Two Caravans Part 17

He sticks his hands in his pockets, and thrusts his chin down, and they walk on in silence like that. Why is he being like this?

The way that old man looked at me made my skin crawl like maggots. He got out his wallet, took a twenty-pound note and rolled it between his fingers very ostentatiously, then as I leaned forward with his gla.s.s he pushed it down inside my bra. I could feel it there all evening, stiff and p.r.i.c.kly between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The restaurant had been quite busy, with all the tables occupied and a few people waiting by the door, the waiters rus.h.i.+ng from table to table trying to keep their cool, and Zita the manageress strutting around showing people to their tables with that lipsticky smile. He was sitting near the window, so probably no one else even noticed. Maybe I should have given it back. But I thought, I'll never see him again, and I can pay Andriy back straightaway and that'll make things easier between us. Then Andriy got all moody, and that was the last thing I needed, because I have enough unpleasant thoughts to deal with tonight.

And the most unpleasant is this-that twenty-pound-note man reminded me of my Pappa. Same build. Same rimless gla.s.ses. Same old-age-porcupine hair. He was sitting at a table on his own. I stared for a moment, startled by the likeness, then I caught his eye, and quickly looked away. Probably this is how it all started-the business of the twenty-pound note-with that quick exchange of looks. But this is what's been bothering me-had my Pappa been like that? Making a fool of himself over a young girl, peering into her blouse?

Because the girl Pappa left home for, Svitlana Surokha, is almost the same age as me-in fact she was two years above me at secondary school. She is one of those girls everybody likes, pretty, with fair curly hair like a starlet, and blue eyes and a turned-up nose, always laughing and making jokes about the teachers. Then at Shevchenko University, where Pappa is professor of history, she was one of the Orange Student organisers. And they'd fallen in love. Just like that. That's what Pappa told Mother, and that's what Mother told me, crying into the night, using up box after box of tissues, until her nose was all red and her eyes were puffy and squinty like a piglet's.

Not a pretty sight. Really, no one could blame Pappa for falling out of love with someone so middle-aged and unattractive who nagged at him all the time, and falling in love with someone so young and pretty and full of fun. "Fallen in love"-the pretty blond-haired student activist and the distinguished Ukrainian historian, drawn together by a love of freedom. What could be more romantic than that?

Of course, I felt sorry for Mother, with all her sniffling and soggy tissues. But really, everyone knows it's a woman's fault if she can't keep hold of her man. She just has to try harder. The worst thing was, even Mother knew it, and she did try harder, dyeing her hair and putting on bright pink lipstick and that silly pink scarf. But then she couldn't stop herself nagging at him in a really humiliating way. "Vanya, don't you love me just one little bit?" It only made things worse. I'll I'll never make that mistake. never make that mistake.

That Mister Twenty Pounds-his appearance reminded me of Pappa-an elderly respectable man, probably with a middle-aged wife and family tucked away somewhere out of sight. But the look in his eyes was the look of Vulk. Hungry eyes. You like flower...? You like flower...? Greedy eyes. The way the man watched me was not romantic, it was like a cat watching a mouse, concentrating on its every movement, antic.i.p.ating the pleasure of catching it. Greedy eyes. The way the man watched me was not romantic, it was like a cat watching a mouse, concentrating on its every movement, antic.i.p.ating the pleasure of catching it.

Had my dear craggy crumpled Pappa looked at Svitlana Surokha in that way? Is that what men are like?

Andriy had his head down and that moody look on his face, and he was walking too fast for me again, but I wasn't going to ask him to slow down. I wasn't going to be the first to speak. I didn't even blame Pappa. I just felt a big empty hole of disappointment in the middle of my heart, not only with Pappa, but with this whole man-woman-romance thing. You go through life waiting for the one the one to come along, kisses by moonlight, eternal love, Mr Brown and his mysterious bulge, faithful beyond the grave; then suddenly you realise that what you've been waiting for doesn't exist after all, and you'll have to settle for something second-rate. What a let-down. to come along, kisses by moonlight, eternal love, Mr Brown and his mysterious bulge, faithful beyond the grave; then suddenly you realise that what you've been waiting for doesn't exist after all, and you'll have to settle for something second-rate. What a let-down.

So when after ten minutes of silence Andriy suddenly slipped his arm round me, I just pulled away. "Don't!"

And then straightaway I wished I hadn't, but it was too late. Sorry, I didn't mean it. Please put your arm back Sorry, I didn't mean it. Please put your arm back. But you can't say that, can you?

