22 Britannia Road (28 page)

‘What is it?’ Silvana asked, looking at the thick cloudy mixture.

‘Chaga. And yes, it tastes as bad as it looks. But it works. I get it from a Russian doctor who makes it for me.’

Silvana held the bottle up to the light. ‘A Russian doctor?’

‘He’s in hiding, not far from here. He is a very good doctor.’

There was only one person who could have made this for her. Gregor. And this was the cottage, then, that he had got food from when they were all together in the woods. Silvana handed Ela the
bottle and said nothing, but for weeks afterwards, every time she looked across the fields, she wondered whether Elsa had had her baby and if Gregor might come to the cottage one day.

Janusz

Janusz and Hélène lay on a grassy mound together. Below them the Mediterranean sea was a thin pen line of blue meeting a sky the same colour. Villages, vineyards and towns, soft and gauzy in the heat, spread out below them. Waxy-leaved myrtle grew in clumps around them, hiding them from view.

‘Stay,’ Hélène said, her head resting on Janusz’s shoulder. Stay here with me. We can be happy together, you and me.’

Janusz smiled at her. ‘How can I? If I stay here I’ll be arrested.’

‘The war won’t go on for ever.’

Janusz pressed his fingers against his eyes.

‘Janusz, are you listening? Will you? Will you stay?’

He took his hands away and looked at her.

‘Stay,’ she repeated.

He thought of the sailors at the docks in Marseilles, unloading goods from Africa, the Ivory Coast, places where the sun mapped lines on faces toughened by sea air and salt water. When he had stepped onto the docks nearly three months ago, Janusz had envied these men their bronzed muscularity. He had listened to their voices and tried to copy their fierce vowel sounds, the questioning rise to every sentence. He felt closer to them now, as if his body turning from red to brown was part of something deeper. Janusz was warmed by their laughter, comfortable in his new skin.
I am a Frenchman
, he thought. He was wrapped in sunlight and love and a dream he didn’t want to wake from.

He pulled out the photograph of Silvana and Aurek from his pocket and looked at it.

Hélène took it from him. She stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff.

‘Will you stay?’

She held the photo out over the edge of the rocks.

‘Shall I let this go?’

Janusz hesitated.

‘I love you,’ Hélène said. ‘Do you love me? Shall I let it go?’

Janusz shut his eyes.

‘If you want to.’

Hélène gave the photo back to him and he put it on the ground beside him, pulling her into his arms.

The same day, as Janusz was standing on the barn roof, setting red tiles into place, he heard the noise of a motorbike coming up the hill towards the farm. He slithered quickly down, climbed down the ladder and stood in the shadows watching as the motorbike cut up the white stone drive, sending dust clouds high into the air.

He picked his way carefully around the back of the barns and watched Bruno get off the bike and walk across the yard. The fields beyond the farm looked tempting. Nobody would find him up there. Or he could hide in the barn. He could get himself lost all day and not come out until Bruno had gone. But no, he had to see what this was about. He’d see his friend again and explain he was staying.

He found Bruno smoking a cigarette, talking to Hélène in the loud, playful voice he used with women. Janusz quickened his pace and stepped between them.

‘Bruno.’

‘Janusz? Hélène was just telling me you weren’t here. There’s a boat leaving for Southampton tonight. The British are taking Polish soldiers with them.’

Janusz glanced at Hélène. ‘I’m not going.’

‘You’ve got no choice, mate.’ Bruno dropped his cigarette, stamped on it. ‘The Germans are moving down through France. They’ll be in Marseilles before you know it. I’m sorry, Jan. You have to come with me. Pack up your stuff. We have to go now.’

‘What did he say?’ Hélène asked. Then she backed away from him. ‘I can see it in your face. You’re leaving, aren’t you?’

‘No, I …’

She slapped him on the chest and turned away, hurrying towards the house.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Bruno.

Janusz ignored him. He hurried after Hélène and caught up with her by the front porch.

‘Wait.’

‘For what?’

She fell into his arms, sobbing.

‘I’ll come back,’ he said. ‘I will.’

‘You have to,’ she whispered, clinging to him.

He could hear the stiff bravery in her voice and was reminded of Silvana. Was this what the war would be for him, a series of goodbyes?

‘You have to,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll die without you.’

‘I swear I’ll come back to you.’

