I said, ‘Don’t tell Bernadette about it,’ and the wife nodded.
When the beer came, Lydia said, ‘It’s known to be dangerous, isn’t it? That stretch of line?’
‘How do you know?’
‘William Askwith called earlier this evening. He said, “I hope’s Jim’s all right.” Well, not in so many words. He said, “I trust Captain Stringer had a safe and satisfactory journey on the down express.”’
‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘How did Askwith even know I was going there?’
‘I suppose Bernadette must have told Claudine, who told him.’
‘And why was he telephoning anyway?’
‘Oh, just to say that Eleanor would be collecting the girls from the dance and bringing them here.’
My mind swung back – as it always did at mention of William Askwith’s name – to the theft of the Schedule C dossier. Before its loss, I had gleaned that it referred to corruption or embezzlement in the traffic department, and William Askwith was the head of traffic. Did he seem crooked? No. But then those public school and Oxford types (or was it Cambridge in Askwith’s case?) never did. That was the whole purpose of their education: to stop them coming over as the rogues they frequently were. That said, Askwith was worth a mint, and there was something odd about him: he was too formal in his speech, talked like a copy book. He was like a sort of parody of a swell. And he seemed to have no face to speak of, just a white oval beneath his sola topee. His light blue eyes appeared to be too small, but not as much too small as his nose or mouth. He had no hair to speak of either, and looked as though he never had had any. His wife, Eleanor, seemed all right to me, although Lydia thought her a snob. She was a rather elongated, worthy woman, not quite beautiful, and that went for her daughter, Claudine, too. Their faces were medieval somehow, like the faces of women on paintings in churches. Whereas their daughters had formed an instant, if competitive, friendship, Lydia and Eleanor Askwith had got off on the wrong foot. To the best of my recollection, Lydia had been on the edge of a group taking tea in one of the hotels, and Eleanor Askwith had been at the centre of the group. She had been ignoring Lydia (according to Lydia) and had said, ‘If only we had one other person we could play bridge.’
‘What about me?’ Lydia had asked me later on, ‘I was “one other person”.’
‘But you can’t play bridge,’ I had said.
‘She didn’t know that, you clot! For all she knew, I was a demon at it.’
All three of the Askwiths were intellects; read a good many books, and did everything right in a social way. Lagged for twenty years in Alipore Jail, William Askwith would be able to get on with his reading; but I didn’t think he’d take very well to it otherwise.
From the first, I’d thought that if William Askwith had been named in that dossier as being on the take, then it must have been Douglas Poole – the father of Bernadette’s other best friend in Calcutta – who had done the naming. Douglas – commonly known as Dougie – Poole looked like Dan Leno: that is, like a sad-eyed superannuated jockey. As with Leno, his clothes always seemed too big, and his hair had to be kept firmly plastered down, otherwise it would do God knew what. Dougie Poole wasn’t as funny as Leno of course, but he was good company with a mournful sense of humour. He also had a whimsical streak, and a taste for the bottle, and so on the face of it it was incredible he’d ended up a senior traffic manager. His wife, Margaret, was a cheerful, competent sort who seemed to laugh off her husband’s drinking. She was pretty or not according to the expression on her face, and she had a great deal of frizzy and colourless hair, as did her daughter, Ann. The Pooles all spoke with slight London accents and were generally looked down on by the Askwiths. In fact the two families would have had no social connection at all were it not for the friendship of their daughters.
It was rumoured Poole wasn’t up to the job of Deputy Assistant Traffic Manager (Goods), and that must have been on account of his tippling, since he seemed bright enough to me when sober. As the head of traffic overall, William Askwith was Dougie Poole’s boss, and known to be a hard governor. With the present push for far-reaching economies, it seemed to me that Dougie Poole must be in a perilous position, and he may only have been saved from the push by his daughter’s connection to the Askwiths. Surely, therefore, if Dougie Poole had anything at all on William Askwith, he’d use it. The only trouble with this notion was Poole’s apparent amiability: he wasn’t the cagey, backstairs sort who’d split on another chap under cover of anonymity.
From inside the dark, hot hotel lobby came the tinkling of a clock chime. It was now seven. I asked the wife, ‘You’re sure they haven’t gone “on”? They’re not with that bloody maharajah, are they?’
