Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  To Dickson, Savage said, ‘Deal with it, Henry. You’re a major, aren’t you? Christ, tell them to stuff it up, then!’ He jumped into the driver’s seat, engaged gear, and we shot off.

  After a mile I looked round and said, ‘The trucks can’t keep up, sir.’

  He said, ‘Do you think I’m running a kindergarten? My God, I nearly broke a blood vessel when I was talking to People-Psmythe. He didn’t understand how the engine driver could run off the rails on a beautiful night like this, with the Great Bear so clean and sparkling. Jesus! Pathoda again. The goods train must have been just a rehearsal.’

  He was in one of his strange ferocious good tempers, and I could not understand why. A deer stood peering into the lights at a corner and did not move till Savage swung the jeep six inches dear of its nose. I saw its little white tail flashing among the trees at the edge of the jungle as it bounded away. Farther on a pair of eyes reflected back like headlamps from a thicket beside the road. ‘Leopard, sahib,’ Birkhe said Savage answered in Gurkhali, and Birkhe chuckled.

  I said, ‘Do you know if many people have been killed, sir?’

  Savage said, ‘The Stationmaster thinks so. His first telegram was practically incoherent, Ranjit told me.’

  I was listening for the sound of the breakdown train. The road was not far from the railway here. I asked which way the troop train had been going, and Savage said, ‘West. From Allahabad.’

  He meant up. I said, ‘It must have been going downhill, then.’

  Savage hooted at a jackal standing bewildered in the lights, and said, ‘Yes, it will be a thoroughly unpleasant scene. That sari suits you, as I forgot to tell you yesterday, but it’s an impractical garment for this kind of life.’

  The two remarks were not altogether unconnected, I was sure. ‘It will be a thoroughly unpleasant scene,’ he said, and he meant, That’s why I’m taking you to it, so that you can see with your own eyes what happens when Mr Surabhai’s kind of patriotism runs wild. I remembered Mr Surabhai’s justification of train wrecking and started suddenly in my seat.

  Savage said, ‘Thought of something?’ He didn’t give me time to reply but went on, ‘or just got ants in your pants?’

  He had nearly forced me to say something then. My start had been so obviously connected with the wreck and the carnage and nationalism and my sari. Then he’d saved me from having to answer.

  ‘Something is on fire,’ he said. I recognized Pathoda station, the lights burning in it, just ahead on the right. The road ran straight for some distance there, and Savage slowed down and ran without lights. Then I saw a jumpy glow in the dark jungle-covered hills to the east. It was perhaps a mile or two away. I sniffed but could smell nothing. ‘West wind,’ Savage said curtly.

  He stopped the jeep at the Pathoda station, jumped out, and talked hurriedly to two men there. The jeeps and the rest soon caught up, and at once we started off again. After a bit the jungle thinned on the right, and I saw the dim gleam of steel rails. The rails swung away from the road, and almost immediately the jungle in there was aglow with red and yellow light, the trees standing in thick ranks against it, all silhouetted and motionless on a gentle slope.

  The convoy halted, and the Gurkhas jumped down. I hurried into the jungle at Savage’s heels, thorns plucking at my sari, and twigs whipping across my face. As we came near to the railway I saw the long hard line of a carriage standing on one end, the other end high among the branches. The carriage was dark and still, and the trees creaked under its weight, and there was a smell of newly broken wood. I saw other carriages, and men moving about. I had thought the men would be running, with the flames crackling so loudly in front of them, but they were moving slowly, or standing or sitting. The track ran in a shallow cutting there, and some of the grass on the banks had caught fire. British troops in every stage of uniform and undress were moving about like sleepwalkers and padding at the fire with coats and rolled trousers.

  I tripped over something and cried out, seeing it was a man sprawled on his side in the undergrowth. His head lay anyhow on his arms, and he was wearing a pair of wrinkled drawers, a white vest, ammunition boots, and nothing else. He rolled over when I trod on him, and mumbled, ‘Go ‘way.’

  Savage laughed suddenly. ‘Asleep!’ he muttered. ‘Good old Mr Atkins. Now, let’s see.’

