Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

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.