Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

Avtar beat his fists against the basin, clawing at it. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He thought he was going to drown. Black and silver strings vibrated behind his eyelids.

‘If it happens again we’re clearing your family out. Do. You. Understand?’

He let go of Avtar’s neck and removed the hood and Avtar collapsed to the floor, on his hands and knees, gasping.

It was late when he got back to the doctor’s house, though the sun was still taking its time to set. He went in through the garden and found Rachnaji, the doctor’s wife, the proper doctor, balanced on the squashy lip of the sofa, slicing a carrot on the coffee table. Her hair was tied into a Spanish net and shelved to one side.

‘Is uncle around, aunty?’

‘He’s at the gurdwara,’ she said, and chopped the head off the carrot. ‘He’s always at the bloody gurdwara.’ She turned her face to Avtar. ‘I found him weeping a few weeks ago. He said he didn’t know what he was for. That he felt empty.’

Avtar thought it best to stay in his room after that, emerging only when he heard Cheemaji’s car outside, the gravel spraying under the wheels. He needed to ask about that Sri Lankan factory job from before. There was nothing keeping him in Sheffield, not now that cheat had stolen his job. He took a breath. He needed to keep his mind straight. He needed to find a job.

The doctor was mixing a whisky-soda from the cabinet. The lights were low and there was no one else about. Avtar coughed.

‘Ah, you’re still up. Revising?’

‘Ji,’ Avtar lied.

‘Good, good.’

He tilted his glass towards Avtar, who said no, thank you.

‘Probably best,’ Cheemaji said, and necked his drink in one. He exhaled. ‘That hit the spot.’

The front door opened and Neil, their son, came through in an oversized NFL sweatshirt. He went upstairs and slammed the door shut.

‘Everyone’s a little upset with me,’ Cheemaji said. ‘You’ve no doubt noticed.’ He refilled his drink. ‘They don’t understand. We don’t belong here. It’s not our home.’ He raised his glass to Avtar. ‘You’ve helped me realize that. People like you.’

‘Me?’

‘We’re like flies trapped in a web. Well, I don’t intend on waiting for the spider.’ He took a sip this time. ‘I said that to Rachna. Do you know what she said? She said I seemed to have forgotten that for the fly, once webbed, it’s already over.’

Avtar returned to his room without asking about the job. He sat on the bed and gave in to his anger. What decadence this belonging rubbish was, what time the rich must have if they could sit around and weave great worries out of such threadbare things.

He couldn’t sleep that night, and when he called Lakhpreet, she didn’t answer.

*

Randeep locked the door and turned back into his room. He hoped Avtar bhaji would agree to moving in. He’d got used to having a room-mate and didn’t like being alone, not now the house was beginning to empty. For the first time, the rooms felt too big. He pulled his bag free from behind a panel in the wardrobe and counted his money. He had enough to cover another month’s payment to Narinderji, maybe even two, and if he only sent home half of what he normally did he should be fine for food as well. By then surely they’d have found work. He wondered what he’d tell his mother. Going by the pearls in her last photo, she’d got used to the cash. There was a big click and the lights went out. Randeep clutched his money harder, until his eyes adjusted and the darkness settled into something less confrontational. He folded the notes into the bag and returned it behind the wardrobe panel. Then he unlocked the door and stepped onto the landing. The whole house was black. One or two others came out from their rooms as well.

‘What happened?’ Randeep asked.

‘The meter, probably,’ someone said sleepily, smokily.

Randeep tiptoed down the two flights of stairs, a hand on the painted white globe at the end of the banister. He could hear voices up the hall, in the kitchen. Gurpreet, threatening someone to put money in the meter or else.

‘It’s your bhanchod turn,’ the other guy said. ‘Look at the sheet.’

There was the sound of someone being pushed hard against the fridge and slapped. Gurpreet’s voice: ‘Bhanchod, who taught you to talk back?’

Very quietly, on the balls of his feet, Randeep turned around and went back up to his room. He locked the door and reached for his blanket. At least Avtar bhaji was back tomorrow.

She’d suggested meeting at Leicester Station. It was more or less halfway for them both and, she’d thought, feeling a little ridiculous even as she’d thought it, she could shout for help if he tried anything. She waited for him under the departure boards. Her hands were buried inside the wide pockets of her cardigan and pulled round to the front, thumbs touching through the material. She looked to the floor and said a faint waheguru. She told herself to calm down. Her shoulder bag slipped and yawned down her arm and a few things fell to the floor. Her phone, a pack of tissues. She crouched to pick them up — a green biro, bus tickets, fingers shaking. She went to the toilets again and sat on the closed lid behind a locked door. She breathed. When she re-emerged onto the concourse he was standing where she had been. He looked exactly the same.

He took her in, up and down, as if surprised that she too wasn’t someone entirely different. ‘Were you waiting to see if I was on my own?’

‘I was—’ She indicated the toilets, then looked beyond him. ‘Is someone with you?’

‘I’m alone,’ he confirmed. He cast his gaze a little above her head. ‘Some of us still keep our promises.’

They walked to the gurdwara near the city centre, a temple they both knew from one wedding or another. They paid their respects, then came down to the langar hall and sat around one corner of a long steel table. A sevadarni brought tea in white styrofoam cups.

‘You live alone?’ he asked.

She nodded.

‘You sure?’

‘Karamjeet, please.’

He paused. ‘Have you been in Sheffield the whole time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

She looked up, a question on her face.

‘Why Sheffield?’

‘I can’t say. I’m sorry. But please believe that I’m trying to do a good thing. God would not judge me harshly.’

He nodded. ‘I understand. You wanted to get away from me.’

She said nothing, but her face must have shown that there was some truth in what he’d said; when she glanced across she saw that a part of him newly hated her.

On the train down she’d considered telling him everything. There was a chance he’d understand and not inform on her, on them all. She now realized she couldn’t say a word. It wasn’t her risk to take.

‘How’s Baba?’ she asked quietly.

‘How do you think?’

‘And Tejpal?’

‘Angry. Violent. He’s looking for you everywhere.’

‘Will you tell him?’

‘I should.’

She paused. ‘Will you?’

‘Damn you, Narinder! Damn you! Why’d you have to go and ruin everything?’ He kicked the chair beside him, and it wobbled, fell.

The woman in the canteen kitchen looked over. ‘Sab kuch theek hai?’

‘Ji,’ Narinder said.

‘I’m sorry,’ Karamjeet said, and the woman, displeased, returned to her work.

There was a crackle of static as the gurbani started upstairs in the darbar sahib, reaching them through the speakers in each corner of the canteen.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, to Narinder this time. ‘But it hurts all over. All of it. The humiliation. How could you?’