‘What,’ called out Dalip, ‘what do you want?’
He wished his voice hadn’t broken halfway through, because it made him sound as scared as he was.
When the man didn’t answer, Dalip didn’t know why. It was stupid to assume he’d speak English, but trying Punjabi probably wouldn’t work either. Was he deaf? Did he want to fight? Were he and the others trespassing?
‘Oi. He asked you a question.’
‘Mary, that’s not helpful.’
‘Well.’ She was shoulder to shoulder with Dalip. ‘Maybe not, but he’s given me the fucking fear.’
‘We don’t mean to be here,’ he called. ‘We just are, and we don’t know why. We, we’ve not got any food left, but you can share our fire if you want.’
‘What are you doing?’ whispered Mary.
‘Offering hospitality.’ It might work. It might diffuse the stand-off and even be to their advantage. Dalip was pretty certain they’d collectively lose a straight fight with two wolves, let alone the man, or whatever he was. And this person was a native. He was going to know how this world worked. He might be persuaded to help.
It was his duty as a good Sikh, too, a thought that shamefully occurred to him after all the other, more pragmatic reasons.
A man, even one with two wolves, coming across seven orange-suited strangers when he didn’t expect them, was entitled to be wary. It didn’t automatically follow that they had to be enemies, did it?
The figure pulled on the wolf-chains, and both animals sat on their haunches. They suddenly appeared more like big dogs than they did wild beasts, turning their heads up to take their lead from their master. Dalip was sure that wolves couldn’t be domesticated like that, even from pups, but the evidence confounded him.
‘Where do you come from?’ His voice was deep and resonant, curious and serious.
‘There… There was a door,’ Dalip looked at Stanislav for support, but the older man was still braced for an attack, and resolutely staring at the man and his wolves. ‘We ended up here, down by the coast.’
‘Where were you before that?’
‘London. London Underground.’ He had no idea if that made any sense to the man.
But it did.
‘I’ll share your fire,’ he said, and made a ticking sound with his tongue. The wolves stood up and they all walked into the camp. Everyone moved out of their way, wary of the wolves, not so much the man, which struck Dalip as the wrong way around. Now he was close, he could both see him and smell him. The wolf pelt on his back was old and scraggy, the muzzle and ears certainly had seen better days: but as a statement of intent it was unequivocal. Here was a man who had fought fierce creatures and won.
He watched their separate reactions with amusement◦– at least, the small grunt he made as he sat cross-legged by the fire sounded like a laugh◦– and waited for them all to return. Stanislav warily lowered his club, and poked the fire with the heavy end, stirring the embers into life. He put more wood on, which instantly started to steam and smoke.
‘What happened to your head?’ the man asked, and it took a moment for Dalip to realise he was being addressed.
‘My head? That’s my turban.’
‘Turban? Like the Mohammedans wear?’
It took a moment for Dalip to work out what a Mohammedan might be. ‘No. I’m a Sikh. From India.’
‘So you’re from India?’
‘No. I’m from London. My grandparents were from India. Rawalpindi. Except that’s now in Pakistan. They left during the Partition.’ He stopped and started again. ‘I’m from a Sikh family now living in London. All the men wear turbans.’
The man pushed his wolf ’s-head hood back to reveal a head of black hair, thinning at the temples. ‘Does that make you a man, then?’
Dalip thought of all kinds of answers, some of them entirely unsuitable to give to a man with two wolves crouching by his side. His grandfather had been in the Indian Army at sixteen◦– though Grandfather’s age was a matter of family legend, so he could have been either younger or older. But if sixteen was old enough to carry a rifle and fight the Japanese, Dalip being nineteen was old enough to qualify as a man.
‘So they say,’ he finally managed.
‘Good answer. The reputation you give yourself is worthless. Let others name you.’
The fresh wood caught with a pop, and flames jetted out, bright and lively. The man lifted his hands instinctively, palms out, to feel the heat, even though it wasn’t cold.
Despite the presence of a wolf on either side of the man, Dalip sat next to him, cross-legged as if he were in the gurdwara. The closest wolf raised its head, shook its dense brown fur at him and leaned over to sniff at his leg. It spent a disconcertingly long time doing so, and the man pulled on its chain slightly, just to tell it that Dalip had had enough.
‘Aren’t you afraid?’ The man jerked his head down to his side.
‘Yes,’ said Dalip. ‘You seem to have them under control, though.’
‘For now,’ said the man, and grunted the same little laugh. ‘When did you get here?’
‘Today. Can I ask you something?’
‘You can ask. Can’t promise to answer.’
Everyone was looking at him, at them, and Dalip stared uncomfortably into the heart of the fire.
‘Where are we?’
‘Here,’ he said, and shrugged. When he did that, Dalip could see past the front legs of his wolfskin coat to the thick-bladed knife he had, strapped down by the side of his broad chest. It put Dalip’s little kirpan to shame, the kirpan he was still clutching in one hand.
He held it down by his leg to hide it. ‘It’s just that here is different to where we were. If we don’t know where we are, how do we know how to get home?’
‘You don’t.’
His words caused a ripple of consternation and anger around the group, which he managed to silence with a mere look.
‘I was born here. My ma was born here. My da◦– he arrived, like you did, but far to the north. He’d sometimes tell me of this place he was from, a city where there was nothing but streets and people, where you could walk all day and not go from one side to the other, and he called it London just like you do.’ The man shrugged again. ‘He started off trying to go back. Didn’t do him any good. In the end, he stopped looking. Made the most of it here.’
‘There’s no way back?’ said Mary. ‘There has to be a way back.’
‘Why? No reason why there should.’
‘But there has to be!’
He tilted his head on one side as he looked up at her. ‘Wishing it doesn’t make it happen. Did you wish to get here?’
‘No.’
‘There’s your answer then.’ He gazed back into the embers. ‘How did you get here?’
‘There, there was a fire. And we ran.’
‘Is that right?’
‘It was more than a fire,’ said Dalip. ‘It seemed like the whole of London was burning. We thought we’d got out from the Tube, but the street outside was on fire too. Everything, everything was burning.’
‘And were you in danger?’
Dalip turned to Stanislav. ‘How many were in there in our shift?’
‘Thirty or so.’ He threw another log on the fire, and the sparks flew up into the leaves overhead.
‘Two of us survived. Mary?’
‘Twenty. Five of us got out.’ She turned to look at Grace, who stared back. ‘Something like that, anyway.’
‘I’m told that’s how it happens,’ said the man. ‘You think you’re going to die, and you open a door, and this place is behind it. You can choose to stay, or you can choose to step through. I don’t know how many people stay. Maybe most of them, maybe none of them, I can’t say one way or the other. All I do know is that those who come here, stay here.’