2007 - Two Caravans

by Marina Lewycka

  So it was agreed we would go with her to Peterborough and meet this Malawian nurse. All this time we were driving along slowly—in my opinion women are much better drivers than men—and we had plenty of time for conversation, which was good, because Yateka was very talkative. It turned out she was not really a trainee, for in Zambia she had already been running a health centre for six years, but to work in England she has to do a special adaptation training. She explained that there is a new rule that the National Health Service is not allowed to recruit nurses from Africa, so she must do her adaptation training in a private nursing home.

  “This is a good rule for Africa, but a bad rule for us nurses,” she said, “because my adaptation job pays only the minimum wage, not a proper nurse’s salary. Then they make deductions. Tax. Food. Accommodation. Uniform. Training fee. Agency fee. At the end of the week I have nothing left.”

  “I know about these deductions,” I said. “We are strawberry-pickers. Accommodation, food, transport; everything comes out of our wages. You know, I had not expected such meanness in England.”

  “Worst thing is the agency fee,” said Yateka. “Nine hundred pounds I must pay for arranging this training place.”

  “Nine hundred!” exclaimed Andriy from the back seat. “This is more than we pay for phoney work paper. These are bloodsuckers!”

  “Nightingale Human Solutions. They are vultures, not nightingales.”

  “But is it worth it?” I asked.

  “When I am in the National Health Service I will be able to earn fifty times more in England than in Zambia. This is a problem for Africa, because every African nurse wants to come in England, and there are not enough nurses to look after all our sick people at home.”

  “Same for us. Wages for strawberry-picker in England is higher than for teacher or nurse in Ukraine.” Andriy furrowed his brows together in a very thoughtful and intellectual-type way, which is actually quite sexy in a man. “This global economic is serious business.”

  You see? He is quite intelligent, despite being uneducated.

  “You come from Ukraine?”

  “Yes of course. Do you know some Ukrainian people?” I asked.

  Yateka told us that one of the old men in her nursing home was Ukrainian, and he was always causing a lot of bother with his peculiarities.

  “I wish you would talk to him. Maybe he would listen if someone talked to him in Ukrainian.”

  “Of course,” I said. “We would be happy to talk to him.” I was curious about these Ukrainian peculiarities.

  It’s happened again. He wanted to go to Sheffield, but somehow he’s ended up in this place. Andriy is feeling vaguely annoyed with Irina, with Yateka, and with himself. Why didn’t he just say no?

  Four Gables nursing home is a large grey house on the outskirts of Peterborough, set back from the road behind a screen of gloomy evergreens. Yateka pulls into the car park and leads them inside. The first thing Andriy notices is the smell—sweetish and feral. It hits him like a blast of bad breath as soon as they open the door. Haifa dozen old women in various stages of decrepitude are sitting in armchairs pushed up against the walls, dozing with their mouths sagging open, or just staring. “Wait here,” says Yateka. “I will look for Blessing.” They sit down on a padded bench and wait. The air is heavy and stale. Irina gets into a strange conversation with an old lady sitting nearby, who thinks she is her niece. Dog goes off sniffing along the corridor on the trail of the strange smell, and disappears. After a while Andriy gets up and goes to look for him.

  “Psst!” A skinny arm beckons him in through an open door. “In here.”

  He steps into a tiny room. That smell—it reminds him of the smell inside the rabbit hutch on their balcony in Donetsk. In the middle of the floor, Dog is sitting on a rug at the feet of a very old woman, who is feeding him chocolate biscuits from a tin.

  “Hello, young man. Come in. I’m Mrs Gayle. Your name?”

  “Andriy Palenko.”

  “Polish?”

  “No, Ukrainian.”

  “Oh, splendid! I’m very partial to Ukrainian men. Have a seat. Have a biscuit.”

  “Thank you, Mrs Gayle.” Andriy crams the biscuit in whole, coughing as the crumbs stick in his throat—it is the first thing he’s eaten since that bread last night.

  “Have another.”

  “Thank you.”

  He sits down on a chair, then he realises it is in fact a commode covered with an upholstered lid. The rabbit-hutch smell is all-pervasive.

  “Take two.”

