The Year of the Runaways (13 page)

Narinder handed him the rent, which he took with a resigned sigh and counted out very slowly.

‘This is all very cumbersome,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I have to come here to collect it and then I have to go to the bank. It’s all very . . . cumbersome.’

Narinder didn’t know what to say. She wished he’d turn round and go down the stairs and leave.

‘Do you not have a bank account?’

‘Sorry.’

‘What about your husband?’

‘I’ll ask him.’

‘Don’t you know?’

She said nothing.

‘I’m going to have to up your rent.’

‘Pardon?’

‘For the costs I incur in coming here.’

Narinder looked to the wall over the man’s shoulder, at the cracks in the plaster, like branches. ‘No. I’m sorry.’

‘You what?’

‘I don’t think you’re doing the right thing.’

He nearly laughed. ‘I rather think that’s for me to decide.’

‘Imagine it’s not me standing here. Imagine it’s your sister or your mother. Would you want them to be treated like this?’

‘But you’re not, are you? Either my sister or my mother.’ Adding, muttering, ‘Thank the good Lord.’

‘But if I was. How would you feel if someone was trying to use them in this way?’

He pressed the silver top of his pen, so the nib disappeared. ‘I think we’re going off point.’

‘I think you have to be fair, Mr Greatrix. To treat people as kindly as you’d want those closest to you to be treated. I might be your tenant but I’m also your friend and neighbour.’

Someone once said to her that when she spoke she made people feel naked against the world.

‘Maybe we can discuss this another time,’ he said, blushing as he made his exit.

She was woken by a rattling sound, as though someone was trying to trip the lock. Momentarily, she thought Mr Greatrix was back. She sat up. Her heart was thumping. The clock-radio blinked 12:00. The light had cut out, or had been cut out. She told herself not to get like this, not to let fear take her over. She held the kandha at the hollow of her throat and listened for Him, and something like the stroke of a wing disturbed the air beside her face. She moved to the bedroom door – heel to toe, heel to toe – and opened it. She must have forgotten to draw the curtains because the main room was bathed in a geometry of light, shapely blocks of blue that made a cityscape on the floor and walls. There it was again, the rattling. She found the torch-pen she’d bought the previous week and with a rolling pin in her other hand opened the apartment door. In the dark the stairs looked even narrower, longer. It was only the wind in the letter box. Sighing, a little irritated with herself, she took a pink token from the tin under the sink and kept one hand to the wall as she went down to the meter. When she came back, she couldn’t sleep, so drew out from under the mattress her letter, the one she’d a few nights ago started drafting to her father. She wanted to write a letter to her family every month. This was her second. She’d gone back home to Croydon after the visa marriage, not telling anyone. The lawyers had said it was important she had a fixed address, at least until her interview, until the visa was granted. The interview, mercifully, was short. As instructed, she said she’d met Randeep four years ago, on one of her yearly visits to India, and that they’d fallen in love and decided to get married. She had photos and witness testaments to support it. The interviewer – a kind-looking man, close to retirement – smiled and said it all looked in order and that he was happy to support her application. Soon, she received a call from the Indian lawyer confirming that Delhi had granted the visa, and that Randeep and his family were extremely grateful, that they said it was as if she’d been delivered to them from God. Narinder could expect her first payment by the end of the month.

One month after that, mere weeks before her real wedding to a man called Karamjeet, Narinder left home. She wrote the most difficult letter of her life and secured it with a hairclip to the front of her gutka, and placed this on her dressing table. She’d not said anything about Randeep – they’d only notify the police and put an end to it all – she’d only said that she had her reasons for not being able to go through with the wedding right now but that she’d be back in one year and hoped with enough time they’d be able to forgive her. At four in the morning, an hour before her father woke for his morning prayers, Narinder carried her suitcase down the stairs and stepped outside, where a taxi was waiting to take her to the station.

Now, she attached a stamp and sealed up the envelope. Like last month’s letter, this one simply communicated that she was fine, that she’d be back by the end of the year and that they weren’t to worry. She folded out her map across the bed – she’d take a train somewhere tomorrow and post it from there.

