Narinder turned her face away; she wished Savraj would stop.
‘It would be one year only. And no one would have to know. Not even your family. I thought if when you’re over there this summer you could go with Kavi to see the agent, then it could all be taken care of before you have to come back.’
All the time Narinder was shaking her head. ‘It’s illegal. It’s against the law. People could go to prison.’
‘Think of the number of people you’ll be helping. Not just us. But our children, and their children. We’ll love you till we die.’
‘No one has to die,’ Narinder said, facing Savraj full on. ‘Come to the gurdwara. We’ll get advice. We’ll help Kavi find a job. In India. A good job.’
‘There are no jobs. There is only corruption. Or if there are jobs they go to the fucking chamaars with these government quotas.’ Savraj reached for Narinder’s hand. ‘Please. Help us.’
Narinder shook her head, said sorry, that she couldn’t take the risk, couldn’t do it to her family, her father, and she kept shaking her head and saying sorry until Savraj gave up and left the langar hall for the dingy evening outside.
She told her father what had happened. Baba Tarsem Singh had been marking out passages in his gutka when Narinder appeared in the doorway and asked if she might interrupt him.
‘It’s not enough that they trick you, they also have to make you feel guilty,’ he said afterwards.
‘I’m scared they’ll do something dangerous.’
‘You’ve tried harder to help them than anyone else ever has. It’s between them and God now.’
‘What if her brother comes to harm?’
‘Let’s pray that doesn’t happen.’
She knew he was right. And yet: ‘I’m worried I should be doing more. That I’m not doing enough.’
‘There is nothing more you can do, beita. It’s in God’s hands. You’re getting married. Did you tell her that?’
Narinder hesitated.
‘Narinder?’
That evening she was summoned down from her bedroom. In the rocking chair sat her father, a guilty look on his face. Her brother stood with his back to the portrait of their mother. His arms were folded across his chest, hands arranged in a way that cupped each elbow, and his beard shone blue in the mix of lights playing through the different windows. He’d set his turban on the sideboard, so his topknot flopped like a loose apple. When they were children, he used to let Narinder pull on this funny-looking hairball.
‘Are you happy with this match?’
She’d been prepared for this. ‘Of course. It all seems fine to me.’
‘You’re sure? Certain?’
‘Get off my case, Tejpal.’
‘Don’t be too hard on her,’ Baba Tarsem Singh said.
Tejpal raised his hand and their father withdrew into the chair.
‘If you’re not happy tell me now. While I can still do something about it. Because if you leave it any longer I won’t be able to do anything. And I won’t let you shame us. I won’t let you make it impossible for Dad to walk into the gurdwara with his head held high.’
He approached, the blue light falling abruptly from his beard to his feet.
‘Well?’
She could feel herself glaring at him, at the idea that she would ever do anything – had ever done anything – to shame their father. ‘I’ve told you. Get off my case.’
*
Every so often she’d try calling India or Savraj. She wanted to know that the family was OK. That they’d not been ensnared by the kinds of agents she’d read up on recently. The ones who took all your money in exchange for a shoddy visa that wouldn’t even gain you entrance to the airport. But the information from India was sketchy – the PCO she called didn’t really know the family she was asking after – and Savraj never returned her messages. In time, winter broke to spring, and then summer, and somewhere along the way Narinder gave up trying to contact them. She was getting married in December and she needed to start coming to terms with that fact.
She’d seen Karamjeet twice since their introduction. Once when he’d come with all his relatives to drape a phulkari chunni over her head and officially claim her into the family. They’d not spoken that day. She wasn’t absolutely certain she even remembered having seen him. The second time, they met secretly in Hyde Park on a Friday afternoon in late May. He brought along a small hamper full of posh vegetarian bits and pieces and they’d found a bench by the Serpentine, the basket of food balanced awkwardly between them.
‘More juice?’
She said no, thank you.
He put the carton back. ‘You’re not going to Anandpur Sahib this summer?’
‘There’s too much to do. For the wedding.’
‘Well, maybe we can go next year. Together. It’s a while since I’ve done some proper seva.’
She nodded. ‘That’d be nice.’
He nodded, too. Seconds ticked.
‘So, have you thought any more about where you’d like to go? After our wedding?’
‘I don’t mind. Hemkund Sahib sounds nice. Isn’t it only open in the summer?’
‘June to October. But I have contacts. It is a lot of walking, though. I wouldn’t want you to be bored.’
‘It’ll be worth it.’
‘Maybe we can ask them to read an ardaas. For us. For our future together.’
‘That would be nice.’
Nice, nice, nice. She wished she could think of something else to say.
‘It’s funny we both wore the same colour,’ he went on. Their turbans, camel-brown. ‘Maybe it’s a sign. We think similarly.’ He was smiling determinedly through his beard.
‘It’s good that we have shared interests,’ she said, relieved to have landed on something positive.
‘Yes. Though I think shared attitudes is more important. And I think we have that as well. Don’t you?’
‘Yes. I do. You definitely need that because otherwise things can be very . . . very . . .’ She didn’t know how to end the sentence.
‘Not nice?’
