22 Britannia Road (14 page)

‘I don’t know,’ Silvana said. She tried not to think of Janusz and focused instead on the warm cup in her hand, the steam rising from it. ‘And what about you?’ she asked Hanka.

‘
Szlachta
,’ Hanka said, tossing her head back. Nobility. And the subject was closed.

The barn Silvana lived in with Hanka, the daughter of nobility, was a small thatched building made of wood and plaster. The farmer and his wife kept rabbits in it for meat. There were rats that came around the cages at night, but by making beds on stilts, the women managed to keep them away from them.

They cared for the farm animals and were fed and given shelter. Sometimes, when it was very cold, Hanka demanded that the farmer let Silvana and Aurek sleep in the house with them. Silvana didn’t want to. She knew the farmer’s wife didn’t like her, and she feared the farmer might like her too much.

The farm was isolated, miles from any villages, but still, every time the farmer’s wife spoke to her, it was about German troops and how she wouldn’t hide the two women if they arrived at the house. Silvana felt it was only a matter of time before they were found. The farmer’s wife told them women from the next village had been sent to work on German farms. Their children had been taken from them.

Hanka said it was all talk and nothing more than that. ‘Listen, that woman needs us. We do as much work as both of them on the farm. She won’t hand us over to any soldiers.’

‘It’s the way she looks at me,’ said Silvana. ‘Like she hates me.’

‘Well, of course she does. You’re younger and prettier than she is. Look, stay in the barn if you want. But if you do, you’d better stop moaning in your sleep. I am not going to be woken up by your bad dreams every night.’

Silvana blushed hotly and the other woman put her hand out and touched her cheek. ‘It’s all right,
moja droga.
Don’t listen to me, my dear. I don’t mean to be harsh. We all have nightmares. This war is the worst one of all. Tell me, what is it that makes you cry?’

Silvana stroked Aurek’s head and tried to stop the tears pricking at her eyes.

‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘I think I miss my husband, that’s all.’

Janusz

Flat river plains and wide fields stretched ahead of them. It seemed to Janusz, in those early weeks of their journey, that the air itself was filled with unease and danger. The weather turned vicious, gales blew and raged, uprooting trees, shutting down the landscape in folds of grey rain so that Janusz could often only see a few feet in front of him. Snowstorms came, the cold gnawed into him and whiteness burned his eyes. And every step took him further away from Silvana and his son.

They passed towns filled with Polish army units, groups of men giving up their weapons to the Russian units that came from the east. They saw the Red Army soldiers marching, singing their beloved national songs. So many tired-looking men and thin horses. Bruno always led them away from the crowds even as Janusz felt they should step forwards and join up with the other soldiers. In villages and towns, the snow-banked roads were clogged with men, horse-driven wagons, artillery pieces and dismal field kitchens.

Janusz longed for Warsaw. He wanted tall buildings and wide urban streets, pavements beneath his feet, the sound of the trams, the theatres and glass-fronted shops. The things he hated before, he now missed: the gangs of dippers, the thieves, the Jewish street hawkers,
the
koniks
and cab drivers. He missed the colours of the gypsies with their violin-playing and their red trousers and rainbow scarves, selling their wares off the Royal Way, looking like they belonged to the last century.

But most of all he missed Silvana. The touch of her, the hard frown she wore like armour against the world, her arms tight around him at night, the sound of his son’s breath as he slept in the cot beside them. Instead he was stuck on this journey, and he followed Bruno and Franek silently, like a dog follows a cart, hypnotized by the metallic clink of its wheels.

They stopped at farmsteads and were hidden in attics and barns. Bruno had been telling the truth when he said he had money. Where he could, he bought sugar, salt, vinegar and soap. They became precious commodities and worth more than cash. He bartered and got them all civilian clothes.

Slowly they became aware of an underground movement of men and women. The Home Army, it was called. Men and women who were proud to be Polish, who wanted to fight any way they could. These people sent them on to safe houses and told them which towns and villages to avoid.

There were men from other regiments trying to get across to France, and news was swapped and speculated upon. Stories filtered through to them via secret whisperings and illegal pamphlets, and it was always bad news. There had been large-scale arrests by the Russians in the east: government officials, police, clergymen. Always at night. Nobody could ever be sure he would sleep through a peaceful night.

