‘When do you go back?’ he asked.
‘In two weeks. If you have a message for Savraj I’d be happy to deliver it for you. I’m sure she’d want to receive a message from her brother.’
‘Don’t you think we have phones?’
Narinder felt herself redden. ‘Of course. I didn’t mean to say—’
He was laughing at her, and almost but not quite tweaked her elbow. ‘I’m only joking, Narinderji.’ He emphasized the ‘ji’, which made her feel threatened. ‘So you’re telling me I’ve got two weeks to convince you to give me a kiss?’
She didn’t know what to say. She looked around but no one was paying them the least attention. She stepped away – ‘I have to go’
– and concentrated on the sound of her footsteps on the stone path, which seemed to be flaunting her exit.
A week before her flight home, it was time for the blanket distribution, and she wrote her name against the three sub-district villages to the west of the city.
It was the festering, sticky end of the afternoon when she got to Savraj’s house. The spiderbush plant had bloomed horrendously well, conquering both sides of the metal gate and most of the sandy wall. Blankets against her chest, Narinder opened the gate hatch and stepped over the gutter and into the courtyard. To her right, a small cardboard box kept crashing against the wall, the feet of a cockerel padding underneath. Narinder lifted the box off the poor thing and the bird squawked away in a flap.
‘Massiji?’ she said, turning back to the courtyard.
She could hear noises from the back room. The TV, probably: Massiji watching one of her game shows. Narinder wandered across the yard, ducking neatly under the washing line. She stopped at the door. It wasn’t the TV, and she knew she should turn right round and leave. She pushed the door open, silently, smoothly. On the menjha Kavi was lying on top of a girl, both of them naked. Narinder watched, fascinated, feeling pangs of shame and excitement. The girl smiled and tapped Kavi’s shoulder. He twisted round and Narinder said sorry and hurried back across the courtyard and out of the gate, the blankets still clutched to her chest.
She could not shift from her mind the image of him locked against the girl, the look of pleasure on the girl’s face. She went to bed feeling wretched. She wasn’t jealous. Either of the girl or of what they were doing. She’d never so much as touched a boy – she’d never so much as seen two people kissing, with her own eyes – and she had no intention to start. It was more that she felt inadequate. She felt like a child. No. She felt that the world made her feel like a child. Because she had no conception, let alone experience, of the thing that it thought was the most adult act of all. She moved onto her back and placed a hand under the blanket, on her abdomen. All evening, a warm glow had been spreading out from her stomach and down towards her thighs. She slid her hand beneath her navel, then further down, and clenched her buttocks and pressed them hard into the mattress. The metal springs resisted. From below she heard this year’s room-mate lift her head, then, perhaps a full minute later, put it back down.
Narinder collected her ironing from the dhobi. The ironing board at their hostel had gone missing a few days earlier.
‘I hear you’re leaving soon,’ the dhobi said.
Narinder said she was.
‘Arré, then why so glum? There’s always next year.’
Narinder paid the man and made her way back through the bazaar. It was true. She did feel glum and she wasn’t sure exactly why. She forced her clothes into the overstuffed suitcase and with renewed determination zipped it closed. Because this moping was ridiculous. She was twenty-one, for God’s sake.
She was on kitchen duty that afternoon, chopping coriander mainly, when she saw him through the doorway. He was taking off his shoes, tying a ramaal around his head. Surely he wouldn’t dare come and talk to her. In front of all these people. But that was exactly what he seemed to be doing, smiling with each step. Narinder tried to concentrate on her chopping.
‘I’d like to give my sister a message.’
She looked up, wrong-footed. ‘Oh. Of course. I’d be happy to.’ She waited for him to go on.
‘It’s a private message. Can I talk to you later?’
She frowned, resumed chopping. ‘I’m sorry. I’m leaving soon. No time.’
A silence, then he said, ‘I’ll be outside after rehraas. I’ll see you there.’
‘I said I don’t—’ But he’d moved away already.
