Night Train to Jamalpur(94)

I knew the score. As far as Anthony Young was concerned, the Anglo-Indians were merely being patronised by the annual inclusion of a few of their number in the Debating Society dance, and he didn’t think it an event worth commemorating. Two tables over, Charles Sermon was holding forth, and I caught the sound of his rumbling tones: ‘. . . One of the Indian shikaris, a fine old Rajput who feared nothing this side of Nirvana . . .’ The chrysanthemum in his buttonhole was as white as the one he’d been wearing last time, but his white linen suit was a shade or two grubbier. Glancing up, he saw me. He looked surprised, but then signalled a friendly greeting before resuming his lecture. Meanwhile, Anthony Young had left his post at the bar. It seemed he was coming over to us after all.

‘You again,’ he said, glowering over me.

Sonia Young said to me, ‘He means “Hello, how are you?”’

‘Have you found my dad’s killer yet?’ At least he’d stopped accusing me of being the murderer, and in answer to his question I wanted to say that yes, I had; that his dad had been killed in a bungled attempted ambush on a nationalist revolutionary. But I kept silence.

Anthony Young didn’t go away. He was sipping a beer, continuing to glower.

His mother and her friend continued to paste in the photographs.

‘I don’t know why you bother with that rubbish,’ he said to her.

She said, ‘Now if you can’t be polite go away.’

‘How are you enjoying life as a travelling ticket inspector?’ I said.

‘It keeps me out of this place, anyhow.’

It didn’t seem to keep him out of it very much.

‘He won’t be in that sort of job very much longer,’ said Sonia Young.

Anthony Young was eyeing me. ‘She’s worried I’ll be mixing with the bloody darkies. She wants me climbing the ladder, man. Study the loco mags! Get your special apprenticeship!’

Mrs Young and her friend had left off pasting in photographs, and they were now looking back over the pictures of earlier years at the dance. Without looking up at her son, Mrs Young said, ‘With your brains, you could be a chief mechanical engineer by the time you’re thirty-five.’

‘Then I can join that bloody world,’ he said, indicating the album, ‘alongside a lot of men who keep their daughters away from me. Then, if I do get hitched, they won’t dare send their kids to where I send mine in case they pick up the chi-chi way of talking.’ He was eyeing me again. ‘Think about it, man. That’s no bloody good.’

From two tables over, Charles Sermon was saying to his Anglo-Indian friend, ‘Shall we have the other half?’ I had been warned that people in India would say this. It meant “Shall we have a second drink?” but this was the first time I’d actually heard it said. Sonia Young turned one of the pages of one of the albums, and Anthony Young stabbed his finger down on a photograph of a young European woman dancing with a young European man. ‘She’s a damned fine tart!’

‘You bugger off!’ shouted his beautiful mother, and the whole bar did fall silent for a moment.

I watched Anthony Young. It seemed to me that he was slightly less truculent, or slightly less drunk, than he had been the last time, but that could change, since he was now walking back to the bar. Slowly the hubbub of conversation rose again, and I wanted to give the impression to Mrs Young that I had taken this family spat smoothly in my stride, so I said: ‘Do you mind if I ask . . . was your father or mother English?’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Mrs Young, but her friend, addressing me for the first time, put in, ‘Some people would do.’

‘My mother was an opera singer,’ said Sonia Young, ‘on a tour of India. She was from Manchester. My father was an engine driver, and he was from Delhi originally, but he came here to work from the Howrah engine shed. He was a top-link man, always on the expresses. The engines called Atlantics, you know?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Big engines. The wheel arrangement is 4-4-2.’

‘I daresay it is, my dear,’ said Mrs Young, and she patted the back of my hand, as though I were a hopeless case.

‘An engine driver and an opera singer,’ I mused.

‘An intriguing alliance, you are thinking.’

‘It sounds almost—’

‘I’ll tell you what it sounded,’ said Mrs Young. ‘It sounded loud. They were forever rowing.’

She was once again looking over the photograph albums. She tapped me on the elbow, saying in a conspiratorial tone, ‘Here’s another intriguing alliance for you.’ She was indicating a page on which had been pasted a single extra-large photograph. It showed a collection of smiling couples standing in the garden of Wright’s Hotel, all taking a breather from the Debating Society dance.