“I like this landscape,” says Irina. “It is how I imagined England. Like Wuthering Heights.”
“Peak District,” says Rock. “We’re nearly there.”
On a steep narrow road between two woods, Rock takes a left turn onto a rutted dirt track that leads into a grove of silver birches. At the bottom, among the trees, another bus is parked. As they drive closer, two dogs run out of the wood and race towards them, barking. Maryjane pricks up her ears and starts barking too, and Dog joins in. Then three people emerge, following the dogs. Andriy studies them curiously-are they men or women?
Andriy was rather annoyed when he realised this was our destination. I think he had believed we would soon arrive in Sheffield. Rock had promised vaguely that he would drop us off in Sheffield the next day. Or the day after. To be honest, I was in no great hurry to reach Sheffield and I was curious about this camp. Maybe there would be a tent or little romantic caravan perched up on a hillside where we could spend the night.
But there was just a jumble of old vehicles at the edge of a wood, some of them propped up on bricks, and the only tents were crude tarpaulins stretched low over bent saplings. Then I looked up and my eyes blinked, because up there among the leaves was a whole spider’s web of blue rope, stretching from tree to tree like walkways in the sky, and canvas shelters perched up in the branches.
Rock jumped down and ran towards three people-they must be his fellow warriors-who were coming out to greet us. He embraced them, and introduced us. They were all wearing the same baggy earth-coloured clothes. In my opinion, they did not have the appearance you would expect of typical warriors. The smallest of them, whose name was Windhover, had a completely shaved head. The two taller ones had the same twisted rat’s-tail hair as Toby McKenzie, though one of them had it pulled back into a ponytail. They were called Heather and Birch. Everyone round here seems to have these stupid names. In my opinion, people should be named after people, not things. Otherwise, how can you tell whether they are male or female?
Heather is the name of a small purple flower which is very popular in Scotland and it is also a woman’s name, but this Warrior Heather seemed to be a man, at least if facial hair is anything to judge by. Despite his feminine name, he looked quite chunky and muscular, with a thick brown beard that looked as if it had been chopped with nail scissors-maybe this is a warrior fashion. I was less sure about the other two. Warrior Birch was quite tall but seemed somehow insubstantial, with a soft voice and an apologetic manner. Warrior Windhover was smaller but seemed more ferocious, despite having no hair of any kind apart from eyebrows, which were dark and curved expressively over luminous sea-blue eyes that stood out vividly in the pale bony head. As we followed them back to the camp, I noticed that Windhover and Birch were holding hands, so one of them must be a woman and one a man-but which was which?
To my surprise I spotted a washing line stretched between a caravan and a tree, just like at our strawberry field, and on it were hanging three pairs of warrior underpants, all greyish, shapeless and soggy.
And this amused me, because to be honest they did not seem like the kind of warriors who would bother much with laundry.
In a clearing among the trees a fire was smouldering, with a blackened kettle hanging over it and some logs set around it as seats. They invited us to sit, and Heather poured tea for us, which was greyish, smoky-tasting, and very weak, into cups that were also cracked, greyish and smoky-tasting. Then Birch ladled out some food from another pot, and that was greyish and smoky-tasting, too. It reminded me of the warrior underpants. If you boiled them and mashed them up a bit, they would look and taste like this.
They were talking among themselves. Rock was telling them about his visit to Cambridge, and they were asking various questions about laboratories, but I wasn’t really paying attention, because I had spotted something in the trees. Up there among the leaves was a caravan-a little round green-painted caravan, sitting in the crook of a massive beech tree, secured with blue rope, and a dangling rope ladder leading up to it.
“Look, Andriy,” I said.
Rock said, “Aye, that’s the visitors’ caravan. You can sleep up there if you want.”
Andriy gave me look that set my body glowing from inside, and my heart was jumping around all over the place, because I knew for sure that it would happen tonight.
The bald woman, Windhover, has the most entrancing eyebrows-the way they lift enquiringly, curve suggestively, tighten into a frown, or rise up in arcs of surprise or pleasure. A woman’s eyebrows can be a very seductive feature, thinks Andriy. She is talking to Birch, the eyebrows rising and falling in rhythm. Earlier, he saw them holding hands, and as they bent their heads together there was a little stolen kiss. To watch two women kissing is very arousing to a man. Were they doing it on purpose? He has never met a homosex woman before, but he has heard that they are incredibly sexy. Never until now has he had an opportunity to find out for himself. He has heard it said that their passionate nature, thwarted by the absence of a suitable man, turns in on itself and fixes on another of the same kind. But should a suitably manly man appear on the scene, they say, the intensity of the ardour that will be unleashed is beyond description. There’s no stopping these homo-sex women once they get going. A man has to keep a cool head or he could drown in the torrent of their passion. What’s more, they say, the homosex woman will be profoundly indebted to the man who liberates her from her sterile inward-looking fixation, and will show her gratitude in an astonishing display of sexual abandon, etc, which he can only begin to imagine.
This poor hairless woman with beautiful eyes and seductive eyebrows, the thought of her mysterious body pale beneath its layers of dun-coloured wrapping, hungry for the love of a good man, fills Andriy with intense…pity. And although of course he is completely committed to Irina and to their future together, still, he wonders whether Irina would object if as an act of kindness, he were to free this sad confined creature from the prison of her thwarted passion.
Oh, don’t be such an idiot, Andriy Palenko.
After our meal, Rock said, “Come on. Time to meet the Ladies.”
He led Andriy and me and a small pack of dogs back along the track, over the lane and up a steep path through the wood on the other side. As we climbed up I stopped to look back at their camp, but it was hardly visible, the green-painted caravan and faded green tarpaulins hidden among the foliage. You could just see a wisp of smoke fingering up through the leaves. Warrior Heather, who had accompanied us, pointed out an outcrop of rosy-coloured stone.
“That’s the sandstone they want to quarry,” he said. “Pretty colour, isn’t it? It was licensed in 1952. Now they want to open it up again. But we stopped them.”
“You stopped it? With your camp?” said Andriy.
“Yes. We made them take it to court. The court threw it out. We should be celebrating, but actually it’s rather sad, because it means the end of this camp. Some of us have lived here for five years. Isn’t that so, Rocky?” His voice and manner of speaking were very cultivated, unlike Rock’s low-class regional accent.
“Aye,” said Rock, who had gone on ahead, and now stopped and waited for us to catch up. “Bloody sad. I’ve been here three year. Now I’ll have to become a wage slave again. Earn. Spend. Buy crap. Surrender missen to t’ vile clutches of materialism.” He re-lit the cigarette that was dangling on his lip. “Some of them’ve gone up to Sheffield and Leeds already. Thunder, Torrent, Sparrowhawk, Midge. Working in t’ call centres. Sweatshops oft’ information age, Jimmy called them.”