Night Train to Jamalpur(3)

He had produced from beneath his seat a bottle containing about five inches of Indian whisky, that is to say distilled molasses, that is to say rum. The label read ‘Loch Lomand’, whereas ‘Loch Lomond’ would have been closer to the mark. He had summoned his bearer from the servants’ compartment – the foremost one in the carriage – and the fellow had equipped us with two glasses. John Young had asked where my own man was, and I had said I preferred to travel without, which he obviously found irregular. The lie was beginning to loom.

He had jokingly suggested that, in view of the snake attacks, we were brave men to travel in first class on the East Indian Railway. He had been reading about the attacks in The Statesman, and had been particularly interested in the case of Miss Schofield from Leamington Spa:

‘It is in the county of . . . ?’

‘Good question. Not sure.’

‘But not in Yorkshire.’

‘No.’

‘. . . That being your own county.’

‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m from York.’

‘Now York, I believe, is the plum. I have read about the fine cathedral there.’

‘The Minster, yes. Not a patch on yours in Calcutta, if you ask me.’

‘Also the beautiful railway station. Principal junction of the . . . North Eastern Railway . . . ?

‘London and North Eastern. There was an amalgamation.’

John Young said, ‘A very great railway, I believe.’

‘Fairly great,’ I said, grinning.

I was determined John Young should not overrate ‘the homeland’. He would be happier if he settled for what he had: namely India, and the mighty enterprise whose metals we were riding upon: the East Indian Railway. It was not to be sniffed at.

The London and North Eastern Railway came in at six thousand five hundred route miles, making it the second biggest show in Britain after the London, Midland and Scottish, which had about seven thousand eight hundred. True, the East Indian was only half that in route miles: there was not the British density of branches. But the Grand Chord of the East Indian – extending as it did from Calcutta to Delhi and beyond – covered a tract of country half as long as the distance from Land’s End to John O’ Groats, and its gross receipts from passenger and freight traffic far exceeded that of any British railway. This was mainly because of the coal traffic, since the East Indian sat atop the Bengal coalfield, which had begun to be exploited in earnest during the war, and had sufficient reserves to supply almost the entire world east of Suez.

But my companion was still dreaming of Blighty . . .

‘I tell you what, Jim,’ he said, leaning confidentially towards me, ‘I would like to drink a fine glass of Scotch whisky in the dining room of York station.’

‘You’ll be lucky,’ I said, picturing the dusty bottles of Bass on the shelf behind the buffet counter.

It wouldn’t quite do to ask whether he had actually visited Britain. Some of the Anglo-Indians would speak of it as ‘home’ in a heart-breaking sort of way, even if they had never been. But John Young was not a typical case. He was a gazetted officer of the East Indian Railway, and he must have been a very bright spark to get so high.

He was taking out his pocket book.

‘My wife and my boy,’ he said, indicating a photograph, and handing the whole pocket book over to me. There were a number of hundred-rupee notes inside – at least four – but I was supposed to be looking at the photograph. John Young’s wife was plumpish, pretty, looked perhaps less Indian than he did. The boy was rather wild-eyed, with a great deal of hair. He looked a bit delinquent.

‘Anthony,’ said John Young as I contemplated the picture. ‘He prefers Tony, of course.’

‘Good-looking chap,’ I said.

‘I daresay. But the boy is a worry.’

‘On the railways, is he?’

‘Regrettably, yes.’

Then the boy wasn’t at one of the railway colleges; was not on course to be a gazetted man like his father. I wouldn’t have pressed the matter, but John Young volunteered the information: ‘He is a travelling ticket inspector,’ he said, with some contempt. ‘I am going up to Jamalpur to see if I can find a course of training for him.’ He added that he himself was on the Commercial side, the department that solicited custom for the Railway.

I still held John Young’s pocket book. I was now examining the metal warrant badge, set into the leather, and had put on my reading glasses to do so. This token entitled him to travel in first class on the East Indian Railway without payment. It was about the size of a half crown. The elephant and the circular track were engraved upon it, with John Young’s name engraved above. I carried the equivalent in pasteboard, as befitted a temporary holder of the same privilege.