The Year of the Runaways

by Sunjeev Sahota

  ‘Huh? Oh, it’s nothing. It’s your uncle. Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But I think I will be leaving tomorrow. It’s time.’

  ‘And you think my husband will let you?’

  He wasn’t sure he understood. Was he held captive here?

  Rachnaji slid out of her heels and sat a few chairs down from him at the table. Up close like this, he could see the powder-sheen of her face. The chalky grey at her temples. ‘The last one he brought home was here for nearly three months. A girl. How the aunties tittered.’

  ‘Ji?’

  ‘I don’t even pretend to know what it is. I used to think it was just nostalgia. Some attempt at connecting with his roots. Some regret at living the life he does. I don’t know. All I know is that it’s become much worse since he became president of that IndiSoc or whatever it is. He’s become much concerned with “ideas of belonging”,’ she said, holding up fingers.

  Avtar nodded. But, no, he didn’t understand.

  ‘It really is a pathetic thing. To mourn a past you never had. Don’t you think?’

  *

  Lakhpreet called early one morning, so early it was dark outside. He was still half asleep and her voice sounded creamy in his ear, gently stirring his dreams away. I wish you were here beside me, he said, murmured, so I could hold you, touch you . . .

  ‘Randeep’s in trouble,’ she said.

  Frowning, Avtar sat up, wiping a crust of sleep from his eyes. She’d always had a leaning towards the dramatic interruption. ‘What trouble?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he called yesterday and he sounded so down. I’ve never heard him like that. I’m really worried, janum. Have you spoken to him?’

  ‘Once or twice. Briefly. He’s just homesick.’

  ‘Maybe. Do you know the men he’s living with? What are they like?’

  Avtar said he hadn’t a clue.

  ‘You just let him go? On his own? Without knowing anything about . . . anything?’

  ‘I’ve got my own worries,’ he said, a little peeved. ‘And he’s not a kid.’

  ‘He is though, in some ways . . .’ She trailed off.

  ‘Jaan, is there something else?’

  ‘No, no. I just . . . I guess Daddy being how he is, is making me more worried.’

  ‘Randeep’s not like your father.’

  ‘I know, I know. But can’t you just keep an eye on him? Stay in touch? Just keep making sure he’s all right?’

  Days passed, a week, and he still hadn’t called Randeep. He was putting it off. He didn’t want to discover that the boy really was in trouble. In which case, Avtar would have to do something. Wouldn’t he? He was thinking of this, folding clothes into his suitcase, when Cheemaji knocked. It had taken Avtar a while to get used to this – people knocking – and he still wasn’t sure whether to get up and open the door or tell them to come in from where he was sitting. On this occasion, Cheemaji walked right in. He was excited. He still had the cordless in his hand.

  ‘That was the factory-wallah. From that clothes factory we went to last week. He has a job.’

  They drove down to Southall, past kebab joints and sari shops and curry houses and travel agents promising the cheapest fares to Amritsar through Air Turkmenistan. The factory was towards the old gasworks, and a dark-skinned, full-lipped man in a green safari shirt came into the loading bay to greet them. He wore a gold watch, too.

  ‘Avtar, you remember Mr Golwarasena?’

  For half an hour it was very slowly and very tediously explained to Avtar that the job was 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., six days a week, with two thirty-minute breaks to be taken in turn by all the workers on the line. He would be paid at the standard level for the twenty-two hours per month his visa permitted him to work, with the rest of his hours paid at the reduced level. The fauji level, they called it. The contract, of course, would itemize the standard hours only.

  ‘The job has many angles,’ Mr Golwarasena went on in his strangely accented English. ‘From patternation to executive stitching to industrial storage.’ And he proceeded to detail exactly what the duties in each of those angles entailed.

  ‘And the pay?’ Dr Cheema asked, sounding exhausted already.

  Mr Golwarasena’s eyes became heavy-lidded, as if talk of money was beneath him. He gave the figures. Avtar tried not to let his delight show. It sounded like an obscene amount to earn.

  On the drive back, Avtar asked why they hadn’t just accepted the job. Instead they’d invited Mr Golwarasena over for dinner that night.

