Tempting though it was to land her a clout, I knew that was out of the question – had been since she was nine or ten. I stood red-faced, pointing to the French windows. Lydia took her, holding on to her arm; I followed, and as we grimly skirted the dance floor, the band struck up. On the hotel driveway, two tongas were waiting. Bernadette was shouting about how we must be ‘screwy’ if we thought we could stop her seeing whoever she wanted to see; and how she hated all the ‘flat tyres’ she met at the ‘lethal’ supper dances at the De Grey Rooms, and the ‘grungy’ tea dances at Terry’s Emporium, these being the social highlights of York life that she had sampled and found wanting.
We got her into the tonga anyway, whereupon she fell silent, as the prisoners do when you put them in the Black Maria. She knew the game was up – at least for now. It was only when I took my seat in the tonga that I saw, through the window, William Askwith standing outside the front door of the hotel. He had resumed his hostly position, and was inspecting his pocket watch, albeit with face blank as usual. Who was he waiting for, now that the dance was almost over? As our tonga rolled away over the gravel, another was approaching. Both vehicles were going at a lick, and so I only had a fleeting glimpse of a large head slowly turning.
I believed it had been Major Fisher inside the tonga.
Chapter Seven
I
I woke shortly before dawn on Monday. I dressed in the bathroom so as not to disturb the wife. All ready and laid out on the cabinet were cigarettes, pocket book, revolver. I exited the suite as quietly as possible, and put my boots on outside the door. As I walked through the dimly lit lobby, I was surprised to see several of the uniformed bearers sleeping on the couches or the floor, and to hear snoring coming from behind the reception desk. I found the chowkidar sleeping in his lodge, and I had to wake him so that he would open the gates of the hotel compound and let me out. I stepped out into the soft green darkness of Calcutta, where the first market stalls were being put up on Chowringhee, but the trams had not yet started, and nor had the heat . . . so I could walk fast. There were some cyclists about, but not the orderly bicycling clerks. The early chaps were weirder. One came out of the gloom on a tricycle with two chairs belted on the back. Then came another, with another two chairs, followed by a pair of tricyclists carrying between them the table corresponding to the chairs. They all turned into Esplanade Row, and the latter two shouted as they co-ordinated, but they did not wake the little sepoys who slept on pavement mattresses, like so many toy soldiers fallen over.
Fairlie Place was quiet. For the first time, I saw no bathers on the Armenian Ghat, and no traffic block on the Howrah Bridge. But by the time I had crossed the river, there was light in the day; my hat had become heavy, and Howrah was fully alive, with the cranes swinging over the barges at the jetties, the men shouting, tongas arriving and departing, and the air full of the burning of Bengali coal. I entered the station. On the concourse, the crowds swirled while the engines waited, fuming beyond the platform gates.
I made for gate three, where a stopping train for Moghalsarai was about to set off along the Grand Chord. It would be calling at the spot called Sheoraphuli.
Deo Rana was waiting at the gate as arranged. He saluted and handed over a square leathern case about eight inches by eight. I lifted the lid of the case. Inside was a bit of kit called a Mandelette Picture-Taking Machine. ‘Easy to operate?’ I said, and Deo Rana shook his head.
‘Buggeration,’ I said, until I remembered that in Deo’s case this meant yes.
‘Even for little child,’ he said.
Beyond the gate, the train was being boarded by means of the usual free-for-all.
‘Would you care to come in first class with me, Deo?’
‘Thank you, sahib, I would like.’
By agreeing, he was putting himself in the way of the snakes; and that was exactly why he had agreed. We located the one first class carriage and climbed up. We had not booked, and it appeared we could take our pick of the seats. Walking along the hot, dusty corridor we passed one compartment after another with not a soul inside. The whole carriage, in fact, was empty. I dragged open one of the doors, and as I was stepping in, Deo Rana said, ‘I first, huzoor.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said, and so we split the duty of checking the compartment for snakes.
We took our seats, and Deo Rana said, ‘Webley gun, huzoor. You have?’
I took the piece from my shoulder holster and handed it over.
‘Comes very handy,’ he said. Deo Rana liked guns – guns and snakes.
