by John Freeman
‘Good. Let’s leave it at that.’ And then: ‘Your uncle’s thinking of selling the land.’
His forehead—smooth, unblemished (could a forehead be described as perfect?)—narrowed, as if asking why she was telling him this.
‘I thought you should know. As you looked after it,’ which sounded like the most ridiculous thing she’d ever uttered in her life.
‘Well, he’ll get a lot for it.’
‘Fifteen crore,’ she admitted. Was there anything she wouldn’t disclose?
‘And all tax free. It’s pays to lie, doesn’t it?’
‘I don’t think you should call my husband a liar.’
‘They all do it. Not a penny do they pay in tax.’ He shook his head, as if in wonder at what some people can get away with. ‘The rich know all the schemes.’
‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘If you can’t say anything good about him then let’s just wait for him in silence.’
While they waited she remembered she hadn’t topped up the cash machine. Squatting, knees flared so the apron of her kameez hung between her legs, she wrapped her arms around the machine’s wide grey base and pulled. It seemed heavier today, or maybe she was only getting older. Manjit crouched opposite and said he’d do it.
‘I can manage,’ she said, clearly not managing.
He circled his arms around the thing, and they were like two people attempting to shift a tree. This close he even carried a faint smell of India, some old dark smell that made her want to weep and inhale all that was around his neck. They forced the machine away from the wall so Balbir could get to the safe hidden in its hollow stand and add the new cash. What a lie those ‘We don’t have access to the machine’ and ‘No cash kept overnight’ stickers were! As they crouched and pushed it back against the wall Manjit’s hand—accidentally?—touched hers, rested on top of her fingers, over the middle one that was singly ringed. Balbir, gently, as if nothing had happened, took her hand back and told herself that the tingling shooting up her arm was only the hum of the Coke fridge. Because she was nearly twenty years older than him for God’s sake. Old enough to be his amma. Old enough to know better.
‘That’s one heavy machine,’ he said.
‘Hm? Oh yes. Heavy. Very heavy.’
He smiled, as if perplexed. It must have been an accident. Definitely an accident. Why else would he look so confused? Why else would he be walking round to her? With his words and his smell. Oh his smell. His smell and his lips and please God help me but yes his kiss.
‘Y ou’re looking worried, ji,’ Kulwant said to Jagroop, sliding her just-shaven legs under the duvet, placing one calf across his knee. Any higher and her back gave a twinge.
‘Hm?’ he said. ‘Oh no. No. Come here.’
‘You sure? It’s been three nights you’ve been like this. Not talking. Thinking. You never think. I can tell something’s the matter. I am your wife.’
‘Uff, woman, I said it’s nothing.’
Huffing, she wriggled to her side of the bed.
She heard him sigh. ‘We’ve had a letter.’
She rose onto her elbows. ‘What letter?’
He brought a photocopy up with him the next night, a formal-looking communication on strong white paper. Running along the top, about two inches wide, the lion-and-scrolls imprimatur of the Government of India Tax Commission, Investigative Office.
Dear S. Gurdev S. Aulak and S. Jagroop S. Aulak (sons/o S. Bachittar S. Aulak)
A complaint (ref. no. 877D3G#1) has been registered with regards to plots 7A, 7B and 7E on the New Cantt Road in the town of Jandiala of district Jalandhar in relation to the selling of these three plots. We believe the documents for these plots are with you and that you are therefore the rightful owners of these plots. However, these plots have not been registered with the Government of India Tax Commission (Punjab State Division) which is legally required for you to do so before any sale, trade or exchange can be made. The penalty for completing a sale without informing the GITC (PSD) is potentially custodial. To register your land please visit our website at indiataxoffice. gov.org.in/rurallandregistration (we recommend you have your bank details with you).
The letter continued for another paragraph, giving the contact details and auto-signature of a Major Jarnail Singh, followed by some words on the role and remit of the GITC, which Kulwant had cribbed from its website. She was particularly pleased by her use of the word ‘custodial’. Her first draft had simply and crudely declared ‘The penalty is jail’ until she went over it all again with a dictionary and a thesaurus at her side and the letter templates she’d snagged from the Internet.
