2007 - Two Caravans (24 page)

She looks at the three of them and Dog with surprise, and takes the piece of paper which Emanuel hands to her.

“Yes, Toby lives here. But he’s out at the moment. And may I ask who you are?”

“I am Emanuel Mwere, and Toby is my brother. Two years ago he came into volunteering at Zomba, near Limbe, and our extreme friendship commenced at this time.”

“Zomba in Malawi?”

“Yes, madam. Toby was volunteering in the school contagious to the mission centre where I was learning to perform wood carvings, and Toby came to pursue a wood carving.” Emanuel speaks carefully, as though his mouth is full of stones. His vocabulary is surprisingly sophisticated, thinks Andriy.

“Oh yes, I remember the wood carving Toby brought home. Exquisite. Did you do that?”

“Alas, no, madam. The wood carving pursued by Toby was the work of a much more talented carver. Our friendship springs from a different source. I once saved him from an evil occurrence, and we swore brotherhood together. My name is Emanuel Mwere. Did he not talk to you of me?”

“You saved him from evil?”

“Yes, madam. From prison incarnation. In connection with substances.”

“Ah.” A subtle look passes over her face. “You’d better come inside. And these…?”

“These my strawberry friends. Irina, Andriy. They are Ukrainian. And our resplendent dog.”

Dog woofs, and wags his tail. She bends down and rubs his head. Andriy can see that she is already smitten.

“I’m Toby’s mother, Maria McKenzie. Come in. You must be hungry.”

She leads them through a tall wood-panelled hallway into the kitchen of the house, which is bigger than their whole apartment in Donetsk, with a refrigerator the size of his grandmother’s wardrobe, glass doors that open into the garden, and a long wooden table in the centre, on which are flowers in a vase and a bowl piled full of strawberries. Only the sight of the strawberries is strangely depressing. Then she sets a feast out for them—so many strange and delicious dishes, of leaves and herbs and grains and nuts, and breads, and vegetables cut into salads, tomatoes, peppers, radishes, olives, avocados such as he has only seen and not tasted before, with delicious yoghurts and sauces, etc, which after their monotonous and restricted diet create such a pleasurable sensation in the mouth that he finds himself eating more and more, and then he has to restrain himself, because he doesn’t want her to think he is starving, and he doesn’t want Irina to think he has no manners, though what does he care what she thinks? Surreptitiously he looks across at her and sees that she, too, is stuffing herself as though she has not eaten for days, and even licking her fingers, which he did not allow himself to do.

But one thing is disappointing. Where is the meat? In a house like this you would expect a big fat steak, maybe some juicy pork cutlets cooked with garlic, or at least a tasty piece of sausage or some stew with dumplings. As though reading his mind, Maria McKenzie goes over to the cupboard, and fetches a large tin marked Steak in Gravy. The picture on the tin shows huge chunks of gleaming brown meat. His stomach purrs in anticipation. She opens the tin, and empties the contents into a bowl. Then she puts the bowl on the floor, and before he can say anything the dog has gobbled it all up.

“Would you like some more?” she asks them.

“Yes please, madam.” He and Irina say it simultaneously. They look across the table at each other and laugh. Her cheeks dimple in that sexy way, and she doesn’t seem so stuck up any more. Maria McKenzie fetches some raw carrots from the refrigerator and chops them into fingers, with some celery and cucumber pieces, and a bowl of some delicious creamy nutty sauce, which he eats with great pleasure. But his eyes meet Irina’s and they exchange smiles again, because there is a bag of carrots in their caravan, and Dog is sitting in the corner with a satisfied look on his face and licking his jaws.

While they are eating, Maria McKenzie takes out her mobilfon and dials some numbers, and though she speaks very quietly with her back turned towards them, he can pick up what she is saying.

“Yes, from Malawi. Yes. Yes, he said prison. No, he said substances. Toby, don’t lie to me. No, he doesn’t know. He’s not here yet. OK. OK. See you soon, darling.”

She turns to her guests with a radiant smile.

“Toby says he’ll be back soon.”

