Night Train to Jamalpur

Chapter One



I

‘What now?’ said the man at the far end of the dark carriage corridor.

The night train to Jamalpur, an express in theory, had come to a stand a minute before – the third time it had done so in half an hour. I had been trying to work out whether the man was English or Indian, but as he turned a little way towards me, I saw that he was both: a Eurasian, although it was politer to say ‘Anglo-Indian’.

‘Where are we?’ I asked him.

‘God knows,’ he said.

Even though this fellow was probably born and raised in Calcutta, not more than sixty miles back, he was proud to know as little about our present location as I did.

The Indian trains gave the appearance of being armoured against the sun. They had overhanging roofs, and the windows were small, and fitted with venetian slats that could be controlled by a lever. A second lever allowed the raising or closing of the window glass. The Anglo-Indian was at one of the windows in that hot, dark corridor, I stood at another. I worked my levers, so as to try and see between the slats. In the smoky gloom, I made out paddy fields, the silhouette of a parked bullock cart, a block house.

The carriage lurched, and we were off again. A dark palm tree slid past the window; then a signal post.

The Anglo-Indian had abandoned his own window; he was eyeing me.

‘Signals,’ he said. ‘Junction with . . . somewhere or other.’

He was minded to talk. In a minute he would ask me what I was doing in India, and I would have to tell him a lie. The compartment from which he had emerged was behind him: the one at the far end of the corridor, the rearmost one. I could tell because its sliding door was open. My own compartment was the next one along, and I too had left my door open. It occurred to me that I might have left my loaded revolver in plain view on the seat. Some yellow light spilled from those two open doors, but it was too weak and sickly to progress very far, and all the light bulbs in the ornamental, serpentine light fittings of the corridor itself were busted.

‘They’re replacing the opposite track up towards Jamalpur,’ the Anglo said, ‘so that’ll be single-line working – expect a bad delay there.’ He was approaching me, and holding out his hand. ‘I’m John Young,’ he said.

‘Jim Stringer,’ I said, since I didn’t have to start lying quite yet.

We shook hands.

‘You look tired, Jim Stringer,’ he said, smiling. ‘Perhaps a drink is called for.’

I had been thinking much the same myself.

‘I have a dozen of soda in my compartment,’ he continued, rather disappointingly.

He turned and walked along the corridor towards his compartment. He did not look into mine on the way there, but I did and, yes, the Webley was there for all to see on the red leather seat. Alongside the piece was the Calcutta daily paper that I’d been reading: that day’s Statesman, the date on the paper Monday 23 April. I slipped into the compartment and pulled the newspaper over the gun. I then glanced quickly under both seats. I stepped back into the corridor, dragging the compartment door shut behind me. John Young was standing by his own door, waiting to usher me in.

His of course was a repeat of mine: two red leather couches facing each other, three photographs of Calcutta scenes behind each; in between the photographs fancy electric lamps on curving stalks, giving a low, yellow glow. Opposite the sliding door was another door, the one by which John Young would step down on to the platform when we reached the great railway colony of Jamalpur at seven in the morning. This door was presently locked from the inside. Set into it was another of the shaded windows, and I saw darkness going past beyond the half-closed slats – darkness punctuated by whirling points of light that might have been fireflies or sparks from the track. To either side of the window was a cloth panel with a stitched design of fading pink flowers and green leaves. At the cloth panel end of the seat to the left was a four-foot-high cabinet with door closed. There was no cabinet in the corresponding place on the opposite side, but a heavy curtain of the same faded flower design as the panel. If you walked through that you came to the thunderbox and shower bath, both operated by dangling, knotted chains.

Contemplating the compartment, I was worrying about the shadowy spaces beneath the seats. Somebody had been leaving poisonous snakes in the first class compartments of the East Indian Railway, and this was a first class compartment of the East Indian Railway. I had checked every corner of my own compartment before settling down, and I only hoped that Mr John Young had done the same. I had a phobia of snakes.

On both seats were neat piles of newspapers and work papers and these last, I saw, displayed the crest of the East Indian Railway: locomotive, palm tree and elephant, enclosed by a circular track – like a child’s attempt to sum up India in a single drawing. There was also a carton of cigarettes: John Young smoked the same brand as me, Gold Flake, and the compartment smelt of these cigarettes and what I supposed was John Young’s cologne.