After finding all in order with the Webley, he returned it to me, and we sat back.
We waited for the sound of the pea whistle. I checked my watch: it was six fifteen, and we had been due away at 6.12. We waited a further minute.
‘They are not hurrying up at all,’ said Deo.
I had thought I heard raised voices from the platform, and now they came again. Telling Deo Rana to sit tight, I quit the compartment and stepped down on to the platform again. A party of Europeans with bags and suitcases were rowing with the Indian train guard. Their leader was a young English fellow.
‘Yes, I daresay first class is, as you say “most height of luxury” but we don’t want to go in first.’
‘But you are having tickets and bookings for first itself.’
‘But we want to travel in second, and we want you to find us an empty compartment.’
‘But there is no empty, sahib.’
Now a woman stepped forward from the party: ‘Look we’re quite happy to go in third class if necessary. We just don’t want to get attacked by poisonous snakes, is that so unreasonable?’
A conference was taking place between another two of the males in the part, and they now took the guard aside, and began a low muttering with him. One of the Europeans took out his pocket book. They were offering baksheesh; offering to pay not to go in first . . . and being turned down by the looks of it. Either way, the original fellow had now lost patience. He strode over to the guard, shouting, ‘Look, you go and take some bloody Indians out of second class and put them into bloody first!’
‘Sahib, that is impossibility.’
‘What are you talking about, man? They’ll jump at the chance to go first class.’
‘Sahibs, train is late. I am blowing whistle.’
And as I leapt back up, he did so, and the train began drawing away, the locomotive barking violently, and giving a long, shrieking whistle as though from annoyance at the delay. Regaining our compartment, I told Deo Rana what had occurred, at the same time as opening the window blinds to verify that – yes – the Europeans had remained on the platform rather than risk the snakes. I wondered how many other, similar scenes had occurred at Howrah in recent days. It occurred to me that if the perpetrator put even one serpent in second or third, then he might single-handedly start to reverse the tremendous increases in ridership seen over the recent years; but he – or they – seemed to be fixated on first.
As we pulled away, I sat down and began to inspect the picture-taking machine. The big feature was that it could take pictures without the need of plates, films, printing or dark room, and so no third parties need know what you’d photographed. Fisher and I had been equipped with one apiece, and he’d already used his, I believed, to take pictures of unguarded entrances to certain railway properties. This was the first time I’d used mine, and I was doing so at the suggestion of Deo Rana, who’d booked the thing out of the police office stores on my behalf. You pointed it, and pressed the button (there was only one), and the image came out on what resembled a postcard: one of a dozen or so held in the cartridge attached to the back of the contraption. The thing was fully loaded anyhow, and there was a flash bulb attachment. I set it aside, and began looking out of the window. Deo Rana was doing the same, and his face betrayed no expression as he contemplated the ragged people who made their homes on the margins of the lines, and who at this time of day could be seen breakfasting on low-loaders parked in sidings, o
r making their ablutions on the track ballast.
On aggregate, the Grand Chord headed west, but it curved north in its early stages, and we were running a little way inland of the milky morning river, over which the sun was climbing. After a while, the factory chimneys of Calcutta gave out, and we were into a region of scrub and paddy fields, with occasional thickets of palms, and crumbling blue or orange buildings that looked temple-like to me. But then the factories (jute mills in the main) resumed, with the mercury climbing steadily all the while, so that I had to mop my brow, causing Deo Rana to turn towards me with what might have been the beginnings of a smile. ‘Too much of heat, sahib,’ he said.
