The Changes Trilogy (7 page)

After that the council became less serious, dwindling into boastings and warlike imaginings. Gopal translated the louder bits.

“My Uncle Gurchuran says we must capture horses and turn ourselves into cavalry, and then we can protect the whole countryside for a fee. A protection racket. We often lived like that in the old days.… Mr. Parnad Singh says his father was Risaldar at an archery club in Simla, and he will teach us all to shoot. A risaldar is a sort of sergeant.… My Uncle Chacha is teasing him and Mr. Parnad Singh is angry.… My Uncle Jagindar is trying to smooth him down; he says it will be useful to have a good shot with a bow for hunting, and that Uncle Chacha must be careful what he says, because he is so fat that he'll make an easy target. That's unfair because Uncle Chacha is the quickest of them all, and the best fighter. You saw how he fought against those robbers. Now he's pretending to be angry with Uncle Jagindar, but
that
doesn't matter because it's inside the family.… My grandmother is speaking. She says we must all be careful how we talk to one another, because we are in a dangerous world and we can't afford to have feuds with one another. My goodness, she says, we Sikhs are a quick-tempered people. She's beginning to tell a story. She tells pretty good stories, for children and adults too.”

The council had fallen silent at the creak of the old woman's voice. There had been a brief guffaw of laughter at her second sentence, but that was all. One of the men turned to glare at Gopal because his translation was spoiling the silence. He too stopped talking.

The story was not long, but the old woman told it with careful and elaborate gestures of the hands, as though she were the storyteller at some great court and had been sent for after supper to entertain the princes. Nicky could hear, even in the unknown language, that it was the story of a fierce quarrel between two proud men. She looked along the outer circle of children and saw Ajeet sitting entranced, mouth slightly parted and head craning forward as she listened and stared at the elaborate ceremony of the fluttering hands. Ajeet's lips were moving with the words, and her hands made faint unconscious efforts to flutter themselves.

All the Sikhs laughed when the story ended, then broke into smaller chattering groups. Nicky crossed to where Ajeet still sat staring at the orange firelight.

“What was the story about, Ajeet?” she said.

“Oh, I don't know,” said Ajeet in her usual near whisper, shy and confused.

“Please tell me. I like to know anything your grandmother says. She is so … so special.”

“Oh, it was a tale of two Sikh brothers, farmers, whom my grandmother knew in India, and how they quarreled over a dead pigeon, and in the end lost their farm and their wives and everything. Listen. It was like this.”

Her voice changed and strengthened. She drew her head back and sat very upright, freeing her hands for gestures. The history of that forgotten feud rolled out in vivid, exact words, each phrase underlined with just the same gesture of finger or wrist that her grandmother had used. Once or twice she hesitated over a word, and Nicky realized that she was turning familiar Punjabi into English which didn't quite fit. When she finished Nicky found herself laughing at the ridiculous disaster, just as the men had laughed, and heard more voices laughing behind her. Kewal and three of the other men had been standing around in silence to hear the same story all over again.

“Very excellent,” said Kewal, only half mocking.

One of the men called in Punjabi over his shoulder, and was answered by a pleased cackle from the open stall where the old woman lay on her cushions; she had been watching the show too. Ajeet accepted the compliments gravely, without any of her usual shyness, then took Nicky off to say good night to the old lady.

This had become a sort of ritual for Nicky, a good-luck thing, wherever they were. They couldn't say much to each other, even with Ajeet to translate, because their lives had been so different, but somehow it ended the day on a comfortable note.

As they crossed the yard back to the shed where the women slept, Nicky looked around the firelit walls and the black-shadowed crannies. So this was home, now.

Provided nobody came to drive them out.

They settled in slowly. The bungalow had been left unlocked, and the first thing the Sikhs did was to redecorate the bedroom with rich hangings. They took their shoes off when they went into the room. Uncle Jagindar carried the old lady in when it was finished, and she clucked her satisfaction, though she wanted several details changed. Nicky watched fascinated from the doorway.

