Night Train to Jamalpur(23)

‘What about me?’ Lydia had asked me later on, ‘I was “one other person”.’

‘But you can’t play bridge,’ I had said.

‘She didn’t know that, you clot! For all she knew, I was a demon at it.’

All three of the Askwiths were intellects; read a good many books, and did everything right in a social way. Lagged for twenty years in Alipore Jail, William Askwith would be able to get on with his reading; but I didn’t think he’d take very well to it otherwise.

From the first, I’d thought that if William Askwith had been named in that dossier as being on the take, then it must have been Douglas Poole – the father of Bernadette’s other best friend in Calcutta – who had done the naming. Douglas – commonly known as Dougie – Poole looked like Dan Leno: that is, like a sad-eyed superannuated jockey. As with Leno, his clothes always seemed too big, and his hair had to be kept firmly plastered down, otherwise it would do God knew what. Dougie Poole wasn’t as funny as Leno of course, but he was good company with a mournful sense of humour. He also had a whimsical streak, and a taste for the bottle, and so on the face of it it was incredible he’d ended up a senior traffic manager. His wife, Margaret, was a cheerful, competent sort who seemed to laugh off her husband’s drinking. She was pretty or not according to the expression on her face, and she had a great deal of frizzy and colourless hair, as did her daughter, Ann. The Pooles all spoke with slight London accents and were generally looked down on by the Askwiths. In fact the two families would have had no social connection at all were it not for the friendship of their daughters.

It was rumoured Poole wasn’t up to the job of Deputy Assistant Traffic Manager (Goods), and that must have been on account of his tippling, since he seemed bright enough to me when sober. As the head of traffic overall, William Askwith was Dougie Poole’s boss, and known to be a hard governor. With the present push for far-reaching economies, it seemed to me that Dougie Poole must be in a perilous position, and he may only have been saved from the push by his daughter’s connection to the Askwiths. Surely, therefore, if Dougie Poole had anything at all on William Askwith, he’d use it. The only trouble with this notion was Poole’s apparent amiability: he wasn’t the cagey, backstairs sort who’d split on another chap under cover of anonymity.

From inside the dark, hot hotel lobby came the tinkling of a clock chime. It was now seven. I asked the wife, ‘You’re sure they haven’t gone “on”? They’re not with that bloody maharajah, are they?’

‘Bernadette says you’ve got a complex about him.’

‘You haven’t answered the question.’

‘Whether the R.K.’s there or not, Bernadette will be brought here in minute by Eleanor Askwith.’

‘I expect he’ll be hanging around. He’s made a dead set for her.’

‘He’s got beautiful manners, and they both like dancing. She calls him Raju – I think that’s rather charming.’

Lydia ought to have been up in arms for the girl. Instead she seemed at this moment to be encouraging a romance.

‘No doubt he’s heavenly as well.’

‘He’s charming, handsome, intelligent.’

‘Well, I’ve warned her off.’

‘. . . Which of course will have the opposite of your intended effect.’

‘How do we know he’s clever anyway?’

‘He went to the North Indian equivalent of Eton. It’s in the Himalayas. His English is absolutely perfect, practically.’

It was now five past seven. Our usual dinner table was booked for eight. Whenever Bernadette was even slightly late back from an event, I thought of organising an immediate police sweep of the city, and I would make my own mental sweep of it. On the face of it, Calcutta resembled a steaming hot London. The maidan was perhaps the equivalent of Hyde Park, but there were jackals on the maidan that would scream at night. Yes, the High Court was like the Houses of Parliament from the front; but the back of it was falling down, and propped up by bamboo scaffolds, and the river running before it contained dead bodies.

I ought not to have brought the girl out here.

I had now finished my beer; Lydia had fallen silent. Before long, the clock in the lobby would chime the quarter hour. I said, ‘I’m just off out front for a look,’ and Lydia did not say I was becoming needlessly agitated. I walked from under the canopy, and through the gates on to the hard standing where the tongas and motors for Willard’s Hotel would pull in from the Chowringhee traffic. The light was fading fast, if not the heat. There were palm trees over the road, like giant dark stars on sticks. Beyond them, the maidan had become mysterious, like a sea. There were some low, burning . . . somethings on it, like stars that had crashed to the ground. Tongas and the occasional motor hurried past – all apparently making a point of ignoring Willard’s; and now a rickshaw was coming. The rickshaw-wallah was like a man running for his life; he was clearly about to expire, and yet the European fellow sitting up behind was just staring into space. They too ignored Willard’s Hotel.