Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  Taylor shook his left fist under Victoria’s nose. In his right hand he brandished her pants. They were pink brief with a thin edging of lace round the legs. Taylor bawled, ‘I saw you lying naked on thee bed, like a tart! Naked on thee bed, I saw you. Oah, you are a——! Oah, you!’ He lashed out at her with his fist. I tightened my grip on his arm and pulled him back with a jerk, so that his fist hit the wall, not very hard. Bill Heatherington was laughing silently.

  Taylor turned on me and bawled, ‘And you, you stuck-up rotter! Just because you are a colonel in thee military department you think you can play fast and loose with my girl. You tried to get me out of thee way by killing me with an ink bottle, didn’t you?’

  I was sorry I’d never had a chance to apologize to him about that. Now wasn’t the time. I said, ‘Please talk softer, Taylor. I have a pierced eardrum. And stop insulting Miss Jones. I don’t know whether she is your girl, but I do know that she is my Intelligence Officer. She was not naked, nor was I.’

  ‘I saw you!’ he screamed, pounding the berth with his hand.

  Heatheringron broke in with, ‘Want any help, Rodney?’ and climbed on to the upper step of the door.

  I said, ‘No thanks, Bill. Mr Taylor’s rather excitable, but he is not dangerous.’ I don’t know why I had to be so unpleasant. Well, I do. Plain, common jealousy, available at all Woolworths.

  Taylor went quite pale and said slowly, ‘I will shoot you, Mister Colonel bloody Savage, I will shoot you.’

  I said, ‘I think defenceless Indian clerks are more your mark, Taylor.’ It wasn’t fair, but I don’t play fair. I play to win.

  Taylor stared at me and said with a kind of shocked wonder, ‘You are a cad, Colonel Savage. You know I was onlee doing my duty to protect the armoured car.’ He was a most admirable man, really.

  I said, ‘I understand, Taylor. Now—get out.’

  But he stood there still, in his dirty white shirt and his old St Thomasian’s tie and his down-at-heel black shoes, between us two colonels of infantry. Then he said, pleading with Victoria, ‘Vickee, you were on the berth, weren’t you? I saw you. I am not drunk.’

  She waited for me to answer. She wanted me to speak, and then it wouldn’t be her own hands that destroyed him. But I am not a cricketer. I am only a good first slip. I said nothing. At last she said, ‘No, I wasn’t. Please go away, Patrick. I don’t want to speak to you.’

  Taylor’s big hands opened and closed, but there was no one he could strangle there; they groped round for something to hold on to, but Victoria had moved out of his reach. He turned and stumbled out—with her pants.

  Victoria’s knees were shaking, and she sat down suddenly on the edge of the berth. Bill cleared his throat twice, obviously wondering whether he should say anything about what he had just seen. He kept his eyes away from Victoria. Someone blew a whistle, and I said, ‘We’d better get off the train.’ I told Birkhe to bring out our kit.

  It was cooler on the platform. I had begun to develop quite an eye for the beauty of the railway, and I don’t mean Victoria. The train made a good curve on the curved platform, and was finished off by a curve in another plane, the engine’s boiler and the stainless steel bands round it. The signal up there flicked to green, and the highlights on the boiler and on the steel bands changed from ruby to emerald.

  I wondered why Bill had come down to meet me. I told him I could have found my way out to his camp. Then I said, ‘You haven’t met Subaltern Jones, have you? Victoria, Bill Heatherington. He commands the Thirtieth Raj Rif.’

  ‘I’ve seen your name often,’ she said, holding out her band. Bill murmured, ‘How do you do, Miss Jones.’

  The train pulled out, southbound, and the empty rails were left there shining under the lights. I had to put Bill straight. I said, ‘Victoria is a WAC (I). She’s been doing Battalion Intelligence Officer as well as Railway Liaison Officer for me.’ I paused a long time and then added softly, speaking directly at Heatherington and looking at him and smiling, ‘And, she’s a very nice girl.’

  Heatherington grinned cheerfully at her then, she smiled back, and all the awkwardness had gone. It’s as easy as winking, if you’re born a son of a bitch, in the happy American phrase. The trouble is that the only people I like are people who can do it, like Birkhe—and all Gurkhas, for that matter—and Taylor. Now Heatherington’s inquisitiveness was satisfied, and Victoria’s reputation was at least partly refurbished. Heatherington was still smiling, as though saying to himself, Well, you lucky bastard Or perhaps he was smiling because Victoria was so beautiful and in love, and a very nice girl. Anyway, his look was just that—very nice, nothing more.

