Night Train to Jamalpur(67)

‘And the writing life?’

‘He said, if you’re a born writer, you’ll write a book – won’t be able to help it.’

Dougie Poole hadn’t written a book as far as I knew.

He now rose to his feet. ‘Just going to drain off, Jim,’ he said, and he began pushing his way through the liquor bar crowd. The moment he was out of sight, I stood and followed. Did he think I’d got the drop on him? If so, he would go into the reading room instead of the Gentlemen’s, and he would check on whether I’d been looking at The Captain in order to get on the trail of his true interest in snakes. I was closing on the exit door of the bar just as Poole was pushing his way through it. In the corridor, he approached the open door of the reading room, where the bound volume of Captains that I’d been reading lay undisturbed in the long table. He looked into the room, but did not go in; he continued on his way to the Gents’. Had I been saved from discovery by the colour of the binding?

I myself then ducked into the reading room and set the volume back on the shelf, before regaining our table at the liquor bar, where Poole joined me a moment later.

‘How’s the missus getting on with the cards?’ I said.

‘What cards?’

‘Hasn’t she been dropping cards?’

‘You make her sound butter-fingered, Jim.’

‘You know what I mean. Has she been giving out calling cards?’

‘A few, yes.’

‘And how many have been dropped on you?’

‘Oh, not many. Shouldn’t think. We’re no great socialites.’

‘Does Margaret mind?’

‘Maggie doesn’t mind about anything much. She’s a good girl.’

You could say this for Dougie Poole: he’d made a good marriage. He was no fool, either. He wouldn’t have risen so high in traffic if he had been; but he certainly was a rummy, and with the arrival of the second bottle in prospect, it was time for me to leave him to it.


IV

The Continental motor car was silent, as was its driver. The dark-suited secretary, who had been introduced to me as Mr Chakraborty, was likewise. Major Fisher had done little more than grunt as I climbed into the car at the railway station, and the R.K. himself had fallen to reading some document after greeting me, which he’d done this time with a salaam and not a handshake. Perhaps his religious calendar dictated that on this day he – or more likely I – was untouchable. In order to read, he had put on wire glasses. Observing him in the rear-view mirror, I saw that they did not in way lessen his youthful good looks, but made him look clever in addition.

After leaving town we had been driving, for most of the time, in a wooded valley. There was no rain, but a light morning mist. It might have been an English wood, except that the trees were too big, and there were tattered flags by the roadside. They had been brightly coloured but were now faded, as though a great celebration had been held some years ago: the prayer flags of the Buddhists. There were more Buddhists in Darjeeling than Hindus. We passed a snow-white waterfall and now all the trees gradually became pine trees. They gave off the same scent as the fire that had burned in Cedar Lodge when I had taken my early breakfast.

We turned off the road, and roared quickly up to a wide log cabin: the clubhouse of the course, evidently. We all climbed out of the car. Something more than a game of golf lay in wait, I was sure of that. In order to delay the moment of its starting, I took out my cigarette case. The R.K. watched me do it.

I said, ‘Care for a cigarette, Rajkumar sahib?’

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Take one of mine,’ and he trumped my battered silver-plate cigarette case with a solid silver one of his own. I helped myself to a cigarette – they were fat Turkish ones – and the R.K. lit it for me with his Dunhill lighter.

‘My name is Narayan, Captain Stringer,’ he said. ‘And I am a very bad Brahmin, as you can see.’ After a pause, he added, ‘But not bad in everything. When I marry, I will do it in the correct way. I will marry the one who chooses me, and I will seek to satisfy the requirements of the bride’s family.’

So that’s his game, I thought: he’s going to break the news that Bernadette has chosen him. Well, I would put him off, and I would not mince words in doing so. If trouble flared, I had my Webley in my golf bag (it being impossible to make a golf swing while carrying a revolver in one’s suit-coat pocket).

There were two other cars parked before the pavilion, but no other golfers to be seen. We bypassed it anyhow, walking directly to the teeing ground. That is to say, Fisher, the R.K. and I walked there while Mr Chakraborty and the driver remained loitering by the car; I assumed that one or other of them would go into the clubhouse to pay the green fee and find some caddies.