He was waiting for her at the bottom of the marble steps, his back to the gurdwara. His cuffs were folded to midway up his forearms, thumbs hooked into his rear jeans pockets. Narinder’s sandals clacked loud on the marble, louder still in her ears. He turned round and waited for her to complete the descent.
‘Shall I take those?’ he asked.
She gave him a couple of the blankets from the stack in her hands. ‘If anyone asks, we’re talking about tomorrow’s donations.’
‘You’ve thought of everything.’
‘I’m busy, bhaji,’ she said combatively. ‘Please tell me the message and I promise to deliver it as soon as I return.’
For a long time he looked off to the side, where a handful of boys were getting caught up in the sunset. Still looking away, he said, ‘Mamma doesn’t have cancer.’
Narinder blinked, confused, but then thought she understood and her arms loosened across her chest, her hardness dissolving. ‘But that’s the best news! Oh Waheguru! How long have you known? Does Savraj know? I have to call her!’
Kavi raised his hand, speaking over her in a clear voice: ‘She never had cancer. We thought she did but they got it wrong. There’s nothing wrong with her.’
Time halted. Narinder didn’t move.
‘I think when Savi first borrowed money from you, she wasn’t lying. But then they wanted to keep you thinking she had it.’
‘Your mother and sister.’
‘So you’d help us.’
‘Help you?’
‘Help me get a visa.’
Visa. Cancer. Lies. It all floated around Narinder’s head, dots she wasn’t able to connect. Kavi made an impatient noise.
‘I was meant to get you to like me so you’d agree to being my visa-wife. So I could come to England and earn enough to pay for the cancer treatment.’
‘But there was no cancer.’
He shook his head again impatiently, as if he needed to get beyond this. ‘But after meeting you in the garden that time I told Mamma I wasn’t going to do it that way.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know why.’
‘Because you have a girlfriend,’ Narinder supplied, not really thinking straight.
‘What? Oh – ’ he made a swatting motion with his hand – ‘she’s just one of the chamaars. She gets passed round. I’d never treat one of our own girls like that,’ he added, apparently keen that she understood this fact about him.
She said she had to go. She wanted to get away from him. From him and his cruel, lying family.
‘Wait.’
She ignored him.
‘Please.’
The desperation in his voice stalled her. He came closer. She could smell his aftershave, like old leather.
‘I’m an honest man, believe it or not, so I wanted to ask you honestly. Not through deceit. Savi said you’re a very caring girl, so if you could see it in your heart to help us I’d be forever in your debt.’
‘Help you how?’ she said, her voice rising until she could hear the pain in it.
She saw him swallow. ‘We’ve saved and sold enough to cover the visa permit. Of course, when I start working in England I’d pay you every month. I promise you that.’
‘You want me to marry you?’ The question came as a shriek.
His finger leapt to his lips. ‘It would only be for one year. You’d be free again after.’
Narinder said she was going. He blocked her off.
‘Let me go. You’re being crazy.’
‘We can’t make anything of ourselves here. Land rents keep going
up. Rates are going down. Nothing’s growing. It’s impossible. I’d be forever in your debt.’
She believed him. She was sure she did. But before she could allow herself to be even halfway persuaded, she looked away, away from him and his aftershave. Darkness had fallen in the sudden way that happened here in summer. She said he could keep the blankets, seeing as she’d not left them with any last time.
She couldn’t go to India the following year; she had to stay at home and meet potential suitors. There was another one coming tonight. From Surrey, Narinder thought, as she stepped into the bath and under the shower.
It would be the fifth family so far this year. Three had been rejected for not being sufficiently gursikh, and the one family who had seemed suitable was discovered to have an older daughter who’d married out of caste. The boy’s parents hadn’t mentioned it during the initial meeting, and it only came out when Tejpal asked some relatives in India to dig into the family’s background.
