Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  I muttered, ‘Perhaps. But how much self-respect could I keep then, Pater? I’d be not much better than a loose woman myself if I did that. It is now, doing what I am doing, that I am beginning to be able to respect myself.’

  He didn’t answer. We sat for a little longer; then I got up and ran over to kiss the top of his head and put my arms round him. He caught my waist and muttered, ‘Don’t think I am against you, Victoria. I am only thinking of your own good, nothing else.’

  I said, ‘I know, Pater I’ll always trust you.’

  I did not sleep well that night. In my thoughts I saw myself always in one or another of my saris. Sometimes I saw things of the past, things that had happened; sometimes I imagined things to come. Like—in the past: On Saturday morning Colonel Savage had looked me up and down and said, ‘Please remember that caste marks may not be worn when in uniform.’ George Howland, the awful young man, had come into my office and started back with his hand across his eyes, crying, ‘What’s the fancy dress in aid of, Vicky?’ Major Dickson had looked at me, opened his mouth, and said, ‘Good morning, Miss Jones—er—good morning.’ Rifleman Birkhe had smiled at me and said nothing.

  But the subadar-major had marched in to return a map, saluted, frowned, and said brusquely in his painful Hindustani, ‘You have got oil mark on sari, miss-sahiba. Sari is not good clothes for running or bicycling.’

  And—in the future: I was a bride, being prepared for marriage. I stood in a light and airy room with my arms outstretched while Indian girls ministered to me, I and they in flowing diaphanous saris. There was no bridegroom in that room, of course. Then I was in a big hall of parliament, and again I had my arms lifted up and stretched out, but that time I was exhorting the men in there, and the sari made me like one of those pictures of Romans in the school history books.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The next morning Lanson’s Chevrolet was standing outside the offices when I got there. The orderly told me the colonel-sahib wanted to see me. I went in at once, saluted, and waited.

  Savage and Lanson were standing beside the big desk. Savage said, ‘Mr Lanson wants to talk to you in his office at the Kutcherry. They have found Macaulay’s body. I have just identified it. You have the right to have a legal adviser present with you during the D.S.P.’s questioning.’

  ‘I haven’t accused her of anything, Savage,’ Lanson protested indignantly. ‘What do you want to frighten her like that for?’

  ‘I’m telling her her rights, in case you forget to,’ Savage said. ‘Well, Miss Jones? I can get anybody you want.’

  ‘No, thank you, sir,’ I said. ‘There’s no need.

  He said, ‘All right. Will you send her back afterwards, Lanson?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ Lanson said stiffly. Savage sat down at his desk, and I followed Lanson out into the passage.

  His office in the Kutcherry was three doors from the Collector’s. It was a small book-littered place with a table, three or four chairs, shelves, an almirah or two, and a typewriter. It was very hot in there. Lanson brought me a chair and began to light his pipe. He took longer over it even than Pater did. I noticed his eyes wandering over my sari and thought he did not like it. When he began to speak his tone was noticeably harder than at our last interview. He said, ‘Macaulay’s body was found this morning in a dungheap in the city. It had a notice hung round the neck—“Quit India”, which is the current Congress slogan. His head had been battered in, his stomach ripped open, and other mutilations carried out.’

  I kept my mouth tight closed. Too tight, for he was watching me sharply, and he said, ‘You’re surprised? Why?’

  I shook my head. I said, ‘I was thinking, how horrible. A dungheap, and—all those horrible things.’

  Lanson looked at me for a minute, the pipe rattling as he sucked on it. He said, ‘I expect you’ve read a good many detective stories, so you’ll know that the police always have to ask a lot of questions of the last person who saw the victim alive.’

  I nodded. I didn’t feel a bit sick. I wanted to know why Ghanshyam had done those things to Macaulay’s dead body.

  Lanson said, ‘I have to find out what you were doing during all the hours in which Macaulay might have been killed. I have to have proof of everything you say.’

  ‘When was he killed?’ I asked automatically. About eight o’clock, it had been, but I would be supposed to ask.

