22 Britannia Road (11 page)

The bus passed through wooded countryside and villages, market
towns and open fields. When it broke down, Silvana hitched a ride on the back of a cart. She found another bus. When that ran out of fuel, she got off and walked.

On the road ahead stretched a long line of people with handcarts and farm carts loaded with mattresses, pulled by horses. Silent women pushed perambulators, bicycles weaving through them all, avoiding the crush of the slow-footed crowds.

Silvana swapped the high heels for a pair of wooden clogs and walked for days. She had no idea where she was going, but then nobody else seemed to either. Aurek howled at the wind and dribbled miserably. Around his lips an angry red scab appeared, worsening every day. He caught a cold. Green snot bubbled in his nose and he was hot to the touch. Nothing she did could make him happy. When a woman walking beside her offered to nurse him for her, she only hesitated for a moment before she took off her fur coat, wrapped him in it and handed him over, glad of the rest.

A storm had been gathering in the skies all afternoon and a biting east wind began to blow. Silvana looked up to see a black cloud to the west. It moved fast and began spreading out, rushing forwards like spilt ink, covering the sky, shutting down the daylight in minutes. The first splatter of rain fell, icy and needle-sharp. With a crash of thunder the storm was over them.

Silvana was soaked through in moments. She looked around for the woman carrying Aurek, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Over the sound of the whistling wind and the rain came another sound. It grew louder until it became a deafening drone. Silvana turned her face towards it. A low-flying formation of planes cut through the sky, their undercarriages gleaming.

Silvana swung round in panic, calling for her son. How could she have given him to another woman? How could she have been so stupid? People were dragging children down from the carts they were travelling on. Men and women ran through the rain. Horses were driven off the road into the fields, heading for the trees.

Then she saw her. The woman with Aurek. She was crossing the road, towards the fields. The hum of the planes grew louder. The
air changed and a gust rushed over her. Silvana began to run towards the woman. She heard the sound of screaming and the crash of thunder, smelt something burning. Looking up, she saw one of the planes spiralling in a high-pitched dive. Then there was only a great heat like a furnace door being opened and she fell.

She opened her eyes and felt a shooting pain in her leg. Her hands were cut and bloody, and her ankle had a deep wound in it. The storm had passed over and the water lying in puddles all around gleamed darkly. Silvana stumbled over the bodies of women and children and fallen horses. She was barefoot, and slipped and fell in a pool of blood slicked like oil across the road. On hands and knees she crawled. She pulled herself to her feet and searched for Aurek, offering up her life to any number of saints if she could just find the woman who had her boy.

Her mother’s words were in her head.
Just don’t love the baby too much. You don’t know what it’s like to love someone and lose them
. For the first time she understood. And she grieved for her. She grieved for her mother terribly.

She saw the coat first, the orange fur up ahead of her, like a wounded animal in the mud. The woman lay beside it, her legs twisted, as though she had jumped from a height and landed badly. Silvana touched the coat. It was sticky with blood. Her heart leapt, thudded and slowed as she opened the coat.

‘My baby,’ she whispered. He was lying in the coat’s silk lining, his face quite calm.

Janusz

‘Come with us,’ said Bruno, and Janusz shook his head.

They were sitting at the kitchen table in the cottage.

‘You can’t stay here. The Russians will pick you up. The government wants all Polish troops to resist. We can make our way to France. I’ve got money. If we can get to Budapest without being picked up, the Polish consul there will arrange a passage to Marseilles and we can join the French and the British. Come with us.’

Earlier, Bruno had picked up the basket of potatoes under the
windowsill and proclaimed himself the cook. Franek had plucked the chickens and Janusz had got water from the well. Now they had eaten and were sharing the remains of a bottle of vodka Bruno had produced from his rucksack.

The two men had been curious about what Janusz was doing in the cottage on his own. They’d asked so many questions he found himself telling them the truth just to get them to be quiet.

‘Dog!’ said Franek. He coughed and laughed and slapped his knees and spat on the floor. ‘You said you were burying a dog! I knew you were lying. I knew it. You’re a deserter.’

Janusz glared at him. ‘You weren’t there.’

