2007 - Two Caravans (10 page)

Her prayers have made her feel pleasantly righteous, and after righteousness it is natural to feel hungry and thirsty. So as far as Yola is concerned, their first priority when they get to Dover is to have some lunch.

Unlike in Canterbury, where all the shops were open, in Dover everything is very closed. At last down a back street they find a small, gloomy shop with two narrow aisles, smelling of spices and something musty and not very nice. The shopkeeper is a plump Indian woman of about Yola’s age, dressed in a green sari, with a red spot on her forehead. Yola studies her curiously. She is not unattractive in an Asiatic sort of way. The red spot seems to be in the wrong place. Surely it should be on her cheeks.

Yola as the supervisor is naturally in charge of the shopping, but in the interests of harmony she lets everyone have a say. They agree on five loaves of white sliced bread (better than coarse Polish bread and quite inexpensive), margarine (more modern than butter, and also cheaper), apricot jam (Tomasz’s favourite), teabags and sugar (they have been drying out and reusing their teabags, but there is a limit), bananas (Andriy’s choice, typical Ukrainian), salted peanuts (a special request from Emanuel), a large bar of rum and raisin chocolate (Yola’s own little luxury), two large bottles of Coca-Cola for the Chinese girls, and a tin of dog food. Tomasz lingers in the off-licence section, studying the labels, but his request for a bottle of wine is firmly rejected by Yola. Unnecessary. Too expensive. Andriy is also hanging around in the off-licence, looking at the beer.

“Did you see the mark-up Vitaly has been making on the beer he has been selling us?” he says grumpily. Typical Ukrainian.

Marta has stayed in the Land Rover with the dog, and Yola cannot remember her special request.

The Indian shopkeeper tut-tuts as she puts all this through the till.

“You are not eating a balance diet.”

“Not balance?” It is Yola’s responsibility to see they eat properly.

“Protein. You must have a protein. If you eat all this you will be feeling sick.”

Yola looks at their pile of shopping and realises that she is right. Just looking at all this stuff is making her feel a bit unwell.

“What can you recommend?”

The shopkeeper hmms and ruminates.

“Pilchards.” She points down the aisle. “Fishies. Good for you. Cheap. In tin over there.”

Yola thinks the fishes in the picture on the tin look plump and appealing and she is pleasantly surprised by the price. They take two tins.

Between the waist of the shopkeeper’s sari and the bottom of her blouse is a soft bulge of brown flesh. In civilised countries this area of a woman’s body is normally concealed, but Yola notices that the Ukrainian is staring at it fixedly.

“Madam,” he says, very politely, “I wish to ask, from where you learn such wisdom?”

What a flatterer that beetroot-brain is, almost like a Pole. (Of course Polish men are renowned throughout the world for being flirtatious, on account of their habit of hand-kissing, but sadly this does not make them good husband-material, as Yola has discovered to her sorrow.) The shopkeeper laughs modestly and points at a picture above the counter of a smiling wrinkled old woman dressed in bright blue, with a triple string of pearls and a stylish blue hat.

“This lady is my inspiration.”

Everyone gathers round to look. The old woman in the picture looks back with a cheerful smile and a wave of her gloved hand. Yola thinks that to have both a veil and little blue feathers in a hat is unnecessary: one or other would have made a sufficient statement.

“She is a lady of extreme age and wisdom. In her long years, which unfortunately are now over, she gave many cheery indications of the important things in life. To have friends come from afar is a pleasure—this is one of her great sayings.” The shopkeeper folds her arms on the counter with a friendly smile. “You not from round here. I think you all come from afar, innit?”

“You are right, madam.” Tomasz smiles ingratiatingly. “We have come from all the corners of the world—Poland, Ukraine, Africa, China.”

He too is staring at the brown bulge. Really, what can you do with men?

“And Malaysia,” adds Chinese Girl Two.

“Well, have a lovely time, my dears, and bon appetit.” The shopkeeper beams at them over the counter. “That is another of her sayings.”

“This is a great saying,” says Emanuel. “I will commit it to memory.”

But Chinese Girl One whispers to Chinese Girl Two, “I think that saying attributed to the old lady in blue is in fact a saying of Confucius.”

And Chinese Girl Two points at the red spot in the middle of the shopkeeper’s forehead, and whispers, “I think it is a bullet hole.”

They giggle.

