‘I wasn’t expecting visitors until you called,’ Michael said, coming in from the kitchen with a glass of milk. He was a slightly hunched man with a silver comb-over, his face a network of deep wrinkles connecting the soft nodes that were his mouth, nose and ears. His left eye didn’t open fully. Several times he had to ask Randeep to speak up.
‘I said, I remember you telling me the story of you and Balwant Singh.’
‘Oh, yes, Billy.’ Michael made a sympathetic noise. ‘He was a good one. An engineer, you know. He had a girl waiting to marry him back in the Punjab. Don’t think he’d ever clapped eyes on her, mind. One of those arranged jobbies. Is that what you’re here for?’
‘No, sir. Too young for that. I’m here to work only.’
‘Because there’s plenty of them knocking about Donny. Your sort. And a young chappie like you won’t have any trouble to start a-courting.’
‘Sir, actually, I have a girlfriend back home waiting for me, too.’
‘Have you seen her, though?’
Randeep asked if he might remove his jacket – to get more comfortable, sir. When he came back from the cloakroom, Michael was waiting at the frosted-glass cabinet, beckoning Randeep over.
‘My grandchildren.’ He went through their names, ages, how far they lived, what they were like. ‘They all take after their nana, if you ask me. Bright as butterflies, the lot of them.’
Randeep suggested that he – Randeep – make them both something to eat. Michael said he’d eaten. ‘But you help yourself.’
He found some sort of pie in the fridge and a tin of baked beans and he heated this all up in the microwave. As long as he kept making himself useful, Randeep thought, waiting for his food to cook. Maybe then Michael would let him stay. He hoped so. It would make all the difference, knowing he had a cosy home to come back to, that he’d never have to spend an evening with Gurpreet again. He could suggest a walk to the park one evening next week, or to the cinema, even, to watch an old wartime film.
He returned to the front room, hot plate in hand. Michael was rousing awake the television. He wanted to watch the news and for the next half an hour the two of them sat there quite companion-ably: Randeep, for once, enjoying his meal, while Michael wielded his remote at the screen and swore at the flaming Tories.
After the news came the weather, and the bearded man with the map said they expected a mild, dry day tomorrow, with only a small chance of showers.
‘Maybe when I come back from work I can take you to the park. For some fresh air.’
‘That’s kind of you. I’d enjoy that.’
‘And I also want to talk about rent. I insist. What sort of payment would you like for all this?’
‘Rent? You staying?’
The front door opened and a man started backing into the room. ‘Sorry, Dad, the pigeons took the arse-end of forever. I tried calling but you must’ve been fast on.’ He wore a fluorescent raincoat, though it wasn’t raining, and was dragging over the doorstep some sort of trolley covered in tartan. Only when he rested the trolley against the wall and turned round and pulled off his hood did he see Randeep sitting in the armchair.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had company.’
Randeep stood and offered his hand. He tried to sound assured. ‘I’m Randeep Sanghera. A friend of Michael’s. From India.’
The man – ‘Philip,’ he said, accepting the hand – looked to his father. ‘I didn’t know you had friends in India.’
‘Many a thing that many a man knows not many about.’
Philip unzipped his raincoat, slowly, with an air of deliberation. His light-blond hair was so wispy that his pink scalp showed through, and when he spoke his whole face seemed taken over by the twin avalanches of his fleshy cheeks. ‘Been in the country long? Holiday, is it?’
‘No, sir, I’m here to work. I work in construction. Building.’
‘Oh, nice. I’m in the medical profession myself. Thirty-two years this August just gone. We see a lot of you lot. Builders.’ He turned to his father. ‘How did you two become friends?’
‘On the telephone, weren’t it?’
Randeep confirmed that it was. ‘I used to work as a claims officer in India and one day I called your father and we became very friendly. He’s a very kind man. You’re lucky,’ he added.
‘The telephone?’ Philip said, confused, or maybe suspicious.
‘I helped your father with his claim,’ Randeep went on. ‘I did my best.’
The man was staring at Randeep’s suitcase, stowed neatly beside the cabinet. ‘How long are you visiting Dad for?’
