admire you, Colonel’—three bags full, etc., etc. Oh, Master Howland needed to have his name written on the soles of his boots so that when he disappeared up my arse the adjutant would know where to find him. He had the salesman’s aggressive ability to spot any spark of generosity—which he would call a weakness—and with it he had the salesman’s sense of self-preservation. He didn’t actually mention Victoria, but because of her he thought he could force me to get matey and swop confidences, measurements, and performance details with
him. The fat sod.
We stopped near the station entrance, and I glowered at the people struggling in with their boxes and rolls and bundles. Victoria saw Govindaswami farther down and drew my attention to him. I peered over the heads of the crowd. He was talking to Ranjit—and the Sirdarni-sahiba. It looked as if she was catching the train. He’d never pressed any charge against her, so she’d been out of jail for more than a week.
We waited, pressed closed by the crowd. Patrick passed by, pushing and shoving as usual. But, looking round, I saw Indians shoving and Gurkhas shoving, and we had been shoving, and no one seemed to mind. Perhaps there was a different atmosphere in Bhowani since Surabhai had died for democracy.
Patrick didn’t see us before he turned up the stairs to the district offices and disappeared. When he had gone Victoria said, ‘Has he seen Mr Stevenage yet?’
I said, ‘How the hell do I know? I’m not his keeper, though God knows he needs one.’ William Stevenage had arrived the day before on his way to visit the cement orchard or glue mine or whatever it was his firm owned at Cholaghat. But of course my telegram had also had something to do with his arrival. He was staying with Sammy for a couple of days before continuing his journey into the mofussil. I’d had a talk with him about things in general. He hadn’t come to the station for this party.
Sammy came up to us and tipped his panama nicely to Victoria. He said blandly, ‘Can you tell me why the arrival of a train is so exciting? Even when one is grown-up and presumed to have become blasé?’
I said, ‘A steam engine is a libidinous symbol representing lusts that you absorbed into your subconscious at the age of one month while you lay asleep in a cot in your parents’ bedroom. In and out and round and round. Don’t try to fob me off with dirty notions at this time of the afternoon. Where’s the Sirdarni-sahiba going? Visiting friends?’
Sammy sighed, removed his panama, and mopped his brow. He answered, ‘You could call it that. The friends live in War
saw, whence there is a good train service, I believe, to the east.’
I said, ‘She’s going to Russia? Are you people letting her?’
He said, ‘We can’t stop her. It’s a world conference of some kind. She will be back. But not for a year or two. Not till after you’ve followed
your
friend away, on this train, and gone back whence you came.’
I said, ‘And Ranjit?’
He said, ‘He made her go—by becoming a Sikh. It’s been a great triumph of love and determination for him. She was trying to be two things at once—and to make him the same—a Communist and an Indian. It can’t be done. So they’re parting here at Bhowani Junction, he to become an Indian, and she to become a Communist.’
I drew on my cheroot and looked carefully over Sammy’s calm bony face. I took the cigar from my mouth and said, ‘You know, Govindaswami, you are a dashed good fellow for a native. Allow me the privilege of putting you up for my club next time you are in Town.’
Sammy’s face became solemn. He said, ‘You are extraordinarily kind yourself, Savage. In fact, you are a white man. I presume that some of your best friends are natives?’
I said, ‘Indeed that is so, Govindaswami.’
He said, ‘It is such men as you who help me to forget my unfortunate pigmentation. But tell me, Savage, do you not fear that Clutterbuck will whiteball me?’
I said, ‘All right, all right, here’s the train.’ Sammy turned and led the way through the shrieking people on the platform. Patrick came down the stairs just before we got to them, and stood with his hands in his pockets. Sammy passed dose to him and said, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Taylor.’ Patrick ignored him but said, ‘Good afternoon,’ to Victoria and me and tried to smile.
As we went on Sammy said, ‘He’s having a bad time. You have heard that he is under a month’s notice of dismissal from the railway?’
Victoria stopped dead among the seething crowds, as if he’d punched her over the heart. The engine of 98 passed by, clank
ing and hissing. Her father would be along soon if he wasn’t here already. Above everything else I heard the shrill foxhunting yells from the end of the platform, and the shouts, and Molly Dickson’s shriek—‘Oh, come down and
kiss
me, Steve, you gorgeous beast!’
I saw Steve in the door of his carriage and thought, There he is, on his way out. Soon I would go. We’d all go. It wasn’t desertion, for us, was it? It was the British people deserting their responsibility, wasn’t it? Then why didn’t I stay? Because I didn’t belong here, not as a stone or a stream belongs. Or a cheechee engine driver’s little girl, in a big topi with a waterproof cover, playing in the dust beside the red-hot rails.
