The Year of the Runaways (2 page)

‘So we come to yours?’

‘No, no. Keep to the gardens.’ He didn’t want them knowing where he lived.

He zipped up his jacket and sneaked out of the house and down onto Ecclesall Road, heading away from the city. The shabby restaurants were all closed, the pound shops shuttered. He liked this road in the day, a place of business and exchange, a road that seemed to carry on into the hills. Tonight, though, there was only a scrappy silence, and the city at his back, the countryside glowering ahead. He gripped the top of the zip between his lips, flicking it with the end of his tongue, and breathed out puffs of air that hung briefly in the cold. He turned up towards the Botanical Gardens and saw them sitting in their rich black BMW, faces flooded by the car’s interior light. The engine was still gunning. Bal got out, the eldest of the three brothers, all long leather and shaped facial hair. The gold ring on his right hand was the size and shape of a fifty-pence piece. Avtar nodded, jogged to meet him.

‘Why so late? I have work soon.’

‘True what they say, man. Fuckin’ cold up north.’

‘You were held up?’

‘By another one of you chumps. In Birmingham. He won’t be doing that again.’

Avtar handed the money over. ‘It’s all there. So tell your uncle not to bother my family. Do you understand?’

Bal counted it, note by note. ‘Good. It’s just my share, then.’

‘Arré, go fuck a cow. I can’t pay extra every—’

He slapped Avtar. ‘It’s two o’clock in the bastard morning, I’m in the arse-end of nowhere and you want to argue the fucking toss?’

Hand on his cheek, Avtar looked over to the two in the car, the baseball bat he knew they kept in their boot, then back at Bal’s heavy face. The height, which stretched the fat out of Bal’s body, couldn’t do the same for his slabbed cheeks and jaw. He took three more notes from his pocket and threw them across. ‘If we were in India, bhaji, I swear I’d break all your bhanchod bones.’

Bal feigned confusion. ‘What would I be doing in India?’ Then he laughed and pinched Avtar’s cheek, as if he were a child.

Three hours of sleep later, Avtar forced his stiff second pair of socks up over the first and pulled on his oversized workboots. He stuffed the sides with kitchen towel until they fitted. Then he picked up his rucksack, his hard hat and reflector jacket, and locked the door quickly. He was late.

He and Randeep were the last of the twelve to come down the stairs. They mumbled a quick prayer over the smoking joss stick and rushed out. Avtar didn’t mind: it meant they got the nearest waiting point. The street lamps were still on, spreading their winter yellow. The chill was sharp as needles.

‘So cold, yaar,’ Randeep said, and tucked his gloved hands into his armpits.

They turned onto Snuff Mill Lane and waited beside a twiggy hedge near the Spar. The National Lottery sign reverberated in the wind. Any van pulling up would look like it was only delivering the day’s newspapers.

‘There used to be a flour mill here,’ Randeep said. ‘Hundreds of years ago. I read about it.’

‘Yeah,’ Avtar said, too tired to really talk.

They took out their Tupperware boxes and peeled off the lids. Avtar held up one of his chapattis: a brittle misshapen thing full of burn holes. ‘No joke, I genuinely think my cock could do better.’

Randeep smeared the chilli gobi around his roti, then rolled it all up like a sausage.

The white Transit arrived and they climbed into the back and squeezed onto the wheel arches. The others were already in there, eating, or asleep on the blankets that covered the corrugated floor. Randeep squashed his bag under his knees, behind his legs. Opposite, Gurpreet was drawing on his roll-up and looking right at him.

‘Did you wear that jacket all the way down the street?’ Gurpreet asked, rocking side to side. ‘Do you bhanchod want to get seen?’

‘I was in a hurry.’

‘In a hurry to get us all caught, eh, little prince?’

He’d have to take some of his clothes over to her soon. He concentrated on that.

‘So what was she like, then?’ Gurpreet asked. ‘Our Mrs Randeep Singh?’

Randeep pretended not to hear.

‘Oy! I asked you something.’

‘Nothing. Like any girl.’

‘Oh, come on. Tall, slim, short? What about . . . ?’ He mimed breasts.

Frowning, Randeep said he didn’t notice, didn’t care to notice.

‘And she didn’t let you stay?’

‘I didn’t want to.’

Gurpreet laughed. ‘Maybe one day you will.’

‘Leave him alone,’ Avtar said, strongly, eyes still closed.

‘Where are we going today?’ Randeep asked quickly.

Vinny – boss, driver – spoke up: ‘A new job, boys. We’re off to Leeds.’

