Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

The lane widened out and she took the rightmost fork in the road and then the left turn immediately after the big wedding-card emporium. A little further on was the tatty white-and-blue board of R. K. Santoshi Advocate. She peered in. It seemed busy. At least three people were fanning themselves in the waiting room. With an internal waheguru she pushed open the glass door and waited for the receptionist to look up from her huge white box of a computer. She had heat-frizzed hair and — now she looked up — a strikingly beautiful face.

‘I’d like to speak to a lawyer, please,’ Narinder said.

The woman plucked a form from her in-tray. ‘Fill this in. The next available appointment is in two months.’

‘But I need to speak to him today.’ She took the form. ‘I don’t mind waiting. It’s only that I’m not here for very long.’

‘Two months,’ the woman said, returning to her keyboard.

By the early afternoon, Lawyers4u was the fifth office she’d tried, though the first to offer her an appointment for that same day. It looked shabby — a second-floor operation with peeling beige paint and a giant plant starting to brown. There was no receptionist, just a man in a khaki two-piece handing out numbered green chits. Narinder took her ticket — 00183 — and a young man in a white lunghi offered her his chair. The chit-man called out, ‘Ticket number 155.’

Four hours later, her turn came. The lawyer’s office was tiny, the size of their bathroom at home, and far too small for the huge oak desk he seemed to insist on. He was older than she’d expected — it had looked like the outfit of someone at the beginning of their career, not that of a slight, elderly, grey-haired man like this. A brass prism on his desk read D. S. Yadav LLB, and on the wall hung a certificate confirming his membership of the Amritsar Bar Association. There was nowhere for her to sit.

‘And how can I help you, miss?’

Narinder cleared her throat. ‘I’m looking for a husband.’

It took a few minutes for the details to be straightened out. She wanted to help someone who needed to come to England. It was important that this person really needed the help. Money wasn’t a consideration — she’d need a little for when she arrived back in England, but that was all. The important thing was that the person must really need her help.

Mr Yadav called for a chair — ‘Forgive me, but if I let everyone sit down they’d never leave’ — and he leaned back, fingers making a steeple beneath his chin.

‘I hoped you might be able to assist me?’ Narinder said, taking her seat.

‘People have such strange ideas, madam. They think we break the law, not uphold it.’ He must have seen the alarm in Narinder’s face because he flung out his arms. ‘But how could I not help a daughter of God, hain?’

He made several phone calls, one call seeming to link to the next, and by the time it sounded like he was getting somewhere the window behind him had darkened.

‘I heard there were a few desperate for visa-wives at the club last month,’ he said, dialling again. ‘It seems our Mr Harchand might be one of them.’ Someone must have answered. ‘Dinesh Yadav Advocate. Call for Vakeel Sahib, please — I see. Is he coming back tonight? — That will be all. Thank you.’ He reached for a letterheaded pad and spoke to Narinder as he scribbled. ‘Take this with you. Go to the Circular Road Basant Avenue crossing. I’ll ask Bilal to flag an auto. There you’ll see H. S. Dokhlia Law Association. Give him this.’ He tore the page off and held it out. ‘He’ll help you.’

Narinder looked at the paper, at the darkness outside.

‘What was I thinking?’ Mr Yadav said, and crumpled the paper into a ball, letting it fall where it landed. He stood and removed his lawyer’s cloak from the back of his chair. ‘Come, madam. Let’s find you your husband.’

They took an auto across the city, over misshapen concrete roundabouts and past a grand-looking cinema that Narinder somehow recognized. At the lawyer’s office, the receptionist rose to explain that Mr Dokhlia wasn’t back yet but would they please take a seat in the waiting room and she’d bring them some tea-coffee.

Narinder sat down. She slipped her hand into her bag and touched the picture of her mother she’d packed that morning. Beside her, Mr Yadav was flicking through a waiting-room magazine. It had an X-ray of someone’s teeth on the cover. She should thank him for all this, she thought, and was just opening her mouth when the door buzzed and an obese man in a lawyer’s white collar entered.

‘Harchand!’ Mr Yadav exclaimed, striding over, arms wide. ‘How long you make us wait, to experience the pleasure of your date.’

‘Arré, Poet Sahib, what can I say? It’s sangraand, no? And when Mother insists, Mother insists.’

They embraced casually and Mr Yadav took this other lawyer by the elbow and steered him into a corner. She caught bits — spouse-visa, England — and every now and then this Mr Harchand looked over. They seemed to finish by agreeing Mr Yadav’s cut — percentages were mentioned — and then the new lawyer started making his way across the grey carpet, smiling at her. Narinder stood up — do the right thing, she kept telling herself — and readied herself to greet him.

Late spring, and the shell of the hotel was finished, a modern cuboid touching the sky. The ceilings were next, and they worked into their lunch break to get the first one in and levelled off, girders fixed at the mortise points. Afterwards, they swung down from the scaffold, took off their yellow hats and reached for their flasks. It was always water now; getting too warm for tea.

‘I think we should drill the holes in first,’ Randeep said. ‘It’s hard holding them up like that. My shoulders kill.’

‘Can do,’ Avtar said. ‘But if the grooves go wrong it’ll be coming out of our bhanchod wages.’

‘What do you think?’ Randeep asked Tochi.

‘What you asking him for?’ Avtar said.

Tochi tore his roti in two. ‘Nothing’s coming out of my wages.’

They ate in tired silence, hard hats upturned in their laps to dry the sweat out.

‘Where is that limpy bhanchod, anyway?’ Gurpreet asked.

‘In his cabin,’ Randeep said. ‘All day on the phone.’

Gurpreet sent someone to find out what was the matter and the envoy returned saying that there’d been a delay on the drainage system and the engineers would come tomorrow. In the meantime, they should get on with the work they were being paid to do.

The drainage system didn’t arrive the next day. Neither did the crane drivers, nor the electricians, who were meant to have started wiring up the site nearly a month ago. One other team of migrant labour hadn’t turned up either. Mid morning, they all gathered around John’s Portakabin, demanding to know what was going on.

‘There’s a few problems with the council that need ironing out,’ John said. He had a defeated air about him.

‘Where is everyone?’ Avtar asked.

‘They’re not happy with the financial accounts for this project. They say some things aren’t adding up.’

They stared at him, not at all sure what this meant for them.

‘I’ll give your lad Vinny a call. No point in standing around here. Too nice a day for that,’ he added, closing the cabin door on them.

‘Vinny bhaji will sort it all out,’ Randeep said, as they waited.

‘He better,’ Avtar said, throwing him a tennis ball. He looked over to Tochi, sitting alone by the windbreak. ‘Because I don’t trust your room-mate one bit.’

It was late and the light patchy when the van parked up. They grabbed their backpacks and ran towards it, shouting.