The Year of the Runaways (58 page)

Tejpal had let Sabrina believe one version of the story. That she had forsaken her future to take care of her ill father. In reality, when she returned home from Sheffield, without her turban, her kara, her kandha, and told her family she wasn’t going to marry – not Karamjeet, not anyone – Baba Tarsem Singh had slapped her. It was the one and only time in his life he’d done that. Tejpal bellowed, a frantic Karamjeet tried to talk her round, to the wedding, to God. She said she’d made up her mind and nothing could change that, however much she might wish it. Baba Tarsem Singh was forced to apologize to Karamjeet’s parents, lowering himself in front of everyone. Less than a year after Narinder’s return he had his second stroke, leaving him unable to care for himself. He lived for another ten years and then one morning Narinder came into his room, his toothbrush and glass of sugared water on her tray, and found him sitting up against the headboard, his heavy head sunk forward and turban falling off.

*

You’d think the rani was coming. His mother had said so at least a dozen times in the last week. He didn’t care. He was excited. It wasn’t often he had visitors, and he’d not seen her since that damp, formal day in the solicitor’s office in Southall, when he’d waited for her to come and sign the divorce papers. Afterwards, they’d shaken hands and she’d hurried off down the road, unfurling her umbrella, hoping to catch the 2.15 back to Croydon. And now here he was, all these years later, waiting again.

A knock on the window startled him. Avtar. ‘The door’s locked,’ he mouthed.

Randeep’s hand went to his forehead, in apology, as if to convey he was losing his mind. He got up to let him in.

‘Is she staying a few weeks?’ Avtar said, eyeing all the food laid out on the kitchen counter.

Randeep carried on to the front room and sat down, clasping and unclasping his hands.

‘What time’s she coming?’ Avtar asked, sitting down too.

‘Her train gets in at 11.35. She said she’d get a taxi. Do you really think it’s too much for lunch?’

‘I think it’s too much for Switzerland.’

Randeep frowned. ‘Oh well.’

‘Why so nervous, man?’

‘Be serious, yaar.’

Avtar pointed. ‘New haircut?’

The taxi turned into the cul-de-sac and parked outside a modern semi with a neat stamp of a front garden. She didn’t remember ever coming to this part of Sheffield before. Beauchief, the address in her hand read. It was one of those new estates, where every house was of the same orange brick.

The front door opened before she’d even stepped out of the car. The bright sunshine pushed his face into shadow, but as she came down the driveway the light softened until he was standing before her and she could see him perfectly: the thin pockets of flesh that now cushioned his eyes, the inevitable downward turn of his full-lipped mouth. The hair at the side of his head, down to his sideburns, had greyed shockingly. He was still as thin and tall as ever, but looked perhaps a decade older than the thirty-one or so years she guessed he must now be.

‘Narinder?’

‘It’s good to see you, Randeep. It’s been a long time.’

He took her suitcase and showed her through to the front room, where she hugged Avtar. He’d run to fat. His face was bloated, pudgy, as if melted slightly in the summer heat.

‘You haven’t changed,’ she said.

‘Oh, I think we both know that’s not true,’ he replied.

Randeep brought in nibbles and glasses of mango juice, setting the tray on the coffee table. ‘Lunch won’t be long. I hope you’ll stay.’

‘I don’t think so. The flights. And I’ve still to get to Manchester.’

He said he understood. ‘It’s great to see you. Really. It’s made me very happy.’

‘It doesn’t take much,’ Avtar said, popping peanuts into his mouth.

Randeep ignored him. ‘I was sorry to hear about your father.’

She accepted this with a small nod. ‘And I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the twins’ weddings. Thank you for inviting me, though. For contacting me.’

‘It’s because of you we’re living here, Narinder. We would have invited you to Lakhpreet’s wedding too – ’ a nod at Avtar – ‘but it was a very small affair.’

Narinder looked to Avtar. ‘Congratulations. I didn’t know.’

He shrugged, which she wasn’t sure how to take.

‘Do you live close by?’

‘A twenty-minute walk for most people.’ He tapped his foot against the table leg – a dull, hollow sound. ‘Forty for me.’

A door opened, closed, and now someone was coming down the stairs. ‘My mother,’ Randeep whispered. ‘For which I apologize in advance.’ This elicited a smile, which was gratifying.

