“Aha!” said Kewal, his terrible squint sparkling with pleasure at his own cleverness, “I begin to see. Shall I explain my theorem to you?”
“No, please,” said Nicky, who had only just managed to struggle through the discomfort of trying to think about the shut places of her own mind. “Go and tell your uncles.”
That caused further delay while the two groups of grown-ups joined to discuss Nicky; at one point a quarrel broke out and excitable fists were flung skyward, but it was all over as suddenly as a child’s tantrums. Then at last they were on the march again, hauling prams and carts up the steep slope to the common, then turning right to trundle down toward Kingston. The children who had darted so eagerly through their game became tired almost at once, oppressed by the dreariness of the slow walk. By the time they came to Robin Hood Roundabout, where the road divides, one of the smallest ones was sniveling and several mothers had found space for an extra burden on their prams. Nicky helped fat Kaka up onto the old lady’s cart.
“I shall not be able to push a great weight like yours except down hill,” said the big man severely. Kaka grinned between fat cheeks and reached for his grandmother’s hand. Or perhaps she was his greatgrandmother, Nicky thought. All the grown-ups seemed to show a special kindness toward the small children, despite their strange, fierce looks.
At the roundabout a further conference was held. Nicky lounged amid the incomprehensible babble and looked north, through Robin Hood Gate, to where the green reaches of Richmond Park lay quiet in the westering sun.
“Miss Gore,” a voice called. It was the big uncle.
“Yes.”
“We are discussing whether we should go through Kingston or along the bypass. It is shorter to go through, although there is a big hill. Would it, shall I say, affect you if we went one way or the other?”
“I don’t know,” said Nicky. “Couldn’t we go in there?”
She pointed to the inviting greenness of the park. Some of the mothers made approving noises. The discussion in Punjabi clattered out again. Really, Nicky couldn’t understand how any of them could be listening with so many of them talking all together. This time the women seemed to have more to say than the men, but at last the noise quietened and in the lull Gopal’s grandmother said something decisive. The march wheeled into the park.
“We have decided that the children have gone far enough,” said Neena, “so we shall camp here for the night. The women wanted to sleep in a house, but the men said there was more danger of sickness. My mother said that we shall have to camp often, and this would be a warm fine night, with no enemies about, for practice.”
“Oh, this is much nicer than houses,” said Nicky.
The grass stood tall, shivering in faint slow waves under a breeze so slight that it seemed to be the sunlight itself that moved the stems. The copses looked cool and dark. A cackle of interest burst from several lips together; following the pointing arms Nicky saw a troop of deer move out of shade into sunlight. The big uncle studied his map and then led the march right to where a swift brook flowed in a banked channel.
Here, while a dozen mothers scolded children in Punjabi about the dangers of falling in, they began to set up camp, slowly, arguing about every detail, four people fussing over some easy matter while a fifth struggled alone with an unmanageable load. The fifth might shout angrily for help, but his voice went unnoticed amid the clamor.
Then, quite suddenly, everything was sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction and the women started to fill pots from the stream while the men and the older boys straggled off towards the nearest copse.
“You come too, Nicky,” called Gopal.
Halfway to the trees they came to a neat stack of fencing posts which the men picked up and carried back to the stream while the boys and Nicky went on.
“That was a bit of luck,” said Gopal. “Now we shall have a first-rate fire if we can find some kindling wood.”
Nicky was struck again by something that had been puzzling her about the way Gopal and the others spoke. The children didn’t have the slightly singsong lilt of the grown-up Sikhs, but the actual words they used were oddly exact and careful, and if Gopal said something slangy the slang would seem a little quaint and old-fashioned — like “first rate.”
As they reached the edge of the wood they heard a scuffling and snorting, and about twenty deer flounced away uphill, then turned to watch them from beyond throwing range.
“If only I had a gun!” said one of the older boys withalaugh. “Pow! Wump! Kerzoingg!”
“No!” cried Nicky.
“A bow and arrow, perhaps,” said Gopal in a teasing voice.
“Yes, that would be all right,” said Nicky, seriously.
It took them some time to gather dry twigs and branches and pile them together for dragging down to the camp. By then the men had fetched the whole pile of fencing posts and were sawing them into short logs. Soon four neat fires were sending invisible flames into the strong, slant sun. Pots boiled. Some of the men were cutting bracken up the hill, others were rigging a mysterious screen. A child fell into the stream, but luckily Kewal was sitting on the bank, brooding at the passing water, and he snatched it out. The child was scolded for falling in and Kewal for not doing his share of the work. Nicky half dozed, and wondered whether it was all a dream.
“Come and wash, Nicky,” said Neena, “if you want to.”
There was nothing she wanted more. The women were queueing to wash behind the screen, using barely more than a mugful of hot water each in a collapsible canvas baby bath. Nicky, ashamed at her month's grime, used more than her share of water, but nobody complained. Cousin Punam inspected her scratches and dabbed some nasty-smelling stuff along the sore place where her collar had been rubbing. Neena borrowed clean clothes for her from another mother. Then she joined the chattering laundry party.
A frowning woman, darker than the others and with flecks of gray in her hair, hung out her own clothes beside Nicky and looked at her several times without speaking.
“We Sikhs are a very clean people,” she said at last, in an accusing voice. “We are cleaner than Europeans.”
“I like being clean too,” said Nicky.
“Good,” said the woman without smiling.
Then Nicky was called over to where the men, who had also been washing and laundering, were holding a council. Gopal had told them about the gun and the bow, and now they settled down to ask her random questions about what they could or could not do with safety. It was difficult because some of the questions made her sick and unhappy again; besides, the way they all asked different questions at the same time, or started discussions in Punjabi among themselves, or became involved in flaring arguments about things that didn’t seem to matter at all — all this muddled her attempts at sensible answers. If she hadn’t been so tired she would have laughed at them several times, but soon she realized that it wouldn’t have been a good idea. They were too proud and prickly to take kindly to being laughed at by an outsider. She thought they wouldn’t actually hurt her, not now; but looking at the rich beards and the strong teeth and the dark eyes, fiery and secret, she was sure that they could be very cruel to their enemies.
And Nicky wasn’t an enemy — but she was determined not to be a friend either. As the big uncle had said, she was to help them and they were to help her, but one day that would end, and it must end without hurting her. She realized that her raid on the pub had been partly a way of saying that she didn’t belong, that the Sikhs had no other claims on her than the single contract of alliance. She was their canary, but she was neither friend nor enemy.