“Go away, little girl,” he said sharply. “We don’t want you. We can’t help you.”
Nicky stopped. He was taller and younger than the fat man who had spoken to her before, and frowned at her very fiercely.
“No! Don’t go that way!” she said between gasps. “There’s a bad sickness that way. An old man told me. He said he was going to catch the sickness and die. He made me promise not to go down there. He said he’d seen people staggering about and then falling down dead in the street.”
The dark man moved his stave, so that it stopped being a weapon and became a stick to lean on.
“This is true?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.”
He looked at her for several seconds, just as fiercely as before. Then, without another word to her, he turned and called after the procession in the strange language. Beyond him Nicky could see two or three faces turn. A cry came back, the man answered and another cry came. By this time the whole group had stopped.
“Come with me,” said the man without looking around, and strode off up the street. Nicky followed.
Men, women and children stood staring and unsmiling, still as a grove of trees, while she walked between them. When they reached the cushioned cart where the old woman lay, the man stopped and spoke for some time. The old woman creaked a few words back at him. Her face was all shriveled into wrinkles and folds as though it had been soaked too long in water, but her thin hooky nose stood out of the wrinkles like the beak of a hawk, and her dark brown eyes shone with angry life. She looked like a queen witch.
“Tell your story again, please, miss,” said the man.
Nicky had stopped panting, so she could fit her words together into proper sentences; but she was so afraid of the old woman that she found she could hardly speak above a whisper. She felt the other people drawing closer, so as to be able to hear.
“I used to bring food for an old man who sat on a doorstep,” she said. “He only had one leg, which is why he hadn’t gone away. He told me that quite a lot of people further down this road had stayed too, and now they’d got very sick and if you went near them you might catch their sickness. It was the sort of sickness you die of, he said. He said that they crawled out into the street, like rats coming into the open when they’ve eaten poison, but some of them danced and staggered about before they fell down. He made me promise not to go this way if he wasn’t on his doorstep, because that would be the sign that the sickness had come up the street as far as where he lived. He wasn’t here when I came to look for him twelve days ago, and he hasn’t come back. That’s where he used to sit, down there, opposite the church.”
The group was still no longer, but wavering and rustling. Suddenly the starling clamor of voices broke out, all of them seeming to speak at the same time. The women drew their children close to them, and the men’s hands began to gesture in several directions. A younger man with a very glossy beard spoke directly to Nicky, in English.
“Cholera, perhaps,” he said. “Or plague.”
He sounded interested, as though he’d have liked to explore further up the road and see which guess was right.
The big man who pushed the old woman’s cart had pulled a red book from under the cushions and was peering at it amid the clamor; two of the other men, still arguing at the tops of their voices, craned over his shoulders. The old woman held up her arms suddenly and screeched like a wild animal, and the shouting stopped. She asked a short question, and was answered by a mild-faced young woman in a blue dress. The old woman nodded, pointed south, and spoke again. The crowd murmured agreement. The big man ran his finger down a page of the book, flipped over some more pages, and ran his finger on—he must be tracing a road on a map. Then the whole group picked up all they had been carrying; the pram pushers and cart pushers circled around; the old woman screeched and they all started back toward the Green. They filed around Nicky as though she were a rock in the road.
She stood, running her thumb back and forward under her satchel strap, and let them trail past. Nobody said a word, and only one or two of the smallest children stared. When the last four, the stave carriers, had gone she followed behind. One of them glanced over his shoulder and spoke to the man who had led her into the group. He glanced back too, said something, shrugged and walked on. Nicky trudged behind.
They turned right at the Green, south. Their pace was a dreary dawdle as they went down Shepherd’s Bush Road, which Nicky had so often scampered along. Carefully she didn’t look up the side street to where her note was pinned to the pink door, but studied instead a gang of scrawny cats which watched from a garden wall on the other side of the road; already they were as wild as squirrels.
Yes, she thought, I am right to go now. If I stay any longer I will become like those cats. She remembered how neat the strange children had seemed, even while they were playing their game of “touch,” and wondered how she herself looked. You can’t wash much in soda water.
At Hammersmith Broadway there had been either an accident or a battle, for two buses lay on their sides and a vegetable lorry had charged into the ruin, scattering crates of lettuce about. The wreckage stank and the procession edged well clear of it. A minute or two later they were on Hammersmith Bridge.
Here the whole group stopped and the adults broke into their cackle of many-voiced argument while the children crowded to the railings and gazed at the still and shining water. Small brown arms pointed at floating gulls or bits of waterlogged driftwood, ignoring the wrangle that raged behind them. Nicky wondered how they ever could decide anything if they were all allowed to speak at the same time. The big man found a sheet of paper under the cushions, a real map with many folds, and this was pored over until, once more, the harsh creak of the old woman decided the question. Mothers called their children to them; burdens were hefted; the march dawdled on.