The woman, Mrs McKenzie, was very kind, despite having purple toenails like a witch’s. In my opinion, nail varnish, if used at all on the toes, should be discreet. She offered me some strawberries and I forced myself to eat a few out of politeness, for how could she know the truth about her strawberries? Then she made me some special herbal tea, which she said would re-balance my positive and negative energies—it’s a stupid idea, but the tea was quite nice. It was warm and quiet in the kitchen, and it smelt of baking. We sat on a sofa to one side of the huge enamelled stove. You could hear the tick-tock of a big clock, and the snoring of the dog—sss! hrr! sss! hrr!—who was curled up in the cat’s basket in front of the stove.

We chatted a bit. It turns out she has been to Kiev. She asked about my parents, so I told her my Pappa is a professor and has written a lot of books, and I hope one day to become a writer too, and my mother is just a housewife and a schoolteacher. Then I felt sad for Mother having such a boring life, and I remembered I had never made that phone call to say sorry.

“Would it be possible to telephone my mother?” I asked.

“Of course, dear.”

She passed me the phone.

“Mother?”

“Irina? Is that you?”

At once she started on about being lonely, and wanting me to come home.

I said, “Mamma, I’m planning to stay here a bit longer. And I’m sorry about what I said last time. I love you.”

I’d been dreading saying it, because I thought it would make me cry like a baby, but as soon as I said it I felt better.

“My little girl. I miss you so much.”

“Mamma, I’m not a little girl. I’m nineteen. And I miss you too.”

There was a silence. Then Mother said, “Did you know your Aunty Vera is expecting another baby? At her age!” She put on a scandalised voice. Aunty Vera is a source of much gossip in our family. “And a nice couple have moved into that empty flat downstairs. They have a son a bit older than you. Very nice-looking.”

“Mamma, don’t start getting ideas.”

And we both laughed, and suddenly everything between us was normal and easy again.

Just as I put the phone down, the door opened and a boy walked in, about my age, wearing jeans cut off in that raggedy fashion below the knees, and a black T-shirt with a skull on it. His hair was a
koshmar
—long and twisted in thin rats’ tails all over his head—and there were some wispy bits of beard on his chin. Definitely not my type.

“Hi, Ma!” he said.

Then he looked at Emanuel, and their faces broke out in big smiles, and they hugged each other and shook hands in a peculiar thumb-twisting way, and hugged again. Mrs McKenzie started to sniffle. Andriy and I looked at each other and grinned, and he squeezed my knee under the table. Then the cat came in and hissed at the dog, and the dog chased the cat around the kitchen, and Andriy shouted at the dog and he knocked the flower vase over, the water went everywhere, so he started mopping it with a towel and Mrs McKenzie cried out “It’s destiny!” still dabbing at her eyes.

Then the door opened again and a man came in, and he said, “Good Lord. What on earth is going on here?”

And the amazing thing is, he looked just like Mr Brown in my school textbook. But where was the bowler hat?

“Darling…” Maria McKenzie’s voice is so low and seductive that Andriy feels a distinct tremor in his manly parts, though she is speaking not to him but to the man who has just come in and is now slumped down on the sofa. “Darling, let me get you a drink. Whisky? Double? On ice? Darling, these are some friends of Toby’s. Emanuel here is from Limbe, in Malawi. Do you remember when Toby did his gap year in Malawi? Well, Emanuel is one of the friends he made. And now he’s come all the way over here to visit us. Isn’t that wonderful? And this is Irina, and Andriy. They’re from Ukraine but they’ve been staying in Kent. And Emanuel has brought them along because they’d like to meet a typical English family.”

“Well, they’ve come to the wrong place, haven’t they?” The man takes a quick gulp of his whisky. “And what about the dog. What’s the dog’s name?”

“Sir, the dog’s name is Dog.” Andriy wishes he had thought of something more intelligent, but the man chuckles.

“Excellent. Excellent name for a dog. Cross breed, is it?” His voice is deep and booming, like a foghorn.

“Sir, we know nothing of origin of this dog. It arrived mysteriously in night.”

