by John Masters
She awoke slowly to hear someone saying, ‘Wake up, please, Miss Jones.’ The voice was small, polite, and flat.
She opened her eyes. A man in a coolie’s loincloth was standing over her. His hand rested on her arm, the fingers pressing gently just above her elbow. There was some light, a creeping-in of visibility through the open windows. The man’s face was neutral, and he was K. P. Roy. He held a big Army revolver loosely in his right hand. His arm hung straight down as though the revolver was too heavy for it.
The slow freeze began at the back of her head, spread forward across her scalp, down her face, into her neck. Suddenly it caught at all her muscles together so that she jerked in a convulsive spasm and sat back where she had been in the chair, but lower.
‘Do not make any noise, Miss Jones,’ Roy said. He talked oddly, like Winston Churchill, because of his missing teeth.
She waited. They were always supposed to say, I don’t want to hurt you, but—and push the pistol forward and bare their teeth and narrow their eyes. But she thought that K. P. Roy didn’t mind whether he hurt her or not. The depth of his indifference was not to be calculated. He said, ‘Can you tell me anything about the Collector’s plans for capturing me? I would like to know where the military and police posts outside the city are. I thought you would know.’
She whispered, ‘No. I don’t know.’ She moved her eyes to the clock. The hands were very dim on its blurred white face. Twenty past nine, or a minute afterward, about. Roy’s eyes flickered and came back to her. She spoke quickly. They didn’t tell me anything.’
He said, ‘You weren’t discussing the plan with Colooel Savage in his bungalow all this afternoon?’
She said, ‘No.’
He said, ‘What were you doing?’
She said, ‘We were making love. That’s all I went there for.’ The revolver was big and shiny blue, and it took away her pride.
Roy said, ‘I see. When do you expect your father, mother, or sister back?’
She said, ‘I don’t know.’
He stepped to the window and glanced out. It was the street light that shone dimly in. Her hands had joined together and were wringing, one in the other, slippery with wetness. Roy’s body gleamed as he moved about.
Roy came back to her. He said, ‘The situation is this, Miss Jones. All the roads and trails leading out of the city are blocked. There will certainly be military patrols in the fields, since Colonel Savage is an efficient officer, but I do not know exactly where they are.’
He was wrong there, by a few minutes. It was 2118 when I persuaded Sammy to let me help, and the first of my patrols didn’t get into position until 2145.
Roy said, ‘I cannot expect for a second time to have such luck as I had in escaping from the affair at the jail. Mr Govindaswami was better informed than I expected. You were not hurt at that time?’
Victoria said, ‘No.’
He said, ‘You were lucky. The railway lines also are blocked, and an armed policeman is in the cab of every engine leaving Bhowani. But I think that with your help I can surmount these obstacles. Mr Dunphy is backing out of the yards now with the Down Goods for the Bhanas branch. It departs every night at about this time, as you know. In a few minutes Mr Dunphy will return through the station and start out. I want you to come with me now and stand by the line and wave some suitable object to induce Mr Dunphy to stop his train. When he does so, you should speak up to him in the cab and keep him busy for a minute or two. You should ask him something, or tell him something, which will seem to him of sufficient importance to warrant your having stopped the train. Remember it is only a goods. What do you suggest?’
She wrung and unwrung her hands. Ted Dunphy was in love with her. He might be able to see from her face that she was in terror. But she would have to control herself, or Roy would shoot her and the policeman, take over the train, and ride his luck.
She said, ‘I could invite Ted to a dance,’
Roy shook his head. ‘To-day is Sunday. There is no dance occurring sufficiently soon to give your request the necessary urgency.’
She could think of nothing except that she could think of nothing. Roy spoke more sharply. ‘Very well. You shall tell Mr Dunphy that Mr Taylor has threatened to kill you, and you are therefore afraid. You shall ask Mr Dunphy if he knows where Mr Taylor is so that you may hide from him. Yes.’ He nodded. ‘That will do very well, because it will also account for your obvious state of agitation. Kindly put on your shoes now.’
