Frowning, Randeep said he didn’t notice, didn’t care to notice.
‘And she didn’t let you stay?’
‘I didn’t want to.’
Gurpreet laughed. ‘Maybe one day you will.’
‘Leave him alone,’ Avtar said, strongly, eyes still closed.
‘Where are we going today?’ Randeep asked quickly.
Vinny – boss, driver – spoke up: ‘A new job, boys. We’re off to Leeds.’
They all groaned, complaining about how late they’d be back.
‘Hey, ease up, yeah? Or maybe I need to get me some freshies who actually want the work?’
Someone in the back closed his fist and made the wanker sign, a new thing that had been going round the house recently.
The proposed hotel site was directly behind the train station. A board so white it sparkled read, Coming soon! The Green: a Luxury Environmentally Friendly Living Space and Hotel in the City of Leeds. But right now it was just a massive crater, topsoil scraped off and piled in a pyramid to one side. At least all the bushes and trees had been cleared.
They assembled in the corner of the station car park, looking down onto the site. Another vanload joined them. Mussulmans, Randeep guessed. Bangladeshis even, by the look of them. A man approached, his hard hat askew on his big pink head. He went straight to Vinny and the two spoke and then shook hands.
‘All right, boys,’ Vinny said. ‘This is John. Your gaffer. Do what he says and you’ll be fine. I’ll pick you up at seven.’
The van reversed and Vinny left. Randeep moved closer to Avtar: if this John was going to pair them off then he wanted to be with him. But John began by handing out large pieces of yellow paper, faintly grid-lined. Avtar took one, studied it. Randeep peered down over his shoulder.
‘These are the project plans,’ John said, walking back and forth. ‘As you can see there’s lots to do, lots to do, so let’s just take it one step at a time, yes? You understand?’
‘We could do this with our eyes closed,’ Avtar muttered. ‘Saala bhanchod.’
‘Oy! No, bhaji!’ John said, bursting into Panjabi, pointing at Avtar with the rolled-up paper. ‘I no longer fuck my sister, acha?’
Avtar stared, open-mouthed, and then everyone was laughing.
They put on their hats, smoothing their hair out of the way, chose tool-belts and made for the footings stacked in neat angles on the wooden pallets. John called them back. He wanted stakes in first.
‘But it will take twice as long,’ Avtar said.
John didn’t care. ‘We’re doing this properly. It’s not one of your shanty towns.’
So Avtar and Randeep piled a wheelbarrow with the stakes and bumped on down to their squared-off section of the site. ‘You put in the stakes and I’ll follow with the footings,’ Avtar said.
Randeep dropped onto one knee and held a stake to the ground. With a second glance towards the plan, he brought down his hammer. ‘Like last time?’ He wasn’t going to fall for that again.
‘It’ll take all week just to do this,’ Avtar said. ‘It’s as big as one of their bhanchod football grounds.’
At lunchtime, they found their backpacks and joined the others sitting astride a large tunnel of aluminium tubing, newly exposed from the dig. Beside them, a tarpaulin acted as a windbreak. They slid off their helmets. Their hair was sopping.
Afterwards one or two pulled on their coats and turned up their collars and sank into a sleep. The rest decided on a cricket match to stay warm. They found a plank of wood for a bat and several had tennis balls handy. They divided into Sikhs and Muslims, three overs each. Gurpreet elected himself captain and won the toss. He put the Muslims in to bat.
‘No slips, but an edge is automatic out,’ he said, topknot swinging as he ran back to bowl.
He was knocked for fourteen off the first over, the last ball screaming for a six. Gurpreet watched it arc above his head and land somewhere in the car park.
‘Arré, yaar, there’s something wrong with that ball.’
‘Right,’ Avtar said. ‘The fact that it is being bowled by you.’
Randeep laughed but when Gurpreet glowered he fell silent.
They needed thirty-one to win and came nowhere near, with Avtar going for glory and getting caught, and puffing Gurpreet easily run out.
‘These Mussulmans,’ he said, throwing aside the bat. ‘Cheating is in their nature.’
John approached and for the first time Randeep noticed his gentle limp.
‘Bohut good work, men, bohut good work. But come on, jaldi jaldi, it looks like you’ll have it all khetum in no time.’
