The Year of the Runaways (44 page)

‘I’m sorry if you heard me,’ the husband said. ‘But please don’t come to our house or speak to my wife again. We can’t afford to become involved in other people’s problems.’

Avtar was in the kitchen negotiating a sale when he heard Randeep returning from his visa-wife’s. He shut the door and stomped upstairs. Perhaps it hadn’t gone so well, Avtar thought. He turned back to the sale, to this young fauji who’d bussed it over from Hillsborough.

‘Seven pounds,’ Avtar said. ‘And that’s better than I’ve done for anyone else.’

‘Come on, bhaji. You know what work’s like these days.’ He shook his pocket out onto the counter. ‘Five. That’s all I’ve got.’

‘And how much do you keep in your socks?’

The young man smiled. They agreed on six pounds per chicken and the fauji left with two, one tucked under each arm. As Avtar folded the notes into his wallet, he heard Randeep hurrying back down.

‘What the hell?’ he said, swatting the beads aside.

‘I’ve just sold another two.’

‘Why are there chickens hanging all over my room?’

‘Oh,’ Avtar said, looking up. ‘Oh, yeah.’

‘They’re in my wardrobe!’

‘I ran out of room in the fridge. And your room gets less sun than mine. What else should I have done?’

‘It stinks! I can’t believe . . . How am I meant to sleep in that?’

‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Do you want to swap?’ Randeep asked, petulantly.

‘Look, I’ve got more buyers coming over tonight and in the morning. The chickens, they’ll be gone by tomorrow.’

Hari advised them to wait a week before attempting their next crate snatch, until that chamaar was back on the late shifts and out of the way. In the interim Bal drove up and Avtar thudded into his hand a nice thick tube of notes. So keep away from my family, he’d said. The next day he wired his parents enough money to cover the remortgage, and the day after that they headed on down to the chip shop.

‘I told you to wear a belt,’ Avtar said. It was the second time Randeep had stopped to pull his jeans up. ‘You’ll slow us down again.’

‘I don’t have one, yaar. My clothes actually used to fit me.’

They waited at the bus stop, and soon the truck came past, bang on time, and deposited the chickens. As it left, Avtar told Randeep to get ready. There was no miss-call from Harkiran, though. Two minutes passed. Five.

‘Shall we call him?’ Randeep said.

‘I don’t know.’

Then – relief! – the call came and they hurtled towards the shop and round the back, where the beautiful chickens were waiting. Avtar went to flick the catches up but they didn’t snap loose. He tried again. They were stuck. Like they’d been glued. Run, he was about to shout, when a hand closed around his collar: ‘So that’s why my invoices weren’t adding up!’

Malkeet didn’t demand his money back – if anything, it had seemed to Avtar that he half admired their guts – but he did say that if they pulled any stunts like that again he’d be on to the police quicker than they could say detention centre.

‘As if he could ever call the police,’ Avtar seethed, kicking the bus stop so hard the green panel dented. ‘With everything he does!’

9. UNDER ONE ROOF

She continued with the swimming, visiting the leisure centre on her own now. At first she’d gone in the hope of bumping into Vidya, whom she’d not seen at the gurdwara since the night her husband told Narinder to stay away. But Vidya was never at the pool and now Narinder went simply because she enjoyed it, which felt like a scandalous and perhaps even a shameful thing to admit. Sometimes, during the silent unoccupied evenings, she wondered if some change had taken place inside her, or, disturbingly, was taking place inside her, imperceptibly, in the way that the night gives way to dawn. Even if her father and brother had permitted it, she couldn’t ever have imagined herself in a pool with other half-naked people. She supposed it was living on her own that had done it. And now here she was, this afternoon, trying to make roti-dhal for the strange man downstairs. She peeled the roti off the tava and gave the dhal a stir. If her family could see her now! She’d even considered getting a job, and last week had made it all the way to the job centre before talking herself out of it, because who would want to employ someone for – what was it? – five months? When she’d have to return home and marry Karamjeet. And stay married to Karamjeet. Forever. There was a chance that this roti-making for the man downstairs was as much to do with resisting her fate as it was a desire to help, but this thought was too wild to get any sort of purchase on.

