There were two rooms downstairs. One, which had its door open, had six chairs around a table on which the greasy remains of a meal were waiting to be cleared away. The other room was at the front, and Tomasz opened the door to a wave of hot, stinking breathed-out air. Inside were six—no, there were seven—sleeping figures curled up on mattresses on the floor, surrounded by their pitiful possessions spilling out of holdalls and carrier bags—a jumble of shoes, clothes, bedding, papers, cigarette packs, bottles, and other human debris. There was a gentle chorus of snoring and snuffling. He backed out quickly and closed the door.
Upstairs was the same. In one room, the smaller of the two, there were four mattresses laid out on the floor, so close that you had to walk over them to get to the other side of the room, and on each mattress was a prone sleeping figure. In the other, larger room, there were six mattresses and six sleeping figures. No—one mattress over in the far corner was unoccupied, and Tomasz realized with a terrible sinking feeling that this was the mattress allocated to him.
He went back downstairs into the dining room, pulled up a chair, and with a feeling of despondency so intense that it was almost pleasurable, he got out his guitar. So this was to be his condition now. What was he but a fragment of broken churned-up humanity washed up on this faraway shore? This was where his journey has brought him.
There must be a song in this.
I was woken up by birdsong, so sweet and close that for a minute I thought I was back at the trailer. I opened my eyes and looked around. Where was I? Sunlight was streaming in low through a dusty window. Then I remembered: At some point in the night, I’d abandoned the three-legged chair and rolled myself into the plastic sheet on the floor. I must have slept like that. My clothes were still damp. No wonder I felt stiff. I stood up and stretched myself, straightening each arm and leg painfully. Ujjas! What a night. I remembered that I’d had a dream—one of those terrifying dreams where you’re running and running, but you can’t move. One of those dreams that makes you glad to wake up to a sunny morning.
My stomach was rumbling again—the effect of yesterday’s chips had worn off. I eased the door open and stepped outside. The rain had passed and the sky was clear, but there were still puddles on the ground. In Kiev, when it rains in the night you wake up to see all the golden domes of the churches washed clean and glittering in the sunlight, and the potholes in the roads full of water. “Mind the puddles, Irina,” Mother would say as I set off for school, but I always got splashed.
I was in somebody’s garden. The old garage was at the bottom of a long graveled drive. At the end, behind a screen of trees, I could see the chimneys of a big house. My feet crunched on the gravel and somewhere not far away a dog started to bark. Was it on a chain? Was it fierce? I stood still and listened. The barking stopped. Then faint and far away I heard another sound—the drone of a car engine, getting closer.
A few minutes later, I saw the vehicle. It was a white van. I stepped forward and waved. The driver slowed down and waved back. Stupid man—couldn’t he see I wasn’t just waving for fun? I jumped directly in front, so he had no choice but to screech to a stop. The driver wound his window down and yelled,
“You crazy? What you doing?”
That homey accent! That round face! That dire shirt! I could tell at once that he was Ukrainian. For some stupid reason, I felt tears pricking at the back of my eyes.
“Please,” I said in Ukrainian. “Please help me.”
He opened the passenger door.
“Get in, girl. Where you want to go?”
I tried to speak, but I found myself sniffling, which was pathetic, because after all I was alive and nothing terrible had happened.
“Okay, girl. You don’t cry,” said the van driver. “You can come with us.”
As the van moved forward I heard voices in the back. I turned in my seat and saw there were about a dozen people, men and women, crouching or squatting on the floor. They were all young. Some were chatting quietly. Some seemed half asleep. They looked like students—they looked quite like me, in fact.
“Hello,” I said in Ukrainian. There was a chorus of hellos, some in Ukrainian, some in Polish and a couple of other Slavic languages I couldn’t place.
“Strawberry pickers,” explained the driver.
“Ah, that’s lucky! Me too.”
I started to explain about the trailers and the strawberry field, and then suddenly there it was, just flashing past on the right, the little copse, and the gate, and the lovely, familiar south-sloping field. But what had happened to our trailer?
