The Year of the Runaways (53 page)

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 broken. 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.

‘No bhaji?’ Avtar asked.

‘He’s busy.’

‘Shall I order some tea?’

Bal looked surprised. ‘You’re getting confident.’ Then: ‘We thought you’d run out on us. Too scared to answer your phone?’

‘I’ve been busy.’ He took his hand out of his pocket and put a few sorry-looking notes on the table. ‘For your uncle.’

Briefly, Bal inspected the notes. ‘That’s not even gunna touch the sides, bruv.’

‘The rest will come. I’m working now. There’s nothing to worry about.’

‘You’re weeks and weeks behind.’

‘A little more time,’ he said, feeling the confidence slip. ‘You can have this as well,’ and he put the stolen phone on the table.

‘I don’t want— You’re just not getting the message, are you?’ He lifted his finger to Avtar’s forehead and accompanied each syllable with a prod:
‘Are-you-too-thick-to-un-der-stand?’
He fell back against his chair. ‘I think it’s time we paid your family a visit. Navjoht, right? And the shawl shop in Gandhi Bazaar?’

‘Please. I’m doing my best.’

‘He’s put whole families on the street if the son hasn’t paid up.’

‘Just a little more time. Please! Can’t you explain it to him?’

Bal clucked his tongue several times, in thought, then shrugged. ‘I guess you could buy yourself one last chance.’ He looked across, with intent. ‘You know?’

Avtar reached down inside his sock and pulled out another note. It was the last of his money and he’d intended on buying some meat with it, some strong food that might feed this body. He handed it over. ‘Thank you.’

He avoided the guards at Leeds station, instead stealing through a delivery gate left unchained. He crossed the car park and made his way to the hotel. The makeshift stairs only took him halfway. He had to climb a ladder to reach the top tier of the scaffolding. The wind was loud up here, so loud you could almost put a face to it. He could see how the city worked, the roads, the one-way system. From here, the motorway bridge was a mouth, and the traffic poured into it. It was all clear. Easy. It was all easy and yet still he was losing. He breathed. The wind slapped his face. How easy it would be to fall. How nice. He dug out from his rucksack the mobile he’d stolen and switched it on. There’d been several calls, probably from the gora in the suit. He put the phone at his side and probed further into the bag and found his college folder. A phrase from somewhere came to him:
reaching beyond his dreams.
He lifted the flap and tore into pieces every handout and worksheet and note he’d made. He threw the white pieces into the air and watched them shower and drift, until they were caught by the wind and vanished into the night.

13. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SKY

In a single stiff shudder the minute hand docked on twelve and Tochi untied his apron from behind his back and hung it across the handle of the toilet door.

‘Off already?’ Malkeet said. He’d come into the kitchen for some batter and stood there holding a sloppy white pail of the stuff.

‘It’s four.’

‘I can see that. Set my bloody watch by you these days.’

He went through the gardens and up the main road, taking a left past the school and the lollipop lady.

For dinner he fried four aubergines into something that looked like a bartha. He ate half of it with bread and put the rest in the fridge for the next day. He was at the sink washing up when she came through the back door.

‘Hello,’ she said.

He nodded.

‘You’re early again.’

Was she making a joke? He said nothing.

She took off her coat and carried on through the beads and up the stairs. He heard a door shut and, perhaps a minute later, the toilet flush and then her feet on the stairs again.

‘Right,’ she said, re-entering the kitchen, and he hoped she might say something else. Instead, she set about making a start on her meal.

He ripped off the last square of kitchen towel and sat at the table, lifting his boot to his knee and spitting on the sheet. He worked at the dirt, scrubbing and polishing, sometimes spitting directly onto the leather. She brought her bowl of food to the table and sat opposite him. It looked like chickpeas. He glanced across to the counter and the opened tin confirmed that it was. She didn’t seem that hungry, though, sitting there weaving the spoon through her soup. She looked over.

‘I’ll be a bit late tomorrow. I’m going to look at some flats.’

He nodded, scrubbed.

Nothing more was said for a long while. She seemed distracted, looking up, looking down, fiddling with the kandha at her neck. Perhaps it was something to do with her family.

Finally, she said, ‘I can’t eat this. Would you like the rest?’

He didn’t think anything of it, but she seemed suddenly appalled at herself, her eyes wide, a hand to her mouth, and she apologized and dropped the lot into the sink.

There was a diversion further up, so the bus driver advised anyone wanting the top end of Ecclesall Road to get off outside the ’Tanical Gardens and walk. Narinder didn’t mind. It gave her time to think.
Nothing can come out of nothingness,
the granthi had said.
So to know joy, compassion, sympathy – to feel love – means also to have in the world their opposites.
She’d been reassured with that at the time, returned to Waheguru’s ship. It was only now, an hour later, that she felt the doubt and loss and fear whirling again, into a vicious storm. Stay strong, he’d advised. He knows what you are going through better than anyone. He’ll send you a sign. A sign, she thought. A sign. Walking up to the house, she turned her gaze to the stars, half hoping for the moon to explode.