That's it, then. In a few days he'll collect his week's wages, then he'll be off to Sheffield. No point in hanging around here and making a fool of himself, chasing after a girl who has not the slightest interest in him. This London, it is exciting, it gives you plenty to think about, and to tell the truth he is glad he stayed here for a short time and tasted its bitter-sweet flavours. And it will be good to travel north with money in his pocket. But it's time to go. The girl will be all right. She can stay in the accommodation that comes with the job, whatever that is, and she seems to be bringing home something in tips as well as her wages. Probably that's why she wears that blouse. Well, that's her business. It means nothing to him. She can sort out her pa.s.sport, though she seems to be in no hurry to do this, and save up for her fare and even buy a few nice clothes if that's what she wants. He doesn't have to worry about her. He will take the caravan, and Dog. He is quite looking forward to being by himself, on the road.

They are within a block of the place where the caravan and Land Rover are parked when they hear the sound of Dog barking furiously and an intermittent dull thudding noise. As they get closer the sound intensifies, along with a babble of shrill voices. He quickens his step, then breaks into a run.

As they turn the last corner, they see a horde of children surrounding the caravan, pelting it with bricks. Dog is barking frantically, dodging the stones, and trying to chase them off. Where did these little b.u.g.g.e.rs come from? In the shadowless orange glow of the street lights the small figures are dancing about like a bizarre baccha.n.a.l. One of them has set a pile of sticks and paper under one end of the caravan and is tossing lighted matches at it.

"What you doing? Stop it!" Andriy races towards them swinging his arms. The children stop, but only for a second. Nearest to him is a raggedy boy with hair like a rat's nest. Their eyes meet. The boy picks up half a brick and lobs it at him.

"Yecontgitmeeyafacka yecontgitme!"

It falls short. Andriy runs at the little sod, grabs him by both arms and swings him round, throwing him sideways. The kid staggers as he hits the ground.

"Fackyafackyafackincant!"

Andriy grabs at another kid, who dodges out of his way and starts to run, and another who wriggles out of his grasp, lithe as a cat, and darts off, showering him with spit. Even Irina is getting stuck in. She s.n.a.t.c.hes one of the boys by the arm, and when he spits and swears at her she spits and swears back and gives him a hard wallop on the behind. Where did she learn those words? Dog snarls and launches himself at the boy with the matches just as the fire starts to catch on the paper. The smell of smoke drifts towards them. The children scatter, shouting and throwing stones behind them as they run. Dog chases after the stragglers, snapping at their heels.

The paper has caught fire and now the sticks are crackling under the caravan, sending smoke and sparks into the air. Dog is going mad. Quick as a flash, Andriy unzips himself and pees on the flames. There is a hiss and a bit of smoke, but not too much damage to the caravan. Why is she looking at him with that grin on her face? It was an emergency. Well, let her look. Let her grin. What is she to him?

He sits down on the step of the caravan and rests his head in his hands, surrendering to the fatigue. But she has to come and squeeze down beside him. Her arm, her thigh-where her skin touches his, it's like hot steel. This girl-why does she have to get into his skin? If it isn't going to lead to any possibility, why can't she just leave him alone?

The thought makes him feel bleakly irritated, both with her and with himself. And something else is bothering him-the look in the rat-boy's eyes as he swung him into the air. They weren't the sparkling mischievous eyes of a naughty kid having fun. They were blank dead-pool eyes-eyes that have already seen too much. Like the naked girl in the four-by-four. Like the Ukrainian boys on the pier. Why are there so many people in the world with those dead zombie eyes?

"Andriy?"

"What?"

"We can't stay here."

"Why not?"

"Those children-they'll come back while we're asleep. They'll set fire to the caravan with us inside."

"No, they won't."

Why can't she just shut up and leave him alone?

"They might. And even if they don't come back tonight, the caravan won't be safe here. They're bound to be back."

"Well, we can move it in the morning."

He feels exhaustion like a trickle of molten lead seeping and solidifying inside his limbs. He must have pulled his shoulder swinging the boy, and there are other obscure aches in his back and legs. He needs to sleep.

"There'll be too many people around in the morning. It's easier to find somewhere now. Let's go now."

"Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know. Anywhere. Maybe we could find somewhere a bit nearer to the restaurant."

So he gets a bit of brick and hammers at the padlock on the bar gate. It comes off quite easily. In fact she is right-driving around at night is better. He even gets up into fourth gear once, without going into reverse. He remembers a quiet side street not far from the back of the restaurant where there are sometimes a few cars parked. That will do for now. It is only a temporary place. Soon he will move on.