Janusz slept lightly. He woke at the slightest noise, ready to move. He saw himself in a mirror in a house and didn’t recognize the stubbly, red-eyed man looking fearfully back at him. The loneliness of the journey made him short-tempered. He felt sure arrest was just around the corner. Each new day brought more miles to cover. His feet hurt. He had blisters that, unattended, turned to sores.

Bruno was stronger. He said they owed it to Poland to stay free. If hiding was the way to do it, so be it. France was their only chance.
There, they’d be trained to fight, and they’d whip the Germans and the Russians both.

‘I have my mother’s medallion to protect me,’ explained Franek. He held a chain on his neck and showed them the small silver disc hanging from it. They were in a barn waiting for a guide to come and take them to the next safe house. Outside, a gale blew, and the barn creaked and rocked like a boat in rough seas.

‘Saint Sebastian will see me through. God won’t be calling me yet. He calls those he loves, but he’s not ready for me yet.’

Bruno patted his duffel bag. ‘I’ve got my insurance. Some nice gold watches and cufflinks to barter with. And a couple of pounds of flour. What about you, Janusz? What will save you?’

Janusz stared down at his feet. ‘I have my boots,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think they’ll save me. In fact, I think they’re killing me.’

Bruno and Franek looked at him. Bruno started laughing and Franek joined in too. A full thirty seconds behind the joke, Janusz suddenly coughed up a laugh.

It had been a long time since he had found anything funny.

Weeks later, they stood on the banks of a frozen river, preparing to leave Poland and cross into Romania. They had avoided the towns filled with soldiers, and a guide had taken them along the riverbank for miles during the night. Now, at dawn, Janusz felt numbness creep across his chest, as if his shirt bound him too tightly. He undid the buttons on his coat and loosened the necktie around his throat, but the numbness spread to his head, tightening around his eyes. He was leaving his country and didn’t know if he would ever return. Flat fields lay behind him, and thick woodland welcomed him across the narrow river. He thought of turning back. Of making his way across Poland again, working his way north, back to Silvana.

‘We’ll walk across,’ said Bruno, tapping Janusz’s arm and waking him from his thoughts. ‘The ice will hold us.’

It took only minutes, stepping out onto the ice, feeling it solid under them, and then they had crossed over and were running for cover into the trees.

Janusz stopped and looked back at the border to his country. He
stood quietly for a moment as though at the graveside of a friend. How surprising then, when he found in his heart a strong fluttering, a surge of hopefulness. No matter what he expected to feel or how he tried to make this last image of his own country fix in his mind, the thrill of adventure overtook him and he ran after the others, into the trees, towards the future.

Ipswich

It smells of tree roots inside the underground shelter and Aurek likes it. He’s hidden away here. He hears his mother calling for him, but he stays put. She can come and climb in with him. They can sit in here together, just like they used to. He still misses the feel of her against him.

Yesterday, the last day of school before the holidays, his teacher called him a brat. A heathen child who needed punishing for his rudeness. She told him to take his shoe off, and then smacked his legs with it. He had bitten her hand, grabbed his shoe and run away. She came to the house after that, with her hand in a bandage. The enemy told her he was sorry and that Aurek would be punished.

Aurek doesn’t care. They are all wrong. He is not a heathen child, whatever that means. He is a wild boar. All thick black hair and wet snout, scraping the earth, finding tree roots in the dark.

He spits on the ground, rubs a finger in it and wipes mud across his face. Through a gap in the metal he can see Silvana frowning, looking up the garden.

She walks up to the shelter but doesn’t crawl inside to be with him. She bangs on the boards and starts an avalanche of water droplets that fall on him. Aurek digs into the muddy ground and curls up.

‘Aurek,’ Silvana calls. ‘Peter is here. He has brought your clothes back. Why don’t you come out and say hello?’