  She blinks. Or is it a wink? Her eyes are small and watery, sunk deep into their crinkled sockets. Her hands are thin and bent like claws. Will I be like this one day, Andriy wonders? It is inconceivable.

  He remembers his grandmother’s room at home, piled from floor to ceiling with heaps of musty clothes, the space for sitting becoming smaller and smaller. It was sad to watch her life shrink away. As she lost control of her bladder, the smell from the room became so intense that they could hardly bear to go in there. However much his mother had washed and scrubbed and sprinkled powder around, the rabbit-hutch smell just got stronger, until in the end she died and only the smell was left. A bit like the smell in Mrs Gayle’s room. He is starting to wonder about the commode he is sitting on. What is under the lid?

  “My daughter put me in here, you know, after my husband died. She says I smell. In your country, young man, what happens to old people?”

  “You know, usually they live with family, but sometimes they go into monastery. Woman-only monastery is very popular with Orthodox ladies.”

  “Hm! That sounds quite nice, a women-only monastery.” Mrs Gayle nibbles at a biscuit with what is left of her teeth. “Company. A roof over your head. No matron to boss you about. And the only man you have to worry about is Lord Jesus…” She searches in her bag and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. “…who is probably much less demanding than a husband. Probably drinks less, too.” She roots through her handbag once more. “Have you got a light?”

  “No, I am sorry. I not…”

  “You’ll find a box of matches in the handyman’s room. End of the corridor, down the stairs, and it’s on your left.”

  She gives Dog another biscuit, and he sits up on his back legs to take it. Andriy has never seen him do this before. The room is very hot and the smell overpowering. He is beginning to feel a bit strange.

  “Go on.” She gives him a little prod with her walking stick. “Don’t hang about. The handyman’s not in at the moment.”

  The handyman’s room is a den of old bits of wood, furniture awaiting repair, defunct appliances, obscure machine parts, etc, and in a cabinet along one wall an interesting array of tools. Andriy pauses in the doorway. The handyman is nowhere in sight. On a table by the door are a packet of tobacco, a large curved pipe and a box of matches. He hesitates. Then he picks the matches up, puts them in his pocket and goes back up the stairs.

  On the door to the corridor is a No Smoking sign.

  “Mrs Gayle. Excuse me. Do you know about smoking ban?”

  “Hah! You sound just like my daughter! She’s always trying to stop me smoking. Have to smoke in here—can’t stand the stink. Have you got the matches?”

  He hesitates. She pokes him with her stick.

  “Come on, young man. Let an old woman have a bit of fun.”

  He hands the matches over. She lights the cigarette and at once begins to cough.

  “My daughter put me in here because I’m a communist, you know.” Cough, cough. “Yes, I was incarcerated because of my political views.”

  “No!” Can it be true? Do such things happen in England?

  “Yes. She’s married to a stockbroker. A minor scion of the aristocracy. Vile man. Now I’m in here, and they’re living in my house.” Her left eye twitches.

  “How is this possible?”

  “Yes, I wanted to donate it to the International Workers of the World, but they got it off me. Made me sign something. Told the socia
l workers I was mad.” She has become so agitated that she gets another cigarette out of the pack and lights it, and starts to puff, even though the other one is still smouldering in the ashtray. “Do I seem mad?”

  “No. Very not mad, Mrs Gayle.”

  “But what they don’t know is, I’m coming home. I’m getting married again, and I’m coming home.” She chuckles. “Are you married, young man?” The eye twitches again. Or is it a wink? Andriy feels a moment of panic. He shakes his head. She takes a few more deep drags on her cigarette, coughs once or twice, and continues, “Yes, Mr Mayevskyj in room nine. The Ukrainian gentleman. Have you met him yet?”

  By now the little room is completely filled with smoke. It must be noticeable from the corridor. If someone catches them, they could be in trouble. Andriy reaches across to stub out the cigarette in the ashtray, but quick as a flash she grabs it first and sticks it in her mouth, along with the other one.

  “No you don’t, young man.” She lowers her voice to a confidential whisper, puffing away on both cigarettes simultaneously. “He has an incredible sex drive for a man of ninety-two, you know. Yes, they don’t know this yet, but we’re getting married and we’re coming to live at home.”

