Bhowani Junction (20 page)

I drank thirstily, my head bent over the mess-tin. After a time I saw a pair of shoes in front of me, and above them blue uniform railway trousers. A man’s voice said in quick nervous Hindi, ‘Oh, daughter, can you tell me if it is lawful for me to drink this tea? My caste is——’

I looked up and saw Bhansi Lall, the Stationmaster of Pathoda. He was shaking and stammering, his fat cheeks aquiver. When my face came up he stopped, began again, and at last got out in English, ‘Miss Victoria Jones, my word! My
sainted aunt! Miss Jones, you were in train? You have lost all clothing in horrible accident?’

I shook my head and said wearily, ‘No. I’m wearing a sari, that’s all. I’m sure it’s all right for you to drink the tea.’ Really I had not patience with the point then. If he wanted tea, why didn’t he drink it? That was another time my sari was difficult to fit into.

I beckoned to a Gurkha, and he brought Bhansi Lall a messtin of tea. Bhansi Lall sipped noisily, staring at me, his small eyes darting from my face to the sari, to the Gurkhas, to the ugly black and red wreck not far off. He said, ‘You are wearing sari always now? Very good show. Accident took place outside station limits of Pathoda, Miss Jones. Outside by
miles
—by two miles and three furlongs, approximately. Oh, I would like to catch bloody rapscallions responsible for all this to-do. Twenty-seven officers and soldiers of all ranks killed in Koyli Light Infantry, besides two soldiers missing in burned carriage, that is meaning colonel-sahib is not saying whether horrible objects in carriage are one soldier or how many soldiers.’

‘Was the driver killed?’ I asked. ‘Who was it?’ I thought suddenly that it might have been Ted Dunphy. He did an occasional turn on the branch, usually on specials.

Bhansi Lall said, ‘Driver was killed, both the two firemen were killed. Guard was not killed. My God, Miss Jones, why are every derailments and
sabot
ages performed in vicinity of
my
station? When nothing but calamities are occurring here, who will get the bloody sack but me? It is no dashed tommyrot!’

Savage cut in. ‘You look as if you want a drink, Stationmaster!’ He was standing over Bhansi Lall. I hadn’t seen him come. An uncorked bottle of Army-issue rum swung in his right hand. Bhansi Lall scrambled to his feet, burbling thankyous, took the bottle, and poured a lot down his throat, holding the bottle high up and away from his mouth.

Savage said, ‘Now, Mr Lanson wants you. At the back of the train. Down there.’

Bhansi Lall tugged at his coat and set his cap straight on his large hairless head. He said, ‘I shall conceal nothing, Colonel-sahib. This persecution must be halted in military fashion—
that is, with back to wall. Light of day is needed.’ He crashed off through the bushes.

Savage said, ‘We’re going back to Bhowani.’

I walked behind him to the road. There were many well-beaten paths now. Police and Gurkhas were keeping watch over a small knot of spectators. The jungle was dishevelled, with pieces of equipment lying everywhere, and heaps of salvage, and soldiers sleeping, and a couple of tents, and Gurkhas making tea, and splintered glass glittering high in the branches. The sun rose out of the crest line of the Sindhya Hills to the east, and we turned our backs to it and got into the jeep.

Savage drove slowly on the way down. I’d forgotten all about the terrible things he’d said to me earlier. When I remembered them, I was almost grateful to him. He had made me do what I ought to do.

His eyes were rimmed with dust and ashes, his uniform was filthy and the black hair on his forearms matted with perspiration and grey soot. He said, ‘We’ve got all the injured away now, to Bhowani and Kishanpur. Chaney told me you’d done a good job of work.’

I said, ‘I didn’t do anything.’

He said wearily, ‘Please don’t be modest. It doesn’t go with that heroic sari. Well, I suppose someone else thinks he’s done a good job, in killing those fellows and stopping all traffic on the branch line for two or three days.’

I said, ‘Do they know for certain yet that it was sabotage?’

He said, ‘Yes. The District Engineer found two fishplates missing. Later someone picked them up in the jungle the other side of the line. Do you think Surabhai did it?’

I said quickly, ‘I’m sure he didn’t. The police can find out where he was last night. I’m sure he will have been in Bhowani and will be able to prove it. He’s always talking to people.’

Savage said, ‘Surabhai doesn’t have to unscrew the fishplates himself to be responsible. I asked whether you thought he did it—ordered it done, knew about it.’

I answered angrily, being a little frightened. ‘And I said I’m sure he didn’t do it. He wouldn’t murder people like that. He’s
a very nice, kindhearted man.’

Savage said, ‘Yes, but he has a blind spot just the same as I have and you have. I’ll do a lot of queer things for this regiment and not care a damn who else suffers. He’ll do the same for what he calls India. Still, if he had to wreck a train, a troop train—especially one full of British troops—was about the fairest he could have picked.’