‘You did the right thing,’ said Bruno. ‘You’d only be in a prison camp by now if you had stayed on the train. You can still fight. That’s what we have to do. We Poles have always fought for our freedom.’

‘Fight or run away. You’ll end up dead either way,’ said Franek. ‘That’s the way things are now. You might have the angel of death riding on your shoulder. You look like you have. You’re going to be called soon enough.’

Janusz ignored him. They were sitting back after their meal, the heat of the fire on their faces, an oil lamp burning on the table.

‘I don’t care,’ said Franek, belching loudly. ‘Eat, drink and loosen your belt. Nothing better. Who knows when we’ll be able to again, hey, Bruno?’

Bruno picked through the remains of the chicken. ‘We’ll fight for our country and when we come back, we’ll go to my house in Torun. I was the manager of a soap factory and I have a large house. We’ll drink Polish vodka until we fall down dead drunk. Then we’ll wake up and do it again. Of course, that’s if the looters haven’t stolen everything. The crime rate in the city has gone up crazily this summer. I can only imagine it’s worse in Warsaw?’

‘There were stories in the papers,’ said Janusz. His head was throbbing and his throat felt dry. Sleep was weighing down his eyes.

‘Thieves like wartime,’ said Bruno. He finished the last drops of vodka in the bottle and threw it on the floor. ‘All of them: Polish thieves, Jews, Lithuanians, Russians, Germans, Slovakians. They’re
all at it. Don’t believe the newspapers who talk of our brave people working against the Germans. There are spies and criminals who are profiting from this war already.’

‘I’ve never been to France,’ said Franek. He was cleaning his fingernails with the blade of his pocket knife. ‘I’d never been out of my village before I joined up. What about you, Janusz?’

Janusz looked at the fire burning in the hearth. ‘I have to get back to Warsaw. I have to see my wife.’

‘Be my guest.’ Franek waved his knife in the air. ‘Warsaw is in that direction. Just follow the German tanks and the guns. Nice knowing you, dead man.’

Bruno wiped his hands clean on his trousers. ‘The best you can do is get out of Poland. There are truckloads of men heading to Romania and Hungary. Come with us while you can. The borders are still easy enough to cross, but they won’t stay that way for long.’

Janusz stood up. He didn’t feel like having this conversation. ‘I’ll get some logs in. It’s cold tonight.’

He stepped outside and felt the night air clear his head. He trudged across the yard. Out there, under the starless night, with the damp smell of vegetation, it was possible to believe that the men sitting in the cottage were just figments of his imagination. They’d leave tomorrow and it would be as if he had never met them. And then he’d go home. He began to pile logs into his arms. Footsteps came across the yard and he stopped, peering into the blackness. Bruno stepped towards him, smelling of chicken fat and woodsmoke.

‘I thought I’d give you a hand. What I was saying inside earlier? I meant it. I can’t get to France with Franek on my own. I need someone with me who’s got his head screwed on right. You can’t stay here. Franek’s right about you being judged as a deserter …’

‘I got separated from my unit.’

‘And then you hid up here. I’ve seen what happens to deserters. Nobody knows what the hell is going on any more. People are scared. They don’t know who to trust. I saw an execution just days ago. A lad in civilian clothes wearing military boots. He was picked up by a lieutenant. He was made to stand in the middle of the road as the
troops went past. The lieutenant said deserting was a sign of cowardice. Then the crazy bastard shot him. There was no court-martial, nothing. The lad had military boots and civilian clothes and that was enough. There are army units marching all over the country. If they find you here …’

Janusz picked up a log and balanced it with the others in his arms. ‘I’m not a deserter.’

‘That’s for them to judge. Come with us. I’ve got money. Enough to get us to France.’

Janusz didn’t want to ask how Bruno had got his money. He thought it would be better not to know. As he straightened up he saw a flash in the darkness.

‘There’s a light. Over there.’

A soft yellow beam moved through the trees. The sound of an engine echoed in the distance.

‘It’s a motorbike,’ said Bruno. ‘It must be about half a mile away. There are troops nearby.’

‘Polish?’

‘Russians, I’d have thought. There it is again. Look, you can stay here and get picked up by them. Or come with us.’

‘You make it sound like I don’t have a choice.’

‘You don’t.’

