The Year of the Runaways

by Sunjeev Sahota

  ‘Will they be all right?’ she asked.

  He returned to his food on the cooker. ‘Don’t do that again.’

  ‘They were hungry. Would you let them starve?’

  He said nothing and she went back through the beads and up the stairs.

  She found the library again easily enough, and the lady’s name clicked into place the moment Narinder opened the door and saw her standing behind the reception desk. Jessica. It was, she later thought, a name well suited to white-haired ladies with bright blue eyes. Smiling, anxious, Narinder approached. She wanted to apologize, that was true. She had also wanted to get out of that house.

  ‘Narinder,’ Jessica said. ‘Well, better late than never, I say.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for letting you down.’

  Jessica showed her to the staff kitchen, where the interview had taken place. ‘I’m a firm believer in the power of a good, strong brew.’ She plucked a box of camomile from the high cupboard. ‘I’m assuming you’ve come back because you still want the job?’

  ‘Oh, I’d love to . . .’

  ‘You don’t sound very sure?’

  ‘You see, I’m only here for two or three months. Then I’ve got to go back home.’

  ‘That’s fine with me. It’s always busier in the winter. Unless you have better things to do?’

  ‘No, no. Definitely not. I don’t have anything to do. It’s just—’ She struggled to know how to say it. ‘I don’t want anyone to find me.’

  Jessica filled the mugs with boiling water. ‘In that case, let’s just keep it all very informal, shall we?’

  She loved the job. It was basic admin and filing and only for two or three days a week, but it rescued her from the accusatory silence of the house. She found she liked being around other people, kind people. It was its own peculiar balm. Only when she left the library and started for home did she fully remember that the immigration man was on to them and that Randeep still hadn’t been in touch. She’d tried calling him every day. At first his phone had gone straight to voicemail, as if it was switched off, but now it didn’t even do that, and all she got was a long dead note, flatlining. She couldn’t believe he’d run away, not this close to getting his stamp.

  As she turned onto Ecclesall Road, she saw Tochi up ahead: she recognized his jacket, the ribbed collar arranged around his neck. There was something about the way he walked that had become familiar to her, something to do with the way he kept his elbows pressed to his sides. She expected him to take a left after the pub, then pass the school and climb to their road. He walked straight on. Perhaps he knew a shortcut, but when she got to the house he wasn’t there. Thirty minutes later he came in, and, without acknowledging her, went to his room.

  She’d not been to the gurdwara for nearly a month now, not once since she’d been in the house. She knew she was avoiding it, was scared of it, scared of everyone taking one look at her and seeing how she was failing Him. It was easier to stay in her room, where she could convince herself that these feelings weren’t real, or were temporary and more to do with her situation than any change inside her. On Gurpurab, however, the pull was too great and she felt she had to go and pay her respects. She caught the bus after work, and, head bowed, went up to the darbar sahib and remained there until the end of the rehraas. Afterwards, she entered the langar hall, to share in the food. She saw her old friend Vidya coming towards her. She’d had her baby.

  ‘You should go,’ Vidya said, ushering Narinder out of the queue.

  For a sickening moment, Narinder thought they really had seen inside her and were throwing her out.

  ‘Some men were here looking for you. Showing your photo to everyone.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes. Oh. So it’s better if you stay away.’

  ‘That’s my brother. He—’

  ‘I don’t need to know. It’s not safe here.’

  She prayed that night. She took out from her suitcase the photo of Guru Nanak, stood it on the windowsill, and sat cross-legged before it. Waheguru is my ship and He will bear me safely across. It was one of her favourite lines. The words would surround the edge of her world in glimmering halo and she’d feel reassured. Not tonight. She repeated the words again and again but there came no halo, and there came no ship. There was only a frightening and oceanic darkness.

