The Changes Trilogy (6 page)

They'd camped that night in a field north of Guildford, on the banks of the river Wey, and had held another council. The discussion sounded earnest and subdued, and after it a party of men had gone night-raiding into Guildford, though there'd still seemed to be plenty of food left in the cardboard boxes on the carts. (Seeing a can opened made Nicky uneasy, but the meat inside tasted all right.)

They'd decided to head for the coast, but to avoid towns and villages even if it meant going the long way around. However, the houses in the Home Counties are so close sown that they were bound to pass some of them, and at the very next hamlet two or three faces had leaned out of windows and called cheerily for news, just as though columns of bearded foreigners passed that way so often that there was nothing strange about it. So for a while they'd felt more optimistic, but as they steadily trudged the days away they'd learned that every village was different, and that the frowning ones were commoner than the smiling ones. And people seemed to have little idea of what was happening more than a mile or two from their own doors.

No more stones were thrown at them, but they had thrown some themselves. This was in their second battle, on the outskirts of Aldershot, a much nastier business than the skirmish at Ripley. The enemy had been a wandering gang of robbers, though at first they'd looked like another procession, trundling down the sunk road toward the Sikhs; but almost at once a dozen young men armed with pick helves had charged shouting and yelling, forcing the Sikhs' advance guard back against the group of women and children. Uncle Chacha had brought the rear guard up in a counterattack. While the grunts and bellows rose Nicky stared wildly around for something she could do. Gopal grabbed her elbow and pointed to the flinty chalk at the top of the embankment, and the next moment they were scrambling desperately up. There'd been seven of the children up there, screaming and hurling flints, by the time the robbers broke and ran back to where four or five dirty women had been watching the fun from among their own prams and barrows. The angry Sikhs had driven the lot of them on down the road, hitting as hard as they could. Nicky had stopped to look at the robbers' baggage, which had turned out to be a hoard of cheap looted jewelry, a lot of boxes of sweets and some moldy loaves. The Sikhs left it all where it was.

Mr. Gurchuran Singh had hurt his leg in the battle, so they'd decided to rest for a couple of days where they next found water. They had posted extra sentries that night, and after supper the big uncle, whose name was Mr. Jagindar Singh, had spoken very earnestly to Nicky.

“We think you should leave us,” he said, “as soon as we next meet friendly people. You will be safer with them than with us. We propose to try to reach the sea and go away to France. We listened to the Paris radio in London, and they are free from this madness there.”

“But what will you do for a canary?” Nicky had said.

“Oh, we shall be careful. You have taught us much.”

“I'd rather come with you for a bit longer, Mr. Singh.”

“We do not consider it wise.”

“What does your mother say?”

“Ha, you have bewitched her, Nicky. She says that it is no business of ours, and that you are to make up your own mind.”

Nicky had looked toward the cushioned cart and seen the bird-bright eyes watching her through the gloom.

“Please, then,” she'd said. “I'd much rather stay. I don't want to have to learn to know a
new
lot of people. Have you still got the … the thing you listened to France with?”

“Kaka knocked it off the table and none of us knew how to mend it.”

“Good.”

She'd meant what she'd said about the new people. They would be English, like her, and the kindlier they were the worse it would be, day after day probing to pierce through the clumsy armor she'd built around her heart. They would try to be mothers, and fathers, and perhaps even the sisters and brothers she had never had. And only she would know, all the time, in waking nightmares as well as the deeps of dream, how such a home can be smashed in a single morning. She couldn't live through that again.

Besides, against all her reason, she had made a new friend. Kaka's elder sister Ajeet was a very quiet girl whom Nicky had at first thought was seven or eight; in fact the two of them had been born only a week apart. They had fallen into that instant, easy friendship which feels as though it had begun before any of your memories and will last until you are so old that the humped veins on the back of your hands show dark blue-purple through your wax-white skin. Ajeet's mother—Uncle Chacha's wife—was the fat frowning woman, and she seemed anxious to know about every breath her children drew, but they all seemed happy enough when you got to know them. At least she didn't try to be a mother to Nicky.

