2007 - Two Caravans (28 page)

So when after ten minutes of silence Andriy suddenly slipped his arm round me, I just pulled away. “Don’t!”

And then straightaway I wished I hadn’t, but it was too late.
Sorry, I didn’t mean it. Please put your arm back
. But you can’t say that, can you?

That’s it, then. In a few days he’ll collect his week’s wages, then he’ll be off to Sheffield. No point in hanging around here and making a fool of himself, chasing after a girl who has not the slightest interest in him. This London, it is exciting, it gives you plenty to think about, and to tell the truth he is glad he stayed here for a short time and tasted its bitter-sweet flavours. And it will be good to travel north with money in his pocket. But it’s time to go. The girl will be all right. She can stay in the accommodation that comes with the job, whatever that is, and she seems to be bringing home something in tips as well as her wages. Probably that’s why she wears that blouse. Well, that’s her business. It means nothing to him. She can sort out her passport, though she seems to be in no hurry to do this, and save up for her fare and even buy a few nice clothes if that’s what she wants. He doesn’t have to worry about her. He will take the caravan, and Dog. He is quite looking forward to being by himself, on the road.

They are within a block of the place where the caravan and Land Rover are parked when they hear the sound of Dog barking furiously and an intermittent dull thudding noise. As they get closer the sound intensifies, along with a babble of shrill voices. He quickens his step, then breaks into a run.

As they turn the last corner, they see a horde of children surrounding the caravan, pelting it with bricks. Dog is barking frantically, dodging the stones, and trying to chase them off. Where did these little buggers come from? In the shadowless orange glow of the street lights the small figures are dancing about like a bizarre bacchanal. One of them has set a pile of sticks and paper under one end of the caravan and is tossing lighted matches at it.

“What you doing? Stop it!” Andriy races towards them swinging his arms. The children stop, but only for a second. Nearest to him is a raggedy boy with hair like a rat’s nest. Their eyes meet. The boy picks up half a brick and lobs it at him.

“Yecontgitmeeyafacka yecontgitme!”

It falls short. Andriy runs at the little sod, grabs him by both arms and swings him round, throwing him sideways. The kid staggers as he hits the ground.

“Fackyafackyafackincant!”

Andriy grabs at another kid, who dodges out of his way and starts to run, and another who wriggles out of his grasp, lithe as a cat, and darts off, showering him with spit. Even Irina is getting stuck in. She snatches one of the boys by the arm, and when he spits and swears at her she spits and swears back and gives him a hard wallop on the behind. Where did she learn those words? Dog snarls and launches himself at the boy with the matches just as the fire starts to catch on the paper. The smell of smoke drifts towards them. The children scatter, shouting and throwing stones behind them as they run. Dog chases after the stragglers, snapping at their heels.

The paper has caught fire and now the sticks are crackling under the caravan, sending smoke and sparks into the air. Dog is going mad. Quick as a flash, Andriy unzips himself and pees on the flames. There is a hiss and a bit of smoke, but not too much damage to the caravan. Why is she looking at him with that grin on her face? It was an emergency. Well, let her look. Let her grin. What is she to him?

He sits down on the step of the caravan and rests his head in his hands, surrendering to the fatigue. But she has to come and squeeze down beside him. Her arm, her thigh—where her skin touches his, it’s like hot steel. This girl—why does she have to get into his skin? If it isn’t going to lead to any possibility, why can’t she just leave him alone?

The thought makes him feel bleakly irritated, both with her and with himself. And something else is bothering him—the look in the rat-boy’s eyes as he swung him into the air. They weren’t the sparkling mischievous eyes of a naughty kid having fun. They were blank dead-pool eyes—eyes that have already seen too much. Like the naked girl in the four-by-four. Like the Ukrainian boys on the pier. Why are there so many people in the world with those dead zombie eyes?

“Andriy?”

“What?”

“We can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Those children—they’ll come back while we’re asleep. They’ll set fire to the caravan with us inside.”

“No, they won’t.”

Why can’t she just shut up and leave him alone?

“They might. And even if they don’t come back tonight, the caravan won’t be safe here. They’re bound to be back.”