  ‘Because he’s the type who’s impressed by a big house and shiny things. So we ask him to dinner, give him a few whiskies, he becomes a friend, and then he offers you more money. Good plan or what?’

  The plan was never executed. As Avtar was pulling his best shirt out of the suitcase and wondering if it would be rude to ask for use of the iron, his phone rang.

  ‘Randeep! You’ve called on a great day!’

  ‘Bhaji? Is that you? I have good news.’

  And Randeep launched into something about how they could now work together because someone had broken their foot and all he had to do was come up tomorrow and even accommodation was included and it’d be great and he couldn’t wait for Avtar bhaji to join him because he was lonely and had no friends but it was all going to be all right now because he was going to come up too.

  ‘There’s a job? Working with you?’

  ‘Yes, yes. So what time will you come? I’ll meet you at the station.’

  Avtar made Randeep go through it all again, slowly, calmly, explaining what the job was, the pay, how long-term.

  ‘Very long-term. Vinny bhaji is always thinking of new projects.’ The silence on the phone grew. ‘Is something the matter? You will come, won’t you?’

  Avtar said he needed to think and that he’d call Randeep later – and what a horrible feeling it was, hearing the disappointment in the boy’s voice as he came off the phone. Really, the choice should have been easy. The job here, in Southall, was better all round – better pay, better accommodation, better hours. He’d have to get a second job in this Sheffield place to come close to earning as much. And yet there was no choice. Lakhpreet was right. Something had sounded wrong, and because Randeep was her brother, and younger than him, weaker than him, and because they’d come across together and stayed with Randeep’s aunt that first month – all this seemed to have conferred on Avtar an irritating and exaggerated sense of responsibility towards the boy. He smiled ruefully. Funny how God offers you everything you’ve asked for, only to force you to turn it away. He sat a few minutes in the silence of the room, then went downstairs to tell Cheemaji that the dinner wouldn’t be necessary.

  SPRING

  5. ROUTINE VISITS

  Behind Avtar, the yellow cranes did their noisy browsing: giant birds biting up great mouthfuls of earth, only to jerk their heads to the side and spit it all out. The racket was such that Langra John limped up with a box of noise-cancelling earphones, and Avtar had one set circled loosely around his neck. He was hunched over his college folder, going through handouts forwarded on by Cheemaji. Most of them were stamped ‘College of North-West London’; underneath that, ‘Preparing You For Your Future’. Around him the lunchtime talk was of the latest raids.

  ‘Three last week,’ Rishi said, his foot recently out of plaster. ‘Two in Wolverhampton, one in Luton.’

  ‘See,’ Gurpreet said. ‘It’s always down there. Nothing for us to worry about.’

  At this, several of them cringed and said a waheguru and threw some soil over their shoulders.

  ‘My fuffer – the one who works in customs – he says they’ve even started checking the marriage ones. He said one brother was sent back because when they visited he couldn’t speak English and his gori visa-wife couldn’t speak Panjabi.’

  ‘Arré, janaab, those pindu types are stupid. They give the rest of us a bad name. It’s like they want to get caught.’

  Randeep reattached the lid onto his lunchbox in a
series of tiny clicks. ‘How much time do they give before they visit?’

  Langra John shouted at them to get back on it and so Avtar packed his folder away and re-secured the leather harness around his waist. He’d been paired with Gurpreet and together they had to climb the scaffolding and score off the lock-points between the planned executive rooms on floors ten through to fifteen. They were both complicatedly belted up and tethered to a double-chain rope that ran around the hotel perimeter, and the platform was wide enough to walk side by side. The ladders connecting the floors didn’t sway once in the wind and drizzle. Despite all that, they’d only made it up one floor and were walking round with their spirit levels and pencils when Gurpreet stopped and folded onto his knees.

  ‘What now?’ Avtar said.

  He held up his hand, as if to say he’d be fine in a minute. Ten minutes later they were still there, their backs to the main drop and facing the grey mesh curtain that hung all down the inside of the scaffolding.

  ‘It’s the height,’ Gurpreet said.

  ‘You must love living in Sheffield, then.’

