Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  ‘What do you think’s happened to Macaulay?’ Govindaswami said.

  I looked up slowly, but he was speaking to Savage.

  Savage knocked the ash off his cheroot and said, ‘I have no idea. He leaves Miss Jones at the signal and disappears. No one sees him. If you want my opinion, you should have the proprietors of the local brothels thoroughly cross-questioned Lanson and his police should give them all the third degree.’

  Govindaswami said, ‘Oh. Macaulay is that kind of man, is he? I’m so bad at telling about these things.’ He dusted off his white suit, seeming rather embarrassed.

  ‘He is,’ Savage said. “He came within an inch of a courtmartial in ’forty-four. He raped an Assamese coolie woman—or just about. I saved him by sending him out on a long patrol while the subadar-major persuaded the woman, with a good chunk of the Battalion Fund at his disposal, that she bad a bad memory for faces.’

  I sat stiffly in my position. I must relax, but I must not move about and draw their attention to me. I must be prepared at any moment to say something about Macaulay. If they spoke to me this instant I would whisper triumphantly that I had killed him and I was glad of it.

  Govindaswami said, ‘H’m. Have you checked your funds? People like Macaulay often need money.’

  Savage said, ‘I know. Yes, I have. Dickson did it this morning. He’s a thorough old boffin. All the money’s where it ought to be. But Macaulay’s carbine is missing.’

  ‘With him, of course?’ Govindaswami said. ‘He had it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Savage said. “It makes me wonder whether someone hasn’t hit him on the head to get it. Particularly after the looting of the ammunition train.’

  Govindaswami said, ‘It’s possible. But we’re not sure yet that he hasn’t just deserted, are we?’

  Savage said, ‘He might have. I’ve been pretty rough on him lately. But how the hell did he get away, and where has he gone?’

  They discussed the case unconcernedly. They didn’t seem to care very much whether Macaulay was found or was not found, whether he was alive or dead. It had been like that since the telephone call I had expected that midnight, which duly came. The voice had said, ‘Victoria? Duty Officer, First Thirteenth Gurkhas. George Howland. Wotcher! Say, have you seen Graham Macaulay? He’s not back in his quarters. The Sahib’s going off his rocker. Oh, did he? Yes. ’Arf a mo’. I’ll write that down. Sure. Thanks a lot. Cor stone the crows, this is a rum go, i’n’it? Good night, Vic.’ Howland was an awful young man, always imitating Cockney to be funny.

  In the morning Savage had asked me a few more questions, and after lunch I’d heard him discussing with Major Dickson whether they should invite the police to share the Thirteenth Gurkhas’ little mystery. Later they decided it might be as well, and then they told Lanson. The D.S.P. had not asked to see me yet, and I was beginning to doubt whether he would.

  The conference drifted to a conclusion. Govindaswami thought there would be a procession or two the next day. Savage thought that would be fun. I got on my bicycle and wondered again how much Govindaswami knew and how much he guessed—about the stolen ammunition, about K. P. Roy, about Lieutenant Macaulay.

  But I went home thinking more about my visit at the Sirdarni’s than about Macaulay. There had been much political talk, but that was not the chief memory I had carried away with me. I remembered their playing an old gramophone with a huge horn, scraping and squeaking. The music was not music to me, but it mixed cheerfully with someone singing in the bazaar and the men’s thin voices conversing. I remembered the smell—what was it? Curry, incense, clean linen? I absorbed some of the Sirdarni’s bitterness. It was not a conscious single thought; it was a gradual seep, drop by drop. I said to myself, looking around me, this I could have loved; this the English have spoiled for me; sneering at me, they have brought me up to sneer at myself.

  Perhaps no one but a Jew would understand what it was like to be my sort of Anglo-Indian, and not even a Jew could really know, because the Jews are there in the history books before the English. A Jew would see, though. There was a clerk in Transportation, a Jew from Stepney in London. I used to avoid him even before I was commissioned, because of his furious self-mockery—the more painful the funnier, the jokes curling up and round like the tail of a scorpion that wants to kill itself.

  I cheered up. That was over, for me. I was going to meet Ranjit and go to the pictures with him just as if he had not been an Indian.

