The Key to the Indian (10 page)

O
mri was surprised his mother didn’t notice, in the days that followed, that he and his father spent so much private time together. But she was completely fixated on Gillon. After his two recent mishaps, she decided he had become accident-prone and she was afraid to let him out of her sight. So that although in Omri’s opinion Gillon had now competely recovered, he was still home from school, being spoilt absolutely rotten and loving it. However, as he kept boring his mother (and anyone else who would listen) by recounting his ‘dream’ over and over again, with embellishments, it seemed probable that her indulgence would soon come to an end.

Meanwhile, it was quite useful to have her mind on other things. It left Omri and his dad with time and privacy to plan.

They’d already decided when they would make the trip. There was some kind of teachers’ in-training day coming up at the end of October which would close schools on the Monday. So Omri and his dad talked openly at meals about a short camping trip together. There was no question of Gillon going; he didn’t even want to. He couldn’t explain this, but Omri understood. Even though Gillon thought the India trip had been a dream, nevertheless he’d had his fill of adventure for the moment.

Early on, the idea of Dartmoor was privately abandoned. They decided to go instead to a place nearer home. Omri’s dad took to going for long, exploratory walks and drives. At the end of one of them, he was so excited he came to meet Omri on his way home from school.

“Peacock Hill!” Omri’s dad said breathlessly. Omri had told him his private name for the hill he could see from his bedroom. “It’s perfect! Only two miles away, and once you’re up at the top in that little circle of trees, you can’t be seen.”

“Can you drive up there?”

“Yes, on a cart track. I’d have to back down again which wouldn’t be funny, but it can be done.”

“If there’s a track, other people must go there.”

“Maybe they did once. It’s pretty overgrown. I think just the occasional walker goes there now.”

But that still left the main problem unsolved. They discussed it endlessly. Who would send them to Little Bull’s
time? Who would be around to turn the key in the ignition, and bring them safely back?

“It must be someone we can trust. Someone who won’t ask questions, who’ll just walk up there and
do it
at the time we arrange.”

“But there’s no one like that! You’d need a robot. Imagine finding two people unconscious in the car – who wouldn’t ask questions?”

“What we really need is someone who already knows.”

And then, of course, the solution – blindingly obvious, why hadn’t he thought of it sooner? – flashed upon Omri.

“Patrick!”

“Omri,” said his dad after a moment, “you are a genius. Write to him immediately, and I’ll write to his mother.”

Omri didn’t stop to think it out. He just rushed upstairs and dashed off a letter to Patrick (who, maddeningly, was not on the phone) at his home in Kent. He wrote “Private and Confidential” on the envelope, and at the start of the letter, he wrote: BURN THIS WHEN READ.

Dear Patrick
,

My dad has found out. I didn’t tell him, of course. He found out by accident. Don’t worry, he won’t tell
.

This is to ask you to stay with us like you did before, on the long weekend. You
must
talk your mum into it. Then we’re going to a place my dad’s found. We’ll pretend we’re going camping, the three of us. Only we’re not really. We’re g
oin
g
back
to help Little Bull. He’s in trouble. We’ve found a way. It does work, we’ve proved it. I’ll tell you everything when I see you. Say you’ll come. Omri
.

Reading this, Omri’s dad frowned. “You don’t think you ought to tell him a few more details – such as that he won’t be coming with us?”

“Couldn’t him and me go first – do part of it together?”

“
He
and
I
,” grated his dad, as usual. (He was a pronoun-freak.) “I don’t know about that. All I know is that he can’t do the main part with us.”

“So, basically, we’re inviting him to be a sort of gopher.”

“No. A key-turner.”

“What’s the difference, Dad?”

“Not much,” his dad admitted. “From what I know of Patrick, we’re going to have to handle this rather tactfully.”

“You mean I am,” said Omri glumly. He lost every bit of good feeling he’d had about the coming adventure in bad feeling about exploiting Patrick.

Patrick rang from a pay phone twenty-four hours later to say that he wouldn’t miss it for anything on earth.

He arrived by train, unaccompanied, as he had before.

“Mum’d told the conductor to look after me,” he said. “Can you believe she’d do that? Humiliation time! He kept coming round asking if I was all right! I mean, grotesque or what?”

After that he talked about nothing but going back. He thought it was terrific that Omri’s dad knew all about it.