I AM DOG I AM GOOD DOG I SIT WITH MY MAN I EAT DOG FOOD MEAT MAN EATS MAN FOOD BREAD FISH WE ALL EAT WE ALL SIT ON SMALL SMOOTH STONES NEAR BIG-WATER SUN SHINES HOT THIS WATER IS NOT GOOD TO DRINK BAD TASTE BIS-WATER RUNS AFTER DOG DOG RUNS AFTER BIS-WATER BIS-WATER HISSES AT DOG SSSS DOG BARKS AT BIS-WATER WOOF DOG SNIFFS BIS-WATER SNIFF SNIFF NO DOG SMELL NO MAN SMELL ONLY BIS-WATER SMELL EVERYWHERE STONES WOOD WEEDS WASTE DOG FINDS MAN-SHOE BESIDE WATER WET SHOE GOOD MAN-SMELL SHOE DOG BRINSS WETSHOE TO SOUR-PISS-STRONS-FEET-SMELL MAN HE IS HAPPY GOOD DOG HE SAYS I AM GOOD DOG I AM DOG

Andriy feels quite queasy by the time he’s finished his lunch. Those pilchards in tomato sauce—they were good, but perhaps he shouldn’t have eaten so many. While the others set out on foot to the ferry terminal, he spreads his towel on the pebble beach and stretches out in the sun, with Dog beside him. The slow pull and surge of waves down at the water’s edge is soothing. Dog falls asleep almost instantly, hissing and snoring as rhythmically as the sea. Andriy is incredibly tired, but each time he is on the point of sleep the fluttery panicky feeling starts up and wakes him.
I did not do it
. The left-side driving, the excitable passengers, this self-willed caravan, the argument with Ciocia Yola, and a niggling unspecific anxiety which swirls around in his head like a mist without taking any fixed form, all have tired him out yet left him unable to relax.

He must have started to drift away at last, when he is brought back abruptly by a thunderous crash just a few feet from where he is lying. His blood freezes; his heart begins to pound. Half asleep, as if waking from a nightmare, he listens to the dreadful sound—a long crescendo, a terrible reverberation, a slow fading rumble. It is the long-drawn-out growl of the earth crying in pain. It is the roar of the coalface collapsing in the darkness below ground.

He sits up, rubs his eyes. There is nothing. Nothing but the waves pounding on the pebbles a few inches away from his feet. The tide has come in. And yet, in that moment of wakening, he relived the terror of looking into the fuming blackness of noise and dust, and knowing his father would never emerge alive.

That sound—no, he will never be able to work underground again. He cannot go back down there. In fact he had never wanted to be a miner in the first place. He would have stayed on at school and studied to be a teacher or an engineer. But when he was sixteen, his father had shoved a pick into his hands—they were long past the time of power tools—and said, “Learn, son. Learn to be a man.”

He had replied in that clever sixteen-year-old way that makes him wince now to remember, “Is a man someone who grubs about like a beast under the ground?”

And his father had said, “A man is someone who puts bread on the table, and puts his comrades’ safety before his own, and doesn’t complain.”

In Donbas, there is only one way to put bread on the table. When they said the pit was uneconomic, international solidarity couldn’t help, the mineworkers’ union couldn’t help. So they had gone back underground and helped themselves. Well, you have to live, don’t you? When the roof fell, Andriy had lived, and two others. Six had been killed. The story didn’t even make the headlines beyond Donbas.

But why him? Why did he live, when the others died? Because a voice in his head insisted, if you want to live, run—keep running. Don’t look back.

He watches a bank of grey clouds massing up on the horizon.

And why Sheffield? Because Sheffield is the place where the puddings are pink, and the girls put their tongues in your mouth when they kiss. And there was something about the blind man, the gentleness of his voice when he spoke of the welcome that awaits strangers in his city, the way he clasped your hand and seemed to look right into your heart, even though of course he wasn’t looking at all. Yes, now you remember, Vloonki was his name.

And once he gets to Sheffield? Andriy hasn’t thought that far ahead. Tomorrow he will look for Irina, and when he has found her, he will be on his way.

However long Vulk waited for me, I would wait longer.