‘Oh, Philip, that’s no way to treat a guest in our country. He only landed today, the poor bugger.’
Randeep moved to collect the dishes. ‘I’ll clean all this up.’ His hands were shaking.
‘Is that my washing?’ Michael asked brightly, nodding towards the trolley.
Randeep washed the dishes, including the pans and mugs collected in the sink from earlier in the day, then carried in Michael’s clothes from the trolley and folded them into neat piles on the small Formica table. All the while, he could hear Michael’s son asking what the hell was going on, Dad? How could you be so gullible? . . . For the love of God, tell me you haven’t given him your bank details? . . . Of course he can’t stay here!
Shyly, Randeep re-entered the room. ‘Sir, please don’t send me away. I understand your concern. Really, I do. But I want you to know that I mean your father no harm. I’ll pay rent. I’m from a good family. My father works in government.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Singh. Truly, I am. But this just isn’t on. I know in your culture guests can come and live willy-nilly, but that’s just not how we do things. Perhaps that’s all to the bad, but it is how it is. If you don’t have a bed for tonight then by all means you’re welcome to stay, but I’d be grateful if you’d respect my wishes and find somewhere else tomorrow.’
‘Oh, Philip . . .’
‘I’m sorry, Dad. He seems like a very nice boy but I couldn’t forgive myself if something happened to you.’
Randeep said he understood. He took his jacket from the cupboard, picked up his suitcase and thanked Michael for the meal. He tried to give him a few pounds for the pie and beans, but neither Michael nor Philip would hear of it. Instead, Philip drove Randeep to the station and helped him catch the last train back to Sheffield.
*
‘Why are you so bhanchod slow?’ the guy at the skip said, as Randeep upturned another barrowload at the foot of the ladder. ‘It’ll take a whole other week like this.’ His name was Rishi, a fair-skinned and good-looking boy from Srinagar. Perhaps five or six years older than Randeep, he had a reputation for causing trouble.
‘They’re heavy,’ Randeep said. ‘I’m all on my own.’
Rishi snorted, saying that wasn’t his problem, and on the van ride home he told Gurpreet that Randeep had been complaining, that he said he was having to work harder than everyone else.
‘I never said that,’ Randeep said, shaking his head fast. ‘I didn’t.’
Gurpreet smiled. Randeep’s fear seemed to be satisfaction enough.
He stayed in his room that evening, reassuring himself that one day he would be reunited with his family, his father; that the loneliness he was feeling would not be for ever. When he was sure everyone had gone to bed, he took his laundry to the bathroom, filled the tub with a few inches of tepid water, and started scrubbing the clothes with soap. He was on his knees, leaning over, and aching from the day’s work. He was determined. Then a noise started up, a sound like an angry bull trapped beneath the bath. Randeep froze. It was getting louder, closer: the others would wake. Gurpreet would wake. Panicking, he pulled out the plug. The noise stopped, only for a green sewage to gurgle up from below. He watched it circulate and make a mess of everything. He called Avtar, who answered, sleepy-voiced, but confirmed that, no, he hadn’t found any work, let alone work they could do together. And then it was five o’clock and his alarm wa
s going and he was sure he’d rather have been dead.
One in one out, Randeep kept thinking, as he wheeled to and fro. That’s what Vinny had said. One in one out. At lunchtime, with everyone else gathered by the van, sharing round the achaar, he approached the plank ladder propped against the skip. He loosened the knots around the middle two rungs. Not so loose that they fell on touch, but loose enough that they might collapse under pressure. Then he went round the back of the skip and continued on to the van to collect his own lunchbox. He wasn’t sure what he was doing. He convinced himself he was helping a friend.
‘You’re getting faster,’ Rishi said in his nasal voice.
It was the first barrowload after lunch. Randeep tipped out the rocks at the foot of the ladder and started back down the slope. Maybe it wouldn’t work. Please, God, don’t let it work. He’d not made it halfway down – a significant crack, the sound of thick wood snapping, a scream. He turned around. The ladder and the rock had fallen away and Rishi had crumpled to the ground, thrashing his fists as his foot lay twisted oddly on itself. The others relinquished their spades and released their drills and ran to gather round, while Randeep stood there, shocked, almost wondering if he really had done it.
