22 Britannia Road (16 page)

‘Why don’t you go home?’ she asked.

Hanka shook her head.

‘I was a child during the Great War. The Germans took over our house. They had their motor-repair shops in the barns alongside the vegetable gardens. My family hid almost all our possessions, the paintings, sculptures, the silver and so on; all walled up in the cellar. At the end of the war, all the valuables were safe but my mother died. She caught typhus from one of the soldiers. And now another war, and our house is taken over again. My father didn’t bother hiding the family heirlooms this time. The only thing he asked was that his children would be safe. He’s forbidden any of us to go near the house until the war is over. I can’t go home and I can’t carry on living like this. I need to be in the city.’

It was true that Hanka looked as if she belonged in the city. Her limbs were too fine for farmwork, her hands too soft.

‘I’m going back to see my lover,’ continued Hanka. Silvana watched
her face grow still, the tiredness settling in the shadows under her eyes.

‘He’s a musician. He plays American jazz, and the last time I saw him he told me to get out of the city. He said he didn’t want me having to sing for a German audience. So I left. But I miss him. I have to go back: I have to see him again. And I don’t care who I sing to. I just want my life back.’

Silvana rocked Aurek on her lap and Hanka smiled at her.

‘So, little Silvana, will you come with me?’

Silvana felt her heart ache. ‘Yes,’ she said. Though the thought of returning to Warsaw filled her with dread.

Janusz

On a moonless night, a guide took Janusz, Bruno and Franek to the Hungarian border. They were used to each other now, and Janusz had even begun to feel fond of Franek and his mad ways. The boy’s heart was in the right place and he was as brave as they came. They’d been given papers, but it was still best to cross at night, in secret. They reached a rocky promontory and watched as border guards with dogs patrolled the path below them.

‘The guide said we’ve got about fifteen minutes before they come back,’ said Bruno as the guards rounded the corner out of sight.

‘I need a machine gun,’ said Franek.

He was shivering and shaking, and Janusz wanted to tell him to stop bloody moving.

‘I’d take them all out,’ Franek said. ‘Bang, bang, bang. Shoot them all down. If I had my old gun from home, I could do it.’

‘When do we go?’ asked Janusz. He felt sick, and realized he too was shaking.

‘We go now,’ said Bruno. ‘The guards won’t be expecting anything tonight. Nobody would want to be out on a night like tonight. Even the wolves would find it too cold. One at a time. Every three minutes. That gives us plenty of time to make it across. You go first, Jan. Then Franek and I will follow you. Don’t worry, we’ll be right behind you.’

Janusz couldn’t feel his legs any more. He doubted his ability to run. His breath was coming in quick gasps. He was trembling with tiredness and his heart was hammering.

Bruno nodded. He gave Janusz a push. ‘OK, it’s time,’ he whispered. ‘Good luck. Go!’

Janusz got up and started running, scrambling down the rocks.

He didn’t look back. If he was going to die, so be it. He stumbled. His legs were not listening to his brain; they buckled under him, but he forced himself to keep going. There was no one on the road. He crossed it and threw himself into the deep snow, where he rolled downhill. He slithered and slid and slammed into a fir tree. Getting to his feet, he ran. Finally he reached the shelter of trees and, on hands and knees, crawled into a forest of dark pine trees and lay there. He could taste blood on his lip, and a pulse thumped in his neck. He could feel it: the blood pushing through him, the feeling of being alive. He lay still and his heart pumped, fear twitching his eyelids, pulling at a nerve in his cheek. He worked his way further into the trees and dug himself into the snow. Shivering, he heard noises around him. Cracking branches and scuffling sounds. He hoped Bruno was right. That the night really was too cold for wolves.

Franek came into view, running and jumping through the snow, smashing full pelt into Janusz, knocking him in the face with his elbow.

‘Sorry,’ panted Franek. ‘I didn’t see you.’

‘Jesus, Franek,’ whispered Janusz. ‘I think you’ve broken my bloody nose.’

‘Christ, no, I’m sorry …’

‘Forget it, you big oaf. You made it. We both did.’

‘We made it,’ said Franek. ‘I’m a good soldier.’

He sounded so proud, Janusz only just managed to stop himself from hugging the boy.

Ipswich

The pile of wooden planks underneath the oak tree gets bigger all the time, and Aurek climbs it, jumping up and down, feeling the wood wobble underneath him. If the pile keeps on growing, it will be even easier to climb his tree than before. He will jump on the wood stack and be able to leap into the tree’s lower branches. Hop onto them, just like a sparrow hunting insects.