“Stop, please!” I cried. The driver pulled to a halt, shaking his head.
“Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Typical woman.”
“Wait. Please. Just one moment!”
I ran back down the lane and opened the gate. The women’s trailer had gone—vanished completely. Only the shower screen was still standing, the black plastic flapping forlornly. The men’s trailer was there, leaning at an angle. I tiptoed up and peered through the window. It was empty. No one was around. The field was full of ripe strawberries. At the top of the field, I could hear the thrush still sitting there in the copse singing its early-morning song.
I climbed back into the van.
“Stop? Go?” said the van driver.
“Let’s go.”
After the Chinese girls have gone with Mr. Smith, and Vitaly has taken the Poles to their rendezvous with the van driver (whom he refers to as the “transport manager”), Andriy, Emanuel, and Dog go off for a consolatory ice-cream cone to get away from the heat. They arrange to meet Vitaly later at a pub in town.
Andriy hopes that Vitaly, with his new mobilfon wealth, will stand them a round of drinks, but when he comes back it turns out that unfortunately he has no cash on him, so from what is left of his two weeks’ wages, Andriy has to pay for two small beers for himself and Emanuel and a double scotch with Coke for Vitaly.
They take their drinks through a door marked Beer Garden into a dank courtyard full of empty beer barrels, where the sun barely peeps above high brick walls that are covered with dismal, sooty ivy. They are the only people there. Dog finds the remains of a sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin under one of the tables, and gobbles it up, spreading crumbs and shreds of paper everywhere. Emanuel and Andriy sip their beers slowly to make them last.
At once Vitaly wants to know what has become of Irina, and there is an annoying presumptuousness about the way he talks, moving seamlessly between Russian and English.
“I thought you and she would be making possibility by now. I could find her very nice job in London. Dancing. Can she dance? Good pay. Luxury accommodation.”
When Andriy tells him about the night-time abduction, he whistles between his teeth.
“That Mr. Vulk is a no-no-good. He brings bad reputation to profession of recruitment consultant.”
“He is recruitment consultant?”
“Yes of course. But not same like me. Not employment solution consultant with capacity for advance meeting flexi. He is more interested to make overseas contact. My contact is to find work for people when they arrive on ferry. Dynamic cutting solution to all organization staffing.”
“And he is living here in Dover?”
“In some hotel, not far away, I think.”
“Can you take me to him?”
“Aha! I see you are still thinking of making possibility with this Ukrainian girl.”
Andriy gives a studied shrug. “Well, of course I would be interested to know where she is. But she already has boyfriend, I think. Boxing champion.”
Vitaly gives him a funny look. “Boxing? This is unusual for high-class girl. Angliski?”
“Maybe. I think so.” He too has his doubts about this boyfriend.
He feels unaccountably furious with Vitaly. Where did he get these clothes, these sunglasses, this phone? And how all the women were dancing around him at the ferry terminal! It couldn’t have been just the markup on the beer at the trailer, could it? And why di
d he keep it all to himself? The strawberry pickers shared everything, but Vitaly had been secretly keeping something aside for himself all the time. And how quickly this transformation from equal to superior had taken place. Devil’s bum! It had happened overnight. Of course he had lived through a time like this in Ukraine—one day they were all comrades, next day some were millionaires and the rest had…coupons. How had it happened? No one knew. It left a bad taste in the mouth.
And what can you do with coupons? You can’t eat them. You can’t spend them. All you can do is sell them. But who will want to buy? Suddenly, the millionaires were all billionaires, and the rest had enough for a load of coal to see you through the winter and that was it, bye-bye, end of story. Now the whole country was run by mobilfonmen.
And this Vitaly—if he finds this Irina, will he ring you on mobilfon and say, hey, Andriy, my friend, come and make possibility? Unlikely. And what would she think of this new recruit-consult mobilfonman Vitaly? She considers herself so superior—the new high-spec Ukrainian girl—maybe the new Vitaly will just be in her category. Hello, mobilfon businessman—this is Irina calling—can we make a possibility? And if she makes a possibility with Vitaly, what does it matter to you, Palenko? Now he feels irrationally, fumingly angry with Irina as well as with Vitaly.
