Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  Everyone was suddenly quiet, and my trousers were drenched in blood and my shirt in rain.

  It was no use going on any more. Everything went flop inside me, and my eyes stung. I muttered, ‘Nine, ten, out. Don’t be a fool. You were trying to help him. Otherwise he’d be alive.’ I turned to Manbir and ordered him to tell me when the buming was going to be. I ordered Henry to go and tell Mr Jones and Glover and the lance corporal that the accident was not their fault.

  Sammy came up, and Patrick said to him, ‘I pushed Colonel Savage’s orderly under the train.’

  Sammy said, ‘On purpose?’ I looked round the circle of sickly eyes. Ellington was there. The champagne flush had turned mottled red and white and ugly on all their faces. Taylor said in answer to Sammy’s question, ‘On purpose? I don’t know.’

  Ranjit was there. He said, ‘Mr Taylor didn’t do it on purpose, Collector. He was tying to save the soldier.’

  Patrick turned on him and shouted, ‘I don’t want your helpl’

  I said, ‘In the name of Jesus —— Christ, will you all get away from here. Taylor did not do it on purpose.’

  I thought I was alone on the platform for a time. Molly Dickson tried to speak to me, but I shook her off, I turned and went out.

  A woman was there with me, though, running along beside me, trying to keep up, her short skirt too tight for her, with a look on her face I’d seen once before. Victoria.

  She came to my bungalow with me, and we sat down and drank in silence. She was there, but I’d lost her. Later I put on the gramophone. I wouldn’t change or wash, but kept all the blood on myself. I thought of finishing the whisky bottle, but I wasn’t a civilian to reward a dead son and a lost lover by getting stinking drunk to forget them. I stopped drinking and asked Victoria why she wasn’t with Patrick. ‘He needs you more than I do,’ I said.

  She said, ‘Not tonight, Rodney. But I love him.’

  That was my woman, to give me the knife when I needed it most. I said, ‘Lift up your skirt.’ I didn’t think for a second that she’d do it. But she did. Her thighs were as fat and round as they’d ever been. I started for her.

  She said calmly, ‘Go and bathe and take off your clothes.’

  That resistance, a moment sooner, and I’d have gone out of there and hated her and carried the whole day like an ulcer under my tongue, to my grave. A moment later, and I’d have had her, and hated her as much as I was hating myself. But she was all woman.

  I looked down at myself and nodded, and went out to the bathroom. Afterward she came quietly to the bed and lay down—not a mother, not a lover, just a woman—and took me into her arms. I don’t think there was anything in the world but that, from her, which could have helped me then. I didn’t forget Birkhe. I told her about pulling his top-knot, which Gurkhas keep because they believe that God will pull them up to heaven by it when they the. I talked a lot about Birkhe, and then the war, and the regiment, and Manbir, and my father.

  Then she talked, peacefully, endlessly. It was at this time that she told me about the night Roy came for her, and the escape in the goods train. She lay beside me, smoking cigarettes and talking and getting water for us to drink.

  I might have felt sad because this was surely the last time. I might have decided that I could always have her as long as I was in Bhowani. It wasn’t like that. This was Bhowani Junction.

  I might have asked in what way she loved Patrick. It wouldn’t have hurt me then, whatever she answered. But I knew. Patrick had drawn her back to him a little more quickly by his bad luck, but the twin roots of the matter were that she was an Anglo-Indian and that she had always loved him—and even those two were really one. She couldn’t desert her people, and he was one of them. Even his luck was Anglo-Indian. She had wanted to go, first with Ranjit and then with me. But she physically could not. She had always loved Patrick. They’d grown up for each other. Then the great changes swept across India and the world, and she had searched, not by deliberate plan but because the wind of change blew through her too, for ways of escape from a life that had come to seem small and doomed. Patrick was a part of that life. He had become petty, helpless, and hopeless. She’d tried becoming an Indian—but she wasn’t an Indian. She’d tried becoming English—but she wasn’t English. An idea of the future, of herself as a dweller in India, had sent her to Ranjit. Sexual passion, the knowledge of herself as a woman, had sent her to me. But this was Bhowani Junction.

