Freeman's

by John Freeman

  ‘Maji? Tusi theek hai? It’s Harmohan, from the gurdwara . . .’

  As soon as she was off the phone she switched to her mobile and called Kulwant. ‘I did it.’

  ‘Good girl. I’ll set off now.’

  ‘Are you sure? Be careful.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Kulwant said. ‘I’ve done it before,’ she added, which confused Balbir, but before she could say anything Kulwant hung up and perhaps two hours later Gurdev hurtled down from his office above the shop shouting that the Merc had blown up.

  ‘Deal! Deal you pucking idiot!’

  ‘Mum? Mum? We need to talk,’ Gurdev said, sitting beside her on the busted square seat cushions of the sofa.

  ‘About what?’ She didn’t take her eyes off the TV.

  ‘About the car,’ Jagroop said.

  ‘I told you. It wasn’t me.’

  The brothers exchanged looks and Gurdev’s forehead constricted as if to say Leave it to me.

  ‘But it was you, Mum. They saw you.’

  ‘Who pucking saw me?’

  ‘The neighbours. They saw you carrying the petrol can.’

  ‘I keep telling you. Harmohan from the gurdwara rang to say they needed some petrol for their mower. What is a good Sikh to do?—Arré, I told you to deal—what you to do now, hain?’

  ‘But there is no Harmohan at the gurdwara. And no one from the gurdwara rang. We checked.’

  ‘Are you thinking about Harmohan your neighbour?’ Jagroop suggested, placidly, sweetly. ‘From the old Attercliffe house?’

  Mum, a small, tremendously wrinkled woman with silver hair scraped back into a ratty little tail, turned her glittering black eyes to her younger son. ‘No, bhanchod. Because he died. In 1973. And not once did his wife cry.’

  ‘They say the long-term memory starts to compensate,’ Kulwant said, ostensibly to Balbir who was standing in the doorway with her, but loud enough for their husbands’ ears.

  Mum slapped the side of Jagroop’s turban. ‘I am not going into a home. Over my charred remains will those people come here again. And I did not burn your Mercedes. I was in this room watching those loose women when this desert-island dish you married came running down from the bathroom saying the car was on fire.’

  ‘It’s lucky she was here,’ Jagroop said, in a tone of protectiveness that made Kulwant soften towards him a little. ‘The garage, the whole house could have gone up.’

  ‘It wasn’t me.’

  ‘And the flooding?’ Gurdev said. ‘You were the only one in the house.’ (Balbir felt her cheeks start to glow.) ‘And phoning round wishing people a happy birthday when it wasn’t?’

  ‘I swear that’s what my Guru Gobind calendar said.’

  ‘Thirty-five thousand pounds that car cost me.’

  ‘I am not going into any dirty cunting home. So puck choo.’

  ‘T he bastards put me in a home!’ Mum exclaimed, charging across the peach shagpile of her room in Sheffield Rosewall Accommodation as furiously as her four-year-old hip would allow. One month on and she still sounded shocked.

  ‘How was Mum?’ Gurdev asked that night.

  ‘Better,’ Balbir said, nodding insistently. ‘She didn’t throw any chairs at us. And in her own way she said she misses you.’

  He pursed his lips across to one side of his face. ‘Well, of course I want to see her. But the shops are busy.’

  ‘Of course.’ She shuffled a little closer to him, so close he put down his copy of Des Pardes and looked right at her. She smiled, hesitantly. ‘I was wondering. It’s Zubaidah’s birthday in a few weeks.’ She waited. She looked for some change in his face, for some concession, or even just an acknowledgement that their granddaughter, who had his bow-shaped mouth, his thick brows, was about to turn four.

  But he said nothing, not a tremble in his overdyed, stiff facial hair.

  ‘Maybe I could meet her? Just for a few hours. One, even. Maybe?’

  ‘You know how we feel. They’re dead to us.’

  ‘Jaswinder’s all alone. And Zubaidah’s your granddaughter. I’m only asking for a short visit. Mum will never find out.’

  On the fourth night he agreed to a meeting in a park somewhere in Leicester, where their daughter lived and far away from any aunties who might spy them.