  He stood on top of the side of the cutting, while the Gurkhas gathered behind him and to the right and left. The battalion doctor’s jeep was a little farther up, and I wondered how he could possibly have got it there. An Englishman in blue and white striped pyjamas came up to Savage and began to point and explain. I could see seven carriages now—one on the rails, one burning, one up-ended in the jungle, one half into the jungle, and three welded into a single Z-shaped heap across the cutting. There must be more carriages behind there, out of sight and probably undamaged.

  I hadn’t seen the engine and began desperately to look for it. An engine and tender couldn’t disappear. They weighed a hundred and fifty tons together, and carried three men. I saw them at last, recognizing the engine’s funnel and then the battered curve of its boiler among the wreckage of the three tangled carriages.

  Now I was alone with Savage. All the Gurkhas were at work. The breakdown train had arrived without my noticing it, and now its searchlights flashed on so that the dying red flames of the burning carriage flickered and jerked against a background of even white light. Savage said, ‘Go and help Chaney in the R.A.P.’

  I hadn’t then seen any dead or injured men, not close to. The soldiers were pulling lumps out of the wreck., and some of the lumps were strangely shaped. They might have been bedding rolls, or frame members, or men. I didn’t want to go to the Regimental Aid Post. There I would have to see those strange shapes close to, and look at them. The men would have raw wounds, and some of them would be bent and blind and dead. In truth I felt that I had somehow done all this by wearing a sari.

  ‘Go on,’ Savage said.

  I said, ‘I won’t! I’m not a nurse. I didn’t do this.’

  Savage put out his arm and caught my shoulder. His fingers tightened into my flesh, and his eyes glittered. He said, ‘Go and help Chaney to help the poor sods who’ve been hurt. They didn’t do it either.’

  ‘Don’t use filthy language to me!’ I said. ‘I won’t have it. I’ll report you to Mrs Fortescue. I’ll——’ I was struggling back as though Savage were pushing me, but he wasn’t.

  He said, ‘Go on.’

  I gasped. ‘They did do it. It’s their fault for——’

  Savage stepped away from me and said, ‘You mustn’t let the old school sari down—you little slut.’

  To get away from him I turned and stumbled along the top of the cutting. After twenty steps I got hold of myself. In trying to hurt me, Savage had only cleared my mind. Everyone must help now. If Mr Surabhai had been there he would be killing himself trying to help—even if he’d done it. But he couldn’t have done it. He wouldn’t. What he had said was just talk, principle, theory—surely?

  I came to the R.A.P., swallowed, and went down to report to Captain Chaney. There was a strong smell of cooking meat and burned sugar there, downwind from the burning carriage.

  I began to bandage and patch, inject and splint and bathe, blindly doing whatever Captain Chaney told me to. The soldiers were mostly young men, obviously conscripts because they were very polite especially when they were badly hurt. They lay in a quiet row at the edge of the jungle and called me ‘miss’. Some of the injured were excited, and then often, later, they’d relapse as the shock hit them. While they were ‘high’ they talked to me in tense bursts of soldier-Urdu. I was puzzled at that until I remembered the sari.

  The pieces and the strange shapes were there in the corners of the R.A.P., but Chaney did not ask me to help with them.

  Suddenly as I worked it was light, and I started up, thinking there must be another fire, but it was the dawn, and then I saw two breakdown trains and two big mobile cranes working, and there was a l
ocomotive under steam at the back of the wreck, and there were scores of railway coolies and gangers and men in topis. Chaney told me to go and have a cup of tea.

  The Gurkhas had brought degchies with them, and lit cooking fires among the trees and made lakes of stewed tea. I walked to the nearest fire and sat down slowly on the dry leaves. A Gurkha came, gave me tea in half of a mess-tin, and begged me to drink it. I saw it was Birkhe, Savage’s orderly, and watched him fill the other half of his mess-tin and carry it carefully away between the trees.

  I drank thirstily, my head bent over the mess-tin. After a time I saw a pair of shoes in front of me, and above them blue uniform railway trousers. A man’s voice said in quick nervous Hindi, ‘Oh, daughter, can you tell me if it is lawful for me to drink this tea? My caste is——’

  I looked up and saw Bhansi Lall, the Stationmaster of Pathoda. He was shaking and stammering, his fat cheeks aquiver. When my face came up he stopped, began again, and at last got out in English, ‘Miss Victoria Jones, my word! My sainted aunt! Miss Jones, you were in train? You have lost all clothing in horrible accident?’