She fumbled with her sandals and at last got them on. Roy squatted on the floor and watched her. The clock ticked. All the noises of the night passed round the little house but never came in. The people next door tuned up their wireless. They must have just come back from somewhere, she thought. The Institute. A visit. The wireless was giving a talk, and the speaker sounded pompous, as though he had a hot potato in his mouth, his voice and the words mashed together to form a meaningless boom like frogs in a pond.
Roy stood up quickly and said, ‘Out!’ and jerked up the pistol so that the big black snout touched her breast. He had seen something outside. She sprang up from the chair, and his arm held her upright against the drag of her knees. They hurried into the passage, turned left, passed out of the back door. He closed the door carefully. She heard her mother’s voice, quite loud and dear. ‘No one told me why it is wrong to——’ It shut off. She wondered, What is wrong? Chewing betel nut? Trumping her partner’s ace? The lecturer thundered and boomed.
They passed behind the servants’ quarters, slipped through the bushes, and stood a moment on the other side. She saw no one up or down the line. Looking to the left along the straight, she saw the lights of the station and among them the white eye of an engine’s searchlight. It was dark there at the edge of the bushes, darker than in the parlour, because the street lamps did not shine there, and the yard lamps were only a glow in the sky.
They crossed the main line and moved, one behind the other, Victoria in front, in the triangle of wasteland. On the other side of it the Bhanas branch runs in a steep left-handed curve, turning from south to east. They crouched down beside the single stretched wire that leads from Bhowani South Box to the branch line’s Up Distant signal. The houses were close and dark opposite.
She heard the shimmer of sound in the rails as soon as he did. Straining her ears, she could hear the slow beat of the engine’s exhaust. Ted Dunphy was coming out. The headlight shone on the main line behind them, then on the wasteland as the engine took the points for the branch, then on the branch line. The wheels’ flanges ground against the inside of the rail. Roy said, ‘Stand up now.’
She stood up. She had to wave something, he had said. She had nothing to wave. If she lifted her hand Ted might just wave back at her and not stop.
Roy said, ‘Here, Miss Jones.’ He pushed something soft into her hand. She recognized it as the little bolero jacket of the dress she’d been wearing all day. Roy said reassuringly, ‘I will be right behind you, but concealed.’ She heard the clank of the coupling rods and the roar of the blast. The light blinded her, and she began to wave the jacket. The focus of the light narrowed to a single glare in her eyes, then faded, passed by, and spread out. She heard the grinding of brake shoes, and the buffers went bang-bang-bang all down the train.
The cab stopped directly above her. Dunphy stuck his head out and said, ‘Victoria. I thought it was you. What is the matter?’ Behind him the constable lowered the rifle he had held aimed at her while the train slowed.
She glanced wildly round with an idea that that would tell him something was wrong. But she realized at once that it would seem perfectly natural—as soon as she had said her piece. She tried with her eyes to make the constable understand that he was not to look at her but to jump out and run back down the train. That is a hell of a message to pass with the eyes. She saw Roy crouched under the overhang of the tender.
She said, It’s Patrick.’
‘Patrick?’ Dunphy said foolishly.
She
caught a movement under the tender. They were on the right of the train, so the guard, looking out from his brake van, would see nothing on this sharp left-handed curve. She thought that it wouldn’t be long now before Roy was on the train, and then she would be free.
She said, ‘Patrick’s talking about killing me. Where is he? I want to hide from him. I’m frightened.’ She felt worse about telling that lie than anything else.
Dunphy was worried for her, but he had the train to take to Bhanas. He said, ‘I don’t know where he is. Isn’t your father at home?’
She said, ‘No,’ and Dunphy licked his lips uncertainly. Up there in the cab his face and the policeman’s were red and shadowless in the glare of the firebox. At last Dunphy told her to go to his house, where Mary would have to help her until her father came in. He was troubled, in spite of knowing about me, because he couldn’t leave the train and help her himself.
She said, ‘All right. I’ll be all right. Thank you,’ and stepped back.
Dunphy couldn’t do any more. He opened the regulator, and the wheels began to turn. The tender ground past her. She looked for Roy and could not see him. The first wagon passed, and the second. They kept on passing. She began to breathe more easily. She was beginning to feel weak from relief, but when she got her lungs filled she was going to scream. The brake van would come, and the guard would hear. She decided Roy was a fool.