They had to move before Mr. Gurchuran Singh's leg was properly healed, because a passing horseman had shouted to them that there was plague in Aldershot. That had meant a long journey around the northern edge of that ugly, shambling town, so in the end they had come to Felpham from the north, taking eight days to get there from London. Felpham was a frowning village, but not a stone-throwing one, so they had trudged silently through and begun the long push up Strake Lane, never guessing that they were nearly home. In fact Nicky almost refused to pass the double line of pylons, because they seemed so much worse than the single ones which she'd crossed with a slight shudder before, but Gopal cajoled her under.

It had rained twice that day, and there were looming clouds about, so they were glad of the farmyard roofs and the dry hay beneath them. Four of the men pushed a cart laden with pots to Strake, two miles further along the road. There was a pond marked on the map at Strake.

It was Nicky who found the old well, which had enabled the farm to be built there in the first place. The close eye which the Sikh parents kept on their children irked her, though she didn't like to say so; but she tended to drift off and explore as soon as she had done what she could to help set up camp; it was her way of saying that she wasn't going to let herself be watched and pampered like that. Once or twice Gopal had slipped away and come with her, only to be scolded when they got back, but this time she was alone.

The artist's cottage was locked. Nose against windows, Nicky could see a low-ceilinged kitchen and another big room which had been made by knocking down several walls. Light streamed into it through a big skylight in the far roof. She didn't feel like visiting the huge barns because they'd be full of engines, and everywhere else was nothing but rippling wheat; so she sat on a low circular flint wall, topped with a line of brick, and thought about nothing much. The shouting and chatter of the encampment washed over her unheeded. The center of the flint wall was covered with a four-foot round of wood; she thought vaguely that it must be some sort of garden table, uncomfortable because you couldn't get your knees under it. She slapped the timber with her palm.

A slow boom answered, as though the whole hill were speaking, the million-year-old chalk answering her knock in tones almost too deep to hear. Each slap or rap produced the same bass reply. She got her fingers under the edge of the wood and it came up like a lid.

The hole in the center of the circle was black. It was a tunnel of night defying the gay sun. The palms of her hands went chilly as she clutched the brick rim and peered in. At first she could see nothing, but then there was a faint light, a circle of sky with a head and shoulders in the middle. The rough chalk walls dwindled down, becoming invisible in darkness before they reached the water. She dropped a stone but it fell crooked, clacking several times from wall to wall before the splash. She went to fetch Kewal.

He dropped three or four stones, with his other hand feeling his pulse. Even when the stones fell straight it seemed ages before the splash answered.

“About fifty feet to the water,” he said. “If we can get it up, and if the water is good, it means we can stay here for a while. The women say that Rani's baby will be born in two or three days.”

They found a rope and bucket in the sheds, but it took a lot of trial and error and a lot of many-voiced arguments before the men rigged up a method of getting a bucket down all that distance and making it lie sideways when it reached the water, so that it filled, and then tilted upright when it was full. Hauling a full bucket up from fifty feet was tiring, too, but it was better than walking to Strake. And the water when it came was so sweet and clean that Cousin Punam decided it was safe to drink without boiling.

It was Gopal who found the corn. While Rani was in labor, three days later, the older children were shushed away. Nicky didn't follow them up to the big barns because she felt uncomfortable there. She was looking, with little luck, for late wild strawberries in the matted grass on the banks of the lane when Gopal came hurrying past, his hands cupped close together as if he was trying to carry water. Nicky thought he'd caught a bird and ran to look.

“Nicky, you're thick,” he said. “This is
food
. I climbed an iron ladder up one of those round towers and opened a lid at the top and it's full of corn. There's enough to feed us for a year. Look, it's dry and good.”

