The Year of the Runaways

by Sunjeev Sahota

  Avtar applied the flat of his hand to the door and pushed it open. He said sat sri akal and waited about a metre from the bed, feet together and hands closed over his stomach, the heels of his palms touching as if he was standing in the gurdwara. Nirmalji sat motionless and Harbhajan lay between them, under a pale-green blanket. There were terrible marks down both his forearms. Avtar wondered what to say. He asked after Aunty.

  ‘She’s at the temple,’ Nirmalji said.

  ‘I’ll ask Mamma to pray too.’

  ‘Is the God that will help him different from the one who put him here?’

  Avtar said nothing. Then: ‘Shall I fetch you something to eat, uncle?’

  ‘Someone’s bringing something.’

  ‘Some water?’

  Nirmalji closed his eyes and for several minutes Avtar stood there wondering if he could go.

  Back in the reception lobby, he waited until the deskman had dealt with the fidgety queue trying to force an appointment for that same day. When he did approach, the man looked up from his calculator, then back down. He had an ugly moustache, the bristles hanging unevenly over his top lip.

  ‘Yes?’ And the looking down, the practised indifference with which he said this single word, made clear that the earlier bribe was now meaningless, forgotten. Any future favours would cost Avtar again.

  ‘I’m looking for work.’

  ‘No openings,’ he said, almost singsong.

  ‘Any job will do. Cleaning. Carrying. Portering.’

  The man shook out a form from a sheaf trapped under a Buddha-bust of a bookend. ‘Fill this in and bring it back.’

  ‘Nirmalji sent me,’ he lied.

  Now the man stopped his calculations and raised his head. ‘How long for?’

  ‘Kya?’

  ‘Are you looking for a permanent position?’

  Avtar hesitated, then said that yes he was. It was too late. The man smiled. He had horrid teeth.

  *

  Randeep reached out of the window and stroked the basket of English Lady apples being offered up to him. In the end, he disappointed the kid and opted for the cheaper Green Bharat ones, with their Shivji logo. He’d get the others on payday. He dropped the lumpen bag of fruit in his lap and loosened his tie and waited for the bus to move.

  It had been half a year since the teacher unbound his arms and legs and he’d scrambled out of the lecture hall, humiliated, grunting, the students all standing to look. He’d written to Jaytha once since that day, a long letter in which he’d underlined his mobile number three times. He said he felt sick thinking of how he’d held her down. Those were the words he’d used. He couldn’t quite say it any more strongly, even to himself. It was too adult a crime. Of course, he’d told his family nothing. He’d simply said college wasn’t for him any more. That he missed his family. Wanted to be with Daddy.

  Outside the flat he paused, cocked his ear. His mother was speaking in her special chiming voice. He wondered which guests they might have. She hadn’t complained in advance about anyone coming over. He turned the key lightly and stepped inside. He recognized Vakeelji’s red Panjabi brogues, but not the slim, sensible black shoes placed tidily next to them. Women’s shoes. He closed his eyes. Will they never give up?

  ‘Randeep? Is that you, my dear? Do come. Vakeel Uncle is here.’

  His mother, addressing him in English? Whoever the girl was, she must have impressed. Randeep kicked off his shoes, a little petulantly, and padded down the hall, suddenly aware of the sweat patches flowering in the armpits of his white shirt. His mother sat on the edge of the settee, ankles crossed and feet aside; she’d set her hair differently, so the streak of white made a significant sweep up past her ear. Vakeelji more or less filled the space beside her. His pencil tie with its baby knot and psychedelic pattern made him look even broader, and a little silly. Later, Randeep would wonder if the tie had been an attempt to lend a more relaxed atmosphere to the meeting, given how terrifically badly the first few had gone. At the window, on the red armchair – on his father’s red armchair – was a woman. The first thing he noticed was her small turban, the kind he sometimes saw women wear at the gurdwara. It was black and started halfway up her brow and smoothly covered her hair and head. Her chunni was a simple green unembroidered rectangle, overlaying her turban and pinned in the traditional manner, so it stayed in place down her shoulders and across her chest, the way few girls seemed to bother doing these days. A delicate steel band circled her wrist. No rings, no jewellery. Her small hands seemed calm in her lap and her eyes were bright and clever. She looked elegant, plain, kind. He pinned his arms to his sides – the sweat patches – and realized he was staring. He looked back to his mother. She indicated the bag.