The dhal tasted good, though the rotis, which she’d always struggled with, were a little crisp. She hoped he wouldn’t be offended and put it all on a tray and carried it down the stairs. She knew he was in because she’d heard him moving about, pots banging, but when after three knocks he still hadn’t answered she left the food by the door and returned upstairs. She showered and prayed and began work on a five-hundred-piece jigsaw she’d bought the previous week on her way home from the leisure centre. Once complete it promised a tantalizing sea view, the sky impossibly wide, the ocean sun-dappled. A few birds. No people. After two hours she’d perhaps managed only a couple of pieces when the meter started to tick. She fished out a token from her tin beneath the sink and opened the door. The tray of food lay at her feet, untouched.

*

At last Avtar found some work. Harkiran had to head down to Barking for a three-day family wedding and called in case he wanted to cover the security-guard night shift.

‘Of course I do!’ Avtar said, rising from his mattress.

The job was at a copper-pipe factory on Leadbridge Industrial Estate in Attercliffe, and all Avtar had to do was keep watch from his plasticized cabin outside the estate entrance and once an hour patrol the grounds. It was the easiest money he had ever earned. The cabin was small, stuffy with the day’s warmth, and warmed even further by an electric radiator mounted low on the wall. He’d tried to switch the radiator off but it seemed stuck on its high setting. The only furniture was five narrow, armless blue swivel chairs arranged in a row against the window.

‘I’ll do a walk round,’ Avtar said.

Randeep reached for his jacket.

‘Stay You don’t have to follow me everywhere.’

He hadn’t meant to snap, and if Avtar had bothered to look no doubt he’d have seen Randeep gawping glumly after him. But Avtar hadn’t looked. He’d opened the door and walked straight out. He’d told him that this was a one-man job, that he couldn’t afford to split the money. Randeep had said he didn’t care about the money. He just wanted to come.

‘I don’t want to be on my own with Gurpreet.’

‘Don’t be such a wimp,’ Avtar had replied. ‘You won’t get anywhere like that.’

He rounded the last grey block of the factory and ambled towards the perimeter fence. Something about being alone in the night air tended to create a space for compassion, for feeling ashamed. He didn’t know what was happening to his mood lately. He should apologize to Randeep. It wasn’t his fault he was so different from his sister, that he had so little of her fight. Perhaps it was time to tell him about their relationship. It would be good to get him on side before the big confrontation with Mrs Sanghera. But no. He was still too much of a kid in the way he thought of himself. Maybe in a little while, when he seemed a bit more stable. At the perimeter fence, he called Lakhpreet and felt relief when it went straight to voicemail. He wasn’t sure he had anything to say to her: anything she’d understand. He remained at the fence for a while, staring through to the city lights beyond. Where was the work? He was promised work. He had a sudden memory of a disused factory, a staircase, a bell tower. It all seemed so long ago. Everything was moving away from him. Further and further away. At least he could keep Pocket Bhai’s men away from his family for another month. He ran his hand down the wire mesh, his thoughts somehow following, and returned to the cabin.

Their shift finished at six, when Mr Shah, the fur-hatted factory owner, turned up in his second-hand Bentley, and by seven they were back in the house, starving. Avtar checked the boxes of cereal, then the freezer. Gurpreet came through the beads on bare feet.

‘Have you had all the bread?’ Avtar said, shutting the fridge.

‘There wasn’t any atta.’

‘Great.’ He opened one of the top cupboards, looking for a clean cereal bowl. ‘Want some?’ he said to Randeep.

‘I’m leaving next week,’ Gurpreet said.

Avtar looked across. ‘Oh?’

‘To Southampton.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Past London.’

‘There’s work there?’

‘Maybe.’

‘But you’re not sure?’

‘Who can be?’

Avtar lost interest and shook the cereal into two bowls. ‘Enough to feed a couple of small birds,’ he said, banging the side of the box, getting it to cough out all the crumbs.

‘Lend me some money,’ Gurpreet said.

‘Don’t have any.’

‘You’re working.’

‘Still don’t have any.’

‘I’m not asking for much,’ he said, in a tone laced with desperation.

Avtar said nothing and Gurpreet, furious, punched the doorframe on his way out.

‘Idiot,’ Avtar said, reopening the fridge. He made an exasperated noise and slammed it shut. ‘I bought a whole carton yesterday.’

He looked to Randeep, who was staring at the beads, still swinging. ‘Did you see how much he was shaking?’

‘Gurpreet?’ Avtar picked up his bowl of dry cereal. ‘What’s new?’

