Similar activities at the Simla station made me glad that one of my trunks had vanished into the Red Sea, and by the time we had gone through the same rituals in Kalka, shifting to the larger-gauge train (Mrs Goodheart wouldn’t hear of allowing the porters to do it unsupervised—one would swear she had the Kohinoor amongst her bags), then twice in Umballa, from train to hotel in the evening then back again the following morning, I was thoroughly sick of every trunk, bag, and hat-box in the collection, and tempted to stand up with the small bag holding my new clothes, comb, and tooth-brush, forswearing the burdens of civilisation.

But the maharaja’s own saloon coach had been sent down for our use, and an appropriately princely train car it was, all sumptuous glitter and spotless carpets, overhead fans and electric lights, its staff in spotless white and wearing the red turban with white device I had seen on the docks in Bombay. The car had its own baggage compartment, which meant that once we had picked our way past the Umballa platform’s sleeping bodies, which eerily resembled corpses sheeted for burial, we were not required to oversee the shifting of anything more complex than a tea cup for the rest of the day. I settled into my armchair with a sable-lined travelling rug over my knees, and prepared to be pampered. Mrs Goodheart, having spent the past twenty-four hours labouring heroically to maintain Yankee order in the face of Oriental chaos, collapsed onto a softly upholstered sofa, where she allowed Sunny to prop up her feet and slip off her shoes under cover of her own fur rug. After a spate of fussing, dabbing wrists and forehead with cool scented waters, and downing a mighty slug of purely medicinal brandy, she retreated into sleep, her snores rising and falling with the beat of the train over the tracks.

Sunny came to sit near me at the window, giving me an apologetic smile.

“Your mother is finding India a challenge,” I observed.

“She’s not used to letting other people do things for her.”

I lowered my voice so that her brother, seated at the other end of the car with a book, might not hear us. “I’d have thought your brother could help a little more.”

“He’s pretty preoccupied,” she replied, which was both an agreement and an excuse.

“By what?”

“Oh, it’s something to do with the maharaja. I don’t really know, but Tommy’s hoping to get the maharaja interested in one of his pet projects. His backing, you know?”

“Ah. A business venture.”

“Not really. I think it’s something to do with setting up a school in the States. But like I said, I don’t really know. Just that Tommy’s got a lot of hopes hanging on it.”

Not altogether a social visit, then. I wondered if the maharaja was aware of that.