Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

‘Stop it. Please.’

Savraj laughed, mirthlessly, and Narinder looked away.

On the Tube she stood staring at her reflection in the knife-scratched windows. Two months now. For two whole months she’d tried to help this woman. Perhaps she wasn’t strong enough. Good enough. Why hadn’t she been made good enough? She exited at East Croydon and tunnelled through the press of humanity, surprising commuters with her turban, and walked home via the clock tower, whose advertised music library she thought she might one day visit. Outside her front door she straightened the chunni over her turban, and, stupidly, wiped a hand across her lips, as if she’d been the one wearing lipstick. She twisted the key and slipped inside, up the hallway, and was turning into their front room when a blow came crashing down on her face, sending her sprawling to the floor. She heaved, staggering up onto her hands, only for her brother to grip her at the neck and drag her across the carpet and into the centre of the room. She could hear her father rushing down the stairs, the thud-step thud-step of his cane.

‘Tejpal! How dare you strike your sister!’

‘If she’s going to hang around with whores then we’ll treat her like one.’

‘Enough!’ Baba Tarsem Singh said, struggling to kneel beside his daughter.

‘Let her do more, you said. Let her do her singing. All day in the house is not good for her. What has it got us? What will people think?’

‘I’m helping!’ Narinder said. ‘You can’t stop me!’

‘Watch me.’

‘I’m not doing anything wrong!’ she shouted, and launched the CD remote by her hand at her brother’s face. It cracked against his forehead.

‘You nasty little. .’

But Baba Tarsem Singh banged his cane hard on the table. ‘I said, enough!’

*

On the night of Diwali, Narinder covered their dining table with a hundred and one tiny clay dia lamps. She did this every year and it was always a ravishing display. Liquid shadows slid across the ceiling, and the shapes thrown against the wall were a dark vibrating mass. It made her feel as if she was underwater, submerged deep within His love. She drew out a chair, closed her eyes, and, quietly, began to sing. She felt weightless, like she was gliding. The words seemed to generate inside her a different heartbeat, and behind her interlocked lashes, sunlight squandered itself across the world. Swallows swooped over copper fields. And in the penance of song she could hear His breathing. At the end of the shabad, she opened her eyes and saw Savraj outside the window, staring with her forbidding brown eyes.

‘I need money,’ she said.

Narinder had shuffled her down the side of the house, away from Tejpal who was upstairs with his Khalistani friends. They huddled together for warmth, to whisper.

‘You haven’t come to see me in months,’ Savraj went on.

‘How’d you know where I live?’

‘I asked. At the gurdwara. I was sure you’d be there tonight. What happened?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Your baba?’

Narinder was silent, then: ‘I’ve never been so angry. When they said what I was doing was wrong, I just wanted to scream. I wanted to shout. I’ve never been like that.’

She looked across to Savraj, who seemed to be considering this, saying nothing.

‘Your chunni,’ Narinder said, and Savraj pulled her chunni — borrowed from the gurdwara, Narinder could tell — forward so it veiled her face completely, comically.

‘Happy? Now all I need is a husband who doesn’t mind me hiding my ugly face all day.’

‘Shh! And you’re not ugly. You’re so beautiful.’

‘Do you wish you were as beautiful as me?’ Savraj said, lifting the chunni away.

Narinder was wounded. ‘I’m fine how God has seen fit to make me.’

‘You God people.’ She reached for Narinder’s hand. ‘You’re not even close to being ugly. Your eyebrows are a bit bushy and maybe some make-up once in a while, but other than that you’re fine. I wish I had eyes so clear.’

Narinder didn’t know what that meant. To have eyes so clear.

‘Nin,’ Savraj went on, more seriously, pressing Narinder’s hand. ‘You have to help me. You’re my only friend. I don’t know what’ll happen if you don’t.’

‘You need to escape. Tell the police.’

‘Police!’

‘I’ll speak to Baba. I’ll make him understand.’

‘Just this one time. Can’t you help me just this one time?’ She looked at her wristwatch — a digital thing with a white plastic strap. She was in a hurry.

‘How much do you need?’

They cut through the adjacent avenue, and, under the glowing green cross of a pharmacy, Narinder handed over one hundred pounds, taken from a savings account her father had opened for her wedding. Savraj kissed her, thanked her, promised she’d pay it back soon, and then ran for the Tube, her borrowed chunni trailing around her neck.

Tejpal was waiting in the hall and it was clear he’d seen them.

‘I’ve warned you,’ he said. ‘What’ll Dad say?’

She looked at him, into his long, thin face on which a beard had only this year started to stake a claim. It gave him a harder look, the beard. Or maybe he was just hardening into a man, and the beard made no difference. And when did he stop calling their father Baba?

‘Don’t cause a drama, Tejpal. It’s late. Have your friends gone?’

He stood firm. ‘See her again and I’ll really do something.’

‘Tej! Should Guruji not have fed the hungry sadhus? Should he have walked past? Now come on, and shut the door — it’s freezing.’

He yanked her back by the elbow. ‘Your duty is to uphold our name. Mine is to protect it.’ His face softened and his hand moved to her cheek. ‘Don’t force me into doing something I don’t want to.’

Narinder laughed, nervous. ‘Tej, you’re scaring me.’ She freed her elbow. ‘Let’s forget about it and go to sleep. We’ll wake Baba up.’

A week passed, then two, and when Savraj still hadn’t been in touch Narinder told her baba she was going to the community centre to use their new harmonium, and instead caught the train to Poplar. It didn’t take her long to find the alley, despite the months since her last visit, and the green gate was, somehow, hanging on. Narinder knocked, twice, and twice again before she heard a door shut and the woman saying that she was coming for fuck’s sake.

She still wore pink lipstick and emerald eyeshadow, and her hair was braided into thin lanes of orange cornrows.

‘Hello,’ Narinder said. ‘You might not remember me. I—’

‘I remember you.’

Narinder nodded. ‘Could I see Savraj, please?’

The woman shrugged. ‘It’s a free country,’ though she made no move to let Narinder pass.

‘Could I come in, please?’

‘Why?’

‘To see Savraj. Is she not in? Can I leave a message?’

‘Sure you can. But I won’t be giving it to her.’

Narinder looked at her, confused. ‘Has something happened?’

The woman bit into an apple that Narinder only now noticed had been in her hand the whole time. She spoke as she chewed. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it has. She don’t live here no more, does she. Hasn’t done for months.’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘Did your friend not tell you?’ the woman said, smiled.

‘Do you have a forwarding address?’

She shrugged.

‘Please?’

The woman, seemingly tired, seemingly bored, dropped her shoulders and looked away. ‘Nothing for free, turban lady. Not in this life.’ Then, with something of the full sadness of things: ‘We all need help, now, don’t we?’

Later, she stood outside the estate agent’s — Randhir Chahal Lettings — and stared at the brown-framed windows of the flat above. It must be round the back, the stairwell. She walked for perhaps fifty metres, the street spawning buses, until a gap between two launderettes led to a partially concreted car park. She cut a diagonal towards the rear of the estate agent’s, where a metal staircase led to a carrot-bright front door, a rose painted into the glass. Narinder knocked once and took a careful step back, mindful of the drop. The door opened.