  SIXTEEN

  I met Ranjit in the Sudder Savoy. It was the big ground-floor room of a dirty house outside the northern corner of the city. There was a long signboard over the door: SUDDER SAVOY RESTAURANT, A. COWASJEE MILKMAN, PROP. IN BOUNDS FOR B.T.

  I’d seen the place, on Friday nights particularly, when there’d been a hundred Tommies in there, eating greasy fried eggs and drinking beer and shouting. They were real old sweats with tattooed arms and hollow cheeks and no sunburn. Rose Mary used to come here often then. In those days she’d had a boy friend who was a corporal. When the last British battalion left Bhowani in 1939 the Sudder Savoy began to decay. Now Rose Mary never came, and Mr Milkman had returned to Bombay, leaving an old Mohammedan cook in charge.

  I arrived a quarter of an hour late. I couldn’t afford, even in 1946, to be seen sitting alone in there. In the old days the regimental police would have asked me who I was waiting for and then tried to make a date with me themselves and made trouble if I had refused. Rose Mary said that happened to her once.

  Ranjit was sitting at a table in the far corner under a 1944 calendar that had a picture of a blonde girl in a white bathing suit. He was watching the door and he had a glass and a bottle of fizzy lemonade in front of him. There was no one else in the place. In 1939 he wouldn’t have been allowed there. The glass front was half screened with brown paper. Tins of beans and pineapples and peaches, all flecked with rust, filled the dusty shelves up the wall behind the counter. After all those years the place still smelled of stale beer.

  Ranjit got up with a quick shy smile as I sat down. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I have never been in this place.’

  I knew that, but I said only that he hadn’t been in Bhowani long.

  He said, ‘No, not long.’

  The old cook was standing beside me, and Ranjit asked what I wanted. I ordered lemonade, the same as his, though I did not like the stuff. It was too sweet. When I got my drink Ranjit said a little nervously, ‘I have some bad news, Miss Jones. The projector at the Mahal has broken down. They are not showing any picture to-night.’

  I said, ‘Oh dear!’ and smiled at him. He seemed really worried, so I said, ‘It’s bad luck, I know, but it won’t kill us. I did want to see those two dancers, though.’

  He began to talk about the dancers. He said, ‘They are the best classical dancers working in India to-day, but I do not think they are as good as they used to be. This is a rather recent film of theirs. They have been to London and New York—before the war, of course—and their dancing is not so good, not really classical. There is more posturing, if you know what I mean. They have become too obvious.’

  I didn’t know what he meant, because I’ve never been to London or New York. But I knew what he thought I thought he meant—that the dancers had westernized themselves; in other words, betrayed his India.

  He said, ‘I am so sorry. I suppose I had better take you to your house.’

  I was sure it had been in his mind to ask me to his own home. But I had been there only yesterday, and obviously he was too shy to force himself on me. I would have liked to go there again.

  But if my mind was made up, and my boat was moving, why did I have this feeling, almost of guilt, to be sitting there with Ranjit? Why were we meeting in a deserted restaurant and going to an Indian cinema where I knew no one would recognize me? It had got to stop. The time for feeling guilty and ‘different’ had passed. I said, ‘Let’s go to the cantonment cinema, then. They’re still showing Hell’s Angels. Have you seen it?’

  He said, ‘No
, I’ve never seen it, but——’

  I said, ‘But what?’ I lit a cigarette slowly. I felt responsible for him, in this half-English place. It was extraordinary how that feeling made me like him more.

  He said in a low voice, ‘Do you think it would be wise, Miss Jones? I am an Indian, and you are not. I mean, you do not look like one. See, you are smoking, and your dress is European. My mother is a wonderful woman, but she does not always understand how difficult it is for people to change from things they are used to.’

  ‘You think I’ve always got to be half and half?’ I said. ‘You think I’ve always got to wear a short skirt?’

  He said, ‘No, no, Miss Jones. Please!’

  Looking at him, with my cigarette in my hand, I was suddenly sure that he thought I might have led Macaulay on. He couldn’t make up his mind whether I had or not. He had seen me smile at Macaulay. He had seen me accept Macaulay’s offer to escort me home. All that, after he had saved me the time before. He couldn’t understand. I began to feel cross with him. This was something that must be settled. I said, ‘You think I was flirting with Macaulay, don’t you?’

