Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans

This girl-he has tried to approach her in a patient and methodical way, but she is more unpredictable than a slipping gearbox. Will he ever get to the fine-tuning stage? Hm. He turns off into a side street, and then another, following a narrow alleyway between two tall buildings. Here’s a piece of waste ground where something has been demolished, with a sign saying No Parking and some vehicles parked. This’ll do.

“Let’s walk?”

“Let’s walk.” Now, for some unfathomable reason, she’s smiling.

The weather is too warm. Despite the recent rain, the air is already dusty again. It smells of car fumes and blocked drains and the miscellaneous smells of the five million other people who are breathing it at the same time. He feels an unexpected excitement rising in him. This London -once you’ve got your feet on the ground, and you don’t have to worry about those Angliski bandit-drivers-this London is quite something.

He is amazed, at first, just by the vastness of it-the way it goes on and on until you forget there is anything beyond it. OK, he has seen Canterbury and Dover, but nothing can prepare you for the sheer excess of this city. Cars that glide as smooth and silent as silver swans, deluxe model, not the battered old smoke-belchers you get back home. Office blocks that almost blot out the sky. And everything in good order-roads, pavements, etc-all well maintained. But why are all the buildings and statues covered in pigeon-droppings? Those swaggering birds are everywhere. Dog is delighted. He chases them around, barking and leaping with joy.

They come to a row of shops, and the windows are stuffed with desirable items. Minute mobilfons, packed with advanced features, everything compact and cleverly made; movie cameras small enough to fit in your hand; cunning miniature music systems, a thousand different tunes, more, at your command; wall-sized televisions with pictures of amazing vividness, imagine sitting back with a glass of beer to watch the football, better than being at the match, better view; programmable CD players; multi-function DVD players; high-spec computers with unimaginable numbers of rams, gigs, hertz, etc. Too much choice. Yes, so many things that you didn’t desire before because you didn’t even know they existed to be desired.

He lingers, he reads the lists of special features, studies them almost furtively, as if standing on the threshold of uncharted sin. Such a surfeit of everything. Where did all this stuff come from? Irina is trailing behind, staring into the window of a clothes shop, a look of unbelief on her face.

Food shops, restaurants-everything is here, yes, every corner of the globe has been rifled to furnish this abundance. And the people, too, have been rifled from all over-Europe, Africa, India, the Orient, the Americas, so many different types all mixed together, such a crowd from everywhere under the sun, rubbing shoulders on the pavements without even looking at each other. Some are talking on mobilfons-even the women. And all well dressed-clothes like new. And the shoes-new shoes made of leather. No carpet slippers, like people wear in the street back home.

“Watch out!”

He is so intent on the shoes that he almost stumbles into a young woman walking fast-fast on high heels, who backs away snarling, “Get off me!”

“What are you dreaming about, Andriy?”

Irina grabs him and pulls him out of the way. The feel of her hand on his arm is like quickfire. The woman walks on even faster. The look in her eyes-it was worse than contempt. She looked straight through him. He didn’t register in her eyes at all. His clothes-his best shirt shabby and washed out, brown trousers that were new when he left home, Ukrainian trousers made of cheap fabric that is already shapeless, held up by a cheap imitation-leather belt, and imitation-leather shoes beginning to split on the toes-his clothes make him invisible.

“Everybody looks so smart. It makes me feel like a country peasant,” says Irina, as if she can read his thoughts. This girl. Yes, her jeans are worn and strawberry stained, but they fit delightfully over her curves, and her hair gleams like a bird’s wing and she’s smiling teeth and dimples at all the world.

“Don’t say that. You look…” He wants to put his arms round her. “…You look normal.”

Should he put his arms round her? Better not-she might shriek ‘Leave me alone!’ So they walk on, just wandering aimlessly through the streets, opening their eyes to all there is to be seen. Dog runs ahead making a nuisance of himself, diving in between people’s legs. Yes, this London -it’s quite something.

But why-this is what he can’t understand-why is there such abundance here, and such want back home? For Ukrainians are as hard working as anybody-harder, because in the evenings after a day’s work they grow their vegetables, mend their cars, chop their wood. You can spend your whole life toiling, in Ukraine, and still have nothing. You can spend your whole life toiling, and end up dead in a hole in the ground, covered with fallen coal. Poor Dad.

“Look!”

Irina is pointing to a small dark-skinned woman wearing a coloured scarf like the women of the former eastern republics. She has a baby bundled up in her arms, and she is approaching passers-by, begging for money. The baby is horribly deformed, with a harelip and one eye only partially opened.

“Have you got any money, Andriy?”

He fumbles in his pockets, feeling vaguely annoyed with the woman, because he hasn’t much money left, and he would rather spend it on…well, not on her, anyway. But he sees the way Irina is looking at the baby.

“Take it please,” he says in Ukrainian, handing her two pound coins. The woman looks at the coins, and at them, and shakes her head.

“Keep your money,” she says in broken Russian. “I have more than you.”

She takes the baby off and sidles up to a Japanese couple who are photographing a statue covered with pigeon-droppings.

They have already turned and started to retrace their steps when Irina spots, in the window of a stylish restaurant where the tables are set for the evening meal, a small card discreetly stuck in one corner: Staff-wanted. Good pay. Accommodation provided .

“Oh, Andriy! Look! This may be just the right place for us. Here in the heart of London. Let’s enquire.”

What does she mean, ‘the right place for us’? How have she and he suddenly become ‘us’? Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, because really she is a nice-looking girl, and she has a good heart, she isn’t one of these empty-headed girls who are only thinking about what to buy next, like Lida Zakanovka. But he doesn’t know where he is with her. She keeps changing her mind. And he likes things to be definite. One way or another.

“You can enquire if you like.”

“Don’t you want to?”

“I think I will not stay very long in London. Maybe just one or two days.”

“Then where will you go?”

“My plan is to go to Sheffield.”

“ Sheffield -where is this?”

“It’s in the north. Three hundred kilometres.”

Her smile disappears. Her brow wrinkles up.

“I would like very much to stay in London.”

“You can stay here. No problem.”

“Why d’you want to go to Sheffield?”

He stares in through the window of the restaurant, avoiding her eyes. He decides not to tell her about Vagvaga Riskegipd.

“You know, this Sheffield is very beautiful. One of the most beautiful cities in England.”

“Really? In my book it says it is a large industrial town famous for steel-making and cutlery.” She looks at him for a moment. “Maybe I will come too.”

Why has she removed the orange ribbon from Dog, and taken to wearing it herself? It looked much better on Dog.