  He smiled faintly. ‘It’s not easy, this life, is it?’

  Avtar jutted out, then immediately withdrew, his lower lip. A facial shrug. ‘Who said it would be? But it’ll get better. Hard work, that’s all it takes.’

  ‘Yeah, I used to be like you, too.’

  ‘You’re nothing like me.’

  ‘I used to think I only had to work harder. Longer.’ He shook his head. ‘Bhanchod liars.’

  ‘You should go home. Eleven years is a long time.’

  Gurpreet laughed. ‘Forget any ideas about going home. You’ll still be here, still doing this, in eleven years’ time as well.’

  ‘Nah. If I don’t pass my exams I’ll go home with what I’ve earned.’

  ‘That easy, is it?’

  ‘It is for me.’ The rain puttered against his yellow hat, dribbled down the back of his neck.

  ‘So how much have you saved so far? With all your working?’

  Avtar stared straight ahead.

  ‘Thought so. I said the same. That I’d go home after one year with my money. You really are like me.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘You’re me in eleven years.’

  ‘I said fuck you.’

  ‘Why? Scared? And it’s only going to get harder. Now chamaars like him are coming over.’

  Avtar dipped his gaze and saw Tochi far below, tiny, switching drills.

  ‘It makes you only care for yourself.’ Gurpreet spoke quietly. ‘This life. It makes everything a competition. A fight. For work, for money. There’s no peace. Ever. Just fighting for the next job. Fight fight fight. And it doesn’t matter how much stronger than everyone else you are, there’s always a fucking chamaar you have to share the work with, or a rich boy who can afford a wife.’

  ‘You play the cards you’re dealt,’ Avtar said.

  Gurpreet clucked his tongue. ‘Or you tear up the game. You get rid of the players.’

  Avtar checked his harness, his stay.

  ‘It’s not your time yet,’ Gurpreet said. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘I’m not the one who needs to be worried.’

  ‘But I would do it, you know. If it helped me, I would throw you over. And, one day, you’ll say the same.’

  Tucking the orange uniform into his trousers, he ran across the road and into the Botanical Gardens. The grasses were starting to bud, the daisies closing for the night. He should ignore Gurpreet. Lazy and bitter, that’s all he was. Kirsty was waiting outside the shop, in jeans and a T-shirt printed with four faces he didn’t know.

  ‘Late again?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t know you came up that way. Wouldn’t it be quicker through the wood?’

  He couldn’t remember where he’d told her he lived. ‘I was visiting a friend.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, sounding unconvinced.

  She’d started nearly four months ago, in the new year, to save for university. She said she was taking Criminology. At first, this had alarmed Avtar and his desi co-workers. They’d even complained to Malkeet, their boss, who’d had to come down and explain that they were idiots, the lot of them, and of course it didn’t mean she was going to tell the police. Her dark-blonde hair, when it wasn’t pinned into an orange net, fell about her face and shoulders. She had flinty eyes and a handspan waist, fingers that stroked the counter each time she walked by, and a way of standing – hip stuck out – that seemed both careless and defiant. She lived with her mam and her mam’s boyfriend, who wasn’t her dad.

  A black Mini swerved into the forecourt and braked abruptly, so close to Avtar and Kirsty that they both jumped back. A middle-aged woman in leggings and a fluffy white jumper scrambled out, jangling keys. Diamond-studded sunglasses sat on top of her glamorous mane like a second pair of eyes: insect eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry. So sorry. He goes away for two weeks and I can’t even manage to open up on time.’ They went to the entrance round the back. ‘There you are,’ she said, deactivating the alarm. ‘It’s all yours.’

  Avtar went in, switching on lights, the fryers, the spit. Kirsty tied her apron round her waist.

  Their boss’s wife hovered at the door. ‘All OK? Shall I leave you to it?’

  ‘Unless you want to get the chicken on,’ Kirsty said.

  ‘It’s fine, bhabhi,’ Avtar said hastily. ‘We’ll look after it all from here.’ He waited for the door to close, then gave Kirsty a look.

