Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  ‘But after that why didn’t I go into the house?’ I asked quickly.

  Ghanshyam looked at me with a little nod of approval. He said, ‘Because you decided you could not face your sister—or your mother. Because you had personal problems you wanted to think over in peace. About your position as an Anglo-Indian, for instance. About Mr Taylor, perhaps.’

  I said slowly, ‘Yes. I had things to think about, and I wanted peace and quiet.’

  ‘Very well,’ Ghanshyam continued. ‘Now where did you go for, say, two and a half hours? It is not late even now—a quarter to nine.’

  I would have said it was nearer midnight.

  Where on earth could I have been hiding for two and a half hours at this time of the evening? I wouldn’t have crept into the bushes like a jackal; that didn’t make sense. It had to be some quiet but ordinary place. It had to be the reading-room of the Institute. I said it aloud, and Ghanshyam asked, ‘Did you do any reading?’

  I said, ‘I had a magazine in my hand. I hardly remember what it was. I was just sitting there thinking of Patrick, thinking that I couldn’t marry him. I was thinking of Colonel Savage. I was deciding the Anglo-Indians were wrong not to throw in their lot with the Indians.’

  Ghanshyam said, The lights would be on all the time? There is a place you could be, where a person glancing in from the door might not see you?’

  I said, ‘Yes, but——’ I had no regrets, no qualms, and I was glad I had killed Macaulay, but it was becoming risky, of a sudden.

  Ghanshyam said, ‘You must remember that it is almost impossible to get anyone to swear that a person was not in a particular place at a particular time. Witnesses will only swear that someone was somewhere. You walked round a bit. You went to the ladies’ room—there is no ayah permanently on duty there?’

  I said, ‘Only on week-ends. For dances and whist drives.’

  He said, ‘Good. You will go to the Institute now, and use the bathroom in case the sweeper should later recall that no one did. It is very important that you should be able to prove that you were not in the reading-room all the time. All this is merely precautionary. Lieutenant Macaulay will be seen at about this hour, now, in a house of ill fame at the other end of the city. He will leave it at eleven o’clock—that is, in two hours from now, more or less.’

  ‘The doctors will be able to tell better from the body,’ the Sirdarni said sharply.

  ‘I think not, Beji,’ Ghanshyam said, The corpse is in a dungheap, you will recall, and with ordinary luck it will not be discovered for several days. The dung emits strong gases and powerful chemicals.’ Ranjit was swaying on his feet, and his eyes were half closed as he listened to this. Ghanshyam said, ‘But I think Miss Jones should now leave, with all cautious

  I stood up. My legs were strong and my head clear. The Sirdarni said, ‘Tomorrow my son will invite you to come here for a visit. You must come. Some interesting people may call. I wish to see you again. And please remember that no one except us here, and our two servants, knows that our friend Ghanshyam is staying with us. Now go quickly and put on all those underclothes you were wearing. Better still, put on all your clothes, and then I will drape the sari over everything. Hurry.’

  She pushed me into the little room. I undressed and redressed as quickly as I could. When I came out the Sirdarni adjusted the sari again so that it hid all the other clothes. She stepped back, and for a moment her hard face softened and she smiled. She muttered, ‘You are a very beautiful woman, my child. Take her along now, Ranjit.’

  Without another word I followed Ranjit down the stairs and out of the house. There was no one about, and we walked quickly along empty streets. I found that I swung my hips naturally, as Indian women do, holding my head up and my chest out. If I didn’t walk like that the sari did not move properly.

  Ranjit did not speak until we were on the wasteland nearly opposite our house, and I could see the tall signal against the stars and the white glow of light escaping from the side of the signal lamp. Then Ranjit muttered, ‘My mother is a wonderful woman, isn’t she?’

  I said, ‘Yes. Why mustn’t I mention Ghanshyam? Who is he?’

  He said, ‘A gentleman from Western Indian. The British want him for printing seditious pamphlets, in Karachi or Multan, I think it was.’

  We were at the line then. Ranjit whispered, ‘Will you take off the sari now?’ I unwrapped it and untied it and gave it to him. ‘Your bag,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget that again. Don’t take too much notice of what my mother says always, Miss Jones. She is a great patriot, but—well, I cannot always agree with her.’