  “That will be nice surprise for your daughter.”

  “It’ll be a surprise. I don’t know about nice.”

  While I was waiting for Yateka and Andriy to come back, I heard someone calling out for help. It was the old man in room nine. He had dropped his hearing aid down the back of his chair, so I helped him to find it. It turned out he was the Ukrainian resident Yateka had told us about. He put in his hearing aid and we got into a long conversation about Ukraine, the way it was when he lived there and the way it is now. Then he cleared his throat and embarked on a long speech about malfunctioning hydraulic lifts and other engineering problems, and at the end of it he suddenly took me by the hand and said I had a very beautiful figure, and would I marry him.

  I said teasingly that I couldn’t marry him, because I agree with Tolstoy that a wife should share her husband’s interests, and I could never be interested in hydraulics. “Oy oy!” he exclaimed, striking his forehead. “I have other interests too. Do you care for art or philosophy or poetry or tractors?” Before I could answer, he started to recite an obscure poem by Mayakovsky about love and destiny, but he got stuck after a few lines, and became agitated and started shouting for his books. So I went to look for Yateka.

  Yateka calmed Mr Mayevskyj down, and brought him a cup of tea. Then she made some tea for us, too, which we drank sitting out in the garden. It’s strange because I didn’t know any Africans in Kiev, but Yateka is the second African friend I have made in England. When I told her about Mr Mayevskyj’s marriage proposal, she grabbed my hand and laughed out loud.

  “Now you understand what I mean by peculiarities,” she said. “That poor old man. He has become more mentally unstable ever since they took his gearbox away.”

  “Gearbox?”

  “He had a gearbox in his room. Did he not tell you about it? He said it was a relic of his beloved motorbike.”

  “Why did they take it away?”

  “Matron said it was not hygienic to have a gearbox in the room.”

  “What is not hygienic about a gearbox?”

  “I don’t know,” said Yateka. “But nobody can argue with Matron. You don’t know what she is like.”

  “I cannot see the harm in a gearbox. I would let him have it.”

  Yateka giggled. “You would be the perfect wife for him. Maybe you should accept his proposal. It would make him very happy. And in a few years, you will have a British passport and an inheritance.”

  “Not all Ukrainian women are looking out to marry an old man for his money, you know, Yateka.” In fact I was thinking these stereotypes of Ukrainian women are not helpful. Where does this idea come from?

  “And why not? In my country if a young girl can make a good marriage to a wealthy senior it is good for the family. Everybody is happy. Sometimes nowadays the young girl can get AIDS, which is a terrible tragedy in my country. But this will not be a problem with Mr Mayevskyj,” she added quickly. “The only problem is his two daughters. These are not nice people at all. They have already intervened three times to prevent him marrying.”

  “Is this true? He has had three fiancees?”

  “Maybe they are worried about the inheritance.”

  “He has inheritance?”

  “He told me he is a millionaire.” Her eyes twinkled darkly. “And he has written a famous book. A history of tractors.”

  I could believe he has written a history of tractors. But I must say, he didn’t look like a millionaire. Or smell like one.

  “But maybe you already have a lover.” She winked.

  “Maybe,” I said with a nonchalant shrug.

  “You know, you can stay here if you like. There’s a spare room in the attic which cannot be used for residents because of safety reasons. It’s been empty for years.”

  She gave me another twinkly look. I could feel myself blushing. There is something incredibly romantic about attic rooms.

  The Malawian nurse turns out not to be Emanuel’s sister after all, though she does look a bit like Emanuel, thinks Andriy: very small and slightly built, with a round shining face. Her name is Blessing.

  “I am sorry to disappoint you.” She gives him a dazzling smile that also reminds him of Emanuel.

  They are sitting in the nurses’ room while Yateka and Blessing are having a tea break.

  “But don’t you know some other Malawian nurses?” says Yateka.

  “You know, my cousin was in a nursing home in London that was closed because of a scandal—the proprietor was stealing the residents’ money. Some of the other nurses there were from Malawi. They all lost their jobs. The agency found new jobs for them, but they had to pay another agency fee. Nightingale Human Solutions.”

