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 cannot 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 have read it in my history books.”
“How old are you?” said Nicky.
“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 will 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 down hill 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 the English girl 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 is the old lady on the cart — is my grandmother, and she has four sons and two daughters. My mother is 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 is a family who are relations of the lady who married my Uncle Chacha Rahmta. You think that is a funny name, I expect.”
“Well, er,” said Nicky.
“It is a funny name, in English,” said Gopal.
“I expect Nicola Gore is a funny name in some languages,” said Nicky.
“Oh, yes, I assure you that in Eskimo language Nicola Gore means . . . means . . . bother, I can’t think of anything silly enough.”
“Oak-tree soup,” said Nicky.
“The Eskimos do not have oak trees.”
“That’s why they chose a silly word for oak-tree soup. Which is Mr. Chacha Rahmta?”
“He is 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 do not mind me talking about the madness? That is 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 towards 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 . . .