Night Train to Jamalpur(65)

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Have you considered having lessons?’

‘I am a lost cause, I fear,’ said the R.K., ‘but I love the game even so. Did you say you will join us?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I mean . . . is there a course?’

Fisher spoke up. ‘Of course there’s a course. His Highness wouldn’t be asking otherwise, would he?’ The R.K. winced. ‘His Highness’ had definitely been wrong, but the two were in close alliance, no question of it.

‘The course is out at Tiger Hill, Captain Stringer,’ the R.K. said. ‘Only a few miles away, and only nine holes. I’m afraid the greens are in a shocking state, but then again you can see Mount Everest in favourable weather. Might we collect you in the motor?’

‘When?’

‘The prognosis is excellent for tomorrow, Saturday.’

What prognosis? It hardly mattered. I was going to play golf with him. It was simply inevitable, but I did not want him at the house, because then he might run into the girl that I was sure he had fixed on for a wife: namely my own daughter, and I did not want her to know about any of this. I said, ‘That will be rather out of your way. Let’s meet outside the railway station.’

‘The station it is then,’ said the R.K. ‘Say, two o’clock?’

He put out his hand, and we shook again.

‘Confirm by messenger?’ the businesslike man – I assumed he was the secretary – suggested from his distant post.

‘No, no,’ said the R.K. ‘All these dammed chits flying about all over the place – not necessary.’

The three of them walked back to the car. On the way, the businesslike man raised an umbrella and held it over the R.K.’s head, since the rain had started again. Fisher was close enough to the R.K. to get some of the benefit of the umbrella. Somehow, I did not think that Fisher would ever be returning to work on the East Indian Railway Commission of Enquiry. After they had driven off I remained in the road, pedestrians, tongas, ponies and ox carts flowing by on either side of me, my mind in a whirl. I had been not so much flattered as practically flattened by the boyish charm of the R.K. His charm lay partly in the fact that his English, while good, was slightly ‘off’. It lay also in the enthusiastic briskness with which he conducted his business.

But why did he want to play golf with me? And why was he associating with Fisher?


III

I resumed my walk, and at getting on for midday I found myself on what I believed was called Auckland Road looking at a notice fixed to the double doors of one of the bigger chalet-like buildings. It read, ‘Bertram’s’, and there was a list of the amenities inside, including post and telegraphic office, games room, liquor bar, reading room and lending library. Well, I was an honorary member of Bertram’s. It was one of the clubs you could join in advance for the length of your stay. Lydia had arranged it for me, and looking at the notice I saw a chance to take up a line of enquiry I’d been meaning to pursue since the evening of the Debating Society dance.

Bertram’s was a matter of polished wooden floors, green notice-boards, bookshelves not confined to library and reading room, and sodden umbrellas sprouting everywhere. There was quite a crush of steaming, damp Englishmen in the bar, so I gave up on the beer and walked directly through to the reading room-cum-library, a chilly place, the fire in the great fireplace being unlit owing, as I supposed, to the coal famine.

The fact that the place ran to lending books had made me think they would have children’s books, and they had plenty, including volumes of The Captain. It was one of the principal boys’ papers, and it was ‘for Old Boys too’, as the covers always proclaimed.

Dougie Poole was in the middle forties. He would have been thirteen in about the mid-nineties. I picked out the volume for the collected Captains of 1896–7, and began looking for the ‘Naturalist’s Corner’, an item that occurred regularly, along with many a ‘Cycling Corner’ and ‘Athletic Corner’. While flipping the pages, I took the volume over to the long centre table, where two other readers sat, both looking over the sporting papers. ‘Naturalist’s Corner’ was advertised as being ‘conducted by Edward Step, F.L.S.’ The queries from the young naturalists were printed in bold, and Step’s answers were given in ordinary type below:

H. P. Pearson (Hendon) declares himself ‘an ardent collector of birds’ eggs’, and he wishes to know . . .



William Lessing (Devizes) wishes to know the average age of the common spider . . .



F. Dixon (Doncaster) desires to begin a collection of dried plants this spring . . .