They went so slowly that Nicky decided she could afford a few minutes more on the bridge; she would be able to catch them without hurrying. The river was beautiful, full from bank to bank as high tide began to ebb unhurriedly toward the sea. A sailing dinghy fidgeted around at its moorings as the water changed direction. Something about the river’s calm and shining orderliness washed away all Nicky’s resolution—the river ran to the sea, and over the sea lay France, and that’s where Mummy and Daddy were, and a little boat like that couldn’t be hard to sail. She could swim out to it and row it ashore, and then stock it up with pretzels and lemon soda and sail down the river, around the coast and over the Channel. And then it would be only a matter of finding them, among all the millions of strangers. They must have left a message, somewhere. Sailing would be nice—alone, but going to meet the people who were waiting for you, who would kiss you and not ask questions and show you the room they had kept ready for you.…
Nicky’s whole skeleton was shaken by a tearing shudder, like the jerk of nerves that sometimes shocks the body wide awake just as it is melting into sleep, only this shudder went on and on. Nicky knew it well. It had shaken her all that first nightmare morning, and once or twice since. It was a sign that somewhere a hellish machine was working.
She looked wildly about for a few seconds, not feeling how her mouth and lips were pulling themselves into a hard snarl like a dog’s, nor how her legs were running down the street called Castelnau faster than they’d ever run when she’d asked them, nor how her hand was groping in her satchel for the hunting knife.
A bus towered in the road; the strange people crowded around it, chattering again. Nicky jostled between them and hurled herself at the young man who stood smiling beside the vile engine which churned its sick stink and noise into the air. Her knife was held for killing. The young man was the only person looking in her direction. He shouted before she was quite through the crowd, and started to back away around the bus. A hard thing rammed into her ear and cheekbone, jarring her head so that for an instant she could not see. In fact she could not remember falling, but now she was on her hands and knees groping dazedly for
the dropped knife, not finding it, then crawling toward the drumming engine and feeling again in her satchel for a bottle to hit with.
The world seemed to be shouting. Tough hands gripped her arms and hoisted her up. She struggled toward the bus, but the hands held her, hard as rope. The young man was climbing again through the door of the bus. She lunged at the hands with her teeth, but the men who held her did so in such a way that she couldn’t reach.
All at once the foul drumming stopped, and only the stink of it hung between the houses. A voice croaked an order. They all moved on, up Castelnau.
Slowly, like the panic of nightmare dying as you lie in the half-dark and work out that you really are in your own bed between safe walls, the lust of hatred ebbed. She felt her neck muscles unlock. Her hands and knees, where she had fallen, stung with sudden pain. She was so tired that she would have dropped but for the hands that gripped her. She let her head droop.
It might have been a signal for the others to stop, and for the clatter of arguing voices to break out again. Most of the voices were men’s, but sometimes a woman joined in. At last something was settled.
“Are you all right now, miss?” said a man.
Nicky nodded.
“Why did you do that?” said the man.
“Do what?”
“Try to kill Kewal?”
“He made the thing go,” she said. “He mustn’t. I had to stop him.”
“Who told you to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to kill him now?”
Nicky looked around the dark, silent faces. The young man she’d charged at stood directly before her, smiling, his small teeth brilliant amid the gorgeous beard. Only one of his eyes looked directly at her. The other one squinted crazily over her right shoulder. “No,” she said.
“But if he tried to make the bus go again?” asked the man.
“Yes,” she said.
The hands let go of her and she swayed. An arm curled round her shoulders to stop her falling—a woman’s arm this time.
“You will come with us,” said the man. It wasn’t a question. Now, at last, she looked up and saw that the speaker was the big man who had been pushing the old woman on the cart. A woman in a blue dress, the one who’d answered the question about the sickness, knelt down in the road and started to sponge Nicky’s bleeding knees.
“Yes,” said the young man, Kewal, smiling and squinting. “You will be our canary.”
“Kaya?” said one of the women.
“When the miners go into the coal mines,” explained the young man importantly, “they take a canary with them; if there is firedamp about—that is carbon monoxide, you know—the bird feels it before the miners. Just so this girl … what is your name, miss?”
“Nicola Gore.”
“Just so Miss Gore will be able to warn us of dangers which we cannot perceive.”
“You are willing?” asked the big man.
“Most people call me Nicky,” she explained.
“Good,” he said, as if she had answered “Yes.” She had in a way.
“Our names are easy too,” said Kewal. “All the men are called Singh and all the women are called Kaur.”
Several of the group laughed in a fashion that told Nicky that it was an old joke. A high, imperious voice croaked from the handcart.
“My grandmother does not speak English,” explained Kewal as the big man turned and began a conversation in the strange language. The woman who had been dabbing at her knees rose and took her hand and started to clean the grazes.
“How is your head?” said a voice at her side. “I regret that I had to hit you so forcibly.”
She turned and saw the fat man who had first spoken to her. He was smiling nervously. His eyes had the look of a dog’s which thinks it may have done something bad but doesn’t want you to think so.
“My uncle is very quick and strong,” said Kewal. “Although he does not look it.”
There was another little laugh among the group. Nicky felt her cheek.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s still a bit sore but it’s all right. It doesn’t matter, Mr.—er—Singh?”