She raised her eyes to him. ‘I’ll be here. Waiting.’

Janusz let her go and she turned, walking into the farmhouse, shutting the door behind her. Janusz tried to fix the moment in his head, to give himself a picture of her: how pretty her hair was, the way her shoulders rounded as she hugged herself, her steady step up as she went indoors.

‘I’ll come back,’ he said to the wooden front door. ‘I promise I’ll come back.’

He had nothing to take with him, only the clothes he stood in. He walked back to Bruno and climbed onto the motorbike behind him. They rounded a corner and tall, dark poplar trees hid the farm from view. Then he concentrated on watching the road in front of them.

A coal boat took them to Britain. It set sail with its crop of foreigners, and Bruno and Janusz were billeted down in the hold, eating hard yellow cheese from the iron rations they had been given, sitting on sheets of metal, shoulder to shoulder, squashed in with crowds of men all talking about their beloved
Polska
.

Janusz borrowed a Polish guidebook on England from a group of men, the only book of its kind among hundreds of them, passed between them all like a bible. He started studying it, learning a few phrases, muttering them under his breath.

Good morning. How do you do? Do you know where I can find a post office?

He and Bruno had stilted English conversations about buying
umbrellas and visiting the doctor.

‘Is that all they do in Britain?’ Janusz asked, handing the book over to another soldier.

Bruno shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Here’s another I learned. ‘Will you please sell me a ticket for the dance tonight?’ He grinned. ‘That one’ll come in useful. All those British girls.’

Janusz put his head in his hands and thought of Hélène. He curled up, vulnerable as a child with stomach cramps, rocking himself. Then Silvana and his son entered the confused fields of his thoughts. He reached into his pocket for Silvana’s photograph and couldn’t find it. He remembered Hélène handing it back to him, but what had he done with it then? He must have left it behind.

A storm blew up in the Atlantic and the boat crashed and heaved in heavy waves. Janusz was sure they would never reach England, home to doctors, dancers and umbrella sellers. That either the high waves or the patrolling German boats would sink them.

Down in the bunks, where the throbbing of the engines was deafening, all around him was seasickness and complaining. Janusz sat in silence, watching the anonymous faces, the backs of heads, the crush of men, everybody covered in fine layers of earthy black coal dust. As the ship dipped and groaned, the men shifted back and forth in the gloom, hundreds of Polish lads rolling together like a cartload of potatoes rattling across a vast furrowed field.

Ipswich

Aurek knows it is best to look from underneath. Keep your head down and push through with your shoulders. From underneath they appear as a dark spot in the branches. Like a diver swimming towards the light, push upwards until your hand touches the mossy side of the nest. Take only one egg – except from rooks’ nests, where you can take as many as you like, because everybody knows they are the devil’s birds.

It is the enemy who taught Aurek to collect bird’s eggs for fun. At home they have a box lined with cotton wool, full of soft-hued eggs. Each one has a label.
Blackbird. Linnet
.
Song Thrush. Warbler
,
Treecreeper
,
Flycatcher
. There are important rules too. If a bird is sitting on the nest you must leave it be. Most birds nest in bushes and thick hedgerows, so expect scratches and nettle stings. These things are proof of your bravery.

When he and his mother lived in the forest, Aurek ate the eggs he found, picking holes in the top of them, sucking the soft insides into his mouth, swallowing them down in one.

‘Like an oyster,’ his mother told him. She’d never eaten oysters but she’d supposed they were similar, fluid and solid at the same time. ‘They’re a luxury,’ she said. ‘In Warsaw only the rich eat oysters.’

Aurek will never tell the enemy he ate the eggs he found. He won’t tell him that sometimes the eggs were full of blood or the blue-skinned beginnings of birds. That they picked the shells off those and cooked them on a stick over a fire. He will not mention the fledglings he stole from nests or the strips of birch bark he chewed on in the dead of winter. Even a child knows that it is shameful to admit to that kind of hunger.

The enemy says egg collecting is part of learning about nature
and every boy should be interested in Britain’s wildlife, fauna and flora. In the kitchen, Aurek watches him heat the point of a needle in a flame until it blackens. He uses it to make a tiny hole in each end of a blackbird’s egg, pushing the needle inside the fragile shell, mashing up the contents. Then he presses his lips to the hole he has made and blows gently until the yolk and the white slip out of the other end, into the sink. When it is Aurek’s turn, he finds it hard to resist sucking in. He wants to draw the eggy mess into his mouth and swallow it. But he won’t do it. Not in front of the enemy. He wouldn’t want to disappoint him.

