by John Masters
I said slowly, ‘Does Mr Surabhai know all this?’ Though he was the local Congress boss, I hoped he didn’t. If he didn’t, Ranjit certainly didn’t. As long as they were not in the know my sympathies were entirely with them. If they were puppets I could understand them and feel with them and be one of them.
The Collector said, ‘Almost certainly not. He’s the sort of person with whom, if the Congress high command seemed to be co-operating with the government, they would lose influence.’
‘And that’s the kind of sentence up with which a sensitive Old Wellingtonian should not on any occasion be asked to put,’ Colonel Savage said. ‘But I presume you dislike Churchill.’
‘Talking about language,’ the Collector said, ‘that subadar-major of yours is really rather a wonderful man.’
‘Manbir’s a good egg,’ Colonel Savage said shortly. ‘Also he’s a good actor, like all Gurkhas. His grandfather was my grandfather’s orderly.’
‘Same regiment?’ the Collector asked.
Colonel Savage said, ‘Yes. No imagination, that’s our trouble.’ He fell silent. I knew he didn’t like talking about the Gurkhas with outsiders. Once he’d said to me, ‘Now, Miss Jones, if you ask me any questions about the wonderful little Gurkhas and their wonderful little boomerang-knives and their wonderful bravery and loyalty and good humour, I’ll tell one of them to cut your wonderful little throat.’ I knew that he always called the subadar-major ‘Father’, except on parade.
The liveried doorman passed in with a small visiting card in the middle of a huge silver salver. The Collector glanced at it and said, ‘Ask him if it’s private.’
The doorman salaamed and retired. Mr Govindaswami said, ‘Mr Surabhai.’
Colonel Savage said, ‘Then perhaps he does know about our little subterfuge?’
The Collector said, ‘I don’t know. He wouldn’t come here unless he thought it was serious.’
The doorman came back and whispered something. The Collector raised his eyebrows. ‘Show them all in,’ he said and stood up.
Mr Surabhai entered the room and stood stiffly at ease a little inside the doorway. Two Indian gentlemen followed him, bowing to the Collector, and stood one on each side of Mr Surabhai. All three wore dhotis. Mr Surabhai’s sock-suspenders were maroon and his socks yellow, and he was wearing tan and white co-respondent shoes. On his arm he had a looselyfurled umbrella with a long ferrule.
The Collector held out his hand, but Mr Surabhai ignored it. He said, ‘I have come, Mr Govindaswami, to lodge a complaint. These gentlemen are my two witnesses.’
The Collector dropped his hand and said, ‘But shouldn’t you come to the Kutcherry during the proper hours, Mr Surabhai?’
‘I have only just this very minute thought of my idea,’ Mr Surabhai said excitedly. ‘Besides, you have no right to order the hours when the people may come and lay their complaints in front of you. You are a servant of the people.’
The Collector said, ‘I see. Can you give me some idea of the subject of your complaint?’
Mr Surabhai rummaged in his coat pocket and brought out a sheet of paper. He looked at it, then glared at the Collector with large, excited eyes. He said, ‘This is not in correctly legal form yet, you understand that? I just dashed it off: “I, V. K. Surabhai, pleader, of such and such an address”—you know quite well where my house is situated, mister—“do hereby depose that at or about one p.m. Indian Standard Time, on Sunday, May the nineteenth, nineteen forty-six, parenthesis, being Vaisakha Vadya 3 Saka 1868, Vikrama 2003 of the true calendars, end of parenthesis, on platform Nnmber One of the Bhowani Junction railway station of the Delhi Deccan Railway Company Limited——”’
Colonel Savage put down his whisky and began to light a cheroot.
Mr Surabhai continued to declaim: ‘“—did see and observe a Gurkha soldier, name unknown, commit the following here-under described misdemeanours, that is to say, first, indecent exposure of the person by opening his buttons and exhibiting in full view of the public of all sexes there assembled his——”’
Mr Surabhai had been reading angrily and banging the ferrule of his umbrella on the floor and glaring at the Collector to emphasize his points. The other two gentlemen stood solemnly beside him Suddenly Mr Surabhai caught sight of me. He stopped short and said aggrievedly, ‘Why did you not inform me there was a lady present? How do you do, Miss Jones, so nice to see you here.’