“It’s really too scary on your own,” he said. “I can’t wait, I haven’t slept since I got your letter…”

Omri and his dad said very little. But Patrick was too excited to notice.

When they got to the cottage and hellos had been said, Patrick dragged Omri to the wild end of the garden for a private conference.

“Look what I brought!” he exclaimed, bringing his closed hand out of his pocket.

Omri guessed what he would see, before Patrick’s opening fingers revealed the figures of Boone, the cowboy, and his wife Ruby Lou. They were sitting on Boone’s black horse, Boone in front, Ruby sitting sideways behind him still in her wedding dress – which, when real, was of silk and lace ruffles – her veil thrown back, her red leather boots sticking out incongruously under the white frill. Boone was bare-headed. They were both smiling their post-wedding smiles of happiness. Boone held the reins in one hand and something white in the other – a chunk of wedding cake, halfway to his grinning mouth.

“You’re not planning to take Boone and Ruby Lou back!” said Omri.

“Why not? They belong in the Wild West. They could help. We could send him back first, with one of the others, in the plastic tepee, like before. He could be waiting for us.”

“I think that’s a crazy idea. What would the Indians make of him – a white guy not even from their time, suddenly appearing, on a
horse
which they’d
want
, with a woman all got up in a wedding dress—”

“They might think she was a goddess!”

“Goddess! Don’t be daft. They’d kill Boone and carry her off. That’s what they did with white women in those days, they carried them off and made them part of the tribe.”

Patrick snorted. “I wouldn’t like to be the Indian who tried to carry Ruby off!”

“We can’t take risks like that.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” said Patrick. “I am definitely going to bring them through the cupboard. I have to know how they are. Just for a visit, Omri, come on! You brought yours.”

“My dad brought them.”

“Yeah. Wow. I have to hear all about that.”

So they sat under a tree and Omri began to tell him. Oddly enough, it was the stuff about Jessica Charlotte that Patrick was most excited about.

“The magic pulled her out of the river! But that’s weird. How come it happened at just the right moment?”

“I know what my dad thinks,” said Omri soberly. “He thinks I’ve got a bit of magic in me, from Jessica Charlotte, because I’m her posterity.”

“Post-what?”

“Descendent then. Her relative. Dad thinks it can be passed on, like her gift is in her genes.”

“She didn’t wear jeans!” And Patrick collapsed with laughter and rolled on his back.

Omri, feeling the old irritation with Patrick, sat still, frowning. There had always been this side to him. He was a good mate and often had brilliant insights into the magic, but
he could be a complete idiot sometimes. Vaguely rude jokes about Jessica Charlotte struck Omri as being completely out of order, especially when he remembered the terrible ordeal she was going through, back in her time, which he couldn’t even help with.

“If it hadn’t been for her, we wouldn’t be able to go at all,” he said stiffly.

Patrick glanced at him, saw at once he’d gone too far, and sat up again. “Sorry,” he said. “I was really laughing at the idea of you having magic powers. I wouldn’t laugh at
her
.” After a moment’s thought, he said, “But if you did have some of Jessica Charlotte’s gift, wouldn’t your mum have it, too?”

Omri grunted. He didn’t want to tell Patrick about his mother seeing Jessica Charlotte’s ghost when she was young. He thought he just might laugh again. He told about the key and the car. Patrick was absolutely riveted.

“Have you tried it?”

“Yes. We’ve all been back. Gillon and I went to India, of about eighty years ago, I think.”

Patrick’s jaw dropped. “
Gillon
knows?”

Omri shook his head and told Patrick about his being dropped on his head and thinking he’d dreamt the whole thing. “I’m a bit worried that when he
really
gets his head back together, he’ll realise that dreams just aren’t like that,” he said. “For the moment he hasn’t even thought it might have been real. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?”

“
I
would,” said Patrick. “I’d know it wasn’t a dream! Well, go on, tell what happened! India! Blimey! Did you meet a
snake-charmer?” Patrick did a shimmy with his head and arms.

“As a matter of fact—” began Omri, but just then his mother called them for tea and they had to go back into the house. They didn’t get a chance to talk again until they were in bed in Omri’s room that night. And that didn’t happen until late because they’d had to pack the gear to give the trip the appearance of a genuine camping trip.

