The Year of the Runaways

by Sunjeev Sahota

  ‘No bhaji?’ Avtar asked.

  ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘Shall I order some tea?’

  Bal looked surprised. ‘You’re getting confident.’ Then: ‘We thought you’d run out on us. Too scared to answer your phone?’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’ He took his hand out of his pocket and put a few sorry-looking notes on the table. ‘For your uncle.’

  Briefly, Bal inspected the notes. ‘That’s not even gunna touch the sides, bruv.’

  ‘The rest will come. I’m working now. There’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘You’re weeks and weeks behind.’

  ‘A little more time,’ he said, feeling the confidence slip. ‘You can have this as well,’ and he put the stolen phone on the table.

  ‘I don’t want— You’re just not getting the message, are you?’ He lifted his finger to Avtar’s forehead and accompanied each syllable with a prod: ‘Are-you-too-thick-to-un-der-stand?’ He fell back against his chair. ‘I think it’s time we paid your family a visit. Navjoht, right? And the shawl shop in Gandhi Bazaar?’

  ‘Please. I’m doing my best.’

  ‘He’s put whole families on the street if the son hasn’t paid up.’

  ‘Just a little more time. Please! Can’t you explain it to him?’

  Bal clucked his tongue several times, in thought, then shrugged. ‘I guess you could buy yourself one last chance.’ He looked across, with intent. ‘You know?’

  Avtar reached down inside his sock and pulled out another note. It was the last of his money and he’d intended on buying some meat with it, some strong food that might feed this body. He handed it over. ‘Thank you.’

  He avoided the guards at Leeds station, instead stealing through a delivery gate left unchained. He crossed the car park and made his way to the hotel. The makeshift stairs only took him halfway. He had to climb a ladder to reach the top tier of the scaffolding. The wind was loud up here, so loud you could almost put a face to it. He could see how the city worked, the roads, the one-way system. From here, the motorway bridge was a mouth, and the traffic poured into it. It was all clear. Easy. It was all easy and yet still he was losing. He breathed. The wind slapped his face. How easy it would be to fall. How nice. He dug out from his rucksack the mobile he’d stolen and switched it on. There’d been several calls, probably from the gora in the suit. He put the phone at his side and probed further into the bag and found his college folder. A phrase from somewhere came to him: reaching beyond his dreams. He lifted the flap and tore into pieces every handout and worksheet and note he’d made. He threw the white pieces into the air and watched them shower and drift, until they were caught by the wind and vanished into the night.

  13. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SKY

  In a single stiff shudder the minute hand docked on twelve and Tochi untied his apron from behind his back and hung it across the handle of the toilet door.

  ‘Off already?’ Malkeet said. He’d come into the kitchen for some batter and stood there holding a sloppy white pail of the stuff.

  ‘It’s four.’

  ‘I can see that. Set my bloody watch by you these days.’

  He went through the gardens and up the main road, taking a left past the school and the lollipop lady.

  For dinner he fried four aubergines into something that looked like a bartha. He ate half of it with bread and put the rest in the fridge for the next day. He was at the sink washing up when she came through the back door.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  He nodded.

  ‘You’re early again.’

  Was she making a joke? He said nothing.

  She took off her coat and carried on through the beads and up the stairs. He heard a door shut and, perhaps a minute later, the toilet flush and then her feet on the stairs again.

  ‘Right,’ she said, re-entering the kitchen, and he hoped she might say something else. Instead, she set about making a start on her meal.

  He ripped off the last square of kitchen towel and sat at the table, lifting his boot to his knee and spitting on the sheet. He worked at the dirt, scrubbing and polishing, sometimes spitting directly onto the leather. She brought her bowl of food to the table and sat opposite him. It looked like chickpeas. He glanced across to the counter and the opened tin confirmed that it was. She didn’t seem that hungry, though, sitting there weaving the spoon through her soup. She looked over.

  ‘I’ll be a bit late tomorrow. I’m going to look at some flats.’