Aurek ignores her. He longs for the encircling safety of the trees of his past. In the forest the trees spoke to him in green whispers, telling secrets that could crack the bones of those that did not belong. He walked among them and felt their words like falling leaves, soft and understanding. He does not like this England where he must
wear his school cap straight, sit up and recite the Lord’s Prayer from memory. He does not belong in a country where he must not swing his legs on the bus, where he mustn’t eat with his fingers, must endure the smart of a ruler across his knuckles in class and not fight back. He digs the ground with his fingers again, angrily scraping away at the earth.

‘Is Aurek in there?’

Aurek stops still. It is a man’s voice he has heard.

His mother replies. ‘Yes. Yes, he’s hiding. But he will come out soon.’

‘Don’t worry. We can come back another time. Perhaps he’d like to come to play at the pet shop?’

Through a gap, Aurek sees Peter and his father standing together.

‘Why don’t you crawl in with him?’ Peter’s father says.

‘Dad, you know I can’t fit through that gap. Hey, Aurek! You coming out?’

Aurek considers what to do. He’d like to see Peter, but it’s not easy to change out of his pig shape. He can’t bring himself to be a boy just yet.

He watches Tony Benetoni grinning at his mother. He can see the man’s slicked shiny hair, his large nose, his white teeth in his open mouth. Peter is sucking on a pink stick of rock. Aurek hears his mother apologizing and watches them walk away. He grunts, snarls, lets out a yell and rolls over in the dirt like an animal in pain.

After they have gone, Silvana puts the flowers Tony brought in a jam jar on the windowsill, arranging them for a while, shifting first one dahlia and then another as if she is organizing a complex colour scheme, when in reality they are all white.

She can’t remember the last time anybody bought her flowers. In her grandmother’s village, dahlias were always known as bachelor’s flowers. Giving white ones was a single man’s way of telling a girl he liked her. She allows herself to dwell on this and then dismisses it as ridiculous. Of course he wouldn’t know about Polish traditions.

She had white flowers for her wedding, an armful of
peppery-scented carnations. Janusz’s father had grown them in his garden. She moves the flowers from the windowsill onto the kitchen table and climbs the stairs with a cup of tea for Janusz.

‘Are you awake?’

Janusz stirs in bed and sits up, yawning.

‘I’ll be glad when I don’t have to work the night shift any more. I don’t like sleeping in the afternoon. Did I hear voices downstairs?’

She puts the teacup down, perches on the edge of the bed and thinks of the flowers again.

‘Tony brought Peter to play with Aurek. But Aurek was in the shelter at the bottom of the garden and refused to come out. Tony and Peter left a minute ago.’

‘I wish Aurek would be more polite. That boy is the only friend he’s got. I think I’ll get rid of the shelter.’

‘Is that Aurek’s punishment?’

‘For his behaviour at school? No. I’m not going to punish him. I thought I’d knock down the shelter and build him a tree house.’

‘A tree house?’ Silvana smiles. ‘He’d love that.’

‘Where is Aurek now?’

‘Still in the garden. Why?’

‘Because I want you all to myself for a moment.’

He kisses her, pulling her down onto him.

‘You’re all I want,’ he whispers. ‘You know that? You and the boy.’

His eyes are so blue and clear, they shine with a kind of truth that shames her.

She closes her own eyes and silences him with a kiss, pressing against his warm body, but memories circle her, like wolves in a forest, the same ones that attack her in her dreams. She moans and Janusz misinterprets the sound for pleasure. He pulls her under him and she wills her body to follow his. Only her mind lags behind. She clings to him and her body curves to his shape, gratitude moving her towards a place of unexpected desire. A place where her memories leave her alone and she is briefly full and whole, just like she was before the war.

‘Thank you,’ she says afterwards.

They are lying side by side, breathing heavily.

‘What do you mean?’

She wonders at it herself. What is she thanking him for? For making love to her? Or for helping her forget, no matter how fleetingly, the memories that live under her skin?

‘I don’t know. For finding us, I suppose.’

She gets up, wrapping the sheet around her, and lifts the curtain to look out into the garden, checking Aurek is still safe.

‘I love you,’ says Janusz, sitting up and reaching for his cigarettes. She turns and looks at him.

‘Thank you,’ she says again, and they both laugh.

‘Come back to bed.’

She folds herself into his arms and watches him smoking, a small smile playing on his lips.