“Hm. That’s interesting. Dog, come here. Let me look at you.”

Obediently, Dog walks across and sits down at the man’s feet, returning his gaze in a way that is both friendly and courteous. Andriy’s heart swells momentarily with pride.

“Labrador collie, I’d say, with a bit of German shepherd in there too. Excellent cross. Best dogs you can get.”

“Yes, he is very excellent dog.” Though he has heard of the Angliski love of animals, still it seems strange that this man seems more interested in the dog than in any of the people in the room. “He is hunting also, and brings all type of creature for us. Many rabbit and pigeon.”

Dog is glorying in the attention, wagging his tail, turning his head and lifting up his paw. The man takes the paw in his very clean businessman hand and shakes it.

“How do you do.” Just like Mr Brown! “Hm. Not a young dog. You say he arrived in the middle of the night?”

“Yes. When we are camping in wood. We think he is long time running, because feet is bleeding and he has scratchings on body.”

“Fascinating. And he hasn’t left you since?”

“No. He is all time with us.”

“Hm. Remarkable creatures, dogs. Faithful to the end. Maybe he was kidnapped. Dog-napped. Kent, did you say? Yes, they still go in for a bit of dog fighting down there. Sadly, in this day and age. They catch pet dogs and throw them to the fighters. Get their aggression up. Barbaric, really. Miners. Should be shot.”

Andriy doesn’t like the turn this conversation is taking. The man’s left eye has started to twitch, and he is gulping the whisky. Dog reaches forward and rests his chin soothingly on the man’s knee. The man seems to relax.

“Once, I had a dog. When I was a boy. Buster.” He leans down and scratches Dog’s ears. His voice is thick with emotion and whisky. “Can’t you take me with you, young man? When you go camping? Down in Kent? Hunting in the woods, with the dog? I’m quite handy with a shotgun, you know. Hares. Rabbits. Pigeons. I can skin a rabbit. I’ve still got my Swiss army knife. Fetching wood. Making the fire. Damp matches. Smoke everywhere. Kettle boiling. Tea in enamel mugs. Baked beans. Burnt toast. The whole lot.” He looks up at Andriy, his eyes watery and sad. “I wouldn’t get in the way.”

“Sir, of course you can come with us. But unfortunately we are just coming from Kent, and we are on our way to Sheffield.”

The man drains his whisky glass and groans.

“Supper ready soon, is it, Maria? I’ll go and get changed.”

As soon as his father has left the room, Toby lets out a sigh of relief.

“That stuff about the prison, Emanuel. It’s better if he doesn’t know.”

“He does not know?” asks Emanuel.

“Sweetheart,” says Maria McKenzie to Emanuel in that low seductive voice, “Toby’s father is quite old-fashioned in some respects, although he is a very kind and loving father. Isn’t he, Toby? But I think it would be fair to say that he has had some difficulty coming to terms with some aspects of Toby’s personality.”

“Yeah, Ma, he’s so straight you could stick him in the ground and grow weed up him.”

“Toby, your father is a very good man, and he works very hard for us. And if I had known you would get yourself into trouble in this way, I would never have let you go to Malawi for a year, I would have sent you to my family in Renfrewshire.”

“Yeah, yeah, Ma. Is that the end of the sermon?”

“And if your father finds out, Toby,” Maria continues, in her sexy
Let’s Talk English
voice, “he will blame me for encouraging you to go. Because I was the one who said it would broaden your mind and help you to understand the developing world, and your father was quite against it, because he said there was quite enough under-development round here without going to Zomba, especially in Croydon.”

Andriy is beginning to have some doubts about this family. The woman means well, and she does bear some resemblance to Mrs Brown, with her tiny waist and insatiable tea-drinking, but her ideas about food are bizarre. And what is the significance of the purple toenails? Of course it is well known that married women are sexually voracious, but to make love to a woman under her husband’s roof would be asking for trouble, even though the man is drinking too much whisky and talking strangely and setting a poor example to his wife. And this boy Toby—he speaks to his parents with disrespect, and Andriy wonders whether he will be a suitable mentor for Emanuel, who is young and impressionable and showing an interest in the wrong kind of sex.