‘Mr Surabhai had nothing to do with it, sir,’ I repeated.

He said then, ‘We’ll see,’ and said nothing more until he stopped the jeep in front of our house. There he said, It’s nine-fifteen. The Collector wants to see you at five in his bungalow.’ He engaged gear and drove away. I saluted his back and went inside.

Why did Govindaswami want to see me? Why hadn’t Savage told me so earlier? How and when had the appointment been fixed between them? Was it about the train wreck? If so, Savage and Govindaswami must have talked on the radiotelephone during the night. Why were they asking me about poor Mr Surabhai when it was obvious that K. P. Roy had done it? I felt suddenly very tired and very dirty and very small. I had a tepid bath and climbed into bed. As I was dropping asleep I thought that Govindaswami might want to see me about Macaulay—but by then I didn’t care. Nothing could stop me from trying to find rest and some peace in sleep.

Govindaswami kept me waiting in his study for ten minutes, and then I heard him talking with another man in the hall and recognized Ranjit’s voice. I had had no time to think what this might mean when Ranjit came in. He looked drawn, tired, and handsome. He must have been working all night and all day. He was so sweet-tempered that it hurt me to see him looking
worried. I wanted to tell him not to worry, that I did like him, that I was sure I would marry him if he would give me time; but that wasn’t the cause of his worry now, I knew.

The Collector was wearing a dark red carnation in his button-hole. He looked as tired as Ranjit, but as soon as he began to speak I knew he was going to come to grips with us. He began at once, ‘We are three Indians. We have different backgrounds and we believe in different approaches to the goal. But our goal is the same, as far as patriotism is concerned. I want a free, strong, democratic India, and I want it as soon as possible. Do you, Ranjit?’

Ranjit nodded. Govindaswami glanced at me, raising his eyebrows, and I nodded. It was like a breath of fresh air to have it publicly acknowledged and said aloud that I was trying to be a good Indian.

Govindaswami said, ‘But this train wreck is the work of men who want violent revolution. Specifically, it is the work of K. P. Roy.’

‘Roy?’ Ranjit said. ‘You weren’t even sure that he was in the province.’

Govindaswami said, ‘Yes, but now we are just about positive that he’s actually in Bhowani City. The looting of the ammunition train was certainly his work. We do not know what he intends to do with the explosives that he stole, except that he will certainly use them to increase dissension. He might arm the Moslems against the Hindus, or the peasants against the landlords, or the lawless against the police. Or he may blow up more bridges, wreck more trains. He doesn’t care who’s in the train. It might be me or Colonel Savage—but it might be Mr Surabhai, and it might be a thousand pilgrims. Who do you think engineered that fiasco when the two processions met the other day? We have got to remove Roy and everyone like him.

‘Now, we are working on two lines of approach. One is that someone may know where the stolen explosives are hidden—someone outside Roy’s own small circle of faithful Communists, that is. The “someone”, if he exists, is not telling. The “someone” may think it is none of his business, or he may
think that the explosive is being kept for some justifiable cause. A Moslem might know, for instance, but might have been told that it is intended for the defence of the Moslem community here when the Hindus rise up to massacre them. You can think of other “justifications”.’

‘Why do you ask us?’ Ranjit cried distractedly. ‘I do not know. I’m sure Miss Jones does not know.’

Govindaswami said sharply, ‘I think your mother knows.’

Ranjit started, his mouth worked. Govindaswami went on. ‘Wait a minute. The other line of approach I mentioned is that we do have a picture of Roy. Here.’ He stepped behind his desk, lifted the blotter, and came forward with a glossy eight-by-ten print. He handed it to us where we sat together on the sofa, and said, ‘That’s K. P. Roy in nineteen thirty-seven.’

It was an enlargement from a poor negative. A man in European clothes—trousers, shirt, tie, collar, coat—was standing by an ancient taxi, with a big turreted building in the background. The man had short hair and was clean-shaven and smiling. I had seen Ghanshyam ‘smile’, and I was almost sure this man in the picture was Ghanshyam. But I wasn’t
quite
sure. Nine years is a long time, and a moustache makes such a difference.

‘Have either of you ever seen this man recently, here in Bhowani?’ Govindaswami asked carelessly.

‘No, I’ve never seen this man,’ Ranjit said and handed back the print. He carefully kept his eyes on the Collector, so as not to look at me.

‘And you, Miss Jones?’ Govindaswami said.

I was ready and did not hesitate, but answered at once. ‘No, I’ve never seen him either.’

Govindaswami put the print away. He said, ‘Well, he’s about, and he is a real danger to what we have agreed that we want. Perhaps you think he’s just one nihilist with a few crazy followers, and what difference can it make to the future of India if he does blow up a train—or ten trains, for that matter. Have you been thinking that, Ranjit?’