The kitchen light was off as she turned the key and took a single step inside. All was quiet. Darkest was the hallway beyond the beads, as if someone were lurking there. But then she heard him moving about upstairs and there was a sudden feeling inside her of being safe. It was a feeling she recognized. It was the same feeling she used to get inside the gurdwara.

The oven wouldn’t work. She tried all four settings and then all four again after switching it off. It must be the mains. She pulled the oven away from the wall and saw that it was plugged into a wall socket, rather than straight into the circuit board. She sighed. The fuse, then.

He opened the door before she’d even stepped across the landing, as if he’d been listening out for her.

‘The oven,’ she said, one hand around the banister. ‘It’s not working. The fuse has gone and I can’t find another.’

‘I’ll get one tomorrow.’

She nodded. ‘Thank you.’ She wasn’t sure why she felt disappointed by his response.

‘I suppose you don’t have anything to eat,’ he said.

‘I’ll find something. The gas is still working.’

He started closing the door.

‘Unless you have something already made?’

He looked at her, and with the most surprising of sparks in his eyes said, ‘As long as you don’t mind eating leftovers.’

She smiled, and her smile widened in response to his own. He had such a quick, easy smile, as if it was something he did all the time.

There was still some of the bartha left, which she ate with toasted bread.

‘It’s better with roti,’ he said.

‘Not my rotis.’

‘You can’t cook?’

‘A gurdwara aunty tried to show me. She said it was like teaching a horse to hop.’

Another quick smile. A lovely smile, she thought.

‘I can teach you. If you like.’

She looked down at her food.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, brisk, retracting.

‘No, no. I’d like that. Thank you.’

He went to the Londis to see if they sold fuses. She was putting away the dishes when he returned. His hands were empty.

‘No?’

‘Closed. I’ll get one from the main road tomorrow.’

‘Try Wisebuys. They look like they sell that kind of stuff.’

He poured himself a glass of water and sat at the table, still in his jacket and scarf.

‘It is starting to get cold,’ she said.

‘There’s blankets.’

‘I can’t walk around wrapped in a blanket the whole time.’

He drank half of the water. ‘How good were the flats you went to see?’

She didn’t know why she’d lied about that, about going to the gurdwara after work. But she knew what he meant: if she didn’t like staying here, if it was too cold for her, she could move.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He was frowning, as if wrestling with some thought or idea.

‘Can you leave the kitchen light on when you come back? It can’t cost that much extra.’

He drained the rest of the water and said nothing for a long time. ‘It’s not the cost.’

She turned round from the worktop. She was more surprised by the fact of a response than by what he’d said. ‘Do you prefer the dark?’ Then: ‘Like Panjab, isn’t it? All those power cuts.’

‘I’m not from Panjab.’

‘Oh,’ and she felt foolish for being so presumptuous.

‘I’m from Bihar.’

He looked across so piercingly she felt herself pinned to the counter.

‘My family’s Kumar.’ He kept his eyes on her but it was almost as if she didn’t care. Perhaps these English-born types didn’t understand. ‘It’s a chamaari name,’ he clarified. Still he saw no change in her face, no recalibration in her eyes.

‘Is your family still in Bihar?’ she asked, warmly.

He stood up, both hands running through his hair. It was disturbing, dizzying even, not to get the response he’d always had, since time began. ‘My family are dead.’

Half an hour passed. Nothing more had been said. She wiped down the table and prepared her lunches for the following week. He, meanwhile, went round with his screwdriver – the TV, an old kettle – to see if a suitable fuse could be found. It was as if the silence between them had swelled into a third being, sitting at the table, someone whose eye they were working hard to avoid.

Behind her, she could hear panels being loosened, the sound of metal on metal. She opened the fridge door, put her sandwiches on the shelf, and reached for a bottle of orange squash.

‘Would you like a drink?’

He dropped the plugs, screws spilling. His hands were shaking. She came over and they gathered up all the screws and the wires and the plugs themselves and set them on the table.

He told her he was thirteen when he left home to find work in Panjab. A lot of Biharis did this, he said.
The Panjabis don’t work their own farms any more. Their sons have left for America, Canada, UK. The parents need servants.
For six months he looked for work, travelling west from Ambala to Bathinda, then north as far as Amritsar. He slept in an aluminium tunnel he’d carried from home. For money, he scoured dump sites for plastic bottles and sold them to local recycling collectors. It was only when he reached Jalandhar that he found a good job, taking care of the farm for a family who lived about twenty kilometres outside the city. Their two sons had gone to Sydney, working in fast-food restaurants.
My family were doing well,
he said.
I was making good money. For the first time we could afford to rent our own land and house. But after three years it all started to go wrong.
He told her everything. About his father’s accident, his sister’s wedding, his attempts to make it as an auto driver. The riots that engulfed them and killed his family. His two years working in a brick factory in Calcutta and the travel across to Europe by plane, ship and truck. His weeks on the streets of Paris and the year in Southall and, finally, the trip up to here, Sheffield.