Narinder turned the shower off and pulled her long rope of hair, as thick as her wrist, forward over her shoulder, wringing the water out. She hoped this match would be suitable, if only for Baba’s sake. Tongues would start to wag if they kept turning boys away. She dressed in a simple chocolate salwaar kameez and chose her saffron turban from the cupboard. When she was halfway down the stairs, Tejpal said they were here, parking up. Narinder returned to her room and sat on the bed, waiting to be called. She’d spent hours here these past few months while prospective families were entertained downstairs. It gave her time to think. She was certain there were women out there who’d view her with pity, women who’d implore her to live her own life and thought all marriages of this design were the product of some sinister family pressure. She wondered what that meant: living your own life, as if your life was a thing closed unto itself. Did these women not understand that duty, that obligation, could be a form of love? That the pressure she felt was the pressure of her love? It might not be their kind of romantic love, but maybe it was all the purer for that. Sometimes she wanted to ask these women to imagine some manure on the side of the road, with all their friends and family circled around it. Now imagine leading your parents to the manure and burying their faces deep in it, in front of all of their friends and all of their family. She wondered how many of them would actually do that, in the drive to live their own life. There was an uncle when Narinder was young who’d cut a razor blade across his wrists because his daughter had run off with a Muslim boy. That, obviously, was an extreme case. Most parents whose daughters had strayed lived with their aura of shame, and everyone else gave them a wide berth, as if they really did stink of shit.
She couldn’t hear a thing – usually there’d be laughter or some sort of exaggerated exclamation as they discovered an acquaintance in common. But there was nothing. Perhaps they’d gone already. Maybe the boy had rocked up puffing smoke into Tejpal’s face and been straight away sent packing. The thought made Narinder smile. She stepped across to the window and held aside the net. The car was still there. A black estate-type thing.
When Baba Tarsem Singh did come up he held Narinder by her shoulders and said he thought this might be it.
‘They seem like a decent family.’ He kissed her forehead.
Eyes lowered, she followed her father into the room and sat next to Tejpal. Her chunni hung far forward, like a veil. They could probably only see her mouth, her lips. Through the crêpe of her chunni she counted seven maple-cream biscuits, brought over by some massi in Calgary. There were half-empty cups of tea, too, and samosas arranged into a squat pyramid. Beyond the table was the boy and his parents, or their knees, at least. His must be the middle pair of legs, in trousers a delicate shade of green. The parents continued chatting as if she hadn’t even entered the room. What plans did they have for vaisakhi next year? Do they go to the nagar kirtan? And then the boy’s mother asked if the girl might be shown and Narinder felt her father’s hand on her elbow. She raised her head and pulled back the chunni a few inches. Still, her eyes were cast down, fixed on a woody knot in the coffee table. This was always the worst bit. Wondering what they’d make of her face. It never seemed to get any easier. ‘Beautiful,’ the boy’s mother said, like all the boys’ mothers have to say.
‘Karamjeet said he’d like to talk to the girl alone,’ the boy’s mother went on. ‘If you don’t mind?’
Perhaps her father looked to Tejpal, because after a pause it was her brother who spoke. ‘What’s there to mind? We’re as modern as anyone else.’
They left – ‘I’ll show you the conservatory’ – in a rustle of salwaars and closing doors.
Alone with him, Narinder looked up. His turban was a deep royal blue and maybe a touch big for his round face. His beard was nice and full – no trim-singh, he – and a neat little kandha hung on the chain around his neck. Just like the one she wore.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You as nervous as me?’
‘I thought I was going to be sick.’
He nodded – he knew the feeling. ‘I’m Karam, in case no one’s thought to tell you.’
‘They did,’ she said, relieved he had a sense of humour. ‘And your age, job, education, height and complexion. Always complexion.’
‘You practically know me inside out, then. Let’s get married.’
A silence formed, which Narinder tried to find words to dispel. She settled for an inadequate smile.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Nerves. You nervous, too?’ A shake of his head. ‘Sorry You answered that already.’ A sigh. ‘I’m making a hash of this, aren’t I? I was aiming for funny-but-sincere.’
