No Comebacks Page 4

  'Right lads,' said Big Billie as the truck rumbled away back to Bangor. 'There it is. Well start with the roof tiles. You know what to do.'

  The group of men stood beside their pile of equipment. There were great sledgehammers with 7-pound heads; crowbars 6 feet long and over an inch thick; nailbars a yard long with curved split tips for extracting nails; short-handled, heavy-headed lump hammers and a variety of timber saws. The only concessions to human safety were a number of webbing belts with dogclips and hundreds of feet of rope. Ram Lai looked up at the building and swallowed. It was four storeys high and he hated heights. But scaffolding is expensive.

  One of the men unbidden went to the building, prised off a plank door, tore it up like a playing card and started a fire. Soon a billycan of water from the river was boiling away and tea was made. They all had their enamel mugs except Ram Lai. He made a mental note to buy that also. It was going to be thirsty, dusty work. Tommy Burns finished his own mug and offered it, refilled, to Ram Lai.

  'Do they have tea in India?' he asked.

  Ram Lai took the proffered mug. The tea was ready-mixed, sweet and off-white. He hated it.

  They worked through the first morning perched high on the roof. The tiles were not to be salvaged, so they tore them off manually and hurled them to the ground away from the river. There was an instruction not to block the river with falling rubble. So it all had to land on the other side of the building, in the long grass, weeds, broom and gorse which covered the area round the distillery. The men were roped together so that if one lost his grip and began to slither down the roof, the next man would take the strain. As the tile disappeared, great yawning holes appeared between the rafters. Down below them was the floor of the top storey, the malt store.

  At ten they came down the rickety internal stairs for breakfast on the grass, with another billycan of tea. Ram Lai ate no breakfast. At two they broke for lunch. The gang tucked into their piles of thick sandwiches. Ram Lai looked at his hands. They were nicked in several places and bleeding. His muscles ached and he was very hungry. He made another mental note about buying some heavy work gloves.

  Tommy Burns held up a sandwich from his own box. 'Are you not hungry, Ram?' he asked. 'Sure, I have enough here.'

  'What do you think you're doing?' asked Big Billie from where he sat across the circle round the fire.

  Burns looked defensive. 'Just offering the lad a sandwich,' he said.

  'Let the darkie bring his own fecking sandwiches,' said Cameron. 'You look after yourself.'

  The men looked down at their lunch boxes and ate in silence. It was obvious no one argued the toss with Big Billie.

  'Thank you, I am not hungry,' said Ram Lai to Burns. He walked away and sat by the river where he bathed his burning hands.

  By sundown when the truck came to collect them half the tiles on the great roof were gone. One more day and they would start on the rafters, work for saw and nailbar.

  Throughout the week the work went on, and the once proud building was stripped of its rafters, planks and beams until it stood hollow and open, its gaping windows like open eyes staring at the prospect of its imminent death.

  Ram Lai was unaccustomed to the arduousness of this kind of labour. His muscles ached endlessly, his hands were blistered, but he toiled on for the money he needed so badly.

  He had acquired a tin lunch box, enamel mug, hard boots and a pair of heavy gloves, which no one else wore. Their hands were hard enough from years of manual work. Throughout the week Big Billie Cameron needled him without let-up, giving him the hardest work and positioning him on the highest points once he had learned Ram Lai hated heights. The Punjabi bit on his anger because he needed the money. The crunch came on the Saturday.

  The timbers were gone and they were working on the masonry. The simplest way to bring the edifice down away from the river would have been to plant explosive charges in the corners of the side wall facing the open clearing. But dynamite was out of the question. It would have required special licences in Northern Ireland of all places, and that would have alerted the tax man. McQueen and all his gang would have been required to pay substantial sums in income tax, and McQueen in National Insurance contributions. So they were chipping the walls down in square-yard chunks, standing hazardously on sagging floors as the supporting walls splintered and cracked under the hammers.

