“Thirteen.”
“I’m twelve. Shall I help you push the pram or are you too proud?”
He laughed again, as though he was used to being teased and didn’t mind. His face was thin and his skin looked silky soft; he moved his brown eyes about a lot when he spoke or listened, in a way that was full of meanings. Nicky decided that she liked him, but that he was a bit girlish. It was only later that she found he was a true lion, worthy of his name.
“You can help me up the next hill,” he said. “We’ll give my mother a rest.”
Neena—Mrs. Singh or Mrs. Kaur, Nicky decided she ought to call her—turned her weary face to smile at her son, then started to arrange the bundles on the pram so that the little boy could sleep.
In fact the next hill was a long time coming.
Castelnau is a flat mile from end to end, between friendly Victorian mansions; then it bends and becomes Ranelagh Gardens, quaintly ornate red houses with little unusable balconies crowding all down one side, and on the other a six-foot wooden fence screening Barn Elms Park from the street. Ranelagh Gardens twists to cross the miniature scrub desert of Barnes Common. Here a bedraggled horse stumbled out of the bushes and followed them, until one of the rear guard tried to catch it and it shied away.
On the far side of the common the road humps itself up over a railway. Nicky fulfilled her bargain by toiling beside Gopal to heave the pram up to the ridge of the hummock, but she could only just manage it, so much of her strength had the rage of her fight taken. On the bridge some of the children crowded to the wall and gossiped in English about the odd little station with its lacelike fringes of fretted wood, until angry voices called them back to the line of march. Down the far slope a pram ran away from its pusher and was caught amid excited shouts by the advance guard. It seemed to Nicky that the shouting and the excitement were much more than were needed for an ordinary pram trundling downhill with nobody in it, only bundles and cardboard boxes.
The long climb up Roehampton Lane was another matter. Ropes and straps were produced and tied to every cart and pram, so that two could pull and one could push. The men in the rear guard and advance guard had to do their share as well, but they pulled with one hand while the other held their thick staves ready over their shoulders. Neena returned to the handles of the pram and Nicky and Gopal each took a strap. It didn’t seem hard work for the first few steps, but as the wide road curved endlessly upward Nicky began to stagger with weariness. Nobody spoke. The iron rims of the cartwheels crunched on the tarmac, and the eighty feet padded or scraped according to how they were shod. Nicky bent her head and hauled, seeing nothing but the backward-sliding road beneath her, hearing nothing but the thin whistle of her breath in her throat. She stumbled, and stumbled again.
As she was still reeling from the daze of her second stumble she heard the old woman’s voice creak, and a man shouted “Ho, Kaka, you fat villain, give Miss Nicky a rest and work off some of your grease by pulling on a rope.”
Nicky looked up hopefully. A roly-poly boy about eight years old came and held out his hand for the strap.
“Please,” he said shyly.
“This is my cousin Kaka,” said Gopal from the other side of the pram. “I have twenty-seven cousins, and Kaka is the worst.”
Kaka smiled through his shyness as though Gopal had been paying him a compliment, and immediately gave such a sturdy tug at the strap that the pram shot sideways across the procession and Neena locked wheels with the pram next door. Even the weary women laughed as they scolded Kaka, and the men halted and leaned on their staves to watch the fun.
The march only stopped for a couple of minutes, but it felt like a proper rest. Nicky walked beside Gopal on the other side of the pram. It was interesting to see how warily the leading men looked into every driveway and side road as they went past, and how often the others glanced from side to side or looked over their shoulders, as though every garden of the whole blind and silent suburb might hide an ambush.
“Is everybody here your relation?” she said.
“No,” said Gopal. “Daya Wanti—that’s the old lady on the cart—is my grandmother, and she has four sons and two daughters. My mother’s the youngest. All my uncles and aunts have married, and they have children. Some of the children are grown up, like my cousin Kewal and my cousin Punam, who washed your knees; and then my father has a sister who is married and has children, and there’s a family who are relations of the lady who married my uncle Chacha Rahmta. He’s the one who knocked you over.”