Avtar and Randeep stowed their lunchboxes and trudged down the site. Another six hours to go.
Vinny was late that evening.
‘Some of us have other jobs to get to, yaar,’ Avtar said.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ Vinny said. ‘I had to go to Southall.’ He was forced to turn left. ‘Crazy one-way system in this city.’
‘Is there work in Southall?’ Avtar asked, up and alert.
‘Hm? No, no. The opposite. I’ve found another one of you slackers. You’ll have to make some more room back there.’
No one spoke. It was nothing new. They came and went all the time.
Soon they hit the motorway. Someone asked if Vinny Sahib had heard anything about any raids? Because one of those Mussulmans, you see, he was telling that the raids have started again.
Vinny whistled a single clean note while shaking his head. ‘I’ve not heard a thing. Why would I? Far as I’m concerned you’re all legit, ain’t you? You all showed me your papers. Nowt to do with owt, me.’
The van continued in the slow lane, the tyres rumbling away under Randeep, a vibration that felt vacantly erotic. Then something made him sit up. At first he thought it was rain but it was too slow and gentle to be that. Then he understood, and touched his fingertips to the back window. ‘Mashallah,’ someone said, as Randeep felt them all brimming up behind him, pressing and jostling to stare at the sky, at the globe of tumbling snow around each street light.
At the house, Avtar persuaded Vinny to drop him off at the chip shop, leaving Randeep to eat alone in his room. Soon he was in bed, too exhausted to call Narinderji, too exhausted even to sleep, and he was still awake when he thought he heard a door sliding shut, like a van’s side door, and the downstairs bell being rung. He swiped clear a patch in the window – Vinnyji again? – and went down the first flight of stairs. Gurpreet and the others had edged into the hallway, shushing one another.
‘It’s Vinnyji,’ Randeep called down but no one seemed to hear him.
Gurpreet bent to the letter box, just as Vinny’s voice came through, shouting that he was freezing his fucking kecks off out here. Quickly, the door was opened and he hurried in. He was hunched over, looking shorter than usual, and each needle of his spiked hair was topped with a bobble of snow. Behind him was someone new.
Randeep joined them in the front room, glancing around for Avtar. The others were all there: some perched on the mattress laid over the metal trunk, two squatting on an upturned milk crate, several flopped into the Union Jack deckchairs nicked from a garden a couple of weeks ago. The TV was balanced on a three-legged stool in the middle of the room, playing their favourite desi call-in show.
‘This is Tochi,’ Vinny said, his thumb chucked towards the new guy. ‘Starts tomorrow, acha?’
He was very dark, much darker than Randeep, and shorter, but he looked strong. The tendons in his neck stood out. Twenty-one, twenty-two. One or two years older than him, anyway. So another he’d have to call bhaji.
‘I’ve got a spare mattress in the van. He’ll be staying in yours, OK, Ronny?’
It wasn’t really a question but Randeep said he was absolutely fine with that.
He and Tochi carried the mattress up the two flights and leaned it against the wall. They’d have to take out the wardrobe first.
‘Wait,’ Randeep said and placed his suitcase to one side, out of harm’s way.
‘Cares more about that fucking suitcase . . .’ Vinny said.
They bullied the wardrobe out and shoved in the mattress and then Vinny said he had to go.
‘Have a beer,’ Gurpreet said, joining them on the landing.
Vinny said he couldn’t. ‘Was meant to be back an hour ago. She’ll have the face on enough as it is.’ He turned to the new guy and made a star of his hand. ‘Five sharp, you understand? These lot’ll show you the ropes.’
When the three of them were left, Gurpreet folded his arms on the shelf of his gut, slowly. ‘So. Where you from?’
Tochi walked into the room and closed the door. Gurpreet stared after him, then pushed off the banister and huffed downstairs.
Randeep waited. He wanted to make a good first impression. He wanted a friend. He knocked and opened the door, stepping inside. The guy looked to be asleep already, still in his clothes and boots, and knees drawn up and hands pressed between them. He’d moved his mattress as far from Randeep’s as was possible in that small room: under the window, where the chill would be blowing down on him, through the tape.