  Heatherington clicked his tongue, stopped, and fumbled in his pocket. He handed me a signal form and said, ‘Here, Rodney. This came for you an hour ago. I’ve just remembered that I came to the station to give it to you.’

  I took it, read it, and handed it to Victoria. This is it: SECRET. TO 30 RAJ RIF FROM 1/13 GR. FOR LIEUTENANT-COLONEL SAVAGE PERSONAL FROM COLLECTOR BHOWANI BEGINS TAYLOR HAS AUTHORIZED SEVERAL AFI MEN KEEP ARMS WITH THEM AS PERSONAL PROTECTION AGAINST ANTI-EUROPEAN ACTIVITIES HE CLAIMS TO HAVE RECEIVED YOUR PRIOR AUTHORITY RESULTING SITUATION INFLAMMABLE PLEASE RETURN BHOWANI EARLIEST TO DISCUSS WITH ME REGARDS GOVINDASWAMI ENDS

  She handed it back to me and said slowly, ‘Patrick has a pistol on him. I saw it in his pocket.’

  I hadn’t noticed that.

  I worked out that Taylor must have come down there to talk to the lieutenant of the Gondwara A.F.I. platoon. He’d find himself in front of a firing squad for fomenting a mutiny if he wasn’t careful. I wondered where he’d got to. I told Birkhe to ask the Stationmaster where he was, and bring him to us if he could.

  ‘Jee-lo, huzoor,’ Birkhe said.

  It didn’t matter a damn where Taylor was, except that I wanted him back in Bhowani after I’d talked to Govindaswami. I said, ‘Victoria, your leave is cancelled.’

  She smiled at me, her lips parted and the big warm bedroom eyes shining. She said, ‘It doesn’t matter, sir. I hadn’t even warned the Roviras that I was coming.’

  It was lucky in one way that this affair came up at that moment. Otherwise she might have been thinking more of Patrick the wronged lover, instead of Taylor the angry buffalo.

  I said, ‘And now, when does the next bloody train on the Delhi bloody Deccan bloody Rail-bloody-way bloody well leave for Bho-bloody-wani?’

  They laughed, and I took Victoria’s arm and said, ‘Let’s go and get something to eat.’

  ‘The next train back is Number One Down Mail, depart Gondwara twenty-three thirty-three, arrive Bhowani Junction oh-five forty-seven,’ she said happily. She knew the time table by heart.

  Heatherington said, ‘My God, the girl’s a walking Bradshaw.’

  I said, ‘She’s a railway girl, from Bhowani. She’s been wearing a sari to find out whether she prefers it that way.’

  Bill glanced at her in the light streaming from the door of the European refreshment room. He seemed to notice for the first time that she was an Anglo-Indian. He shook his head and said, It must be damned difficult.’

  She smiled at him for that and said quickly, ‘It is.’

  Bill pushed open the door of the refreshment room, and I said, ‘Not in there, Bill, for God’s sake. I’ve had enough racing murghi and stewed prunes to last me until I’m ninety-five.’ I led them a couple of doors along, into the non-vegetarian Hindu restaurant.

  They followed me, and as we stood inside I caught Victoria looking at me with wonder and surprise in her face. By God, I knew why. I was young again, no more than twenty-five. There hadn’t been any war, and I hadn’t ordered a hundred attacks, and I hadn’t got any M.C.S. She’d done it, simply by lying naked to take me, and answering me with love and gladness.

  She laughed aloud with happiness, and Bill said, ‘Miss Jones, when you smile you really are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’

  So I had done the same to her.

  She l
aughed again and said to Bill. ‘You’ve been in India too long, sir, or you wouldn’t say that to me.’ She smiled, and looked at me to acknowledge how wonderful it was that she, an Anglo-Indian, could say a thing like that. Whatever happened afterwards, I knew she was rid of that fear for good. (George, you may give me another medal.)

  The manager popped out of the back of the restaurant like a weevil out of a biscuit. ‘Sahib!’ he cried. ‘You have come to wrong place! This is restaurant, Hindu, non-vegetarian.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, holding up my hand. ‘But we are Hindus, non-vegetarian.’ The place was empty, no trains were due in, and I asked him whether it would be all right. He beamed and said, ‘Yes, yes, sah, quite all right, sah!’