Omri tried to tell Patrick about India but they were both too tired. Besides, Omri was feeling uneasy and guilty about The Plan.

“Patrick,” he mumbled as they were both on the brink of sleep.

“Mmm.”

“You do realise you can’t go back with Dad and me.”

There was a longish silence and Omri thought Patrick was asleep. But he sat up abruptly as the penny dropped.

“What do you mean, I can’t go back?”

“I mean, for the – the long part of the trip.”

“You mean, for the
main
part! The good part!”

Omri was silent.

Patrick got up off his makeshift bed on the floor and switched on the light. His face wore an expression Omri had seen there before, when they’d been younger. It was not an expression that filled him with confidence that Patrick was going to co-operate.

“Let me get this straight. You’ve brought me all the way here so I can send you and your dad back to Little Bull’s time
while I—” He stopped. “While I – what, exactly?”

Omri told him The Plan – how Patrick would send them, and then walk down the hill and make an excuse to Omri’s mum. “You can say you don’t feel well, or that we’ve had a row.”

Even as he said it, he heard how terrible it sounded.

“
I
see,” said Patrick in a voice dripping with sarcasm. “And then I spend two days here with your
mother
and then do a ten-mile hike back up the hill—”

“Two miles,” mumbled Omri.

“Oh,
thanks
. So sorry. Two miles. And turn the key at the right time. And bring you guys back, dead or alive, after you’ve had the adventure of your lives. And then, if I’ve been very good, I get to hear all about it. Have I got this right?”

“Er… sort of. But…”

But Patrick wasn’t listening. He was too mad.

“So I’m just here to be useful. I’m not going back at all. Is that what you think?”

“Oh, of course you’re going back! You’ll go back with me, first, before me and Dad go for the – the main part.”

“For five minutes, till your dad gets fed up and turns the key.”

“Er – no – we thought about two hours—”

“
Bloody well think again
,” said Patrick shortly. He switched off the light and Omri heard a thud as he flung himself down, and then a sharp jerk as he pulled up the covers.

Omri’s dad’s instructions to him, last thing, to “get a good night’s sleep” necessarily went out of the window.

N
ext day, however, it seemed as if it was Patrick who had thought again.

Omri woke from a shallow, dream-fractured sleep expecting a major row with him. But it didn’t happen. They got dressed, Patrick avoiding Omri’s eyes, and went down to an early breakfast without anything further being said.

After breakfast they loaded up the Cortina. Gillon helped. He seemed to be having some regrets, now, about not coming, but his mother said he wasn’t fit enough. She meanwhile was busy in the kitchen preparing enough food to withstand a siege.

“Will we be able to take some of that back with us, Dad?” Omri whispered as they bumped shoulders at the back of the car, loading the tent and the cold-box into the hatchback.

“I presume so, if we’re touching it,” whispered his dad. “I’m more concerned about taking useful things like this.” He held up a Swiss army knife with a lot of different blades.

“I wish we had a gun,” said Omri. “We might need it.”

His father, who was deeply opposed to guns, gave him a look. “Don’t be silly. We couldn’t even shoot a fly with it,
there
.”

“Oh! Of course.” Omri shivered slightly.

“Patrick seems very quiet this morning. Did you speak to him?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“He – he didn’t seem too pleased.”

“I’m not surprised. But he agreed?”

Omri shrugged. He was bewildered by the change in Patrick this morning. Now he was approaching across the lane, laden with sleeping bags and a small stove.

“Where do you want to stow all this?” he asked flatly.

Omri’s dad took it from him and loaded it carefully. “Go on, boys, go and get the rest,” he said.

Omri and Patrick walked back to the house together. Omri was dying to speak, to ask, but he didn’t know how. This silence between them, after last night, was as suspenseful as a held breath, but Patrick seemed determined not to break
it. They made several more journeys to the car with food, blankets and clothes.

Then, at the last minute, Omri had to dash up to his room because he’d forgotten to pack his pyjamas, which of all useless items his mother insisted he take. While he was up there he paused to look at the cupboard.

Perhaps he ought to bring Little Bull back, just for a moment, to warn him they were coming. Make sure the dolls were ready for them. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

He hastily took the plastic bag from its hiding place and extracted Little Bull, shut him in the cupboard and swiftly turned the key. Just as he did so, he became aware of somebody behind him. He swung round, his heart nearly flying out of his mouth. It was Patrick.