  She was a big girl. She hadn’t come out of all this like a Hollywood film star, with her hak metallically immaculate and her face untouched by thought or pain. We talked about the future of her people. When we English left India they could look beyond the telegraph lines and the railway lines. There would be nothing they could not achieve then, depending only upon themselves. From Bhowani Junction the lines spread out to every Indian horizon for them.

  And she had learned that sex is a good thing in its place, and she wasn’t going to hurry Patrick or be hurried, but she was quite sure it would be all right. The angry mating she’d forced on me beside the stream—what was behind that? Patrick, of course. He’d taken her once to the place, and not even the animal perfection of the fusion between her and me had been able to wipe him out of her mind, as she had hoped it would. That was the point at which she stopped drifting. Then Mole gave her a push, and Patrick brought her to shore. Patrick and Birkhe.

  So there we were, at one o’clock in the morning, arrived at last at Bhowani Junction. All change at Bhowani Junction! Tigers over the footbridge for Number 2 Up Mail, people to Number 3 Platform for the slow train for the Bhanas branch!

  BOOK FOUR

  PATRICK TAYLOR

  male, thirty-six, unmarried; under notice of dismissal from the service of the Delhi Deccan Railway

  FORTY

  After the terrible thing happened I stood for a long time where I was, because I was not able to move. I had tried to help the colonel’s Gurkha orderly, and now he was under the train. At least, I could have sworn I meant to help him, but standing there on the platform it was like going mad because I thought, How can these things happen so often unless I do mean them? There was a book I read once by a German fellow about how everything that we do is caused by our mothers, or if it isn’t our mothers it is because we really want to do them. Like when we forget to pay a bill we do not really forget, but are saying to ourselves, I’m damned if I will pay that bill.

  So when the colonel pulled me round I had to tell him, yes, I’d pushed the orderly under the train. It would have been wrong to try and get out of trouble. I wanted the colonel to kill me then, because I deserved it and there was nothing I was good for, and the Indians were going to be the bosses in India, and I was sacked.

  He looked as if he would kill me. He looked more terrible than anyone I have ever seen, with the blood drenching his trousers and the bottom of his bush shirt, and the rain splashes all over him, and the tears in his eyes. For me, the tears were by far the worst. I didn’t understand what happened after that, why he said, ‘Nine, ten, out’, why he said I hadn’t done it on purpose. But he is a gentleman, and I suppose he didn’t want to get me into more trouble than I was in already. I don’t remember anything really that happened there on the platform except Kasel trying to butt in.

  I know Victoria came to me and took my hand and spoke to me. But the colonel loved her, and she was the only person who could stop him from killing himself or somebody else; and I didn’t fed angry any more about losing her, only sad, because I had lost her to a better man and one who could give her a hundred times more than I could, so I told her to go away and look after him. Govindaswami took some notes too, I think, and then I wanted to go home and be alone in my bungalow.

  As I turned to go I remembered I had an appointment with Mr Stevenage in the Collector’s bungalow at six o’clock, to talk about St Thomas’s. It was too much. I said, ‘Oh, damn, oh god-damn!’ I noticed Kasel was beside me then, and he said, ‘Let me take you to your home in a tonga, Mr Taylor.�
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  I had been making up my mind I couldn’t go just then to see Mr Stevenage. He would understand. Govindaswami would surely have the decency to explain to him what had happened at the station. But when Kasel said he would take me home in a tonga I knew I must go to see Mr Stevenage, however badly I felt. So I said to Kasel, ‘I’m not going home. I have an appointment with Mr Stevenage. It is about St Thomas’s.’ I had to explain to Kasel that it was about St Thomas’s so that he would not think it was just a party I was going to after the awful thing I’d done, murdering that little Gurkha.

  Kasel said, ‘I would like to come with you, Mr Taylor.’

  I said, ‘This is nothing to do with you. It is about St Thomas’s. I told you.’

  Kasel said, ‘Please let me come. I am interested in St Thomas’s too. Perhaps I can help you with Mr Stevenage.’

