Free 2007 - Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka Page A

that bloody strawberry tart, too.” She gestures towards the top of the field. What does she mean? He pockets the key and steps forward to embrace her. She backs away.
    “Just go.”
    He climbs into the Land Rover and tries the key. It starts up instantly. The pedals and gear movements are rough. The last car he drove was his father’s Zaporozhets. His first thought is to drive out through the gate and put his foot down, but his passport and two weeks’ wages are tucked in an old sock under his mattress. And there is something else that holds him back—that girl, her dark hair spread on the pillow, waking from sleep. He won’t go without saying goodbye to her. Goodbye and God be with you? Or goodbye and see you again? That’s what he wants to find out.
    He turns off the engine and goes back to the men’s caravan, which is leaning crookedly on its one wheel. Yola is there, sitting on Tomasz’s sloping bed, shaking and crying uncontrollably, and Tomasz is comforting her.
    “I’m going,” says Andriy. He retrieves his passport and money, and starts to stuff his other belongings into his bag. “Before police come.”
    Yola looks up, startled.
    “Police coming?”
    He nods. She jumps up, pushing Tomasz out of the way.
    “I go too. I get my bag.” She makes her way towards the door. “Wait. Please wait.”
    Tomasz pulls his bag down from his locker and starts to pack too.
    “I come with you.”
    Emanuel is sleeping on Vitaly’s bunk, but he opens his eyes and raises himself up on one arm, shielding his eyes from the light with the other, and mumbling something in his own language.
    “We’re going. Goodbye, my friend.” Andriy closes the door quietly and returns to the Land Rover with his bag.
    He drives the Land Rover round the edge of the field, overtaking Tomasz, who is running straight up through the strawberry clumps, his bag and his guitar bouncing on his back. The second gear on the Land Rover keeps slipping and the steering is loose. He’ll have to drive carefully.
    He knocks and opens the door of the women’s caravan. Inside is hysteria and chaos. Yola is trying to gather her possessions by the light of an oil lamp and at the same time to calm Marta and the Chinese girls, who are sobbing uncontrollably.
    “Where’s Irina?” he asks.
    “Man take it,” says one of the Chinese girls, trembling, and the other chimes in, “Woman hairs man take it.”
    “Man in gangster car has taken Irina,” Marta explains in Polish.
    Blood swims before Andriy’s eyes. How has this happened? How has he let this happen? What kind of man would let his girl (is she his girl?) be snatched away like that? He feels faint and sick.
    “Which way?”
    The girls point vaguely down the field. His heart shrinks at the uselessness of it. What a fool he’s been. The blonde. The Ferrari. What a stupid useless idiot.
    “Let’s go. Let’s go.”
    He grabs Yola’s bag, and Marta’s, because she wants to go with her auntie, then the two Chinese girls start shrieking and wailing.
    “We no stay. We come. We go. Bad woman hairs man come again.”
    “You pack up quick quick,” says Yola.
    They are all scrabbling about, shaking hysterically, and Tomasz is getting in the way, clunking them with his guitar each time he moves. Andriy thinks he sees a flash of blue lights between the trees down in the valley. Suddenly he realises what to do. He jumps into the Land Rover, manoeuvres round, backs up, and hitches the caravan to the towing bracket. There is even a socket into which he plugs the connector. It hardly takes two minutes. Then he is off.
    As he bounces along the edge of the field, a small figure in a green anorak stumbles out in front of him, seeming still the worse for eight cans of lager. He slams on the brakes. The caravan lurches and almost leaps off the towing bracket. Hm. He’ll have to remember not to brake so sharply.
    “Get in,” he yells. Emanuel clambers into the back of the Land Rover and settles into the