After that incident with the children, Andriy got even more moody. I tried to make jokes and cheer him up, but each day that pa.s.sed he just got more grumpy, and kept saying he would be going to Sheffield as soon as we got our first week's wages.

I already had about eighty pounds from tips left on the tables. I tried to share them with him, but he shook his head and said, no, keep it, frowning like a belly ache and saying he was tired of this job, and anyway he would soon be going to Sheffield. What was the matter with him? He wasn't still sulking about that twenty-pound note, was he?

So I went back to the shop with the sale and I bought a different blouse that wasn't so low-cut. I thought that would make him happy, but it didn't. He said it was still too low, and my skirt was too short. Why was he being so boring? It's a nice skirt, only a bit above my knees, good cut, lovely silky lining, and reduced to less than half price just because the b.u.t.ton was missing, which I could soon fix. Also it has a deep pocket, which is handy for tips. I saw there was no pleasing him. If he doesn't like my clothes, that's his problem. Why doesn't he just go to Sheffield, instead of hanging around getting on my nerves?

Next morning, I decided to walk over to the Ukrainian Consulate to get a new pa.s.sport. I still had some money left from tips, so I looked in on that first very expensive clothes shop. Really, the prices on the clothes-they just took your breath away. I spent an hour, trying things, trying other things, looking in the mirror. I never made it to the Consulate. There was one pair of trousers, thirty pounds, reduced from one hundred and twenty. They were black, low-cut, and tight-tight. Actually, they looked fantastic. I knew Andriy would really hate them.

I stopped by at the caravan, but Andriy had already left for the restaurant, and that's when I noticed that there was some kind of yellow-and-black label stuck on the windscreen of the Land Rover. I peeled it off and put it in my pocket to show him. And there seemed to be something fixed onto the front wheel of the Land Rover, and also to the caravan wheel. That was strange. No doubt he would know how to get it off. We were busy that lunchtime so I didn't get a chance to talk to him. Anyway, he was looking so grumpy I just kept out of his way.

Then someone else came into the restaurant, and that made things even worse.

It was just before three o'clock, the end of the lunchtime s.h.i.+ft, and some of the staff had already gone. There were only two customers left in the restaurant, a young couple finis.h.i.+ng their meal. Then a man came in on his own and sat down at one of the window tables-the same one where Mister Twenty Pounds had sat. I didn't recognise him at first, but he recognised me straightaway.

"Irina?"

He was young and dark, with very short hair. He was wearing a dark grey business suit, a white-white s.h.i.+rt with a big gold watch peeping out under the cuff, and a blue-and-pink patterned tie. Quite attractive, in fact.

"Vitaly?"

He smiled. "h.e.l.lo."

"Hey, Vitaly! How much you've changed."

"What you doing here, Irina?"

"Earning money, of course. How about you?"

"Earning money too. Good money." He took a tiny mobile phone out of his pocket and flipped up the lid. "Recruitment consultant, dynamic employment solution cutting edge"-he did a little slicing movement with his hand-"organisational answer for all you flexible staffing need. Better money than strawberry."

OK, I admit I was impressed.

"Recruitment consultant? What is that?"

"Oh, it just means finding a job for some person. Or finding some person for a job. I am always on lookout for new arrivals to fill exciting vacancies."

"You can find a job?"

He pointed his phone at me and pressed a few b.u.t.tons.

"I can find very first-cla.s.s job for you, Irina. Excellent pay. Good clean work. Luxury accommodation provided. And my friend Andriy. I have a good job for him also. Near Heathrow Airport. Is he here?"

"He is working in the kitchen. Kitchen hand."

"Kitchen hand. Hm." He shook his head with a little smile. "Irina, you, Andriy...you make possibility?"

"Vitaly, why you are asking this?" I said. Then he reached up and took my hand, and looked at me with his dark-dark eyes in a way that made me s.h.i.+ver. "Irina, all time I am thinking about you."

I blushed. It sounded so romantic. Was he serious? I didn't know what to say. I took my hand away, in case Andriy was watching.

"Vitaly, tell me about this job. What kind of work is this?"

"Very first cla.s.s. Gourmet cuisine. Top-notch international company desperately seeking reliable and motivated replacement staff." His voice was deep, and the way he p.r.o.nounced those long words in English sounded incredibly cultured. "Food preparation contract for major airline near Heathrow Airport."

