Ragtime in Simla

‘Are we there yet? Is this the Hills?’ asked the youngest child for the twentieth time.

‘Not yet, darling. Fifty miles to go. This is Kalka. This is where we change trains and get on to the Toy Train. Then we’ll go chugging up into the Hills. Round lots of bends we’ll go, through lots of tu

‘Are you coming on the Toy Train with us, sir?’ Robin asked Joe.

‘No, Robin. I’ll be sorry to miss it but a friend is sending a car to the station to pick me up. We’ll have a race, shall we? See which of us gets to Simla first?’

‘A car?’ said the boy’s mother, Mrs Major Graham, raising her eyebrows. ‘You have friends in high places then – socially as well as geographically, I mean. I understand that there are only two or three cars allowed to enter Simla…’

‘The Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal,’ said Joe, answering the question good ma

The children, supremely unaware of any change in social nuances, pounced on this new information.

‘Has the Governor got an elephant?’ they wanted to know.

‘He has four in Calcutta where he lives in the cold weather but none in the Hills,’ Joe explained.

‘Will you have to wear your medals all the time if you’re staying with a Governor?’ asked the oldest boy.

‘Oh, yes, Billie. At breakfast, at tiffin, at di

Round-eyed disbelief was followed by a shout of laughter and the children were still giggling as Joe bounced them out of the carriage and into the waiting arms of their ayahs and bearers who hurried forward to retrieve their families ready for the next leg of the journey.

The Umballa to Kalka train had been crowded with English families fleeing the heat of the plains for the cool of the Himalayan foothills. In early April the temperature was already unbearable in Delhi and government and military alike were on the move to the summer capital of India. Simla. Joe looked above the heads of the excited crowds milling around him hoping to catch his first sight of the town perched on its spur of the mountains. Though, disappointingly, Simla was still hidden from view he stood for a moment making out the line of mighty snow-capped mountains in the distance beyond the dark foothills, the morning sun striking the summits with a theatrical brilliance, rank after rank and on and up into Kashmir and far Tibet.

Joe had enjoyed the company of talkative children on the long journey from Umballa; he had even enjoyed fencing with their inquisitive mothers but now the pending arrival in Simla – so much looked forward to – was too precious to share. Joe wanted to savour it in tranquillity, and as the crowds swirled away to the Toy Train he found himself at last alone on the platform. Alone that is but for one other passenger. A tall, distinguished, heavily built man was, like him, gazing in rapt absorption at the mountains.

He seemed to be in no hurry; he was clearly not intending to take the Toy Train. He seemed, like Joe, to be savouring this moment. Joe tried to place him in the hierarchy of India. Expensively dressed in a casual linen suit. Not made in England – not made in India. France? No. Joe decided – America. Also, the man himself – English-looking but not English. His silver-grey hair was longer than any London barber would have permitted. Distinguished. Confident and attractive in his frank enjoyment of this shared moment. He caught Joe’s eye and smiled.

Joe decided to test him out. ‘ “A fair land – a most beautiful land is this of Hind – and the land of the five rivers is fairer than all,” ’ he said.

‘ “Look, Hajji, is yonder the city of Simla? Allah, what a city!” ’ finished the man in the white suit and they looked at each other, in instant rapport. ‘I am addressing an admirer of Kim, I take it? But how did you guess that I too…?’

‘I didn’t guess,’ said Joe. ‘I noticed your copy of the book sticking out of your pocket.’

The stranger took out the small leather-bound volume. Balanced on his hand it fell open at a well-read page. ‘Need I say? Kim’s arrival in Simla!’

‘Mine too,’ said Joe. He pulled a similar book from his bag and demonstrated. He wondered whether the stranger had noticed the appalling condition of his copy. Every battered page was stained with Flanders earth and candle grease, and peppered with cigarette burns; some were even stained with his own blood. The cheeky, proud and resourceful bazaar boy, Kim, had been his companion through four years in the hell of France and he had never tired of reading it. Kim’s spirit had encouraged, even chided him in the depths of despair; the scents and sounds and sights of a hot country he had never seen, nor expected to see, had always seemed able to distance for a while the bleak landscapes and cloying mud of the battlefields.

He looked more closely at the other. There was something familiar about him. Joe had the extraordinary feeling that he knew this man and yet he was sure they had never been introduced. As he spoke Joe’s guess that he wasn’t English was confirmed. He spoke with a slight accent that was neither French nor Italian. It could have been German but Joe didn’t think so. He had a tall figure with a massive torso and carried himself with the confidence of an actor. The man laughed out loud at the sight of Joe’s disreputable book and all at once the sound of that laugh triggered a memory. Joe had got it. He recalled a performance of Faust at Covent Garden when the Royal Opera House had reopened after the war. Mephistopheles had been played by a Russian baritone. He thought furiously and a name came to him.

‘I think I have the honour of addressing Feodor Korsovsky,’ he said. ‘My name is Sandilands. Joseph Sandilands and I am a detective. From London.’

Another burst of laughter greeted this. ‘A detective! You do not surprise me! Are you now going to tell me what I had for breakfast and the name of my tailor?’

‘Elementary, my dear sir,’ said Joe. ‘You were on the Umballa train so you had a chapatti, vegetable curry and a pot of tea. Your tailor though? American? Too obscure for me but I will tell you what you are thinking… You’re wondering how you would best go up to Simla. You’re weighing the advantages of a journey on the Toy Train with its longer route and its one hundred and seven tu

‘Quite right, Mr Sandilands.’ He pointed to the line of dejected-looking tonga horses standing by to carry passengers in relays up into the Hills. ‘I was instructed to take a tonga but I fear my weight would be too much of a challenge. And yet I think the romance of the approach to Simla which I have often dreamed of would be somewhat spoiled by the summer migrants if I took the train.’ He nodded to the crowds milling around it. ‘And are you going to tell me which I am to take?’