Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans

But how does Emanuel know such a wealthy man? For his friend strides up to the house with his piece of paper in his hand and a beaming smile upon his face, and rings on the bell several times. A woman appears at the front door, about the same age as Wendy but more beautiful, though her hair is brown, not blond, with some threads of grey, and swept elegantly back from her face. In fact she is quite like Let’s Talk English Mrs Brown, with neat waist and breasts, but her feet are bare with purple-painted toenails. This is so unexpected that he has to force himself not to stare at them. There is something incredibly sexy about those purple-painted toenails.

She looks at the three of them and Dog with surprise, and takes the piece of paper which Emanuel hands to her.

“Yes, Toby lives here. But he’s out at the moment. And may I ask who you are?”

“I am Emanuel Mwere, and Toby is my brother. Two years ago he came into volunteering at Zomba, near Limbe, and our extreme friendship commenced at this time.”

“Zomba in Malawi?”

“Yes, madam. Toby was volunteering in the school contagious to the mission centre where I was learning to perform wood carvings, and Toby came to pursue a wood carving.” Emanuel speaks carefully, as though his mouth is full of stones. His vocabulary is surprisingly sophisticated, thinks Andriy.

“Oh yes, I remember the wood carving Toby brought home. Exquisite. Did you do that?”

“Alas, no, madam. The wood carving pursued by Toby was the work of a much more talented carver. Our friendship springs from a different source. I once saved him from an evil occurrence, and we swore brotherhood together. My name is Emanuel Mwere. Did he not talk to you of me?”

“You saved him from evil?”

“Yes, madam. From prison incarnation. In connection with substances.”

“Ah.” A subtle look passes over her face. “You’d better come inside. And these…?”

“These my strawberry friends. Irina, Andriy. They are Ukrainian. And our resplendent dog.”

Dog woofs, and wags his tail. She bends down and rubs his head. Andriy can see that she is already smitten.

“I’m Toby’s mother, Maria McKenzie. Come in. You must be hungry.”

She leads them through a tall wood-panelled hallway into the kitchen of the house, which is bigger than their whole apartment in Donetsk, with a refrigerator the size of his grandmother’s wardrobe, glass doors that open into the garden, and a long wooden table in the centre, on which are flowers in a vase and a bowl piled full of strawberries. Only the sight of the strawberries is strangely depressing. Then she sets a feast out for them-so many strange and delicious dishes, of leaves and herbs and grains and nuts, and breads, and vegetables cut into salads, tomatoes, peppers, radishes, olives, avocados such as he has only seen and not tasted before, with delicious yoghurts and sauces, etc, which after their monotonous and restricted diet create such a pleasurable sensation in the mouth that he finds himself eating more and more, and then he has to restrain himself, because he doesn’t want her to think he is starving, and he doesn’t want Irina to think he has no manners, though what does he care what she thinks? Surreptitiously he looks across at her and sees that she, too, is stuffing herself as though she has not eaten for days, and even licking her fingers, which he did not allow himself to do.

But one thing is disappointing. Where is the meat? In a house like this you would expect a big fat steak, maybe some juicy pork cutlets cooked with garlic, or at least a tasty piece of sausage or some stew with dumplings. As though reading his mind, Maria McKenzie goes over to the cupboard, and fetches a large tin marked Steak in Gravy. The picture on the tin shows huge chunks of gleaming brown meat. His stomach purrs in anticipation. She opens the tin, and empties the contents into a bowl. Then she puts the bowl on the floor, and before he can say anything the dog has gobbled it all up.

“Would you like some more?” she asks them.

“Yes please, madam.” He and Irina say it simultaneously. They look across the table at each other and laugh. Her cheeks dimple in that sexy way, and she doesn’t seem so stuck up any more. Maria McKenzie fetches some raw carrots from the refrigerator and chops them into fingers, with some celery and cucumber pieces, and a bowl of some delicious creamy nutty sauce, which he eats with great pleasure. But his eyes meet Irina’s and they exchange smiles again, because there is a bag of carrots in their caravan, and Dog is sitting in the corner with a satisfied look on his face and licking his jaws.

While they are eating, Maria McKenzie takes out her mobilfon and dials some numbers, and though she speaks very quietly with her back turned towards them, he can pick up what she is saying.

“Yes, from Malawi. Yes. Yes, he said prison. No, he said substances. Toby, don’t lie to me. No, he doesn’t know. He’s not here yet. OK. OK. See you soon, darling.”

She turns to her guests with a radiant smile.

“Toby says he’ll be back soon.”

The woman, Mrs McKenzie, was very kind, despite having purple toenails like a witch’s. In my opinion, nail varnish, if used at all on the toes, should be discreet. She offered me some strawberries and I forced myself to eat a few out of politeness, for how could she know the truth about her strawberries? Then she made me some special herbal tea, which she said would re-balance my positive and negative energies-it’s a stupid idea, but the tea was quite nice. It was warm and quiet in the kitchen, and it smelt of baking. We sat on a sofa to one side of the huge enamelled stove. You could hear the tick-tock of a big clock, and the snoring of the dog-sss! hrr! sss! hrr!-who was curled up in the cat’s basket in front of the stove.

We chatted a bit. It turns out she has been to Kiev. She asked about my parents, so I told her my Pappa is a professor and has written a lot of books, and I hope one day to become a writer too, and my mother is just a housewife and a schoolteacher. Then I felt sad for Mother having such a boring life, and I remembered I had never made that phone call to say sorry.

“Would it be possible to telephone my mother?” I asked.

“Of course, dear.”

She passed me the phone.

“Mother?”

“Irina? Is that you?”

At once she started on about being lonely, and wanting me to come home.

I said, “Mamma, I’m planning to stay here a bit longer. And I’m sorry about what I said last time. I love you.”

I’d been dreading saying it, because I thought it would make me cry like a baby, but as soon as I said it I felt better.

“My little girl. I miss you so much.”

“Mamma, I’m not a little girl. I’m nineteen. And I miss you too.”

There was a silence. Then Mother said, “Did you know your Aunty Vera is expecting another baby? At her age!” She put on a scandalised voice. Aunty Vera is a source of much gossip in our family. “And a nice couple have moved into that empty flat downstairs. They have a son a bit older than you. Very nice-looking.”

“Mamma, don’t start getting ideas.”

And we both laughed, and suddenly everything between us was normal and easy again.

Just as I put the phone down, the door opened and a boy walked in, about my age, wearing jeans cut off in that raggedy fashion below the knees, and a black T-shirt with a skull on it. His hair was a koshmar -long and twisted in thin rats’ tails all over his head-and there were some wispy bits of beard on his chin. Definitely not my type.

“Hi, Ma!” he said.

Then he looked at Emanuel, and their faces broke out in big smiles, and they hugged each other and shook hands in a peculiar thumb-twisting way, and hugged again. Mrs McKenzie started to sniffle. Andriy and I looked at each other and grinned, and he squeezed my knee under the table. Then the cat came in and hissed at the dog, and the dog chased the cat around the kitchen, and Andriy shouted at the dog and he knocked the flower vase over, the water went everywhere, so he started mopping it with a towel and Mrs McKenzie cried out “It’s destiny!” still dabbing at her eyes.