  ‘Well,’ she said, flapping a hand towards the window. ‘She goes round kneecapping people like a trout in a Ferrari. It makes me want to vom.’

  He got the potatoes through the peeler and into the hopper, and then straight into the fryers. Harkiran, who worked the same shift, entered through the back door, his over-gelled hair swept to the side, and Avtar took his turn on the small settee in the back, beside the door to the toilet. They did this whenever their boss wasn’t around. It never got properly busy until around ten, so they’d have an hour each to try and catch up on some sleep. Only these days Avtar used the time to study. He set his chin in the palm of his hand and started on the first page: The Basics of Cryptography. He made it halfway down the sheet before he ceased taking anything in.

  When Harkiran woke him, it was nearly 10.30: he’d been curled up asleep on the settee for almost three hours.

  ‘You should’ve nudged me.’

  ‘It’s not busy, and I’ve got the morning off to sleep.’

  Harkiran zipped up his suede jacket – he did the graveyard shift as a security guard – and said he’d be seeing Avtar tomorrow.

  Avtar splashed cold water on his face and went through to the serving area.

  ‘Everything OK?’ he asked Kirsty.

  ‘Quiet, but the numpties are starting so you might want to make yourself scarce.’

  He nodded gravely and returned to the kitchen. When they’d first started, he and Harkiran had been warned that it was fine to go out front if it got busy early on, but to make sure they stayed out of sight once the pubs closed. Usually, this wouldn’t be a problem. Malkeet bhaji tended to arrive at around ten to help with the Drunk Rush and such was his reputation and size that things never got more lairy than the occasional loudmouth who couldn’t even stand up straight and had to be helped – thrown – out of the door. The last few days though, Kirsty had got the worst of it. They called her a slag when she refused to spade on extra chips, they asked her what she was like in bed, whether she took it up the shitter. Once, Avtar had come forward, hoping a male presence would hurry them on. It only made it worse.

  Tonight, he was brushing around the trunk of the toilet when he heard Kirsty shouting at them to get out. He stopped with the broom and listened. Drunks.

  ‘Temper, temper.’

  ‘She’s a feisty one.’

  ‘Like a bit of sausage, do you, love? Battered?’

  ‘I said get out. Now. We’re closing.’

  They didn’t.

&n
bsp; ‘I’ll call the police.’

  There was laughter. One of them told her to get her rat out and, predictably, they started singing: ‘Get your rat out for the lads!’ It was a chant Avtar had heard a few times on his way home past the pubs. He hated the aggressive sound of it, and hated it even more once he’d discovered what the words meant.

  They sang it again and again, clapping in time. Avtar ventured out and spread his arms either side of the counter, trying to make himself appear bigger. The singing stopped, though the laughter on their faces remained. He must look clownish to them, this man in an orange hairnet.

  ‘We need to close. Can you leave, please?’

  ‘What were that? Speaka da English?’

  ‘Kirsty, can you call the police, please?’ It was a hollow threat. All the staff had been warned never to bring in the police.

  ‘Oh, Kirsty, is it? Thirsty Kirsty?’

  Avtar went through the counter flap and opened the door. ‘Get out.’

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Kirsty?’

  She lifted the receiver. ‘You’ve got five seconds or the pigs are here.’

  One of them – light-brown curls cut close to his skull – moved to the door and spat right into Avtar’s face. ‘Cunt.’

  They filed out, spitting in turn, and Avtar closed the door, locked it, dimmed the lights, and went back to the toilet to clean his face in the basin. He heard Kirsty behind him.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Avtar.’

  He nodded, though perhaps even worse than the spitting was the quietness in her voice, the sense of someone being embarrassed for him.

  *

  Narinder took the letter from the pocket of her cardigan. It had arrived for her at the gurdwara, over a week ago now, and it was from Karamjeet, her fiancé. She reread the brief, typed message for perhaps the twentieth time. He said he knew she was in Sheffield and that he wanted to meet. If she refused then she left him with no choice but to tell her father and brother where she was. He reminded her of his mobile number and signed off by saying that he hoped she agreed that he deserved an explanation at the very least. As she slipped the letter back into her pocket, there was a knock on the door.