  During lunch Cameron walked round the building a couple of times and came back to the circle round the fire. He began to describe how they were going to bring down a sizable chunk of one outer wall at third-floor level. He turned to Ram Lai.

  'I want you up on the top there,' he said.

  'When it starts to go, kick it outwards.'

  Ram Lai looked up at the section of wall in question. A great crack ran along the bottom of it.

  'That brickwork is going to fall at any moment,' he said evenly. 'Anyone sitting on top there is going to come down with it.'

  Cameron stared at him, his face suffusing, his eyes pink with rage where they should have been white. 'Don't you tell me my job; you do as you're told, you stupid fecking nigger.' He turned and stalked away.

  Ram Lai rose to his feet. When his voice came, it was in hard-edged shout. 'Mister Cameron...'

  Cameron turned in amazement. The men sat open-mouthed. Ram Lai walked slowly up to the big ganger.

  'Let us get one thing plain,' said Ram Lai, and his voice carried clearly to everyone else in the clearing. 'I am from the Punjab in northern India. I am also a Kshatria, member of the warrior caste. I may not have enough money to pay for my medical studies, but my ancestors were soldiers and princes, rulers and scholars, two thousand years ago when yours were crawling on all fours dressed in skins. Please do not insult me any further.'

  Big Billie Cameron stared down at the Indian student. The whites of his eyes had turned a bright red. The other labourers sat in stunned amazement.

  'Is that so?' said Cameron quietly. 'Is that so, now? Well, things are a bit different now, you black bastard. So what are you going to do about that?'

  On the last word he swung his arm, open-palmed, and his hand crashed into the side of Ram Lai's face. The youth was thrown bodily to the ground several feet away. His head sang. He heard Tommy Burns call out, 'Stay down laddie. Big Billie will kill you if you get up.'

  Ram Lai looked up into the sunlight. The giant stood over him, fists bunched. He realized he had not a chance in combat against the big Ulsterman. Feelings of shame and humiliation flooded over him. His ancestors had ridden, sword and lance in hand, across plains a hundred times bigger than these six counties, conquering all before them.

  Ram Lai closed his eyes and lay still. After several seconds he heard the big man move away. A low conversation started among the others. He squeezed his eyes tighter shut to hold back the tears of shame. In the blackness he saw the baking plains of the Punjab and men riding over them; proud, fierce men, hook- nosed, bearded, turbaned, black-eyed, the warriors from the Land of Five Rivers.

  Once, long ago in the world's morning, Iskander of Macedon had ridden over these plains with his hot and hungry eyes; Alexander, the young god, whom they called The Great, who at twenty-five had wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. These riders were the descendants of his captains, and the ancestors of Harkishan Ram Lai.

  He was lying in the dust as they rode by, and they looked down at him in passing. As they rode each of them mouthed one single word to him. Vengeance.

  Ram Lai picked himself up in silence. It was done, and what still had to be done had to be done. That was the way of his people. He spent the rest of the day working in complete silence. He spoke to no one and no one spoke to him.

  That evening in his room he began his preparations as night was about to fall. He cleared away the brush and comb from the battered dressing table and removed also the soiled doily and the mirror from its stand. He took his book of the Hindu religion and from it cut a page-sized portrait of the great goddess Shakti, she of power and justice. Th
is he pinned to the wall above the dressing table to convert it into a shrine.

  He had bought a bunch of flowers from a seller in front of the main station, and these had been woven into a garland. To one side of the portrait of the goddess he placed a shallow bowl half-filled with sand, and in the sand stuck a candle which he lit. From his suitcase he took a cloth roll and extracted half a dozen joss sticks. Taking a cheap, narrow-necked vase from the bookshelf, he placed them in it and lit the ends. The sweet, heady odour of the incense began to fill the room. Outside, big thunderheads rolled up from the sea.

  When his shrine was ready he stood before it, head bowed, the garland in his fingers, and began to pray for guidance. The first rumble of thunder rolled over Bangor. He used not the modern Punjabi but the ancient Sanskrit, language of prayer. 'Devi Shakti ... Maa ... Goddess Shakti... great mother ...'

