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Veiled at Midnight Book 3 of series Twilight of the British Raj

By Christine Lindsay

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Calcutta, August 15, 1946

The last arrow of sunlight shot back from the train’s brass trim, blinding Cam Fraser. As he narrowed his eyes, he recognized a face at the edge of his vision. A train whistle shrieked, steam hissed. A young woman in a green sari mingled within a crowd of Indian passengers. In an instant, his legs felt encased in steel. Out of that teeming mass on the platform she stared back. Her skin the color of milky tea, her hair a thick braid of silk over one shoulder. The fast sinking sun set her awash in a glow of apricot. Then crimson. She’d been looking straight at him. Then in the descending dark she was gone.

“Hadassah.”

His sister, Miriam, gripped him by the elbow. “Hadassah? Cam, you said Dassah.”

“I thought I saw her.” He shook his head, the pain nearly splitting it in two. He squinted to see into the crowd as the rapid Indian dusk fell. Ten long years….

With her hand on his shoulder to steady herself, Miriam strained on her tiptoes to see over the throng. “It’s been simply ages! Cam, are you sure? Where’d you see her?”

At that moment, whistles blew, and conductors ushered passengers aboard the night train bound for New Delhi. Miriam sent a pleading look over her shoulder. “Find her, Cam, before the train leaves.”

He didn’t need any goading from his sister, and while the steward urged Miriam up the steps of their carriage, he dodged passengers along the side of the train. Hundreds scrambled to their seats, more well-to-do Indians to first and second class. At least that injustice had been corrected somewhat since his childhood. The plush elegance of first class was no longer assigned to the British alone. Still, hoards of poor mashed into the cattle-like carriages called fourth. But it wasn’t fourth he’d seen Dassah standing outside of.

For as long as he could remember, Dassah as a scrawny little girl tagged after him when he visited the mission. He and Miriam had played with the muddle of orphans—Hari, Ameera, Zakir—to name a few—enjoying the usual sort of games, soccer, rugby, marbles. But the last time he’d seen Dassah she’d been anything but scrawny. Nor had she been a little girl.

He reached the area where he thought she’d stood. Sweat soaked the back of his shirt. Blast this muggy monsoon weather. His eyes blurred. And blast this headache. No matter where he looked he couldn’t pinpoint any of the slender young Indian women on or off the train as the girl he sought. Had he conjured up her image—a mirage shimmering on the hot Indian rails? It wouldn’t be the first time.

He wound back through the crowds the way he’d come. As he passed a clutch of railway officials, their talk in Hindi slowed his stride.
“…Muslim League calling for a holiday to mark their Direct Action Day—”
“Shush your foolish fretting.” The Conductor glanced around. “…not until tomorrow.”

“The Hindu Congress is worried.” Another railroad man wiped sweat from his face with the trailing end of his turban. “I have heard rumors someone might disturb the trains, such as the Muslims tried to do to Gandhi’s special train.”

“Disturb? Pah! They tried to derail it, but that was months ago, and Gandhi is not on this train.”

“But many of his friends in the Hindu Congress are.”

The myriad of noise echoing under the station’s massive glass and wrought iron roof absorbed the conversation. Cam’s headache clasped his head in a vice, but the authorities running these trains knew their jobs. Even if there was anything to worry about, they didn’t need him sticking his military nose into things.

As he entered the carriage, Miriam glanced up. “Well?”

“No time. I’ll have to wait until we stop.” The train started to glide forward as he sat on the seat opposite her. He reached for The Times of India, wishing he had an aspirin—or six—and dropped the paper to his lap.

He’d tried earlier to read the news, but the grinding wheels in his head wouldn’t allow it.

“Do you think it was her?” his sister asked.

He didn’t want to raise Miriam’s hopes. “I don’t know for sure if the girl I saw even got on this train.”

But the image of the woman’s willowy shape in the crowd was stamped behind his eyelids. Those arched brows, those eyes that were world-weary even when she was a child. So like Dassah, how she could speak without saying a word, how she trailed constantly after him and Zakir, only running away to hide when they fought.

Miriam smoothed her skirt over her knees. “You want to see her as much as I do. She’s like family. Like Ameera and Zakir.”

“Not quite.”

“Cam, surely you don’t mean that because she’s Indian.”

“You know me better than that.” He regretted the slight growl to his tone. Really, Miriam of all people should know better than to insult him with racial bigotry. “I’m saying that Dassah isn’t quite family because she left the mission. Her and Tikah. Not a word after all this time. If they thought of us as family they’d have contacted us. As for Zakir….” He rattled his newspaper open and pretended to read.

“Honestly, Cam, you’ve been like a mongoose bemoaning a stolen banana all day.” She wrenched off her white, wrist-length gloves and fanned herself with them. “You always get that way when we mention Zakir.”