  He nodded, scrubbed.

  Nothing more was said for a long while. She seemed distracted, looking up, looking down, fiddling with the kandha at her neck. Perhaps it was something to do with her family.

  Finally, she said, ‘I can’t eat this. Would you like the rest?’

  He didn’t think anything of it, but she seemed suddenly appalled at herself, her eyes wide, a hand to her mouth, and she apologized and dropped the lot into the sink.

  There was a diversion further up, so the bus driver advised anyone wanting the top end of Ecclesall Road to get off outside the ’Tanical Gardens and walk. Narinder didn’t mind. It gave her time to think. Nothing can come out of nothingness, the granthi had said. So to know joy, compassion, sympathy – to feel love – means also to have in the world their opposites. She’d been reassured with that at the time, returned to Waheguru’s ship. It was only now, an hour later, that she felt the doubt and loss and fear whirling again, into a vicious storm. Stay strong, he’d advised. He knows what you are going through better than anyone. He’ll send you a sign. A sign, she thought. A sign. Walking up to the house, she turned her gaze to the stars, half hoping for the moon to explode.

  The kitchen light was off as she turned the key and took a single step inside. All was quiet. Darkest was the hallway beyond the beads, as if someone were lurking there. But then she heard him moving about upstairs and there was a sudden feeling inside her of being safe. It was a feeling she recognized. It was the same feeling she used to get inside the gurdwara.

  The oven wouldn’t work. She tried all four settings and then all four again after switching it off. It must be the mains. She pulled the oven away from the wall and saw that it was plugged into a wall socket, rather than straight into the circuit board. She sighed. The fuse, then.

  He opened the door before she’d even stepped across the landing, as if he’d been listening out for her.

  ‘The oven,’ she said, one hand around the banister. ‘It’s not working. The fuse has gone and I can’t find another.’

  ‘I’ll get one tomorrow.’

  She nodded. ‘Thank you.’ She wasn’t sure why she felt disappointed by his response.

  ‘I suppose you don’t have anything to eat,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll find something. The gas is still working.’

  He started closing the door.

  ‘Unless you have something already made?’

  He looked at her, and with the most surprising of sparks in his eyes said, ‘As long as you don’t mind eating leftovers.’

  She smiled, and her smile widened in response to his own. He had such a quick, easy smile, as if it was something he did all the time.

  There was still some of the bartha left, which she ate with toasted bread.

  ‘It’s better with roti,’ he said.

  ‘Not my rotis.’

  ‘You can’t cook?’

  ‘A gurdwara aunty tried to show me. She said it was like teaching a horse to hop.’

  Another quick smile. A lovely smile, she thought.

  ‘I can teach you. If you like.’

  She looked down at her food.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, brisk, retracting.

  ‘No, no. I’d like that. Thank you.’

  He went to the Londis to see if they sold fuses. She was putting away the dishes when he returned. His hands were empty.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Closed. I’ll get one from the main road tomorrow.’

  ‘Try Wisebuys. They look l
ike they sell that kind of stuff.’

  He poured himself a glass of water and sat at the table, still in his jacket and scarf.

  ‘It is starting to get cold,’ she said.

  ‘There’s blankets.’

  ‘I can’t walk around wrapped in a blanket the whole time.’

  He drank half of the water. ‘How good were the flats you went to see?’

  She didn’t know why she’d lied about that, about going to the gurdwara after work. But she knew what he meant: if she didn’t like staying here, if it was too cold for her, she could move.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He was frowning, as if wrestling with some thought or idea.

  ‘Can you leave the kitchen light on when you come back? It can’t cost that much extra.’

  He drained the rest of the water and said nothing for a long time. ‘It’s not the cost.’

  She turned round from the worktop. She was more surprised by the fact of a response than by what he’d said. ‘Do you prefer the dark?’ Then: ‘Like Panjab, isn’t it? All those power cuts.’

  ‘I’m not from Panjab.’

  ‘Oh,’ and she felt foolish for being so presumptuous.