  The thunder crashed again and the first raindrops fell. He plucked the first flower and placed it in front of the portrait of Shakti.

  'I have been grievously wronged. I ask vengeance upon the wrongdoer. He plucked the second flower and put it beside the first.

  He prayed for an hour while the rain came down. It drummed on the tiles above his head, streamed past the window behind him. He finished praying as the storm subsided. He needed to know what form the retribution should take. He needed the goddess to send him a sign.

  When he had finished, the joss sticks had burned themselves out and the room was thick with their scent. The candle guttered low. The flowers all lay on the lacquered surface of the dressing table in front of the portrait. Shakti stared back at him unmoved.

  He turned and walked to the window to look out. The rain had stopped but everything beyond the panes dripped water. As he watched, a dribble of rain sprang from the guttering above the window and a trickle ran down the dusty glass, cutting a path through the grime. Because of the dirt it did not run straight but meandered sideways, drawing his eye farther and farther to the corner of the window as he followed its path. When it stopped he was staring at the corner of his room, where his dressing gown hung on a nail.

  He noticed that during the storm the dressing-gown cord had slipped and fallen to the floor. It lay coiled upon itself, one knotted end hidden from view, the other lying visible on the carpet. Of the dozen tassels only, two were exposed, like a forked tongue. The coiled dressing-gown cord resembled nothing so much as a snake in the corner. Ram Lai understood.

  The next day he took the train to Belfast to see the Sikh.

  Ranjit Singh was also a medical student, but he was more fortunate. His parents were rich and sent him a handsome allowance. He received Ram Lai in his well-furnished room at the hostel.

  'I have received word from home,' said Ram Lai. 'My father is dying.'

  'I am sorry,' said Ranjit Singh, 'you have my sympathies.'

  'He asks to see me. I am his first born. I should return.'

  'Of course,' said Singh. The first-born son should always be by his father when he dies.

  'It is a matter of the air fare,' said Ram Lai. 'I am working and making good money. But I do not have enough. If you will lend me the balance I will continue working when I return and repay you.'

  Sikhs are no strangers to money lending if the interest is right and repayment secure. Ranjit Singh promised to withdraw the money from the bank on Monday morning.

  That Sunday evening Ram Lai visited Mr McQueen at his home at Groomsport. The contractor was in front of his television set with a can of beer at his elbow. It was his favourite way to spend a Sunday evening. But he turned the sound down as Ram Lai was shown in by his wife.

  'It is about my father,' said Ram Lai. 'He is dying.'

  'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, laddie,' said McQueen.

  'I should go to him. The first-born son should be with his father at this time. It is the custom of our people.'

  McQueen had a son in Canada whom he had not seen for seven years.

  'Aye,' he said, 'that seems right and proper.'

  'I have borrowed the money for the air fare,' said Ram Lai. 'If I went tomorrow I could be back by the end of the week. The point is, Mr McQueen, I need the job more than ever now; to repay the loan and for my studies next term. If I am back by the weekend, will you keep the job open for me?'

  'All right,' said the contractor. 'I can't pay you for the time you're away. Nor keep the job open for a further week. But if you're back by the weekend, you can go back to work. Same terms, mind.'

  'Thank you,' said Ram, 'you are very kind.'

  He retained his room in Railway View Street but spent the night at his hostel in Belfast. On the Monday morning he accompanied Ranjit Singh to the bank where the Sikh withdrew the necessary money and gave it to the Hindu. Ram took a taxi to Aldergrove airport and the shuttle to London where he bought an economy-class ticket on the next flight to India. Twenty-four hours later he touched down in the blistering heat of Bombay.

  On the Wednesday he found what he sought in the teeming bazaar at Grant Road Bridge. Mr Chatterjee's Tropical Fish and Reptile Emporium was almost deserted when the young student, with his textbook on reptiles under his arm, wandered in. He found the old proprietor sitting near the back of his shop in half-darkness, surrounded by his tanks of fish and glass-fronted cases in which his snakes and lizards dozed through the hot day.

