In the middle of the night the dog started to bark. When I woke up and saw the headlights of a car blazing in the field, I was overwhelmed with despair. I thought it was the end. I was sure it was Vulk, come to get me.
My mind told me to run, but I couldn’t. Suddenly I felt too tired of running, as though not just my bones but my heart was full of lead. I remembered how light-hearted I had felt when I saw my orange ribbon around the dog’s neck. Then I saw our homey little trailer parked in the field. It’s in the wrong place, I thought. This must be a dream—the honeysuckle air, the whole hillside bathed in that illusory mauve evening light. The door wasn’t locked. Inside, it was warm from the sun, and there was an intense smell of strawberries, and there they were, ranged out on the table, six bowls full. Who were they for? It was like a fairy tale. I couldn’t stop myself—I started to eat. But who could have picked them? I looked around. On the floor was a bright green anorak that looked familiar. And here, in the locker above the bunk, was my striped canvas bag! I looked inside. My nightie, my hairbrush, my spare T-shirt, some dirty underpants, even my money. It looked as though someone had rummaged through it, but it was all there. Even the pictures we’d stuck up on the walls: David Beckham, the Black Virgin of Krakow, a baby seal, a tiger cub, and a little panda. Mother and Papa. They were all here. Then, when Andriy and Emanuel turned up, I knew it wasn’t a dream, and I thought, this is it. I’m safe at last.
No, I wouldn’t run anymore. Instead, I crawled under the folding bed, like a hunted animal goes to earth, down into a deep place where it feels safe, and I curled up and pulled all the sleeping bags around me. After a while the noise died down and I must have cried myself to sleep. I can’t remember what I dreamed that night. I can only remember it was a dream of emptiness and despair, as though my cup of life had drained to the bottom.
In the morning I was surprised to find myself still alive, and lying under the bed. The sun was shining through the window. I heard Andriy and Emanuel running up and down the field calling my name. When he said my name—“Ee-ree-na!”—it sent a tingle through me. Then the dog showed them where I was hiding, and we all started to laugh. We had breakfast—strawberries, and bread and margarine again. Then he said, “Today we are going to London to find Emanuel’s friend, Toby McKenzie. Do you want me to take you back to strawberry farm, Irina? Ee-ree-na. Or do you want to come with us?”
“I will come with you.”
Dear Sister
Today we set out for London with me sitting in front beside Andree and I was cheerful at this opportunity for further questioning but Andree said he could not drive and talk in English at the same time.
So I fell to thinking about this English language which sometimes seems like a fearsome slippery serpent sliding this way and that unleashing his scaly coils upon the tongue. Then my first English lessons fizzed into my memory at the orphanage school at Limbe with Sister Benedicta who was not English nor had ever been in England but was from Goa in India and inpartially Portuguese. Who herself had learned English from an Irish Nun who had somehow turned up on their faraway shore by whose exemplar Sister Benedicta herself became a Nun and voyaged to Africa because of the many lost souls here to be saved ours among them she said. Sister Benedicta forced education into us through choral chanting from scriptures prayers sermons and other uplifting objects of devotion in order to commit them to memory. Unlike Sister Theodosia who was fat Sister Benedicta was thin and stern with shining brown skin and darting eyes and she wore small gold-rimmed glasses that hung on a chain around her neck and she was quick to chastise us with her staff.
So being aged twelve years at the time and you dear sister were already away at Blantire I fell into wondering about canal knowledge. When I asked Sister Benedicta she shook her staff at me but Sister Theodosia told me to ask Father Augustine when he came from Zomba but Father Augustine said canal knowledge is Sin and the wages of sin is Death. And whenever I think of canal knowledge these words rattle in my memory.
Andriy is still feeling disgruntled after last night and in no mood for conversation with Emanuel, who is sitting beside him in the front seat of the Land Rover, smiling cheerfully and asking questions about canals. Where does this obsession with canals come from? And why was he so excited by that horrible business in the back of the four-by-four? Surely he’s too innocent to be interested in such stuff. Or maybe he isn’t.
And here’s another thing that’s bothering him: Why is Irina sitting in the back, when clearly as a woman she should be seated in front? It can only be because she doesn’t want to sit beside him. Is he too uncivilized for her? Well, it doesn’t matter, because soon he will drop them both off in London, Emanuel with Toby McKenzie and Irina at the Ukrainian Embassy, where she will get a new passport, and then he will be on his way to Sheffield and whatever awaits him there.
The clutch slips as he tries to engage second, and he has to do a quick maneuver to get straight from first to third. This place they are looking for, this Richmond Park—it seems to be nothing but a big field and a few trees. Where are all the houses? Finally, they are directed to a small row of houses on the south side. The house they are looking for, number five, is at the end of the row.
He can see even from outside the gate that it is the house of a successful businessman. Many windows, porticoed door in the center, double garage, et cetera. No doubt Vitaly will one day live in a high-spec house like this. And the car? Hm. The only car outside is a VW Golf, 2.0 GLS—not a bad car, features include convertible roof, leather seats, advanced sound system, et cetera, and looks like automatic transmission, unfortunate in high-powered car because you get better performance with a manual gear shift, but even so, quite a nice car. Yes, he wouldn’t mind taking it for a run, but really he would have expected something more interesting with a house like this.
But how does Emanuel know such a wealthy man? For his friend strides up to the house with his piece of paper in his hand and a beaming smile upon his face, and rings on the bell several times. A woman appears at the front door, about the same age as Wendy but more beautiful, though her hair is brown, not blond, with some threads of gray, and swept elegantly back from her face. In fact she is quite like Let’s Talk English Mrs. Brown, with neat waist and breasts, but her feet are bare with purple-painted toenails. This is so unexpected that he has to force himself not to stare at them. There is something incredibly sexy about those purple-painted toenails.
She looks at the three of them and Dog with surprise, and takes the piece of paper that 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 center 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 friends from strawberry. 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 h
ungry.”
She leads them through a tall wood-paneled 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 onto the garden, and a long wooden table in the center, 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 yogurts and sauces, et cetera, 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 anymore. 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 trailer, 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 toward 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. Okay. Okay. 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 rebalance 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 smelled of baking. We sat on a sofa to one side of the huge enameled 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 Papa 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, “Mama, 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.”
“Mama, 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 scandalized 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.”
“Mama, 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 up 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. Whiskey? 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 whiskey. “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. Crossbreed, 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.
“Ho
w 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. Dognapped. 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 whiskey. “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 whiskey 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.”
Strawberry Fields Page 19