Night Train to Jamalpur(26)

I decided to walk to the office.

Anyone who didn’t know the way from Willard’s Hotel to the East Indian Railway’s castle in Fairlie Place would only have had to fall in with the flow of bicycling clerks. What started as a trickle on Chowringhee became a flood on Esplanade Row: first clerks, second clerks, acting first or second clerks, record keepers, cashiers, draughtsmen, subordinate ledger clerks, upper subordinate ledger clerks, temporary upper subordinate ledger clerks. In every case the bicycle was black. Pay grades ranged from about forty rupees per month (three pounds) to four hundred, and these last would have an attaché case dangling from one side of the handlebar, and perhaps a tightly furled black umbrella dangling from the other, like a mobile scales of justice.

The bicyclists were not allowed to take their machines into the courtyard of the castle, so they parked them in the racks by the hot and mustardy river. Between seven and eight o’clock, the clerks who’d parked their bikes clashed with the clerks yet to do so, and chaos resulted in Fairlie Place. The superior European officers would add to this chaos by pulling up in tongas and motor taxis, and, as I turned into Fairlie Place, I saw one of the latter fighting its way through the massed clerks. The taxi stopped a little way short of the courtyard entrance and William Askwith climbed out. In doing so, he coincided with his more junior colleague, Dougie Poole, who’d been walking with clerks. Askwith’s suit was of white cotton tweed, which kept the creases out; Poole’s was of white linen, which did not. His suit looked about two sizes too big in addition. Askwith carried a calfskin briefcase. I knew the kind: it was hand stitched and there would be special compartments inside for everything from ink bottle and paper knife to visiting cards and railway tickets. Dougie Poole made do with a bent valise, carried under-arm. Askwith saw me first.

‘Good morning to you, Captain Stringer,’ he said, touching his sola topee.

‘Morning there,’ I said, because I never knew whether to risk calling him William.

From behind him, Dougie Poole nodded at me and flashed a rather pained grin. Then, as Askwith began to speak, Poole embarked on a huge yawn.

‘According to Eleanor,’ Askwith said, ‘the girls had a lovely, if rather strenuous, time at the Wednesday Club.’

‘Bernadette did seem tired,’ I said. ‘I’m not quite sure why.’

‘They were learning some silly, but evidently rather involved, new dance. Had a thoroughly ridiculous name, something to do with—’

‘The banana glide,’ Dougie Poole put in. ‘It’s considered “hot socks” at the Wednesday.’

‘I gather you encountered a spot of banditry on the Night Mail?’ said Askwith, ignoring Poole.

‘A fellow was killed, I said. ‘A Company man: Anglo-Indian.’

‘Yes,’ said Askwith, ‘a very poor show.’

I wondered how he knew of it. So I asked him.

‘We had special orders about the return of the carriage,’ he said. ‘It was to be kept sealed. I saw a copy of the wire last night.’

A reasonable answer, even if this seemed a minor bit of business to be crossing his desk, given that he was head of traffic. Presumably he had known nothing of the trouble when calling Lydia to explain the arrangements for collecting the girls. We spoke for a while about the attack and the death of John Young. ‘What a country that can produce such horrors,’ said Askwith, in his blank way.

I asked him how things were in his department.

‘The traffic’s expanding all the time, so we must work hard to keep up with the operational and maintenance requirements. But as with your police work, Captain Stringer, our main attention focuses on the coming change, and the rationalisation. It’s certainly keeping us all on our toes, isn’t it Douglas?’

But Dougie Poole could not give an immediate answer, having embarked on another yawn. It was becoming increasingly hard to talk in that fast-moving sea of black and white clerks, and now Askwith and Poole gave themselves up to the flow and, with a tipping of hats on all sides, allowed themselves to be swirled away from me, and into the courtyard.

I lingered on the pavement, being occasionally buffeted, and watching the motor taxi that Askwith had climbed down from, and which had still not managed to leave Fairlie Place. I had heard that he would never on any account use trams or tongas in town, but only taxis, and according to Lydia this was because he’d had a brush with the Gandhi-ites . . .

In the year after the war, the Mahatma had organised a protest campaign against the security measures of the Rowlatt Act. The Act was meant to keep the revolutionists in check, but had only succeeded in creating an army of them, the protests against it having resulted in the killings at Amritsar. There’d been bother on the streets of Calcutta. Indians had stopped the trams, and made Europeans get off and walk. Evidently, William Askwith had been on one of the stopped trams, and the protestors had not only made him walk, they’d also confiscated his sola topee, exposing his head, which was bald, to the strongly raying sun. Evidently, Askwith himself did not like to recall the event.