  I shook my head and said wearily, ‘No. I’m wearing a sari, that’s all. I’m sure it’s all right for you to drink the tea.’ Really I had not patience with the point then. If he wanted tea, why didn’t he drink it? That was another time my sari was difficult to fit into.

  I beckoned to a Gurkha, and he brought Bhansi Lall a messtin of tea. Bhansi Lall sipped noisily, staring at me, his small eyes darting from my face to the sari, to the Gurkhas, to the ugly black and red wreck not far off. He said, ‘You are wearing sari always now? Very good show. Accident took place outside station limits of Pathoda, Miss Jones. Outside by miles—by two miles and three furlongs, approximately. Oh, I would like to catch bloody rapscallions responsible for all this to-do. Twenty-seven officers and soldiers of all ranks killed in Koyli Light Infantry, besides two soldiers missing in burned carriage, that is meaning colonel-sahib is not saying whether horrible objects in carriage are one soldier or how many soldiers.’

  ‘Was the driver killed?’ I asked. ‘Who was it?’ I thought suddenly that it might have been Ted Dunphy. He did an occasional turn on the branch, usually on specials.

  Bhansi Lall said, ‘Driver was killed, both the two firemen were killed. Guard was not killed. My God, Miss Jones, why are every derailments and sabotages performed in vicinity of my station? When nothing but calamities are occurring here, who will get the bloody sack but me? It is no dashed tommyrot!’

  Savage cut in. ‘You look as if you want a drink, Stationmaster!’ He was standing over Bhansi Lall. I hadn’t seen him come. An uncorked bottle of Army-issue rum swung in his right hand. Bhansi Lall scrambled to his feet, burbling thankyous, took the bottle, and poured a lot down his throat, holding the bottle high up and away from his mouth.

  Savage said, ‘Now, Mr Lanson wants you. At the back of the train. Down there.’

  Bhansi Lall tugged at his coat and set his cap straight on his large hairless head. He said, ‘I shall conceal nothing, Colonel-sahib. This persecution must be halted in military fashion—that is, with back to wall. Light of day is needed.’ He crashed off through the bushes.

  Savage said, ‘We’re going back to Bhowani.’

  I walked behind him to the road. There were many well-beaten paths now. Police and Gurkhas were keeping watch over a small knot of spectators. The jungle was dishevelled, with pieces of equipment lying everywhere, and heaps of salvage, and soldiers sleeping, and a couple of tents, and Gurkhas making tea, and splintered glass glittering high in the branches. The sun rose out of the crest line of the Sindhya Hills to the east, and we turned our backs to it and got into the jeep.

  Savage drove slowly on the way down. I’d forgotten all about the terrible things he’d said to me earlier. When I remembered them, I was almost grateful to him. He had made me do what I ought to do.

  His eyes were rimmed with dust and ashes, his uniform was filthy and the black hair on his forearms matted with perspiration and grey soot. He said, ‘We’ve got all the injured away now, to Bhowani and Kishanpur. Chaney told me you’d done a good job of work.’

  I said, ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  He said wearily, ‘Please don’t be modest. It doesn’t go with that heroic sari. Well, I suppose someone else thinks he’s done a good job, in killing those fellows and stopping all traffic on the branch line for two or three days.’

  I said, ‘Do they know for certain yet that it was sabotage?’

  He said, ‘Yes. The District Engineer found two fishplates missing. Later someone picked them up in the jungle the other side of the line. Do you think Surabhai did it?’

  I said quickly, ‘I’m sure he didn’t. The police can find out where he was last night. I’m sure he will have been in Bhowani and will be able to prove it. He’s always talking to people.’

  Savage said, ‘Surabhai doesn’t have to unscrew the fishplates himself to be responsible. I asked whether you thought he did it—ordered it done, knew about it.’

  I answered angrily, being a little frightened. ‘And I said I’m sure he didn’t do it. He wouldn’t murder people like that. He’s a very nice, kindhearted man.’

  Savage said, ‘Yes, but he has a blind spot just the same as I have and you have. I’ll do a lot of queer things for this regiment and not care a damn who else suffers. He’ll do the same for what he calls India. Still, if he had to wreck a train, a troop train—especially one full of British troops—was about the fairest he could have picked.’