  It was foolish of me to say it, even to think it. Why should he meet me to take me to the cinema if he thought that about me? But in truth I am sure he was afraid of me then. I attracted him, yet I terrified him.

  He said, ‘Sssh!’ and glanced nervously around. He would have made a very bad conspirator. He was agitated, and his large soft eyes were fixed on mine, terribly anxious that I should not misunderstand him. He said, ‘It is of you I am thinking. What will your father say, your sister, Mr Taylor? They are not sophisticated people like some, who do not mind.’

  I said, ‘I certainly don’t care what Patrick Taylor thinks,’ and felt myself tossing my head. ‘I’m finished with him. I told him so the other day. As for the rest——’ I played with the empty glass, turning it over and over in my hand. What did I think about the rest? I said slowly, ‘I will be sorry to hurt Pater, but I cannot stand still because of him. It is like being in prison, I tell you.’

  I stood up quickly and said, ‘Come along, Ranjit. I want to see Hell’s Angels. Jean Harlow is terrific in it.’ Of course I had seen it years before.

  So we went to the cantonment cinema, going slowly side by side up the Pike on our bicycles, then through the dark cantonment roads between the low square-cut shapes of the barracks. A few Gurkhas were sitting on one of the verandahs with a little drum, beating it and singing together. They sounded sad, and I had learned to become very fond of them even in this short time, so I said, ‘It is a shame they can’t have their families down here. They are nice little men, you know.’

  Ranjit said, They don’t have to join the Army, Miss Jones. They have come of their own free will from Nepal to oppress us. I cannot feel sorry for them.’

  A breath of exasperation stirred me. I wanted to ask him whether he would say the same thing if it was the Indian Government of the future, instead of the Government of India of the present, that found it necessary to station the Gurkhas in barracks where there was no accommodation for their families. But I held my tongue because I was willing to believe that all my ideas and my thoughts needed looking at with a new eye—my new eye.

  Ranjit bought the tickets, and we went in. The cinema was already dark, and when I got used to the darkness I saw that it was less than a quarter full. A few Gurkhas sat down in front, in the cheapest seats, the foul smoke from their cigarettes curling up like a shaky curtain in front of the screen. I wondered what they thought of Jean Harlow and the long kisses and the huggings. When I turned to look back, peering up along the smoky, flickering beam of the projection lamp, I saw the silhouettes of a few people scattered in the more expensive seats behind. I settled down to enjoy the film. The fans in the ceiling whirred noisily, blowing hot air down on my head.

  At the interval, when the lights went up, I sat blinking for a moment and then said, ‘Let’s go and have a lemonade. I’m thirsty, aren’t you?’

  Ranjit said, ‘Well, yes. Certainly, Miss Jones.’ He stood up very correctly, glancing round him as though he was afraid to be recognized. He said in a low voice, ‘Mr Taylor will be there.’

  I said, ‘Where?’

  I looked round and saw Patrick’s back as he walked. head bent and shoulders swinging, up the side aisle toward the bar at the back of the cinema. I knew from his walk that he bad been drinking—not a great deal, perhaps, but probably enough to make him difficult. It might be more sensible not to force a meeting with him now. But I was not doing anything wrong. If I hid now I might as well give up altogether.

  I went up the aisle behind Patrick. Ranjit not too close on my heels. Patrick was leaning over the bar when I went in. The big double doors to the road were open on both sides, and a little wind blew through to stir up the dust on the checkered imitation marble floor. Colonel Savage was standing at the opposite end of the bar, leaning against the wall with a big glass of whisky in his hand. He saw me come in with Ranjit. Patrick did not. Savage’s eyes did not flicker, and he said nothing.

  Patrick said, ‘Good evening, Colonel.’

  Savage said, ‘Good evening. Enjoying the picture?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Patrick said listlessly. ‘It is jolly good.’

  The barman asked me what I wanted. I said, ‘Lemonade. The same for you, Ranjit?’

  Patrick swung round on his toes at the first sound of my voice. I saw that his eyes were bloodshot. Then Savage said, ‘Good evening, Miss Jones. Good evening, Ranjit.’