“It is a place to keep our holy book,” explained Kewal. “My family are very orthodox Sikhs. Before these troubles some of us younger ones didn't treat our religion as earnestly as the elders, but now it seems more important. It will help to keep us together.”

“We'll have to use the other houses to sleep in when the winter comes,” said Nicky. “It'll be too cold to sleep out in the sheds.”

“You are very practical-minded. That was how the English ruled India. They would go and admire the Taj Mahal, but all the time they were thinking about drains. Anyway, my uncles don't feel it proper to break into other people's houses, even if the people have gone away.”

“They'll have to in the end,” said Nicky. “I don't mind doing the burgling, and then once the doors are open you could all come and use the houses like you are doing this one.”

Kewal laughed and pulled his glossy beard.

“That would be an acceptable compromise,” he said. “But I think we won't tell my uncles until you've done it. I will attend and supervise, because in my opinion your techniques of burglary are a little crude.”

But you have to be crude with metal-framed windows. They fit too tight for you to be able to slide a knife or wire through to loose the catch. Nicky broke two panes, opened two windows, climbed into two musty and silent houses, and tiptoed through the dank air to unbolt two doors. The artist's cottage was full of lovely bric-a-brac—a deer head, and straw ornaments that were made for the finials of hayricks, and Trinidadian steel drums. Kewal delightedly began to tonk out a pop tune, but Nicky (frightened now of what she'd done) dragged him away.

And the uncles
were
cross when she told them. (She left Kewal out of her story.) But when the women found that there was an open hearth in the cottage and a big closed stove in the farmhouse, in both of which you could burn logs, they told the uncles to stop being so high-minded. Here was somewhere to bathe and attend to small babies in the warm. And though the electric cookers were useless, a little bricklaying would turn the artist's drawing-room fireplace into a primitive but practical oven and stove for a communal kitchen.

Even so, Uncle Jagindar spoke very seriously to Nicky.

“It is difficult for us,” he said. “If you were my child, or one of my nieces, I would punish you for this. Perhaps you are right and we will have to use these houses in winter, but you are wrong to take decisions on your own account against the wishes of us older people. If you continue to do this, then perhaps our own children will start to copy you, and then we will have to send you away. We will be sad, but we will do it.”

“I'm sorry,” said Nicky. “My own family weren't so … so …”

“If your own family were more like us,” said Uncle Jagindar, “you would not have become separated from them as you did, even though a mad priest caused a panic.”

Nicky was surprised. Ajeet was the only person she'd told about that wild Dervish who'd pranced red-eyed beside the retreating Londoners yelling about fire and brimstone; and the thunderstorm; and the hideous mass panic; and the long, sick misery of loss. Ajeet must have told her frowning mother, who must have passed the story on. But Uncle Jagindar was being unfair—anybody could have got lost in that screaming mob.

“All right,” she said. “I'll try not to be a bad influence.” That was her own joke—Miss Calthrop at school used to talk about girls who were bad influences, but had spoiled her case by always picking on the girls who were most fun to be with. Uncle Jagindar nodded, and Nicky went up across the fields to the wood to see how the charcoal burners were getting on.

They had made an eight-foot pyramid of logs, covered them with wet bracken, and then sealed the pile with ashes and burned earth. Then the pile was lit by the tedious process of dropping embers down the central funnel and carefully blocking them in with straight sticks. A pockmarked man was in charge, because he had done the job in India. Nicky hardly knew him, as he was one of the Sikhs who was not related to the main families and spoke little English; but now he leaned on his spade by the water hole he had dug and gave orders to the two men who were building a second pyramid of logs.

Gopal came into the clearing with his father, shoving a handcart laden with more logs for the pile.

“Wouldn't it be better sense to burn the charcoal near the log stack?” said Nicky. “Or to cut your wood from these trees here?”

“Wrong both times,” said Gopal. “Nought out of ten. You must have seasoned wood, and we were lucky to find that big stack up by the road. And you must have water to quench the charcoal with when you take the pile to bits. If Mr. Harbans Singh hadn't found that spring, we might have had to carry the wood all the way down to the well.”

