Emma remembers her conversation with Roberto– people wanting to help but not wanting to push themselves forward. She is about to say something more when the door swings open with a bang.
Tamas stands there, flower boxes on his shoulder, smiling at them. He has the most magnificent black eye that Emma has ever seen.
‘Ah, Les, there you are. They have been telling me you have been ringing. You are a good man. But here, you see I am returned!’
‘But your eye,’ Betty says faintly.
‘Ah, that is nothing. You should have seen my face when my cow stamped on it.’
‘But what happened?’ Emma asks, ushering him in and helping him unload the flower boxes.
Tamas becomes overly preoccupied sorting the boxes. ‘It was nothing… I may have missed my turn and made a mistake… My van well it will need some work. But I tell the farmer I will replant his tree, and he is a man who knows how it can be.’ He glances at them, looking like a guilty schoolboy.
‘My goodness!’ Betty exclaims. ‘Berta must have been worried sick.’
‘I called her from the farm phone. But my mobile, the screen it is cracked so it is the only call I make.’
‘Ah, so that’s how it was,’ Les declares. ‘All’s well that ends well.’
But Emma is not so sure they have heard the whole of it. She is all the more convinced that Tamas is holding something back when he changes the subject.
‘You have not won our game yet!’
Not knowing how to voice her misgivings, Emma resigns herself to the inevitable. ‘Hungary?’
‘No!’
‘Slovakia?’
‘Ha! No, that is not it.’
‘Poland?’
‘You people say we are all Polish. This is not true.’
Emma thinks this is a bit unfair; she has listed most of Europe before getting to Poland.
‘I give up!’ she says.
Tamas stamps his large feet on the floorboards, making the buckets of flowers dance. ‘I am from Moldova!’
Emma feels a surge of laughter and lets go of her worries. Tamas is back being Tamas. They are all looking at her expectantly, so she says the first thing that comes into her head (thinking it in Spanish first). ‘I’ve read they make very good wine in Moldova.’
Tamas is delighted. More stamping, more dancing buckets. ‘This is true! Berta’s family, they are famous for the wine they make.’ He stops suddenly, looking down at his big boots. His shoulders slump.
The cabin falls silent, and Emma is reminded of films where everything stops, characters frozen, mid-action on the screen. From the corner of her eye, she sees dust motes hanging in the air, caught in the sunlight streaming through the window.
Still Tamas looks at his boots. Still they all stand waiting.
The large man in front of them seems to visibly crumble. Hedoesn’t fall, but every part of him appears to sag as if in defeat. ‘I think Berta is leaving me.’
The spell is broken. Betty and Les spring into action. ‘Come over here, Tamas,’ Betty says, touching his arm. ‘You come and take the weight off your feet and Les will get us all a coffee.’
Les is already halfway to the door. ‘I’ll bring us some cake too,’ he says looking towards Betty, who nods encouragingly at him. ‘Be back in a jiffy.’
Emma steps out of his way and pulls out a stool for Tamas to sit on. He hasn’t said a word since his announcement, and again she imagines him as a large overgrown schoolboy: awkward, lost and, unexpectedly, painfully shy.
‘Oh Tamas,’ she says, stepping forward and rubbing his shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry. Is it … is that why you crashed?’