  Patrick said, ‘What are you doing here?’ He stood upright, one hand on the bar, swaying a very little.

  ‘Seeing the picture,’ I said as lightly as I could. ‘With Ranjit.’

  He said, ‘You are seeing the picture with Kasel? You have come here with Kasel to see the picture?’

  I said, ‘Yes, Patrick, I’ve just told you—— Look out for the lemonade bottles! Oh, Patrick, you are the most——’ The lemonade bottles smashed on the floor as Patrick jerked his elbow back.

  Now he was concerned by his own clumsiness. He was drunk and nearly crazy with jealousy and hurt pride—because Ranjit was an Indian. Patrick turned to Savage and said in a low voice. ‘That was a jolly good idea of yours at the station the other day, Colonel. You know, what you told the Gurkhas to do on those bloody Congress wallahs.’

  Savage said coldly. ‘Do you mind not trying to drag me into your mating squabbles?’ He swallowed his whisky and went into the cinema. A bell above the outside doors rang continuously for a half minute. The audience began to drift back from walking up and down in the road or on the weedy grass.

  Patrick was swaying more noticeably. His pale blue-green eyes were dull and blinking and watery, as though Savage had hit him on the nose. He said, ‘You are just a bitch, Victoria. You can’t go out with this fellow. I’ll show you!’

  He wandered toward us, his fists doubled. Ranjit said, ‘We ought to go, Miss Jones.’

  I shook my head. I shouted at Patrick, ‘You call me a bitch, you—you fornicating swine!’ I stood right in front of him, glaring at him, and my voice had gone shrill and all cheechee. It was such a little easy step to be with Patrick again.

  Patrick said, ‘I am not going to hit you, Vicky. It’s not your fault. It is that fellow.’

  I stared at him until his eyes fell. Then I said, ‘I am going to see the picture with Ranjit and do whatever else I bloody well like, see? Now go home and get sober and learn to behave yourself!’

  I walked back into the cinema with my head up. The light began to dim as I went in, but I had time to see Colonel Savage sprawled back in the double fauteuil nearest the aisle, nearest the door to the bar. His feet were up on the back of the seat in front. He must have heard.

  Ranjit sat silent through the rest of the picture and did not talk on the ride to my house. Patrick passed us in a tonga. The Norton must still be out of action. I shook hands with Ranjit in the road outside Number 4, pressing his fingers because he had been hurt and I
liked him. On an impulse I said, ‘Do you know what I think I’m going to do?’

  ‘No, Miss Jones,’ he said.

  I said, ‘For heaven’s sake, call me Victoria. I think I’m going to wear a sari. That ought to show them!’

  Ranjit was still worried. He said, ‘It will cause you a lot of trouble.’ Then he cheered up a bit and said, ‘But it will be worth it. You don’t know how suitable a sari is for you, Miss—Victoria.’

  I said, laughing, ‘Oh, yes, I do! Why else do you think I’m going to wear one?’

  The smile was wiped off his face, and he said, ‘Good night, Victoria,’ stiffly and suddenly.

  I said, ‘I was only joking, of course, Ranjit. You didn’t think I was insulting people who wear saris, did you?’

  He said, ‘I didn’t know. You see, it is difficult, as I told you. That is what my mother does not understand. Everything is plain and easy to her.’

  Once more he said good night, and left me. I stared after him, watching his slight body on the bicycle moving from light to dark and dark to light, each time fainter and smaller under the lamp, until he turned out of Collett Road. I thought over what I had said that had upset him—‘Why else do you think I’m going to wear one?’ How could he have thought I meant to be insulting?

  I gave up. It would be difficult for a time. They were so touchy. We were so touchy—whoever I meant by ‘we’. I opened the front door of the house.

  Patrick was there, standing in the middle of the hall, and with him Pater, and, in the door of the parlour, Rose Mary. Patrick pointed his finger at me, his arm stretched straight out. He said thickly, ‘There she is!’

  ‘Where’s Mater?’ I said, putting my hand up into my back hair and pushing out my curls and walking slowly forward to meet them until our faces were only an inch apart, my voice rising and hardening and my back tingling.