  I understood. She was of a much more ruthless character than he was. I whispered, ‘Good night, Ranjit, and—thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ I crossed the line.

  Lights were glowing behind the curtains in the Institute. The sweeper would be in his quarters. I walked round to the back of the building, opened the outer door of the ladies’ bathroom, and slipped in. When I had finished I opened the inner door an inch and looked down the hall. No one was about. I walked slowly over to the reading-room. It was empty. I sat on a sofa with my back to the door and picked a magazine off the table, riffled over the pages, and noted one or two pictures.

  I found myself thinking about Patrick. I resented everything about him and wondered for a moment if it could be jealousy. But that was ridiculous. I thought about Rose Mary, and about Ranjit. Macaulay never crossed my mind.

  The Institute was as silent as an empty church. No. Some men were playing billiards at the other end of the hall. They wouldn’t have come in here. Cigarettes—I looked at the ashtray. There were a couple of old stubs, both stained with lipstick. I couldn’t tell how old they were. Anyway, I had been to the bathroom, out on the steps getting some air, walking about. And I had not smoked to-night. Not in here.

  Where was my bicycle? At the station. Why had I left it there? Because Macaulay had offered to escort me down the line. I must go and get the bicycle in the morning—if it hadn’t been smashed or stolen.

  I got up, glanced carelessly around for the last time, and walked out of the front door, down the three steps, and turned on to Collett road. I stopped to light a cigarette.

  The lights were on in the parlour of our house, and I stood a moment on the path, carefully considering them. Who was it? Patrick’s motor-cycle was there at the edge of the road to my right. I went closer, walking softly on the grass, and listened at the window. No one was talking. Pater was out. Mater would be out. Rose Mary might be in there with Patrick, but I didn’t think so.

  I opened the door and walked in. Patrick was in the parlour. He had left the door open so that no one could pass down the little hall without his seeing. He was sitting in a chair by the fireplace, a book in his hands. He looked at me, his big face suddenly anxious, and stood up. I walked slowly into the room. I saw myself in the mirror over the fireplace and stared carefully—no blood, no mark, my skin smooth, my eyes dark.

  Patrick said, ‘Where have you been? I have been waiting.’

  I said, ‘For Rose Mary?’

  He said, ‘Oh, Victoria, don’t talk like that. Rose Mary is—you know Rose Mary is nothing to me. I was waiting for you. I want to explain about why that happened the other night. I want to ask you to forgive me. I——’ His voice trailed away. His pale eyes were hurt and shiny, and I felt the tears coming up in mine. But I was a new girl. I was not his Victoria Jones.

  I said, ‘I have been in the Institute—reading. I have nothing to say to you, and I don’t want to hear your excuses. Now please go.’

  He put out his hand for me, and I backed a step away. He muttered, ‘Oh, Vicky, this is an awful way for us to be. What have I done to you that you should treat me so very badly? If you would only marry me I would not get drunk from being so miserable, and then I wouldn’t see Rose Mary any more, and——’

  I said, ‘Marry you! You, with ten thumbs and a soul like a boiled ham! Do you think I’m going to marry you and have children like you and
sit in a house like this all my life wondering whether anyone will mistake me for an Indian? I’m not going to marry you.’

  I had become breathless with seeing him standing there so dumb and miserable. In a minute I would cry openly, and then where would I be? I ran out of the room.

  I heard Patrick try five times to kick the Norton into starting. He did not succeed; it only wheezed and coughed, and at last he wheeled it away. I heard the wheels clicking over, then the silence, like rubber.

  Now someone would ring up from the Gurkhas, about midnight, and ask whether I’d seen Macaulay.

  The Sirdarni might have killed several men. I wondered why I was not thinking of Macaulay’s battered head, and why there was no slipperiness of blood between my fingers. When I looked in the mirror I saw myself as I had been in the sari. Eventually I went to sleep and did not dream.

