Night Train to Jamalpur(69)

‘Oh dear,’ said the R.K. ‘This Hob Moor place is sounding worse by the minute!’

‘The clubhouse is an old carriage,’ I said.

‘Well, that’s charming at least,’ said the R.K.

He wouldn’t think that if he saw it.

We had now approached his sliced ball. The R.K. flashed at it. ‘That’s how to do a slice,’ he said, watching the result. ‘Just in case you didn’t know.’

And so it was for the next three holes. Fisher played reasonably well, and kept silence. The R.K., whether using brassie, mashie or niblick, would slice the ball to the edge of the fairway or clean out of bounds, and after each of these fluffs he would make some self-deprecating remark in his English that was good but ever so slightly ‘off’.

‘Mmm . . . misplaced,’ he would say, or ‘Misguided’, or ‘That transcended a joke.’

On the fifth hole, the R.K. was in a fairway bunker, having hooked the ball for a change. He selected his jigger. ‘My father is endeavouring to build a course in Suryapore,’ he said, ‘but we can’t get the right grass: the bent grass, you know – for the greens.’

The R.K. was looking over my shoulder as he spoke. ‘There is Mount Everest, by the way,’ he said. While clouds were gathering above our heads, the ones at that far distance had cleared sufficiently to show a mountain in between two other mountains – and rather smaller than them, being further away, as though shyly hiding.

But I would not continue the pretence of being on some pleasant tourist outing.

I said to the R.K., ‘I believe you know my daughter.’

‘Bernadette,’ he said, in a perfectly even tone after making his shot. ‘Friend of Ann and Claudine. I have danced with all of them, but Bernadette is the best dancer. I have danced three or four times with her, and I have heard her play piano as well. She plays like . . .’ I thought he might say ‘an angel’, but instead he said, ‘an earthquake . . . I love the sound of it. I was discussing this charming girl, and Major Fisher mentioned that you were her father.’

Fisher, having played his own second shot, had now positioned himself directly alongside the R.K., dwarfing him in size. I thought he must be ‘the heavy’: that must be it. Fisher and the R.K. had their backs to the green; my back was to the teeing ground.

‘It was then that I determined to meet you,’ the R.K. continued, ‘and hence my invitation to golf today.’

I heard a loud thump behind me, and a golf ball came to rest three feet behind my heel. The two men following had not waited for us to move out of range before teeing off.

‘That’s bloody rude,’ said Fisher, and he knew all about rudeness. He looked furious, whether because of the arrival of the ball or because of what it had interrupted I could not say.

‘We will let them play through,’ said the R.K., so we waved the two behind to come on, while we backed on to the semi-rough. The pair did not thank us as they walked up to their second shots. They were Englishmen all right. I heard one say to the other, ‘It was a cram exam, and I’m a good crammer.’

When the two had played a pair of decent approaches to the green, I said to the R.K., ‘You were saying about my daughter?’

But he was still watching the two Englishmen. ‘We will let them get well ahead,’ he said, before turning towards me once more.

‘My daughter,’ I repeated. But it had commenced to rain, and the R.K. said, ‘Let’s take refuge in that cadet shelter.’


V

The shelter was a little way inside the trees. It resembled a turret that had become detached from a castle. Close by was a guru’s tree, with painted lower trunk, and candles set into the roots. Affecting to be interested in this curiously placed shrine, I urged Fisher and the R.K. to go on ahead of me towards the shelter, saying I would catch them up in a moment. The tree had perhaps been chosen because of the dreamlike flowers that grew from creepers in its branches: giant khaki-coloured blooms that I believed were orchids.

I observed the caddie shelter. When Fisher and the R.K. were inside it, I took the Webley from my golf bag, and put it into a pocket of my suit coat. I then made my own way through the dripping trees to join them. The interior was unlined bricks with sacking and cigarette stubs on the floor. In the semi-darkness, I could smell the fustiness of the sacking, and a hint of the R.K.’s cologne. He removed his cap, and dabbed his brow with a good handkerchief. He smiled at me. Fisher, meanwhile, was fumbling inside his suit-coat pocket. He removed a metal tube, about six inches long – the very item, surely, that Canon Peter Selwyn had seen him attempting to conceal after the shooting of John Young. Fisher eyed me as he detached the end of the tube, and he removed from it a cigar. It was nothing more than the expensive sort of cigar retainer, made of silver plate or silver. It seemed that his days of smoking the little Trichies were over.