Night Train to Jamalpur(4)

‘A beautiful thing,’ I said, handing back the pocket book.

From my own pocket book, I produced a photograph of my wife – Lydia by name – our daughter Bernadette and myself. It had been taken on the maidan – the main park – of Calcutta, on our first full day in the town: Saturday 7 April. Both Lydia and Bernadette wore cotton shirts and jodhpurs, and they had removed their sola topees so as to show off their hair: Lydia’s was tied up in her usual quick but complicated way. Bernadette’s blond hair was modern – that is, short. They were off for a riding lesson, and laughing about it for some reason. I was not off riding, only paying for the lesson; I was also beginning a really good ‘go’ of tertian malaria, and so my smile was rather dazed compared to those of the females, who were excitedly poised at the start of their Indian adventure.

Lydia’s aim was the liberation of the Indian nation. Or – if that should seem a tall order for one person – the liberation of Indian womanhood. To that end, she’d spent the weeks before our departure corresponding with Indian or British women who ran the sorts of organisations that corresponded to the British Women’s Co-Operative Guild, of which she was a paid-up official.

I indicated Lydia and Bernadette, adding, ‘We have a son, but he’s at the London University, and he didn’t come out with us.’

Pointing at Lydia, John Young said, ‘She looks almost . . .’

‘Almost Indian? I said, ‘Or Anglo-Indian?’

‘Do you mind if I say that?’

‘Not in the least. She’d take it as a compliment.’

I didn’t much care for this conversational turn. It was becoming rather sticky.

‘But the girl is not at all dark,’ said John Young, concentrating now on Bernadette. ‘What age?’

‘Sixteen, nearly seventeen.’

‘Trouble?’ he said, looking up.

I nodded. ‘Has been since she was about eleven. That was when she decided to change her name. Well, she took her second name, and made it her first.’

‘And what was she first called?’

‘Sylvia.’

‘Why the change?’

I shrugged. My theory was that the name Sylvia was too like the name Lydia. The girl wanted to strike out on her own. Lydia had not approved. She had chosen Sylvia in honour of Sylvia Pankhurst, the famous feminist, whereas if any Bernadette was famous for anything . . . then I dreaded to think what it might be. I said something of this to John Young, and he rather shamed me by saying, ‘Of course, there is St Bernadette of Lourdes, who had visions of the Virgin.’

I had forgotten about her. It struck me that John Young might easily be Catholic. Many of the Anglos were.

‘In India,’ John Young continued, ‘people have lots of names.’

He resumed his examination of the photograph. Bernadette was rather cat-like in features, and her hair gave off a beautiful light, as could be seen even from the picture.

‘A clever girl, no doubt,’ John Young said.

‘She got into the high school on a scholarship,’ I said.

‘Our boy, too,’ said John Young. ‘We thought it would be the making of him,’ he added, but he was still studying Bernadette. ‘And she’s left the school now?’

I nodded again.

‘Has she been finished off?’ he said, grinning. For a moment I was minded to clout him, until I clicked that he was referring to finishing school.

I shook my head. ‘We don’t go in for things like that in York.’

Bernadette’s new friend Claudine Askwith, whose father was top brass in the traffic department, and came from Hampshire . . . she’d been to finishing school. Apparently, the main thing it had taught her was how not to appear educated.

The train was slowing again, and none too smoothly. From beyond the closed curtain came a repeated clanging: most likely the flush chain on the thunderbox clashing against the carriage side. Presently we came to a complete stop.

‘Is this the single-line working?’ I asked after a while.

John Young was at the window. ‘No, we’ve come into a station.’

He invited me to look out.

‘I am using the term loosely, Jim.’

The only sign of life was the haze of insects around each platform lantern. Nobody at all in the waiting shed. As a rule, you could expect some sleeping Indians, and any number of pi dogs. Then again, nobody had boarded or alighted from our carriage at any of the dozen or so stops we had made since Howrah. Someone out of sight blew hard on a pea whistle and we lurched away. I glanced down at my watch. Midnight, dead on.

John Young said, ‘Are you in India on business, Jim?’


III

This was John Young’s own country, and it was only fair I should provide some explanation as to what I was doing in it. To buy time, I offered him a Gold Flake. I lit it for him, and lit my own. I sat back. John Young was a likeable fellow, and so he would get the truth; but not the whole truth.