“And I have an Angliska girl,” he adds pointedly to Vitaly. “Vagvaga Riskegipd. In Sheffield. I am on my way to find her.”
Vitaly gives him another odd look.
“Listen, my friend, if I see Vulk, I will ask him what happened to this Ukrainian girl.”
He almost hopes that Vitaly will offer him a job—good pay, luxury accommodation, et cetera—just so that he can have the pleasure of turning it down. But he doesn’t, and Andriy’s pride won’t let him ask. They arrange to meet in the same pub at the same time tomorrow. As Vitaly strolls away, he takes his mobilfon out of his pocket and starts to talk, waving his free hand up and down for emphasis. Andriy tries to make out what language he is speaking.
The sun is blazing at full heat, cutting short hard shadows onto the cracked pavements. He wanders back toward the trailer with Dog and Emanuel, still feeling irritable and resenting the money he spent on Vitaly’s double scotch. Worse than that, he feels shabby, poor, and unattractive. Is he jealous of Vitaly? How shameful it is to be jealous of someone who is inferior in every way, except that he has a mobilfon and better trousers. This is what Vitaly has done to him. This is what Vitaly and Irina between them have done to him. Yes, he thought Vitaly was his friend, and all the time he was taking a bit on the side. Well, here are his true friends. Hey, Dog! But Dog is off on a trail of lamp posts. Hey, Emanuel! Emanuel has found a half-full packet of smoky-bacon flavored chips in the beer garden, which he shares with Andriy, shaking out the last bits into his hand. The artificially flavored salt dissolves on his tongue, tasty and toxic.
“Hey, Emanuel. You like fishing? Maybe we have big luck.”
“Sikomo. Fishing is very interesting. But where will we attain good nettings?” Emanuel starts to sing, “I will make you fishers of men.”
They stroll down to the pier together. The Bulgarian lad who sold him the fish yesterday said this was the best way in town of making quick money. Down a side street, in a maze of car and lorry parks not far from where they left their trailer, they find the entrance to the Admiralty Pier. It must have once been quite a grand structure, but now the ornate cast iron is decrepit and grimy, covered in pigeon droppings, and a few dead pigeons fester where they have dropped behind the barriers. The stench hits you when you walk in.
A couple of men are hanging around at the entrance with a selection of rods and buckets, some blue, some yellow.
“You wanna buy or rent?” asks the older of the two, who is wearing a black woolly hat pulled down over his ears, despite the heat, and a black vest that reveals arms and shoulders covered with an incredible array of tattoos. “Rent is five quid a day. Or you can buy it for twenty-five quid. Superior tackle. Great investment. Pays for itself in five days, and from then on it’s sheer profit. Are you gonna be here for a few days?”
The man is talking too fast. It is stretching Andriy’s English to its limit. What is the price? he wonders.
“What it is?”
“Quality tackle. As used by all the top competitive fishermen. Fella caught a twenty-five-pound cod off of here the other day. Got fifty quid for it. Cash in hand.” He looks Andriy and Emanuel up and down, as if appraising their fishing potential.
“Put food on yer table every night, and the surplus you can sell to us. A quid a kilo. Easy money. No tax. No questions asked. Yours to spend as you wish. Just five quid for the day. Try it out.”
Andriy picks up a rod and examines it. He hasn’t been fishing since he was a kid, but it can’t be so difficult—that Bulgarian lad didn’t look particularly bright.
“Five quids? Five pounds?”
“That’s it, mate. Big shoal of mackerel coming in with the tide. You’ll cover the cost in no time, and then all the rest’s yours to take home to the missus.”
Andriy hands over his five pounds. The man gives him a rod and a blue bucket.
As the Ukrainian driver pulled in through the gate, I saw the gleaming white field that I’d spotted from the hillside yesterday. It had looked as though it were covered with plastic, and it turned out to be just that—rows upon rows of tunnels made out of polythene sheeting stretched over metal hoops. Down the center of each tunnel was a row of straw bales, with bags of compost on them, planted with strawberries. It was like a whole garden under cover. The air was humid and warm, sweet with the scent of ripe strawberries, and another sickly chemical smell that clung to the roof of my mouth. Despite the smell, I was so hungry I couldn’t help myself—I reached out and started cramming the strawberries in my mouth. The others laughed.