  ‘We know when he was killed, Miss Jones,’ Lanson said shortly. ‘To the hour, and nearly to the minute.’

  I didn’t know what to do with my eyes. If I looked out of the window at the pleaders and their clients in front of the court opposite, I’d be avoiding Lanson’s eyes. If I stared at him, I’d be over-anxious. But he couldn’t know the exact time, Ghanshyam had said, because of the dungheap. But suppose Macaulay’s watch had been broken in the struggle? They might be bluffing, though. Ghanshyam was quite as clever as they were.

  Lanson said, ‘Well? Can you give me these proofs?’

  I said, ‘I can’t prove I was in bed, Mr Lanson.’

  He said, ‘No, but tell me everything you can.’

  I said, ‘You’ve got it all already. I’ve told you.’

  He said, ‘I want to check it again.’

  I told my story again. If they did know the exact time of Macaulay’s death it would sound thin. Why had Ghanshyam put the ‘Quit India’ sign on his body? That threw suspicion on Congress.

  I interrupted myself to say, ‘But why do you think I did it, Mr Lanson? It must have been some Congress extremist, or someone who wanted to put the blame on Congress.’

  He said, ‘Perhaps, Miss Jones. You know the Congress crowd here pretty well by now, though, don’t you? And I haven’t said you did it. But I have my duty, you know, just as much as Colonel Savage has his. Now, who saw you in the reading-room at the Institute?’

  The interrogation went on.

  At the end Lanson relaxed a little He said, Thank you, Miss Jones. Have you ever heard anyone threaten—or promise, or talk—about derailing a troop train?’

  I held my hands close in my lap and shook my head. I answered, ‘No,’ but my voice was very small.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He said, ‘I asked because about twenty people have heard such talk. From Mr Surabhai. He’s made no secret of his belief that an Indian patriot would be justified in derailing a troop train, regardless of the fact that the R.I.N. mutiny is over. It’s funny you haven’t heard him, because nearly everybody else who knows him has.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t,’ snapped, getting angry.

  He said, ‘Very good. Have you seen this man recently?’ he pushed the photograph of K. P. Roy into my hands.

  I gave it back at once and flared up because anger and fear were pressing together in me. I said, ‘No, I haven’t, and the Collector’s asked me all this already, and you know he has. Why do you keep on at me? Just because I wear a sari now, I haven’t become a murderess, a train-wrecker!’

  Lanson said calmly, ‘I’m asking you because we think this man’—he tapped the photograph—‘has been seen in the district around the Sirdarni-sahiba’s house. You’ve been there quite a lot, naturally, since you are engaged to Ranjit Singh.’

  ‘I’m not engaged to him,’ I gasped. ‘Who told you that?’

  He said, ‘No one told me directly. But the Sirdarni is telling other people. About this man, though—I hear that someone rather like him was talking to you in the tunnel where Station Road crosses under the railway lines, the day the two processions clashed….’ He gave details.

  I thought of two things at once. How dare the Sirdarni announce my engagement before I had consented, before Ranjit had even asked me properly? Someone must have passed by while Ghanshyam was putting my bicycle chain back on. Or Someone might just have been able to see into the tunnel from the lower windows of one of the houses beyond.

  I said, ‘I remember that a man helped me to put my bicycle chain on when it fell
off. I don’t remember him at all. I gave him a few annas.’

  Lanson stood up, his chair squeaking back on the stone floor. His pipe was rattling again. He said, Then that will be all for now, Miss Jones.’

  I had been thinking. I said, ‘If this man hangs about near the Sirdarni-sahiba’s house, why don’t you search it or surround it or something?’

  The telephone rang. Lanson spoke into it stolidly and slowly in Hindustani. When he put it down he said, ‘That was a message from the tehsildar in Pathoda. A fire started in the jungle just west of a little village called Maslan at about six o’clock this morning. There was a pretty strong west wind up there then, he says. The fire has completely destroyed Maslan. There were only about twelve houses, but they’ve all gone.’

  I said, ‘Oh,’ wondering what was coming next.

