Night Train to Jamalpur(58)

Siliguri station was located at the base of the five-mile-high mountains, and it stood in the same relation to them as a doorstep to a tall house. It was as if this weird situation had sent everybody mad, and the sidings around the station contained engines and wagons of two sizes: full-sized and half-sized. A half-sized train was made up and waiting for us on the platform opposite to the one we’d come in on. Another little train waited behind it, and both together made up the Darjeeling Mail. In other words, what was billed as one train was really two. Well, I supposed it was better for a short train to fall off the mountain than a long one.

Fisher, it turned out, had a good deal more luggage than what had accompanied him in our compartment. He engaged two porters, and shouted at them continuously as they carried two cabin trunks, a shotgun sling and golf clubs across the platform from full-sized to half-sized luggage vans. The tip he gave must have made up for the abuse, since it caused the Indians to bow very low. Were they Indians, in point of fact? They looked oriental, like Gurkhas, and we would be heading towards the territory from which Deo Rana and his fellows had originated.

The little engines were four-coupled saddle tanks, bright green in colour, and overrun with engineers. Three blokes were crammed on to the footplate, a further two sat on the coal bunker, which straddled the boiler. As I looked on, two more blokes climbed up on to the buffer beam, so the engine was now practically smothered by the men who operated it.

The carriages offered a variety of accommodations within each class. Our tickets allowed us to travel in any marked ‘First’. Fisher selected a saloon of the second train. This was an open carriage (no compartments), which suited me, as it meant I wouldn’t be closely confined with Fisher. The carriage held couches, basket chairs and occasional tables, as though furnished from a house clearance, and as we boarded three European women and their assorted children climbed up, together with their three ayahs, or maids. All turned and smiled at Fisher and me.

‘Room for us all here, I think?’ said the first and boldest of the women. Half rising to my feet, I nodded and smiled. But Fisher remained seated. He lit a Trichinopoly cigar.

‘I say!’ said one of the women.

The bold woman said, ‘The children don’t care for your cigar smoke.’

‘If truth be told,’ said Fisher, ‘I’m not very keen on it myself.’ He then fixed his bulging gaze on the children, one by one. ‘I mean, it’s only a cheap cigar,’ he added.

It was to the children’s credit, I thought, that none of them flinched under Fisher’s gaze. But at this point of maximum rudeness he gave ground. Rising from his chair, he said, ‘Best for all, I think, if my friend and I adjourn to the smaller saloon.’

He was indicating a narrow corridor at the south end of the saloon that, as it turned out, led into a supplementary space holding nothing but two basket chairs and an ashtray on a stand.

So I was trapped with bloody Fisher again.

We sat down opposite each other in the basket chairs. Fisher had his Webley in his suit-coat pocket, and I had my Webley in mine. I now also matched his Trichinopoly cigar with my own Gold Flake. Beyond our seats, a glass door gave on to a carriage-end balcony, or veranda. From the platform, the pea whistle blew. It was extremely shrill, and I wondered whether it was half-sized, like everything else. We pulled away, and the glass in the veranda door began to rattle. We were trundling along the high street of the town, past tumbledown hotels, and men going past the other way on slow horses. The window glass was clear, no venetian slats. I stood up and walked through the door on to the veranda, and the moment I reached the open air, the town ended and we were into jungle, where the sunlight could not break through. There was a kind of underwater light, and the creepers came down through the trees like anchor chains. Occasionally white tombstones flashed past in the dark tangle of the jungle floor. We were not yet climbing.

The engine exhaust roared and crackled. I could hear but not see the little loco. Presently we came into a jungle clearing, and a station. We stopped. We’d been going for half an hour, and we were in for a six-hour trip. There’d be a good many stations before Darjeeling, and if Fisher wanted to do me in so that corruption in traffic may not be investigated, he would have to time his move carefully. We were aboard the second of the two trains, so if he stepped out on to the veranda, shot me, and pitched my body on to the track I’d lie undiscovered for a while. But even though it had been Fisher who had picked the second train, he could not, surely, have predicted the arrival of the ladies which had caused us to remove to the supplementary saloon.