  ‘Apples. For Daddy.’ He put them on the table. ‘Sat sri akal, uncle.’ He turned to her. ‘Sat sri akal.’

  ‘Sat sri akal.’ She was the only one who’d said that. She’d even pronounced the t, which no one ever did. The others had all said Hello, or Hi. Maybe she wasn’t from abroad. Maybe this wasn’t at all what he thought it was.

  ‘Well, sit down,’ Mrs Sanghera said, and he balanced on the armrest beside her. ‘This is my son. Randeep.’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘He’s a well-educated, well-mannered young man. Respectful of elders and loving of those younger than him. He’s handsome and enjoys to exercise.’

  ‘Mamma!’

  ‘What? Will you stop a mother from praising her son, her piece-of-the-moon?’

  Vakeelji put his giant hands on his knees and pushed up onto his feet. ‘Bhabhi, show me to bhai sahib. I miss our chats.’

  Mrs Sanghera sighed grandly, for she wanted to make clear that she understood the subtext, and led the lawyer out, taking the apples with her. Randeep heard them enter his father’s room, and the lawyer expressing exaggerated joy at seeing his old friend again. Then the door closed and Vakeelji’s voice cut out and it was just Randeep in the room with this strange, quiet woman.

  He rose a little off the armrest and slid down onto the settee proper. She was some feet away, and she was staring at him. Randeep had the uncomfortable feeling of being appraised, or even judged.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

  ‘England.’

  He nodded. ‘I have a friend there. Michael. He’s from Doncaster. Do you know it?’

  ‘Sorry I’m from London,’ she said, as if that explained everything.

  He nodded again. He noticed she didn’t have a drink, but she said no, she was fine, that his mother had given her some Limca earlier. He nodded. The silence swelled. He noticed a hole in his sock, exposing his big square nail, and he rubbed his toes together until the hole dropped out of view and then he looked up and grinned, just in case. A job? He could ask about her job.

  ‘Are you employed?’

  ‘I teach a little at the gurdwara. That’s all.’

  ‘For the gurdwara?’

  ‘For everyone.’

  ‘My father works for the government.’ He paused. ‘Worked for the government. He’s not very well these days. He doesn’t leave his bedroom much. We don’t really know what to do.’ But probably Vakeelji had explained everything already, so he stopped there.

  ‘God will guide us,’ she said, firmly, and though he wasn’t sure whether she meant He’d guide the world at large or just the two of them, sitting in this room about to weave their lives together, Randeep nodded and said that perhaps she was right, and then they remained sitting there and let the silence grow into something that didn’t feel uncomfortable at all.

  He thought about her that night. He flipped onto his stomach and sighed hotly into his thin pillow and wondered what it would be like to be married to her. He’d liked her laugh, the honest, open-faced shine of it. What had he said? Something about how the best Indian families were the ones big enough to get lost in. He should remember that line. Through the wall he could hear his mother’s voice, muffled. Talking to his father. About the meeting, no doubt. He hadn’t
committed himself to anything. In fact, the woman had stepped into her sensible black shoes and left alongside Vakeelji without any talk of weddings or visas or money. It seemed like a magnificent thing to try and get away with. Enough had, if Vakeelji was to be believed. Which he should be, of course. And he needed to get away from all this. From his fear of being sent back to college. From the shame that made him want to smash every mirror. This girl seemed to offer a new start, another chance. He flipped onto his back again and held his fist to his forehead. He tried to remember what colour her eyes were.

  Vakeelji came round again the next evening. It seemed to be a pre-planned visit, for Mrs Sanghera had the teapot ready on the table. Lakhpreet brought in a plate of apples, sliced and fried in cinnamon. Randeep was called in from his room and the lawyer got down to business.

  ‘If you want to go ahead with it, bhabhi, we’ll have to be quick. She’s leaving in four days.’

  ‘Four . . . ? How in God’s name can we be ready in four days?’