On their way to the Tube at South Kensington, past the Science Museum, he spoke more about his job teaching physics in a secondary school, the joys and frustrations of it. As she listened, she realized that she was fond of him. He was gentle. He was patient. He made allowances for her nerves and understood how much bigger a step this was for her. He had so many sweet qualities that surely it didn’t matter that she felt no . . . No what? Sometimes she remembered the moment Kavi had nearly touched her elbow. That flare of desire. She felt none of that walking beside Karamjeet. Instead, the thought of lying next to him one day soon came trailing a strong undertow of disappointment.
He followed her through the barriers before calling her back. ‘Mine’s the District.’
‘Oh, OK.’ She smiled. ‘I guess I’ll see you at the wedding.’
He was looking at her. He seemed on the brink of something. Then he stumbled in for a kiss, his eyes open and intense. She recoiled, and perhaps even made some sort of sound.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘No, I just . . . You surprised me.’
‘I know. Anyway – ’ he shook his hamper pointlessly – ‘I’ll telephone you?’
‘I’d like that.’
He nodded – he didn’t seem to believe her – and headed for the escalator. Narinder watched him descend, his turban last to disappear. He looked crestfallen and she felt terrible.
For the wedding everything had been more or less decided. It would be a simple occasion, with none of the ostentation that most families engaged in these days.
‘I hope you don’t mind not having a reception,’ Karamjeet said. ‘The sooner we get you home the better. Only six months to go,’ he added, laughing anxiously.
She closed her phone and felt better, lighter, their conversation set aside for another three days. She was fond of him, though, she reminded herself, as the front door opened and Tejpal came hurtling towards her.
‘She’s here.’
‘What? Who?’
‘Your friend. The whore. I can’t believe Dad let her in the house.’
Savraj was sitting on the sofa, fingers threaded around a mug of tea. Her black PVC coat was several sizes too small, straining at the armpits, and her white chunni had fallen off her head. Baba Tarsem Singh sat beside her.
‘Savraj,’ Narinder said. The white chunni. ‘What’s happened?’
She couldn’t speak. Tears ran haltingly down her cheeks. Narinder looked to her father, who explained that the brother had died. He’d tried to make it across in a coach. Hiding in a gap cut into the ceiling. It seems they suffocated. Three of them.
‘They found the bodies in Russia,’ Savraj said. ‘They just dumped them in the snow.’
Narinder groped behind her for a table or chair to lean on. ‘That can’t be true.’ She spoke as if to herself.
‘I don’t know how we’re going to survive. Mamma’s on her own.’
Narinder saw her father nod at Tejpal, and perhaps Savraj did too because she suddenly tugged her coat about herself and said she should go. That she’d bothered them enough with her grief.
‘I just didn’t know what else to do. I’m sorry.’
Tejpal left the room briefly, returning with a small wad of notes which he passed to his father. He in turn pressed it into Savraj’s hand. ‘Take care of yourself, beiti.’
Savraj touched his feet, then tipped the money into her pocket and walked straight past Narinder and out of the door.
She couldn’t sleep and at first light she left the house and walked fast to the gurdwara. It was locked. She banged on the door and a sleepy-eyed granthi in white robes let her in. She raced up the steps, dragging her chunni on over her turban, and entered the darbar sahib, brought up short by the silence of it, as if she’d expected to find Kavi there. There was no one save for a second granthi, sitting with the holy book. Narinder fell to her knees and muttered prayers, rocking to and fro, speaking to Him.
When she returned home, her father called her into the front room. ‘It’s true. I made some phone calls and she’s not lying.’
It hadn’t occurred to her that Savraj might have been making it all up. She stood in the doorway, agitated, unsure where to put her face.
‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Baba Tarsem Singh said, coming to her. And the voicing of this possibility, that she could have averted this death, arrived as both relief and accusation, and Narinder slid down the doorframe and covered her face with her hands.
One night, a week later, her father came into her room and she felt his weight on the end of her bed, heard the slight rattle of his cane.
‘It wasn’t your fault, daughter. You couldn’t have known.’
‘But I did know. I knew they’d try something like this. And still I did nothing.’ She pressed her knees together to stop their shaking. Her bedside clock ticked gamely on.
‘You’re not sleeping. You’re not eating. Look how dark your eyes have become. From all this worry.’
‘I destroyed a family, Baba. My actions killed someone and I don’t know how I’ll ever forgive myself.’
‘God will forgive you. He knows your heart.’
‘But why did He let it happen? Is He teaching me a lesson?’
‘Narinder, we’ve spoken about this. We have to trust Him. I promise you it will all make sense in the end.’
She turned round. She needed to see his face. ‘Does it make sense that my mother died?’
He looked away, with clear difficulty ‘If it pleases Him.’
It was a frightening thought, that God might be pleased by their suffering.