“Well, we can move it in the morning.”

He feels exhaustion like a trickle of molten lead seeping and solidifying inside his limbs. He must have pulled his shoulder swinging the boy, and there are other obscure aches in his back and legs. He needs to sleep.

“There’ll be too many people around in the morning. It’s easier to find somewhere now. Let’s go now.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere. Maybe we could find somewhere a bit nearer to the restaurant.”

So he gets a bit of brick and hammers at the padlock on the bar gate. It comes off quite easily. In fact she is right—driving around at night is better. He even gets up into fourth gear once, without going into reverse. He remembers a quiet side street not far from the back of the restaurant where there are sometimes a few cars parked. That will do for now. It is only a temporary place. Soon he will move on.

After that incident with the children, Andriy got even more moody. I tried to make jokes and cheer him up, but each day that passed he just got more grumpy, and kept saying he would be going to Sheffield as soon as we got our first week’s wages.

I already had about eighty pounds from tips left on the tables. I tried to share them with him, but he shook his head and said, no, keep it, frowning like a belly ache and saying he was tired of this job, and anyway he would soon be going to Sheffield. What was the matter with him? He wasn’t still sulking about that twenty-pound note, was he?

So I went back to the shop with the sale and I bought a different blouse that wasn’t so low-cut. I thought that would make him happy, but it didn’t. He said it was still too low, and my skirt was too short. Why was he being so boring? It’s a nice skirt, only a bit above my knees, good cut, lovely silky lining, and reduced to less than half price just because the button was missing, which I could soon fix. Also it has a deep pocket, which is handy for tips. I saw there was no pleasing him. If he doesn’t like my clothes, that’s his problem. Why doesn’t he just go to Sheffield, instead of hanging around getting on my nerves?

Next morning, I decided to walk over to the Ukrainian Consulate to get a new passport. I still had some money left from tips, so I looked in on that first very expensive clothes shop. Really, the prices on the clothes—they just took your breath away. I spent an hour, trying things, trying other things, looking in the mirror. I never made it to the Consulate. There was one pair of trousers, thirty pounds, reduced from one hundred and twenty. They were black, low-cut, and tight-tight. Actually, they looked fantastic. I knew Andriy would really hate them.

I stopped by at the caravan, but Andriy had already left for the restaurant, and that’s when I noticed that there was some kind of yellow-and-black label stuck on the windscreen of the Land Rover. I peeled it off and put it in my pocket to show him. And there seemed to be something fixed onto the front wheel of the Land Rover, and also to the caravan wheel. That was strange. No doubt he would know how to get it off. We were busy that lunchtime so I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. Anyway, he was looking so grumpy I just kept out of his way.

Then someone else came into the restaurant, and that made things even worse.

It was just before three o’clock, the end of the lunchtime shift, and some of the staff had already gone. There were only two customers left in the restaurant, a young couple finishing their meal. Then a man came in on his own and sat down at one of the window tables—the same one where Mister Twenty Pounds had sat. I didn’t recognise him at first, but he recognised me straightaway.

“Irina?”

He was young and dark, with very short hair. He was wearing a dark grey business suit, a white-white shirt with a big gold watch peeping out under the cuff, and a blue-and-pink patterned tie. Quite attractive, in fact.

“Vitaly?”

He smiled. “Hello.”

“Hey, Vitaly! How much you’ve changed.”

“What you doing here, Irina?”

“Earning money, of course. How about you?”

“Earning money too. Good money.” He took a tiny mobile phone out of his pocket and flipped up the lid. “Recruitment consultant, dynamic employment solution cutting edge”—he did a little slicing movement with his hand—“organisational answer for all you flexible staffing need. Better money than strawberry.”

OK, I admit I was impressed.

“Recruitment consultant? What is that?”

“Oh, it just means finding a job for some person. Or finding some person for a job. I am always on lookout for new arrivals to fill exciting vacancies.”

“You can find a job?”

He pointed his phone at me and pressed a few buttons.

“I can find very first-class job for you, Irina. Excellent pay. Good clean work. Luxury accommodation provided. And my friend Andriy. I have a good job for him also. Near Heathrow Airport. Is he here?”