His sigh would have depressed that mongoose she compared him to, but he couldn’t bear to talk about Zakir. Nor had he any intention of telling her how he felt about Dassah. Then to add on what he’d heard on the platform? Certainly not. Though recent intelligence expected this crisis to blow over, the sooner he got Miriam out of Calcutta the better.

She pulled open her handbag and offered him a packet of tablets. “And there’s no need to hide your headache.”

He smiled as he took the medicine, and she sent him a grin so much like their mother’s. Miriam was rarely nosey—bless her—and thankfully didn’t ask further about his headache.

Through the window, the darkening Indian countryside sped by under a green sky with a crescent moon rising. The rocking of the train lulled him, and he shut his eyes. But Dassah’s face emerged from his memory. That long black braid over her shoulder. The scent of roses and lilies from the mission’s balcony, the perfume of Dassah herself as he faded to sleep.

~*~

A slight hitch in the rhythm of the train gliding along the rails woke Cam. His eyes flew open. As though a change in gear…a step out of cadence. The train met a curved section of track ahead, and he could see the line of lit windows. Not a parallel line. A ripple passed through their carriage, setting the crystal droplets on the lamps to tinkle, the hairs on his arms to stand.

Their car juddered.

A thousand screeches—were they human or metal—as the train jumped like a frenzied horse. The momentum plucked him from his seat. Flung him across the carriage.

He picked out his sister’s screams from so many others.

For a moment he was suspended in air, weightless, then landed on what had been the wall, and then the ceiling as the train tumbled, turned and twisted. Lights went out as pain, poker hot, jabbed him in his side, his head.

A lifetime passed. Human screeches mingled with tearing metal. Blackness. The roar of his pulse pounded through his temples. Until the bucking of the train stopped. He counted his breaths, his heart about to burst through his chest. Where was he? How….?

How long did it take to sort out where he was? Minutes? Seconds? Was this the wall he was lying on? Yes, the train lay on its side. His head had rammed against the lamp fixture.

“Miriam,” he croaked. “Where are you?”

Deathly silence.

Gradually, from all directions people began sobbing, screaming, calling out, but nothing from his sister. An acrid filament of smoke entered their carriage and yanked him into new terror.

“Miriam! Where are you?”

“I’m here.” Her answer, thin and muffled, reached him.

“I’m coming. Are you all right?”

“I don’t know.”

He didn’t like the frailty in her voice. This wasn’t his gangbuster sister on her way to start a new teaching position. As he stood he found sure footing on the panelling close to where the window used to be. Most of the main structure of their carriage remained intact, though their bunks had sprung open in the upheaval and broken furnishings created a minefield of debris.

Pain stabbed his ribs, and when he sought out the reason his hand came away warm and sticky. Same with his forehead when he touched it. He wondered what had become of his cap. As an officer he shouldn’t be out of uniform. It took a moment for the absurdity to sink in. He was wearing his civvies. On leave.

The train had derailed.

He was standing though, with bruised ribs probably, and able to get to Miriam. Glass splintered under his shoes as he gingerly worked his way across to where he’d heard her thread of a voice. “Call out to me again, love.”

“I’m here, Cam. Are you all right?”

“Right as rain. I’m coming.”

“Always the hero, just like Dad, though you’ll never admit it.” She giggled but it petered out too soon.

“Big brother will always come to the rescue. Shout out now.”

He took more steps. It was hard to see in the dark. His knee connected with something hard and sharp, and he felt his way around what must be an upended seat. “How are you, Miriam?”

“Nothing’s changed, my darling sibling, since the last time you asked five seconds ago.”

“Been that long, has it?” Keep her talking, keep her talking, that was the ticket. “Am I getting closer? Warm? Cool? Right off the map?” While shoving aside their strewn luggage, he spiked his tone with the same jolly nonsense as when they were kids playing at the mission. “Miriam?”

A hand grasped him around the ankle. “Stop shouting, and for goodness sake don’t step on me.”

He dropped to see what pinned her down. Some broken fixture trapped her, he surmised in the total blackness, and thrust the jumble off her. Once freed, he quickly ran his hands over her arms and legs. No broken bones, uninjured, and he sent a swift thanks to the Almighty, something he rarely did these days.

“That’s enough, Cam, I’m fine. Really, I am.”

“You’re sure?”

“Bruised. Cuts and scrapes…all minor. Shaken.” Her teeth chattered. “Yes…shaken...and you?”

He helped her to stand, and together they hobbled to below the door that now opened above them. It hurt like the blazes as he hauled himself upward through the opening, pushing the door up and out so that he emerged like a jack in the box. The pain in his side shot a haze past his vision, but he managed to reach below and lift her out.

They stood together surrounded by what appeared to be a battlefield. For a moment he was back in Burma in the war, with bedlam all around him. People, like refugees, lay about, some crouched. Others staggered by in the light of flickering flames from a series of small fires, started by flying coals from the engine. Behind them, the carriages from first and second class lay on their sides. English people stumbled from the wreckage. Nearby, one man in a white linen suit and cricket club tie had lost several layers of skin on his leg. Around him was scattered the usual paraphernalia his fellow British packed for the train: thermoses, picnic baskets, bedrolls, air inflated pillows.

