Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

One by one they dumped their bowls in the sink. A car horned and Munna left; then Ardashir pulled on his long black coat, and Sukhjit and Charandeep said they were going too and turned off the lights and locked the door. Tochi returned to the kitchen. He changed the water in the sink and started again. It was nearly four when he wheeled the bin out and spread his blanket beside the still-warm range. Sukhjit must have forgotten about his mattress.

*

Most days he stayed in the restaurant, going no further than the window, though once a week he’d proceed onto the road, with its big red buses and busy faces. He’d journey to the end of the street and around the corner, from where he could see the green tops of the old gasworks. He always paused outside a shop that sold homes, calculating how long it might be before he could afford one.

He was paid on Sunday nights. He’d be called into the yard, where Sukhjit held out his notes through the window of his red Alfa, the engine thrumming. It was about a tenth of what he’d expected, yet he said nothing. He used his first wage to buy some proper soap. The rest he folded into his rucksack, which along with his suitcase he stowed in the gap between the fridge and the wall.

On his third payday his suitcase was stolen. He’d been taking down the chairs in the restaurant when Munna rushed in from the kitchen shouting about some goreh robbers. Tochi sprinted into the yard so fast a doornail ripped off his jeans pocket, but there was only the rear end of a white hatchback skidding round the corner. The microwave lay cracked on the kitchen floor, dropped in the getaway, and the drawers were all tipped open, Tochi’s suitcase missing.

He picked up his rucksack and checked his money was still there. He had one other shirt and pair of trousers but the rest of his clothes had been in the suitcase, along with his blanket and towel. He got his fist around his remaining jeans pocket and ripped that off too.

‘Fuckin’ chiefs,’ Sukhjit said, that evening. He passed Tochi his notes. ‘These things happen, eh?’

Tochi said nothing.

‘Why aren’t you living with Sheera? It’s raid season, man — Sherry, staying with you from now on, yeah?’

Ardashir was putting on his coat. ‘Never stopped him.’

It was a few minutes’ walk, a run-down part of the neighbourhood Tochi had never been to. Most of the windows were grilled over and behind one of the grilles twinkled a dwarfish tree. Ardashir went down a flight of thin stone steps, Tochi following, and once through the front door he tugged on some string dangling from the ceiling, which brought on the light. Sink, cooker, fridge, boiler. Three chairs — one straight, two orange plastic — stood against the wall with several empty bottles of whisky huddled around their legs. Beneath the long net of the window was a single bed on tiny gold wheels. Tochi dropped his bag to the floor and took a piss in the bathroom, on the other side of the kitchen. When he came back Ardashir was pulling sofa cushions from under the bed and arranging them in the middle of the room.

In the morning, lying awake on the sofa cushions, he watched Ardashir at the sink, pouring whiskies and chucking them back one after the other, growling as each peg hit the spot. He was in trousers only and the heavy slack of his stomach pressed against the worktop.

‘If you get caught, you don’t live here.’

Tochi nodded.

‘You don’t know me, you understand?’

‘It’s your house.’

Ardashir gave a little snort. ‘Yeah.’

They didn’t bother one another. Soon as Tochi woke he washed and left to look for a second, daytime job. Sometimes he asked the Turk, Marat, and often he trudged to the gurdwara in case fruit-picking had started up. He was back at the restaurant for midday, time enough to vacuum and dress the tables. Ardashir would arrive an hour later and change into his whites, and they’d work together in the kitchen, quietly, peaceably, making the midnight walk back to the basement flat in silence, and in this way the seasons shifted and the months passed.

The restaurant closed on Christmas Day — the one day in the year when it did — and Tochi spent the morning lying on the floor, on the blue sofa cushions, gazing up at the damp ceiling. There was no point in looking for any work today — he’d learned that much from last year. Ardashir sat on his straight chair at the window. After a silence of almost two weeks, the older man spoke.

‘How long are you staying here?’

‘I can leave now.’

‘In England, I said.’

‘Until I’ve earned enough.’

‘Then you’re a fool.’

The afternoon was quieter still and as they sat down with the lamb curry brought back from the restaurant the previous night, all that could be heard was the dull scrape of metal on foil and the slurp and slop of eating. Sometimes a car went by.

‘You’re a bigger fool than me. I didn’t have anyone to tell me different.’

Tochi said nothing.

‘Take my advice and go back now. Before there’s nothing to go back for and you’re stuck here.’ It was the most he’d ever said to Tochi. Perhaps it was this Christmas spirit everyone went on about. ‘Thirty-three years. Didn’t do my papa’s rites, my biji’s. Wife and children started new lives. For what? So I can sit here in this hell. No future but death. Just a body needing to be clothed and fed. Go back, you understand?’

‘I’ve done my papa’s rites. And my biji’s. And my brother’s and my sister’s.’

Tochi’s wrist began to tremble and he lowered the spoon and stared at the ground between his knees. He heard Ardashir stride past and pour the rest of his food into a black bin liner hanging off the side of the sink.

The restaurant reopened fully on New Year’s Eve. Tochi worked fast, determinedly, but by the time the countdown and midnight cheer came and went he still had hours ahead of him. Sukhjit stumbled in. He was laughing and had his arm collapsed across another man’s shoulder.

‘Arré, Sheera, give my cousin one of your lassis, man. We’re gunna be Panjabis tonight!’

‘Does that mean we get to beat our wives?’ the other man said.

Sukhjit put a finger to his own lips. ‘They’ll hear you. Ears like an elephant.’

Soon, Sukhjit rounded everyone out the door, saying it was over to his place for whisky and poker, and in less than a minute all the noise of the night evaporated and the restaurant door locked shut. Ardashir joined Tochi at the sink, grabbing a wire-wool scourer of his own.

It was past five when they made it to the flat.

‘Thank you,’ Tochi said.

‘You won’t get anywhere working like a dog for him. Earning shit money.’

He arranged the blue sofa cushions in the middle of the room.

‘Take the bed,’ Ardashir said.

‘I’m good here.’

‘I said take the fucking bed.’

The next day, Tochi was pulling down the chairs from their tables when Ardashir answered the restaurant door. It was the same man who’d come into the kitchen with Sukhjit. He stood there shaking the cold off his small shoulders, flicking out his feet. He seemed to hate standing still. He even spoke fast.

‘What you doing, man? It’s New Year’s fucking Day.’

‘Do you want a drink?’ Ardashir said.

‘Not all alkies, dude. So where is he? This him?’ he asked, looking at Tochi. ‘You got your NI card?’

Tochi looked to Ardashir who said he’d get one in the week. ‘As long as you get his CSA card.’

The man shrugged. ‘Coming out his pay, in any case.’

‘How much?’ Ardashir asked.

‘That’s between me and Freshy Jo here.’

‘How much?’ he asked again.

‘You his fucking pimp?’

They agreed on a figure, which was about four times his current wage. They shook hands.