  For two days she didn’t eat. She couldn’t. She felt hollowed out, as if some instrument had scooped away all appetite. On the third evening she forced herself to boil a quarter-cup of rice, which she sat at the table and ate with a glass of milk. She washed her plate and dried it with tissue-paper and set it aside. Then she returned the carton of milk to the fridge. As she closed the fridge door, she noticed on the upper shelf a second carton, opened. They wouldn’t get through both. Half would be wasted. She felt suddenly angry and left a note, in Panjabi, asking him to please check in the fridge before buying milk as there was no point in wasting it, and that he was welcome to use any milk she bought. She didn’t know why she did this, wrote this note. Because if He really had gone, then she couldn’t understand what the force was that drove her to try and do good. So maybe He hadn’t gone after all, maybe He was still there, watching undetected, another pair of eyes trying to catch her out.

  She wrote a second note when two days later the same thing happened. She left it on the kitchen table, along with her weekly payment, and when she returned from work that evening both were gone. She opened the fridge. Another pointless new carton. She buried her face in her hands.

  Jessica handed Narinder an envelope – her wages in cash. ‘I do hope you’re enjoying it with us?’

  ‘I am. I really am,’ and she meant it. She never felt more part of the world than when she was working.

  She walked home with her coat buttoned up and a hand at her throat, scrunching her collar closed. Again, she saw Tochi up ahead, going past their turn-off. She still didn’t know why he did that. Once she was in the kitchen, she went through the beads and up to her room, taking off her coat as she went. She splashed some water on her face from the basin in the bathroom and returned downstairs. She chopped an onion and set it to stew on the stove, adding a cube of the garlic-ginger mixture she’d learned to make in bulk and keep chilled in ice trays. Then she wiped the counters down with a new disinfectant she’d bought, hoping this one might at last rid the surfaces of their black streaky skin.

  She heard the scrape of the side gate, footsteps. She froze, watchful, but it was only him, coming past the window and now through the door. A blue carrier bag hung from his fingers and this he lifted onto the counter and she watched him place the bread and eggs to one side and then take out the carton of milk and step towards the fridge. Anger propelled her forward and she snatched the carton from his hand and threw it to the floor.

  ‘Why are you being like this? Why? Have I become so worthless?’ Her eyes were white-wide, beseeching. She pressed a finger to her chest. ‘What have I ever done to you? To anyone? I want to know. Why is this happening to me?’

  He picked up the carton from the floor and put it on the shelf, next to hers. She’d moved to the cooker.

  ‘There was a raid,’ he said. ‘Here.’

  She turned round. ‘That was months ago.’

  ‘Three months ago.’

  She didn’t think she understood. ‘And Randeep— What? He’s been deported? But I’d have been told.’

  ‘All I know is there was a raid. Sometimes they keep an eye on the house.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He might have come back here too soon.’

  ‘But he’s got a visa.’

  He took a few slices of bread and began to butter them.

  ‘Are you going to leave now?’ She realized she didn’t want him to.

  ‘If you stay quiet – if you quit the tantrums – they won’t come again.’ He took a dented, grim-looking tin from the cupboard – pilchards – and slopped it all into a pan.

  ‘I’m making a fresh sabzi,
’ she said. ‘I can make enough for two.’

  ‘No.’ Then: ‘Thank you.’

  *

  A new girl had started at Crunchy Fried Chicken, replacing Kirsty, but for some reason to do with babysitters she could only work the late shifts. Tochi had been moved to earlies, finishing each day at 4 p.m. He’d argued with Malkeet over it, saying they didn’t need anyone else and he’d been coping fine with the double shift.

  ‘But I need someone who can banter at night,’ Malkeet said. ‘Someone who doesn’t look like he wants to kill half my customers.’

  A week on, he was still angry about it, about the cut in his income. He hauled the five-litre canister of oil into his arms and, to shake the dregs from the bottom, banged it against the steel fryers, hard.

  ‘Very mature,’ Harkiran said.

  Then Tochi topped up the oil and chucked in the chips. But he’d forgotten to lower the temperature and the splashback was considerable. He managed to look away in time and felt only his forearm scald.