Franek opened the door to the cottage, holding up the oil lamp. ‘What are you two doing? This fire’s nearly dead. I’m freezing in here.’

The lamplight twinkled in the dark. Janusz dropped the logs and ran towards him. ‘Put the light out.’

‘Get your boots, Franek,’ said Bruno, coming up behind him. ‘We’re leaving. Hurry.’

Janusz stepped inside the cottage behind Franek, and Bruno shut the door. Just before he cut the oil lamp, he caught a glimpse of Bruno and Franek pulling on their boots and coats: an overweight man who was surely too old to fight and a scared jackrabbit of a boy. Bruno touched his shoulder.

‘So? Are you coming with us? Will you come to France?’

Janusz nodded. He saw the reality of the situation. If he was
captured as a deserter he might be killed. If he managed to get to Warsaw, he’d be taken prisoner.

‘Well?’ said Bruno.

‘I’m coming.’

He would go with these men and fight for his country. He pulled on his coat and stepped out into the night.

Ipswich

Janusz goes into the kitchen, opens the pantry door and takes out a wooden box filled with shoe polishes, boot brushes and soft cloths. He glances out of the window. Silvana is in the garden, Aurek prancing behind her like a shadow.

Pushing a hand through the brushes and cloths, he pulls out a bundle of letters. He picks through them carefully. The first letter Hélène wrote him. That’s the one he wants to read again, although he knows every word by heart. Written on thin blue paper, her handwriting is spidery, as if she rushed to get the words on the page. Accented and punctuated with a leaking ink pen, her letters have the look of handwritten bars of music.

The words are hopeful and plain, simple as only love letters can be. She has covered the page on both sides with her inky thoughts, and Janusz reads, his fingers tracing her words. He is on a farm in the hills behind Marseilles. The stone buildings around him are solid and glow honey-coloured in the sunlight. Hélène stands in the distance waving to him and begins to walk towards him. He wills her to come closer, but he can’t do it. His imagination always keeps her at a distance.

Janusz looks up to see Silvana coming across the garden. A piece of hair has escaped from under her headscarf and Janusz stares at it, watching it coil over her forehead like a small grey question mark. He hurries to put the letters back and replaces the box in the pantry, his movements quick and furtive.

‘The washing will never dry in this weather,’ says Silvana, opening the back door. ‘Does it always rain like this in summer?’

She dumps the basket of clothes on the kitchen table. Aurek trails in behind her, and she closes the door after him.

‘Here,’ says Janusz. ‘Give them to me. I’ll light the fire and we can dry the clothes that way.’

He reaches out and as she picks up the basket to hand it to him, he feels the brush of her hand against his. The thought of the letters hidden in the pantry burns him like a flame, and the worst of it is that he knows he cannot be without them. As long as he has the letters, he still has Hélène. The sound of her voice, the pattern of her thoughts, the touch of her fingers in the folds creased into the blue papers.

‘Are you all right?’ Silvana looks at him, her face full of concern.

He drops the washing basket and pulls her to him, folding her thin shoulders into his hands. The weight of her head against him feels heavy, obedient, as she bends to his insistent embrace.

‘Sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘So am I,’ she says, wrapping her arms around him so he feels her gather him in.

He wants to love this troubled wife of his. She stands in a heap of wet clothes, holding him up, when it is he who should be strong for her. It is all he can do to stop himself from telling her he still loves Hélène, as if confiding in Silvana would release him from the pain he feels. The only person he could imagine telling is the one person who must never know.

He lets her go and picks up the washing.

‘Do you want tea?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘A cup of tea. That’s what we need.’

He looks up and meets her eyes. ‘It’s hard to know how to go on.’ He searches for words, a way to explain how he needs her to make sense of his life. He can understand nothing of the last six years. All that happened, the way he left Warsaw and didn’t go back, the love he feels for another woman, the war and all its bloody awfulness; all of it is a jumble of jigsaw pieces and he never knows which he will pick up.

All the time, he was hoping for peace; now it’s here, he’s like a man coming up to the light after years of living underground. It should be wonderful, but it’s not. He keeps pretending everything is all right, but the truth is his son hates him, his wife cries every night and he still dreams of the woman he left.