  ‘He even said he’d drive me,’ Balbir said, skimming the pages of a toy catalogue with her free hand while on the shop phone to Kulwant. ‘What do you think of a tractor? Like in India. One she can ride.’

  ‘Why’s he driving you? He might do something to her. Take the train, sister.’

  ‘He wants to. I bet his heart melts when he sees Zuby.’

  ‘He really doesn’t—down there, by the eggs, try opening your eyes—he really doesn’t seem like the melting type,’ Kulwant said and Balbir felt a tiny flutter of worry in the bowl of her stomach.

  Less than a week before the trip to Leicester, news came of a fire at the nursing home. The following day Mum returned to the house. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said to the pastoral care officer as Gurdev loaded her luggage into the van. ‘I really didn’t know they were flammable. But I have a history of it, you know. Ask him about his car.’

  ‘The scheming little mad witch!’ Kulwant said, snatching the baby lotion from the bathroom cabinet because Mum was now waiting in the lounge, hands raised, armpits exposed. But Balbir was scarcely listening, too befuddled by what this return might mean for her first sight of her daughter and granddaughter in nearly three years.

  ‘It means it’s not happening,’ Gurdev said in bed.

  ‘Maybe I can go on my own. In the train. I won’t stay long.’

  ‘Did you not hear me?’

  She lay there watching the still blades of the gold ceiling fan, edges crimped in moonlight, and once Gurdev was snoring she stepped to her wardrobe and held the tractor in its Fisher-Price bag and wept on and off until the alarm bleated and she had to make his tea and get to the shop.

  Prank calls, rearranging the furniture, even leaving the gas on for so long their Somali neighbour alerted the fire service: it didn’t matter what new tactics Kulwant deployed. The sons refused to return their mother to the home.

  ‘She didn’t like it there,’ Jagroop said.

  ‘So that means she can blow us all up in our sleep? She’ll kill us.’

  ‘She’ll kill us,’ Kulwant (washing) repeated to Balbir (drying) the following night.

  It seemed as if Kulwant had started to believe that Mum really was going senile. ‘Maybe we need to stop,’ Balbir said, exhausted by the whole thing.

  ‘You mean I have to carry on living with the woman who’s made my entire married life hell? Don’t you want to see Jassi ever again?’

  The door swung open and Gurdev moved to wash his hands at the sink. ‘The table needs clearing.’

  ‘Fucking bastard,’ Kulwant said.

  ‘Ki keya?’

  ‘Making custard,’ Balbir said. ‘Would you like?’

  ‘I’ve worked out how we’re going to take care of Mum,’ he said, casting the towel onto the worktop. The hook. Please can’t you use the hook? ‘You’re both going to do it.’

  ‘Oh, wonderful,’ Kulwant said.

  ‘But the shops?’ Balbir asked. ‘Who’ll work the shops? You two?’

  ‘Mein tera baap da naukar ni. So speak some sense once in a while. I’ve hired a few faujis. One pound fifty every fucking hour so I hope it’s worth it. And that you appreciate what all I’m doing for you.’

  ‘What faujis, ji? I don’t understand. Where did you find them?’

  ‘What questions! They’re from the pind. They were at the gurdwara looking for work. Is that enough? They’re coming tomorrow.’ He shut the door with a parting: ‘Bring the custard upstairs.’

  They were all young, the four faujis, none yet thirty, and in pairs they were each allotted a shop to look after.

  ‘Two men to do what one woman has been doing for thirty years,’ Kulwant said. ‘And how has it happened that I’ve gone from tryin
g to never see that woman again to spending every hour of my life with her.’

  ‘Jo Rab ne likha,’ Balbir said gnomically, tying the belt of her trench coat and checking the pockets for her bus ticket. ‘Whatever God has written.’

  Gurdev’s van wasn’t in its spot, and inside the shop only one of the faujis was present. ‘Where’s your uncle?’ she asked, indicating the gold-framed picture of Gurdev above the fag stand.

  ‘Ji, he’s gone with chotu to get some samaan. Beers and cigarettes.’

