Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

He nodded and, absurdly, thanked her.

She gave a little laugh. ‘So next year, after I finish my plus two, we’ll come back here and get married?’

‘I don’t think my family could afford it here.’

‘It doesn’t have to be here.’

They walked to Jalianwala Bagh Road and kissed for several minutes behind the gates to the museum, tongues thick, hips fighting. Then Avtar called over an idling auto-rickshaw. ‘PCO me when you arrive, acha?’

‘Try and come every month,’ she said and climbed into the ripped seats of the auto. She was looking away. He put his hand on her cheek and turned her face towards him. Her white chunni had fallen off her head and her eyes were brimming. He went round and gave the driver her address.

*

It was four in the morning and the peppermint-roofed government car was waiting outside. The truck with their furniture had gone on ahead. Randeep tried the bathroom door again.

‘Daddy, are you OK? Please just tell us if you’re all right. We’re getting worried.’

Behind Randeep, his mother said, ‘Remind him of all the people I had to beg for this chance at a new life.’

The handle turned, the door swung in and Randeep’s father stood there looking over their heads, his whole face quivering. He spread one hand along the frame and took a slow step forward. He stopped, looked down.

‘I can’t do this, Paramveer. I’m so sorry, dear.’

Mrs Sanghera unpinned her black shawl and arranged it around her husband’s shoulders. ‘You’re not going to be very warm in just that vest, are you?’

She took his hand in her own, an unfamiliar intimacy that forced Randeep to look away.

‘We’re all here with you. The car’s waiting right outside the compound. Shall we go together? One step at a time?’

He moved into the hall, head fixed straight at his feet.

‘That’s it. And I’m sorry for raising my voice.’

‘I deserve it. What kind of a man am I?’

She looked over her shoulder and told Randeep to make sure the last two Italian suitcases were packed and that his sisters were ready. ‘I’ll lock up.’

Randeep took the lift down, grabbing his college satchel from where it lay propped against the door. The night was clear and the compound gardens chippered with insects. Beyond the gate, the driver rested his hip against the door of the jeep, smoking a beedi. The suitcases were strapped to the roof and folded into the back were the twins, Ekam and Raji. He threw in his satchel and asked where Baby was.

He found her sitting on a child’s swing in a rubber-decked corner of the gardens. He peered over the iron railings and clinked his kara twice against the bars.

‘You ready?’

‘How’s Daddy?’

‘He’s coming. Mamma’s with him.’

She took a deep, galvanizing breath, as if about to meet her maker, and glided through the gardens, the gates and down to the jeep. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her wear a salwaar kameez. Girls, he thought. Making a drama out of a simple move.

The doors to the apartment block opened and Mrs Sanghera led her husband out, holding both his hands and walking backwards, as if he were blindfolded. At the jeep, Randeep opened the door and could only watch sadly as his father scrambled inside. Mrs Sanghera told Baby to pass her father his beads.

‘Baby?’ And then, louder, ‘Lakhpreet?’

‘Sorry, Mamma?’

‘The beads.’

The driver flicked his beedi high and away, and Randeep watched the wire of orange light trace itself on the air. He got in the front and moved to roll down the window, then stopped, not sure how his father would react. The driver started the engine and asked sahib if they were ready. When his father didn’t reply, Randeep quickly said they were. An owl hooted.

‘Isn’t that meant to be good luck?’ Randeep asked brightly, into a general and moody silence.

Avtar gave up cleaning his bus’s windows — he seemed to be applying more dirt than he was removing — and whistled his way round the cells of parked buses towards the glass office at the back. The light was dingier here, brownish, and though it struggled to penetrate the smeary windows of the office, it did look as if that was Nirmalji sitting at his desk today. Avtar rolled down his sleeves and applied a hand to his chest — yes, his shirt was done up; yes, there was a pen in his pocket. He knocked on the open door.

‘Salaam, sahib.’

Nirmalji’s head rose from his rota book and he didn’t quite smile. In this pose of stillness he looked like his son: bearded, turbaned and small-eyed, full of neck and face, though with more gold rings on his hands than Harbhajan wore. Sreenath, another conductor, had packaged his neat Brahmin body onto the side bench. He was an eighty-plus bald gummy gossip who’d worked here longer than anyone else. A white tikka stippled with grains of rice seemed a more or less permanent feature of his forehead. Nirmalji spoke.

‘Son, I need you to be here next Sunday. The Chabba route.’

‘OK, sahib.’

‘I said that farm boy would not last long,’ Sreenath said. ‘These pindu-logh never do.’

Avtar sat beside Sreenath and while the old man shared his gutter tales — ‘They say he was seen leaving her room. .’ — Avtar mentally cancelled his trip to see Lakhpreet next Sunday. It had been the same last month. He wasn’t sure when they’d ever see each other again.

A roar sounded, startling Avtar onto his feet, and Harbhajan powered towards them on a red-and-chrome motorbike, popping the air with glints of light on metal. He snatched off his sunglasses, beaming as he walked to the office, calling for Avtar to come see, come see. He made it to the door before spying his father.

‘How come you’re here?’ Harbhajan said. There was a note of fear in his voice.

‘You’re late.’

‘I was buying my new bike.’

‘What nonsense is this?’

Harbhajan indicated to Avtar that they should get going.

‘You will take it back,’ Nirmalji said.

‘I’m not taking it back.’

This seemed to be how they always spoke to each other: a stiff, reproachful back-and-forth. Nirmalji walked out.

‘Family members must get paid more than the rest of us,’ Sreenath observed.

‘Oh, fuck off, you old fool,’ Harbhajan flashed and walked off too. Avtar heard the door of their bus being yanked open, then slamming shut.

Sreenath chuckled and started attacking his teeth with a toothpick. ‘Robbing his own father.’ He tutted. ‘I feel very sorry for Nirmalji. Don’t you?’

Avtar told the old man about the diversions he’d seen that morning around Circular Road and to take the Gobindgarh junction instead. If he was still doing that route.

Harbhajan didn’t say much on the road that week. He didn’t acknowledge the other bus drivers as they passed and responded only with a tight nod to the uncles and bibis who asked after his mother and father. During breaks between routes, he bought his meal from the Roti Dhal Stop and took it outside, alone. Avtar ate his food inside the restaurant, under the half-hearted whirr of a wire-mesh fan. He knew his friend’s sunken moods well enough and was waiting for the flare of madness that always followed them, like blood spreading through water.

They were finishing up one evening, Avtar counting and rubber-banding the takings, when Harbhajan held down the horn and an excessively violent sound erupted into the twilight. Avtar jumped, coins fell, and a man cycling home wobbled off his bike. Harbhajan flopped back, laughing. Avtar bent to retrieve the coins from under the seats.

‘Yaar, we’re going to a party next week. Friday night. Be ready.’

‘I’m busy,’ Avtar said.

‘You’re really not,’ and he clicked his fingers for the money. Avtar had no choice other than to hand it over, but as the lumpy mustard-coloured bag passed between them he felt uneasy.