She never attended the gurdwara on Sundays, always fearful of finding herself in the middle of a wedding, face to face with an overpowering aunty who knew her family. But most other evenings she took the bus from the bottom of her hill and would arrive in plenty of time to hear the evening’s rehraas sahib. Unlike the gurdwaras she loved in Croydon and Ilford and Southall, the Sheffield one wasn’t domed and the windows had no balconies cut with gentle fretwork. It was a plain brick building with five uneven stone steps leading to a black door and gold knocker. It could have been someone’s house and, once, probably was. To the left of the door a large blue plaque was inscribed with the kandha and next to that a nishaan sahib waved its little orange flag. After prayers, she’d repair to the canteen kitchen, and more often than not to the giant concrete sinks where she’d spend the rest of the evening hosing down the dirty dishes passed her way.

One evening, she was doing just that when Randeep saw her and halted. Avtar was with him and they’d finished eating and been on their way to hand in their thalis. They didn’t come to the gurdwara often but sometimes, like tonight, because there wasn’t a milk run to do and because Vinny had dropped them off early, they’d put their kurta-tunics on over their jeans and bussed it up.

‘What is it?’ Avtar asked.

‘Nothing. Here. Take mine. I need the toilet.’

‘Take your own.’

‘Please,’ he pleaded. ‘She’ll see me.’

Avtar looked. It was mostly old women. There was only one who was young, scrubbing hard at the insides of some steel glasses. ‘Is that our Narinderji? She does seva here?’

Randeep made a desperate face.

‘Come on. What are you scared of?’

Avtar handed his dishes to one of the old women, forcing Randeep to give his up to Narinder. He held out his thali and she didn’t look up and see him until he said, ‘Sat sri akal.’

‘Sat—’ She stared for a long while, blankly, until at last she seemed to remember that her hands were meant to be doing something and she took his plate from him. ‘Sat sri akal.’

‘We come here sometimes,’ Randeep said.

‘I see.’

‘Are you doing seva?’ At the rim of his vision, he could see Avtar slapping his forehead.

‘I try to help,’ she said, rinsing the plate under the taps.

‘Oh, yes. Me too.’

‘I’ve never seen you here before.’

‘I usually come in the week.’

‘I’m here most days.’

‘Right.’

Frowning, she went back to her cleaning.

‘Well, maybe I should make more of an effort. If you’re here most evenings.’ He smiled.

She seemed perplexed. ‘I don’t see what difference me being here makes.’

‘No, no. I guess I just thought it might be a good idea. If people see us together.’

He rejoined Avtar, who put his arm chummily around Randeep’s shoulder and led him outside. ‘There, there.’

‘If you hadn’t rushed me, I’d have been fine.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry. Next time I won’t.’

‘Next time you won’t be there.’

‘Arré, but she’s such a cutie, yaar.’

They walked a little further on. Randeep was smiling. ‘She is cute, isn’t she? You know, that’s what my sister said, too. Lakhpreet said she’s “cute as a button”. That’s another one of their English phrases. Did you know it already? Cute. As. A. Button.’ But Avtar didn’t say anything, and Randeep, still smiling, didn’t notice.

That night, sitting on his mattress in the room he shared with two others, Avtar studied the four small piles he’d made of his money. The first pile was for the monthly repayment on what he owed Bal. The second for the loan taken out against his father’s shawl shop. The third pile was meant to help his parents with their rent and bills and, lastly, a pile for his own expenses here in England. No savings pile. There’d never been a savings pile. No matter. Once the loans were paid off, then saving could begin. He started counting it all again when from across the room came a loud grunting snore and a turning-over. Instinctively Avtar crushed the notes together and hid them under his arms. He waited until he was sure the other two weren’t faking their sleep and then he separated the money into piles again. It was no good. Bal was coming up in his BMW next week and still there wasn’t enough. He took some notes from his parents’ pile and split it between the first two. Still he was short. He recounted how much he had set aside for himself and took half of this and distributed it evenly among the rest.

The following day, on their way back from Leeds in the van, Gurpreet threw in his weekly contribution and passed the tin to Avtar. Avtar slipped in half of his normal share.

‘What’s this?’ Gurpreet said. ‘You cheating us, chootiya?’

‘I’m not eating for half the week. So I’ll pay half as well.’

Gurpreet tutted in false sympathy. ‘And two jobs he works. Spending it all on whores?’