Yes, ever since man first lifted his head above the mouth of the cave to gaze upon the heavenly stars, and thought how pleasing it would be to have one such star exclusively for himself, it has been the dream of man to get others to work for him, and to pay them as little as possible. And no man has been pursuing this dream more dynamically than Vitaly himself. He has spent the day trawling through the bars and restaurants of London looking for the right kind of people. The new arrivals, the confused, the desperate, the greedy. You can make good money out of people like that.

For as that brainy beardy Karl Marx said, no person can ever build up a fortune just by his own labour, but in order to become VIP elite rich you must appropriate the labour of others. In pursuit of this dream, many ingenious human solutions have been applied throughout the millennia, from slavery, forced labour, transportation, indentured labour, debt bondage and penal colonies, right through to casualisation, zero-hours contract, flexible working, no-strike clause, compulsory overtime, compulsory self-employment, agency working, sub-contracting, illegal immigration, outsourcing and many other such maximum flexibility organisational advances. And spearheading this permanent revolutionisation of the work process has been the historic role of the dynamic edge cutting employment solution recruitment consultant. Not enough people appreciate this.

This is why despite the exclusive hand-tailored charcoal-grey pure wool suit, the state-of-the-art Nokia N94i nestled in his pocket and the genuine Rolex Explorer II winking boldly from under his cuff, he still feels sadly unappreciated. What you need, he thinks, is a girl to share your good fortune with-a pretty, clean, good-cla.s.s girl, not a painted-up cheap-rent girl; an innocent girl, whom you can train in the art of love the way you like it; nice-looking enough to attract envy from other men, but not so nice-looking that she will run off with the next chancer with a Nokia N95ii and a Rolex Daytona. What you need is a girl who can rea.s.sure you that, really, you are a good man. A dynamic man. A VIP. Not a criminal. Not a loser. And here she is, the very girl you've been dreaming of, smiling sweetly as she pours you a second gla.s.s of chilled Sauvignon Blanc. Really, this is a very nice wine-one of the nice little perks of the business. And-here is the real tragedy of it-even as you gaze into the silky hollow between her lovely b.r.e.a.s.t.s, a businesslike voice in the back of your head tells you: you could make good money out of this girl.

For if you have grown up in the faraway Dniester valley in a provincial town nestled on a bend in the river that divides Moldova from the Republic of Transdniestria-where the only law is the gun, where your father and two of your brothers were shot down in the main street near your home for refusing to pay protection money, and your third brother was killed in the war of secession, and your mother died of sorrow at the age of forty-two when your house was razed to the ground, and your two younger sisters have been traded by a Kosovan wide-boy to a ma.s.sage parlour in Peckham-if you grow up in a place like Bendery, it toughens you up a bit.

Ah, Bendery! Whose desolate Soviet-era concrete blocks conceal a feral heart; whose alleys smell of blocked drains and frying garlic; whose sunsets glow like fire through the burnt-out windows of the buildings near the bridge; whose wide river laps in silvery ripples along those sandy banks where from time to time a corpse is washed ash.o.r.e; in whose forests the ghosts still sigh; whose streets have run with blood. Ah, Bendery! His eyes go misty with bittersweet pain. He gazes at the opening of Irina's blouse. Once, he had a girl like this in Bendery. Rosa. The school librarian's daughter. She was fifteen and a virgin. So was he. Her eyes were dark and gleaming with promises. They met after school in a secret glade on the riverbank. Probably she, too, is in Peckham now.

Once, in a different kind of time, Vitaly had been the bright hope of his family, the student, the dreamer of great dreams, the apple of his mother's eye. He would most likely have grown up to be a lawyer or a politician, had he not lived in Bendery, and had he not come across that life-changing book, locked away in a school cupboard full of out-of-favour texts, some dating back eighty years and more, which the librarian was keeping hidden just in case any of them should ever come back into favour again. Probably they are still there.

He had just turned sixteen when Transdniestria seceded from Moldova in 1992 over the issue of language. Cyrillic versus Roman. He had joined the patriots, of course, along with his brothers, but his heart wasn't in it and he managed to keep out of the worst of the fighting, even though Bendery, which lies on the west bank of the river Dniester and is joined to the rest of Transdniestria only by a bridge, had been in the front line of the civil war. Two thousand lives lost, his oldest brother's among them, hundreds of homes burned out, theirs among them, over how a language should be written. OK, he was a patriot as much as the next man, but he just didn't think it was an issue worth getting himself killed for. Some know-alls said it was really about politics-about whether it was time to say goodbye to their Russian-dominated past and cosy up with Westward-leaning Romania. And others said that it was just a tribal war between rival gangster families. Probably each person had his own reasons for getting involved, and some had no reason to but still did.