‘Bernadette says you’ve got a complex about him.’
‘You haven’t answered the question.’
‘Whether the R.K.’s there or not, Bernadette will be brought here in minute by Eleanor Askwith.’
‘I expect he’ll be hanging around. He’s made a dead set for her.’
‘He’s got beautiful manners, and they both like dancing. She calls him Raju – I think that’s rather charming.’
Lydia ought to have been up in arms for the girl. Instead she seemed at this moment to be encouraging a romance.
‘No doubt he’s heavenly as well.’
‘He’s charming, handsome, intelligent.’
‘Well, I’ve warned her off.’
‘. . . Which of course will have the opposite of your intended effect.’
‘How do we know he’s clever anyway?’
‘He went to the North Indian equivalent of Eton. It’s in the Himalayas. His English is absolutely perfect, practically.’
It was now five past seven. Our usual dinner table was booked for eight. Whenever Bernadette was even slightly late back from an event, I thought of organising an immediate police sweep of the city, and I would make my own mental sweep of it. On the face of it, Calcutta resembled a steaming hot London. The maidan was perhaps the equivalent of Hyde Park, but there were jackals on the maidan that would scream at night. Yes, the High Court was like the Houses of Parliament from the front; but the back of it was falling down, and propped up by bamboo scaffolds, and the river running before it contained dead bodies.
I ought not to have brought the girl out here.
I had now finished my beer; Lydia had fallen silent. Before long, the clock in the lobby would chime the quarter hour. I said, ‘I’m just off out front for a look,’ and Lydia did not say I was becoming needlessly agitated. I walked from under the canopy, and through the gates on to the hard standing where the tongas and motors for Willard’s Hotel would pull in from the Chowringhee traffic. The light was fading fast, if not the heat. There were palm trees over the road, like giant dark stars on sticks. Beyond them, the maidan had become mysterious, like a sea. There were some low, burning . . . somethings on it, like stars that had crashed to the ground. Tongas and the occasional motor hurried past – all apparently making a point of ignoring Willard’s; and now a rickshaw was coming. The rickshaw-wallah was like a man running for his life; he was clearly about to expire, and yet the European fellow sitting up behind was just staring into space. They too ignored Willard’s Hotel.
The pavement on this side of Chowringhee was a market, and the stallholders were beginning to pack up. At the nearest stall to where I stood, a man sold leather belts from underneath a green storm lantern. There were flies all around the green light, and the belts looked like so many dead snakes. A little way beyond him was the Elphinstone Picture Palace, whose lights were beginning to blaze in the darkness, but I didn’t glance that way because I knew I would see the projecting advertisement for Reported Missing, ‘a comedy in six reels’.
The wife had chosen her words carefully. Eleanor Askwith would be collecting the girls from the dance. In other words, she was not there with them. There was no chaperone. It was true that Claudine Askwith, at seventeen, was a year older than Bernadette, but she didn’t count.
Where was the R.K. staying? He was putting up at a hotel with his father, the maharajah, who was in town on business. It would have to be the Grand or the Great Eastern. I would go there and ask him to give me back my daughter, or tell me where she was, and if he didn’t I would do the bastard in. But one of the Austin taxis was approaching. It looked somehow promising, and I almost put out my hand to stop it even though its roof light was not lit. It pulled up before me anyhow, and there was Bernadette laughing in the back with Claudine Askwith; and Claudine’s mother, Eleanor, was in the front passenger seat. The green night-fog of the city swirled in the taxi headlights.
Bernadette stepped out, calling out, ‘Bye, Claudine, love!’
She wore one of her many dresses that wasn’t long enough, one of her hats that wasn’t cheap enough, and a cashmere wrap I believed to be her mother’s. Eleanor Askwith did not get out, but wound down the window. ‘Here she is Captain Stringer, all safe and sound.’ On her lap was a novel, and inside the novel, some leaflets. She took a couple out and passed them through the open window. ‘Have you had these already? And do give one to Lydia.’ The leaflet read:
St Dunstan’s Fund . . . Buy Happiness for Others! Many poor children, their bodies wasted with want and neglect . . . Rs 25 monthly will feed, clothe and educate one child. We have no paid workers. Purely a voluntary effort.
