His eyes are shut, so he can’t see the odd looks the others are giving him, but his mouth is open, startlingly pink in his youthful brown face, and he is singing aloud in a sweet high voice, along with the choir. And as he sings, tears are pouring down his cheeks. There is something so vulnerable and yet so powerful about the closed eyes, the open mouth, the tears and the music, that it makes Andriy catch his breath. Who is this young man? Andriy feels an urge to put his arm around him, but he holds back, as you would hesitate to wake a sleepwalker, for fear that the sudden shock of reality would break his heart.
A flash of memory comes to him-a circle of enraptured faces at a secret Orthodox service down in a woody ravine, where his grandmother took him as a child. The priest sang the litany and sprinkled them with holy water, promising forgiveness for their sins and solace for the grinding daily hardship of their lives. “Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy.”
His father said that religion was the opium of the masses and it was a shame that his mother, who was a good woman in every way and a good communist, should believe such nonsense.
In the silence at the end of the music, he goes up to Emanuel and touches his arm. Emanuel opens his eyes, looks around him, and smiles.
“Ndili Bwino, my friend.”
Her prayers have made her feel pleasantly righteous, and after righteousness it is natural to feel hungry and thirsty. So as far as Yola is concerned, their first priority when they get to Dover is to have some lunch.
Unlike in Canterbury, where all the shops were open, in Dover everything is very closed. At last down a back street they find a small, gloomy shop with two narrow aisles, smelling of spices and something musty and not very nice. The shopkeeper is a plump Indian woman of about Yola’s age, dressed in a green sari, with a red spot on her forehead. Yola studies her curiously. She is not unattractive in an Asiatic sort of way. The red spot seems to be in the wrong place. Surely it should be on her cheeks.
Yola as the supervisor is naturally in charge of the shopping, but in the interests of harmony she lets everyone have a say. They agree on five loaves of white sliced bread (better than coarse Polish bread and quite inexpensive), margarine (more modern than butter, and also cheaper), apricot jam (Tomasz’s favourite), teabags and sugar (they have been drying out and reusing their teabags, but there is a limit), bananas (Andriy’s choice, typical Ukrainian), salted peanuts (a special request from Emanuel), a large bar of rum and raisin chocolate (Yola’s own little luxury), two large bottles of Coca-Cola for the Chinese girls, and a tin of dog food. Tomasz lingers in the off-licence section, studying the labels, but his request for a bottle of wine is firmly rejected by Yola. Unnecessary. Too expensive. Andriy is also hanging around in the off-licence, looking at the beer.
“Did you see the mark-up Vitaly has been making on the beer he has been selling us?” he says grumpily. Typical Ukrainian.
Marta has stayed in the Land Rover with the dog, and Yola cannot remember her special request.
The Indian shopkeeper tut-tuts as she puts all this through the till.
“You are not eating a balance diet.”
“Not balance?” It is Yola’s responsibility to see they eat properly.
“Protein. You must have a protein. If you eat all this you will be feeling sick.”
Yola looks at their pile of shopping and realises that she is right. Just looking at all this stuff is making her feel a bit unwell.
“What can you recommend?”
The shopkeeper hmms and ruminates.
“Pilchards.” She points down the aisle. “Fishies. Good for you. Cheap. In tin over there.”
Yola thinks the fishes in the picture on the tin look plump and appealing and she is pleasantly surprised by the price. They take two tins.
Between the waist of the shopkeeper’s sari and the bottom of her blouse is a soft bulge of brown flesh. In civilised countries this area of a woman’s body is normally concealed, but Yola notices that the Ukrainian is staring at it fixedly.
“Madam,” he says, very politely, “I wish to ask, from where you learn such wisdom?”
What a flatterer that beetroot-brain is, almost like a Pole. (Of course Polish men are renowned throughout the world for being flirtatious, on account of their habit of hand-kissing, but sadly this does not make them good husband-material, as Yola has discovered to her sorrow.) The shopkeeper laughs modestly and points at a picture above the counter of a smiling wrinkled old woman dressed in bright blue, with a triple string of pearls and a stylish blue hat.
“This lady is my inspiration.”
Everyone gathers round to look. The old woman in the picture looks back with a cheerful smile and a wave of her gloved hand. Yola thinks that to have both a veil and little blue feathers in a hat is unnecessary: one or other would have made a sufficient statement.
“She is a lady of extreme age and wisdom. In her long years, which unfortunately are now over, she gave many cheery indications of the important things in life. To have friends come from afar is a pleasure-this is one of her great sayings.” The shopkeeper folds her arms on the counter with a friendly smile. “You not from round here. I think you all come from afar, innit?”
“You are right, madam.” Tomasz smiles ingratiatingly. “We have come from all the corners of the world- Poland, Ukraine, Africa, China.”
He too is staring at the brown bulge. Really, what can you do with men?
“And Malaysia,” adds Chinese Girl Two.
“Well, have a lovely time, my dears, and bon appetit.” The shopkeeper beams at them over the counter. “That is another of her sayings.”
“This is a great saying,” says Emanuel. “I will commit it to memory.”
But Chinese Girl One whispers to Chinese Girl Two, “I think that saying attributed to the old lady in blue is in fact a saying of Confucius.”
And Chinese Girl Two points at the red spot in the middle of the shopkeeper’s forehead, and whispers, “I think it is a bullet hole.”
They giggle.
I AM DOG I AM GOOD DOG I SIT WITH MY MAN I EAT DOG FOOD MEAT MAN EATS MAN FOOD BREAD FISH WE ALL EAT WE ALL SIT ON SMALL SMOOTH STONES NEAR BIG-WATER SUN SHINES HOT THIS WATER IS NOT GOOD TO DRINK BAD TASTE BIS-WATER RUNS AFTER DOG DOG RUNS AFTER BIS-WATER BIS-WATER HISSES AT DOG SSSS DOG BARKS AT BIS-WATER WOOF DOG SNIFFS BIS-WATER SNIFF SNIFF NO DOG SMELL NO MAN SMELL ONLY BIS-WATER SMELL EVERYWHERE STONES WOOD WEEDS WASTE DOG FINDS MAN-SHOE BESIDE WATER WET SHOE GOOD MAN-SMELL SHOE DOG BRINSS WETSHOE TO SOUR-PISS-STRONS-FEET-SMELL MAN HE IS HAPPY GOOD DOG HE SAYS I AM GOOD DOG I AM DOG
Andriy feels quite queasy by the time he’s finished his lunch. Those pilchards in tomato sauce-they were good, but perhaps he shouldn’t have eaten so many. While the others set out on foot to the ferry terminal, he spreads his towel on the pebble beach and stretches out in the sun, with Dog beside him. The slow pull and surge of waves down at the water’s edge is soothing. Dog falls asleep almost instantly, hissing and snoring as rhythmically as the sea. Andriy is incredibly tired, but each time he is on the point of sleep the fluttery panicky feeling starts up and wakes him. I did not do it. The left-side driving, the excitable passengers, this self-willed caravan, the argument with Ciocia Yola, and a niggling unspecific anxiety which swirls around in his head like a mist without taking any fixed form, all have tired him out yet left him unable to relax.
He must have started to drift away at last, when he is brought back abruptly by a thunderous crash just a few feet from where he is lying. His blood freezes; his heart begins to pound. Half asleep, as if waking from a nightmare, he listens to the dreadful sound-a long crescendo, a terrible reverberation, a slow fading rumble. It is the long-drawn-out growl of the earth crying in pain. It is the roar of the coalface collapsing in the darkness below ground.