The Collector said, ‘I thought you’d seen her, Mr Surabhai.’
Mr Surabhai said, ‘I had not, of course not, why should I? Well, “a disgusting object”, I shall say here, mister, but you know very well what I mean. And—oh, yes—“secondly, a public nuisance in that he passed his water otherwise than in the authorized and plainly marked public convenience. The following undersigned gentlemen also witnessed the above facts and”—you know who these gentlemen are also, mister. Now, what are you going to do about that?’
He put away the paper and stood with his arms folded, the umbrella hanging from his left forearm.
The Collector said, “That’s a serious charge, Mr Surabhai.’
Mr Surabhai said, ‘I know very well it is a serious charge! That is why I made it, you see. There are two charges actually, obviously. I demand that the man be punished most severely. But there were several soldiers engaged in the same disgusting way, mister. In my home I will write a complaint against each and every one—name unknown in each case, naturally—but I have not found the leisure to do all that yet.’
‘I think I can help you to find the culprits, Collector,’ Colonel Savage said.
‘I should say you can,’ Mr Surabhai said warmly. ‘They were soldiers of your command. You know very well who they were!’
‘One was Rifleman Tilokbir Ale,’ Colonel Savage said slowly. ‘I’ll have to ask the subadar-major to find out the names of the others. But I’ll get them. When do you want them in court, Collector?’
‘To-morrow morning, eleven o’clock,’ the Collector said.
Mr Surabhai seemed to deflate. He said, ‘But—but——’ His eyes shrank, and he looked depressed. He said, ‘But do you mean that the soldiers will come and confess guilty to their crime, and accept punishment?’
‘Certainly they will!’ Colonel Savage got up and spoke energerically. ‘Certainly they will. They are subjects first, and soldiers second. Wearing uniform doesn’t put a man above the civil law. Military discipline doesn’t protect a soldier from the legal consequences of an illegal action. You’ll see them tomorrow.’
The Collector escorted Mr Surabhai and his party out. I looked at my fingernails. I didn’t want to catch Colonel Savage’s eye. He really had something to laugh about now. He had been like a lazy well-fed cat playing with foolish little mice. By nature and by blood I was one of the mice.
Mr Govindaswami came back and sat down. After a time Colonel Savage said, ‘Is that the best the poor little blighter could think of?’
The Collector said moodily, ‘I suppose so. He might have charged the Gurkhas with assault—it was, technically—but then he’d have made himself and Congress a laughing-stock. He hoped I’d refuse to bring the Gurkhas to trial. Then he could have said that we were protecting criminals, without having to go into too much detail. Now I doubt if he’ll go on with it.’
The Collector got up and paced angrily up and down, talking as if to himself. He said, ‘Poor Surabhai. He only wanted one thing—to get into armoured cavalry. He’d have preferred a horse, but a tank would have been better than nothing—a tank with the top open and him standing up in it. He hated Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito. He’s a liberal, a romantic of the romantics.’
Colonel Savage said, ‘Why didn’t he enlist, then? He would have been young enough, and he’d certainly have got a commission.’
The Collector said, ‘Because of you and your damned grip on this country. I hate the lot of you sometimes.’ He picked up his glass and refilled it from the decanter. He said, ‘Surabhai’s the stuff heroes are made of. Heroes never have any sens
e of proportion.’
Colonel Savage said, ‘Well, I’ll take my white face out of here. It’ll be gone for good soon enough.’
The Collector said, ‘Yes. Run away. Mr Surabhai makes me very bad-tempered. Look here, don’t go wandering round the city to-night on one of those prowls of yours. There’ll be a mass meeting of protest about our strike-breaking.’
‘You’ve heard already?’ Colonel Savage asked.
The Collector said, ‘No. But I’m an Indian. To-night there’ll be protests. To-morrow morning the union chiefs will telegraph all their branches to get the men back to work—under protest and without prejudice to their right to start the strike again. By God, I wish I could catch K. P. Roy.’
I went out with Colonel Savage, leaving the Collector hunched in his big chair. The short time of twilight had come while we were in there, and from the steps I could see the lighted ends of the Gurkhas’ cigarettes glowing in the jeeps.