  Lanson nodded and said, ‘It’s interesting, and I’ll tell you why. We’ve been able to get a little information bearing, perhaps, on the accident to the troop train. Nothing much—only that, the evening before, a villager crossing the line on his way back from an errand in Pathoda saw three men moving through the jungle near the place where the train was later derailed. They weren’t local people, he said. They didn’t see him. When we began our inquiries up there, this villager came forward at once and told us what he had seen—told us publicly.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said again.

  Lanson went on. ‘He was from Maslan. He gave us help. Now his home is burned and his cattle dead. He’s penniless. So is everybody else in Maslan. It is very unlikely that the fire was accidental. You were asking why we don’t search or watch the Kasel house for K. P. Roy. The answer, Miss Jones, is that we have, several times, and we are. But I think the bird has flown. Not far, but he’s not in the house, if he ever was—unless he can turn himself into a rat and hide under the floor. That’s what he is, Miss Jones, as a matter of fact—a murdering rat, a red rat.’

  Hearing this was far more terrible than killing Macaulay. Ranjit and his mother were sheltering K. P. Roy, and I was helping them. But for the moment I’d have to control my doubt and fear.

  Lanson walked round the table and held out his hand. He said, ‘Good-bye for the moment. I think I can tell you that we have a pretty good idea about Macaulay’s murder. We won’t be able to clear it up—dispose of it tidily, you know—until we find this fellow K. P. Roy and stop the derailments and everything else that has been going on in the district, such as this fire at Maslan.’ He walked beside me to the door. Then he said, and looked straight at me, The murder’s bad, of course, if it was a real murder and not, say, self-defence—but it’s not important compared with Roy. If the murderer would get all the people who know something about Roy and the stolen explosives and the derailments to talk—we’d be very pleased with him. My driver will take you back, and I think you’d better not leave Bhowani without my permission until all this has been cleared up.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  I arrived at the Sirdarni’s house that evening determined to settle two things—K. P. Roy and my engagement. The Sirdarni and Ranjit were in the big room. I waited for a few minutes of general conversation to pass by, meaning then to say what I wanted to say. But when I was ready the Sirdarni said to Ranjit, ‘Our guests will be here in half an hour, and I have forgotten to make pakhoras. Please go and buy some. Don’t hurry. I have things to talk over with Miss Jones.’

  When Ranjit had left the room the Sirdarni said, ‘You looked as if you wanted to say something to me, my child. What is it?’

  We were talking in Hindustani. I said, ‘Beji, I heard from Mr Lanson this morning that you have been telling people that Ranjit and I are betrothed.’

  The Sirdarni nodded and said firmly, ‘I have. You are the girl for him.’

  ‘But—but——’ I said, suddenly feeling helpless, ‘I don’t know that he’s the man for me.’

  ‘Any man will do for you,’ she said. ‘Now don’t be angry. I mean that you need a man—why, you are quite old—but you are the sort of woman who will remain herself whatever the man is like. Ranjit needs such a woman. You are stronger than he is, and you will be able to make him into whatever you wish.’

  ‘I don’t wish to make him into anything,’ I said. I tried to explain to her that I had always thought the man I married would make me into something.

  ‘That is a Western idea,’ the Sirdarni said impatiently. ‘In India we women make our men, whether we act from behind the screen or whether we come out into the open, as I have. You have become an Indian—by what you did in the yards that night, by the sari you are wearing—yet you have no Indian father and mother with whom I can make arrangements. So I am making them myself. It is all settled.’

  I said, ‘I don’t know whether I——’

  She interrupted me, poking her hard finger into my knee. ‘Didn’t you tell Ranjit the other day that you wanted the decision taken out of your hands? I’ve done it.’

  I thought, Ranjit must tell her everything. He must have told her all that we did and said there by the river. Now the Sirdarni had made the decision for me, as she had said she would, and it still didn’t feel right. But I ought not to think or feel. I ought just to accept.

  The Sirdarni said, ‘The marriage will take place one month from now.’

  ‘In what religion?’ I heard myself asking.