“You can’t be a real strawberry picker, Irina! We’re not allowed to eat them. They’ll sack you if they catch you,” said Oksana, who seemed to have taken me under her wing. Oksana was from Kharkiv, a bit older than me, and nice, though not very cultured—but all that seemed much less important now.
The supervisor, Boris, was also Ukrainian. He was a bit fat, and not too bright, with a thick Zaporizhzhia accent. He kept looking at me and saying if I proved myself today he’d put in a good word for me and sort out my paperwork when we got back to the office. He was sure they’d take me on, because the warm weather has caused the strawberries to ripen early and—this was the third time he’d said this, what was the matter with him?—he’d put in a good word for me.
When he told me the wages, I couldn’t believe it. It was twice what we got at the other place, and I started thinking about all the things I would buy—some lovely scented soap, nice shampoo, new underpants—little sexy ones that Mother would detest—a massive bar of chocolate, some strappy sandals, and I needed a hairbrush, a new T-shirt, maybe two, a warmer jumper, and don’t forget a present to take back for Mother. And the picking was so easy; no bending, no lifting. Yes, I thought, I’m lucky to get this chance, and I’d better make the most of it, so I picked like crazy, because I had to prove myself.
At the end of the shift, when we went back to the strawberry farm, Boris came up and said it was time for me to prove myself. Then he pushed himself up against me in a disgusting way and kissed me on the mouth, with wet slimy kisses. I wasn’t frightened—Boris just seemed stupid and harmless—so I made myself go limp and let him kiss me, because I really really wanted this job. His gaspy breathing on my face made me feel cold inside. On the scale of sex appeal I would give him a zero. Okay, it’s a transaction, nothing more, I told myself. I tried to imagine Natasha and Pierre kissing, lost in each other. Were men different in those days? When he’d finished, I wiped my mouth on my T-shirt and followed him up the stairs to the office.
Andriy walks down the Admiralty Pier with his rod and blue bucket in his hands and Emanuel at his side. The pier is a bleak span of concrete almost a kilometer long, reaching like a crooked
dog-leg out into the sea, and every meter seems to be occupied by a fisherman, bucket at his feet, rod or line pitched over the water, staring out over the waves. In some of the buckets there are a few small fishes, but nothing to speak of.
About halfway along the first leg, Andriy and Emanuel come across the Bulgarian lad who sold Andriy the fish. He introduces his two friends, who are Romanian and Moldovan.
“Usually two or three of us here,” says the Bulgarian. “Next few meters is Baltics. Fish fryers. Up there”—he points for Andriy’s benefit—“Ukrainians and Byelorussians. Beetroot eaters. Over there”—he points for Emanuel’s benefit—“we even have Africa. God knows what they eat. Down that end are Balkans—Serbs, Croats, Albanians. Best steer clear of those. Too much fighting.”
“And Angliski fishermen?”
The Bulgarian lad points to the end of the pier.
“That’s where all Angliskis go. Right up to end. Past Balkans. You can tell which is Angliski. Every one wears woolen hat. Even women. Pulled down over ears. Even in summer. Very good at fishing.”
“You get good fishing?”
“Plenty. Plenty fish everywhere. Easy money.”
Andriy glances down into the lad’s bucket. There are a few minnows. Who does he think he’s kidding?
“How long you been doing this fishy thing?”
The lad looked shifty. “Few days.”
“Where you get this fish line and bucket?”
“Man by pier. Same like you. Easy money.”
“Easy for him.”
The Bulgarian lad looks away and fiddles with his fishing rod. Andriy feels like thumping him, but what’s the point?
“He says plenty plenty mackerel coming this morning,” the lad calls plaintively to Andriy’s disappearing back. Poor mutt, doesn’t even realize it’s the afternoon.
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