Her voice turned the last two words into a question. She knew that Kewal had been joking, but she didn’t know what the joke was. However, the fat man smiled and nodded. The old voice creaked another order. You could hear it quite plainly through the chatter of the rest of the group.
“Come,” said Kewal. “My grandmother wishes to speak to you.”
The old woman was still just as terrifying as before. She lay on her elbow on the cushions and stared. She wore about five necklaces, and every finger of her left hand had at least two rings on it. Nicky wanted to propitiate her, to make her less fierce and strange, so without taking her eyes from the many-wrinkled face she began to grope in her satchel. The old woman spoke two sentences and the big man laughed.
“My mother is pleased with you,” he said. “She says you fight well, like a Sikh. But now you must fight for us, and not against.”
Nicky’s fingers found what she wanted. She walked right up to the cart.
“Would you like this?” she said, giving a little half-curtsey: the old woman might be a witch, but she was a queen too. Nicky put the gold and coral necklace down on a blue satin cushion. The ringed claw picked it up and the bright eyes examined it, stone by stone. The old woman clucked, spoke again and put it down on the cushion.
“My mother is grateful,” said the big man. “She says it is good gold and well-carved beads, but you must keep the necklace. You are to help us and we are to help you, so there is no need for an exchange of gifts. We will protect you, and share our food and drink with you. In return you will warn us if we seem to you to be embarking on anything which is dangerous or wrong. Things like Kewal starting the engine of that bus. Do you understand?”
Nicky tore her eyes at last from the old woman’s.
“Yes, Mr. Singh,” she said, more confidently this time.
The big man’s lips moved into a smile under his dark-gray beard.
“You will have to learn our other names too, you know,” he said. “Now we must march on. You will walk with my sister’s family. Neena!”
Nicky picked the necklace off the blue cushion. She was glad she hadn’t had to give it away.
Chapter 2
FIRST NIGHT
Neena, the big man’s sister, was a dark little woman, only two or three inches taller than Nicky.
“You can put your satchel into my pram,” she said. “I expect you’re pretty tired.”
She spoke so softly that Nicky could hardly hear her. She looked tired and worried herself. A sulky baby sat in the pram, almost hidden by a hill of bundles.
“Thank you,” said Nicky, and propped the satchel on the handles of the pram, leaning it against the bundles. Then she found she was still holding the soda bottle which she’d taken out to fight with, so she unscrewed the top and started to drink. The lemon soda was nastily sweet and warm, and very fizzy with the shaking it had had, so that the froth bubbled back into her nose and made her sneeze; through her snortings she heard the boy in the pram begin a slow wail.
“Oh dear,” said Nicky, “is that my fault?”
“He’s thirsty,” said Neena, “and we cannot spare much water because we have to boil it all.”
She leaned her light weight against the handles to get the pram going as the rest of the group moved off. Nicky, walking beside her, felt in the satchel for another bottle and handed it to Neena. The baby was watching; its wail softened to a snivel.
“No,” said Neena, “it’s yours. You will need it.”
“I can easily break into another pub,” said Nicky. “That’s how I got these.”
Neena looked at her doubtfully for a moment.
“Thank you, Nicky,” she said. “Push the pram please, Gopal.”
A boy about Nicky’s size took the handles and started to shove while Neena rummaged in her bundles for a mug; s
he filled it from the lemon soda bottle and tilted it carefully to the baby’s lips. The baby put up a hand to steady it, but did not help much; still, Neena managed very cleverly despite having to glide beside the pram.
“My brother is nicer than this, really,” said Gopal, “but he knows that something is wrong and that my mother is worried.”
“Are you really all called Singh?” said Nicky in a half-whisper.
“Yes. It was an order of the guru three hundred years ago that all Sikhs are called Singh. It means ‘lion,’ and we are a soldier people.”
He spoke very proudly and seriously.
“What are Sikhs?” said Nicky.
“We are Sikhs. My people are Indians—Indian Indians, of course, not American Indians—but many of us came to England, especially after the Hitler war. We have a different religion from you and from other Indians, and we carry five signs that we are different. Other Indians wear the turban, for instance, but we do not cut our hair or beards at all, ever; we carry a sword, to show we are soldiers; we wear a steel bracelet; we …”
“I can’t see any swords,” said Nicky, who had been puzzled by the explanation. She felt that she ought to know about the Hitler war, and about Indians, just as she ought to have known about turbans, but she’d forgotten. She was irritated by being forced to recognize another of those moments when she saw or heard something which felt as though she’d dreamed it before, but had forgotten the dream.
Gopal laughed and felt in the back of his turban. From it he produced a square wooden comb to which was fastened a toy scimitar two inches long.
“You can’t wear a sword if you are working in a bank,” he said, “or driving a train in the underground. Not a real killing sword. So we wear our swords like this, but they are still a sign of our faith and a sign that we are a soldier people. We are a very proud race, you know. When a man joins the Sikh religion he becomes taller and stronger and braver. It has often happened. I’ve read it in my history books.”
“How old are you?” said Nicky.
The Changes Trilogy Page 2