Mr Shah paid Avtar for the three nights’ work and agreed to take his number in case of any more shifts in the future.

‘I’ll do any work, janaab,’ Avtar said, dialling up his Urdu. ‘Aap jho fermiyeh.’
Whatever you ask.
And then, because he’d heard this Mr Shah liked his poetry, and apropos of nothing at all: ‘Zindagi tho pal bar ka tamasha hai.’
Life is but a spectacle of moments,
which had Mr Shah parting his lips a little worriedly.

They left – ‘Khuda hafiz’ – breaking off at the Londis for some bread before making a right onto their road.

‘Zindagi tho . . . ?’ Randeep said. He hadn’t stopped laughing. ‘Wah, bhai, Mirza Sahib!’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Avtar popped his collar. ‘You won’t be saying that when he makes me boss of his empire. Lottery, here I come!’

A mellowness had filled the air these last few mornings. The soft clouds had hatched and a pleasant warmth broke across their faces and arms. They were halfway up their road when Avtar stuck his arm out, stalling Randeep.

‘What?’ Randeep asked, his first thought that they’d left something at the factory.

A crowd had formed up ahead.

‘Wait here,’ Avtar said, and passed Randeep the bread and his rucksack. They took their belongings everywhere these days, now that stealing had become so common in the house.

He thought it was only kids fighting, because most of the crowd looked to be teenagers on their bikes, but then he saw the van and the policewoman standing guard at the gate. The rear doors of the van swung open, though the angle was too oblique to see inside. Head down, he moved right, into the road, and looked again. Two of their housemates were in there, hands cuffed in their laps. One was staring at the roof of the van. There was shaving foam down the side of his face.

‘Walk. Now,’ Avtar said, returning to Randeep, taking his rucksack back.

They turned the corner, feet eating up the pavement. ‘Police?’ Randeep asked.

Avtar nodded. ‘Raid. Keep walking.’

They were so wired, they were almost running around the city. They kept turning their faces to the sky, thanking God, saying that He really must be smiling down on them. How lucky they’d been! By the evening, however, the adrenalin had gone, and neither felt like laughing much.

‘We’ve got nowhere to go,’ Avtar said, dropping onto a bench outside the station.

‘The gurdwara?’ Randeep suggested.

‘Too risky, yaar.’

‘We could just eat and leave.’

Avtar brought his rucksack up to the bench and pulled out the loaf of bread. ‘You go if you want. Your visa’s fine. They take one look at mine and it’s over.’

They shared what food they had, including a bag of peanuts Avtar had bought, and found a warm spot between two large green recycling bins.

‘This isn’t too bad,’ Avtar said, arranging his rucksack.

‘I need to pee.’

‘I told you to go at the station.’

‘I didn’t need one then, did I?’

Randeep got up and walked to a bush further down the road. When he came back Avtar was already asleep.

In the morning Avtar retrieved his ringing mobile from the bottom of his rucksack.

‘It’s Gurpreet,’ he said.

‘He wasn’t in the van, was he?’

‘He must’ve got away.’

They met him at the station, which was where Gurpreet said he’d spent the night. His white vest was ripped across the stomach. He’d jumped the fence, he said. He saw the van coming up the road and had hurdled – ‘Hurdled!’ Randeep repeated – at least three gardens before hiding in one of the gennels.

‘I saw you two walking past,’ he finished.

‘You saw us?’ Avtar said. ‘You saw us and let us carry on walking up? Did you want us to get caught?’

Gurpreet smiled, spat at the ground. ‘Bygones. You got any money? I’m fucking starving.’

They bought a burger each from the station kiosk and gulped water from the taps in the toilets. Even if they could have shaken Gurpreet off, there was more chance of finding work if they stuck together.

‘Maybe we should go see your Narinderji,’ Gurpreet said.

‘I thought you were going to Southampton?’ Randeep said.

‘You paying for my ticket? I can’t hide for six hours.’

‘She won’t let us stay.’ The idea of turning up at her flat appalled him. And it would appal her. He wouldn’t put her in that predicament. ‘No. We can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to her. She won’t like it. She won’t even let us through the front door.’

‘She might.’ It was Avtar, turning round from the departure boards. ‘She might. If she’s so into helping others.’

Avtar and Gurpreet promised to wait down the road and out of sight while he went upstairs to speak to her.