The story was not long, but the old woman told it with careful and elaborate gestures of the hands, as though she were the storyteller at some great court and had been sent for after supper to entertain the princes. Nicky could hear, even in the unknown language, that it was the story of a fierce quarrel between two proud men. She looked along the outer circle of children and saw Ajeet sitting entranced, mouth slightly parted and head craning forward as she listened and stared at the elaborate ceremony of the fluttering hands. Ajeet’s lips were moving with the words, and her hands made faint unconscious efforts to flutter themselves.
All the Sikhs laughed when the story ended, then broke into smaller chattering groups. Nicky crossed to where Ajeet still sat staring at the orange firelight.
“What was the story about, Ajeet?” she said.
“Oh, I do not know/’ said Ajeet in her usual near whisper, shy and confused.
“Please tell me. I like to know anything your grandmother says. She is so . . . so special.”
“Oh, it was a tale of two Sikh brothers, farmers, whom my grandmother knew in India, and how they quarreled over a dead pigeon, and in the end lost their farm and their wives and everything. Listen. It was like this.”
Her voice changed and strengthened. She drew her head back and sat very upright, freeing her hands for gestures. The history of that forgotten feud rolled out in vivid, exact words, each phrase underlined with just the same gesture of finger or wrist that her grandmother had used. Once or twice she hesitated over a word, and Nicky realized that she was turning familiar Punjabi into English which didn’t quite fit. When she finished Nicky found herself laughing at the ridiculous disaster, just as the men had laughed, and heard more voices laughing behind her. Kewal and three of the other men had been standing around in silence to hear the same story all over again.
“Very excellent,” said Kewal, only half mocking. One of the men called in Punjabi over his shoulder, and was answered by a pleased cackle from the open stall where the old woman lay on her cushions;
she had been watching the show too. Ajeet accepted the compliments gravely, without any of her usual shyness, then took Nicky off to say good-night to the old lady.
This had become a sort of ritual for Nicky, a good-luck thing, wherever they were. They couldn’t say much to each other, even with Ajeet to translate, because their lives had been so different, but somehow it ended the day on a comfortable note.
As they crossed the yard back to the shed where the women slept, Nicky looked round the firelit walls and the black-shadowed crannies. So this was home, now.
Provided nobody came to drive them out.
They settled in slowly. The bungalow had been left unlocked, and the first thing the Sikhs did was to redecorate the bedroom with rich hangings. They took their shoes off when they went into the room. Uncle Jagindar carried the old lady in when it was finished, and she clucked her satisfaction, though she wanted several details changed. Nicky watched fascinated from the doorway.
“It is a place to keep our holy book,” explained Kewal. “My family are very orthodox Sikhs. Before these troubles some of us younger ones did not treat our religion as earnestly as the elders, but now it seems more important. It will help to keep us together.”
“We’ll have to use the other houses to sleep in when the winter comes,” said Nicky. “It’ll be too cold to sleep out in the sheds.”
“You are very practical-minded. That was how the English ruled India. They would go and admire the Taj Mahal, but all the time they were thinking about drains. Anyway, my uncles do not feel it proper to break into other people’s houses, even if the people have gone away.”
“They’ll have to in the end,” said Nicky. “I don’t mind doing the burgling, and then once the doors are open you could all come and use the houses like you are doing this one.”
Kewal laughed and pulled his glossy beard.
“That would be an acceptable compromise,” he said. “But I think we will not tell my uncles until you have done it. I will attend and supervise, because in my opinion your techniques of burglary are a little crude.”
But you have to be crude with metal-framed windows. They fit too tight for you to be able to slide a knife or wire through to loose the catch. Nicky broke two panes, opened two windows, climbed into two musty and silent houses, and tiptoed through the dank air to unbolt two doors. The artist’s cottage was full of lovely bric-a-brac — a deer head, and straw ornaments that were made for the finials of hayricks, and Trinidadian steel drums. Kewal delightedly began to tonk out a pop tune, but Nicky (frightened now of what she’d done) dragged him away.
And the uncles were cross when she told them. (She left Kewal out of her story.) But when the women found that there was an open hearth in the cottage and a big closed stove in the farmhouse, in both of which you could burn logs, they told the uncles to stop being so high-minded. Here was somewhere to bathe and attend to small babies in the warm. And though the electric cookers were useless, a little bricklaying would turn the artist’s drawingroom fire into a primitive but practical oven and stove for a communal kitchen.
Even so, Uncle Jagindar spoke very seriously to Nicky.
“It is difficult for us,” he said. “If you were my child, or one of my nieces, I would punish you for this. Perhaps you are right and we will have to use these houses in winter, but you are wrong to take decisions on your own account against the wishes of us older people. If you continue to do this, then perhaps our own children will start to copy you, and then we will have to send you away. We will be sad, but we will do it.”
“I’m sorry,” said Nicky. “My own family weren’t so . . . so . . .”
“If your own family were more like us,” said Uncle Jagindar, “you would not have become separated from them as you did, even though a mad priest caused a panic.”
Nicky was surprised. Ajeet was the only person she’d told about that wild Dervish who’d pranced red-eyed beside the retreating Londoners yelling about fire and brimstone; and the thunderstorm; and the hideous mass panic; and the long, sick misery of loss. Ajeet must have told her frowning mother, who must have passed the story on. But Uncle Jagindar was being unfair — anybody could have got lost in that screaming mob.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll try not to be a bad influence.” That was her own and secret joke —■ Miss Calthrop at school used to talk about girls who were bad influences, but had spoiled her case by always picking on the girls who were most fun to be with. Uncle Jagindar nodded, and Nicky went up across the fields to the wood to see how the charcoal burners were getting on.
They had made an eight-foot pyramid of logs, covered them with wet bracken, and then sealed the pile with ashes and burned earth. Then the pile was lit by the tedious process of dropping embers down the central funnel and carefully blocking them in with straight sticks. A pockmarked man was in charge, because he had done the job in India. Nicky hardly knew him, as he was one of the Sikhs who was not related to the main families and spoke little English; but now he leaned on his spade by the water hole he had dug and gave orders to the two men who were building a second pyramid of logs.
Gopal came into the clearing with his father, shoving a handcart laden with more logs for the pile.
“Wouldn't it be better sense to burn the charcoal near the log stack?” said Nicky. “Or to cut your wood from these trees here?”
“Wrong both times,” said Gopal. “Nought out of ten. You must have seasoned wood, and we were lucky to find that big stack up by the road. And you must have water to quench the charcoal with when you take the pile to bits. If Mr. Harbans Singh had not found that spring, we might have had to carry the wood all the way down to the well.”