  The lawyer raised his hand, as if swearing an oath. ‘All will be done. You just need to say yes to me now.’

  Randeep sank into his seat, sinking further when his mother turned to face him.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s simple. You either go back to college and complete or you do this.’

  He felt the heat come into his face.

  ‘Don’t pull that face with me, Randeep. If you care about the long-term survival of this family, then you need to start making something of yourself. You’re nineteen now. You’re not a child.’

  ‘But I am making something of myself.’

  ‘In that electrical store?’ She looked to Vakeelji. ‘What dreams I had, Harchand. A husband high up in government. A son at NIT.’

  ‘We can all work,’ Lakhpreet said, resting a hand on Randeep’s shoulder. ‘You’re not being fair to him.’

  ‘And we will work. When we are all in England. With well-paid jobs worthy of a family like ours. What hope for that in this snake basket of a land?’

  Vakeelji said, ‘She’s not asking for much money at all. And she’s a good, God-fearing girl. Some of them have all sorts of tricks, demanding more at the last minute and whatnot. But I think you can trust her.’

  ‘A very quiet, simple girl,’ Mrs Sanghera said, approvingly. ‘Jat Sikh, too. What more could we want? She’s landed in our lap from above.’

  ‘And you’d be her first transfer. When it gets to the second or third they start asking questions, but this should be straightforward.’

  ‘You see how much effort Vakeelji has gone to for you?’ his mother said.

  Randeep nodded.

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Narinder. Narinder Kaur,’ the lawyer said.

  ‘A nice name,’ Randeep said absently, and his mother hid her smile in a sip of her tea.

  Vakeelji was right. It was all done in four days. They drove the next morning to a small, isolated gurdwara about thirty miles outside the city and were married in a short ceremony witnessed only by Randeep’s family, the lawyer, his assistant, the priest, and a few locals who happened to have wandered in. Vakeelji’s assistant brought along a sherwani for Randeep to wear, a long gold-and-maroon kaftan, a little scuffed-looking. Randeep guessed it had been the assistant’s own wedding outfit and that this wasn’t the first time it had been reused. The red turban Randeep wore had been his own grandfather’s. When Narinder arrived, the lawyer took a wedding dupatta from the boot of his Ambassador. She accepted it with both hands, like a gift, and touched it to her eyes and forehead. Then she repaired to the outside toilets, emerging a few minutes later with the dupatta arranged and pinned over her head and chest and shoulders. She smiled at Randeep, who smiled back, and Mrs Sanghera led everyone into the temple, where the priest seemed to have a slight cold as he read from the book. Afterwards, the locals surrounded Mrs Sanghera, nagging her for their wedding gifts. She recoiled – the proximity of these chi-chi village folk was clearly too much. But it seemed Vakeelji had thought of this as well and his assistant proceeded to hand out boxes of sweetmeats. Randeep and Narinder stood apart from all this, looking on.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

  ‘It was so easy,’ she said. She sounded almost annoyed. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t do it before.’

  He didn’t know what to say to this. ‘Thank you.’

  Vakeelji was calling them. It was time to be going. Narinder ducked into the car and the rest of them watched as the assistant double-clanged the boot shut and drove her off. It was a strange sight: a red bride sitting alone in the back of a black Ambassador.

  ‘A good girl,’ Mrs Sanghera said.

  ‘Will we see her tomorrow?’ Randeep asked.

  ‘No need,’ the lawyer said. ‘We got all the photographs and computers will do the rest. I doubt you will ever have to see her again.’

  The wedding cards arrived from the printer the following afternoon and in the evening the lawyer turned up with a photo album and video of the wedding, along with some ‘love letters’ dating back several months. He’d had copies made for the girl which he’d take over in the morning, but first he wanted to sit Randeep and his mother down and explain what would happen next. So. The girl will go back to England in two days and file for a marriage visa for you. She’ll need to provide savings slips and evidence that the marriage is real. Hence the wedding, the photographs, the letters. Once she has done that we’ll apply for the marriage visa from here. Delhi will call you for an interview and, if successful, the visa will be granted and you will leave for England. Then after one year you will apply for your stamp, your indefinite right to remain. When you get that, you apply for divorce. A year after that you can get full citizenship status and call bhabhi and your sisters over.