They all groaned, complaining about how late they’d be back.

‘Hey, ease up, yeah? Or maybe I need to get me some freshies who actually want the work?’

Someone in the back closed his fist and made the wanker sign, a new thing that had been going round the house recently.

The proposed hotel site was directly behind the train station. A board so white it sparkled read,
Coming soon! The Green: a Luxury Environmentally Friendly Living Space and Hotel in the City of Leeds.
But right now it was just a massive crater, topsoil scraped off and piled in a pyramid to one side. At least all the bushes and trees had been cleared.

They assembled in the corner of the station car park, looking down onto the site. Another vanload joined them. Mussulmans, Randeep guessed. Bangladeshis even, by the look of them. A man approached, his hard hat askew on his big pink head. He went straight to Vinny and the two spoke and then shook hands.

‘All right, boys,’ Vinny said. ‘This is John. Your gaffer. Do what he says and you’ll be fine. I’ll pick you up at seven.’

The van reversed and Vinny left. Randeep moved closer to Avtar: if this John was going to pair them off then he wanted to be with him. But John began by handing out large pieces of yellow paper, faintly grid-lined. Avtar took one, studied it. Randeep peered down over his shoulder.

‘These are the project plans,’ John said, walking back and forth. ‘As you can see there’s lots to do, lots to do, so let’s just take it one step at a time, yes? You understand?’

‘We could do this with our eyes closed,’ Avtar muttered. ‘Saala bhanchod.’

‘Oy! No, bhaji!’ John said, bursting into Panjabi, pointing at Avtar with the rolled-up paper. ‘I no longer fuck my sister, acha?’

Avtar stared, open-mouthed, and then everyone was laughing.

They put on their hats, smoothing their hair out of the way, chose tool-belts and made for the footings stacked in neat angles on the wooden pallets. John called them back. He wanted stakes in first.

‘But it will take twice as long,’ Avtar said.

John didn’t care. ‘We’re doing this properly. It’s not one of your shanty towns.’

So Avtar and Randeep piled a wheelbarrow with the stakes and bumped on down to their squared-off section of the site. ‘You put in the stakes and I’ll follow with the footings,’ Avtar said.

Randeep dropped onto one knee and held a stake to the ground. With a second glance towards the plan, he brought down his hammer. ‘Like last time?’ He wasn’t going to fall for that again.

‘It’ll take all week just to do this,’ Avtar said. ‘It’s as big as one of their bhanchod football grounds.’

At lunchtime, they found their backpacks and joined the others sitting astride a large tunnel of aluminium tubing, newly exposed from the dig. Beside them, a tarpaulin acted as a windbreak. They slid off their helmets. Their hair was sopping.

Afterwards one or two pulled on their coats and turned up their collars and sank into a sleep. The rest decided on a cricket match to stay warm. They found a plank of wood for a bat and several had tennis balls handy. They divided into Sikhs and Muslims, three overs each. Gurpreet elected himself captain and won the toss. He put the Muslims in to bat.

‘No slips, but an edge is automatic out,’ he said, topknot swinging as he ran back to bowl.

He was knocked for fourteen off the first over, the last ball screaming for a six. Gurpreet watched it arc above his head and land somewhere in the car park.

‘Arré, yaar, there’s something wrong with that ball.’

‘Right,’ Avtar said. ‘The fact that it is being bowled by you.’

Randeep laughed but when Gurpreet glowered he fell silent.

They needed thirty-one to win and came nowhere near, with Avtar going for glory and getting caught, and puffing Gurpreet easily run out.

‘These Mussulmans,’ he said, throwing aside the bat. ‘Cheating is in their nature.’

John approached and for the first time Randeep noticed his gentle limp.

‘Bohut good work, men, bohut good work. But come on, jaldi jaldi, it looks like you’ll have it all khetum in no time.’

Avtar and Randeep stowed their lunchboxes and trudged down the site. Another six hours to go.

Vinny was late that evening.

‘Some of us have other jobs to get to, yaar,’ Avtar said.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Vinny said. ‘I had to go to Southall.’ He was forced to turn left. ‘Crazy one-way system in this city.’

‘Is there work in Southall?’ Avtar asked, up and alert.

‘Hm? No, no. The opposite. I’ve found another one of you slackers. You’ll have to make some more room back there.’

No one spoke. It was nothing new. They came and went all the time.

Soon they hit the motorway. Someone asked if Vinny Sahib had heard anything about any raids? Because one of those Mussulmans, you see, he was telling that the raids have started again.

