Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans

The promised rain has not materialised, and the sky is still heavy and hot. It is early evening now, and the traffic has built up a bit. Not that it makes any difference to him-theirs is by far the slowest vehicle on the road. It is surprising, he thinks, that Sheffield doesn’t seem to be getting any closer. Surely they would have seen a sign for it by now. On their left is a sign for Leeds. Is that not somewhere in the north? Then a sign to York. Well, at least they are in the right county. But isn’t Sheffield supposed to be in South Yorkshire? Where has it disappeared to?

Irina wakes up, and reaches over to touch his hand.

“Are we nearly there now?”

“I think so.”

“Tell me something else about this Sheffield.”

“Well, you know, Sheffield is the first city in England to be declared a socialist republic, and the ruler, this Vloonki, is known throughout the world for his progressive policies.”

“What are these progressive policies?” she asks, a note of suspicion in her voice. “Will I like them?”

“You will like the bougainvillea for sure.”

He leans across and kisses her, steadying the bus with his right knee.

Although Andriy is very handsome and manly, there are times when I wish he was not quite so primitive. How have I let myself fall in love with a man who is riddled with Soviet-era ideas? I hope that here in the West he will be able to shed some of his outdated misconceptions, but I wonder about this Sheffield. Will it turn out to be some kind of communist-style workers’ paradise like Yalta or Sochi, with sanatoria and communal mudbaths everywhere? We will see.

Rock did not wake up for several hours. When he did, he was amazed to see how far we had come.

“You should’ve turned off on the AS/. We’ve come way too far north. We’ll have to turn around and go back again.”

“You did not say anything about this,” said Andriy rather grumpily. That is one of his bad points, I have noticed. He is inclined to grumpiness. I suppose he is desperate to get to this Sheffield.

Rock looked vague and apologetic. “It was that skunk,” he muttered, staring into the back of the van, though I really don’t see how Dog can be held responsible.

Anyway, the bus was turned around and off we went in the opposite direction, with Rock at the wheel once more. The light had faded from the sky. Occasionally a car or lorry thundered down the southbound carriageway, headlights blazing into the dusk. We must have been driving for an hour or so, nosing our way southwards, Rock resting both hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead, without saying anything. The traffic on the road had thinned out. Once or twice a vehicle overtook us, its tail-lights dwindling in the darkness until there were two red pinpricks, then nothing.

Then suddenly he pulled off the road into a lay-by and announced, “I don’t think we’re gonna make it tonight, lads. Let’s pull over for a kip and carry on in t’ morning.”

Andriy didn’t say anything, but I knew what he was thinking. I could see the thundery look on his face.

“You two can have t’ bed-I’ll sleep on t’ bench. Maryjane! Here!” Maryjane bounded into the front, and Dog followed. Rock pulled two of the seats together end to end. He took off his T-shirt and jeans, threw them into a box with the crockery, and eased his pale little body into a khaki-coloured sleeping bag like a larva crawling into its cocoon.

Andriy stepped outside and helped me down from the bus. We were in a lay-by, set back from the road behind a hedge. There was another caravan there, too, all shuttered up, with a sign saying TEAS. SNACKS. The night was still warm and humid, the sky overcast, with no stars. I breathed deeply, filling my lungs, stretching my limbs and feeling them loosen. We had been sitting for hours. I wandered behind a bush to water the grass and I heard Andriy doing the same a little distance away, stumbling in the darkness, then the soft hiss of his pee seeping into the ground.

When he came back in the dark, he took me in his arms and pressed me up against the side of the bus. I could feel him, all hard, and his breath hot and urgent on my neck. I don’t know why I started trembling. Then he held me close, until my body went still against his.

“Irina, we are two halves of one country.” His voice was low and passionate. “We must learn to love each other.”

No one has ever said anything so wonderful to me before.

He kissed my hair, then my lips. I felt spurts of fire running through my body, and that melting feeling when you almost can’t say no any more. But somehow I did say no. Because when it’s the night , it has to be perfect-not on that disgusting mattress where Dog and Maryjane had been lying licking their parts. Not standing up by the roadside like a prostitute in a doorway. You can’t imagine Natasha and Pierre consummating their love up against the side of a bus, can you?

“Not now, Andriy,” I said. “Not here. Not like this.”

Then he said something quite bad-tempered, then he apologised for being bad-tempered, and I apologised for what I’d said, and he said he was going for a walk and I said I’d go with him but he said no, he wanted to go by himself. I stood at the side of the bus, waiting for him to come back, and wondering what I should say to make him not be angry with me. Should I tell him that I loved him?

When at last we did crawl onto the mattress the bedding was grey and greasy, with a sweaty doggy smell. I couldn’t take my clothes off. Andriy thought it was out of modesty-he’s such a gentleman-but it was really because I didn’t want to feel those limp clammy sheets against my skin. He held me in his arms all night, my head tucked in between his chin and his shoulder. He didn’t even notice the sheets.

In the morning, I woke to find my hands and feet were covered in red lumps. Andriy’s were too. Rock was already awake, squatting by the gas stove boiling some water, wearing nothing but his underpants, which were grey and loose like the loincloth of an Old Testament prophet.

“Ready for a cuppa?” he said.

He was smoking a thin hand-rolled cigarette, which hung on his lower lip as he talked and puffed simultaneously. His body was stringy and very pale, with no manly musculature, but a sprinkling of ginger freckles and fleabites. I wished he would put some clothes on.

For breakfast we ate the remains of yesterday’s bread and some wizened apples that were lurking in one of the boxes. Rock poured out the hot, weak tea, which he sweetened with honey from ajar. Andriy leaned over and whispered in my ear, “You are as sweet as honey.”

A brown curl flopped down in the middle of his forehead as he said it, and for some reason I can’t explain, I felt a shining bubble of love swelling up inside me, not just for Andriy, but also for Rock, for Dog and Maryjane, for the smelly old bus, even for the fleabites and the loincloth underpants, and for the whole fresh lovely morning.

It was still very early. Outside, the landscape was softened by a haze that lingered over the flat empty fields, clinging to the outlines of trees and bushes. The birds had already started to rouse themselves, chirping away busily. Dog and Maryjane were chasing around out there, tumbling and playing. Rock whistled, and they came running, their eyes bright, their tongues hanging out. They settled themselves on the bed, and we sat in front. Then Rock revved the engine up, tearing through the misty silence, and we were off.

Some time last night they must have turned westwards off the Great North Road. The road they are on now is smaller, winding through a featureless agricultural landscape of large fields planted with unfamiliar crops and little settlements of redbrick houses. But what amazes Andriy is that there is already so much traffic on the road, cars, vans, lorries, people racing to get to work. A large black four-by-four cruises by. It looks like…No, surely there are dozens of such vehicles on the roads. He glances at Irina. She is sitting in the middle again, her left hand warm beneath his right hand. Her eyes are closed. She didn’t notice.