Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

‘I’m getting less and therefore you’re getting less. Simple economics.’

‘But I can’t live on this. I can’t pay back anything earning this.’ Bal would be calling soon. Perhaps as soon as next week. He didn’t know what he’d say to him. ‘I’m leaving. I’ll find better work.’

‘Arré, yaar. .’ Sony said, as if Avtar was going too far.

‘Where do you think you’ll go without your papers?’ Jagdish said. ‘You should be thankful I provide a roof over your heads.’

‘You lock us in your shed.’

‘It’s an outhouse.’

The van stopped. They must have arrived. It was hard to tell from the back. As they filed into the shed, Avtar turned round. ‘I mean it. I want to go. Give me my passport.’ But Jagdish just laughed, as if Avtar had made a very pleasing joke, and locked the door.

Whenever a phone rang, he flinched. He prayed nothing was happening to his family. He needed to earn more. He needed to get out. Then, round the side of the cash-and-carry, in a grassy trough that had become a sump for several waste pipes, he found a pole, a short lilac metal one with flattened ends. It looked as if it might have once belonged on a girl’s bicycle. He put it in his bag, and, that night, hid it in the gap between his mattress and the wall.

A week passed while he waited for his chance. The evenings darkened and a stiff wind blew in through the bottom of the shed door. Avtar pulled out one of his jumpers, which lay on him sloppily, as if on a coathanger, which, he supposed, he was.

‘It’s starting to get cold at night,’ he said to Jagdish. They were on their way home. ‘We need a heater.’

‘Put some more clothes on.’ Then, perhaps feeling guilty: ‘Maybe I can get an extension lead.’

He told them there wasn’t any work tomorrow. They could have the day off. His treat.

‘Why?’ asked Avtar.

‘I’m busy. So you’ll have to stay in. You’ll get your food.’

‘Will we still get paid?’

He saw Jagdish staring at him via the rear-view mirror. ‘I’ll think about it.’

In the shed, Avtar pressed himself against the door, his stomach to the iron and arms raised, as if someone had a gun to his back. He wanted to know what was happening tomorrow, but all he could hear was a car running, indistinct laughter, maybe a football being kicked against a wall. He rejoined their card circle, squeezing in between Biju and Sony.

‘At least he might pay us,’ Biju said.

‘He won’t,’ Avtar said. ‘He’s just saying that so we’re still here when he comes back.’

‘Where would we go?’ Sony asked, chuckling drily, and he accidentally flipped a card over while dealing and had to gather them all up and shuffle again.

The door opening woke them all up. Sudden, unfriendly light. Avtar wanted only to remain in his dream, but he could smell popcorn, fresh, and yawned and removed his arm from his eyes. It was a woman. He sat up — they all did. He’d seen her sometimes at the kitchen window, a scrunchie in her hair. Today, her hair was down and wet and pulled forward over one shoulder. She looked like she was from India, an impression given by her make-up, perhaps: a thickly applied bright pink to go with her salwaar kameez. She was holding a red beach bucket and placed this on the wood floor. A steel plate covered the top, to which she added a foil-wrapped bundle.

‘Dhal-roti,’ she said, simply, kindly. ‘I’ll collect it later.’

‘Eating out of a bucket?’ Avtar said, disgusted.

‘It’s what Papaji said.’

‘Tell your father-in-law we’re not his pets.’

‘Won’t the dhal be cold by lunchtime?’ Biju asked. ‘I don’t think I can eat cold dhal.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wish I could reheat it.’

‘Why can’t you reheat it?’ Avtar asked.

She looked worried, as if she’d said too much already, and backed out of the shed and turned the key. They heard her soft tread on the grass.

‘Did she look dressed up to you?’ Avtar asked. ‘Like they were going to a wedding? What day is it?’

‘Friday,’ Biju said.

‘Sunday,’ Sony corrected him.

‘They’ll be gone all day,’ Avtar said.

‘Did she smell of popcorn to anyone?’ Biju said, trying to find an opening into the roti bundle.

Avtar listened at the door, until he heard voices hurrying each other on and car doors shutting. Then, nothing.

‘They’ve gone.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Sony asked, sceptical.

He took the pole from the side of his mattress and drove it into the gap above the doorjamb.

‘You’ll ruin it for the rest of us,’ Sony said.

‘Just let him go,’ Biju said. ‘More work for us.’

Avtar yanked the pole out and drove it back in, until finally it stuck, slipping far enough through to act as a lever. He left it hanging there, half out of the door, while he recovered. Then he secured his feet and pushed hard against it. He could feel himself grimacing — ‘You look like you’re having the world’s biggest shit,’ Biju said — and at times it seemed as if the pole might snap, but then, and without the explosion of noise Avtar had prepared himself for, the lock retracted and the door clattered open. He stumbled to the ground, it had happened so unexpectedly.

‘It’s open,’ he said, turning round, as if anticipating applause.

He went back for his rucksack, then down the garden, the pole reassuring in his hand.

The drive was empty and when he pressed his forehead to the window he could see no one inside. The kitchen door held a glass panel which he smashed with the pole, snaking in his arm to reach the lock. As soon as he stepped inside, a siren sounded, a careening wail of blue noise. Desperately Avtar rifled through some post on the counter, hoping to find his papers there. Nothing.

Sony and Biju and the others came hurtling past with their bags.

‘You fucking bhanchod cunt!’ Sony said.

He wanted to look upstairs, in Jagdish’s bedroom. He was sure his passport would be there. But the siren. It was blaring murderously. He picked up the pole — ‘Fingerprints,’ his mind said — and ran. He ran round the corner of the house and up the drive. There were fields far off to the left and Sony seemed to be making for them, Biju many metres behind. Avtar went right, sprinting towards the main road.

*

Halfway up the stairs, Narinder heard her phone. It never rang these days. Maybe it was Randeep. She scrambled across the landing and into her room, finding the thing on her dressing table. She didn’t know the number. She answered anyway. Hello? Randeep?

‘Hello. Is that Narinder Kaur?’

He sounded familiar. ‘Yes. Hello. I’m Narinder Kaur.’

‘Oh good. It’s David Mangold here. From the immigration office. Remember me?’

He said they were due their second and final insp— meeting. Meeting, he repeated. But the office hadn’t received a reply to either of their letters over the last month.

‘I trust everything continues to go well for you and your husband?’

‘There’s another meeting?’ she asked, closing her bedroom door.

‘Routine, of course. So we can cross you off our list, so to speak. Are you still in the same place? I can easily pop over again. Some time next week, say?’

She held on to her dressing table. She sat down. ‘Could I ask my husband to call you?’

‘I took the liberty of contacting your landlord and he said you left quite unexpectedly. Apparently, the front door sustained some damage. It all sounded very dramatic.’

Narinder hunted madly through her mind for something to say.

‘I’m sure it was nothing to do with you.’

‘No,’ she said, glad of the out.

‘As I thought. So, next week, then?’