We went down to the crowd. Everyone was out on the platform, jabbering like monkeys beside the train. The rain hissed on the carriage roofs and drummed on the canopy and ran whispering down the window panes. Birkhe had three champagne glasses insecurely held in his hands and an anxious look on his face. A cork popped, and Molly shrieked, ‘Goody!’ Simkin!’ I managed to get hold of Steve Ellington.
Steve’s eyes flickered when I took Victoria’s hand and said, ‘This is
it,
Steve. But he was well trained, and the flicker went, and his smile widened, and he said, ‘You poor girl! It looks as though you haven’t lost your luck, Rodney,’ and the damned fool meant it. He didn’t care about her colour any more than I did. In the beginning he’d come out from England with his head full of the usual British Service notions about ‘native troops’ and ‘the babu mentality’—I’d had the same notions—but, unlike Winston Churchill, Steve had had the chance to grow out of them. When his boys took the Kyaukpadaung Ridge they didn’t have to dirty their boots in the mud. They could tread on the Gurkhas and Dogras who lay there already, thick as autumnal leaves that strew et cetera. He was never very white after that, except as a joke.
No, it was the fact that she was a half-caste that made his eyes flicker. Anglo-Indians weren’t brave, or even despicable. They were never in situations where they could be either. They were only comical. They tried to marry British soldiers. They spoke like Welshmen. They wore topis at midnight.
We started drinking toasts. Farther down, the B.O.R.s leaned out of the windows, knocked off the tops of the beer bottles against the side of their carriage, and shouted cheerfully in pidgin Hindustani to the Gurkhas. Old Manbir had now arrived down there to join the jemadar-adjutant’s group.
Victoria was looking strange. The champagne seemed to have gone straight to her eyes. She was turning her head from side to side and examining us as though we were a lot of strangers. As though she were saying to herself, Where do I belong in this? Among the frenetic passengers waving from the upper decks, or among the ordinary people who were contorting their faces into smiles but would stay behind? I knew the answer damned well, just as I knew I’d been a traveller for too many generations to change.
Victoria’s father passed by on the outskirts of our crowd. She waved desperately to him to come to her, but he grinned and held up his lunchbox and thermos and train orders. He had to go. He looked foolishly happy with his red bandanna and hunched shoulders and bad teeth. Both his daughters were here among the officers, and they were both drinking champagne. Champagne didn’t mean Brighton to him. I saw him stop a little farther up and look back at us all: Rose Mary, her glass in her hand, shrilling with laughter; Victoria, her flank touching the flank of a lieutenant-colonel.
A little later the conductor-guard blew his whistle imperiously. The engine whistled. None of us took any notice, except Victoria, who said, ‘The train is due to go now.’ Five minutes later the conductor-guard came up, brushing specks off his starched white drill, and touched my arm. He said, and he had a terrific cheechee singsong, ‘Thee express is late now, sir. Please ask thee officers too board thee train.’
‘Oh, keep the damned train here,’ I said, ‘Give it a drink. Have a drink yourself. Birkhe, give the conductor-sahib a drink.’
‘Mr Glover can’t drink on duty, sir,’ Victoria said. This Glover knew all about that night we’d had in this train. He’d been the conductor that night too. He didn’t like me because of it. He was smiling now, but sweating and angry under the
white drill, and afraid to show it. Why didn’t he show it, damn him? He said, ‘Please ask them too board thee train now, sir. It is me who will get into trouble, sir.’
I said sourly, ‘That would be terrible,’ but Steve and his people climbed back into their compartments. Glover blew his whistle and waved his green flag. Four B.O.R.s dashed out of the refreshment room with three bottles of beer in each hand and scrambled into their carriage. The rest cheered raucously.
The engine whistle shrieked, and the train began to move. Ellington was standing in the open doorway of his compartment, well back, to be out of the rain. His other officers had filled their toothmugs with champagne and were shouting toasts—‘Piccadilly!’ ‘Roll on!’ ‘Three cheers for General Twist!’ ‘
Up
General Twist!’ We were not behaving at all like Old Wykehamists, probably because none of us were.
Patrick pushed past behind us. I suppose he had a message for Glover, or perhaps he was just going that way and shoving because his name was Patrick Taylor. He wasn’t being obstreperous about it, just clumsily determined.
Birkhe was there, squeezed on to the rainy edge of the platform with a lot of empty champagne glasses in his hands. He was smiling at the B.O.R.s as they passed so close to him. A lance-corporal leaned out and tried to grab his hat as a souvenir. I began to smile, but Birkhe jerked his head and slipped—and he could have saved himself, but champagne glasses are beautiful and expensive, and Patrick’s big arm jumped out at him, and the back of the carriage came, and Birkhe fell between it and the guard’s van. Victoria’s glass tinkled on to the stone behind me. I thought I heard it tinkling for five minutes. I heard myself whisper among the tinkling, ‘Oh, Birkhe.’ If there was a sound from under the wheels the rumble of the train and the cheering and the yelling hid it. Only a few people had seen.