“But everybody here is your relation or married one of your relations or something like that?”
“No, not quite. We have some friends who had come alone from India and decided to live near us. When the madness happened to all the English people, they gathered to us for safety. You don’t mind me talking about the madness? That’s what we call it.”
“I expect so,” said Nicky without thinking about it. “Is your grandmother the chief?”
“Oh no. The women have an equal voice with the men, and of course the voice of the older people is more respected than the voice of the younger people; but we all decide together what to do, and then …”
“And then my mother tells us what we are going to do despite that,” interrupted a man from Nicky’s other side. It was Uncle Chacha Rahmta, pulling steadily on a rope which was tied to a handcart laden with cardboard cartons. As he spoke, the old woman screeched from her cart and the whole party stopped as if she had been a sergeant major calling “Halt!”
“You see what I mean?” said Uncle Chacha Rahmta.
They had reached the ridge of the hill. Ahead the road dipped and curved into the small valley of Roehampton Village, and then rose almost at once toward Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common. But behind and below them were roof tiles, mile upon lifeless mile, spreading right across the Thames Valley and up the far northern hills. Perhaps a few hundred people were still living among those millions of rooms, eating what they could scavenge, like rats in a stable; otherwise it was barren as a desert, just long dunes of brick and cement and slate and asphalt. Far to the east something big was burning, where a huge ragged curve of smoke tilted under the mild wind.
The Sikhs broke into their clattering gossip even before they settled for their rest. The children were too tired now for running-about games, but pointed and badgered their elders about the cluster of high-rise flats which stood close to the road, like the broken pillars of some temple of the giants. The baby in the pram woke, and was lifted out to totter around on the pavement. The adults sat along a low wall, and passed bottles of water from hand to hand, from which each drank a few sips. Nicky felt thirsty again, but didn’t dare start her last bottle for fear of making the baby cry. Perhaps if she moved further away …
Down in the dip, right in the middle of the village, was a pub. She stood up and trotted down the hill. A voice cried after her, but she waved her hand without looking around, to show that she knew what she was doing. The rosebed in the forecourt of the pub was edged with tilted bricks; she prized one out and used it to hammer at the pane of frosted glass which was the top half of the door; the glass clashed and tinkled as it fell to the floor inside. The first blow was the dangerous one, because the glass might go anywhere; after that, if you were sensible, it was quite easy to knock away the jagged lengths of pane around the central hole, until you were tapping away the last sharp splinters along the wooden rim at the bottom.
That done, Nicky took her spare skirt out of her satchel and laid it along the wood; she put her hands on the skirt, bounced twice on her toes to get the feel of the ground, and flicked herself neatly through the gap. Gym had been her best subject, once.
The saloon bar was the usual mess, with all the glasses smashed and empty bottles of beer and wine and whisky littering the floor. The room reeked of stale drink. But, as usual, the men who had roared and rioted in here a month ago had not been interested in the soft drinks, except as things to throw and fight with; there were severa
l crates of ginger ale and lemon soda and tonic water under the bar counter. She heaved one out and started to drag it to the door. The light changed; there was a crash and a thump behind her; Gopal was sprawling across the floor, gasping and giggling, his feet still scuffling among the smashed splinters.
“Are you all right?” said Nicky. “Don’t cut yourself.”
“I’m less good at jumping than you are,” he said, turning around to look at the door while he brushed his front with his hands. “If we turn your crate on its end we’ll be able to unbolt the door. Then we can drag your loot out.”
But outside the door stood Uncle Chacha Rahmta, looking serious. Kewal was hurrying up, while Neena watched anxiously from halfway down the slope.
“You are a bad little boy, Gopal,” said Uncle Chacha. “You must not wander away like this. Your mother is very worried.”
Probably he spoke in English so that Nicky could share in the reproof.
“It’s quite safe,” she said. “We’re only getting some lemon soda for the children.”