  Yateka wrinkles up her nose. It is a small plump nose, shiny like a stub of polished wood. Quite a nice nose, in fact.

  “Would you like me to ask my cousin?” says Blessing.

  “Yes, please. I give you telephone number where Emanuel is staying. Maybe you help brother and sister be reunited.” He writes the address and phone number of the Richmond house on a piece of paper and passes it to Blessing.

  Another rather pleasant thought has started to nudge at the edges of his consciousness. He has heard it said that black women are incredibly sexy, but he has never before had an opportunity to find out for himself. Maybe here will be an opportunity for him? This little coupe-model Malawian nurse, she has quite an entrancing smile. And the other one—Yateka—see the way she moves, the curve of her shapely legs accentuated by those clumsy lace-up nurse’s shoes, the sway of her buttocks in her slightly-too-tight uniform. You have to admit, there is something incredibly sexy about a woman in uniform.

  Stop! Stop this idiocy, Palenko! Here is a lovely high-spec Ukrainian girl sitting beside you, and still you are letting your thoughts chase about after other women. When the road forks, whichever way you choose, you can only go one way. Goodbye, Africa Yateka. Goodbye, Vagvaga Riskegipd.

  Goodbye and God be with you? Or goodbye and see you again? Andriy Palenko, what’s the matter with you? Goodbye is goodbye. End of story. And yet…And yet it’s not really desire that makes that last goodbye so hard to say—it’s curiosity. Never to know where the other road would have led you. Never to know what lies beneath that taut crisp uniform; never to know whether that long-ago kiss lingers in her memory as it does in yours. Never to know what would have happened when you met.

  Irina’s voice snaps him out of his reverie. She is talking about something incredibly interesting.

  “I think there is only one thing to do,” she is saying. “We must give Mr Mayevskyj back his gearbox.”

  “Gearbox?”

  “Yateka told me he used to keep a gearbox in his room. A beloved relic of an old motorbike. But the matron found it and took it away from him.”


  “Since then,” said Yateka, “he has become unstable.”

  “It is enough to make any man unstable.”

  “I think if he had his gearbox again, he would behave in a more normal way.”

  “You are right, Irina.”

  Sometimes you have to let a woman think she is right.

  I AM DOG I AM SAD DOG MY MAN IS IN LOVE WITH THIS MORE-STUPID-THAN-SHEEP FEMALE HIS VOICE IS THICK AND SOFT HIS PISS IS CLOUDY HE STINKS OF LOVE HORMONES SHE STINKS OF LOVE HORMONES TOO SOON THEY WILL MATE HE WILL HAVE NO MORE LOVE FOR DOG I AM SAD DOG I AM DOG

  “I think Bill the handyman will know where the gearbox is,” says Yateka. “Since Matron asked him to take it away.”

  “Down the stairs at the end of the corridor, then turn left,” says Blessing.

  Bill is back in his basement room, poring over an open newspaper. He is a short square man with a bald head and a clipped moustache. He looks up as Andriy comes in.

  “They’ve nicked me bloody matches again. Those old birds. You can’t trust ‘em. Bunch of flaming firomaniacs. Who are you, anyway?”

  “I am looking for gearbox of Mr Mayevskyj. He has been asking after it.”

  Bill takes this as a reproach.

  “It weren’t my idea to take it off of ‘im. I just do what Matron says.”

  Even as his mouth searches for a suitably annoyed expression, his eyes fall upon Dog.

  “That your dog?”

  “Yes, my dog. Dog.”

  “I used to have one like that. Mongrel. Called him Spango. Great ratter.”

  Bill settles himself back in his chair, and passes the newspaper he has been reading over to Andriy.

  “What d’you think of them, eh?”

  A young woman with bare breasts and blond hair is smiling at the camera. Andriy looks at the picture. The light in the basement is dim. Actually, she looks very much like his last girlfriend, Lida Zakanovka. Could it really be her? He stares more closely. Did she come to England? Did she have a mole like that on her left shoulder?

  “Nice, eh? Better than the missus. You should have seen the pair last Thursday. Magnificent.” Bill gives a companionable grunt. “You can keep it, if you like. I’ve finished with it. Any time you like, you can bring your dog down here.”