He sees Janusz walking up the garden and stops jumping. For once, he’s not treading on any precious plants, but still, he knows the enemy doesn’t like to see foolishness in his neat and perfect garden.

The enemy stands with his hands on his hips, surveying the scene. He is frowning, his blue eyes hooded by his eyebrows. Aurek mimics Janusz’s stance, hands on hips. He knows he has only a limited amount of time before he will be berated for this kind of cheekiness. He furrows his brow just like the enemy. Tries to feel what it is like to be his father.

Before they’d come to England, Aurek had imagined his father would look different. Mama had told him he had blond hair, but he doesn’t. It’s an ashy colour; when he rubs hair oil over it, it turns a shade darker, like metal. It makes him look old, older than Silvana. Maybe he isn’t his father. Maybe his mother made a mistake? Sometimes, Aurek wonders if his real father isn’t still in Poland searching the forests for him and his mama. He studies the enemy a little longer. He’s not so bad. Sometimes, Aurek finds himself forgetting to hate him.

Janusz moves, folds his arms. Aurek does the same. He feels laughter warming him, but holds it back. The enemy salutes. Straight-faced, Aurek does the same. Then Janusz cocks his leg like a dog and farts loudly.

The laughter escapes from Aurek; it bursts out of him quicker than fizzy lemonade in a shaken bottle, shooting down his nose, making his eyes water. He laughs and holds his sides.

‘You’re a funny little lad,’ says Janusz. ‘But it’s a pleasure to see you laughing. Be careful climbing on the wood. I don’t want you to get splinters.’

He turns and walks towards the house, and Aurek wishes he’d come back to play the game again.

‘
Ojciec
,’ he calls. ‘Father?’

But Janusz doesn’t hear him, and goes into the kitchen. Aurek salutes him again anyway.

The following Saturday, Tony brings Peter round and Janusz invites them into the garden, pleased to be able to show them his family working together on their flower borders and lawn. He points to Aurek crouching among the roses, scratching at the ground.

‘Aurek has his own little vegetable patch over there,’ he explains, wishing the boy would look less furtive in his actions. The child has been digging up the carrots he has been asked not to touch. Janusz has explained many times to the boy that it’s too early in the season and the carrots are too small, but Aurek still loves to pull them up, brush the earth off them and eat them. Janusz glances at Tony, but he doesn’t seem to notice Aurek’s behaviour. He is looking at Silvana.

Silvana is kneeling on the lawn, a small knife in her hand, digging at weeds, just as he showed her. She is muttering to herself, a concentrated liturgy of Polish words and their English translations:
Jaskier ostry
,
powój polny
,
mniszek pospolity
,
cieciorka pstra
;
buttercup
,
bindweed
,
dandelions
,
daisies
.

Janusz calls her name and she looks up from her work, her red headscarf fluttering slightly in the breeze. She stands up hurriedly, wiping her hands on her apron, apologizing for not seeing they had visitors.

‘Don’t let me disturb you,’ says Tony. ‘Your flower beds are marvellous. All these Victory gardens left over from the war are so depressing. This is a real peacetime garden.’

‘Exactly,’ Janusz says.

Silvana extends her hand. ‘Good morning, Tony.’

‘Silvana, lovely to see you. I was just saying what a beautiful garden you have.’

‘Janusz is very proud of it. Today he is building a tree house for Aurek.’

‘A tree house?’ Tony claps his hands together. ‘What a wonderful idea. Can I help?’

‘Of course,’ says Janusz, delighted by Tony’s enthusiasm. Tony reminds him of Bruno: the kind of man who always knows a way out of a scrape. He is a loner, as far as Janusz can see, a man too taken with his business to worry about a home and a settled life. Not like Janusz, who needs a wife and a family to make sense of his days. Janusz wants the polished key to his front door in his pocket, a hook on the wall for that key when he comes home, his newspaper and dictionary beside his chair in the front parlour, his family gathered around him at mealtimes. But still, he looks at Tony and likes him for being different.

At the bottom of the garden, Janusz saws planks and Tony pulls out old nails from the wood with a claw hammer.

‘I’m going to show you how to make a dovetail joint,’ Janusz says to Aurek and Peter. He holds his hands up, makes a fist with one. ‘This is the mortice. The tenon is like this.’ He holds his other hand like an arrow, fingers straight. ‘They fit together like this.’ He pushes his straight fingers into the hole in the middle of his fist.