“How long before you get any charcoal?”

“Three days, Mr. Harbans says, but the first lot may not be very good. Have you finished your bow, Risaldar?”

They all called Mr. Parnad Singh Risaldar now. It was a joke in a way, but he seemed to like it. Perhaps it reminded him of the glories of his father's Simla club. He was an older man than the others, his beard a splendid gray waterfall. He looked up from where he was whittling at a long stave.

“In a year's time, perhaps,” he said, “unless I can find some seasoned ash or yew before then. With something like this, I'd be lucky to kill a rabbit at twenty paces. But tell me, Nicky—if I used tempered steel from the farmyard—the right piece, I mean—would it be safe to use that?”

“I think so,” said Nicky uncertainly.

“Let's try,” said Gopal. “There's all sorts of metal littered about the barn.”

Halfway down the huge field two bright-colored figures were working, a man in a crimson turban and a woman in an orange sari. When the children came nearer they saw that it was Mr. Surbans Singh and his wife Mohindar, he scything, she raking. Mr. Surbans Singh had appointed himself head farmer.

“What are you doing?” called Gopal.

Mr. Surbans Singh straightened up, but his wife (whom Nicky thought the prettiest of all the Sikhs) went on tedding the grass he'd cut into a loose line.

“I found this scythe in a shed,” he said. “It is very bad, and the hay is grown too coarse to be good feed, but poor hay will be better than none if we are to keep sheep through the winter.”

“Sheep?” said Nicky, surprised.

“I hope so,” said Mr. Surbans Singh. “I would not like to eat nothing but chapati all the year round. Eh, my dear?”

Mrs. Mohindar stopped raking and smiled at him.

“I have married a greedy man,” she said.

Mr. Surbans Singh looked at the tiny patch he had cut, and then at the vast sweep of the hayfield.

“We have a long way to go,” he said ruefully, and bent to his scything.

From the gray-white hulk of the barns came an erratic clinking of metal. Nicky noticed Gopal looking at her out of the corner of his eye as they walked down the slope.

“What are they up to?” she said nervously.

“Come and see.”

She wouldn't actually go in under the big roof, but the barn was open at both ends and she could see the whole scene. All down one side a rank of bright-colored engines, gawky with insectlike joints and limbs, stood silent. Other machines and parts of machines littered the floor of the barn, leaving only just enough passageway for the tractors to haul the attachments they needed in and out.

“This farmer liked gadgets,” said Gopal. “Three combines, two hay balers, six different tractors, all the latest devices.”

“What are the men doing?” said Nicky, quivering.

Uncle Jagindar was walking about among the engines with a hammer. From time to time he would tap at one, which produced the clinking, and call a man over to him, point and explain.

“Iron and steel are funny stuff,” said Gopal. “There are lots of different kinds. Some you can work with, and some you can't—it is too hard, or its softening point is too high, or it comes from the forge too brittle. My Uncle Jagindar wants ordinary mild steel, and he's looking for bits he can use; the others are trying to take them off the tractors and attachments.”

“And the things won't go when they're taken to bits?” said Nicky.

“That would suit you?”

“Yes, but it's not as good as smashing them.”

She was quite serious, but Gopal laughed and Uncle Jagindar heard the noise and came out into the sunlight. He was interested in the idea about the bow, but said he didn't think they'd find steel whippy enough, and he didn't think he could temper a rod to that state either. Besides, it would be very dangerous to the bowman if it snapped under tension. Then he shouted to one of the men, who brought out an old sickle without a handle which they'd unearthed. Uncle Jagindar sharpened it with a stone and bound sacking tightly around the tang until it was comfortable to hold. Gopal, much to his disgust, was sent up to help Mr. Surbans Singh in the hayfield, and Nicky went with him to turn the hay.

It was surprising how much got cut, provided you didn't stop every few minutes to look and see how you were getting on.

Chapter 4

STEEL ON THE ANVIL

Eight days later Nicky went down to the village. She bent her head and ran with a shudder of disgust under the double set of power lines that swooped from pylon to pylon across the lane.