  I thought, as clearly as I could at that time. Kasel was out of the railway service and had become the local Congress bigwig. I always knew he was a secret Congress wallah. Whether I liked it or not, he would soon be a big man in Bhowani. My God, he might even be the mayor or whatever they would have instead of collectors. I didn’t like him, but for the sake of St Thomas’s I would have to agree, if he really did mean to help us.

  So we went along to the Collector’s bungalow. Mr Stevenage was a young man—not forty then, I should think—and I liked him much better than I had liked Mr Wallingford. The first thing they did was give me a very big glass of Scotch whisky. Then we began to talk, Mr Stevenage, me, Govindaswami, and Kasel, and we talked for a long time. It was hard for me to argue with them because I had no official title; I wasn’t president or chairman or leader of anything; I only knew how our people felt and how important this was to us about St Thomas’s. Mr Stevenage was nice, as he had been while he was listening when I spoke to Mr Wallingford in Bombay, but I do not think he could have done much for us unless Kasel had spoken.

  I couldn’t understand at first what Kasel’s game was at all. He didn’t say that he thought we Anglo-Indians ought to have a better education than Indians. He could hardly say that, I suppose, as he was an Indian himself. He said that he thought it was education that would be the thing India wanted most in the future, and so he said the principle was wrong to take any school that was going, and teaching properly, and sell it to make a factory or offices out of it. India needed factories, but she needed schools more, he said. He said he couldn’t promise what a Congress government in Delhi or in the province would do later, but we weren’t talking about that. He thought that the school should be left going, so that such a Congress government could be free to make it fit into their plans, perhaps by enlarging it instead of abolishing it. I didn’t like that idea much, about Indian boys being able to go to St Thomas’s too, but after all it would be better than no one going. If the school was sold, Kasel said, Mr Stevenage and the Trust would be disposing of an Indian asset, which they had no right to do. He had a jolly nerve to say that, but Mr Stevenage only laughed and said, ‘That’s one way of looking at it.’

  Then we talked some more, but it was clear that Mr Stevenage was really thinking about what Kasel had said, and after a time he said, ‘I have always been against selling the school once the Anglo-Indian community made it plain that they wanted to keep it. Our duty was only to make sure that the community realized the economic facts. But what I and people who agree with me have lacked is a talking point to persuade the more orthodox members of the Trust board. Ranjit Singh’s point—his veiled threat, we might say—is exactly what we need.’

  Then Mr Stevenage said he couldn’t promise anything but he thought he would be able to persuade the board to cancel their negotiations for the sale when he got back to Bombay. The board was already nearly evenly divided, he said, and this ought to settle the thing.

  Then they gave me another whisky, and after some chat Mr Stevenage said to me. ‘Would you care to consider transferring out of the Delhi Deccan and working for my firm as manager of our cement-works railway over in Cholaghat?’

  It was a temptation, but I had to say, ‘I cannot transfer, sir. I have been sacked for inefficiency.’ The letter actually said it was for being absent without leave, but really it was for inefficiency. I was never very good, and I was making a lot of little mistakes over being so worried about Victoria.

  Mr Stevenage said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that. Well, efficiency is something you can’t exactly measure, and I’ve heard differently about you. Would you like the job?’

  Of course I knew all about his firm’s little railway. It was forty miles long, single line, with a few passing places, running from the cement works at Cholaghat to the Bhanas branch at Sihor, which is ninety-four and a half miles from Bhowani Junction. They had a few little engines, and all the traffic was cement and machinery. It would be quite a comedown after the D.D.R., but I am a railwayman, and there is nothing else that I can do. Being offered this job was so like a miracle, when it happened on that day of all days, that I couldn’t believe it. I said to Kasel, ‘You haven’t been getting this job for me, have you?’ If he had, I wasn’t going to touch it; but he said, ‘No, Mr Taylor.’