In the morning, hoping it might help, she went to the gurdwara. There was a poster on the way in reminding the sangat to make time for next summer’s trip to Anandpur Sahib. When she’d volunteered last time she’d felt a great sense of goodness, that she was on the side of goodness. But real goodness, she now understood, wasn’t chopping vegetables in the canteen or distributing blankets. It was what her gurus had all done. It was putting yourself at risk for other people. It was doing the things that others wouldn’t do. It was sacrifice. And she’d never done that. The opposite was true. The one time she’d been tested, the one time someone had asked her to take a risk, to make a sacrifice, she’d walked away.
She stared ahead, mouth open, as if the granthi’s words were sliding right down her throat. Maybe it wasn’t such a ridiculous idea. Maybe she could do it. It seemed to be something that had been in the dark suspension of her mind ever since Kavi first asked her, but only last night had it poured over her brain, like a ramallah lain over the granth. It would be a risk, and that was the point. It wouldn’t help Kavi but it would help someone like him, someone who was struggling to survive. Maybe it would help her, too. Because how could she stand by and do nothing? Knowing what she now did? The wedding could wait. Karamjeet could wait. It was only for one year and then she’d come back and get married and life could carry on as expected. One year of her privileged life. One year. That’s all it was. As she thought these things, the guilt seemed to lift a little and for the first time in weeks she felt a smile come to her face, a smile in which could be seen a curl of excitement, in which the wedding was so happily, so boringly far away.
*
She was in Amritsar, showing the man her diary and indicating the number. She’d been coming here every day for the last week, at more or less the same time, and still the man asked if it was a UK call. He dialled the number from his side of the counter, and when the phone in the booth started to ring he pointed to the receiver. Baba Tarsem Singh was on the line.
Ringing home every day had been one of her father’s conditions. She’d said she needed to spend some time doing seva, to gather her strength before the wedding. Tejpal had been hard against it. Barely six months from the wedding. How would they explain it to Karamjeet’s parents? Baba Tarsem Singh talked him round and it was agreed that she could go for two weeks only and that, other than to call home every day, she wasn’t to leave the grounds of Anandpur Sahib. Narinder hadn’t set out to go against their wishes. The whole idea of marrying someone to help them come to England had begun to seem slightly mad; though that was before she pulled her white chunni from her suitcase and headed out to see Savraj’s mother. The gate was repeatedly padlocked and there was no sign of the animals. A woman on the neighbouring roof shouted that they’d gone. She didn’t know where. Maybe the city? They couldn’t pay the rent, you see. Did Narinder know the son had died trying to get to valeyat? Narinder tried to find a lawyer, but the closest the town had was a local man who dealt primarily with village disputes. He advised her to go to Amritsar, which was two hours away.
She told her father that, yes, she was still in Anandpur Sahib, then replaced the receiver on the prongs of the phone and paid the man. It was a five-minute walk up the Jallianwallah Bagh road to her lodgings inside the Golden Temple. Dusk was falling, and a passing cyclist switched on his flashing red headlight. She walked through the channel of water at the entrance to the temple and went in through the eastern gate. She loved the view from here, especially at this time of day, when the evening-red sun dipped behind the temple and the lake became a wet pasture of liquid gold, and the whole world seemed but a reflection of His glory. She’d prayed that morning, asking Him what to do, and had received direction. It was only for one year. She thought of three young boys lying dead in the Russian snow and knew she was doing the right thing.
‘There’s a good supply of lawyers near the furniture market, madam. In Hall Bazaar,’ the auto driver added, early the next morning.
The streets were already steamy with traffic and the bazaar was impossibly clogged. She’d walked and with some loose directions from the driver picked her way through the rickshaws and golguppe sellers, the scooters and carts and students on their way to college. Huge banners hung between rooftops, images of a bespectacled man who reminded Narinder of a distant uncle.
‘I’d like to speak to a lawyer, please,’ Narinder said.
The woman plucked a form from her in-tray. ‘Fill this in. The next available appointment is in two months.’
‘But I need to speak to him today.’ She took the form. ‘I don’t mind waiting. It’s only that I’m not here for very long.’
‘Two months,’ the woman said, returning to her keyboard.
By the early afternoon, Lawyers4u was the fifth office she’d tried, though the first to offer her an appointment for that same day. It looked shabby – a second-floor operation with peeling beige paint and a giant plant starting to brown. There was no receptionist, just a man in a khaki two-piece handing out numbered green chits. Narinder took her ticket – 00183 – and a young man in a white lunghi offered her his chair. The chit-man called out, ‘Ticket number 155.’
Four hours later, her turn came. The lawyer’s office was tiny, the size of their bathroom at home, and far too small for the huge oak desk he seemed to insist on. He was older than she’d expected – it had looked like the outfit of someone at the beginning of their career, not that of a slight, elderly, grey-haired man like this. A brass prism on his desk read D. S. Yadav LLB, and on the wall hung a certificate confirming his membership of the Amritsar Bar Association. There was nowhere for her to sit.
‘And how can I help you, miss?’
Narinder cleared her throat. ‘I’m looking for a husband.’
It took a few minutes for the details to be straightened out. She wanted to help someone who needed to come to England. It was important that this person really needed the help. Money wasn’t a consideration – she’d need a little for when she arrived back in England, but that was all. The important thing was that the person must really need her help.
The Year of the Runaways Page 30