Mrs Sanghera welcomed Narinder with an embrace that had all the intensity of a puff of smoke. The white streak in her hair looked broader, fiercer, than Narinder remembered. Her face had lost none of its edge. If anything, the years seemed only to have planed it further. She sat beside her son.

They had tea, biscuits. Again Randeep mooted lunch, and again Narinder demurred.

‘My son mentioned you are on your way to India?’ Mrs Sanghera said. ‘Is it a holiday?’

‘Mum, I told you – Uncle passed away.’

‘Oh ya. I’m sorry. You’ll be going to Kiratpur, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. And it’s good you looked after your father so well. My Randeep is the same.’ She patted his knee, as if she were praising a dog. ‘My eldest daughter too,’ she went on, gesturing towards Avtar but in no way looking at him. ‘She lives with her in-laws. We must all perform our duty.’

‘How is Dad?’ Avtar asked, sharp.

Mrs Sanghera’s smile threatened to collapse. ‘He’s well, Avtar beita. It’s good of you to ask. Some might think you’d forgotten all about him.’

‘Papa is in a home,’ Randeep explained.

‘He wanted to go,’ Mrs Sanghera said. ‘It was his choice.’

Avtar gave a faint snort of amusement.

‘Perhaps with all your free time you could visit him once in a while?’ Mrs Sanghera said to Avtar. She turned back to Narinder. ‘My daughter is a nurse and is always working to earn money for her new family. So what excuse does he have?’

‘None!’ Avtar said brightly.

Narinder smiled. ‘Still looking for work?’ she asked.

‘Oh, you know. Old habits.’

Mrs Sanghera huffed. ‘It depends how you bring the children up. All my children have done well. My Randeep is Assistant Manager already. On his way to Director.’

‘It’s only an administration job,’ he protested.

‘And he has his own place,’ Avtar said.

Slowly, as if measuring out her surprise, Narinder turned to Randeep. ‘You don’t live here?’

‘No. It’s not far. It’s a very small studio flat. I prefer being on my own.’

‘We all need our independence,’ Mrs Sanghera said, sounding bitter about the whole arrangement. ‘I only hope you’ll at least let your mother find you a good girl. Unless that’s another embarrassment you want me to bear.’

‘Mum. Not now, OK? Not today.’

‘Then when? Because you know—’

‘When you start listening to me,’ he cut in, silencing her.

She apologized, but said she really had to go. They called her a taxi and Randeep waited with her at the end of the drive.

‘Your mother has some very grand plans for you,’ she said.

‘Worrying, isn’t it?’

‘I’m sure you’ll take it all in your stride.’

He smiled in an automatic way. All through the visit he’d noticed her eyes. They seemed dulled, as if certain lamps had gone out. ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, but are you happy?’

She took a while to answer. ‘Happiness is a pretty precarious state, Randeep. I’m content. That’s more than enough. That’s more than most.’

‘I’m sorry I never asked you what you were risking by helping me. I was too caught up in myself.’

‘I think you tried. But I wasn’t going to tell you then – ’ she smiled – ‘so let’s not start now.’

As the taxi pulled up she pressed his arm and said goodbye, and he waited a long time after she’d gone before returning inside.

‘I’m going, yaar,’ Avtar said, coming into the hallway. ‘Cards at the community centre. Come.’

Randeep shook his head.

‘Dominoes, then. You’ll only mope if you stay here.’

‘I’ve got things to do.’

He locked the door after Avtar and turned round. He could hear his mother on the phone in the kitchen, at the end of the hallway. He went up to his old room, a tight boxy space, only large enough for a truncated single bed and thin MDF wardrobe. He sat down, hands on his knees. Beside him, on the floor, was a short stack of books he’d never removed to the flat, the bottommost one a dust-covered atlas. He fetched a glass of water from the bathroom and placed it on the floor, then sat down on the bed again. He should go home. He had some invoices to check before work tomorrow, tasks he’d been too anxious to complete the previous week. For some minutes he didn’t move. Then he went downstairs and hurried into his jacket. He told his mother he was going, that he might catch a film, and would drop in on his father sometime tomorrow.

*

When Avtar got home from the community centre, his parents were cramped up on the settee watching their Indian soap operas. It was pretty much all they did, morning till night.

‘Navjoht?’ he asked.

‘Working late,’ his mother said, eyes not leaving the screen.