After twenty minutes, we called at Bally, where the American tourist, Walter Gill, had been found dead in company with a sawscale viper. Half an hour later, we climbed down at Sheoraphuli, and the sound of the train pulling away was replaced by the sound of gulls circling overhead. They – and the hot breeze blowing over from the river – made the place seem like the seaside. The station was small, and quiet. The main part of town, and the river docks, lay beyond the opposite platform, which could be reached by a dusty footbridge. There was no local man to greet us. Well, we had not been expected . . . but we had been seen, and the door of a station office closed further along the platform on which we stood. We walked along the deserted platform, passing a drinking fountain on which was posted a sign: ‘Help the Railway to Help You’, and below was a list of instructions, such as ‘Do not take a bath in the drinking fountain’. Beyond the platform buildings, and the door that had closed, we turned left into a station yard: a square of hard mud. In one corner was a cow; in the opposite corner, a man sat on his haunches, smoking elegantly. Near the cow was the place to which I had been directed by the anonymous letter: a small blockhouse, with padlocked door. There was a sign on the door, and Deo Rana read it aloud in a thoughtful way, as he liked to do, to practise his English: ‘Please Knock.’ With one kick, he smashed down the door, and we entered the blockhouse.
The first thing I saw inside the blockhouse was a pasteboard box, on which appeared the words ‘Whisky, when it is good, is the embodiment of progress and happiness’. It was full of bottles of Dewar’s whisky. The room was crammed full of boxes and crates, about a third holding types of whisky, and it was all the good stuff: Dewar’s, White Horse, Old Smuggler, and none of your ‘Loch Lomands’. There was a good deal of brandy into the bargain, mainly Hennessy’s. There was an ice chest in the corner, and that was full of bottles of Beck’s. There was no ice in the chest, and the bottles were somewhat dusty, but they were highly saleable nonetheless. There were cigars and cigarettes, mainly Piccadillies. Behind me, Deo Rana cried ‘Watch, huzoor!’ and I tensed and turned with gun in hand, but he was only indicating a supply of silver plate watches, made by the Imperial Company of Calcutta. Some of these goods might have been the legitimate possessions of the East Indian Railway. The whisky might, for example, have been purchased for station dining rooms, but even the items so acquired did not belong in this dark and dusty lock-up, and most of the booty here had simply been lifted from the private-owner wagons entrusted to the railway for transit.
I commenced to photograph the stuff, as Deo Rana stood guard outside. Across the yard, the squatting Indian remained at his post, although he had now tossed away his cigarette stub, and was grinning broadly. I had pressed the button of the picture-taking machine for the third time, when a great clattering came from the direction of the station. Setting down the camera, I ran, with Deo Rana, on to the ‘down’ platform on which we had alighted. The footbridge was shaking violently, and resounding to the clatter of boots. They belonged to some functionary or other of Sheoraphuli station – I only saw the chap fleetingly as he came off the bridge and exited the station on the opposite side. He was the guilty party anyhow, and the long and tedious business of running him to earth would now begin, but that would be for others to do, and they would be armed with my report. I had no intention of chasing the fellow through a foreign town with the temperature at a hundred and five degrees. But Deo Rana, I sensed, was disappointed not to be able to do so.
II
On the afternoon of that Monday, I rode a tonga to the Calcutta Zoological Gardens. I arrived early, with half an hour to kill before my appointment with Professor Hedley Fleming. As in London Zoo, which I had once visited, there were queues at all the entrances, and elephants wandered about with grinning children on them. But whereas in London the elephant drivers wore blue uniforms with brass buttons, the elephant men here – mahuts by name – wore hardly any clothes at all. Also, an electric railway ran through this zoo. It ran too fast, like a toy that was about to break. It emitted a whirring noise that could be heard even when it was out of sight, and made the heat of the afternoon seem hotter.
In the reptile house, there was a different kind of humming – from its own electricity generator. It was a hot, dark blue hall. There were ornamental trees, ornamental ponds, and long benches. Glass panels were set into the walls, and behind these were snakes, if you could spot them, but many of the glass cases presented an apparent puzzle: find the snake. Most seemed asleep, buried under sand or bits of log, but when one of them did move, it was thrilling, on account of the winding and unwinding occurring simultaneously. In their oddness the snakes were on a par with the elephants, but elephants knew they were odd, and so they had a kind of resigned look about them, whereas the snakes had absolutely no expression at all. Like the worst of the villains I had come across, they were in some parallel world. All sorts of people you knew looked like elephants, sheep or monkeys, but a snake . . . You might say a snake looked like a small, bald, bad-tempered man whose face had been made worse by having been in a bad house fire.