  ‘Then speak Hindustani to me, brother. You’re not a Bombay bearer, and I’m not a gona,’ I said in Hindustani, and his smile widened. This pidgin English was one of the worst things the war-time invasions of India had done, and I couldn’t stand it any more than I could stand soldiers saying, ‘Very good, sir.’ I told the manager, ‘As a matter of fact, we are on our way to attend a Congress meeting in Delhi as guests of the Mahatma and the Pandit. We are hungry. We also want some whisky to drink to the early departure of the English. Oh, yes, there’ll be one more of us coming.’

  He cried, ‘Yes sah, yes sah, Jee-han, sahib, jee-han, jee-han! Congress wale!’ He hurried out, shaking with laughter.

  We leaned across the table and talked. Victoria laughed and talked with us. Bill and I disposed of the shop which I’d originally come down there to discuss with him, and she knew what we were talking about and made notes in my notebook for me. Birkhe came in and sat down with us. No one knew where Taylor was. Every now and then Birkhe and I would talk in Gurkhali while Victoria joked with Heatherington. The food came; we ate properly with our fingers and talked of Delhi and Bhowani, Calcutta nd Bombay and Manali, Peshawar, Rawalpindi, and Poona, Razmak and Quetta. Victoria didn’t really belong to that world, but for the moment she could believe she did. The people she’d worked with in Delhi wouldn’t know Razmak from Friday, but she had heard enough to recognize the right cries, so she drank more whisky and got as high as a kite, but without getting frisky. The engine and I had given her such a going over that her body had become separated from her mind. Her body sat quietly in the chair, recuperating, while her mind sang and rejoiced round that room like a nightingale.

  I saw her once look down at her sari. She giggled to herself, and we three men smiled at her because she was a lovely woman, and laughing. She didn’t tell us why she was giggling, and we didn’t ask. It was all natural and wonderful for her. She had to do nothing—not think or worry or wonder—just sit back and smile and be a beautiful woman, her love visible and obvious in ber eyes and in her smooth skin and flat belly and long-stretched embracing legs. By the time we got out of there I was in love.

  Number 1 Down Mail rode slowly into the station, and Victoria stood talking to Bill while I got the conductor-guard to unlock a locked coupé. It was nearly midnight, but she didn’t care a damn by then about getting into a compartment with me. She stepped up ahead of me and leaned out of the window to say good-bye to Heatherington. Late passengers hurried by, and station coolies struggled past with boxes on their heads. After the usual bouts of whistling the train began to move. She waved at Bill for an unconscionable time, but when she couldn’t see him any more she turned and closed all the windows.

  I said, ‘Patrick’s on the train.’

  She said, ‘Oh?’ she was fiddling with her back hair in front of the mirror, turning her head this way and that. The pupils of her eyes were big and soft, and there were small dark rings under the lower lids. Her skin was the colour of dark ivory or pale milky coffee, and quite matt, unwrinkled, and calm. She said, ‘I’ll lock the doors.’ She bent down to each door in turn and then pulled all the blinds.

  She stood in the narrow space over me, and I saw her eyes begin to glisten. I used to see them as bedroom eyes, and they were, but they had all Victoria in them, so there was a lot of guts and kindness there as well as bed. She said, ‘Rodney, I’m afraid. I love you.’

  I said, ‘I know.’ It was impossible to imagine that this was all there could be for us. I undressed her carefully, with the love flowing out of my fingertips. She stood upright, proud as Diana, her legs braced apart against the rocking of the train.

  We lay on the lower berth, struggling and sleeping and then struggling again. Jesus Christ, I thought again, it’s impossible that all this flood of affection, and the shelter I’ve given her against fear, should come from just norhing but sex. She fell finally asleep at last, but I lay awake with my arm round her, listening to the night rushing by like a torrent, and listening to the wheels hammering, and thinking of her, and India, and the fellow up there, one of her people, as awake as I, who was taking us on behind the searching light of Number 1 Down Mail.

  THIRTY-ONE

  At Bhowani it was good to see Victoria getting out of a compartment down the train. I’d woken up at Shahpur and put her there from some damned silly idea of protecting her good name. It was too late for that by then, and I know that secretly she would have preferred to stay with me—not to flaunt me, but simply because she wanted to be near me.

  I was standing on the platform talking to the Collector. Govindaswami looked very black in that clear morning. His complexion was as unshiny as if he’d powdered it, and there was no sun to pick out the highlights on his cheekbones and jaw and frontal bones. I thought, Perhaps he does use powder. I wondered what shade would produce that strange strongly-grained surface, which was almost purple in this placid lighting.

