Marina Lewycka: Two Caravans

He awakes with a start, wondering-did Blessing remember to make that phone call?

Maybe I was dreaming, because after a while I realised that the patter was raindrops, and the chatter was Andriy saying, “Wake up, Irina. Let’s go back. It’s raining.”

The others had already rigged up a large canvas awning stretched between the trees, and underneath it a fire was smoking. Heather was peeling potatoes, and Rock was stirring something in a pot.

“Can I help?” I asked.

Rock passed me the stirring spoon. Then he disappeared.

“I’ll get some more dry wood,” said Andriy, and disappeared too.

“Where are the other people in your camp?” I asked Heather.

He explained that some of them had gone south to a music festival and others, like Rock’s girlfriend, had found temporary jobs in nearby towns to earn some money. Unfortunately, since the success of their court hearing the support of the local villagers had dwindled away, and soon maybe it would be time to close up their camp altogether.

“Where will you go?” I asked.

He shrugged. “There’s always somewhere. Roads. Airports. Power stations. The earth’s always under assault.”

I thought how wonderful it would be to have some new roads and airports and power stations in Ukraine, but I didn’t say so. We listened to the rain pit-patting on the canvas, and the wood cracking on the fire. Somewhere, somebody was playing a guitar.

“Do you like cooking?” Heather threw a handful of chopped carrots into the pot. His fingernails were very long, almost like claws, and full of black dirt.

“Not much,” I said.

“Me neither,” he said. “But I like to eat. When we lived in Renfrewshire, my parents had a cook called Agatha. She was six feet tall and swore like a trooper, but she had a great way with pastry. One day she was making a batch of tarts, when the oven exploded, and she was rushed to hospital, where she died a week later of third-degree burns. That’s enough to put anyone off cooking, don’t you agree?”

“Of course.” I laughed, despite of the gravity of the story, wondering whether it was true. And I wondered how someone who spoke in such a cultivated way, and came from a house with a cook, could tolerate living in such a place, and eating such food, and having such dire fingernails. And I wondered whether he had a girlfriend, and whether she lived here in the camp, and what she thought of his fingernails. And I wondered whether he found me attractive, for he, like Rock, never stared or flirted or made personal remarks like some other men, so I felt completely comfortable in their company. Maybe they are only attracted to women of their own species.

Obviously the woman with beautiful eyebrows has her eye on you, Palenko-but does that mean you have to proceed? You have discussed the weather. You have discussed the stones. Is it time now to select first gear and try to engage? Or is there a time when you say to yourself, OK. I have met the woman I love. That is enough. Bye-bye, end of story.

Andriy shovels the mush into his mouth, crunching on the chunks of almost-raw carrot, glancing up from time to time to check on the eyebrows. The rain is pattering intermittently on the taut tarpaulin, beneath which smoke swirls round the circle of faces. Windhover is seated next to Birch on the other side of the fire. Now her eyebrows are drawn together in contemplation. Such beautiful eyebrows. She is spooning the sludge into her mouth quite fast, and with apparent enjoyment.

In fact apart from the eyebrows she is not so attractive, he thinks. Her body seems shapeless and lumpy beneath its thick sludge-coloured swaddling-not really a womanly shape at all. Perhaps…? No, surely he could not be mistaken about something like that. Windhover does not return his look.

“This is nice, Heather,” she says, completely ignoring Andriy. “What is it?”

“Lentil and carrot goulash.” Heather looks pleased. “It could have done with some paprika.”

Dinner was the same tasteless underpants-coloured sludge as the previous meal, but this time it had pieces of chopped-up carrot in it. Another unpleasant thing is that this sludgy diet tends to make you fart, which was noticeable even out of doors, especially from the dogs. I declined Heather’s offer of a second helping, while trying to seem enthusiastic so as not to hurt his feelings, because, OK, he’s no Mr Brown, but he is very kind.

After we had finished eating, Rock collected our bowls and scraped the remains of the goulash into them-goulash, they call it! obviously they have never tasted the real thing!-and put it down for the dogs, who licked the bowls clean. In my opinion the hygienic arrangements at this camp are deficient, and I wonder why the authorities have not closed it down. There is nothing but a small stream for washing, and a much-too-shallow pit-lavatory, screened by a few branches, with a piece of wood to perch on above the disgusting festering nuzhnik of previous warrior dinners. Somebody has put up a scrawled notice saying Beware of splashback .

By now dusk was creeping up and the air was cool and damp. I took the bowls and went down to the stream to rinse the dog-lick off them (the others looked surprised-obviously as far as they were concerned, they were perfectly clean) and then I washed myself all over with Mrs McKenzie’s scented soap, because I knew tonight would be the night . Then I climbed the rope ladder up to the tree caravan.

The door was not locked. The caravan was much smaller even than the women’s caravan at our strawberry field, and rounded like an egg. There was no room inside for anything except a folded-out double bed. I could not see how clean the bedding was, and I thought it was better not to look. I suppose one advantage of being in a tree is that the dogs cannot get up here. On a low cupboard by the bed was a bunch of dried flowers in a jam jar that gave the cabin a pleasant powdery smell. Some ends of candles were stuck into bottles, and there was even a box of matches. I lit a candle, and straightaway the little shell was filled inside with soft flickering light. Beyond the circle of light, the leaves at the window shifted and shivered in the dusk. Storm clouds had banked up along the hilltops. Down below, I could hear the voices of the warriors talking among themselves, and the strumming of a guitar. I stretched out on the bed and waited.

For some reason I found myself thinking about my parents. Had my mother lain and waited for my father like this on her wedding night? Was it romantic? Had it hurt the first time? Did she get pregnant? Yes, she did. The seed that was planted inside her that night was to grow into me. I had grown up sheltered by the twined branches of their love, nurtured until the seed sprouted into a tree-Irinochka-that could stand alone. Had he still loved her afterwards? Yes, but only for a while. Temporarily. Provisionally. Until Svitlana Surokha came along. For the first time, I found myself feeling angry with my parents. Why couldn’t they just stick together a bit longer, their love still entwining and sheltering me, while I learnt my own first lessons of love?

I started planning a new story in my head. It would be a passionate romance, a story of enduring love, about two people who came from different worlds, but after many diversions found themselves brought together by destiny. The heroine would be a virgin. The hero would have bronzed muscular arms.

The voices down below grew more animated and the guitar stopped. They were having a discussion, punctuated by bursts of laughter. Suddenly I felt the caravan lurch and sway in a most terrifying way. I sat up quaking. Typical, I thought, tonight- the night -the caravan will fall out of the tree. Then I realised the movement was the tug of someone coming up the rope ladder. My heart started to thump. A moment later, Andriy opened the door. He had a nervous smile on his face and a bunch of heather in his hand.