He carried on to the narrow kitchen where Lakhpreet was preparing dinner. She was still in her uniform of light-blue tunic and black trousers. He circled his arms around her waist and kissed her neck, bit it.

‘How did it go?’ she asked.

He paused, scoured his brain. She turned round.

‘Did you call about the interview?’

‘Oh. That.’ He moved away, his good mood already dissolved. ‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘I didn’t want to. We don’t need to.’

‘You don’t need to work?’

‘We get money anyway.’

She turned back to the stove, banging pots. ‘So we’ll carry on living in this shithole, then.’

He grinned. ‘At least it’s our shithole.’

‘Our rented shithole. And can you tell your brother to tidy away the sofa bed before he leaves? I don’t have the time.’

‘He wakes up early.’

‘And I don’t?’

He let this go. ‘Your mother was on form today. Apparently I do nothing to help my family.’

‘I could have told you that. How was Narinder?’

‘Composed,’ he said, after a while. ‘She doesn’t give anything away.’

‘She might be dying inside.’

‘We don’t all live in a movie, jaan.’

She sighed heavily. ‘Would that we did.’

‘But I think it was good for your brother to see her.’

‘Yeah. Maybe now he can put it all to bed.’

‘Talking of bed,’ he said, softly so his parents might not hear. He pushed off the counter, but sitting down playing dominoes all afternoon had stiffened his hip, and he had to exaggerate his limp horribly to get going. He saw the distaste in her face before she could hide it. It had always been an unspoken thing between them, that she’d married him partly out of pity. He admired her for it, and sometimes, at night, despised her too.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, reddening.

He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s OK.’

He sold paper windmills and plastic chimes. Miniature models of the mandapam and pens topped with the statue of Thiruvalluvar. He sat beside his stall, feet lifted onto a second chair, ankles crossed.

‘How much?’ the American tourist asked, holding up a child’s rattle, the central ball painted with a crude map of India.

He blew the beedi smoke out of his nose. ‘Twenty.’

She nodded, put the rattle down. She wasn’t going to buy anything. He could tell.

The sea was calm, the sunset dingy. The ferry made its final crossing back from Vivekananda. On the seafront some men were erecting a theatre, though the roof was nothing more than a large sheet of corrugated iron held down with seven unevenly spaced rocks. It was being built for a couple of days’ time, when a local theatre group would be acting out the Ramayana.
With a modern twist!
as the posters all had it.

The American lady wandered off towards the tiny port, perhaps to meet someone off the ferry. Half an hour, maybe, and he’d call it a day too. He lit another beedi.

‘How’s things, anna?’ It was Lavan, from the Red Palms Hotel up the hill. The light made the gold buttons of his uniform flash.

Tochi nodded.

‘Ages ago, when you first came here, do you remember what you said?’

‘Remind me.’

Lavan clicked his tongue. ‘You said to tell you if any Panjabi Sikh woman from England ever stayed with us.’

He said she’d been at the hotel for three days now, and that he’d taken a photo of her with his phone. He showed it to Tochi. She was typing at a computer, behind a glass wall. Her hair was a single braid down her back. He looked closer. She’d not changed, not really. A little fuller in the face, maybe. A little thicker in the waist. Still those clever eyes and gentle eyebrows. The same way of sitting: leaning forward a touch, engaged by whatever was in front of her with every cell of her body.

‘So do you know her?’

‘Do you always take secret photos of women?’

Lavan kissed the air.

‘Has she asked if I’m here?’

‘Why? What’s the big secret? Did you use to be James Bond?’

Tochi removed his feet from the chair and sat up, throwing his beedi into the sand. ‘How long’s she here for?’

He didn’t sleep well that night. The walls were thin and the neighbours arguing again. Beyond the window, work went on to get the theatre built in time – drills, hammering, men calling to each other in that round, tumbling language it had taken Tochi only a year to understand. He got up and off the bed, stepped over his wife and children and went down the metal staircase and on to the sea. The waves were loud, dark as his face, and the water rushed up over his feet, closing around his ankles and then slowly withdrawing.

In the morning, the receptionist shook her head and put the receiver down, hard. ‘Not in. You’ll have to wait outside.’

‘How long is she staying?’

‘Wait outside.’

‘I said how long?’

‘I cannot give that information,’ she said, in English now, smiling.