  FIFTEEN

  Two days later I was sitting in my usual place in the Collector’s study, the notebook on my knees and my pencil ready. There had been a big streak of blood on the front of my skirt directly under where the notebook lay. But that was—that had been—on the other skirt. I owned three sets of uniforms. The set had gone to the dhobi yesterday morning, the morning after the Sirdarni washed the blood away from my skirt and all the conscience of blood from my mind. Macaulay’s body hadn’t been discovered yet.

  Govindaswami said, ‘What did you make of the Sirdarni-sahiba?’

  I dropped my pencil, picked it up, and had time to consider the question. Savage and Govindaswami knew I had visited Ranjit Singh’s house yesterday. I hadn’t attempted to keep that second visit secret. Ranjit had openly invited me in the Traffic Office—while Patrick glared sullenly at us—and openly I had accepted.

  I said, ‘I think the Sirdarni is a wonderful woman, sir.’

  Govindaswami said, ‘Yes. Very politically minded. Who else was there?’

  They were a little like an examination in court, these questions, but Govindaswami was rocking easily back on the legs of his chair, his fingers locked together, and smiling comfortably at me. I thought suddenly that he already knew very well who had been there. It had not been a party, just a visit, but there were tea and sweet cakes, and people kept dropping in. I thought the Sirdarni had asked those people to drop in, to have a look at me perhaps—or for me to have a look at them.

  I said, ‘There was Ranjit, of course. Mr Surabhai. Those two gentlemen who came here with Mr Surabhai the other day. One or two others. Practically everybody’s wife.’

  The pale and calm stranger, Ghanshyam, had not been there. During my visit no one mentioned him. No one gave a hint that they knew of his existence. Nor did I. His loincloth would not have gone well with the others’ neat white khaddar, but he was just as well educated as any of them, perhaps better—that I was sure of.

  ‘Quite a Congress gathering,’ Govindaswami said easily.

  I didn’t answer. It was on the tip of my tongue to be sharp, to ask whether I didn’t have the right to meet anyone I liked anywhere I liked. But I decided not to say it.

  ‘What did they talk about?’ It was Colonel Savage who asked the question, looking at me through the thin blue smoke of his cheroot.

  ‘Politics, mostly,’ I answered truthfully.

  But it had not been pure politics all the time. Someone had mentioned Govindaswami, and that had reminded me to ask Ranjit what the Collector meant when he talked of his ‘personal spy ring’. Ranjit had told me. ‘Mr Govindaswami’s father was an untouchable. So of course he is an untouchable too. Every sweeper in Bhowani knows it. They will do anything for him, because they are secretly proud of him. They’ll tell him anything they find out which they think he’d like to know.’ I nodded. Every household has a sweeper, and the sweepers are untouchables. The sweepers are everywhere. They squat silently outside latrines and urinals and private bathrooms and wherever there is filth for them to clean up, and no one notices they are there until they the or are too drunk to do their job. I was glad I had really used the ghuslkhana at the Institute. It was Ghanshyam who had insisted that I must.

  ‘Did you hear anything of interest to us?’ Govindaswami asked. He was affable and offhand. I couldn’t make up my mind what exactly he did know about last night. The Kasels had a sweeper, of course, but he would be as politically minded as the Sirdarni-sahiba, and so perhaps would not help Govindaswami. I thought I could afford to be rather vague.

  I answered, ‘Oh, the Cabinet Committee. Jinnah and the Moslem League. The Mahatma. The usual things.’

  ‘There were no Moslems present?’ Govindaswami asked.

  I said, ‘I don’t think so. None of the women were in purdah.’

  Govindaswami nodded.

  Actually, Mr Surabhai had been planning to organize another procession of sympathy with the naval mutineers. Someone there had agreed to letter a lot of posters for him. Someone else had wanted to know whether Mr Surabhai was going to get the Collector’s permission for the procession, as he was supposed to do under the city by-laws. Mr Surabhai said he was not going to ask for permission, as an act of defiance. Mr Govind Dass, the pleader, thought he should While I was there, it had not been settled what they were going to do.

  Govindaswami said, ‘Did they discuss the stolen ammunition at all?’

  ‘I didn’t hear them,’ I said.