Her mouth was open, ready to scream, when the voice spoke behind her, again urgent and now as hard as—as mine, she said. It said, ‘Up!’
The train had picked up to walking speed. All goods wagons have a long handbrake bar, which is held in position, either on or off, by metal pins. The brake bar lies horizontally just outside one of the projecting axle-boxes. Roy seized the back of the waist of her dress, and a bunch of skin inside it, and forced her forward against the wheel of the coal wagon. She had only one escape from being pushed into and under the wheel. She caught the handgrip above the brake bar and jumped up. Her dress fluttered out and hung against the greasy axle-box. She was furious, even in her fright, because it was a white dress and would get filthy. She scrambled on up, one foot on the brake bar, then got her hands over the side of the wagon. She tried to scream but had no breath. Roy’s hand rammed up under her behind, and she fell over into the wagon. A second later Roy followed her.
She lay beside him on top of the piled coal. Her chest hurt where he had forced her over the side, and she wanted to cry, but she managed to hold it down. Roy worked quickly, heaviog coal to one side. The wagon rattled and groaned and swayed and rushed on. Roy said, ‘Help, please. This is now urgent.’ He had tucked the revolver into his loincloth.
She knelt on the coal and pulled it aside as he was doing, until her fingers hurt. Soon Roy said, ‘Lie down there.’
She lay down in the hollow, and he pushed the coal back over her with his foot. The lumps slid down until they covered all but a tiny piece of her face. Her dress wasn’t white any more. The big lumps lay three and four deep, hard on her chest, and harder underneath where they pressed up into her spine. Roy bent over her and said, ‘If the train is searched, do not move or make any kind of sound. But, should I say “Get up,” then get up quickly. Do you understand?’
She said, ‘Yes,’ and told him she couldn’t breathe.
He said, ‘I think you can. I shall be close by, Miss Jones.’
She watched the stars that hung steadily in the sky above. The moon was coming out from behind cloud. Sometimes branches of trees whipped over and flung back. Roy had a form ready in the coal, but he did not get into it. He sat up near her, his head just poking over the side of the wagon.
The train’s speed increased to about twenty-five miles an hour. She thought that a long time passed. Then the rattling and grinding began to slow, and she heard the engine labouring and the exhaust blasts separating out as Dunphy lengthened his cut-off for the Sindhya bank. Devra station is a mile up the bank. After that the line climbs all the way, through Bharru, Pathoda, and Adhirasta to Sindhya Tunnel summit—which meant that the train wouldn’t be doing more than ten or twelve miles an hour. The jungle begins just beyond Devra.
A signal passed by, and she saw it was green. They stammered over a set of points. There were electric lights to the side and a load gauge sweeping directly overhead. A load gauge is a metal bar, curved to conform to the shape of the top of a wagon or carriage roof, which is hung on chains above the line in certain places to show how high open wagons can be loaded—with machinery, for instance—on that particular stretch of line.
That was Devra. She heard the engine whistle and a Hindi phrase from a man beside the line and more points. Roy sunk his head as the lights passed.
A little later the vacuum brakes ground on all down the train. On that upgrade it came to a stop quickly and stood, the metal creaking for a time until each piece settled under the new stresses. She understood at once, and remembered. A kachha road crossed the line about there. There were empty fields on both sides and no cover, except for a patch of scrub on the right a little farther back. She decided I must have put a search post here to cover the railway, the kachha road, and the main Bhowani-Kishanpur road, which was a hundred yards off to the left. She remembered that the line curved there, and noted that her wagon was tilted to the left on the banked rails.
Roy said, ‘Now be very still.’ He lay down in the trough he had scratched for himself and pulled down coal until it covered him. Something shoved noisily through under the coal near her face and pressed against her ear. It was cold, round, and hard.
She heard a faint crunching on the gravelled lineside path. It was coming from the front of the train. Listening hard, and holding her breath so that the coal would not creak and drown the sounds, she tried to interpret what she heard. It was nailed boots on the gravel. The boots were coming regularly closer in a smooth rhythm of movement: crunch-crunch, for ten or a dozen paces—the dang and scrape of steel on steel—a pause—another dang—a thud—crunch-crunch. On both sides of the train.