Not far from him, a woman in a pink frock and straw hat festooned with silk roses cradled her arm, broken in a nasty-looking fracture. One of her shoes was missing. Many of the English had begun to assist one another, so too were the Indians from First and Second.

But closer to the front behind the engine, carriages lay smashed across the rails, nothing more than a pile of splintered wood and tangled steel. Twisted rails stuck out all over, while cars and coal tender straggled about the ballast stones. Indian passengers crept out from the broken matchbox of a train, in shock, blackened with smoke and grease. He heard and understood various dialects from people speaking all at once—Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, and several others. Many sobbed, hunched over their wounds, while one Indian woman, seemingly uninjured, stood like a statue. Her sari fluttered in the scorching night breeze as she gazed about her at nothing.

Calls for help came from within, and a handful of Indian soldiers picked their way into the wreckage. The engine was still spouting steam. That boiler could blow.

“Stay here,” he said to Miriam, “safely away from the train.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No you’re not.”

She reached for him. “Cam, I felt blood all over your shirt.”

He raised a hand to his head, pushed back his hair sticky with blood, and took a swift glance at his side. The gouge was nasty, would need stitches most likely, but it wouldn’t kill him. “I’ll be back soon. Help will arrive from that town over there!” he shouted back at her as he ran to join the soldiers who were sifting through debris at the front of the train. “Do what you can for the injured here.”

Railroad men raked out red hot coals from the engine’s firebox, but cinders belched from the locomotive lying on its side. It wheezed as if it were a huge black and gold striped animal brought down by a hunter’s bullet. Cam shook off his fanciful thinking to climb inside the wreckage. Stewards and traveling soldiers were already at work putting out a series of small fires.

Inside fourth, Indian women tore the hems off their saris, and the men tore their scarves and shirts to staunch the bleeding of their fellow passengers. Cam threaded his way through, at times crawling, while able-bodied men carried the wounded outside to the embankment. An Englishman of military bearing attempted to free a woman from a broken baggage rack as Cam reached them. This man also wore civvies, but from his tie clip Cam recognized him as a British officer from a Punjab Regiment. A glance of understanding passed between them as they counted to three. Together they lifted the rack that pinned the unconscious woman and thrust it aside.

“Can you carry her outside?” the officer asked. “I can manage in here alone for a few minutes. It’s that engine that worries me.”

With a nod, Cam stooped to gain hold of the woman under her shoulders and knees, and lifted. His vision blurred as he carried her outside where a makeshift triage had already sprung up. Some of the passengers appeared to be doctors and nurses. He’d seen enough war and human misery, enough for a lifetime, and perhaps it would be worse if the sight of suffering didn’t kick him in the gut like it did now. If he’d become used to this, then something truly would have died within him.

In the distance, ambulance bells clanged, adding to the other wretched sounds around them. From the nearest town came civil and railroad police, fire officials. He returned to the wreckage and for a long time helped to lift the wounded from it. At last, hours later, the locomotive was under control, all fear of an explosion causing a secondary disaster subsided, but Cam’s muscles cried out. The pain in his side had worsened so that it was hard to breathe. Had he done more than bruise a rib? But his thirst was worse, enough to drive a man mad.

A local man came by with a bucket of water and a ladle, offeringa drink to Cam. The water went down his throat like nectar, and it would do until he got a proper drink, or better still, a bottle. He turned to survey the derailment.

Among the crowd of injured, her green sari stood out.

Her long braid of dark hair caressed one shoulder as she sat cross-legged on the ground, a child in her lap, her arm around another. There she was. Flesh and blood. A mirage did not bleed.

Those amber eyes of Dassah’s in the scarce light of flickering fires were wide with shock. As she adjusted the sari crossing her chest, the veil eased back from her forehead so that he could see the extent of a gash above one brow. Cam drew close and dropped to his knees before her. With a gulp she cradled the toddler she held that much closer, and the little one whimpered in her sleep. The other child—a boy, he could see that now—sidled closer to her.

“Are they all right?” His voice sounded alien to his own ears. “Are you?”

She shivered as if she were freezing in the hot night air and lowered her gaze. Anger, searing red as coals, coursed through him. Dassah had always been reserved, even as a baby. So had Zakir for that matter. Surely their childhood friendship deserved more than this show of Indian subservience?

But then he’d thought that of Zakir as well.

Around them, the throng of people merged into one unintelligible, buzzing mass. For once, the rest of the world could take care of itself. He lifted the boy and sat beside Dassah, holding the too-quiet child. In the face of the trauma around him, all he could think was, were these children hers? A black cloud crossed his vision. If so, Dassah must be married, and the thought of a husband snuffed out a hope he hadn’t known existed.

Why that should matter made no sense, when he was practically engaged himself.

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