  One of his dodgy Eastern European deliveries no doubt, given how late it was. She slid the Closed sign into its plastic hatch. Beside that: ‘Only two children at a time please. We’re a tidy premises. Debit cards accepted here.’ The young man—Manjit, though his fake passport gave some other name—moved out from the counter and began rolling down the blinds on the chiller cabinets and fridges. Balbir dallied until he was in the furthest corner of the store and then balanced the till and removed the money. Which was silly, she knew, because he had all the access he could want during the day. The cash machine was emptied, the lottery terminal reset, the cardboard recycled, the place swept and mopped—and still Gurdev wasn’t back.

  ‘You go. I can wait on my own,’ she said, lifting the counter flap but not moving through it.

  ‘Uncle told me to wait. To help unload.’

  The lights had all been dimmed and the Coke fridge against which he crouched gave off a steady buzz. The veil of gloom allowed her to look at him properly, directly, in a manner that would have been considered immodest in daylight. He was older than she’d first thought: thirty, thirty-five, even. A slim neck gave way to sloping shoulders. There was a covering of dust in his hair, like fine ash. He must’ve been cleaning out the rear store earlier on. The gloom, generously, also admitted a few words.

  ‘You’re from Jandiala?’ she asked.

  ‘Ji.’

  ‘Which patti?’

  ‘Saanki. Do you know it?’

  ‘I’ve heard of it. I only spent a few weeks in Jandiala after my marriage. We’re from one of the other ones. Badi patti.’

  ‘I know. My family looks after your land there.’

  ‘Oh . . . good. Thank you,’ though she had no idea they still had land there.

  ‘You have good land. It’s one of the best plots. Especially now. The new laws. And you should taste the saag you grow. Not that we ever have,’ he added hastily, eyes worried.

  She moved onto more familiar ground: ‘Are you shaadi-shudda?’

  ‘My sisters first. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Of course. Daughters’ weddings are expensive,’ she said, suppressing a still-painful image of Jaswinder in a red hijab. ‘God willing it will happen.’

  ‘God makes nothing happen,’ he said with vehemence, as the van’s headlights swerved across the shop window and onto his face.

  When she knew that Gurdev would be out collecting another Romanian delivery she cooked saag, throwing in extra mustard seeds—the way people from India like it—and spooned great dollops of it into a plastic Haribo sweet tub. To eat with it, she made four makki-di-rotis.

  ‘Ask him about the land,’ Kulwant said, coming into the kitchen to find Mum’s corn cream.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Manjit ate the saag and roti there and then, squatting on a milk crate and using a case of Carlsberg for a table.

  ‘Have you not had saag while you’ve been here?’ she asked.

  ‘Not like this.’

  She’d forgotten how Indians ate: he confidently trapped the food in the roti, as if the bread were an extension of his fingers, and then swept it into his mouth as smooth as anything. How clumsy the Indians born of this country seemed (‘British-Asians,’ did they call themselves?), chasing the sabzi around the bowl and then tentatively, shakily, lifting it towards their lips so that by the time the roti reached their mouths most of the sabzi had spilled anyway. She’d even seen some who used a spoon to load their roti!

  ‘Is something funny?’ Manjit asked, paused in his chewing.

  ‘No, no. Carry on. Please. I was just thinking of something. It’s not you.’

  He used words and phrases she’d not heard for decades, words that no one seemed to have any use for in England. Lehaaj. Sareeka-pye-chaara. Bahtt. Why did no one in this country say ‘bahtt’? So much more precise than ‘doorr’. When she asked if he had enough saag: Badu, he’d said. Such a simple, nothing word, yet it took her back forty years, to her mother buying gourds in the bazaar while she and her two sisters marvelled at the green hawks overhead. More, pehnji? the vendor asked. Badu, badu, her mother had said. It’s already more than I know what to do with.

  ‘So who looks after the saag in Jandiala now?’

  ‘Ji?’

  ‘Our land. Who looks after it now you’re here?’

  ‘Oh. Aand-gwaand.’ Another one she’d not heard in years. ‘But people we trust. There’s nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘I just want to make sure it’s in good hands. Since you said it’s worth a lot of money now.’

