The Year of the Runaways (34 page)

Her room, it turned out, was the shed at the bottom of the garden, a small wooden structure with a white net aslant across the only window. Narinder knocked with the back of her hand. No response. She tried again, and this time she heard movement – a mattress groaning – and footsteps. The door opened but remained on its flimsy chain. A high-boned face with sharp, darting eyes showed itself. Her mother’s face.

It was a dispiriting little room: damp, cold, unloved and unloving. Not quite enough height to stand up straight. The mattress lay on the floor, beside a dog-chewed armchair probably taken from the alley outside. No electricity. Narinder wondered how she cooked or went to the toilet. Perhaps the orange-haired woman let her use the house for things like that.

‘Your mother asked me to tell you to call home. She’s very worried.’

Savraj sat on the grey mattress and pulled her oversized woolly jumper over her knees and black leggings, so just her feet poked out. She must have cut her hair that short in England.

‘You mean she’s worried about not getting any money,’ Savraj said.

It had occurred to Narinder that at no point had Savraj’s mother expressed fear for her daughter’s safety, or concern over her welfare. The message had simply been that they’d run out of money and Savraj was to stop messing about and call home without delay.

‘If you could call her, I think that would help.’

Savraj looked up, cocked her head to the side. ‘You got money? I’ve not eaten for two days.’

She refused to go to the gurdwara, so Narinder took her to a coffee shop she’d seen near the station. They perched on high stools by the window, overlooking some workmen drilling. Narinder sipped at her small sugarless tea. Savraj dipped cake into her hot chocolate.

When she’d worked out how to phrase the question, Narinder put down her cup and said, ‘Pehnji, can I ask how many sisters are in the same situation as you?’

Savraj didn’t answer straight away. She finished off her cake, licked her fingers. ‘Honestly Pehnji? You sound fresher than me.’ She shrugged. ‘A few. There’s three patakeh sheds in my alley.’

Narinder didn’t understand. ‘You keep fireworks?’

‘It’s what the men call them.’ A tiny smile, as if pleased at the shock she was about to deliver. ‘We make their fireworks go off.’

Narinder gazed at Savraj and nodded slowly. She didn’t blink.

Savraj looked annoyed. ‘We have sex.’

Narinder nodded.

‘They pay. For sex.’

‘I understand. I’m sorry.’

And now it was Savraj’s turn to gaze at Narinder, to scrutinize her. Then she threw her head back and a great laugh burst forth. ‘Oh my God! You want to make me into one of your turbanwallis!’

Her shoulders were shaking, each breaking wave of laughter rapidly overtaken by another. People were starting to stare, but Savraj’s laughter kept coming, so Narinder slipped down from the stool and tried not to look like she was rushing for the door.

For all of the next week, the last of the summer, her days fell back into place: morning chores, kirtan at the gurdwara, evenings of silence and prayer. She couldn’t stop thinking of Savraj, though. How strong she’d seemed. How exciting Narinder had found it, going into the world and seeking her out.

‘Don’t think too hard,’ her brother, Tejpal, warned.

He was chaperoning her home from the gurdwara. Since she’d turned eighteen her father had decided she was never to take the evening walk alone. For your safety, he had said.

‘Or maybe he doesn’t trust you,’ Tejpal had later suggested. ‘Maybe he’s seen something in you that worries him.’

He was about a foot taller than she was, with a vast gym-trained chest that made his shoulders pop up.

‘What do you mean, don’t think too hard?’

‘You’re thinking. Don’t. Girls shouldn’t think.’

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘You’ll get into tra-ble.’

She ignored him – there was no way he could have known about Savraj – and the following Monday she effected a return to the sheds of Poplar. Her gurujis wouldn’t have just left it at that, she told herself. No one answered the door, so she waited beside the battered green gate, shielding her eyes from the low sun. A kid raced up on his bike, wheelied round at the wall, then just as quickly disappeared left out of the lane. Later, a postman emptied his sack of mail onto the rubbish tip. ‘Fuck that!’ he said, grinning at Narinder.

Savraj arrived, and, ignoring Narinder, unlocked the gate. Narinder followed her in, maintaining a distance.

‘Pehnji—’

‘Don’t. I’m not your pehnji or your bhabhi or your didi. I don’t want you babeh-brains near me.’

Narinder stopped at the shed door. She reached inside her pocket and held out the brown parcel. It was tied with orange thread. ‘For you.’

‘What is it? A gutka?’ Savraj said, snatching at it. It was a velvet box inside which rolled a tube of red lipstick.

‘Yours is running out. I noticed, last time I came.’

Narinder visited Savraj once, sometimes twice a week, leaving the gurdwara after her morning kirtan and always getting back before her baba arrived. Usually she’d take along a margarine tub filled with whatever sabzi they had at home. They’d give the tub to the landlady to put in her fridge and head to the coffee shop near the station. The workmen were still drilling outside.

‘You should know I’ve started talking to my family again.’

‘Oh, peh—! Savraj!’ Narinder embraced her. ‘I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.’

‘Calm down. Your turban’ll fall off. I guess I’d just got sick of her always pestering me for money, like I’m earning millions. Like everyone in England must be earning millions. But I think she understands now. I’ll only send what I can.’

‘Oh, that’s brilliant! It’s so good that you help. I knew you would.’

‘Did you? I don’t see what’s so good about helping others, though. If they only become reliant on you. Then you’re just part of the problem.’

‘But we have to help,’ Narinder insisted. ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I just walked away. I don’t know how people can do that.’

Savraj laughed a little. ‘I’ve never met someone who talks like you.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with giving your life to His teachings. Our gurujis—’

‘Oh, shut up. I’ve met worse fundos than you. I don’t mean the things you say. I mean the way you say them. It’s like you actually believe in your words.’

Narinder didn’t know what was wrong with the way she spoke her words. Did she sound too serious? Was that it? ‘I’m better when I’m singing.’

‘You sing? A singing preacher?’

‘It’s true,’ Narinder said, laughing. ‘Come and hear me. I’m singing tomorrow morning.’

‘To the gurdwara?’ Savraj clucked her tongue. ‘Not my scene. If a beardy’s going to touch me up, he can pay for the privilege.’

‘I’ll be with you.’ She reached out and placed her hand on Savraj’s arm. ‘You don’t have to do what they make you do. We’ll look after you. We look after each other.’

Finger by finger, Savraj released her arm from Narinder’s hand. ‘What who make me do?’

Narinder could tell from her voice, like a knife being unsheathed, that Savraj knew what she was driving at. Narinder said it anyway: ‘The men.’

‘Hmm. The men. What if I told you that some of those men are from the gurdwara?’ Savraj leaned in. ‘What if I told you that they don’t make me do it? That I enjoy doing it?’

‘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?’