Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans

Then the door opened again and a man came in, and he said, “Good Lord. What on earth is going on here?”

And the amazing thing is, he looked just like Mr Brown in my school textbook. But where was the bowler hat?

“Darling…” Maria McKenzie’s voice is so low and seductive that Andriy feels a distinct tremor in his manly parts, though she is speaking not to him but to the man who has just come in and is now slumped down on the sofa. “Darling, let me get you a drink. Whisky? Double? On ice? Darling, these are some friends of Toby’s. Emanuel here is from Limbe, in Malawi. Do you remember when Toby did his gap year in Malawi? Well, Emanuel is one of the friends he made. And now he’s come all the way over here to visit us. Isn’t that wonderful? And this is Irina, and Andriy. They’re from Ukraine but they’ve been staying in Kent. And Emanuel has brought them along because they’d like to meet a typical English family.”

“Well, they’ve come to the wrong place, haven’t they?” The man takes a quick gulp of his whisky. “And what about the dog. What’s the dog’s name?”

“Sir, the dog’s name is Dog.” Andriy wishes he had thought of something more intelligent, but the man chuckles.

“Excellent. Excellent name for a dog. Cross breed, is it?” His voice is deep and booming, like a foghorn.

“Sir, we know nothing of origin of this dog. It arrived mysteriously in night.”

“Hm. That’s interesting. Dog, come here. Let me look at you.”

Obediently, Dog walks across and sits down at the man’s feet, returning his gaze in a way that is both friendly and courteous. Andriy’s heart swells momentarily with pride.

“Labrador collie, I’d say, with a bit of German shepherd in there too. Excellent cross. Best dogs you can get.”

“Yes, he is very excellent dog.” Though he has heard of the Angliski love of animals, still it seems strange that this man seems more interested in the dog than in any of the people in the room. “He is hunting also, and brings all type of creature for us. Many rabbit and pigeon.”

Dog is glorying in the attention, wagging his tail, turning his head and lifting up his paw. The man takes the paw in his very clean businessman hand and shakes it.

“How do you do.” Just like Mr Brown! “Hm. Not a young dog. You say he arrived in the middle of the night?”

“Yes. When we are camping in wood. We think he is long time running, because feet is bleeding and he has scratchings on body.”

“Fascinating. And he hasn’t left you since?”

“No. He is all time with us.”

“Hm. Remarkable creatures, dogs. Faithful to the end. Maybe he was kidnapped. Dog-napped. Kent, did you say? Yes, they still go in for a bit of dog fighting down there. Sadly, in this day and age. They catch pet dogs and throw them to the fighters. Get their aggression up. Barbaric, really. Miners. Should be shot.”

Andriy doesn’t like the turn this conversation is taking. The man’s left eye has started to twitch, and he is gulping the whisky. Dog reaches forward and rests his chin soothingly on the man’s knee. The man seems to relax.

“Once, I had a dog. When I was a boy. Buster.” He leans down and scratches Dog’s ears. His voice is thick with emotion and whisky. “Can’t you take me with you, young man? When you go camping? Down in Kent? Hunting in the woods, with the dog? I’m quite handy with a shotgun, you know. Hares. Rabbits. Pigeons. I can skin a rabbit. I’ve still got my Swiss army knife. Fetching wood. Making the fire. Damp matches. Smoke everywhere. Kettle boiling. Tea in enamel mugs. Baked beans. Burnt toast. The whole lot.” He looks up at Andriy, his eyes watery and sad. “I wouldn’t get in the way.”

“Sir, of course you can come with us. But unfortunately we are just coming from Kent, and we are on our way to Sheffield.”

The man drains his whisky glass and groans.

“Supper ready soon, is it, Maria? I’ll go and get changed.”

As soon as his father has left the room, Toby lets out a sigh of relief.

“That stuff about the prison, Emanuel. It’s better if he doesn’t know.”

“He does not know?” asks Emanuel.

“Sweetheart,” says Maria McKenzie to Emanuel in that low seductive voice, “Toby’s father is quite old-fashioned in some respects, although he is a very kind and loving father. Isn’t he, Toby? But I think it would be fair to say that he has had some difficulty coming to terms with some aspects of Toby’s personality.”

“Yeah, Ma, he’s so straight you could stick him in the ground and grow weed up him.”

“Toby, your father is a very good man, and he works very hard for us. And if I had known you would get yourself into trouble in this way, I would never have let you go to Malawi for a year, I would have sent you to my family in Renfrewshire.”

“Yeah, yeah, Ma. Is that the end of the sermon?”

“And if your father finds out, Toby,” Maria continues, in her sexy Let’s Talk English voice, “he will blame me for encouraging you to go. Because I was the one who said it would broaden your mind and help you to understand the developing world, and your father was quite against it, because he said there was quite enough under-development round here without going to Zomba, especially in Croydon.”

Andriy is beginning to have some doubts about this family. The woman means well, and she does bear some resemblance to Mrs Brown, with her tiny waist and insatiable tea-drinking, but her ideas about food are bizarre. And what is the significance of the purple toenails? Of course it is well known that married women are sexually voracious, but to make love to a woman under her husband’s roof would be asking for trouble, even though the man is drinking too much whisky and talking strangely and setting a poor example to his wife. And this boy Toby-he speaks to his parents with disrespect, and Andriy wonders whether he will be a suitable mentor for Emanuel, who is young and impressionable and showing an interest in the wrong kind of sex.

“Croydon?” Emanuel exclaims. “I think we went through that place today!”

Dear sister,

Today I was reunited with Toby Makenzi and I will tell you the outstanding story of our friendship for the first time I encounted him was at Zomba.

But now these mzungus have sown confusion in me because I can see no likeness between Croydon and Zomba expecting the mission house which is tip-top and built of brick. Now this Toby Makenzi had brought from England an outstanding football made of leather the likeness of which we had never seen. For when the poor boys of Zomba play football we must inflict a balloon and wrap it in plastic baggages which is easily prickled on the prickly bush and many footballs perish in this way. And seeing my cheerful countenance when I beheld the football the mzungu said Brother I am greatly desirous to attain some Malawi Gold and in exchange I will give it to you.

This Malawi Gold is so desirous to mzungus I think it is the main reason they come to our country. And I wonder if Toby Makenzi’s parents did not know this why did they send their son here at all? It is regretful also that some of our policemen are corrupted and incarnate the mzungus in order to magnify their income when with much weeping and wailing and a payment of one or two thousand kwachas the mzungus are set free.

But the baggage of Malawi Gold I got for him exceeded any seen before in Zomba and the corrupted policeman who saw it demanded four thousand kwachas and this sum was out of Toby Makenzi’s reach. Then I took pity upon him and went to the police and confessed that the Malawi Gold belonged to me and they freed Toby Makenzi and incarnated me in his place. But these policemen have no reward from incarnating a poor orphan boy for whose freedom no one will pay even a hundred kwachas so after four days they set me free after first smiting me numerous blows. And Father Kevin also did chastise me extensively.