Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

‘It’s Vinnyji,’ Randeep called down but no one seemed to hear him.

Gurpreet bent to the letter box, just as Vinny’s voice came through, shouting that he was freezing his fucking kecks off out here. Quickly, the door was opened and he hurried in. He was hunched over, looking shorter than usual, and each needle of his spiked hair was topped with a bobble of snow. Behind him was someone new.

Randeep joined them in the front room, glancing around for Avtar. The others were all there: some perched on the mattress laid over the metal trunk, two squatting on an upturned milk crate, several flopped into the Union Jack deckchairs nicked from a garden a couple of weeks ago. The TV was balanced on a three-legged stool in the middle of the room, playing their favourite desi call-in show.

‘This is Tochi,’ Vinny said, his thumb chucked towards the new guy. ‘Starts tomorrow, acha?’

He was very dark, much darker than Randeep, and shorter, but he looked strong. The tendons in his neck stood out. Twenty-one, twenty-two. One or two years older than him, anyway. So another he’d have to call bhaji.

‘I’ve got a spare mattress in the van. He’ll be staying in yours, OK, Ronny?’

It wasn’t really a question but Randeep said he was absolutely fine with that.

He and Tochi carried the mattress up the two flights and leaned it against the wall. They’d have to take out the wardrobe first.

‘Wait,’ Randeep said and placed his suitcase to one side, out of harm’s way.

‘Cares more about that fucking suitcase. .’ Vinny said.

They bullied the wardrobe out and shoved in the mattress and then Vinny said he had to go.

‘Have a beer,’ Gurpreet said, joining them on the landing.

Vinny said he couldn’t. ‘Was meant to be back an hour ago. She’ll have the face on enough as it is.’ He turned to the new guy and made a star of his hand. ‘Five sharp, you understand? These lot’ll show you the ropes.’

When the three of them were left, Gurpreet folded his arms on the shelf of his gut, slowly. ‘So. Where you from?’

Tochi walked into the room and closed the door. Gurpreet stared after him, then pushed off the banister and huffed downstairs.

Randeep waited. He wanted to make a good first impression. He wanted a friend. He knocked and opened the door, stepping inside. The guy looked to be asleep already, still in his clothes and boots, and knees drawn up and hands pressed between them. He’d moved his mattress as far from Randeep’s as was possible in that small room: under the window, where the chill would be blowing down on him, through the tape.

‘Would you like a blanket? I have one spare,’ Randeep whispered. He asked again and when he again got no reply he tiptoed forward and folded out his best blanket and spread it over his new room-mate. Downstairs, there were still two rotis foil-wrapped in the fridge. He heated them straight on the hob. He liked the froggy way they puffed up. Then he coated them with some mango pickle. He didn’t want to join the others in the front room, where he could hear the TV blaring, but he didn’t want to disturb his new room-mate either. So he stayed there, marooned in the middle of the kitchen because there wasn’t a single clean surface to lean on, tearing shapes out of his roti and feeding himself.

By 3.15 the next morning Randeep was awake and washed and dressed and in the kitchen binning the previous day’s joss stick and lighting a fresh one. He said a quick prayer, warming his hands by the cooker flame, and set about getting what he needed: frying pans, rolling pin, butter and dough from the fridge, a cupful of flour from the blue barrel. He dusted the worktop with the flour and tore a small chunk from the cold brown dough, softening it between his palms. He had just over an hour to get sixty rotis done.

He paced himself and rolled out the dough-balls methodically. Four rolls up, turn it round, four rolls more, a pinch more flour, three more rolls on each side and then into the pan. He found himself whistling even as his upper arms filled with a rich, dull ache. There was movement around the house: radio alarms, the thrust of a tap. He quickened up and once the rotis were done and wrapped he dumped the frying pans in the sink for whoever would be on washing duty that night and replaced them on the hob with four large steel pans of water, full gas. He added tea bags, cloves, fennel and sugar and while all that boiled he gathered up the five flasks and dozen Tupperware boxes stacked on the windowsill. Each box bore a name written in felt-tip Panjabi. He found an extra box for his new room-mate, Tochi, and spooned in some potato sabzi from the fridge. As he carried a six-litre carton of milk to the hob, Gurpreet wandered in, the bib of his dungarees dangling half undone. He was pinning his turban into place.

‘All finished? Thought you might have needed some help again.’

Randeep flushed but concentrated on pouring the milk into the pans.

‘Clean the bucket after you wash, acha?’ Gurpreet went on, moving to the Tupperware boxes. ‘None of your servants here.’

He had cleaned it, he was sure he had, and his family had never had servants. He didn’t say anything. He just watched Gurpreet moving some of the sabzi from the other boxes, including Randeep’s, and adding it to his own. He wondered if he did this with everyone or only when it was Randeep on the roti shift.

‘Where’s your new friend from?’

Randeep said he didn’t know, that he went to sleep straight away.

‘His name?’

‘Tochi.’

‘Surname, fool.’

Randeep thought for a moment, shrugged. ‘Never said.’

‘Hmm. Strange.’

Randeep didn’t say a word, didn’t know what he was driving at, and stood silently waiting for the pans to come to the boil again. He had the twitchy sensation he was being stared at. Sure enough, Gurpreet was still there by the fridge, eyes fixed.

‘Bhaji?’ Randeep asked. Gurpreet grunted, seemed to snap out of it and left, then the hiss of the tea had Randeep leaping to turn off the gas.

Soon the house was a whirl of voices and feet and toilet flushes and calls to get out of bed. They filed down, rucksacks slung over sleepy shoulders, taking their lunchbox from the kitchen counter; next a rushed prayer at the joss stick and out into the cold morning dark in twos and threes, at ten-minute intervals. Randeep looked for Tochi but he must have gone ahead, so he paired up with Avtar as usual. Before he left the house he remembered to take up the pencil strung and taped to the wall and he scored a firm thick tick next to his name on the rota.

Overnight, the ground had toughened, compacted, and at the end of the morning they were still staking it out while Langra John — Limpy John — and three other white men went about in yellow JCBs.

‘Wish I had that job,’ Randeep said, closing his lunchbox. ‘Just driving about all day.’

Avtar clucked his tongue. ‘One day, my friend. Keep working hard and one day we’ll be the bosses.’

Randeep leaned back against the aluminium tunnel. He shut his eyes and must have nodded off for a while because the next thing he heard was the insistent sound of Gurpreet’s voice.

‘But you must have a pind. Was that in Calcutta too?’

Tochi was sitting against a low wall, the soles of his boots pressed together and knees thrown wide open.

‘I’m talking to you,’ Gurpreet said.

‘My pind’s not in Calcutta.’

‘Where, then?’

Tochi swigged from his water bottle and took his time screwing the top back on. He had a quiet voice. ‘Bihar.’

Gurpreet looked round at everyone as if to say, Didn’t I tell you? ‘So what are you?’

Avtar spoke up. ‘Arré, this is England, yaar. Leave him.’