  ‘Mr Surabhai had nothing to do with it, sir,’ I repeated.

  He said then, ‘We’ll see,’ and said nothing more until he stopped the jeep in front of our house. There he said, It’s nine-fifteen. The Collector wants to see you at five in his bungalow.’ He engaged gear and drove away. I saluted his back and went inside.

  Why did Govindaswami want to see me? Why hadn’t Savage told me so earlier? How and when had the appointment been fixed between them? Was it about the train wreck? If so, Savage and Govindaswami must have talked on the radiotelephone during the night. Why were they asking me about poor Mr Surabhai when it was obvious that K. P. Roy had done it? I felt suddenly very tired and very dirty and very small. I had a tepid bath and climbed into bed. As I was dropping asleep I thought that Govindaswami might want to see me about Macaulay—but by then I didn’t care. Nothing could stop me from trying to find rest and some peace in sleep.

  TWENTY

  Govindaswami kept me waiting in his study for ten minutes, and then I heard him talking with another man in the hall and recognized Ranjit’s voice. I had had no time to think what this might mean when Ranjit came in. He looked drawn, tired, and handsome. He must have been working all night and all day. He was so sweet-tempered that it hurt me to see him looking worried. I wanted to tell him not to worry, that I did like him, that I was sure I would marry him if he would give me time; but that wasn’t the cause of his worry now, I knew.

  The Collector was wearing a dark red carnation in his button-hole. He looked as tired as Ranjit, but as soon as he began to speak I knew he was going to come to grips with us. He began at once, ‘We are three Indians. We have different backgrounds and we believe in different approaches to the goal. But our goal is the same, as far as patriotism is concerned. I want a free, strong, democratic India, and I want it as soon as possible. Do you, Ranjit?’

  Ranjit nodded. Govindaswami glanced at me, raising his eyebrows, and I nodded. It was like a breath of fresh air to have it publicly acknowledged and said aloud that I was trying to be a good Indian.

  Govindaswami said, ‘But this train wreck is the work of men who want violent revolution. Specifically, it is the work of K. P. Roy.’

  ‘Roy?’ Ranjit said. ‘You weren’t even sure that he was in the province.’

  Govindaswami said, ‘Yes, but now we are just about positive that he’s actually in Bhowani City. The looting of the ammunition train was certainly his work. We do not know what he intends
to do with the explosives that he stole, except that he will certainly use them to increase dissension. He might arm the Moslems against the Hindus, or the peasants against the landlords, or the lawless against the police. Or he may blow up more bridges, wreck more trains. He doesn’t care who’s in the train. It might be me or Colonel Savage—but it might be Mr Surabhai, and it might be a thousand pilgrims. Who do you think engineered that fiasco when the two processions met the other day? We have got to remove Roy and everyone like him.

  ‘Now, we are working on two lines of approach. One is that someone may know where the stolen explosives are hidden—someone outside Roy’s own small circle of faithful Communists, that is. The “someone”, if he exists, is not telling. The “someone” may think it is none of his business, or he may think that the explosive is being kept for some justifiable cause. A Moslem might know, for instance, but might have been told that it is intended for the defence of the Moslem community here when the Hindus rise up to massacre them. You can think of other “justifications”.’

  ‘Why do you ask us?’ Ranjit cried distractedly. ‘I do not know. I’m sure Miss Jones does not know.’

  Govindaswami said sharply, ‘I think your mother knows.’

  Ranjit started, his mouth worked. Govindaswami went on. ‘Wait a minute. The other line of approach I mentioned is that we do have a picture of Roy. Here.’ He stepped behind his desk, lifted the blotter, and came forward with a glossy eight-by-ten print. He handed it to us where we sat together on the sofa, and said, ‘That’s K. P. Roy in nineteen thirty-seven.’

  It was an enlargement from a poor negative. A man in European clothes—trousers, shirt, tie, collar, coat—was standing by an ancient taxi, with a big turreted building in the background. The man had short hair and was clean-shaven and smiling. I had seen Ghanshyam ‘smile’, and I was almost sure this man in the picture was Ghanshyam. But I wasn’t quite sure. Nine years is a long time, and a moustache makes such a difference.