When she showed the letter to Balbir, Balbir read it and immediately handed it back, as if it were a cursed object. ‘I can’t believe you wrote that. I can’t believe you sent it.’
‘I told you I would.’
‘They’ll kill us.’
‘Isn’t this a form of death? They’ve robbed us both of kids. We’ve worked like dogs for them.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ Balbir said. ‘There are worse ways to have lived.’ ‘Lived. Exactly. We should still be living.’
Balbir pulled her knees to her chest, revealing orange-stockinged feet (‘No heating after nine,’ Mum insisted, in her electric blanket).
‘I know you’re scared. Think of Jassi. Of Zuby.’
‘We won’t get away with it. We can’t.’
Sitting on the bed, Kulwant put her hand on Balbir’s knee. ‘We can try. Let’s give them a run for their money at least.’ Then: ‘How are you? Better?’
Balbir shrank back against the headboard, as if distancing herself from the lies she’d been telling, because it had been two whole weeks since she’d been to the shop, feigning illness—‘Womens’ problems,’ she’d said to Gurdev, who’d made an odd grunting noise and probed no further.
Kulwant despatched three more letters over the next month, each growing in impatience and the last mentioning a ‘seizing of land rights if registration not completed in a timely fashion.’
‘Harami bhanchod bastards!’ Jagroop said, hitting the letter with the back of his hand.
‘All this shor-tamasha. Why don’t you just register it?’
‘Why don’t you once in a while try talking some sense? Do you know how much tax we’ll have to pay if we do that? Sixty percent. Sixty bhanchod percent.’
‘Hm. Well. That is a lot.’
‘Isn’t it?’ he said, sneeringly. ‘There’ll be no you-and-me-time if we get lumbered with that. You can stay in that shop the rest of your life.’
‘What do other people do?’
‘How am I supposed to know. Bhaji’s looking into it.’
She reached over his belly for the iPhone beside his blood pressure pills.
‘What are you doing?’
‘We can do our own research, can’t we? It is our money as well.’
He wrested the phone back but his face conceded that she had a point and he brought up his home page, a search engine. ‘What shall I type?’
‘Oh, how should I know? You know I’m no good with these things.’
‘Land tax in India?’
‘Hm,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Something like that. Like “avoiding rural land tax in Punjab for foreigners” or something. Maybe.’
With a down-scroll of the screen here, and a well-placed question there, she led him to the sites advising on the least shady way to evade rural land taxes. She knew their content pretty much by rote and the main advice on them all was practically identical: ‘Hide your assets . . . Spread your wealth . . . Spouse, adult children are good . . . Don’t lump it all together under one name . . . Sell after six months . . .’
‘What’s all that mean, ji?’ Kulwant asked.
He bookmarked the page and killed the screen. ‘Doesn’t matter.’
The afternoon the accountant arrived, Balbir spilled the tea because her hands were trembling so much. She fetched a cloth and wiped the puddle away, avoiding all eye contact with Gur
dev and the suited Hindu at his side—Gujurati even, going by his name—a sixty-something with trimmed white hair. She returned to the kitchen, her face hot with fear.
‘Calm down,’ Kulwant whispered.
‘What calm down. We’re going to be found out. Oh God, where will we go?’ She put her hip to the sink and covered her face with her hands.
But the accountant left after a couple of hours, taking with him a blue bag of Balbir’s samosas, and nothing more happened until one evening, ten days later, when Gurdev and Jagroop called them both into the lounge. On the mahogany coffee table was a set of bound papers, the front page folded back so the title couldn’t be read.
‘Sign these,’ Gurdev said, holding out a pen.
‘Oh? What are they?’ Kulwant asked.
‘Since when do you backchat?’
‘Just sign it,’ Jagroop said.
‘But why can’t I ask what it is?’ Kulwant pressed.
Jagroop clutched her upper arm and pushed her forward. ‘Sign. I’ll explain later.’
So she did, Gurdev turning the pages—‘Here, here . . . here . . . and here’—and then Balbir, wiping her damp, dishwashing hands on the end of her chunni, did too.