  ‘You idiot!’ Malkeet said, turning the gauge. He fetched a tube of soothing cream from the toilet room. ‘See what happens when you do things in a temper? Turn round. Lift your T-shirt.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Tochi said.

  ‘Your back got splashed to fuck. How can it be fine?’

  ‘I said it’s fine.’

  His arm, however, was hot and sore and red, as if a whole world of heat was trapped inside it. For a moment, he thought he felt his back tense, his body remembering. He took the cream home and applied it again, then found a bandage and sat at the table and wound it crudely up from his hand. He tried tidying the ends in, but as soon as he stood up the whole thing unravelled. He was looking for a safety pin under the sink when she walked through the door.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  He carried on searching, knocking aside her stupid cleaning bottles.

  ‘Do you want a pin?’

  He stopped. ‘Don’t put yourself out.’

  She fetched several from her room and told him to sit while she took the bandage and started at his elbow and worked tidily, carefully, down to his wrist. He checked, but she didn’t seem to mind touching his skin. Maybe she didn’t know. Or didn’t care. In any case, each time he felt the soft scrape of her fingertips, he had to concentrate hard on the door straight ahead.

  She used three pins to keep it all in place and said he should change it every day. ‘But I can do that.’

  He nodded.

  ‘So you left work early?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see you sometimes. Walking home. Except you come a different way.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘Is it quicker? Your way?’

  ‘Quicker?’

  ‘I mean, why don’t you just turn off the main road nearer the house?’

  ‘I used to.’

  ‘You don’t any more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  He sighed, impatient. ‘Because of the police.’

  She thought on this, in case she’d missed something. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen any police round there.’

  ‘Perhaps because you don’t need to worry about them.’

  ‘Can I ask where you see them?’

  ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

  She didn’t respond, and he seemed to regret the accusation.

  ‘Near the school,’ he said.

  ‘The school?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  She felt a smile coming to her lips. ‘Do you mean outside the school?’

  He looked across.

  ‘At about four o’clock?’

  ‘If you’ve got something to say, tell me.’

  She explained what a lollipop lady was, that it had nothing to do with the police and was no reason for him to walk so far out of his way.

  ‘Honestly. You don’t have to do that.’

  He nodded. He seemed embarrassed.‘Thank you for telling me.’

  The following afternoon, at work, he pulled her crumpled notes from his pocket and asked Harkiran to read them for him, and when Narinder got back from work that evening she opened the fridge and saw that he hadn’t bought his own separate carton of milk, and had instead drunk from hers.

  Avtar felt a little fresher that evening as he sat down to eat. He’d washed in the toilets of the club, feeling a bit silly as he watched himself digging into his armpits with pink soap from the dispensers. He removed the steel plate covering the food bucket. There was still maybe half an inch of watery dhal left, enough for tonight. He’d top up at the gurdwara tomorrow. He spun the bread wrapper open and extracted two slices. Afterwards, he put the empty bucket in the corner and moved to the back of the Portakabin and lay on the bunk he’d made. Through the window, Leeds wore its evening lights: yellow office windows, a nightclub called Flares flashing crazily. He’d hitched a ride here straight from Jagdish’s, three weeks ago now. He’d hoped the building work might have started up again. It hadn’t. The foundations were still exposed. The cranes and scaffolding, the mesh sheeting and aluminium tunnel, none of it had changed. He should count himself lucky, though, because the very next day he’d found work cleaning a club called Parachute, for a young mussulman on the make. God was still looking over him. And he’d get his visa renewed soon, with his second year about to begin. Yes, it wasn’t all bad, he told himself, as he drew his knees up and brought his face down to meet them.

