“My friend. Good you are here. We have excellent business opportunity. Good work. Good money. You will be rich. You will return to Ukraina millionaire.”
Andriy disentangles himself from Vitaly’s embrace.
“What is this opportunity?”
“In factory. Twenty kilometres only. Good work good money. All these people”-he waves his arm to include the dozen or so unsuccessful fishermen he has recruited-“can have good employment. You and Emanuel also. Twenty pound an hour for you. Supervisor rate. You have transport. You bring caravan, put all inside, take to factory.”
He must have read the doubt on Andriy’s face.
“I give you money for petrol.”
Still Andriy hesitates.
“And transport. How much you want?” He pulls a wad of notes out of his pocket. They are all twenties.
“But I have only Ukrainian licence. To take so many people maybe I need special licence.”
“Is no problem. Only if vehicles is with seats for more than eight people you need passenger licence. Now all modern transport is without seats.”
This seems an odd arrangement.
“The caravan is not here.”
“No problem. You fetch it. We will wait here.”
By the time Andriy and Emanuel have returned with the caravan, the crowd has grown. Vitaly climbs into the front of the Land Rover beside Andriy, with Dog at their feet. Emanuel and three other passengers sit in the back, and some fourteen hopefuls squeeze themselves into the caravan. Those that cannot fit onto the bunks sit on the floor hugging their knees. Andriy notices that the Bulgarian lad and his friends are among them. He waits until Vitaly has peeled off five twenty-pound notes from his wad and handed them over before he will even turn the engine on.
It is money well earned, for with such a weight on board, the caravan bucks and swerves all over the place and he has a job keeping it on the road. He has to drive mostly in first gear, with one-hundred-per-cent concentration, to avoid overturning on a bend. They have been driving like this for almost an hour, down roads which are becoming increasingly narrow and difficult, before at last Vitaly directs him down a lane with a sign saying Buttercup Meadow Farmfresh Poultry and a picture of a little blond-haired girl, holding a bunch of buttercups in her hand and clasping a fluffy brown chicken to her chest, with a slogan beneath: Partnership in Poultry. It all looks very nice.
But as they approach the entrance, a scene of wild commotion unfolds before them. What’s going on here? The iron gates are open and police in riot gear are holding back a screaming battling mob which is surging towards them, while a flock of crazed chickens is running round and round the yard squawking and flapping frenziedly.
“What is this, Vitaly? Where have you brought us?”
He puts the Land Rover into first and starts to nose his way forward through the gate. Suddenly he hears a high terrifying howl and a wild Chinese man wearing blood-spattered clothes and wielding a knife bursts through the police cordon and hurls himself onto the bonnet of the Land Rover, chicken feet spewing out of his pockets.
Who is this man? What does he want? His mad black eyes meet Andriy’s for a moment through the windscreen, his mouth jabbering urgently, then two policemen throw themselves on top of him and drag him struggling away. By the gate, two more policemen are wrestling with a big blond man wearing shorts, forcing his arms up behind him and bundling him into a van. This is definitely not a good situation.
“Why does this Chinese want to kill us? What is all this police, Vitaly?”
“Is OK. Police on our side.”
“But why police is here? What is going on?”
“All is because of troublemakers. Lazy Chineses refusing work. Police defend you right to work. We will show them good Ukrainian-type work. Good work, good money, eh, friend?”
Andriy is beginning to feel uncomfortable. To drive the overloaded caravan through this throng with all these police watching, when he is perhaps an outlaw on the run, and definitely has no passenger licence, and still has that five-bullet gun hidden in his backpack-is this a good idea? But it’s not just that holding him back, it’s something his father had said that had stuck in his memory, repeating the words of the visionary blind man of Sheffield in his speech all those years ago. He’s trying to recall-it was something about solidarity, the essential fellow-feeling of man-his father had drummed it into him-something about self-respect. Be a man-is this what he meant? That there are some things a man should not do, not for any amount of money?
He puts the Land Rover into reverse and starts to inch backwards.
“No, no. Go on! Go forward!” Vitaly jumps up in his seat waving his hands, and inadvertently steps on Dog’s tail. Dog lets out a yelp, leaps from the Land Rover and, drawn by a powerful smell of chicken, dives into the melee.
“Dog! Come back!” Andriy hits the brakes. “Come here! This chicken is not for eating!”
But Dog, seeing the challenge of the situation, wants to show them his true colours, and weaving in and out of the crowd with a few courteous woofs he soon has the chickens neatly rounded up in a corner of the yard, where they stand looking a bit surprised and clucking obediently.
Suddenly there is a bloodcurdling shriek and a small fierce figure, petite but voluptuous, breaks out of the crowd and hurtles towards them, arms flailing.
“Yola!” cries Andriy. “What you doing here?”
“I want home to Poland! This place is hell! All is cheating and lies!”
Then she spots Vitaly sitting in the front of the Land Rover and turns on him with her fists, pulling at him through the door, howling, “This is the one! This is root consul flexi dynamo!”
A policeman tries to drag her off, but she holds fast and fights like a fiend, biting and scratching, struggling against the policeman’s grip and kicking him so hard in his sensitive parts that he is forced to let go. Emanuel grabs her by the arm from the back of the Land Rover and pulls her in. Then Marta runs towards them, and Tomasz, and they are hauled in too, and all the time the Land Rover and caravan are backing up gently and Vitaly is shouting, “No, stop! Stop!” until they come to a place where it is wide enough for them to swing round, and at the last minute Dog comes bounding up too, leaps into the back, and Andriy puts his foot down and they’re away.
By the time they get back to Dover, Marta, Yola and Tomasz have told Andriy and Emanuel about everything that happened to them, Vitaly has tried unsuccessfully to get Andriy to give the money back, and most people in the back of the caravan have been sick.
Marta regrets that she didn’t manage to bring a chicken with her for their supper, but her views about food have changed in the last few days. After dropping off their passengers in Dover they make their way back to their favourite spot by the carrot-field, where she manages to improvise a delicious supper from white bread, margarine and cold fish, supplemented with carrots and garnished with lemon slices and roadside herbs.
Yola and Tomasz are helping to peel the carrots, and Yola is telling Tomasz about her disagreements with Geta. Tomasz gazes with fascination into Yola’s eyes, asking her to repeat the sounds she made in the toilet, which she does in her typical vulgar way, and they both fall about laughing like children. And Marta thinks, here we go again.
She remembers last time this happened, when Yola met a nice man, a plump greengrocer, and it was all holding hands and giggling and stolen kisses. And then Yola took the man back to her house in Zdroj, and as soon as he met little Mirek, as soon as he took one look at the boy, he was out through the door again like a cornered tomcat. He didn’t even take off his hat. He didn’t even let go of the box of liqueur chocolates in his hand.
“I piss on your cabbages!” Yola shouted at his retreating back, but the words slid off him like butter off a hot dumpling.