Later, when Vinny bhaji dropped them off at the house, Randeep hung back and asked what would happen to Rishi bhaji. He wanted to get in first – it wouldn’t be long before everyone started advocating some brother or cousin or friend.
‘Maybe he’ll learn his lesson now, yeah? Maybe he’ll spend less time pratting about and more paying attention to his job. Let that be a lesson to you all. Meantime, I’ll get my cousin Manny to take a look at his foot. Didn’t look pretty, though, did it?’
Randeep shook his head.
‘Puts me in a bit of a posish though.’
Randeep waited.
‘I’ll need to find another one of you chumps. Smartish. Don’t suppose you’ve got a cousin breaknecking it across the Channel as we speak, by any chance?’
Randeep told him that he had a bhaji, Avtar, who’d come with him, but he’d left him in Ilford because there was only work here for one of them.
‘Visa?’
‘Ji.’
‘Marriage? Holiday?’
‘Student.’
Vinny shook his head. ‘Been burnt by enough scooters in my time. Lying, argumentative. Always quoting their fucking rights.’
‘Bhaji, I promise. He will work very hard. You have my word.’
Avtar moved out of Massiji’s house and walked towards the high street with no clue where to go next. He spent the afternoon going in and out of the Asian businesses, though no one had work or seemed to know where to find it, and as the day tapered to dusk he made his way to the gurdwara. He put his suitcase and rucksack at the foot of the nishaan sahib and said a short prayer with his forehead to the flagpole. Then he took a ramaal from the wire basket at the entrance, secured it over his head, and went into the food hall. They were serving a langar of roti, dhal and water. Afterwards, he put his dishes in the sink and carried his belongings up the stairs and into the darbar sahib. The rehraas was being read. He bowed his head to the guru granth and found a spot against the rear wall where he could sit in peace and close his eyes for a while. The gurdwara elders gave him a ledge inside the shoe room to sleep on, and in the morning, leaving for the college, he asked God to make this the day he found work.
He knocked on the open office door – Room 625F, it said – and peered inside. ‘Sat sri akal, uncle.’
Dr Cheema was at his whiteboard, in the middle of drawing something. ‘Avtar! I thought you had forgotten all about us.’
They spoke for only a short while – the doctor had a lunchtime tutorial to lead – but Avtar was to wait, and when the doctor returned to his office he handed him a decent wodge of papers.
‘Handouts from your course. I just picked them up. I’ll keep sending them to you once you give me your address.’
‘Thank you, uncle.’ And then, after a pause: ‘I need a job. I’m running out of time.’
Dr Cheema sat down and picked up his pen and started to press the nib of it into his desk. ‘Do you have somewhere to stay?’
He lived in a large detached house towards Harrow-on-the-Hill. As they came up the long, winding gravel drive, the doctor said he was sure they’d find Avtar work, that there must be lots of jobs for hard-working men like him.
‘I don’t mind what it is, uncle. Building, cleaning, delivering. Anything.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Dr Cheema said, opening the front door. He fixed Avtar with a look. ‘You’re with your own people now.’
Everything in the front room was white or gold: the huge white leather sofas, the gold-trimmed coffee table with its glossy fan of magazines. A fashionably tarnished mirror hung above the fireplace, and on either side of this were . . . paintings? Slabs of colour layered one on top of another.
‘Rachna?’ the doctor called.
A tiny bird of a voice replied. ‘Amo?’
The doctor strode into the next room – the massive kitchen – where a small baby of an old woman in a white salwaar kameez sat scowling at her reflection in the long table. There was a bowl of something in front of her. Dr Cheema helped her out of the chair and to the sofas in the front room. It seemed she was blind. ‘Just there, Biji. Sit. That’s it. Have you eaten?’
She made a face, nodded.
‘Do you want something else?’
‘What that witch gave is poison enough.’
Dr Cheema sighed. ‘Biji, I wish you wouldn’t.’ He gestured for Avtar to come closer. ‘I’ve brought someone with me. One of our students at the college. He’s from Nijjar.’