  It was still dark when he woke up, scrambling, scared he was about to piss himself. He hurried behind the cabin, clomping over the bushy grass, unzipped and held down the front of his jeans with his thumb. Nothing came, though the need was still there, pressing. He forced it out and the pain was a furious current firing up and down his cock. He had to keep stopping, pissing in short bursts, and when he finished and zipped up he was sweating. That was the third time this week, and the worst. It was the change in his diet, he kept telling himself, simply his body’s way of asking for food stronger than watery dhal. He was too awake now; there was no point going back to his bed. He seated himself on the middle step, head tipped against the broken cabin door. It was a clear sky; the moon distant, the air thin. He needed to get a blanket soon. That probably wasn’t helping either. The cold. He pulled his knees up to his chest, one leg at a time, and rested his cheek down. He was so tired. Far away, a plane silently climbed.

  Arriving in London, he went straight to the college. They took his photo, added some notes to his computer file, and asked him to complete an application confirming his student visa status, which included an agreement not to undertake any paid work in the UK. He signed it hurriedly and slid it back across the counter. She’d changed her hair colour but it was the same woman as last year, when he’d walked into the college on bare feet. She seemed not to have remembered him.

  ‘Now I just need your passport.’

  There was an infinitesimal shift in Avtar’s face. ‘My passport?’

  ‘I need to take a copy. You can have it straight back.’

  ‘But you took copies last year.’

  ‘Procedures, I’m afraid.’ She smiled and looked to the line of students behind him.

  ‘I left it at home.’

  ‘Well, we will need original copies before we can enrol you. Until then you won’t be able to sit the course. Sorry.’

  Avtar nodded, as if in total agreement with their procedures. ‘I’ll bring them next time.’

  ‘Marvellous,’ and she passed him back his folder.

  He returned to Cheemaji in the car park.

  ‘Everything OK?’ the doctor asked. ‘Nothing about late registration?’

  Avtar nodded, handing him the visa agreement.

  ‘I’ll take this to the embassy myself and renew your visa. Congratulations!’

  He nodded again and tried to smile.

  They reversed out and joined a queue at the exit barrier, which seemed to have bro
ken. The security guard was turning a wheel to raise the bar.

  ‘Are you not teaching today?’ Avtar asked.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, no. I’m on leave for a few months. A sabbatical.’

  He’d grown his beard and his discreet steel kara had been replaced with a hefty gold band, as wide as his wrist. Avtar didn’t ask after any of these changes. He had enough problems of his own. He turned his face to the window and tried to look forward to a night in a clean bed.

  He’d told Cheemaji his return train was at one o’clock, an hour earlier than it was due.

  ‘Thank you, uncle,’ Avtar said, levering himself out of the car.

  Dr Cheema undid his seat belt and leaned across. ‘Are you sure you won’t stay? We’ve hardly talked.’

  ‘I have work tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, make sure you come back soon, acha? Plenty of room now,’ he added, laughing a little embarrassedly. Avtar hadn’t said anything the previous evening, when they’d parked up outside the big house and Cheemaji told him he could sleep in his son’s – Neil’s – room. It was only this morning, over breakfast, that the grandmother confirmed she’d gone, taking the boy with her.

  ‘The whore.’

  ‘Biji, please,’ Cheemaji said.

  ‘It’s what the world thinks.’

  ‘She might come back,’ he said, faintly.

  Avtar had heard of people getting divorced, though this was his first experience of seeing someone going through it. If he was honest, he couldn’t help but think that Cheemaji had brought it all on himself.

  He entered Kings Cross and found a table at the same coffee shop as last time. He was nervous. He pulled his chair back and made for the toilets. Again, it hurt to piss and he had to chew his bottom lip to keep from crying out. He washed his hands and splashed his face and told himself to be strong. He would not show them his fear. There was a man in a suit at the hand dryer and when he walked out, shaking the water off his fingers, he left his mobile on top of the machine. Avtar nearly called after him. Then he pocketed the phone and returned to the table.

  Bal arrived alone and Avtar shook his hand and invited him to please take a seat, as if he was chairing this meeting.