Peter does the same. So does Aurek. Janusz smiles at Aurek. He’s pleased his son has a friend at last. The two of them may get into quite a bit of trouble at school, but it is just schoolboy pranks. A bit of tomfoolery. Normal at their age. And Aurek speaks good English now, without a hint of a foreign accent. That makes Janusz proud. Children learn so quickly. The boy has even stopped making bird noises. Janusz knows he’s a bit hard on him about that, but the boy has to learn. When he goes back to school in September, he will fit right in.

They pull the wood up into the tree, Janusz and Tony doing the heavy lifting while the boys are allowed to hammer in nails. The tree house has four sides, its roof made from corrugated iron. A perfect den for a boy at the bottom of a perfect English garden.

The garden is the key to everything. A place for them all. Janusz has planted herb beds and roses for Silvana. Sage and hyssop, marjoram, sprawling mint and low-lying clumps of thyme sit under pink rose blossoms. The lawn is flat, rolled and velvety green. Borders are filled with dahlias, hollyhocks, yellow and white irises, lilac and love-in-a-mist. Beyond these is the vegetable patch. Here potatoes grow in leafy rows. Onions are pushing up pale globes out of the soil. Marigolds have seeded freely through them all. They keep the vegetables happy and ward off insects. And now, in the oak, Aurek’s tree house will look down on them all. He’d like his father to see this garden, his grandson playing in his den.

‘You’re a clever man, Janusz,’ says Tony, breaking his thoughts. ‘I can’t put up a stack of shelves on my own.’

‘I had a tree house when I was a boy,’ says Janusz. ‘I hid up there with my slingshot and I could hit a bird’s nest right across my parents’ garden.’ He pauses, and then, seeing the way Aurek is listening, his gaze concentrated upon him, he continues.

‘I had a tin whistle my father gave me. I sat in my tree house and played it for hours. I made a terrible noise with it. I’m not musical. Not like my sister Eve. She plays the violin like an angel. And I collected snails for racing. I loved that. My friends brought their snails along and we raced them down the trunk of the tree. The first to reach the bottom was the champion.’

‘Well, that’s not so far away from my own boyhood,’ says Tony. ‘I had a whole stable of champion racing snails. My father loved them. I bred the snails and he cooked them in garlic butter.’

Peter pulls a face.

‘Don’t look like that, Peter. Give the boy a choice and he’d eat roast beef and Yorkshire puddings every day of the week. One day I will take you to Italy, young man, and you’ll learn about real food.’

Janusz is intrigued. ‘I was in southern Italy. Only for a month or so, back in ’44. We flew over the countryside dropping propaganda leaflets. It looked beautiful. What part of the country do you come from?’

‘My parents came from Genoa. I was born here, but my heart is in Italy. I eat like an Italian. I love my food.’ He thumps his belly and
then opens his arms wide. ‘And look at this,’ he says. ‘Your good wife coming down the garden path with a tray of tea things. What could be better?’

They sit at the foot of the oak tree on a tartan blanket. Silvana pours the tea and Tony helps her, passing round the teacups. Janusz lies on his back looking up into the green branches and the blue sky beyond.

‘What are you looking for?’ Peter asks. ‘Enemy fire?’

Tony takes a cup of tea from Silvana. ‘It’s certainly a beautiful view from here.’

‘Enough blue up there to make trousers for a dozen policemen,’ says Janusz.

‘Ah, we say trousers for a sailor here,’ says Tony. ‘A bit of a poet, aren’t you? But of course you are; you have Silvana. Your beautiful muse.’

Janusz glances at his wife. She doesn’t seem to be listening. She has been lost in her own world recently.

‘You were in a hurry the other day when I saw you,’ Tony says to Silvana.

‘What other day?’ asks Janusz. She has not mentioned seeing Tony.

‘A week or so ago. I saw your lady wife out shopping.’

‘I was busy,’ Silvana replies. ‘I didn’t have time to stop.’

‘Next time, I insist you come and have a look at the pet shop.’

‘All right,’ she says. ‘I will.’

Tony turns to Janusz. ‘What a lucky chap you are, having a wife who takes such good care of you.’

Tony laughs and Silvana blushes. Janusz leans back on his elbow, pleased to see his wife looking happy for once. He stops himself from reaching out to her. Even though she is right there beside him, Janusz feels she has become distant from him. Further away from him than the blue sky above.