Vinny whistled a single clean note while shaking his head. ‘I’ve not heard a thing. Why would I? Far as I’m concerned you’re all legit, ain’t you? You all showed me your papers. Nowt to do with owt, me.’

The van continued in the slow lane, the tyres rumbling away under Randeep, a vibration that felt vacantly erotic. Then something made him sit up. At first he thought it was rain but it was too slow and gentle to be that. Then he understood, and touched his fingertips to the back window. ‘Mashallah,’ someone said, as Randeep felt them all brimming up behind him, pressing and jostling to stare at the sky, at the globe of tumbling snow around each street light.

At the house, Avtar persuaded Vinny to drop him off at the chip shop, leaving Randeep to eat alone in his room. Soon he was in bed, too exhausted to call Narinderji, too exhausted even to sleep, and he was still awake when he thought he heard a door sliding shut, like a van’s side door, and the downstairs bell being rung. He swiped clear a patch in the window – Vinnyji again? – and went down the first flight of stairs. Gurpreet and the others had edged into the hallway, shushing one another.

‘It’s Vinnyji,’ Randeep called down but no one seemed to hear him.

Gurpreet bent to the letter box, just as Vinny’s voice came through, shouting that he was freezing his fucking kecks off out here. Quickly, the door was opened and he hurried in. He was hunched over, looking shorter than usual, and each needle of his spiked hair was topped with a bobble of snow. Behind him was someone new.

Randeep joined them in the front room, glancing around for Avtar. The others were all there: some perched on the mattress laid over the metal trunk, two squatting on an upturned milk crate, several flopped into the Union Jack deckchairs nicked from a garden a couple of weeks ago. The TV was balanced on a three-legged stool in the middle of the room, playing their favourite desi call-in show.

‘This is Tochi,’ Vinny said, his thumb chucked towards the new guy. ‘Starts tomorrow, acha?’

He was very dark, much darker than Randeep, and shorter, but he looked strong. The tendons in his neck stood out. Twenty-one, twenty-two. One or two years older than him, anyway. So another he’d have to call bhaji.

‘I’ve got a spare mattress in the van. He’ll be staying in yours, OK, Ronny?’

It wasn’t really a question but Randeep said he was absolutely fine with that.

He and Tochi carried the mattress up the two flights and leaned it against the wall. They’d have to take out the wardrobe first.

‘Wait,’ Randeep said and placed his suitcase to one side, out of harm’s way.

‘Cares more about that fucking suitcase . . .’ Vinny said.

They bullied the wardrobe out and shoved in the mattress and then Vinny said he had to go.

‘Have a beer,’ Gurpreet said, joining them on the landing.

Vinny said he couldn’t. ‘Was meant to be back an hour ago. She’ll have the face on enough as it is.’ He turned to the new guy and made a star of his hand. ‘Five sharp, you understand? These lot’ll show you the ropes.’

When the three of them were left, Gurpreet folded his arms on the shelf of his gut, slowly. ‘So. Where you from?’

Tochi walked into the room and closed the door. Gurpreet stared after him, then pushed off the banister and huffed downstairs.

Randeep waited. He wanted to make a good first impression. He wanted a friend. He knocked and opened the door, stepping inside. The guy looked to be asleep already, still in his clothes and boots, and knees drawn up and hands pressed between them. He’d moved his mattress as far from Randeep’s as was possible in that small room: under the window, where the chill would be blowing down on him, through the tape.

‘Would you like a blanket? I have one spare,’ Randeep whispered. He asked again and when he again got no reply he tiptoed forward and folded out his best blanket and spread it over his new room-mate. Downstairs, there were still two rotis foil-wrapped in the fridge. He heated them straight on the hob. He liked the froggy way they puffed up. Then he coated them with some mango pickle. He didn’t want to join the others in the front room, where he could hear the TV blaring, but he didn’t want to disturb his new room-mate either. So he stayed there, marooned in the middle of the kitchen because there wasn’t a single clean surface to lean on, tearing shapes out of his roti and feeding himself.

By 3.15 the next morning Randeep was awake and washed and dressed and in the kitchen binning the previous day’s joss stick and lighting a fresh one. He said a quick prayer, warming his hands by the cooker flame, and set about getting what he needed: frying pans, rolling pin, butter and dough from the fridge, a cupful of flour from the blue barrel. He dusted the worktop with the flour and tore a small chunk from the cold brown dough, softening it between his palms. He had just over an hour to get sixty rotis done.