She worked out that Gurkhas were coming down the train, climbing up to look into each open wagon or inspect the door seals of the closed wagons, then jumping down again.
The muzzle of the revolver seemed big enough to engulf her head. She prayed, Oh God, make them not see us because I don’t know what he’ll do. She swears she thought of me and told herself that if only I was there in person all would be well. She closed her eyes.
She heard the dang against the side of their wagon. Another pair of boots was moving about, stamping, on the gravel below. She heard the heave and the small gasp of effort as the Gurk scrambled up. A light flashed against her eyelids. He must see. She opened her eyes, peering up through the interstices of the coal and hoping the light would reflect back from her eyes. But the light wandered away. It clicked off. The Gurk (he was Baliram, a nice kid but no ball of fire) jumped back to the ground with a thump. Coal-dust tickled her nostrils. She breathed in deep, wrinkling her nose trying not to sneeze. The boots crunched along to the next wagon, which was a high closed one. She heard the metal seals rattle on both sides, and the heavy bolts shake. The pistol pressed a little harder against her ear. She swallowed the sneeze. The engine blew off steam with a drumming roar that seemed close, although she knew they were much nearer the back of the train than the front.
Soon the steam pressure dropped and the engine fell silent. In the silence she heard car engines and saw lights sweeping across the sky above her. Roy struggled out from under the coal and knelt up to peer over the side. She moved her head to watch him, and the coal grated against her cheek.
Faintly from the back of the train someone shouted, ‘Sab thik chha’—the Gurkhali for ‘Everything okay.’ From the front someone else acknowledged the message. The brakes clicked off, the engine exhaust gave out a loud whoof, the wagon rolled back a few inches, then jerked forward. The train began to move.
THIRTY-FIVE
That was where I came in.
When she left my
bungalow I tried for a time to think dispassionately about us. The effort failed (a) because I am not dispassionate, and (b) because I thought Sammy was making a mistake in not using my battalion more in this attempt to catch Roy. I worked out a plan whereby we could help, warned Chris, and after some argy-bargy got Sammy to agree. Soon my jeeps and six-by-sixes were moving out to cordon the roads and railways and form flying patrols in a few of the more likely jungle areas.
I went myself to Taylor’s house in the Old Lines, knocked on the door, and walked straight in. It was a chummery he shared with another bachelor. It was what I had expected—dark furniture, antimacassars and gimcrackery, a mixture between Victorian respectability and the special ramshackleness that only a bachelor in India can achieve. Except for one thing—the trophies. Taylor stood up slowly when I came in, but I wasn’t looking at him. At some time or other he had shot a good buffalo, a black buck, two bears, a leopard, the usual things. As decorations for a house they were terrible; as a sidelight on Taylor, they were unexpected. He had been very clumsy that night we searched the villages round Malra.
Taylor stood up, his face settling obstinately. He was like a bull waiting for more goading.
I said, ‘Taylor, we’re out after K. P. Roy. Would you like to come with me? Let’s see if we can’t share the honour of catching the bugger.’
After a while he said, ‘I’m not lucky, Colonel. If I go with you, you won’t catch him.’ That room was as lonely as an asylum, in spite of the congress of dead animals peering glassily at us. I was surprised at Taylor’s reaction to me. I had expected abuse, refusal, perhaps even a fight. Something had beaten him down a few sizes. But for purely selfish reasons, I didn’t want him to be so perpetually up against it. So I said, ‘But I’m lucky. Here.’ I held out my hand. ‘I’m in love with her, goddamn it.’
He took my hand slowly, and I thought he was going to cry. In some ways he had a hide like a rhinoceros, in others he was worse than the princess with the pea. He pressed my hand and said, ‘I know you are. I have just realized it. I hope you will be very happy.’ I’ve never seen a fellow look more miserable. He said, ‘I didn’t tell you this afternoon. I threatened Mr Wallingford with the revolver when he refused to stop the sale of St Thomas’s. I was mad. I lost my temper. It was only Mr Stevenage who persuaded Mr Wallingford not to send me to jail.’
