Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans

It’s happened again. He wanted to go to Sheffield, but somehow he’s ended up in this place. Andriy is feeling vaguely annoyed with Irina, with Yateka, and with himself. Why didn’t he just say no?

Four Gables nursing home is a large grey house on the outskirts of Peterborough, set back from the road behind a screen of gloomy evergreens. Yateka pulls into the car park and leads them inside. The first thing Andriy notices is the smell-sweetish and feral. It hits him like a blast of bad breath as soon as they open the door. Haifa dozen old women in various stages of decrepitude are sitting in armchairs pushed up against the walls, dozing with their mouths sagging open, or just staring. “Wait here,” says Yateka. “I will look for Blessing.” They sit down on a padded bench and wait. The air is heavy and stale. Irina gets into a strange conversation with an old lady sitting nearby, who thinks she is her niece. Dog goes off sniffing along the corridor on the trail of the strange smell, and disappears. After a while Andriy gets up and goes to look for him.

“Psst!” A skinny arm beckons him in through an open door. “In here.”

He steps into a tiny room. That smell-it reminds him of the smell inside the rabbit hutch on their balcony in Donetsk. In the middle of the floor, Dog is sitting on a rug at the feet of a very old woman, who is feeding him chocolate biscuits from a tin.

“Hello, young man. Come in. I’m Mrs Gayle. Your name?”

“Andriy Palenko.”

“Polish?”

“No, Ukrainian.”

“Oh, splendid! I’m very partial to Ukrainian men. Have a seat. Have a biscuit.”

“Thank you, Mrs Gayle.” Andriy crams the biscuit in whole, coughing as the crumbs stick in his throat-it is the first thing he’s eaten since that bread last night.

“Have another.”

“Thank you.”

He sits down on a chair, then he realises it is in fact a commode covered with an upholstered lid. The rabbit-hutch smell is all-pervasive.

“Take two.”

She blinks. Or is it a wink? Her eyes are small and watery, sunk deep into their crinkled sockets. Her hands are thin and bent like claws. Will I be like this one day, Andriy wonders? It is inconceivable.

He remembers his grandmother’s room at home, piled from floor to ceiling with heaps of musty clothes, the space for sitting becoming smaller and smaller. It was sad to watch her life shrink away. As she lost control of her bladder, the smell from the room became so intense that they could hardly bear to go in there. However much his mother had washed and scrubbed and sprinkled powder around, the rabbit-hutch smell just got stronger, until in the end she died and only the smell was left. A bit like the smell in Mrs Gayle’s room. He is starting to wonder about the commode he is sitting on. What is under the lid?

“My daughter put me in here, you know, after my husband died. She says I smell. In your country, young man, what happens to old people?”

“You know, usually they live with family, but sometimes they go into monastery. Woman-only monastery is very popular with Orthodox ladies.”

“Hm! That sounds quite nice, a women-only monastery.” Mrs Gayle nibbles at a biscuit with what is left of her teeth. “Company. A roof over your head. No matron to boss you about. And the only man you have to worry about is Lord Jesus…” She searches in her bag and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “…who is probably much less demanding than a husband. Probably drinks less, too.” She roots through her handbag once more. “Have you got a light?”

“No, I am sorry. I not…”

“You’ll find a box of matches in the handyman’s room. End of the corridor, down the stairs, and it’s on your left.”

She gives Dog another biscuit, and he sits up on his back legs to take it. Andriy has never seen him do this before. The room is very hot and the smell overpowering. He is beginning to feel a bit strange.

“Go on.” She gives him a little prod with her walking stick. “Don’t hang about. The handyman’s not in at the moment.”

The handyman’s room is a den of old bits of wood, furniture awaiting repair, defunct appliances, obscure machine parts, etc, and in a cabinet along one wall an interesting array of tools. Andriy pauses in the doorway. The handyman is nowhere in sight. On a table by the door are a packet of tobacco, a large curved pipe and a box of matches. He hesitates. Then he picks the matches up, puts them in his pocket and goes back up the stairs.

On the door to the corridor is a No Smoking sign.

“Mrs Gayle. Excuse me. Do you know about smoking ban?”

“Hah! You sound just like my daughter! She’s always trying to stop me smoking. Have to smoke in here-can’t stand the stink. Have you got the matches?”

He hesitates. She pokes him with her stick.

“Come on, young man. Let an old woman have a bit of fun.”

He hands the matches over. She lights the cigarette and at once begins to cough.

“My daughter put me in here because I’m a communist, you know.” Cough, cough. “Yes, I was incarcerated because of my political views.”

“No!” Can it be true? Do such things happen in England?

“Yes. She’s married to a stockbroker. A minor scion of the aristocracy. Vile man. Now I’m in here, and they’re living in my house.” Her left eye twitches.

“How is this possible?”

“Yes, I wanted to donate it to the International Workers of the World, but they got it off me. Made me sign something. Told the social workers I was mad.” She has become so agitated that she gets another cigarette out of the pack and lights it, and starts to puff, even though the other one is still smouldering in the ashtray. “Do I seem mad?”

“No. Very not mad, Mrs Gayle.”

“But what they don’t know is, I’m coming home. I’m getting married again, and I’m coming home.” She chuckles. “Are you married, young man?” The eye twitches again. Or is it a wink? Andriy feels a moment of panic. He shakes his head. She takes a few more deep drags on her cigarette, coughs once or twice, and continues, “Yes, Mr Mayevskyj in room nine. The Ukrainian gentleman. Have you met him yet?”

By now the little room is completely filled with smoke. It must be noticeable from the corridor. If someone catches them, they could be in trouble. Andriy reaches across to stub out the cigarette in the ashtray, but quick as a flash she grabs it first and sticks it in her mouth, along with the other one.

“No you don’t, young man.” She lowers her voice to a confidential whisper, puffing away on both cigarettes simultaneously. “He has an incredible sex drive for a man of ninety-two, you know. Yes, they don’t know this yet, but we’re getting married and we’re coming to live at home.”

“That will be nice surprise for your daughter.”

“It’ll be a surprise. I don’t know about nice.”

While I was waiting for Yateka and Andriy to come back, I heard someone calling out for help. It was the old man in room nine. He had dropped his hearing aid down the back of his chair, so I helped him to find it. It turned out he was the Ukrainian resident Yateka had told us about. He put in his hearing aid and we got into a long conversation about Ukraine, the way it was when he lived there and the way it is now. Then he cleared his throat and embarked on a long speech about malfunctioning hydraulic lifts and other engineering problems, and at the end of it he suddenly took me by the hand and said I had a very beautiful figure, and would I marry him.

I said teasingly that I couldn’t marry him, because I agree with Tolstoy that a wife should share her husband’s interests, and I could never be interested in hydraulics. “Oy oy!” he exclaimed, striking his forehead. “I have other interests too. Do you care for art or philosophy or poetry or tractors?” Before I could answer, he started to recite an obscure poem by Mayakovsky about love and destiny, but he got stuck after a few lines, and became agitated and started shouting for his books. So I went to look for Yateka.