BY MID-APRIL THE HEAT WAS making everyone ill-tempered and lethargic. Sophie, sleeping under a thin sheet to the steady whirr of the ceiling fan, woke to find both sheet and nightdress soaked through with sweat. No wonder, she thought, that the ladies of the Raj in earlier centuries had succumbed to migraines, melancholia, fainting spells, and lassitude. Following Jeannie’s sensible example, she had abandoned her stays and had taken to wearing simple, loose-fitting tunic-dresses.
“But don’t pack away your cool-weather things,” warned Jeannie. “You’ll need them in the hills.” Like most English families in Calcutta, the Grenville-Smiths were to spend the summer months at the hill-station of Darjeeling, and finally came the long-anticipated morning of departure. Piles of luggage and bedding were assembled on the verandas, tiffin-baskets were packed with buttered buns and hard-boiled eggs, bottles filled with boiled water and lemonade. The servants who would stay behind were given last-minute instructions, and in the grey light of early morning the family, along with Thekong and Alex’s ayah Lily, made their way to the railway station. Tom, who had work to finish at the museum, was to follow in May.
The platform was crowded with poor Indian families who had been camped there all night waiting for their trains. Goats and chickens — and the occasional sacred cow — wandered among the cooking pots and piles of bedding. Jeannie had insisted that Lily must travel with the family in their second-class compartment, but no such consideration was possible for Thekong.
“Third class is horrid,” observed Alex, as they settled themselves on the padded leather seats which at night would be made up into narrow bunks. “I wish Thekong could stay with us.”
“I wish he could too,” said Jeannie. “But I’m afraid I must be a proper memsahib and you must be a proper memsahib’s daughter, and abide by the rules.”
“For fear of drawing attention to ourselves,” said Alex.
Jeannie gave her a quick, surprised look. “Where did you hear that, Alex? Did someone tell you that?”
“Oh, it was a long time ago,” said Alex. “When I was quite little. I was at the zoo with Lily . . . wasn’t I, Lily? — and I tripped and scraped my knee, and I cried — quite loudly, I expect — and a lady said “Hush, child, you’re drawing attention to yourself.”
“Yes, well,” said Jeannie. “That’s usually good advice.”
“Alexandra draws attention to herself,” Alex remarked. “And she would have let her friend the Maharajah ride in the carriage with her.”
“Alexandra doesn’t feel a need to abide by the rules,” replied Jeannie, smiling. “Any more than do Maharajahs. It’s different for ordinary mortals.”
“It’s especially different if you’re an Indian,” said Sophie, thinking unhappily of Thekong. Already, on this first morning of their overnight journey, Sophie was breathless and exhausted. The sun beating down on the metal roof of the train turned their compartment into an inferno. She could only imagine what travel must be like for the Indian passengers, tightly packed into the third class carriages, with no space to lie down, nowhere to sit but on their luggage or the floor.
“It’s what I like least about India,” Jeannie said. “There are so many divisions — not just of race, but of caste and wealth and class. You cross those barriers at your own risk. Diana writes that things are changing in England, especially since the start of the war — but here we’re still living in the past, in Queen Victoria’s time.”
Sophie was reminded, suddenly, that when Jeannie still lived in Scotland, before she married Tom, she had worked on a farm as a common labourer. That too had been in Queen Victoria’s time. How much more aware must Jeannie be of those divisions, than someone like Sophie, raised in wealth and privilege.
As the day wore on, Sophie grew tired of gazing out the window at the sunbaked plain. There was little to see but scattered villages set among dried-up rice and jute and mustard fields. Alex and Lily had both fallen asleep, with Alex’s head in Lily’s lap. Presently Sophie too slipped into a doze.
Some time later, she woke as brakes shrilled and the train slowed to a halt. She looked out the open window and saw that they were at a station. There was a great bustle and commotion going on. Children stood between the tracks and reached up to the train windows to beg for coins; hawkers ran along the platform with trays of fruit and sweets, cheap jewelry and painted wooden toys, or bottles of garishly coloured drinks.