‘I don’t think it is right to kill people and do damage, of course,’ Ranjit said. ‘But yes, I don’t see how Roy can really
do great harm—great political harm, and that is all that is important now.’

Govindaswami returned to his blotter and got out a plain outline map of India. On it several large areas had been shaded with red pencil strokes, and in a few places there were red circles and the names of cities or towns. He said, Those are the areas and the cities where revolutionary groups that stand far to the left of the Socialists, for instance, are waiting to see whether what K. P. Roy told them is true or not—whether they can do on a large scale what Roy is doing on a small scale and almost by himself. Whether it is feasible and practicable to disrupt government and communication by terrorism—all government, any government. The R.I.N. mutiny, coinciding with the railway strike, was to be the first big bang, leading to a wider, ever-spreading train of explosions. But the mutiny failed. The derailment of this troop train is, I think, Roy’s first effort to show that the rest of the plan need not be abandoned. By this act he is saying, “Look, it can still be done.”’

Ranjit looked at the map, shook his head, and said, ‘It is very interesting.’

Govindaswami said, ‘Your mother was associated during the nineteen twenties with men and women who we know are now in K. P. Roy’s group. That’s all I wanted to tell you, Ranjit. Think it over. You, Miss Jones—I wanted you to be here because you have made it clear that you are changing worlds, as I did when I went to Cheltenham. You will be seeing your new world with new eyes. I want you to use those eyes and help me, for India’s sake and your own. Try and persuade Mr Surabhai to help me. I don’t want him to stop being a Congress man. I want him and others like him to examine their friends carefully at this time, and sniff the air, and make sure there isn’t a rat i’ the arras. What do you think Mr Surabhai would do if he knew another Congress man, or a friend of Congress, was going to derail a troop train?’

He shot the question at me suddenly. I started and looked at him with surprise and said, ‘What?’ He repeated his question.

I said, ‘I think he’d try first to persuade the man not to do it’

‘And if he failed to persuade the man?’ Govindaswami said.

I said, ‘I’m sure he’d give you or the police all the information he had.’

‘Do you agree with that, Ranjit?’ Govindaswami asked.

Ranjit was unhappy. He mumbled, ‘Yes, I think so. I don’t know. Mr Surabhai is not a murderer.’

Govindaswami said, ‘No. But it would hurt him just as much to send a patriot, even a misguided one, to jail or to the gallows—wouldn’t it?’

His tone insisted on an answer, and we had to give it. We had to agree. He said no more then, but apologized for keeping us so long—it had not been long—and showed us out and stood on his verandah while we bicycled side by side down his long drive.

As soon as a bank of azalea bushes hid him Ranjit said, ‘We must talk.’

I asked him where we should go.

He said, ‘Down to the river. This way.’ He turned to the right off the Pike, and we pedalled along a rutted causeway that soon brought us to the bank of the Cheetah. The grass was long and patchy and broken up by outcropping stones and a few thorn bushes. The river was running, at that time of year, in several shallow streams scattered over its wide, almost empty bed. We heard a bugle call quite close. Kabul Lines were not far off, beyond a row of big dark trees.

We laid our bicycles on the grass and slowly walked forward to the bank. I sat down on a low boulder, and Ranjit sat at my feet.

I said, ‘I thought that picture was Ghanshyam.’

Ranjit had found a stick and was busy scratching in the earth as he answered, ‘It was quite like him.’

I looked down on the top of his puggaree and wondered what to say. I was sure—almost sure. I thought Ranjit didn’t want to be sure, didn’t even want to talk about it. But I couldn’t get close to him if I hid my thoughts from him, or he his from me. I said, ‘Ranjit, you know it was Ghanshyam. Why didn’t you tell the Collector?’

He muttered, ‘I don’t
know
. It was very like.’

I said, ‘You do know. Why didn’t you say so?’

He threw away his stick and looked up into my face. He said, ‘If they catch him—Ghanshyam—he will tell the truth about Lieutenant Macaulay.’

I said, ‘That will be unpleasant, Ranjit, but it’s not serious enough to make us hide K. P. Roy. They won’t hang me, you know.

Ranjit said slowly, ‘They will arrest my mother.’

I was silent. I had got to the bottom of Ranjit’s thought then. I wanted to say something like, What does that matter? or, What does she have to fear if she’s innocent?—but obviously Ranjit thought she wasn’t innocent. I didn’t see how she could be innocent.

Ranjit began to speak in a tense, low voice. He said, ‘My mother has fought the British for twenty-six years. She’s been to jail five times—nineteen twenty-one, nineteen twenty-five, nineteen thirty, nineteen thirty-one, nineteen thirty-seven. She’s not a revolutionary, she’s a patriot—but they’d put her in jail again. I don’t agree with everything she says, but I can’t blame her. She’s seen too much, fought too hard. Besides, she may not know that Ghanshyam is K. P. Roy.’