  That was a direct lie. Mr Surabhai had in fact got very excited about the missing ammunition. His theory was that the British had deliberately allowed the train to be looted—by extremist members of the local Moslem community, he insisted. ‘Of course that is what occurred,’ he had said, waving a teacup wildly in one hand and a small green cake in the other. ‘It is Jinnah’s fault. He has stirred up his people until they believe we are merely preparing to assassinate them on their charpoys the very first hour after freedom is sounded. The British have helped Jinnah with all their might and main. The British would be highly pleased with themselves, indeed, if the Moslems could feel enough strongly armed to assault us! Poor misled people! It is a scandalous state of affairs.’ Mr Surabhai spoke in English mostly, especially when the subject was political.

  I had told him I didn’t think he was right there. After all, I knew what had really happened—I thought. I told him about how Colonel Savage had tried to get a guard to the train, and how he had failed through no fault of his own. Ranjit backed me up, but we couldn’t persuade Mr Surabhai. He said, ‘My dear young lady, your Colonel Savage was merely pulling wool over the eyes of the record. He was keeping his tongue in his cheek throughout that flim-flammery!’

  During the night, last night, I’d thought carefully about what Mr Surabhai had said. It was possible. Savage and Govindaswami did have secret schemes which they told no one about—the way they had dealt with the strike, for instance. What Mr Surabhai asserted was certainly possible.

  But it had worried me that all those men and women at the Sirdarni’s house, except Ranjit, believed Mr Surabhai’s theory implicitly, and I didn’t see how they could be so sure. They might suspect—as I was beginning to suspect—but how could they know? They had inside information on the R.I.N. mutiny too, which I had never seen in Intelligence reports. They knew that seven sailors had been tortured in Bombay. Govind Dass had the sailors’ names and ranks on a little list in his pocket. Three more sailors had been shot out of hand. The battle at Karachi was a great deal bloodier than the newspapers or the Intelligence reports had said.

  I had told them what I knew, and doubted whether their sources were accurate. They became excited and a little scornful. They told me I was a dupe. Did I think the British would tell the truth, even in Intelligence reports? Those reports were printed documents, available years later as permanent records. Would the British be likely to print their infamy in them? They were read by thousands of Indian officers and officials, weren’t they? Only a few real traitors, men who had sold their souls to the British—such men as Govindaswami—would continue to work for the British if they knew the real truth.

 
Again I had had to admit it was possible. I knew things had been suppressed in Intelligence reports. The real truth about the Malayan campaign, for instance, had not yet come out. I’d met a lot of British officers in Delhi who knew bits of the truth and were convinced that the government was hiding something, but no one could find out.

  The Collector said, ‘I hope Mr Surabhai didn’t hold it against you that you were at the railway station on the day of the troop-train business.’

  I said quickly, ‘No, not a bit, sir. He knows I didn’t have anything to do with that. I like him.’

  ‘So do I,’ Govindaswami said at once. ‘So do 1.1 like him very much. You know, there is nothing against your seeing as much of Ranjit and Mr Surabhai and their Congress friends as you wish. Don’t think I am censuring you or warning you off by asking these questions.’

  ‘Oh, no, sir,’ I agreed. I thought Govindaswami was hinting that I would be a good spy, a useful part of his intelligence net, if I wormed my way into the confidence of the Congress group. But he must know they would not say anything secret in front of me unless I actively joined them.

  Govindaswami said, ‘Congress is not an illegal organization. One is not allowed to join it while in the Indian Civil Service or the Army, of course, just as Ranjit is not supposed to join it—or any other political party—while he is a railway officer.’

  I nodded. Ranjit had talked about that too. He didn’t say outright that he belonged to the Congress party. He said, ‘I’m not supposed to join any political parties. But the railways are owned by the government and run by the government. Government is English and, though they won’t admit it, they are of course a party, the party in power. Congress is the party in opposition. So, as a railway officer, I have made myself an official of the English government. That is, I am a member of the English party. I don’t think they have the right to force me into this position.’ Mr Surabhai had overheard and joined in. ‘Ah, but they are very clever fellows,’ he said. ‘Very clever fellows indeed! What they want is peace and order, so they are above the political party. What I want is bloodstained revolution, and so I am a dirty dog and should feel ashamed of myself from end to end.’