‘How are you getting home?’ Colonel Savage asked me.
‘I came on my bicycle, sir,’ I said.
He said, ‘Okay. You heard what the Collector said. You’d better keep out of the city too, unless you go in a sari.’ He stood there a moment, drawing on his cheroot. Then he said, ‘In a few days now I intend to tell G.H.Q. I have no further work for you. It’s getting less, isn’t it?’
I said, ‘The railway work is, sir. That’s nearly all routine now. The battalion Intelligence work is increasing.’
He said, ‘I know. But I can’t keep a female Intelligence officer as a pet, even if I wanted to. Been having any more trouble? Sex trouble?’ He looked hard at me, frowning and biting the end of the cheroot.
I said, ‘No, sir,’ and couldn’t help blushing, though I don’t suppose he noticed in the gloom.
He said, ‘Have you made up your mind about Taylor?’
For a moment I was too surprised to speak; then I said, ‘That is none of your business, sir.’
He said, ‘Up to a point. But Taylor’s behaving like an angry water buffalo, and God knows he’s inefficient enough when he’s not angry. I expect the other men in your life would also feel much more at ease if you made it plain who was going to get it. If you pretend no one’s going to get it, men just don’t believe you—neither black, white, nor khaki men.’
I stood, still and angry, on the top step while he got into the jeep and switched on the engine. I could see his teeth flash as he smiled suddenly and said, ‘But if I were you I’d give Mr Taylor to Rose Mary, and throw in a pound of tea.’
THIRTEEN
I saluted as the jeep swept away. He hated to have me salute him. When he was out of sight I got on my bicycle and pedalled slowly toward our house. I wondered why Colonel Savage took a delight in using the full force of his personality, all its hard and unpleasant side, against me. He was quite different with the Collector and with the Gurkhas. He didn’t seem to like his own British officers very much. A few of them liked him; the rest managed to hide whatever feelings they had. To them, he was ‘the Sahib’. He liked to live that way and to be that way, and they were under his command—so be it He was the only Regular Army officer among them.
I felt very lonely pedalling down the Pike among the straggling houses and gardens that cover the strip of land between the railway and the Cheetah. There was no one else on the road. But the cause of my loneliness was what I had seen and heard this day. The Collector and Colonel Savage made a strange pair, but the ties between them were very close. I had no ties—except to the railway line over there on my left, and to the ladders of unwinking green and red lights on the north gantry.
That ride was like a time of slack water in my life. I was not English or Indian or Anglo-Indian. I was Victoria Jones and sat alone in a boat with everybody equally far away from me. There were two things which, so to speak, pointed my boat in a certain direction. One was the obvious truth that the English and the Anglo-Indians were sinking. I don’t say I would not have gone down with them, and very happily, if I had felt any real affection for even one of them; but I hated all of them. Colonel Savage and Patrick Taylor were their representatives.
The second thing was that I really knew nothing about Indians. As I didn’t know, I could imagine. I was imagining—all the good and nice things the others hadn’t got.
Then I remembered that a Gurkha office orderly, who could hardly read, had taken down and accidentally burned a rather complicated graph Colonel Savage had told me to make in the beginning. The graph was to help him see when the line was dear for his trolley patrols. If normal rail service was going to begin to-morrow or the next day, I’d better be ready with a new graph. I turned down Station Road.
The sight of the city ahead of me reminded me of the Collector’s warning and Colonel Savage’s repetition of it. I pedalled more slowly and thought of turning back.
But the station was only just inside the limits of the city. I freewheeled down the ramp into the tunnel that passes under the tracks beyond the north end of the platforms. When I came out of the tunnel I had a quick view of a long, narrow street with many people in it. I heard the noise they were making, and again I stopped pedalling. Then I thought how Colonel Savage would sneer if he did happen to ask for the graph and I hadn’t got it. I turned right and pedalled quickly into the station yard.
It was deserted. The tonga wallahs had gone, with their ponies and their tongas and their little piles of chopped grass. The hawkers had gone. The beggars had gone, even the man with his leg twisted around his neck, even the legless armless body in a basket. Two policemen were talking in the shadows of the arch. They stood aside for me, and I hurried past them and along the platform. The coolies were there, waiting for trains that would not come. The Gurkha soldiers stood a little way from their prisoners. The bright lights in the freshment rooms and in the ticket office shone out over the bare platforms and the steel rails.