  ‘I am an atheist,’ she said. ‘Religion is the opiate of the people. Ranjit talks lately of returning to Sikhism. I think he is a fool, but I will not force him one way or the other. It will not matter soon. Someone as clever and as well educated as you cannot believe all that nonsense, and you are all that will matter. I want him to rely on you, not on the stupid gurus and their pious hocus-pocus out of the Granth Sahib. You have got a hundred years of wrongs to avenge. You can put some fire into Ranjit. Don’t think all will be well when the British go. It won’t. I’ll show you things, tell you things I’ve seen, that prove you cannot trust any of them—Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Patel, Rajogopalachari—none of them. But we will have plenty of time to talk after the marriage, when Ranjit is out at work.’

  It took me a long time to realize what she had said. Then I said, ‘You don’t want us to live here, Beji?’

  She smiled grimly and said, ‘Oh, yes, I do. Certainly. It is the Indian custom. You will get used to it.’

  I said, ‘But I think I must have a home of my own.’

  She said, ‘Don’t talk about it now, my child. Remember that Ranjit is my only son.’ She dropped her strong hand from my elbow, which she had been holding.

  I wanted to press the point. Many Anglo-Indians lived with their mothers-in-law, but I didn’t want to. Then I remembered I had something else even more important to say.

  I said, speaking carefully, ‘Beji, the British keep asking me now whether I know K. P. Roy. They showed me a picture of him. It was very like Ghanshyam, your guest who was here.’

  She said, ‘The man who hid the traces of the murder you committed? What did you tell them?’ She was looking at me calmly, as though she had heard all about this before. She probably had. Ranjit would have told her.

  I said, ‘I said I hadn’t seen him. But Beji, is Ghanshyam really K. P. Roy? I must know.’

  She said, ‘Why?’

  I said, ‘It’s worrying me. Lanson and Govindaswami say he’s a Communist agitator and a murderer. They say he wrecked the troop train the other day, and stole the explosives, and burned down Maslan, and caused the riot of the processions. If he’s as bad as that, ought we to hide him? Oughtn’t we to tell the police everything we know or suspect?’

  ‘Ghanshyam is K. P. Roy’s brother,’ the Sirdarni said calmly, ‘and he’s not doing anything except help hurry the British out of the country, as the necessary first step to further progress. We have been searched. Ghanshyam was not in, and now he has left. About those things that K. P. Roy is supposed to have done—you must use your brain, child. Why should that black baboon Govindaswami tell you the truth? Why should Lanson? They’re just trying t
o drive a wedge between us—between the Moslems and the Hindus, between different wings of the freedom movement. Tell them nothing!’

  I heard voices on the stairs, and a moment later two middle-aged Indian couples entered the room. There were many questions I still wanted to ask, but for the moment my time had run out. Soon everyone was talking Hindi, and Ranjit had returned with the pakhoras, and a sweet shy girl was congratulating me on my betrothal and in the same breath asking me to describe what European girls wore as underclothes. For the moment I had to give in. The Sirdarni had won—for the moment. But I knew I could never allow matters to rest as they were. Ghanshyam might be K. P. Roy’s brother; I still thought he was Roy himself. Ranjit was a clean, fine man, but he was standing neck deep in foul water. I felt the stench of it in my nostrils as I tried to get closer to him. I was becoming obsessed, nervous, and torn by knowledge or guilt. I began to pray for something to happen that would force me to act.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  On the following Sunday, which was June 2nd, I went to the Sirdarni’s house again. Ranjit came down to the Old Lines for me on his bicycle at about ten o’clock in the morning. I wondered at first why he had not telephoned, as he usually did to avoid the unpleasantness at Number 4 Collett Road. When he came in person they never asked him into the house but left him standing outside. I’d often told him to come in, but he wouldn’t.

  On the way up the Pike I asked, ‘What’s on? Surely your mother’s not having a policital meeting at half past ten today?’

  ‘She just wanted to see you,’ Ranjit said. ‘So did I.’

  The Sirdarni’s pressure on me was increasing. She was trying to make me realize my place as an Indian daughter-in-law, and I began to feel obstinate. Perhaps this would be a good time to take up where I had had to leave off the other evening.