(She didn’t tell him about the pub she’d broken into north of Shepherd’s Bush where a dead man had sat, sprawled across a shiny red table, with a knife in his side.)
“It is notorious that Indian parents overprotect their children,” said Kewal. “But that is what they do, Miss Nicky Gore, and you must respect their anxieties.”
“All right,” said Nicky. “Will you help us with this crate? There’s plenty for everybody.”
“But we cannot take this,” said Uncle Chacha slowly. “It is not our property.”
“It isn’t anybody’s,” said Nicky. “They’ve all gone.”
“We could put some money in the till,” suggested Kewal.
“It’s smashed,” said Gopal. “I noticed.”
Uncle Chacha walked into the pub, very careful and light on his feet, like a wild animal sniffing into a trap. He counted five green pieces of paper into a broken drawer. Kewal waved to the crowd on the hill and they gathered themselves into line of march and trooped down to the pub. Kewal explained what had happened, and half a dozen angry voices answered him, all together. Several faces looked at Nicky. The women joined in the row. Suddenly something was settled and four of the men went into the pub to fetch more crates, and cans of peanuts and cheese biscuits. The whole party settled to an impromptu picnic. The children recovered strength and began a squealing game of chain tag. The towers of empty flats brooded silent in the dusty afternoon air. The men settled into one group, and the women into another. Every half minute a mother would look up from her gossip and call to a child in words that Nicky couldn’t understand, but in the tone that all mothers everywhere use when they are warning their children to be careful. Nicky, all of a sudden, felt just as lonely and left out as she had that morning on the Green, before the Sikhs had come.
“Do you not wish to join the game,” said Kewal, who had appeared silently beside her. “Are you too old for that sort of thing, perhaps? Look, Gopal is playing.”
“I’m too tired and hot,” said Nicky, sighing to keep the crossness out of her voice. “What’s the name of the language you talk among yourselves?”
“It’s Punjabi—that’s the normal language Sikhs use in India. Most of us speak English here—in fact I’ve friends who only know a few words of Punjabi—but in our family my grandmother has always insisted that even the kids have got to speak Punjabi at home. When my grandmother insists on something, it happens. Some of us used to resent it and stick to English when she wasn’t around, but now, since the madness happened, we all seem to have become more Sikh. Sometimes I find myself actually thinking in Punjabi. I never used to.”
“Why are you all still here? Why did you leave so late? Everybody else went away a long time ago.”
“Oh,” said Kewal, “at first we couldn’t decide what was happening. Some of us used to work for London Transport, but when the early shift went to get the buses out they were attacked by mobs of Englishmen. Even the little children threw stones as soon as an engine started. And they weren’t like you—they didn’t stop when the engines were turned off. Perhaps it was because there were so many of them; it’s difficult, you know, for a whole crowd to stop rioting once they’ve started. But none of my relations was killed, though my cousin Surbans Singh was badly beaten. So they came home, and the rest of us couldn’t go to work because none of the buses and trains were running. I started to bicycle to the university—I’m a student—but I was chased by shouting people so I came home too. We shut ourselves in our houses—we have three houses all together in the same road—and held a council. We decided that all the English people had been infected by a madness against machines, which for some reason did not affect us Sikhs. Oh, now I’ll tell you something interesting and significant. The Jamaicans had also gone to get the buses out, but my cousin Surbans said that they were extremely clumsy and giggled all the time when they made a mistake. He thought they’d all been drinking—at four o’clock in the morning, which is not impossible with Jamaicans. So perhaps they too were a little affected by the madness, but not in the same manner as the English. Anyway our council decided that we’d wait until the madness passed. But it didn’t pass. One of my uncles owns a store, so there was enough to eat, but water became difficult and sanitary arrangements too. And it was difficult to cook without … What’s the matter, Miss Gore?”