‘Thanks very much,’ I said. She smiled at me and the taxi pulled away. Could such a woman really be married to an embezzler?
‘Have you caught the snake man, Dad?’ said Bernadette.
‘It’s not my job to catch him. Why do you ask?’
We were walking back through the hotel gates.
‘The snakes were the hot topic at the Wednesday,’ said Bernadette. ‘People were saying they would stop going on the trains until he’s found.’
‘All the snakes have been in first. So they could always go in second.’
‘Some of them were saying they jolly well would do.’
‘Was that flipping R.K. there?’
‘I don’t know why you’re so rude about him. He’s a “friend of Britain”, Dad. His father sent troops to the war.’
‘He’s a friend of yours, that’s what bothers me. I want to know if he was there.’
‘If I say yes, you’ll blow up, and if say no, you won’t believe me.’
‘I’ve told you not to see him. For those blokes, a girl is marriageable at aged eight. How many wives has he got already?’
‘Lay off, Dad.’
Under the canopy of leaves, Lydia had another lemonade on the go. When she saw us, she stood up at her table and waved.
‘Dad?’ said Bernadette.
‘What?’
‘The trains to Darjeeling are on a different line, aren’t they?’
‘Different to what?’
‘To the snakes.’
‘Different line, different company.’
Trains to Darjeeling and ‘the hills’ were operated by the East Bengal Railway, from Sealdah station on the other side of town from Howrah. No snakes had been found on those trains as yet.
‘When we go up there,’ said Bernadette, ‘I’ll need some clothes.’
‘You’ll need a good thick sweater.’
She laughed. ‘I’ll need some chic little party dresses.’
The trip to Darjeeling, to escape the heat, was one of the two big events on the horizon. The first was the East Indian Railway Debating Society dance coming up on Saturday. Lydia and Bernadette would be travelling up to Darjeeling on the following Monday, and I was to join them on the Wednesday. They would be staying for the best part of a month, whereas I would be there for only a week. Lydia had taken a house up there. She had booked it from a classified advertisement in The Statesman. Cedar Lodge, it was called: Lydia had had visiting cards printed with the name on them. That was how things went on in the hills. You posted your card through the letter box of people you wanted to know – ‘dropping’ your card, it was called – and waited in agony to find out whether they wanted to know you.
Lydia kissed Bernadette and we all agreed to walk straight through to dinner, but the happy mood was interrupted when I produced Eleanor Askwith’s leaflet.
‘She’s been feeding the poor again, has she?’ the wife said, rather bitterly. It seemed to me that she resented the amount of time Eleanor Askwith spent among the destitute children of Calcutta – which was not really all that much time. From what I could make out, she gave a few days every year to this effort called the St Dunstan’s Fund. The wife called this ‘Lady Bountiful stuff’. It was a different sort of do-gooding to her own. Lydia was involved with an outfit called the Women’s India Association. She had become an honorary member of that club, in her role as an emissary of the Women’s Co-Operative Guild, Yorkshire division. At these meetings, co-operative credit schemes were discussed (whatever they might be) and plans for the education of Indian females. It seemed to me that these enlightened women had their work cut out, given the approach of India’s religions to women.
We walked through the lobby of the hotel, which was dark but not heavy, the chairs and tables being mainly bamboo, and interspersed with many plants and even small trees in copper pots. There were cushions scattered about the place, but you didn’t get much in the way of upholstery in Calcutta; and the floor was a matter of rugs on bare wood rather than continuous carpet. On the walls were paintings of picturesque Indians looking happier than was needful, given that they were only carrying water pots or beating clothes; and there were dried snake skins hanging from the walls as well.
We were shown to our table by a bearer, who went off to get the menus. The wife called after him what sounded like ‘Shook-ree-yah’, which was Hindustani for ‘thank you’ or so she thought. As we waited for his return, I said, ‘How rich are the Askwiths?’ and both Lydia and Bernadette piped up, for they were very interested in this subject.
‘Their flat is unreal,’ said Bernadette.
‘Parquet flooring throughout,’ said Lydia. ‘And they won’t be renting in the hills. They’ve bought a place up there.’
‘It has a paddock and a pony for Claudine,’ Bernadette added.