Narinder took hold of the situation. ‘Did you have any questions? They’ll be back soon.’
‘Oh. OK. Well, I think your father said you go to Anandpur Sahib every year?’
‘I try to. I enjoy the seva there. And I fully intend to carry on even after my marriage.’ She said this with conviction, ready to argue her case, though he didn’t seem to have been listening.
‘To be honest, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t being forced or anything. I’m five years older than you and . . . Well, you hear stories, don’t you?’
She assured him no one was forcing her to do anything.
‘And you’d be happy living in Surrey?’
‘I don’t see what difference that makes.’
He seemed like a good person. They’d spoken on the phone a few times this last month and often she’d found herself smiling into the receiver. He was kind and honest and had twice now said how happy he was and how lucky he felt that she’d agreed to become his wife.
Narinder felt a hand on her shoulder, making her start. It was her baba, come to walk her home.
‘I was calling you.’
‘Oh, sorry, Baba. Is it time?’
‘What is this?’
He gestured to the posters on the gurdwara notice board, of Panjabi men and women who’d died trying to cross into the UK.
‘It’s very sad,’ Baba Tarsem Singh said.
She hadn’t really been reading them. The posters had been on the board for many months now. ‘Yes. I’ll pray for the families.’
‘Is that what’s been on your mind?’
‘Nothing’s been on my mind.’
‘You’ve been lost in your thoughts a lot recently.’
‘I’m sorry, Baba.’
‘You’ve been very quiet.’
She smiled. ‘I’m always quiet.’
He tried a different approach. ‘Is it the wedding? You are happy with the match?’
‘Yes, Baba.’
‘It’s a good family.’
She nodded.
‘It’s natural to be nervous.’
‘I’m fine. Really.’
‘And excited. Nervous excitement, they call it.’
She wondered whether to tell him that she didn’t feel excited. Not at all. But she couldn’t. Instead, they linked arms. ‘Why don’t you take the evening off?’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. I’ll escort you,’ she finished, emphasizing the pronouns.
*
During dinner one evening she received a text message: call me. urgent. Savi di. Narinder slid the phone under her thigh. That ‘di’, she knew, had been calculated to remind Narinder that she was the younger of the two, the one who should obey.
‘Still enjoying your new phone?’ Baba Tarsem Singh said, reaching for the pot of raita.
‘Who was it?’ Tejpal asked.
‘No one. A friend.’
‘You don’t have any friends.’
‘And how would you know?’ Narinder said.
He really was getting insufferable these days. With his collection of Khalistan turbans and Puffa waistcoats. Only last week he’d had a go at Narinder for not bathing before evening prayers.
She deleted the message. They’d not spoken once in the last year. Probably she needed money. Probably she was only going to feed Narinder more lies. A week later another text arrived, Savraj threatening to turn up at Narinder’s house if she didn’t agree to meet.
‘I don’t want to meet you or any of your family,’ Narinder said, on the phone. ‘You’re all liars.’
‘Meet me for Kavi’s sake.’ Before Narinder could work out how to respond, Savraj said, ‘The gurdwara at six? Today. For Kavi’s sake.’
They met in the langar hall and sat cross-legged on one of the runners. Opposite them, two young girls raced to finish their bowls of rice pudding. She’d changed her hair, Narinder noticed. Even shorter, with streaks of cheap copper. She’d given up her cleaning job and gone back to the sheds.
‘More money for less time,’ she said, pulling a few notes from her gold lamé purse. ‘What I owe you.’
‘Is that it? Is that why you wanted to see me? Can I go now?’
She made to get up. Savraj stayed her with a hand to the knee. ‘Do it for us.’
‘Do what?’
‘What Kavi asked of you.’
It was so ridiculous she nearly laughed. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘They can’t survive. Kavi’s even talking about selling his organs.’
‘Lies. More lies.’
‘Do you think we’d have lied if we weren’t desperate? Do you think I wanted to go back to the sheds?’
The Year of the Runaways Page 29