Aurek stares up at a tall elm tree with Peter beside him, thinking of rooks’ eggs. They are picnicking in the woods today, and there’s a kind of glory in the thick spring air, the shudder of fresh leaves and the sunlight flickering through them. The grasshoppers buzzing in the nettles sound like a fanfare just for him. It’s better than any orchestra at the town park’s Sunday bandstand, and it makes him want to climb every tree he can see. If he could, he’d split into a hundred different boys so he could climb them all, and he imagines the boys and himself perched up high like a great cackle of magpies.

Peter’s dad brought them here on this perfect Saturday. He arrived at the house in the morning with Peter and a picnic basket. Silvana told him they couldn’t go out. Not when Janusz was working and she has the front steps to clean and rugs to beat.

Tony said the day was too good to waste doing housework. Then he went down on one knee, making a big show of it, begging her to give him her duster. Finally she looked at Aurek and asked him what he wanted to do. He nodded. Let’s go to the woods. Please. Silvana handed the duster to Tony, who threw it into the air and declared the day a holiday.

And now here they all are in the woods, and Aurek is so happy he can hardly stop himself from dropping to his knees like Peter’s dad.

In the elm’s uppermost branches is a big, untidy nest of twigs. Two black rooks hunker on a branch beside it, heads tucked into their wings.

‘You can’t climb up there,’ says Peter. ‘Those birds look evil.’

‘You’re not to do anything dangerous,’ Silvana calls. Aurek and
Peter look back through the trees to where she and Tony sit on a rug setting out the picnic.

‘The pond,’ Peter says. ‘Let’s go to the pond. We could look for the kingfisher’s nest.’

Kingfishers are Aurek’s favourite. The birds dig tunnels in riverbanks and line them with tiny fish bones. To Aurek they are bejewelled palaces. If he could shrink himself small enough, he’d live in one of their nests.

They traipse through the undergrowth until they reach a dip in the landscape where an expanse of water mirrors the trees and clouds. Peter finds a long stick and bashes it against the reeds. Frogs leap in the shallows. Dull-winged birds take flight, and flying insects whirl and zip across the pond’s unbroken surface.

Aurek kicks off his sandals and steps into the water. His feet sink into clouds of sediment and mud sucks at his heels. He wades through clinging green algae into a bed of tall rushes, the smell of disturbed mud deliciously thick in his nostrils. Aurek is halfway round the pond when two moorhens skid across the water in alarm. He sees their nest hidden in a clump of bulrushes. It is difficult to get to, as it is in deeper water, but twenty minutes later he climbs onto the bank holding a clutch of eggs in his hands.

Peter picks up a stick and prods Aurek with it.

‘Eurgh. Stay away from me. You stink.’

Aurek sits down a safe distance from Peter’s stick. Smoke wafts past his face and he wrinkles his nose. Peter is smoking a cigarette that he stole from his father’s cigarette case.

‘There was a murder in Ipswich last week,’ Peter says. He takes a drag on the cigarette and coughs. ‘A woman had her throat cut.’

Aurek cracks an egg, sniffs it and tips the wobbly contents into his mouth, swallowing them down. He is not in the mood to listen to Peter’s story. He is too full of the woods and the sharp smell of spring. He stares at his knees, the whiteness of them against the black mud drying like crackled lizard skin over his feet and ankles. Then he pulls on his sandals and walks back to look at the rook’s nest. Peter trails along behind him.

‘It was in the newspaper. My dad says she was a call girl. Do you
know what that means? There are lots of them down by the docks.’ Peter waves his cigarette as he speaks. ‘Common women. I’ve seen them with my dad. They wear black a lot. Grandad says they’re called ladies of the night.’

Aurek doesn’t care what they are called. They sound like bats to him.
Ladies of the night.
Women with black cloaks flying through the air.

‘So what,’ he says. ‘In Poland there are murders all the time.’ He hesitates, wondering whether to tell Peter the things he has seen. He decides not to. He doesn’t want to think about them. He stops by the elm tree and rests a hand on its wide trunk.