From my leafy hiding place I watched as the sun carved its slow arc from the wooded hills in the east, up over the rolling patchwork of green and gold fields, and down to the other horizon. It was strange, because although I could see the sun moving, I felt inside me as though time was standing still. I was waiting—waiting and trying not to think about why I was waiting, because those thoughts were so horrible that if I let them creep into my mind, I might never be able to chase them out again. “
You like flower…?
”

When I get back to Kiev, I thought, I will write a story about this. It will be a thriller, following the adventures of a plucky heroine as she flees across England, pursued by a sinister but ridiculous gangster. Thinking of my story made me feel better. When you write a story, you can decide how it ends.

As the sun moved across the sky, a spume of streaky clouds that unfolded in its wake started to thicken and turn heavy. Strange how I had never noticed before how expressive clouds can be, like people, changing, ageing, drifting apart.

At some point I must have fallen asleep, because suddenly I opened my eyes to find the sun had disappeared and what I had thought was a line of hills, blue in the distance, was in fact a long bank of cloud that had swallowed up the sky. It was going to rain. I was incredibly hungry. If thought if I didn’t eat something soon, I would faint. I squeezed myself out of my hollow and peered down the track. Where I had caught the gleam of sunlight on metal before, there was nothing now but leaves. Had he gone, or was it just that the sun had moved round? Was he hiding, waiting for me? Maybe everywhere I go from now on, he’ll be hiding, waiting.
Stop. Don’t think those thoughts. If you think like that, you will be his prisoner all your life
.

I knew I had to find food. I looked around me. There were trees, bushes, grass, leaves. Were any of them good to eat? I pulled a handful of grass—well, if cows eat it, it must be OK. I chewed at it, but I couldn’t bring myself to swallow. There were some red berries on a shrub with a vivid toxic lustre.
Mamma, Pappa, you know about this sort of thing. Don’t be foolish, Irina. You know you shouldn’t eat berries or mushrooms unless you are absolutely sure. How many times do I have to tell you that?

Even as I was turning these thoughts over in my head, I had already started to walk back down the track. In the daytime, it seemed no distance. I crawled through and walked down the other side of the hedge to keep out of view. At the bottom, the track widened out and there was an old wooden table with benches on each side, though some of the planks had been pulled off. There was no vehicle in sight, but the ground was gashed with tyre marks. Either he’d been back, more than once, or there’d been other vehicles. I looked more closely. There, in one of the wheel-ruts, I spotted the stub of a cigar. My heart started up—boom boom. I remembered he had a cigar last night, but was it the same cigar? Or had he been back? Had he been sitting in his mafia-machine, smoking a cigar and waiting for me? “
Little flower
…” I stamped on the stub and ground it into the grass. And there was another strange object, something grey and rubbery. It looked like part of a shoe. What a stink! But Vulk’s shoes were shiny black.

Then I noticed, beneath the broken table, a screwed-up bundle of paper. I knew at once what it was. Another stroke of good luck! I picked it up. That smell! I couldn’t help myself. I was salivating like a dog. I unwrapped the bundle and counted them. One, two, three…There were lots! I stuffed them into my mouth. My stomach growled with pleasure. They were cold and stiff, like dead men’s fingers. They were absolutely delicious. And something else was buried there beneath the chips, something golden and crispy. I broke off a piece and put it on my tongue. It was like manna. It was…It was all gone.

Then I thought, what an idiot you are, standing here by the roadside where anyone passing could see you, stuffing yourself with somebody’s thrown-away leftovers. If Mother could see you…
Well, she can’t, can she?

Somebody’s leftovers…Whose leftovers? Did he have some chips in the car last night? No, I would have noticed the smell. So they must be someone else’s. Or maybe he went and bought some chips, and came back here, and sat in the car and waited for me to return. Waited for me so he could…
Stop! Don’t think that thought. Every time you think of him, he possesses you
.

The ferry terminal is almost deserted, and silent apart from the wailing of a small tired chocolate-smeared girl tugging at the skirt of her equally tired mother. Marta remembers the bustle and excitement of their arrival, only a few weeks ago. Now everyone seems so despondent. Andriy stayed at the beach. Emanuel has gone to look at the boats. The two Chinese girls are outside having an ice cream. Yola and Tomasz are wandering around looking for the office where they can get their tickets changed. Yola’s face is red: maybe from stress, or maybe from too much sun earlier on the beach, when her hat blew away, and the bad language that followed was appalling. Tomasz is wearing one smelly trainer and one trainer that is wet and two sizes too large for him. He too got sunburned on his nose. Marta can’t really concentrate on what everyone else is doing because she is desperate for the toilet.