They had six months to sell the land that was now in their names. There’d be a twenty percent penalty, Kulwant explained, because of some unavoidable early selling charge, but they couldn’t risk waiting longer. No doubt Gurdev and Jagroop were planning to sell up as soon as the half year was over and before the tax people would notice. There was, however, the problem of how to sell land in the bureaucratic maze that was India.
‘That is a problem,’ Kulwant said.
‘A samasi’a,’ Balbir replied, absently, and Kulwant looked across, by degrees, as if absorbing this strange past-life word.
Balbir had not been alone with Manjit since the kiss: there’d been the fake illness, then for a week she had timed her arrival at the shop to coincide with Gurdev’s return from any deliveries. It had never occurred to her, she realised as she passed the van’s empty parking space and entered the store, that he might tell anyone of her shame. She’d just seemed to know that he wouldn’t. And this realisation—his discretion, her wantonness—only made her feel worse. What kind of gutter woman must he think her to be? He was refilling the cigarette lines—Lambert & Butler, Rothmans—getting ready for the next day when he looked back and saw her standing there. He moved out from the counter, throwing the cellophane into the potato-sack bin, and she waited for him to pass before starting to till up. She kept her eyes on the money, counting, recounting, distracted. He was deep in the middle aisle, mopping the linoleum. She bagged up the notes; sorted the cash machine, the PayPoint and lottery terminals; then adjusted her chunni over her shoulder and approached.
‘I need your help,’ she said.
Later, Kulwant locked the door to Balbir’s room. ‘But what if he tells?’
‘What other option do we have? And he won’t tell.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘There’s five lakhs in it for him.’
‘Still, pehnji. Are you sure he’s trustworthy?’
‘Yes.’
Perhaps she’d been too adamant, too immediate in her defence, because Kulwant sat beside her and asked with quiet suspicion, ‘How can you be so certain?’
Balbir said nothing, only looked at the wall, and Kulwant put a hand to the small of Balbir’s back as if to relay a promise that she’d ask nothing more.
For a quick sale they stuck a price of twelve crore on the land—an alarming one million pounds even after everything was deducted—and asked Manjit to ensure that not a word was mentioned in any newspaper or on any website, nowhere anyone from the pind might see it and call Gurdev and Jagroop. Instead, Manjit contacted a close friend who knew someone who, in turn, knew someone who’d had dealings with a man at the Punjab Development Authority. Everyone in this chain insisted on his own one-lakh cut of the sale, but it meant that within a month Manjit was on the phone to buyers at three of the biggest commercial developers in the district, all of whom were panting to make the purchase.
‘How long will it take?’ Balbir asked.
‘I don’t know.’ He placed a USB stick on the ice-cream fridge between them. ‘There are some papers on here you need to print out and sign. Your sister-in-law, too.’
‘More forms,’ she said, zipping the stick into the inside pocket of her handbag. ‘Thank you.’
‘Where will you go?’ he asked suddenly.
She was surprised. He’d never asked questions. ‘We haven’t decided. I want to see my daughter and granddaughter. In Leicester.’
‘You might need to go further.’
‘Yes, well, like I said, we haven’t decided.’ Then: ‘You must think I’m a very besharam, loose woman.’
‘The opposite. I think you’re very brave.’
The door buzzed and Gurdev came in and maybe he witnessed something difficult and intimate in the way she had to force her eyes away from Manjit’s face, because he said not a word on the drive home and the next morning Kulwant spent half an hour applying concealer to the bruise around Balbir’s mouth.
A completion date was agreed upon—still some five weeks before the six-month deadline—and on the night before the funds were to be transferred Balbir arrived at the shop to close up as usual.
‘You won’t be able to keep it quiet for much longer,’ Manjit said. ‘As soon as the money’s handed over someone will talk.’
She nodded. ‘We’ve made plans.’
She walked down the aisles, lingering, staring at the large white squares that made up the ceiling. How many years? How many hours? She’d given her life to this little shop. Her life. Would anyone notice she’d gone? That the little Indian woman from the shop—what was her name?—was no longer there?