‘Would you like a blanket? I have one spare,’ Randeep whispered. He asked again and when he again got no reply he tiptoed forward and folded out his best blanket and spread it over his new room-mate. Downstairs, there were still two rotis foil-wrapped in the fridge. He heated them straight on the hob. He liked the froggy way they puffed up. Then he coated them with some mango pickle. He didn’t want to join the others in the front room, where he could hear the TV blaring, but he didn’t want to disturb his new room-mate either. So he stayed there, marooned in the middle of the kitchen because there wasn’t a single clean surface to lean on, tearing shapes out of his roti and feeding himself.
By 3.15 the next morning Randeep was awake and washed and dressed and in the kitchen binning the previous day’s joss stick and lighting a fresh one. He said a quick prayer, warming his hands by the cooker flame, and set about getting what he needed: frying pans, rolling pin, butter and dough from the fridge, a cupful of flour from the blue barrel. He dusted the worktop with the flour and tore a small chunk from the cold brown dough, softening it between his palms. He had just over an hour to get sixty rotis done.
He paced himself and rolled out the dough-balls methodically. Four rolls up, turn it round, four rolls more, a pinch more flour, three more rolls on each side and then into the pan. He found himself whistling even as his upper arms filled with a rich, dull ache. There was movement around the house: radio alarms, the thrust of a tap. He quickened up and once the rotis were done and wrapped he dumped the frying pans in the sink for whoever would be on washing duty that night and replaced them on the hob with four large steel pans of water, full gas. He added tea bags, cloves, fennel and sugar and while all that boiled he gathered up the five flasks and dozen Tupperware boxes stacked on the windowsill. Each box bore a name written in felt-tip Panjabi. He found an extra box for his new room-mate, Tochi, and spooned in some potato sabzi from the fridge. As he carried a six-litre carton of milk to the hob, Gurpreet wandered in, the bib of his dungarees dangling half undone. He was pinning his turban into place.
‘All finished? Thought you might have needed some help again.’
Randeep flushed but concentrated on pouring the milk into the pans.
‘Clean the bucket after you wash, acha?’ Gurpreet went on, moving to the Tupperware boxes. ‘None of your servants here.’
He had cleaned it, he was sure he had, and his family had never had servants. He didn’t say anything. He just watched Gurpreet moving some of the sabzi from the other boxes, including Randeep’s, and adding it to his own. He wondered if he did this with everyone or only when it was Randeep on the roti shift.
‘Where’s your new friend from?’
Randeep said he didn’t know, that he went to sleep straight away.
‘His name?’
‘Tochi.’
‘Surname, fool.’
Randeep thought for a moment, shrugged. ‘Never said.’
‘Hmm. Strange.’
Randeep didn’t say a word, didn’t know what he was driving at, and stood silently waiting for the pans to come to the boil again. He had the twitchy sensation he was being stared at. Sure enough, Gurpreet was still there by the fridge, eyes fixed.
‘Bhaji?’ Randeep asked. Gurpreet grunted, seemed to snap out of it and left, then the hiss of the tea had Randeep leaping to turn off the gas.
Soon the house was a whirl of voices and feet and toilet flushes and calls to get out of bed. They filed down, rucksacks slung over sleepy shoulders, taking their lunchbox from the kitchen counter; next a rushed prayer at the joss stick and out into the cold morning dark in twos and threes, at ten-minute intervals. Randeep looked for Tochi but he must have gone ahead, so he paired up with Avtar as usual. Before he left the house he remembered to take up the pencil strung and taped to the wall and he scored a firm thick tick next to his name on the rota.
Overnight, the ground had toughened, compacted, and at the end of the morning they were still staking it out while Langra John – Limpy John – and three other white men went about in yellow JCBs.
‘Wish I had that job,’ Randeep said, closing his lunchbox. ‘Just driving about all day.’
Avtar clucked his tongue. ‘One day, my friend. Keep working hard and one day we’ll be the bosses.’
Randeep leaned back against the aluminium tunnel. He shut his eyes and must have nodded off for a while because the next thing he heard was the insistent sound of Gurpreet’s voice.
‘But you must have a pind. Was that in Calcutta too?’
Tochi was sitting against a low wall, the soles of his boots pressed together and knees thrown wide open.
‘I’m talking to you,’ Gurpreet said.
‘My pind’s not in Calcutta.’
‘Where, then?’
