Bhowani Junction by John Masters

handed him his hat and said, ‘Your hat, sir.’ Macaulay’s lips gave me the willies. Savage walked out. Macaulay stopped by Victoria’s chair and smiled at her and said, ‘Let me know if you change your mind, won’t you? He’s really not so bad to work with.’ He’d taken off his dark glasses, and I saw that his eyes were funny too, wide-set and dull. Then he went out.
    I sat there on the edge of my desk for a couple of minutes, then I grabbed my topi, jammed it on my head, and yelled at the top of my voice, ‘Oh, damn all the bloody military to hell !’ Then I asked Victoria to come along with me.
    While I was starting up the Norton I asked her why she’d told Savage she couldn’t help us as a liaison officer. I told her how disappointed I was.
    She said, ‘I don’t like him, and I’m not going to work with him. I’d have to call him “sir”!’
    That was true. I was pleased that she didn’t like him. But there was another thing; I felt queer because she had stood up to him and told him flatly she wouldn’t do it. I ought to have been proud of her, and I was, but I hadn’t stood up to him myself, which made the gap bigger between me and her.

FIVE
    I was still thinking of Savage and Macaulay when I went down to Number 4 Collett Road that evening. I picked up Victoria and Rose Mary and Mrs Jones and walked with them to the Institute, where Sir Meredith Sullivan was going to speak to us about St Thomas’s.
    There were two Railway Institutes then, of course, one forEuropeans and Anglo-Indians, and one for Indians. The Indians had not made theirs into anything, while ours was a fine big building with a dance floor and card rooms and a bar, just like the Club in cantonments. The Indians seldom used their Institute. They never spent any money on beer, rum, and whisky there, so there was no profit to improve it with. It was the same at the station. We had two running rooms there for the drivers, firemen, and guards who had to stop over an hour or a night between trains. The European running room was twice the size of the Indian one, and had comfortable beds and a room with chairs and magazines and packs of cards.
    When we got to the Institute, Victoria went off to play whist. I would have said she got rid of me, almost, so I spent most of the evening in the bar. We used to have good Murree and Solan beer in that bar. I kept an eye on Sir Meredith Sullivan, and about eleven o’clock went to ask him if he was ready to speak to everybody. He was, so I got up on the dais and rang a bell, and everyone crowded on to the dance floor. The younger people sat down on the floor, and the older ones took the chairs that were all round the walls. When they’d all settled down I raised my hand and announced, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Sir Meredith Sullivan will now address us on a subject that is very important for all of us.’
    Sir Meredith came forward, and I sat down. He began to talk about St Thomas’s. He told us what we already knew—that the Presidency Education Trust had had a good offer for the school buildings and grounds and wanted to accept it. He was on his way to meet with the trustees in Bombay. He wanted to find out what our feelings were so that he could tell them. He said, ‘Let anyone speak.’
    He stood there, waiting. He looked terribly ill and very tired. Someone spoke up and said, ‘I think it would be a damned shame to sell the school, sir. My boy is going next year. Where else can he go?’ There was a big murmur of people agreeing. Then they began to clap their hands, and soon everyone was shouting, ‘No, no!’ ‘It is our school!’ ‘They have no right to sell it,’ and so on. It made me feel good just to hear them. No one was going to push us down the drainwithout a fight.
    Then I saw Victoria standing up, taller than the others. She lifted her arm and said loudly, ‘Sir Meredith, I think we ought to ask the Trust to accept the offer and sell the school. What is going to happen in a