  ‘Yes. Since the new laws. You get four times the value. And yours is in prime position. Commercial developers would pay a fortune for it.’

  ‘That’s so strange. It’s hard to believe.’

  He explained that it had started as a sweetening policy to get the agri-vote on Modi’s side. Because there’d been a lot of feeling, you see, especially in Punjab, that the BJP was anti-farmer. But the policy coincided with a huge surge in Punjab’s urban economy and developers were now desperate for land to build on, especially land bordering a road that leads to the city.

  ‘Like yours,’ he finished.

  As he washed the Haribo tub and handed it back to her, she said, ‘Don’t mention the saag to your uncle. He might think I’m spoiling his staff,’ she added, laughing a little to disguise her awkwardness.

  ‘Ji.’

  ‘Or our conversation. About the land.’

  He looked at her for perhaps a moment too long. He must be thinking, What other secrets did this woman keep from her husband? She felt herself start to blush.

  ‘The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013,’ Kulwant said, reading the words on the monitor over Balbir’s shoulder. Then, taking over the mouse: ‘For direct purchase of land . . . including farmers . . . rural areas . . . compensation fixed at four times the land value. That’s interesting.’

  ‘Have you got what you want now?’ Balbir asked, eager to switch to her Facebook page and see if any new photos had been uploaded.

  ‘Hm. Maybe,’ Kulwant said, and for the next three nights she teased information out of her husband. On the fourth, she waited until Jagroop advanced his hand onto her thigh. He seemed shocked that it wasn’t shoved away again and braved going a little further down.

  ‘Please, na,’ she said. ‘You’re pretending only. You don’t find me attractive anymore.’

  She turned round, showing him her back which he was quick to press up against, his hand on the end of her nightie, his topknot swinging into the rim of her vision. ‘You’re still beautiful, darling. So very beautiful. I tell you every night.’

  ‘And I keep telling you. All these years in that shop have turned me into a hag. How many more will I have to endure?’

  ‘You’re so hotty-hotty, darling.’

  Kulwant grimaced—he wasn’t listening—and stayed his hand before it reached her knickers. ‘Just tell me, na. Will we ever have enough money to sell up? I want only to spend some more time with you . . . jaan.’

  ‘Oh we will, we will,’ he said, trying his hand again, frustrated by her again.

  ‘You keep saying that, but when? We don’t have anything apart from the shop. No properties, no huge savings. No’—she risked it—‘no land.’

  ‘But we do have land,’ he said, so voluntarily, so openly that she wished she’d just asked him in the first place and not gone throu
gh this nightly charade.

  ‘Oh, back in Jandiala? But it’s not worth anything. It won’t get us far, I mean.’ She slid her thighs apart and his hand dived in and she felt his beard against her neck.

  ‘It’s worth a lot now, you know. There’s been a change in the law.’

  ‘Really? How much?’

  ‘About fifteen crore.’

  She gawped in the dark.

  ‘Bhaji wants to sell it’—his hand rubbed her bum—‘and once we have our share we can sell the shop and spend as much time together as we want . . . Do you like me doing that, baby?’

  ‘Yes, yes, very much. But surely we won’t get it all. What would we do with all that money?’

  ‘We will get it all, darling.’ He chuckled against her ear. ‘Every last penny for you and me.’

  Her knickers were off—how had that happened?—but she supposed she’d now have to go through with it. His reward, she told herself.

  Manjit returned from the tiny toilet-cum-kitchen and held up the washed Haribo tub like a game-show assistant, to show that this time he’d left no smears of sabzi on the bottom.

  ‘Well done,’ Balbir said, stowing the tub in her shoulder bag, stowing it right deep down. Hiding it, really. She noticed his long mouth tighten to a frown.

  ‘You don’t have to keep giving me food. If it’s going to make trouble for you.’

  Samasi’a. Not since she was a betrothed girl about to leave India had she heard that word. She wasn’t even confident that, prior to his using it just now, she’d have been able to recall what the proper word for ‘to experience trouble’ was. How much of herself she’d lost, to time, to this country. And for what gain?

  ‘It’s no trouble for me. But if you don’t like my cooking you only have to say.’

  ‘It’s the best meal I have all week.’