Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans

“OK, girl. You don’t cry,” said the van driver. “You can come with us.”

As the van moved forward I heard voices in the back. I turned in my seat and saw there were about a dozen people, men and women, crouching or squatting on the floor. They were all young. Some were chatting quietly. Some seemed half asleep. They looked like students-they looked quite like me, in fact.

“Hello,” I said in Ukrainian. There was a chorus of hellos, some in Ukrainian, some in Polish and a couple of other Slavic languages I couldn’t place.

“Strawberry-pickers,” explained the driver.

“Ah, that’s lucky! Me too.”

I started to explain about the caravans and the strawberry field, and then suddenly there it was, just flashing past on the right, the little copse, and the gate, and the lovely familiar south-sloping field. But what had happened to our caravan?

“Stop, please!” I cried. The driver pulled to a halt, shaking his head.

“Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Typical woman.”

“Wait. Please. Just one moment!”

I ran back down the lane and opened the gate. The women’s caravan had gone-vanished completely. Only the shower screen was still standing, the black plastic flapping forlornly. The men’s caravan was there, leaning at an angle. I tiptoed up and peeped through the window. It was empty. No one was around. The field was full of ripe strawberries. At the top of the field I could hear the thrush still sitting there in the copse singing its early-morning song.

I climbed back into the van. “Stop? Go?” said the van driver. “Let’s go.”

After the Chinese girls have gone with Mr Smith, and Vitaly has taken the Poles to their rendezvous with the van driver (whom he refers to as the ‘transport manager’), Andriy, Emanuel and Dog go off for a consolatory ice cream to get away from the heat. They arrange to meet Vitaly at a pub in town.

Andriy hopes that Vitaly, with his new mobilfon wealth, will stand them a round of drinks, but when he comes back it turns out that unfortunately he has no cash on him, so from what is left of his two weeks’ wages Andriy has to pay for two small beers for himself and Emanuel and a double Scotch with Coke for Vitaly.

They take their drinks through a door marked Beer Garden into a dank courtyard full of empty beer barrels where the sun barely peeps above high brick walls that are covered with dismal sooty ivy. They are the only people there. Dog finds the remains of a sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin under one of the tables, and gobbles it up, spreading crumbs and shreds of paper everywhere. Emanuel and Andriy sip their beers slowly to make them last.

At once Vitaly wants to know what has become of Irina, and there is an annoying presumptuousness about the way he talks, moving seamlessly between Russian and English.

“I thought you and she would be making possibility by now. I could find her very nice job in London. Dancing. Can she dance? Good pay. Luxury accommodation.”

When Andriy tells him about the night-time abduction, he whistles between his teeth.

“That Mr Vulk is a no-no-good. He brings bad reputation to profession of recruitment consultant.”

“He is recruitment consultant?”

“Yes, of course. But not same like me. Not employment solution consultant with capacity for advance meeting flexi. He is more interested to make overseas contact. My contact is to find work for people when they arrive on ferry. Dynamic cutting solution to all organisation staffing.”

“And he is living here in Dover?”

“In some hotel, not far away I think.”

“Can you take me to him?”

“Aha! I see you are still thinking of making possibility with this Ukrainian girl.”

Andriy gives a studied shrug. “Well, of course I would be interested to know where she is. But she already has boyfriend I think. Boxing champion.”

Vitaly gives him a runny look. “Boxing? This is unusual for high-class girl. Angliski?”

“Maybe. I think so.” He too has his doubts about this boyfriend.

He feels unaccountably furious with Vitaly. Where did he get these clothes, these sunglasses, this phone? And how all the women were dancing around him at the ferry terminal! It couldn’t have been just the mark-up on the beer at the caravan, could it? And why did he keep it all to himself? The strawberry-pickers shared everything, but Vitaly had been secretly keeping something aside for himself all the time. And how quickly this transformation from equal to superior had taken place. Devil’s bum! It had happened overnight. Of course he had lived through a time like this in Ukraine -one day they were all comrades, next day some were millionaires and the rest had…coupons. How had it happened? No one knew. It left a bad taste in the mouth.

And what can you do with coupons? You can’t eat them. You can’t spend them. All you can do is sell them. But who will want to buy? Suddenly, the millionaires were all billionaires, and the rest had enough for a load of coal to see you through the winter and that was it, bye-bye end of story. Now the whole country was run by mobilfonmen.

And this Vitaly-if he finds this Irina, will he ring you on mobilfon and say, hey Andriy, my friend, come and make possibility? Unlikely. And what would she think of this new recruit-consult mobilfonman Vitaly? She considers herself so superior-the new high-spec Ukrainian girl-maybe the new Vitaly will just be in her category. Hello, mobilfon businessman-this is Irina calling-can we make a possibility? And if she makes a possibility with Vitaly, what does it matter to you, Palenko? Now he feels irrationally, fumingly angry with Irina as well as with Vitaly.

“And I have an Angliska girl,” he adds pointedly to Vitaly. “Vagvaga Riskegipd. In Sheffield. I am on my way to find her.”

Vitaly gives him another odd look.

“Listen, my friend, if I see Vulk, I will ask him what happened to this Ukrainian girl.”

He almost hopes that Vitaly will offer him a job-good pay, luxury accommodation, etc-just so that he can have the pleasure of turning it down. But he doesn’t, and Andriy’s pride won’t let him ask. They arrange to meet in the same pub at the same time tomorrow. As Vitaly strolls away, he takes his mobilfon out of his pocket and starts to talk, waving his free hand up and down for emphasis. Andriy tries to make out what language he is talking.

The sun is blazing at full heat, cutting short hard shadows onto the cracked pavements. He wanders back towards the caravan with Dog and Emanuel, still feeling irritable and resenting the money he spent on Vitaly’s double Scotch. Worse than that, he feels shabby, poor and unattractive. Is he jealous of Vitaly? How shameful it is to be jealous of someone who is inferior in every way, except that he has a mobilfon and better trousers. This is what Vitaly has done to him. This is what Vitaly and Irina between them have done to him. Yes, he thought Vitaly was his friend, and all the time he was taking a bit on the side. Well, here are his true friends. Hey, Dog! But Dog is off on a trail of lamp posts. Hey, Emanuel! Emanuel has found a half-full packet of smoky-bacon flavour crisps in the beer garden, which he shares with Andriy, shaking out the last bits into his hand. The artificially flavoured salt dissolves on his tongue, tasty and toxic.

“Hey, Emanuel. You like fishing? Maybe we have big luck.”

“Sikomo. Fishing is very interesting. But where will we attain good nettings?” Emanuel starts to sing, “ I will make you fishers of men .”

They stroll down to the pier together. The Bulgarian lad who sold him the fish yesterday said this was the best way in town of making quick money. Down a side street, in a maze of car and lorry parks not far from where they left their caravan, they find the entrance to the Admiralty Pier. It must have once been quite a grand structure, but now the ornate cast iron is decrepit and grimy, covered in pigeon-droppings, and a few dead pigeons fester where they have dropped behind the barriers. The stench hits you as you come in.