‘Your mother’s not that expensive,’ Avtar said, sighed. Gurpreet laughed and Avtar passed the tin on.

4.
AVTAR AND RANDEEP: TWO BOYS

Avtar Nijjar, former student and now the youngest conductor employed by BUTA Travel, held on to the rubber loop above the door and leaned out of the bus.

‘Sidhu Bangla! Geetpur! Kalawar! Jheela! Choper!’

He moved aside, arse against the windscreen, as elbows and legs clambered in. He kept one hand over his ticket machine and money bag. Thankfully, mercifully, it was the fifth and final round trip of the day. ‘That diversion’s not helping,’ he told Harbhajan. ‘Try Farid Chowk this time.’

Harbhajan sighed and draped himself across the thin hoop of the steering wheel, his new flamingo-pink turban cocked against the windscreen. ‘Yaar, we should go somewhere. Goa, maybe. Imagine it. The beach. Some bhang, some money.’

Passengers were still forcing themselves on board. Avtar started to count over their heads.

‘We’ll take this,’ Harbhajan said, patting the dashboard.

They were full. Avtar slammed the door and some of the people shut out rushed to flag autos; others stood swearing at him through the glass. ‘Your papa let us take this bus? Jha, jha. You must be dreaming.’

And sighing again Harbhajan pressed on the horn for an unnecessarily long beat and urged the bus forward.

It was nearly dark when the last passengers disembarked at Harmandir Sahib and Harbhajan drove on to the shawl shop. Avtar passed him the ticket machine and the day’s takings and jumped down.

‘Just think about it,’ Harbhajan said. ‘Goa! The kudiyaan on the beach in their small-small clothes.’

‘See you later,’ Avtar said and slipped out of his old black shoes and bounded up into the shop. It was a single room lined floor to ceiling with wooden cubbyholes, and each hole held a neat stack of six shawls. At the back of the room his father sat cross-legged on a large fringed cushion. He had a customer with him, several cream and faintly damp-smelling Rajasthani shawls spread before her. Avtar began refolding and repackaging the many shawls that had been viewed and discarded during the day, separating them first by material and then by design and price. He rustled them back into clear plastic covers, stapled the covers secure, and returned the shawls to their cubbyholes. As he finished the customer stood up, puffing out her white-and-pink sari.

‘Madam, I have one more you will definitely like,’ his father called but she was already through the shop and summoning her rickshaw-wallah.

Silently, together, they shook the sequins from the groundsheet and one by one thumbed out the ten joss sticks lit before the images of the ten gurus.

‘I’ll bring the scooter round,’ Avtar said.

‘You go. There’s still work to do.’ It was the eighth time this month he’d insisted on staying behind. Avtar had stopped asking why, but keep counting.

‘I’ll come back in a couple of hours, then.’

‘No, no. I’ll make my own way back.’

‘Papa – it’s too far to walk.’

‘I’ll get Mohan to drop me off. Stop worrying.’

So Avtar took the small royal-blue tin with the day’s meagre earnings and clipped it to his jeans and rode home.

The lift was still broken at Gardenia Villas. He returned outside and checked the four public toilets to the east of the building but none had toilet paper. He’d just have to come back down after dinner with some of his own.

He vaulted up the stairs and made it halfway up the twelfth flight before stopping for breath. It was further than he’d ever got before. He leaned against the warm wall and reread Lakhpreet’s note, pouting, wondering what her ‘news’ would be. He didn’t like surprises.

On the landing, Mr Lal, their neighbour, sat on a fishing chair outside his front door, smoking a pipe. He’d tied a wet American-flag towel around the smoke alarm, Avtar noticed.

‘Young Avtar! Kaise ho?’

‘Good, uncle. Thank you.’

‘Still working the buses, I see.’

Avtar smiled flatly.

‘Well. Good for you.’

He’d got used to the man’s way of boasting, and asked, as he knew he had to, ‘Have you heard from Monty recently?’

‘Yesterday.’ He blew out pipe smoke. ‘Lakhs he is earning. Lakhs. The way he’s going, he’ll have his own business in Toronto soon. And then we’ll join him.’

The jealousy always got Avtar in the gut, though he tried not to let it show. ‘I hope so. God willing.’

‘Nothing to do with God. You just have to go where the money is.’