Nicky had only been able to understand about half of what Kewal said. His explanation seemed full of nasty, fuzzy words and ideas, such as “bicycle.” She felt a qualm of the old sick rage bubbling up inside her—the rage she’d felt in Castelnau, or on that first morning when Daddy had gone around the house with his hammer smashing all the nasty gadgets of their lost life. But it was only a qualm this time, not strong enough for killing or smashing. She put her head between her hands and waited for the qualm to seep away. Kewal watched her in silence.
“Please don’t talk about things like that,” she said at last. “You mustn’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why, but you mustn’t.”
He smiled.
“You’re a good canary,” he said. “You will be really useful to us. I must go and tell my uncles what you say.”
“No, wait,” said Nicky. “I think I can explain a bit more. Gopal was talking to me before, and he said things which worried me in a different kind of way. The things you were talking about made me feel very angry, very mad really. I don’t mind your calling it madness, because it’s just like that. But Gopal was talking about India, and the war and things which I’m sure I knew about once. But now it’s … it’s as if they’d become so … so boring, I suppose, that my brain goes to sleep before I can think about them. I couldn’t remember the word for your hats until he told me it was ‘turbans.’ Do you understand?”
“Aha!” said Kewal, his terrible squint sparkling with pleasure at his own cleverness, “I begin to see. Shall I explain my theorem to you?”
“No, please,” said Nicky, who had only just managed to struggle through the discomfort of trying to think about the shut places of her own mind. “Go and tell your uncles.”
That caused further delay while the two groups of grownups joined to discuss Nicky; at one point a quarrel broke out and excitable fists were flung skyward, but it was all over as suddenly as a child’s tantrums. Then at last they were on the march again, hauling prams and carts up the steep slope to the common, then turning right to trundle down toward Kingston. The children who had darted so eagerly through their game became tired almost at once, oppressed by the dreariness of the slow walk. By the time they came to Robin Hood Roundabout, where the road divides, one of the smallest ones was sniveling and several mothers had found space for an extra burden on their prams. Nicky helped fat Kaka up onto the old lady’s cart.
“I shall not be able to push a great weight like yours except downhill,” said the big man severely. Kaka grinned between fat cheeks and reached for his grandmother’s hand. Or perhaps she was
his great-grandmother, Nicky thought. All the grown-ups seemed to show a special kindness toward the small children, despite their strange, fierce looks.
At the roundabout a further conference was held. Nicky lounged amid the incomprehensible babble and looked north, through Robin Hood Gate, to where the green reaches of Richmond Park lay quiet in the westering sun.
“Miss Gore,” a voice called. It was the big uncle.
“Yes.”
“We are discussing whether we should go through Kingston or along the bypass. It is shorter to go through, although there is a big hill. Would it, shall I say, affect you if we went one way or the other?”
“I don’t know,” said Nicky. “Couldn’t we go in there?”
She pointed to the inviting greenness of the park. Some of the mothers made approving noises. The discussion in Punjabi clattered out again. Really, Nicky couldn’t understand how any of them could be listening with so many of them talking all together. This time the women seemed to have more to say than the men, but at last the noise quietened and in the lull Gopal’s grandmother said something decisive. The march wheeled into the park.
“We’ve decided that the children have gone far enough,” said Neena, “so we shall camp here for the night. The women wanted to sleep in a house, but the men said there was more danger of sickness. My mother said that we shall have to camp often, and this would be a warm fine night, with no enemies about, for practice.”
“Oh, this is much nicer than houses,” said Nicky.
The grass stood tall, shivering in faint slow waves under a breeze so slight that it seemed to be the sunlight itself that moved the stems. The copses looked cool and dark. A cackle of interest burst from several lips together; following the pointing arms Nicky saw a troop of deer move out of shade into sunlight. The big uncle studied his map and then led the march right to where a swift brook flowed in a banked channel.
Here, while a dozen mothers scolded children in Punjabi about the dangers of falling in, they began to set up camp, slowly, arguing about every detail, four people fussing over some easy matter while a fifth struggled alone with an unmanageable load. The fifth might shout angrily for help, but his voice went unnoticed amid the clamor.
The Changes Trilogy Page 3