‘Is she a good rider?’
‘That’s the queer thing. She doesn’t ride at all. Says it makes your sit-upon too big.’
‘Bernadette!’ That was the wife.
‘I’m only saying’, Bernadette continued, ‘they just don’t know what to do with all their dough.’
‘And how does Askwith get on with Ann’s dad?’
‘Mr Poole’s a lovely man, but he’s a rummy isn’t he? Everyone knows that.’
‘Does he ever talk about his work?’ This was to Bernadette specifically, since she spent more time with the Askwiths.
‘About the railway you mean?’
‘About his particular line of work.’
‘Well, he’s a top box-wallah, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, in traffic.’
‘What’s that, exactly?’
‘Movement of trains. Keeping tabs on the whereabouts of carriages and wagons so they’re always in the right place at the right time, and scheduling them for cleaning and periodic running repairs.’
‘Sounds lethal.’
Chapter Three
I
Early the next morning, I ran into both Askwith and Poole.
I had woken at six in the hotel, and I went down to a chota haziree of anchovy paste on toast and a pot of tea. I took it on the terrace, and even though the heat had started, the teapot was wrapped in a thick, knitted cosy. As I ate, I watched a squad of Indian police doing physical jerks on the maidan.
The wife and Bernadette were still sleeping in our suite of rooms. After dinner the night before, Bernadette had complained of a headache, and Lydia had given her two aspirin, which had sent her off. I reckoned she had been drinking pegs at the dance. Lydia and I had then revolved the idea of lovemaking, but even though Bernadette seemed deeply asleep, she might wake at any moment and walk thro
ugh the door connecting our room with hers. We had had relations only once since coming to India, and that had been exactly a week before, when Bernadette had stayed overnight with the Askwiths. It had been a perfectly satisfactory ride (at least, I thought so) and we had ended in a bath of sweat.
A bearer brought some more toast, also that morning’s copy of The Statesman. The snakes were all over the paper, whereas the shooting of John Young did not feature and, I believed, had not featured at all, possibly because it had occurred too far ‘up country’. A press communiqué from the East Indian Railway was quoted to the effect that all possible steps were being taken to safeguard passengers. Carriages, especially first class, would be thoroughly inspected by Company personnel when trains were made up, and a reward of five thousand rupees was to be offered in return for information leading to the apprehension of the culprit. But in light of the two further fatalities, the paper asked, ‘How long before the masses will abjure travel on the line?’ (In common parlance, the East Indian Railway was always ‘the line’.)
I decided to walk to the office.
Anyone who didn’t know the way from Willard’s Hotel to the East Indian Railway’s castle in Fairlie Place would only have had to fall in with the flow of bicycling clerks. What started as a trickle on Chowringhee became a flood on Esplanade Row: first clerks, second clerks, acting first or second clerks, record keepers, cashiers, draughtsmen, subordinate ledger clerks, upper subordinate ledger clerks, temporary upper subordinate ledger clerks. In every case the bicycle was black. Pay grades ranged from about forty rupees per month (three pounds) to four hundred, and these last would have an attaché case dangling from one side of the handlebar, and perhaps a tightly furled black umbrella dangling from the other, like a mobile scales of justice.
The bicyclists were not allowed to take their machines into the courtyard of the castle, so they parked them in the racks by the hot and mustardy river. Between seven and eight o’clock, the clerks who’d parked their bikes clashed with the clerks yet to do so, and chaos resulted in Fairlie Place. The superior European officers would add to this chaos by pulling up in tongas and motor taxis, and, as I turned into Fairlie Place, I saw one of the latter fighting its way through the massed clerks. The taxi stopped a little way short of the courtyard entrance and William Askwith climbed out. In doing so, he coincided with his more junior colleague, Dougie Poole, who’d been walking with clerks. Askwith’s suit was of white cotton tweed, which kept the creases out; Poole’s was of white linen, which did not. His suit looked about two sizes too big in addition. Askwith carried a calfskin briefcase. I knew the kind: it was hand stitched and there would be special compartments inside for everything from ink bottle and paper knife to visiting cards and railway tickets. Dougie Poole made do with a bent valise, carried under-arm. Askwith saw me first.
Night Train to Jamalpur Page 7