After the truce had been agreed and life got back to an abnormal sort of normal, he tried for a few years to make a go of it in the family construction business, he really tried. He worked all hours, humping bricks and mixing concrete, laying pipes and drains, hammering in doors and windows, and paying protection money all the while. But after his father and his younger brothers were shot dead in the main street of Bendery by a henchman of one of those gangsters for daring to query a hike in the protection fee, he realised that work was for losers, and the wily old grizzle-jaws was right (probably that's why those dangerous books had to be locked away) and if you want to join the elite, you have to learn to tap into other people's labour, and let them make you rich. Harvest the efforts of the others-the losers. It is the only way.

So he got in touch with that Kosovan phoney-asylum-seeker wide-boy who had transported his sisters, and offered to get four girls for him in exchange for a pa.s.sage to England. In the event, he could find only three, the two daughters of his impoverished former English teacher at school, who had been sacked for refusing to teach English in the Cyrillic script, and a deaf-and-dumb girl who sold pickled mushrooms in the market. The Kosovan wide-boy got them all Greek pa.s.sports, and Vitaly escorted them on the ferry to Dover, where the wide-boy, who was working under the name of Mr Smith, took the girls off his hands and introduced him to his uncle, Vulk, who had once run a similar business in Slovenia and Germany, who introduced him to farmer Leapish, who made the mistake of introducing him to his wife (ha ha), who introduced him to Jim Nightingale of Nightingale Human Solutions. That's how it works in the world of business-you need contacts, and if you have the right contacts you can sell anything.

And now, look, only four months later, here you are, sitting at the best table in this expensive London restaurant, wearing a good-cla.s.s expensive suit (the shaved head and gold chain with pendant knife belonged to a different phase, which may have given a wrong impression to some Angliski businessmen), with a genuine Rolex Explorer II, not one of those replicas which any fool can see is fake, enjoying a gla.s.s of rea.s.suringly expensive super-chilled New Zealand Blind River Sauvignon Blanc while waiting for your client to arrive, taking a picture of this attractive and potentially very expensive girl on your expensive Nokia N94i, and facing the pleasant dilemma of whether to keep her for yourself or sell her on to someone else. You know a couple of guys who might be interested if you send them her picture.

For in Bendery, girls as pretty and innocent as this used to be two a penny, in fact you yourself deflowered several of them-that was after Rosa, after the war, after all the killings-and you've been thinking recently that spending so much money on the visibles, the suits, watches, phones, girls, is all very well, and probably an essential investment for creating the right brand image for the business, but if you want to be seriously wealthy, you can't just spend it all, you need to acc.u.mulate and invest, to build your capital, and property is h.e.l.lishly expensive here in London. And you could really do with the cash.

Not enough people appreciate what a struggle it has been-what a lonely struggle-rooting yourself out of that nowhere town on the borders of an unrecognised republic which is really nothing but a strip of countryside with half a dozen little towns sandwiched dangerously between the east bank of the Dniester river and the western border of Ukraine, and establis.h.i.+ng yourself as an advanced motivational human solution recruitment consultant here in the bona fide Western world; they don't understand how dynamic you have to be, and sometimes how ruthless, and how lonely it is not being able to trust anyone, no one at all, because every other chancer will take their opportunity to knock you down and steal your business, and your closest business partners are also your deadliest rivals.

For in the transition from the old world to the new, as that cunning old bushy-beard wrote, all fixed, fast-frozen relations are swept away, all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and a man has to face up to his real choices in life and his relations with others. For in this new world there are only rivals and losers. And of course women.

She sidles up to him with that infuriating smile.

"Andriy. Vitaly's here. Vitaly from the strawberry field."

"Where?"

This is all he needs. The mobilfonman coming to taunt him as he stands with his hands in the sink.

"Here. Here in the restaurant. Sitting by the window."

"What does he want?"

"He says he has a job for us. A first-cla.s.s job. Gourmet cuisine near Heathrow Airport."

Andriy feels the anger rising in his face.

"Irina, if you want to go with Vitaly, that is up to you. I have no interest in that job."

He gropes in the hot caustic water and grabs at a couple of slippery plates, noticing how red and raw his hands have become.

"He says the pay is good. And the work is clean. Maybe it will be better for you, Andriy. Better than kitchen hand."

"He knows I am kitchen hand?"

"I told him we were working to earn some money. At least go and talk to him."