  ‘Years,’ Mrs Sanghera said, falling back against the settee.

  ‘Not really, bhabhi. He’ll be in England by September.’

  ‘Only three months?’ Randeep said.

  ‘You’re paying all this money. It should be quick.’

  ‘About that, uncle. What about paying Narinderji?’

  ‘Ji?’ Lakhpreet exclaimed, from the red armchair. ‘Careful, brother.’

  Vakeelji said it was all no problem. ‘We’ve given her partial payment now, as I agreed with your mother, so she has savings to show them. The rest she won’t get until it all goes through. So once you are over there I will give you her address and each month you send her what we’ve agreed. But only if you can afford it. She was quite adamant about that.’

  Randeep nodded. ‘She’s very kind.’

  ‘Hmm,’ the lawyer said. ‘The money doesn’t seem that important to her.’

  He felt his mother’s hand stroking his hair. ‘Three months and you’ll be leaving me. All alone in another country.’ He wasn’t sure if she meant his loneliness or her own.

  The lawyer took one of the apples before him, speaking and eating at the same time. ‘Actually, bhabhi, I have another visa case running at the moment. Nijjar Sahib. The Ambarsar shawl-wallah? He lived in the same block as you.’

  ‘Shanti’s husband? He is looking for work abroad? At his age?’

  ‘His son. I forget his name.’ He looked sidelong at Lakhpreet.

  ‘She has two.’

  ‘The oldest.’

  Mrs Sanghera turned her face to the ceiling, willing the name into being, but then shrugged and gestured vaguely towards her head. ‘The memory, it is going, Harchand.’

  ‘I thought the two boys could go together. Four eyes are more likely to find work than two. Do you agree?’

  She said she supposed she did. ‘And it means Randeep will have someone with him.’

  ‘Good. That’s settled, then. I’ll arrange things so.’

  Lakhpreet stood and excused herself from the room.

  *

  It was a small, miserable place: steaming dirty towels stacked on the tottery
coffee table, a torn blue sheet coming detached from its rail, a lamp in the form of a goldfish and beside that, strangely, disturbingly, the top half of a grandfather clock. The wooden bed was high and his bare feet dangled several inches above the grime of the chequered floor. He could hear the old woman singing to herself, and the clink and splash of metal objects being run under a tap.

  ‘Won’t be long, child!’ she called.

  Avtar tried to smile, failed. He mouthed a silent ‘Waheguru.’

  The woman pottered in, humming, carrying a gold-bottomed tray with large French handles. Various sharp-looking things were arranged on it. Very carefully, she placed it on the coffee table, beside the steaming towels.

  ‘There. All cleany-cleany nicey-nicey.’ She smiled a wide, loose smile, shoulders bunching up, as if he was a little boy and they were about to embark on a nice little adventure. A picnic, perhaps. The smile made her tiny black eyes disappear but brought the rest of her face out in a sudden storm of wrinkles. Her over-washed flower-print dress was cut roughly at the knee and shoulders and her hair was skinned back into a braided rat’s tail. Her name was Nurse Gomes.

  She explained that she was going to give him an injection now which would make him all sleepy because once he was asleep she could make a really long cut at the bottom of his ribs. She’d then tie up a few pernickety little tubes before removing the little moon-sock. And then she’d stitch it all back up, do a final clean, and that would be that. Not even one hour it would take. Easy, na? Not one jot thing to worry about.

  ‘You get the best care with Nurse Gomes!’

  At some point during the procedure his eyelids fluttered, making a veil of his lashes. There was pain. A long razoring pain which he couldn’t locate. It seemed to be coming up from his legs. He could hear the old woman. Singing. The snickering of scissors. He tried to lift his head. Too heavy. He moved his lips but no sound came out. Then his eyes closed and he felt himself being taken under again.

  When he did wake, blinking in the steady sunlight, the pain was very definitely coming from his stomach. His throat caught. He reeled up and moved his hand to where it hurt. The area was crisscrossed with furry white bandages. He looked around but the place was empty.