I ran up the stairs, along the upper passage, and into the Traffic Office. I sighed with relief as I closed the door behind me.
Ranjit Singh was there, and so was Macaulay. Macaulay’s carbine lay on my desk. Though I did not like Macaulay, I was glad at that moment to see the carbine.
Macaulay looked at me and said, ‘You’re done in, Victoria.’
I was out of breath from running and from the foolish indescribable fear of the crowd in that narrow street. I said, ‘It’s so quiet outside, but it’s noisy a little farther off in the city. I—I got the wind up, I suppose.’ I laughed nervously and smoothed down my skirt and lit a cigarette.
Ranjit said, ‘May I get you a drink of water, Miss Jones?’ He spoke politely, so politely as to be almost cold. I refused, thanking him, and he sat down at his desk and bent his head over his work. I wanted to ask him what was the matter—but what could I say?
I went to my table and sat down. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked Macaulay.
He said, ‘Working. What else can you do when the Sahib’s got you in his sights? He sent me out on a trolley patrol as a matter of fact. When I got back just now I thought I might as well re-do that graph that got burned.’
I said, That’s what I came here to do! It’s my job. You shouldn’t have bothered’
He said, ‘I thought I’d save you a little trouble. But I hardly got started’
I said, I’ll finish it. Thank you, though.’ I had to thank him, and he was standing well away from me. Ranjit Singh’s pen scratched unobtrusively in the background.
Macaulay said, ‘Look, I’ll do the branch line graph and you do the main line. Then we can get finished quicker. And the sooner the better, if you ask me.’ He glanced out of the window and muttered, ‘Not a bloody soul in sight anywhere now.’ He got some sheets of graph paper, sat down opposite me, and began to work.
I tried to concentrate on the work, but sounds outside kept intruding, and then there would come silence more pressing than the silence in the room. Once there was a tremendous distant shout that rumbled and boomed toward us from the farthest parts of the
city. I dropped my pencil and started up, to see Macaulay looking at me. He shrugged, and I picked up my pencil, smiling at him—smiling from nerves.
Once a woman on a nearby housetop screamed for three minutes to another woman down in the street; it was a message, but I could not understand it. They shouted in some dialect. I only knew that both women were terrified—the one crying from the roof and the one hiding in the street. Then silence again, a big flat silence that crept up and caught hold of my pencil hand until it slowed and slowed and stopped. Ranjit Singh noisily got out a typewriter and furiously banged the keys. The silence was like the sea, and drowned even that.
I finished at last. It could not have been more than three-quarters of an hour. As I put down my pencil the noise boomed up again, a steady drumbeat and a rhythmical chanting from the centre of the city, perhaps six hundred yards to the east of us. I said, ‘I’m going home now. Please take this to the office with yours and leave them in my room.’
Macaulay pushed his chair back and picked up his carbine. I’ll go with you,’ he said.
Automatically I said, ‘No, there’s no need for that.’
He was hurt and answered me very stiffly. ‘Allow me to ring for a jeep. The telephone line’s still through.’
‘No,’ I said quickly, ‘thank you. It’s too close.’ I didn’t say, besides, Colonel Savage warned me. I said, ‘I’ll walk down the line.’
He went to the door and held it open for me. He said, ‘I’m coming. My God, Victoria, the Sahib would tear my guts out with his bare hands if I let you go back alone now. Listen to them!’
I heard the booming drum, and the tramp of feet that held no discipline, and the rhythmical high chant. I shivered, and said, ‘All right. Thank you.’
Macaulay said, ‘Are you sure you’re all right here, Ranjit?’
Ranjit looked up at the two of us, his eyes meeting mine for a second and at once dropping. He said, ‘I’m all right, thank you, Mr Macaulay.’
Macaulay shrugged and followed me along the corridor and down the stairs. On the platform he spoke to a Gurkha standing in the beam of light from the first-class waiting-room, then led on. At the end of the platform he said to me, ‘The password to-night is shikar and the countersign, Kabul. That mob’s coming this way.’