The old woman leaned forward, jutting her chin up slightly. ‘Who?’
‘My name’s Avtar Nijjar, Biji. Grandson of Jwala Singh Nijjar.’
She said the name sounded familiar and patted the space beside her. ‘It’s been so long. Did they live near the marsh?’
Dr Cheema sat on the sofa opposite, teasing out the stories, watching, listening, encouraging. He seemed desperate to hear, even at second hand, of this past of which he had no experience. An hour passed in this way, until there was the sound of a lock clicking, of heels on tiles. A magnificently tall woman in a business suit appeared in the doorway. The two halves of her sleek black hair met sharply, precisely, at her chin. Red lipstick, Avtar noticed.
‘Oh, hello,’ she said, seeing Avtar.
Avtar moved his head, a cross between a bow and a nod. ‘Sat sri akal.’
‘Why did you leave Biji alone?’ Dr Cheema asked.
She stepped across the room, sliding her earrings off with two swipes of her hand and placing them on the mantelpiece. ‘I had an emergency. I had to go. I paged you.’ She sounded tired.
‘You don’t leave Biji alone like that. Anything could’ve happened. She could’ve hurt herself.’
‘We live in hope.’
‘What was the point in us deciding that you go part-time if this still happens?’
‘Darling, I think you decided, not me. And I’m doing my best but I had no choice. I’m sorry. I made sure she had food and I came back as soon as I could.’
‘Well, don’t let it happen again,’ he said, conceding a little.
She looked to the ceiling, shaking her head. ‘My patient died, by the way. Thanks for asking.’ And with that she left the room.
The Cheemas’ son was off in America on something called a gap year, so Avtar was given his room.
‘Uncle, this is too much. I’d be happy on the floor downstairs.’
‘Let’s just concentrate on finding you work. Sleep well. We start tomorrow.’
‘Uncle?’
The doctor turned round.
‘Thank you for all this. I don’t know why you’re doing it, but thank you.’
The doctor’s mouth pursed up, then he said, ‘I remember my father telling me that back in the day people would open their houses to young men like you. To help you get started on this ne
w life. That’s all I’m doing.’ He paused. ‘Something happened a few years ago that made it clear to me that I’m only ever going to be a guest in this country. That it didn’t matter how many garden parties I threw for my neighbours, this would never be my real home. It’s important that a man has a sense of a real home. A sense of his own ending.’
For over a week Dr Cheema drove Avtar around London – Harrow, Ealing, Southall, Hounslow, Grays, Brixton, Hackney, Uxbridge, Croydon, Enfield. They enquired in newsagents’, fish-and-chip shops, market stalls, in gurdwaras and factories. They criss-crossed the capital following leads, acting on tips, pursuing half-chances. They left each day at a little after dawn, packed lunches in the boot, eager to miss the traffic, and when they arrived back at the house it was long past ten o’clock. But none of their efforts resulted in a job for Avtar and after the tenth day of this he collapsed onto the sofa and said he wasn’t going to impose on Dr Cheema’s family any longer. He’d leave the next day.
‘Of course you can’t leave. Where will you go?’
‘But, uncle—’
‘Let’s give it a few more days, hain? We’re so close. I can feel it.’
That night, Avtar came downstairs and into the kitchen, textbook in hand. He couldn’t sleep. He had little money left and no job in sight. And now Pocket Bhai’s nephew had got in touch. They wanted the first repayment.
‘I still have a few weeks,’ Avtar had said.
‘Fair enough. A few weeks. I’ll be in touch.’
That was already two days ago and still he didn’t know what he was going to do. He heard footsteps on gravel and the kitchen door opened and Rachnaji stepped in with her briefcase. ‘Oh, hi. Up late.’
‘Studying,’ he said, indicating his book.
‘Good. Studying is good.’
She dumped the briefcase on one of the high stools and poured a glass of water from a hatch in the fridge. She drank deeply, then brought the glass down hard.
Avtar flinched. He took it as a sign of her frustration that he was still in their house. ‘Thank you, aunty, for everything you and uncle are doing.’
The Year of the Runaways Page 22