Hedley Fleming’s office was attached to the reptile house, and at half past three a scientific-looking Indian in a white coat took me from the office into a dark passage, which was the service corridor for the snake enclosures. This was closed off to the public, and the many black doors set into the right-hand wall were bolted shut. In the gloom ahead of me I could see another man in a white coat. He was closing and bolting one of the doors like a prison warder, but he also had alongside him a trolley of the kind used in hospitals, and I had learnt from the Calcutta Directory that Hedley Fleming had practised as a medical doctor in London before coming out to India. He turned towards me. He had a thin face, curly blond hair, pale blue eyes behind round wire glasses. He looked like the cleverest boy in the form. He shook my hand without really looking at me, Meanwhile the Indian who had introduced us did not depart as I expected, but took hold of the trolley and pushed it along to the next door. The trolley squeaked badly. Upon it was a mix-up of odd-shaped glasses and bottles, some rubber tubing, a pump-like thing, and what I slowly realised was an outsized single white canvas glove – a glove for the hand of a giant: his left hand. Two of the bottles, I saw, had treacly yellow stuff in them. In the semi-darkness, we walked past some metal boxes with holes in them. They’d been put on the left side of the corridor. Thick black cables that were themselves snake-like ran along the floor of the corridor. On the right side, the next doors were coming up, and these were padlocked. The squeaking of the trolley stopped, because the scientific Indian had left off pushing it. He wasn’t overly chatty, this fellow, and nor was his governor. But Professor Hedley Fleming did now turn to me, saying, ‘One more call to make, Captain Stringer, then you will have my full attention.’
He was unshackling one of the two doors we stood alongside – the bigger of the two. As befitted his junior status, the Indian was unshackling the smaller one. The doors did not come right down to the ground, but were more like hatches. Professor Fleming stepped back as he swung open his door, and there was heap of gravel, a grey log and, some three feet beyond that, a pane of glass. I was on the wrong side of that pane of glass. On the right side of it, but still looking horrified, was a small Indian boy, a paying customer of the reptile house. His head just came up to the level of the glass; his mouth
opened and closed twice. I could not hear him, but I thought I knew what he had said: ‘Wah-wah!’ Observing that the boy had taken a single pace back – and that with the safety of the glass between him and whatever was in the enclosure – I took two steps back. The Indian had got the smaller trapdoor open, and the professor was putting on the single glove. As he did so, a snake’s head came into view from the right-hand side of the rectangle of light revealed by the open door. The snake’s head was not on the gravel, but about four feet above it, and therefore near the top of the rectangle of light. It was a king, and here was the rope trick all over again.
Beyond the glass, the Indian boy had now turned sideways on, and was shouting at the top of his voice through two cupped hands for someone he knew – mother or father, no doubt – to come and take a look. If he wasn’t careful, a keeper would come and chuck him out for making such a racket, but on my side of the glass, I couldn’t hear him at all, and nor could the king, the king being deaf. The king was moving his head up and down. The other, smaller door must have given the Indian access to king’s tail end, and the Indian was busying himself at the trolley again, pouring water into a saucer. He then put this into the aperture revealed by the small door. The king’s head was still swaying about in the bigger rectangle. The king’s hood was open wide, and I was hypnotised by its weirdness. It was like a case of flat mumps. A hood should be above, not below, your head. It was as though the snake had been lying down on one of the dusty roads of Bengal when a motor car had come along and run it over just behind its head, so flattening out the neck.
Professor Hedley Fleming stuck his left hand – the hand with the big glove on it – into the enclosure, and held it in front of the snake’s head, like a policeman stopping traffic. The snake looked at the glove, then smoothly pulled its head back out of the rectangle of light so that it was lost to my view. The Indian was now looking through his own opened trapdoor with folded arms. His posture suggested . . . not pleasure exactly. It was more that something had occurred that did not surprise him. I walked over, took up position behind his back, and looked. The snake’s head was at this end now, and it was drinking the water from the saucer. But the scene was soon interrupted, for both men were now shackling their doors. The Indian then walked over to the trolley, and began pushing it back to the door by which we had come in, with Professor Fleming following. The trolley squeaked loudly.
Night Train to Jamalpur Page 14
