Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

Randeep made a desperate face.

‘Come on. What are you scared of?’

Avtar handed his dishes to one of the old women, forcing Randeep to give his up to Narinder. He held out his thali and she didn’t look up and see him until he said, ‘Sat sri akal.’

‘Sat—’ She stared for a long while, blankly, until at last she seemed to remember that her hands were meant to be doing something and she took his plate from him. ‘Sat sri akal.’

‘We come here sometimes,’ Randeep said.

‘I see.’

‘Are you doing seva?’ At the rim of his vision, he could see Avtar slapping his forehead.

‘I try to help,’ she said, rinsing the plate under the taps.

‘Oh, yes. Me too.’

‘I’ve never seen you here before.’

‘I usually come in the week.’

‘I’m here most days.’

‘Right.’

Frowning, she went back to her cleaning.

‘Well, maybe I should make more of an effort. If you’re here most evenings.’ He smiled.

She seemed perplexed. ‘I don’t see what difference me being here makes.’

‘No, no. I guess I just thought it might be a good idea. If people see us together.’

He rejoined Avtar, who put his arm chummily around Randeep’s shoulder and led him outside. ‘There, there.’

‘If you hadn’t rushed me, I’d have been fine.’

‘Of course. I’m sorry. Next time I won’t.’

‘Next time you won’t be there.’

‘Arré, but she’s such a cutie, yaar.’

They walked a little further on. Randeep was smiling. ‘She is cute, isn’t she? You know, that’s what my sister said, too. Lakhpreet said she’s “cute as a button”. That’s another one of their English phrases. Did you know it already? Cute. As. A. Button.’ But Avtar didn’t say anything, and Randeep, still smiling, didn’t notice.

That night, sitting on his mattress in the room he shared with two others, Avtar studied the four small piles he’d made of his money. The first pile was for the monthly repayment on what he owed Bal. The second for the loan taken out against his father’s shawl shop. The third pile was meant to help his parents with their rent and bills and, lastly, a pile for his own expenses here in England. No savings pile. There’d never been a savings pile. No matter. Once the loans were paid off, then saving could begin. He started counting it all again when from across the room came a loud grunting snore and a turning-over. Instinctively Avtar crushed the notes together and hid them under his arms. He waited until he was sure the other two weren’t faking their sleep and then he separated the money into piles again. It was no good. Bal was coming up in his BMW next week and still there wasn’t enough. He took some notes from his parents’ pile and split it between the first two. Still he was short. He recounted how much he had set aside for himself and took half of this and distributed it evenly among the rest.

The following day, on their way back from Leeds in the van, Gurpreet threw in his weekly contribution and passed the tin to Avtar. Avtar slipped in half of his normal share.

‘What’s this?’ Gurpreet said. ‘You cheating us, chootiya?’

‘I’m not eating for half the week. So I’ll pay half as well.’

Gurpreet tutted in false sympathy. ‘And two jobs he works. Spending it all on whores?’

‘Your mother’s not that expensive,’ Avtar said, sighed. Gurpreet laughed and Avtar passed the tin on.

Avtar Nijjar, former student and now the youngest conductor employed by BUTA Travel, held on to the rubber loop above the door and leaned out of the bus.

‘Sidhu Bangla! Geetpur! Kalawar! Jheela! Choper!’

He moved aside, arse against the windscreen, as elbows and legs clambered in. He kept one hand over his ticket machine and money bag. Thankfully, mercifully, it was the fifth and final round trip of the day. ‘That diversion’s not helping,’ he told Harbhajan. ‘Try Farid Chowk this time.’

Harbhajan sighed and draped himself across the thin hoop of the steering wheel, his new flamingo-pink turban cocked against the windscreen. ‘Yaar, we should go somewhere. Goa, maybe. Imagine it. The beach. Some bhang, some money.’

Passengers were still forcing themselves on board. Avtar started to count over their heads.

‘We’ll take this,’ Harbhajan said, patting the dashboard.

They were full. Avtar slammed the door and some of the people shut out rushed to flag autos; others stood swearing at him through the glass. ‘Your papa let us take this bus? Jha, jha. You must be dreaming.’

And sighing again Harbhajan pressed on the horn for an unnecessarily long beat and urged the bus forward.

It was nearly dark when the last passengers disembarked at Harmandir Sahib and Harbhajan drove on to the shawl shop. Avtar passed him the ticket machine and the day’s takings and jumped down.

‘Just think about it,’ Harbhajan said. ‘Goa! The kudiyaan on the beach in their small-small clothes.’

‘See you later,’ Avtar said and slipped out of his old black shoes and bounded up into the shop. It was a single room lined floor to ceiling with wooden cubbyholes, and each hole held a neat stack of six shawls. At the back of the room his father sat cross-legged on a large fringed cushion. He had a customer with him, several cream and faintly damp-smelling Rajasthani shawls spread before her. Avtar began refolding and repackaging the many shawls that had been viewed and discarded during the day, separating them first by material and then by design and price. He rustled them back into clear plastic covers, stapled the covers secure, and returned the shawls to their cubbyholes. As he finished the customer stood up, puffing out her white-and-pink sari.

‘Madam, I have one more you will definitely like,’ his father called but she was already through the shop and summoning her rickshaw-wallah.

Silently, together, they shook the sequins from the groundsheet and one by one thumbed out the ten joss sticks lit before the images of the ten gurus.

‘I’ll bring the scooter round,’ Avtar said.

‘You go. There’s still work to do.’ It was the eighth time this month he’d insisted on staying behind. Avtar had stopped asking why, but keep counting.

‘I’ll come back in a couple of hours, then.’

‘No, no. I’ll make my own way back.’

‘Papa — it’s too far to walk.’

‘I’ll get Mohan to drop me off. Stop worrying.’

So Avtar took the small royal-blue tin with the day’s meagre earnings and clipped it to his jeans and rode home.

The lift was still broken at Gardenia Villas. He returned outside and checked the four public toilets to the east of the building but none had toilet paper. He’d just have to come back down after dinner with some of his own.

He vaulted up the stairs and made it halfway up the twelfth flight before stopping for breath. It was further than he’d ever got before. He leaned against the warm wall and reread Lakhpreet’s note, pouting, wondering what her ‘news’ would be. He didn’t like surprises.

On the landing, Mr Lal, their neighbour, sat on a fishing chair outside his front door, smoking a pipe. He’d tied a wet American-flag towel around the smoke alarm, Avtar noticed.

‘Young Avtar! Kaise ho?’

‘Good, uncle. Thank you.’

‘Still working the buses, I see.’

Avtar smiled flatly.

‘Well. Good for you.’

He’d got used to the man’s way of boasting, and asked, as he knew he had to, ‘Have you heard from Monty recently?’

‘Yesterday.’ He blew out pipe smoke. ‘Lakhs he is earning. Lakhs. The way he’s going, he’ll have his own business in Toronto soon. And then we’ll join him.’