  Then I said to Mr Stevenage, ‘Who recommended me for this, sir?’ Now that I was suspicious I saw that he must have known I was in trouble with the railway, and had been trying to let me hide it. He glanced at Govindaswami, who nodded at him, and then said, ‘It was Colonel Savage. He is not a railwayman, but I have known him a long time and I have a very high regard for his ability in the judgment of character.’

  If it was Colonel Savage I would be happy to take it. We had been misunderstanding each other at first because of Victoria, but that is what women always do to men, and now it was over. He had shaken my hand and never said anything about me trying to shoot him that day, and now he was in trouble.

  I told Mr Stevenage I would be glad to work for his firm, and we settled some details. I was to go there as soon as my relief had come to Bhowani. Cholaghat is in the middle of big jungles in the northern part of Bandelkhand, and the shooting is good. It is lonely there, but that would be good, and at any rate I wouldn’t see many people to hurt them—or to have them hurt me.

  Before I left, Govindaswami asked me if the railway was still keeping a good watch on the line in the district. That was not really my business, but I knew we were, so I told him, I supposed he was worried about three trains full of British troops, which were going through. He said, ‘Oh, there are three troop trains tonight, are there? To Bombay, I suppose. When do they go through?’ I told him the first one was due to pass Bhowani Junction at 0230, and the other two at twenty-minute intervals after that. Then I thanked Mr Stevenage and said good night.

  When I got outside with Kasel I had to shake hands with him. I didn’t like him any more, mind, but he had helped us, and it was no use going on hating him. We would have to get along somehow, especially now that the English people were on their way home. I said, ‘What has made you so different, Kasel?’

  He said, ‘Partly K. P. Roy. You’re not exactly the same yourself, Mr Taylor.’ And that was true, but it was losing Victoria that had upset me.

  I went to bed early and lay awake, thinking of Victoria and listening to the train on the roof. I was happy for her that she had fallen In love with such a fine man, but I was sad for myself too, because I would always love her. I would have to go out with other girls sometimes until. I got too old to care, I supposed, but I wouldn’t love any of them any more than I had loved Rose Mary. Rose Mary was misbehaving with the fat officer Howland, and she was determined to make him marry her so that he would take her Home. She didn’t love him at all, so really she was just running away from us. Victoria wasn’t running away, because she did love the colonel. Also she wasn’t misbehaving with him. Of course I used to think she was, but that was me being jealous. I couldn’t help it, although I knew really that Victoria was not that sort of girl and the colonel was too much of a gentleman to do it with her until they were married. I’m positive tha
t Colonel Savage wasn’t even on the berth that night at Gondwara when I made a fool of myself and took her pants—I still had them hidden in a drawer—and Victoria had a sheet over her and was dozing. I can see it now. They must have been working.

  It was sad to think about her, though, because of what we might have done at Cholaghat. The railway manager there has a big bungalow at the edge of the jungle. We could have had children who might become officers of the Indian Army just like Colonel Savage. Remembering something that Kasel had said at the meeting just now made me realize that that could happen. It was beginning to happen already, after all. One of our people was a captain in the Rajputana Rifles at Gondwara. with several Indians too. But when the English went there wouldn’t be any officers except us and Indians.

  I lay there dreaming of the railway and the jungle that would be there in Cholaghat for me, and thinking that Victoria would enjoy them too, because the colonel had just taken her out to teach her to shoot, so she knew something about the jungle now; and I saw my children doing anything they wanted to do in the world—air pilots, rich men, prime ministers, they were—when I turned over in bed and groaned, because Victoria would not be in the Cholaghat jungle with me but with the cows and the green fields in England, shooting pheasants in a tweed skirt like the pictures in the shiny English papers. Of course Colonel Savage had not been teaching her to shoot so that I could benefit.

  The telephone rang, and I looked at my watch and saw it was three minutes past one in the morning. It was the Assistant Stationmaster, who is a fool of a babu, like Bhansi Lall. He asked me if I knew where Kasel was. I did not know, and I was ready to bawl at the A.S.M. for asking me at that time in the morning, when I thought, Damn it, Kasel helped me, perhaps I can help him; so I asked the A.S.M. what was the matter.