Alex sat up, looking dazed and a little feverish. Her face was sheened with perspiration. “I’m thirsty,” she complained, and Jeannie dug into one of the baskets on the floor for a bottle of water. Just then a fruit seller went by the window, carrying a tray of bananas on his head.
“And hungry,” added Alex. “Could we buy some fruit?”
Jeannie glanced over at Lily, still sound asleep and gently snoring. “I’ll go,” she said. “There’s a news-seller too — Sophie, I’ll get us some magazines.” She stood up, straightened her crumpled skirt, put on her straw hat, and stepped out of the compartment onto the platform, locking the door behind her.
Moments later, from farther down the platform, there were angry shouts. Someone—a woman — shrieked. There were more shouts — in Bengali, Sophie guessed. Then came the sudden crack of rifle fire.
Sophie froze in her place, her heart racing, her stomach twisting into a knot. Without stopping to think, scarcely realizing what she was saying, she cried out, “Alex, Lily — get under the seats.”
Alex and Lily stared at her, eyes wide with alarm.
“Now!” said Sophie. Her voice was trembling, but still it carried an authority she hadn’t known she possessed.
Lucknow, Cawnpore, the mutiny — women and children kidnapped, chopped to pieces, thrown down wells . . . Those terrible stories flashed through her mind. Lock the door, she thought. No, the door is locked. Shut the windows, close the shutters.
And as Alex and Lily, bewildered but obedient, scrambled for cover, Sophie reached towards the nearest window, slammed it shut and pulled down the louvred wooden blinds.
Before she had time to deal with the other windows, something thrust itself through the bars and shutters on the side of the carriage facing the tracks. It was a long, thin pole with a hook on the end.
It seemed to Sophie, even in her panic, that it was an odd sort of weapon, but the hook looked sharp and dangerous, and she had charges to protect. She seized the middle part of the pole in both hands, carefully avoiding the hook, and braced against the edge of a seat, she began to force it back through the bars. On the other side of the window, someone grunted. Sophie pushed again, hard, and there was no more resistance. She heard the thud of the pole as it fell onto the tracks, and the sound of feet hitting the ground.
But now someone was hammering on the door of the compartment.
“Sophie, open up, let me in!” Jeannie’s voice. Sophie unlocked the door, and Jeannie stepped in, carrying a bunch of bananas in one hand, and some copies of the Strand in the other,
Limp with relief, Sophie sank down on the bench. Her throat had gone tight and raw, and tears were spilling down her cheeks. Meanwhile, Lily and Alex, hearing Jeannie’s voice, had emerged rumpled and dust-covered from beneath the seats.
“Sophie, whatever is the matter?” Jeannie handed the bananas to Lily, tossed aside the magazines and sat down beside Sophie, holding out a clean handkerchief.
“I heard shots,” Sophie gasped out between sobs. “Then a pole with a hook on it came through the window . . . ”
“Oh Sophie, my dear, I’m so sorry, you must have been terrified . . . ”
“I heard shots . . . ” Sophie repeated helplessly.
“Yes, I know, some thieves were trying to steal bags from the platform. A soldier fired over their heads to frighten them off.”
“But the pole, the hook . . . ”
“Oh dear, I didn’t think to warn you — that’s a favourite thief’s trick. They climb up and reach through the windows into the compartments. The idea is to catch up a bag or a parcel and drag out it through the bars.”
“I thought . . . ” began Sophie, but stumbled into silence. What, after all, had she thought?
“And you told Alex and Lily to hide?”
“I’m sorry, I . . . ”
“Sophie, don’t be sorry, I’m proud of you — you did exactly the right thing.”
Lily had dampened her handkerchief from a water bottle, and was wiping Alex’s dirt-smeared face.
“We thought they were thuggee,” declared Alex. “And Sophie was very brave, wasn’t she, Lily? She frightened them off.”