Night Train to Jamalpur(24)

The pavement on this side of Chowringhee was a market, and the stallholders were beginning to pack up. At the nearest stall to where I stood, a man sold leather belts from underneath a green storm lantern. There were flies all around the green light, and the belts looked like so many dead snakes. A little way beyond him was the Elphinstone Picture Palace, whose lights were beginning to blaze in the darkness, but I didn’t glance that way because I knew I would see the projecting advertisement for Reported Missing, ‘a comedy in six reels’.

The wife had chosen her words carefully. Eleanor Askwith would be collecting the girls from the dance. In other words, she was not there with them. There was no chaperone. It was true that Claudine Askwith, at seventeen, was a year older than Bernadette, but she didn’t count.

Where was the R.K. staying? He was putting up at a hotel with his father, the maharajah, who was in town on business. It would have to be the Grand or the Great Eastern. I would go there and ask him to give me back my daughter, or tell me where she was, and if he didn’t I would do the bastard in. But one of the Austin taxis was approaching. It looked somehow promising, and I almost put out my hand to stop it even though its roof light was not lit. It pulled up before me anyhow, and there was Bernadette laughing in the back with Claudine Askwith; and Claudine’s mother, Eleanor, was in the front passenger seat. The green night-fog of the city swirled in the taxi headlights.

Bernadette stepped out, calling out, ‘Bye, Claudine, love!’

She wore one of her many dresses that wasn’t long enough, one of her hats that wasn’t cheap enough, and a cashmere wrap I believed to be her mother’s. Eleanor Askwith did not get out, but wound down the window. ‘Here she is Captain Stringer, all safe and sound.’ On her lap was a novel, and inside the novel, some leaflets. She took a couple out and passed them through the open window. ‘Have you had these already? And do give one to Lydia.’ The leaflet read:

St Dunstan’s Fund . . . Buy Happiness for Others! Many poor children, their bodies wasted with want and neglect . . . Rs 25 monthly will feed, clothe and educate one child. We have no paid workers. Purely a voluntary effort.

‘Thanks very much,’ I said. She smiled at me and the taxi pulled away. Could such a woman really be married to an embezzler?

‘Have you caught the snake man, Dad?’ said Bernadette.

‘It’s not my job to catch him. Why do you ask?’

We were walking back through the hotel gates.

‘The snakes were the hot topic at the Wednesday,’ said Bernadette. ‘People were saying they would stop going on the trains until he’s found.’

‘All the snakes have been in first. So they could always go in second.’

‘Some of them were saying they jolly well would do.’

‘Was that flipping R.K. there?’

‘I don’t know why you’re so rude about him. He’s a “friend of Britain”, Dad. His father sent troops to the war.’

‘He’s a friend of yours, that’s what bothers me. I want to know if he was there.’

‘If I say yes, you’ll blow up, and if say no, you won’t believe me.’

‘I’ve told you not to see him. For those blokes, a girl is marriageable at aged eight. How many wives has he got already?’

‘Lay off, Dad.’

Under the canopy of leaves, Lydia had another lemonade on the go. When she saw us, she stood up at her table and waved.

‘Dad?’ said Bernadette.

‘What?’

‘The trains to Darjeeling are on a different line, aren’t they?’

‘Different to what?’

‘To the snakes.’

‘Different line, different company.’

Trains to Darjeeling and ‘the hills’ were operated by the East Bengal Railway, from Sealdah station on the other side of town from Howrah. No snakes had been found on those trains as yet.

‘When we go up there,’ said Bernadette, ‘I’ll need some clothes.’

‘You’ll need a good thick sweater.’

She laughed. ‘I’ll need some chic little party dresses.’

The trip to Darjeeling, to escape the heat, was one of the two big events on the horizon. The first was the East Indian Railway Debating Society dance coming up on Saturday. Lydia and Bernadette would be travelling up to Darjeeling on the following Monday, and I was to join them on the Wednesday. They would be staying for the best part of a month, whereas I would be there for only a week. Lydia had taken a house up there. She had booked it from a classified advertisement in The Statesman. Cedar Lodge, it was called: Lydia had had visiting cards printed with the name on them. That was how things went on in the hills. You posted your card through the letter box of people you wanted to know – ‘dropping’ your card, it was called – and waited in agony to find out whether they wanted to know you.