“Croydon?” Emanuel exclaims. “I think we went through that place today!”

Dear sister,

Today I was reunited with Toby Makenzi and I will tell you the outstanding story of our friendship for the first time I encounted him was at Zomba.

But now these mzungus have sown confusion in me because I can see no likeness between Croydon and Zomba expecting the mission house which is tip-top and built of brick. Now this Toby Makenzi had brought from England an outstanding football made of leather the likeness of which we had never seen. For when the poor boys of Zomba play football we must inflict a balloon and wrap it in plastic baggages which is easily prickled on the prickly bush and many footballs perish in this way. And seeing my cheerful countenance when I beheld the football the mzungu said Brother I am greatly desirous to attain some Malawi Gold and in exchange I will give it to you.

This Malawi Gold is so desirous to mzungus I think it is the main reason they come to our country. And I wonder if Toby Makenzi’s parents did not know this why did they send their son here at all? It is regretful also that some of our policemen are corrupted and incarnate the mzungus in order to magnify their income when with much weeping and wailing and a payment of one or two thousand kwachas the mzungus are set free.

But the baggage of Malawi Gold I got for him exceeded any seen before in Zomba and the corrupted policeman who saw it demanded four thousand kwachas and this sum was out of Toby Makenzi’s reach. Then I took pity upon him and went to the police and confessed that the Malawi Gold belonged to me and they freed Toby Makenzi and incarnated me in his place. But these policemen have no reward from incarnating a poor orphan boy for whose freedom no one will pay even a hundred kwachas so after four days they set me free after first smiting me numerous blows. And Father Kevin also did chastise me extensively.

And Toby Makenzi’s expression was exceedingly mystical for he said Brother you have endured Blows for my Blow. And being filled with outstanding gratitude he said thanks mate if my Ma and Pa ever found out we’d never hear the end of it which I understood to mean that they would be unendingly grateful. And he gave me a desirous green anorak and a good pair of shoes which I still have to this day alongside the football and he said listen brother I owe you one if you ever come to England drop round at my place and my Ma and Pa will look after you. Then he wrote his name and address on a paper though it was spelt wrong and we shook hands in the traditional Chewa way of brotherhood.

But when I came to his place I was disappointing that the Ma and Pa had not been a praised of my Good Deed how I freed Toby Makenzi and the grievous blows I endured for his sake. For although I did not yearn for any reward still it would be joyous for them to know.

For this Pa Makenzi is downhearted and partakes exceedingly of whisky and he takes the name of the Lord in vain. For when the Ma set down his dinner before him he cried out for God’s sake Maria do we have to eat this rabbit food isn’t there a decent piece of meat in the house? And after some whilings a tip-top fragrance pierced the air and Dog leaped to his feet barking joyously and the Pa said good boy come here I’ve got a bit for you too.

And when the door was closed again Toby said hey Emanuel did you bring any Malawi Gold with you? And I replied no Brother because I think in England police are less forgiving than in Malawi.

After his dinner Pa Makenzi said to Toby Makenzi so in what useless way have you been idling away your day son of mine?

And Toby said if you must know Pa I’ve been working on my project.

And the Pa said what project is that?

And Toby said it’s about the representation of opiates in the media.

And the Pa clapped his hand upon his eyebrow and said son that will never lead you to gainful employment.

And Toby said Pa who’s interested in gainful employment?

And the Pa smote his eyebrow once more and said is there any more whisky Maria?

And Ma Makenzi said Toby don’t talk to your father like that.

And after further excess of whisky the Pa turned towards Andree and pleaded to let him accompany us on our huntings in the woods. And Andree who is a very good mzungu maybe even better than Toby Makenzi said in a calm voice that we were finished with the life of the woods but the Pa would be very welcome if he wished to travel to Sheffield.

Then the Pa set down his whisky and smote both eyebrows with his hands and began to weep and the Ma said in a cheerful voice now I think it’s bedtime everybody would you like me to show you to your rooms?