“He is working in the kitchen. Kitchen hand.”

“Kitchen hand. Hm.” He shook his head with a little smile. “Irina, you, Andriy…you make possibility?”

“Vitaly, why you are asking this?” I said. Then he reached up and took my hand, and looked at me with his dark-dark eyes in a way that made me shiver. “Irina, all time I am thinking about you.”

I blushed. It sounded so romantic. Was he serious? I didn’t know what to say. I took my hand away, in case Andriy was watching.

“Vitaly, tell me about this job. What kind of work is this?”

“Very first class. Gourmet cuisine. Top-notch international company desperately seeking reliable and motivated replacement staff.” His voice was deep, and the way he pronounced those long words in English sounded incredibly cultured. “Food preparation contract for major airline near Heathrow Airport.”

Yes, ever since man first lifted his head above the mouth of the cave to gaze upon the heavenly stars, and thought how pleasing it would be to have one such star exclusively for himself, it has been the dream of man to get others to work for him, and to pay them as little as possible. And no man has been pursuing this dream more dynamically than Vitaly himself. He has spent the day trawling through the bars and restaurants of London looking for the right kind of people. The new arrivals, the confused, the desperate, the greedy. You can make good money out of people like that.

For as that brainy beardy Karl Marx said, no person can ever build up a fortune just by his own labour, but in order to become VIP elite rich you must appropriate the labour of others. In pursuit of this dream, many ingenious human solutions have been applied throughout the millennia, from slavery, forced labour, transportation, indentured labour, debt bondage and penal colonies, right through to casualisation, zero-hours contract, flexible working, no-strike clause, compulsory overtime, compulsory self-employment, agency working, sub-contracting, illegal immigration, outsourcing and many other such maximum flexibility organisational advances. And spearheading this permanent revolutionisation of the work process has been the historic role of the dynamic edge cutting employment solution recruitment consultant. Not enough people appreciate this.

This is why despite the exclusive hand-tailored charcoal-grey pure wool suit, the state-of-the-art Nokia N94i nestled in his pocket and the genuine Rolex Explorer II winking boldly from under his cuff, he still feels sadly unappreciated. What you need, he thinks, is a girl to share your good fortune with—a pretty, clean, good-class girl, not a painted-up cheap-rent girl; an innocent girl, whom you can train in the art of love the way you like it; nice-looking enough to attract envy from other men, but not so nice-looking that she will run off with the next chancer with a Nokia N95ii and a Rolex Daytona. What you need is a girl who can reassure you that, really, you are a good man. A dynamic man. A VIP. Not a criminal. Not a loser. And here she is, the very girl you’ve been dreaming of, smiling sweetly as she pours you a second glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc. Really, this is a very nice wine—one of the nice little perks of the business. And—here is the real tragedy of it—even as you gaze into the silky hollow between her lovely breasts, a businesslike voice in the back of your head tells you: you could make good money out of this girl.

For if you have grown up in the faraway Dniester valley in a provincial town nestled on a bend in the river that divides Moldova from the Republic of Transdniestria—where the only law is the gun, where your father and two of your brothers were shot down in the main street near your home for refusing to pay protection money, and your third brother was killed in the war of secession, and your mother died of sorrow at the age of forty-two when your house was razed to the ground, and your two younger sisters have been traded by a Kosovan wide-boy to a massage parlour in Peckham—if you grow up in a place like Bendery, it toughens you up a bit.

Ah, Bendery! Whose desolate Soviet-era concrete blocks conceal a feral heart; whose alleys smell of blocked drains and frying garlic; whose sunsets glow like fire through the burnt-out windows of the buildings near the bridge; whose wide river laps in silvery ripples along those sandy banks where from time to time a corpse is washed ashore; in whose forests the ghosts still sigh; whose streets have run with blood. Ah, Bendery! His eyes go misty with bittersweet pain. He gazes at the opening of Irina’s blouse. Once, he had a girl like this in Bendery. Rosa. The school librarian’s daughter. She was fifteen and a virgin. So was he. Her eyes were dark and gleaming with promises. They met after school in a secret glade on the riverbank. Probably she, too, is in Peckham now.