“What are you doing?” Patrick asked quietly.

Omri explained quickly. Patrick narrowed his eyes and came closer.

“Go on then. Open the door.”

Omri did, and there was Little Bull standing on the shelf. He looked angry, and, ignoring Patrick, burst straight into a stern speech.

“Many days pass! I think like other English you forget you gave word!”

“No! We couldn’t come just like that, Little Bull. We had to arrange things. We’re coming soon, today.”

“Our need is great.
You come
,” he said, and it was an order. “More time and it become too late.”

“Are the – the toys ready?”

“Ready many days!”

“How many are there?”

Little Bull held up two fingers.

“What about one for me?” It was Patrick’s quiet voice.

“Ah, Pat-Rick. You come with Om-Ri and father?”

“Maybe,” said Patrick steadily.

“No toy ready. Two is enough,” said Little Bull, folding his arms.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Right,” said Patrick. He reached across Omri, and before Omri could say or do anything, he had slammed the door shut and turned the key. Then, while Omri was still standing there staring, he turned the key again, opened the door, took out Little Bull’s figure, and put the double figure of Boone and Ruby Lou on the horse in instead.

“Wait, what are you doing!” Omri exclaimed anxiously.

“Just showing you what’s going to happen while you’re gone,” Patrick remarked calmly.

“What do you mean?”

Patrick turned and squared up to Omri. “Now get this straight,” he said between his teeth. “I’ve decided I’m going to do what you want. I think it’s lousy of you to expect it, but I’ll do it. But remember, I’m in control. And in the meantime, I’m not just going to sit back here pretending to be ill or whatever. I’m going to be having some fun of my own.”

“Well, I’m going to take the key, so you—”

“No, Om. You’re not going to take the key so I – anything.
I’m
going to take the key, and then we’re going ‘camping’.”

With that, he took the key out of the lock, and slipped it in his pocket.

Omri was so shocked that for a moment he just stood there. He’d seen Patrick mad before, or acting recklessly, but he suddenly saw that as people get older their characteristics – bad as well as good – become more pronounced. Patrick had always been capable of behaving like this, but now he was big (bigger than Omri – he was halfway through his growth-shoot) all sides of his character were growing with his body.

For a second Omri wanted to fight him for the key. But he knew he’d lose. And his sense of fairness told him that Patrick had a justifiable grievance. Just the same… Omri was not about to walk away and leave all his own little people at Patrick’s disposal. Anything could happen.

He pulled himself together. “Right,” he said. “Since you’ve
stolen
the key, I can’t stop you. But you’re not going to mess about with
my
little people.” He picked up the plastic bag, put Little Bull into it and stared Patrick in the face.

“Please get out of my room,” he said.

“So you can hide them. Okay. Go ahead.”

Patrick turned on his heel and strode to the door. There he paused, and without looking round, said, “I should hide them really well, if I were you.” Then he went out.

The second the door closed, Omri rushed to the fireplace and, reaching up, hid the plastic bag on the ledge inside the chimney. Then he heard his dad calling. He hurried through the door, not noticing he had left sooty fingerprints on the white paint.

They drove slowly, so that Patrick could note the way. Patrick seemed quite co-operative and friendly now.

As they bumped up the cart track towards the crown of trees at the pinnacle of the hill, he leant out of the window. “You can see your place from here. What if I just cut straight down through those fields, instead of going by the road? Be much shorter.”

“What will you say – have you thought?” asked Omri’s father.

“Oh, yes. I’ve worked it all out. The thing is, the others are supposed to think you’re on Dartmoor, right? So if I just walk back and tell them I threw up or had a row or whatever, they’ll have to know where you are.”

Omri and his dad looked at each other. “That’s right. So?”

“So. I’m not going back today. I’m going to camp here overnight.”

“On your own? Are you sure?”

“I’m used to camping in our orchard at home, sometimes with my brother but often by myself. It’s nothing. Then tomorrow I’ll kick around – I’ve got my walkman, and a magazine, and I’ll have the food – and then, in the afternoon, I’ll walk back down there and say we all went for a hike on the moor and we got separated, and I got completely lost in some mist and couldn’t find you or the camping-site. I’ll say I spent the day hunting for you and in the end, I just decided to come back here, and got a series of lifts as far as your village
with the help of a map. I’ll make myself look all worn-out and grotesque.”