  Mr Chatterjee was no stranger to the academic world. He supplied several medical centres with samples for study and dissection, and occasionally filled a lucrative order from abroad. He nodded his white-bearded head knowledgeably as the student explained what he sought.

  'Ah yes,' said the old Bengali merchant, 'I know the snake. You are in luck. I have one, but a few days arrived from Rajputana.'

  He led Ram Lai into his private sanctum and the two men stared silently through the glass of the snake's new home.

  Echis carinatus, said the textbook, but of course the book had been written by an Englishman, who had used the Latin nomenclature. In English, the saw-scaled viper, smallest and deadliest of all his lethal breed.

  Wide distribution, said the textbook, being found from West Africa eastwards and northwards to Iran, and on to India and Pakistan. Very adaptable, able to acclimatize to almost any environment, from the moist bush of western Africa to the cold hills of Iran in winter to the baking hills of India.

  Something stirred beneath the leaves in the box.

  In size, said the textbook, between 9 and 13 inches long and very slim. Olive brown in colour with a few paler spots, sometimes hardly distinguishable, and a faint undulating darker line down the side of the body. Nocturnal in dry, hot weather, seeking cover during the heat of the day.

  The leaves in the box rustled again and a tiny head appeared.

  Exceptionally dangerous to handle, said the textbook, causing more deaths than even the more famous cobra, largely because of its size which makes it so easy to touch unwittingly with hand or foot. The author of the book had added a foot-note to the effect that the small but lethal snake mentioned by Kipling in his marvellous story 'Rikki-Tikki-Tavy' was almost certainly not the krait, which is about 2 feet long, but more probably the saw-scaled viper. The author was obviously pleased to have caught out the great Kipling in a matter of accuracy.

  In the box, a little black forked tongue flickered towards the two Indians beyond the glass.

  Very alert and irritable, the long-gone English naturalist had concluded his chapter on Echis carinatus. Strikes quickly without warning. The fangs are so small they make a virtually unnoticeable puncture, like two tiny thorns. There is no pain, but death is almost inevitable, usually taking between two and four hours, depending on the body weight of the victim and the level of his physical exertions at the time and afterwards. Cause of death is invariably brain haemorrhage.

  'How much do you want for him?' whispered Ram Lai.

  The old Bengali spread his hands helplessly. 'Such a prime specimen,' he said regretfully, 'and so hard to come by. Five hundred rupees.'

  Ram
Lai clinched the deal at 350 rupees and took the snake away in a jar.

  For his journey back to London Ram Lai purchased a box of cigars, which he emptied of their contents and in whose lid he punctured twenty small holes for air. The tiny viper, he knew, would need no food for a week and no water for two or three days. It could breathe on an infinitesimal supply of air, so he wrapped the cigar box, resealed and with the viper inside it among his leaves, in several towels whose thick sponginess would contain enough air even inside a suitcase.

  He had arrived with a handgrip, but he bought a cheap fibre suitcase and packed it with clothes from market stalls, the cigar box going in the centre. It was only minutes before he left his hotel for Bombay airport that he closed and locked the case. For the flight back to London he checked the suitcase into the hold of the Boeing airliner. His hand baggage was searched, but it contained nothing of interest.

  The Air India jet landed at London Heathrow on Friday morning and Ram Lai joined the long queue of Indians trying to get into Britain. He was able to prove he was a medical student and not an immigrant, and was allowed through quite quickly. He even reached the luggage carousel as the first suitcases were tumbling onto it, and saw his own in the first two dozen. He took it to the toilet, where he extracted the cigar box and put it in his handgrip.

  In the Nothing-to-Declare channel he was stopped all the same, but it was his suitcase that was ransacked. The customs officer glanced in his shoulder bag and let him pass. Ram Lai crossed Heathrow by courtesy bus to Number One Building and caught the midday shuttle to Belfast. He was in Bangor by teatime and able at last to examine his import.