  During the night Victoria had told me that K. P. Roy, in the guise of one Ghanshyam, had been hiding in the Sirdarnisahiba’s house. Ought I to tell Govindaswami this? I decided not to, because Sammy had always been sure of it anyway, and because Roy wasn’t there now—we’d searched the place.

  I beckoned to Victoria. When she came up I said to Govindaswami, ‘Victoria ran away from the Khalsa, Sammy. But she’s feeling better now. She burned her feet.’

  Govindaswami looked at her keenly. He missed nothing. He was disappointed about what had happened to her, but I think he understood. He’d been through the same thing himself. He said to her, ‘You tried, anyway. You’ll both come and breakfast with me?’

  Victoria began to say she really ought to be going, et cetera, but I said, ‘Come along. We’re going to talk shop, and I’m sure the Collector can lend you a notebook and pencil.’ She made a gesture with her hands. She wanted to put on a skirt and a shirt, both clean, and get a pair of shoes on her feet, but she wouldn’t leave me for that.

  They’d sent down my station wagon, one of those ugly steel boxes sitting two feet above the axles, and it was waiting in the yard with Howland at the wheel and Tula, the driver, in the back. Govindaswami murmured his thanks to me for my thoughtfulness in sending the wagon to pick him up on its way to the station—the Austin was always tricky to start first thing, he said.

  I jerked my head, and Howland let go of the wheel unwillingly and moved back. I drove; Govindaswami sat beside me; Victoria sat with Howland in the second row of seats, and Birkhe with Tula in the third. As we left the yard I glanced over my shoulder and saw Patrick Taylor standing under the station arch, staring after us. Victoria saw him too.

  Govindaswami and I talked in the front seat, but not about the A.F.I. situation. I did my best to keep up my end of the conversation and at the same time listen to Howland and Victoria behind me. I heard Master Albert say, ‘Bee-yootiful plates a’ meat you got, sis.’ The little sod was eyeing her bare feet, and I thought, If I’m getting jealous over Howland, of all the impossible people in the world, I’m in for trouble.

  Then Howland muttered, ‘Don’t be so snooty, Vicky. We’ll be seeing lots of each other.’ She said politely, ‘I’m afraid not, Albert. I’ll be released any day now.’ Then I had to answer some question of Govindaswami’s, and the next thing I heard was Howland saying, �
��I’m walking aht wiv yer big sis, if you want to know. We go to the pitchers and ’old ’ands. She’s a nice piece of homework, if you ask me.’

  I was a fool not to see then and there how the situation was taking shape. I noted that Howland was trying to go to bed with Rose Mary. I noted that Rose Mary was a good deal smarter than Master Albert, so he’d probably finish up by getting married to her. I noted that Patrick had now been deserted by Rose Mary, in whom he obviously used to find a safety valve when Victoria left him. What I did not see, like the clever swine I am, was that the troubles were beginning to pile up too thickly on Patrick, and troubles were his trumps.

  We got out at the Collector’s bungalow. Behind Govindaswami we filed into the dining-room. Howland took the station wagon back to the lines with Birkhe and my small kit. After breakfast we moved to the study and sat down in the familiar, comfortable chairs. Sammy’s authentic Oxford chamber-pot stood on its table in the window, full of flowers. The sun came up behind the trees along the railway line.

  I put my hands behind my head and settled back. I caught Victoria looking fondly at me before she dropped her eyes to her notebook. Then we began. I said, ‘I take it this A.F.I. business is just an excuse, Sammy. What’s really happened? Has Surabhai laid an information against you for selling pardons after hours?’

  Sammy didn’t laugh. He said seriously, ‘No, it’s the A.F.I. A nice two-way hate. First, as you know, there’s been a good deal of anti-European feeling in the city. Some of it is peaceful, and some of it, stirred up by Roy’s people, is vicious. There has been no incident reported to me of an actual assault on or by a European.’ He glanced at me and paused. I stared blandly back. I had never reported the bottle-throwing and the beating-up of the youths the night Molly Dickson came, but Sammy obviously knew. He went on, The Europeans, however, live up here in cantonments with a few hundred Gurkhas round the corner, and they seldom go into the city. The bad feeling has found a vulnerable target in the Anglo-Indians—stone-throwing, minor assaults, pushing and shoving in the street, abuse, and so on. Well, Taylor came to see me and claimed they weren’t getting proper protection from the police. It’s true enough, because we just don’t have enough police.