  ‘I’m from Bihar.’

  He looked across so piercingly she felt herself pinned to the counter.

  ‘My family’s Kumar.’ He kept his eyes on her but it was almost as if she didn’t care. Perhaps these English-born types didn’t understand. ‘It’s a chamaari name,’ he clarified. Still he saw no change in her face, no recalibration in her eyes.

  ‘Is your family still in Bihar?’ she asked, warmly.

  He stood up, both hands running through his hair. It was disturbing, dizzying even, not to get the response he’d always had, since time began. ‘My family are dead.’

  Half an hour passed. Nothing more had been said. She wiped down the table and prepared her lunches for the following week. He, meanwhile, went round with his screwdriver – the TV, an old kettle – to see if a suitable fuse could be found. It was as if the silence between them had swelled into a third being, sitting at the table, someone whose eye they were working hard to avoid.

  Behind her, she could hear panels being loosened, the sound of metal on metal. She opened the fridge door, put her sandwiches on the shelf, and reached for a bottle of orange squash.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  He dropped the plugs, screws spilling. His hands were shaking. She came over and they gathered up all the screws and the wires and the plugs themselves and set them on the table.

  He told her he was thirteen when he left home to find work in Panjab. A lot of Biharis did this, he said. The Panjabis don’t work their own farms any more. Their sons have left for America, Canada, UK. The parents need servants. For six months he looked for work, travelling west from Ambala to Bathinda, then north as far as Amritsar. He slept in an aluminium tunnel he’d carried from home. For money, he scoured dump sites for plastic bottles and sold them to local recycling collectors. It was only when he reached Jalandhar that he found a good job, taking care of the farm for a family who lived about twenty kilometres outside the city. Their two sons had gone to Sydney, working in fast-food restaurants. My family were doing well, he said. I was making good money. For the first time we could afford to rent our own land and house. But after three years it all started to go wrong. He told her everything. About his father’s accident, his sister’s wedding, his attempts to make it as an auto driver. The riots that engulfed them and killed his family. His two years working in a brick factory in Calcutta and the travel across to Europe by plane, ship and truck. His weeks on the streets of Paris and the year in Southall and, finally, the trip up to here, Sheffield.

  ‘Life,’ he said.

  On Monday, heading out to work, she left the weekly payment on the table as usual. It was still there when she came back.

  ‘But don’t you need it?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve enough.’

  She divided the sabzi and put a plate of white bread in the centre of the table. She sat down. He was looking at the food.

  ‘Is something the matter?’ she asked.

  All at once he moved to the cupboards and pulled out the half-packet of flour. He shook it into a plastic bowl and added water from the tap.

  ‘Are you making roti?’ she asked, curious. She joined him at the sink.

  He was using his hands, the wet dough hanging off his fingertips in stiff peaks.

  ‘You made the sabzi, I’ll make the roti.’

  She watched him work, adding water a little at a time – which she supposed was where she always went wrong – and she saw the concentration on his face, as if nothing in the world was more important than this task. She watched the muscles in his upper arms rise and fall and a slight sheen of sweat form across his brow. When he finished, he threw the ball of dough high up in the air, caught it, and turned to her.

  ‘Done,’ he said. And there was that quick smile again, and here was she, feeling herself blush.

  That became the shape of their evenings: one of them cooking up the dhal or sabzi, the other making the rotis, and then a meal together, quietly, peaceably. At night he stood at his bedroom window, a finger absent-mindedly, repeatedly, tracing a crack in the wall. It really did feel like the two of them were alone in the world, as if the city was all lit up while they hid away in this pool of darkness. He moved to his mattress, listening. Her room was below his. There were small noises, creaks, light-footed and careful, unidentifiable in themselves, so painfully womanly when heard together.