Omri was staring at him. He seemed to be his old self, entering into the spirit of this new adventure with relish.

“But if we’d lost you, we’d have to report it and send out search-parties,” objected Omri’s dad.

“Ah,” said Patrick. That stumped him, but only for a moment. “I know! I’ll say that I left a message for you with the police that I was okay and had gone back to your place.”

“The police wouldn’t let you go alone.”

“Okay! Right! So the police drove me. If I say that, I won’t even have to make myself look as if I’d walked half the way.”

“My wife,” said Omri’s father slowly, “is going to smell a rat. But I think it’s the best we can do. Here we are.”

The car came to a stop right at the top of Peacock Hill, resting in a little hollow, invisible from below. They got out and ran up the slope on to a bank that nearly surrounded the hollow, all but the track entrance. These were the trees that Omri had seen from afar, the ‘peacock’s crown’ that he had often looked at from his room, growing out of the bank in a rough circle. Their roots protruded from the earth like a giant’s knuckles.

The boys stood staring around. It was a glorious spot. In every direction, the hills, fields, woods, and farms of this most beautiful part of England, marked out irregularly by hedges, stretched away, bathed in morning sunlight. To the south, behind them, they could see, three times
between three pairs of hills, a dazzling line – the sea.

Turning back, Omri could pick out the thatched roof of home nestling below. As he watched, a tiny figure emerged from under the thatch and moved among the flowerbeds – his mother. Gillon came out after her, turned away and must have crossed the lane… They looked, as the cattle and sheep in the fields looked, like living toys.

As Omri thought those words, he shivered. Soon that was what
they
would be – living toys. As small to Little Bull and his people as his mother now looked to him. Unconsciously he reached out his hand as if to pick her up, trying to get the sense of her as small, not the strong person he knew her to be, but helpless in his hand.

Patrick said, “Yes, she looks like I felt, when Ruby Lou picked me up, in Texas. You’ll be like that soon. Only it won’t be so civilised.”

“Indians had their own kind of civilisation,” said Omri.

Patrick grunted. “Come to that, I don’t think white people were very civilised. They weren’t in Boone and Ruby’s time. One of them tried to shoot me the moment he saw me, and most of the others were dead drunk.”

Omri turned to him. “Have you changed your mind about wanting to come back with me first?”

“Yes.”

“Why? We could go now. Right now.”

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

“Why?” asked Omri again. “You were so keen.”

“I’ve decided I’d rather be the big one,” said Patrick.
“Besides, Little Bull didn’t want me. Nor do you two. You want to have your adventure without me.”

This was true and Omri couldn’t deny it. But he felt worse than ever, when Patrick was being so nice about it… all of a sudden.

Omri’s dad, behind them, said urgently, “Come on, we’re wasting precious time!” They turned and ran down the slope, letting the side of the car bring them up short.

Omri opened the front passenger door. His father had been arranging things. He’d put two of the sleeping bags on the seat so Omri would be sitting on them. On the floor was a box containing food, a couple of books, and some other things underneath that Omri couldn’t see.

“Put your behind on these, and your feet on that,” his father was saying. “I’ve got Little Bull’s belt in my shirt pocket. Now. We have to hang on to each other, so the belt will take us both back. Put your anorak on. It’s cold in New York State in October.” He swung himself into the driving seat, removed the spare key from the ignition, put it carefully away in the glove-compartment, and produced
the
key.

Patrick stood by the car and watched silently.

It seemed Omri’s dad, in his eagerness, had forgotten there was ever any question of Patrick and Omri going back together first. He put the key in the ignition. “Patrick, would you like to turn it?”

“Yes,” said Patrick steadily. “I’d love that.” Omri glanced at him quickly but his face was blank. “Are you ready?”

Omri’s dad turned to look at Omri. His face was flushed,
his breath coming fast. “This is the greatest adventure of them all!” he said. “Are you ready, bub?” Omri swallowed hard, and nodded.

His father took hold of his hand. Omri couldn’t tell who the trembling was coming from – both of them, probably.

“Do it!”

Patrick reached calmly in through the window and turned the key.