Tochi swigged from his water bottle and took his time screwing the top back on. He had a quiet voice. ‘Bihar.’
Gurpreet looked round at everyone as if to say, Didn’t I tell you? ‘So what are you?’
Avtar spoke up. ‘Arré, this is England, yaar. Leave him.’
‘Ask him his bhanchod name.’
Shaking his head, Avtar turned to Tochi. ‘What are you? Ramgarhia? Saini? Just shut him up.’
‘Ask him his bhanchod name, I said.’
Tochi made to get up, frost crackling underfoot. ‘Tarlochan Kumar.’
Randeep frowned a little but hoped no one saw it.
‘A bhanchod chamaar,’ Gurpreet said, laughing. ‘Even the bhanchod chamaars are coming to England.’
‘Who cares?’ Avtar said.
‘Only backward people care,’ Randeep said, but Gurpreet was still laughing away to himself and then John limped up and said they better get a move on.
‘Do you think he’s got a visa?’ Randeep asked, when they started up again.
Avtar looked at him. ‘When did you last meet a rich chamaar?’
‘His parents might have helped him.’
‘Janaab, don’t go asking him about his parents. He’s probably an orphan.’
That evening Gurpreet knocked on their bedroom door and said he and a few of the others were going out, so Randeep and Tochi would have to help with the milk run. ‘You’ve got Tesco.’
‘Where are you going?’ Randeep asked and Gurpreet made a fist and pumped it down by his crotch.
‘And stop buying those bhanchod cloves and whatnot. We don’t have money to waste, little prince.’
Randeep waited until he heard him on the stairs, out of earshot. ‘He’s that ugly he has to pay for it.’
Tochi was threading his belt around himself. The swish of it sliced the air. ‘You’ll have to do it yourself.’
‘I can’t carry all that milk. Do you know how far it is? Can’t you help me?’
‘Join one of the others.’
‘But we can’t all go to the same place. The gora gets suspicious.’
Tochi said
nothing.
‘I respect you, bhaji,’ Randeep said. ‘Can’t you help me?’
On Ecclesall Road the roadworks still hadn’t finished and the street was all headlights and banked-up snow. Randeep pulled his woolly hat lower over his ears and marched through. Tarlochan only had on his jeans and a shirt which kept belling in the wind. His jeans had no pockets, as if they’d been torn, and his hands looked raw-white with cold, like the claws of some sea creature.
‘Next time I will insist you borrow my gloves,’ Randeep said. ‘You can have them. I have two pairs.’
As they passed the turn-off for the Botanical Gardens, Randeep pointed. ‘That’s where Avtar bhaji’s second job is. Through the gardens and carry on straight.’
‘Whose garden is it?’
‘No one’s. Everyone’s. Maybe the government’s. But they’re pretty. I always think it’s like we have the city, then the gardens, then the countryside.’ He nodded towards the hills, made smoothly charcoal by the night. ‘Shall we go there one day? To the countryside?’
‘How many apneh work with your friend?’
Privately, Randeep felt ‘apneh’ was perhaps a little too far, given their background. ‘A few, but no one else from the house. You looking for a second job too?’
He didn’t say anything. Instead he turned sharp left down a road, his head bent low. Randeep yelled his name, then ran to catch up.
‘Police,’ Tochi said, still walking.
Randeep turned round and saw the blue lights revolving by. ‘No visa, then.’
‘I guess not.’
‘How did you get here? Ship or truck?’
‘On your mother’s cunt.’
Randeep stared glumly into a dark coffee-shop window. It didn’t seem to matter how hard he tried.
‘Sorry,’ Tochi said. He looked annoyed with himself.
‘I’m on a marriage visa.’ Randeep expected a reaction but got none. ‘I got married,’ he went on, aware he was starting to blather. ‘To a girl. She came over to Panjab. From London. But she’s here now. In Sheffield, I mean.’
‘So why not live with her?’
‘She’s Sikhni. But I’m not that bothered, if I’m honest with you, bhaji. I’m going to take some clothes over soon but that’s it. It’s just one year, get my stamp, pay her the money, get the divorce, then bring my parents and sisters over. It’s all agreed with Narinderji.’ And he wished he’d not said her name. He felt like he’d revealed something of himself.
The Year of the Runaways Page 2