‘You can tell her,’ I said.

Ranjit lifted his shoulders and dropped them in a sudden gesture of hopelessness. He said, ‘I was trying to deceive myself. If he is K. P. Roy, she knows it very well. But that doesn’t mean Mr Govindaswami is right.
He
says Roy is doing all this, but how do we know he is telling the truth? How do we know someone else, some other group isn’t responsible and the British are only trying to put the blame on Roy so that they can hang him, because they know he is a man who could unify India against them? How do we know? I’d rather trust my mother than Mr Govindaswami. Why should we believe any Indian who joins the Indian Civil Service and serves the British so faithfully they make him a Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire and an Officer of the Order of the British Empire? Two empires! You can’t be more imperialist than that.’

Neither of us had mentioned Mr Surabhai and what he had said that night about derailing a troop train. He had said it was justifiable. But he would be in a terrible quandary—of the spirit—if someone he admired and respected had determined to do it. I thought of asking Ranjit what, if anything, we ought to say to Mr Surabhai, but I decided not to. The problem was really much bigger. What were we going to do?

I opened my bag, got out my cigarette case, and lit a cigarette. Ranjit was looking at me with his face sad and strained and his eyes puckered at the corners as though he was on the edge of tears. I dragged the smoke into my lungs and said, ‘What are we going to do, then?’

He broke into a smile that lit his face, and lay back on his side, propping himself up on one elbow. He said, ‘I shall never get over seeing you pull out a cigarette and just smoke it, Victoria.’

‘In a sari, you mean?’ I said, smiling at him.

He said, ‘Yes. All the ordinary Indian ladies will have a fit when they see you. Mrs Surabhai will give you a severe lecture.’

‘What about your mother?’ I asked.

Ranjit became serious at once and said, ‘My mother won’t mind. She is not ordinary.’

I wanted to catch again the butterfly lightness that had linked us just then. I flipped open the case, offered it to him, and said, ‘Have a coffin nail yourself.’

He shook his head and said, ‘I don’t smoke.’

I asked him if he didn’t like the taste. He said he’d never tried.

I said, ‘But you’re not a Sikh—I mean by religion? Didn’t you tell me your mother persuaded you to give it up?’

He said, ‘In nineteen thirty-five. But I’ve never wanted to smoke, and——’ He stood up quickly, dusting off his clothes. ‘I think I’m going back. Back to my religion. I tell myself it is ridiculous, but I can’t help it. I am feeling more lost every day. I think I will go to see the guru here soon and ask if I can go back. Will you mind?’

I said slowly, thinking as I spoke, ‘I don’t mind, Ranjit.
You won’t want me to become a Sikh if—if we get married, not at once, will you? Not till I understand more about it?’

There, I’d said right out that I was thinking of marrying him. It was what I’d agreed to do, take the lead, when we talked by the signal that night. But I didn’t like it. Why couldn’t he take some of the weight of responsibility off me, some of this perpetual having to think and decide?

He said, ‘I would like you to become a Sikh, of course, Victoria—if you marry me. You would have another name then. Victoria is not a good name for an Indian.’

I laughed and shook my head and said, ‘No,’ but I was thinking, Victoria is my name, and I will always call myself Victoria; I don’t see how I can help it.

Ranjit took my hand and brushed his lips across it. He said, ‘It is not as important as marrying you, though. Do you think you will marry me, Victoria?’ He was so docile and spoke as though he were asking me whether I meant to have a permanent wave soon.

I held his hand tight and said, ‘I don’t know, Ranjit. I wish it could all be arranged for us. Whenever I think about it I get afraid that I will make you unhappy. I get afraid that I will be unhappy myself, for a time. Then I wonder—for how long a time?’

Ranjit said, ‘I will wait.’

He stood beside me, and our hands were joined, his left with my right. Even holding my hand made him nervous because Indians don’t do it in public, but he had forced himself to come that far toward me. We faced west where the sun was low over the hills of the State of Lalkot. It was a quiet sun sinking in a quiet evening, a warm red sun settling into long sheets of pink and green silk.

An engine whistled long and shrill from the city behind us. I knew without looking at my watch that it was 97 Down Express whistling for the Kishanpur road crossing. A bugle blew a short call, like an order in brass, from the barracks. I knew the call was the ‘Orderly Havildars’ of the First Thirteenth Gurkha Rifles. I knew Ghanshyam was K. P. Roy. I knew K. P. Roy was a murderer and a train-wrecker. But he was an
Indian. For me there would be no floating in a boat, on a calm tide, to a sheltered shore.