‘Will your cut be deducted before the money’s moved?’ she asked, circling back to him.
‘Ji. I thought that would be easier.’
She nodded again, looked round the shop one final time, and back to his face. She tidied some grey hairs away from her cheek and rose up onto her toes and kissed him very deliberately, very fully, and very slowly on the mouth.
‘What’s with the suitcase?’ Jagroop asked as Kulwant wheeled the gleaming box to the van. ‘We’re only going for the day.’
‘Supplies. Food. Mum’s medications.’
It had taken several weeks of planning, this trip to Hull, once they’d got the completion date. They’d considered absconding in the night, then in the day, or saying they were only going to the gurdwara, even concocting an elaborate plot involving a choking fit and a late-night dash to hospital. But there was always the question of how to get their belongings, noiselessly, inconspicuously, past their shrewd-eyed mother-in-law.
‘Let’s not, then,’ Kulwant said. ‘Let’s do it in plain daylight.’
Hints were dropped, there were throwaway mentions over roti of how wonderful a trip to the beach would be, that the sea air would do Mum no end of good. They spoke of a family day out, a day trip, and showed their husbands how cheaply it could all be done. None of it was taken seriously. Only when Balbir chanced upon news of a trade fair in a city called Hull (‘Cheapest prices guaranteed.’ ‘Make contacts from all over Europe!’) did Gurdev start to take grudging notice and finally agree to the idea of time away from the shops. Balbir moved the completion date back by one week so it fell on the same day as the fair, and from then until the morning they left she lay awake at night listening to her heart thump thump thump.
They took the van up the M18, the M62, Gurdev, Jagroop and Mum in the front while Balbir and Kulwant sat swaying on the rear wheel arches, Kulwant holding on to their suitcase. It seemed like every minute Kulwant would check their bank balance on her phone and glance over to Balbir and shake her head.
‘Did you register us for the fair?’ Jagroop asked over the noise of Sunrise Radio.
‘Ji!’ Kulwant replied. ‘It starts at one. Maybe let’
s go to the beach first?’
‘Who cares about the beach?’
‘For Mum! The sea air!’
They found a car park across from the water and the van doors were opened to let the women out. Balbir reached back in for the suitcase.
‘We’re not carrying that bhanchod thing around,’ Gurdev said.
‘But—we might need it. I’ll wheel it.’
Gurdev slammed the doors shut. ‘If you need it, you can come back for it. Here–’ and he passed the keys for her to put in her handbag. As the five of them headed for the lift Kulwant, pushing Mum in her wheelchair, kept looking back, memorising the van’s location.
It was a blustery day, the sky a grey dome, and their coats remained fully buttoned up, right to their chins.
‘Who’s pucking idea was this?’ Mum said as they lifted the front wheels of her chair onto the promenade.
‘It’s good for you, Mum,’ Jagroop said. ‘It’s a different kind of air here. Cleaner.’
They made it to the pier, then up it, Gurdev striding ahead, as if on his way to fight the sea, and still the phone showed no increase in their bank balance.
‘What now?’ Gurdev said, turning round at the candy-striped railing. ‘There’s the sea. We’ve seen it.’
‘Something to eat, maybe?’ Balbir suggested, chin-jutting towards the tables in what looked to be some sort of indoor viewing point. ‘We could eat the paratha we brought.’
Kulwant made sure to lead them in, choosing a spot folded into a corner, away from the windows. ‘Less noisy for Mum.’
Paratha were unfoiled and handed round, with achaar and butter. A flask of tea. As Balbir served everyone a second cup she noticed Kulwant looking at her phone with lips starting to part, as if in awe, and it took all the strength Balbir had to steady her hand and keep pouring the tea.
‘I need the toilet,’ Kulwant said, rising slowly from the table. ‘Pehnji?’
‘Why you both—?’
‘Women’s,’ Kulwant said and Jagroop bent back to his food. ‘Pehnji?’ she said again and this time Balbir stood and picked up her handbag. She remained standing for a while, watching the three of them eat, watching Gurdev, her husband, fixing this image in her mind. Kulwant touched her sleeve and Balbir nodded and followed her through the room.