He ran on to show his treasure to the menfolk, while Nicky returned to combing through the weeds for strawberries. She found no more of the little red globules of sweetness, but caught a grasshopper instead, let it tickle her prisoning palms for a moment, then held it free and watched it tense itself for its leap, and vanish.

The baby was born in a cow stall. It was a boy. That night the Sikhs held full council. It was just as noisy and muddled with cross talk as any of the ones they'd held on the road, but Nicky got the feeling that even in the middle of rowdy arguments they were being more serious, paying more attention to what the others said. From time to time they would ask her a question.

“We can't use any of the tractors, can we, Nicky?”

She shook her head.

“But we can reap and plow and dig and plant by hand?”

“Oh yes.”

“And there's nothing wrong with this wheat?”

“Wrong?” She looked through the gateway to where the beautiful tall blades waved, gray as fungus under the big moon, but already tinged with yellow by daylight as the year edged toward harvest.

“Oh yes,” said Mr. Surbans Singh, “this is a modern crossbred variety of wheat, and another of barley. The madness does not apply to them, you think?”

“Oh no!”

Another long fusillade of Punjabi followed. Then …

“Nicky, would the madness make the villagers come and destroy us if we were to set up a blacksmith's shop?”

“What would you do?”

“Make and mend spades and sickles and plows and other tools.”

“I mean, how would you do it? What would you use?”

“We'd have to make charcoal first, which is done by burning wood very slowly under a mound of earth. Then we'd have to contrive a furnace, with bellows to keep the charcoal burning fiercely. And when the iron was red-hot we'd hammer it, and bend it with vises and pincers, and then temper it in water or oil.”

“Water,” said Nicky. “Where would you get the iron from?”

“There is plenty lying around the farm.”

“I
think
that would be all right. You could try, and I could always tell you if I thought it wasn't. Why do you want to know?”

“First, because if we are to stay here we shall need hand tools. This farm is highly mechanized, which is no doubt why the farmer left; he felt he couldn't work it without his tractors. But secondly, we shall need more to eat than wheat. We shall have to barter for meat and vegetables until we can produce our own. Some of us have seen smithwork done in India, in very primitive conditions; Mr. Jagindar Singh was a skilled metalworker in London, and two more of us have done similar work in factories and garages; so we think we can set up an efficient smithy. But perhaps the villagers will not have our advantages, so we shall be able to barter metalwork with them in exchange for the things we need.”

“That's a good idea,” said Nicky, astonished again by the amount of sense that seemed to come out of all the clamor and repetition. “But do you think the villagers will actually trade with you? They didn't look very friendly when we came through, and they haven't come up here at all.”

“If we make something they need, they will trade with us,” said Uncle Jagindar somberly. “It does not matter how much they dislike us. We have found this in other times.”

The whole council muttered agreement. Kewal gave a sharp, snorting laugh which Nicky hadn't heard before.

“We must be careful,” he said. “If we become too rich they will want to take our wealth away from us.”

“I expect there are quite a lot of robbers in England now,” said Nicky. “Like those ones we fought on the other side of Aldershot—men who've got no way of getting food except by robbing the ones who have.”

This set off another round of argument and discussion in Punjabi. The men seemed to become very excited; voices rose, eyes flashed, an insignificant uncle even beat his chest. Nicky edged back out of the circle to ask Gopal what they were talking about. He was allowed at the council, but he was thought too young to speak (Nicky wouldn't have been listened to either if she hadn't been the Sikhs' canary).

Gopal laughed scornfully, but he looked as excited as the rest.

“They are going to make weapons,” he said. “Swords and spears and steel-tipped arrows. A Sikh should carry a real sword when times are dangerous. But I'll tell you a joke—we Sikhs won most of our battles with guns; we used to run forward, fire a volley and then run back until we had time to reload. It doesn't sound very brave, but all India feared us then. What's the matter, Nicky? Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. But they won't make guns now; instead they'll turn this farmyard into a fort which we can defend against the robbers.”