  Narinder pulled out from her suitcase the photo of Guru Nanak and stood it on the windowsill. She brought her hands together underneath her chin and thanked Him. He’d seen that she was in trouble and had given her His sign. Tochi. That’s what this had all been about. That was why she’d been brought onto this path. So that she might help Tochi, a good man who’d been through too much. She understood now. She stood up, light-headed with relief. She wanted to rush upstairs and knock on his door. But no. She’d wait until tomorrow. She hurried into bed. It took some effort to get to sleep, though. She was restless, like a castaway who imagines they’ve seen the prow of their ship coming over the horizon.

  She didn’t catch him in the morning – he was still in his room and she needed to get to work. The evening, then, she decided. But when they sat down to eat that night she was suddenly nervous of his reaction. She mouthed a silent waheguru.

  ‘You not hungry?’

  ‘Hm?’ She gave the tiniest shrug, more a twitch of her shoulders, and put the roti down. ‘Not really.’

  ‘You should eat.’

  ‘Later.’

  He thought on this. ‘You don’t have to eat with me every night. You don’t have to feel sorry for me.’

  ‘I don’t feel sorry for you.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you about me. It’s put you in a difficult position.’

  ‘It’s not. I like spending time with you.’

  He said nothing for a while, as if absorbing this confession. ‘I’ll do the meal tomorrow.’

  She took a sip of her water. ‘I went to the gurdwara at lunchtime and signed up for the kirtan tomorrow. And the rest of the week. I’ll have langar there.’

  ‘And if someone sees you?’

  ‘God will protect me.’

  His jaw paused in its chewing, then resumed its work.

  ‘Why don’t you come?’ She’d tried to sound offhand.

  He said nothing.

  ‘It might help.’

  She watched him lift his face to her. The look in his eyes.

  ‘It might not help straight away. But in time . . .’

  ‘In time what?’

  She hesitated, then forced herself on. ‘It might help if you let in His love.’

  ‘If I let in his love,’ he repeated, as if trying the words out.

  ‘His love for us all.’

  He laughed a little, and turned back to his roti.

  He didn’t see her for five da
ys. He cooked his own meals – potatoes with a thin gravy, adding peas if he could steal some from work – and ate alone at the table. He’d be lying on his mattress by the time he heard her key rattling in the lock, her footsteps on the stairs. He held his breath – if she knocked, he’d answer – but always she turned down the landing and away from the second flight of stairs. He moved onto his stomach. He wished these feelings would go away. He wished things could be as straightforward as they once were.

  His phone rang – Ardashir. They’d not spoken since the hotel work dried up.

  ‘You still looking for work?’

  ‘In London?’

  ‘Would you go to Europe?’

  Tochi was crossing the empty car park in front of the chip shop, on his way home. He switched the phone to his other ear. ‘Get to the point.’

  ‘Building offices. In the capital of Spain. For the city’s rich.’ There was lots of work, he said, enough for two years at least. He knew one of the contractors, and they’d get Tochi across no problem. The job was his.

  ‘Are you going?’

  ‘Me? No, I don’t think so. I’ll see out my days here.’

  Tochi said nothing.

  ‘What is it? When do you want to leave?’

  He’d reached the gates to the Botanical Gardens. He curled a gloved hand around an iron bar. ‘I’m staying here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want to.’

  ‘You want to take this chance, Tarlochan. That’s what you want to do. They’re talking thousands. It’ll make your future.’

  ‘I’ve decided.’

  ‘You’ll never earn as much.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You’re being stupid.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He heard Ardashir sigh – ‘I hope she’s worth it’ – and then he rang off.

  He jumped the gates and was soon at the house, but one look at the unlit windows and he turned on his heel and set off back down the road.

  The nishaan sahib fluttered above the gurdwara and for a long while he stood in the sudden icy rain. Inside, he removed his shoes and washed his hands and took a ramaal from the basket and tied it around his head. He could hear the kirtan playing upstairs, the plaintive chords of the harmonium, and, sort of under them, encouraging them, her voice. Slowly, he climbed up. It was his first time inside a darbar sahib since his family’s murder. He didn’t bow down before the book. He sat at the back and watched.