22 Britannia Road (17 page)

Silvana

When the spring came, the farmer told Silvana and Hanka he couldn’t risk hiding them any longer. He looked nervous, as if afraid the women might make a fuss. Hanka shrugged and said it was time they were moving on in any case.

The farmer gave Silvana a pair of boots and Aurek a blanket. His wife handed them a parcel of food for the journey and told them never to come back or she would see to it herself that the Germans would find them.

It was May when they left, and the sun had started to dry out the muddy roads and meadows. Walking away from the farm, Silvana watched Aurek toddling ahead of her. He had grown and his baby curls were gone, revealing a thick head of hair as straight and dark as summer shadows. The sun tanned him and the boy looked happy, gambolling down the road, chasing butterflies and dancing this way and that.

They camped near a river and washed their clothes in the water, drying them on the bank in the sunshine.

‘My necklace,’ Silvana said, putting her hand to her throat. She was sitting naked on the riverbank. Hanka had told her nudity was glorious and she was trying to show that she believed her, although all she wanted was to put her clothes back on.

‘My glass pendant. It’s gone.’

‘That old weasel back at the farm,’ replied Hanka. She stroked Silvana’s neck. ‘He will have stolen it for his wife. You can’t trust peasants with anything. Do you want me to go back for it? I’ll get it for you.’

‘No,’ Silvana said. ‘No. It’s gone.’

Hanka made a daisy chain and gave it to her.

Silvana put it on and felt grateful once again for her friend’s kindness.

‘Here,’ she said. She held out her fur coat. She wanted to give Hanka something, a gift for her friendship, and she had nothing else to give. ‘You should have this.’

‘Really?’ Hanka slipped it round her shoulders, stroking the fur.

She gave Silvana her greatcoat in exchange. That afternoon, Hanka walked up and down the riverbank in the fur coat, head held high, like a model. She didn’t seem to notice the matted, dried bloodstains in the fur and the rips where the silk lining showed through.

‘I thought about stealing it off you anyway,’ Hanka admitted. ‘Fur doesn’t suit you. You’re too thin to wear it.’

They sat together on the riverbank.

‘We’ll go back to Warsaw,’ Hanka said. You can come to the Adria club where I used to sing with the Henryka Golda orchestra. I’ll take you dancing. You can hear me sing and I’ll show you how to dress properly. Pearls! We’ll have pearls and diamonds!’

Silvana laughed. ‘But what would I do?’

‘Do? You could sing. Learn to dance. Use that body of yours.’

Silvana shook her head. ‘I don’t think I can really go to Warsaw.’

‘You don’t want to come with me?’

Silvana remembered the soldier in the apartment, the smell of rain on his clothes and the bruises he left on her thighs.

‘Hanka, I can’t.’

Hanka threw off the fur coat and lay down in the sun.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘We won’t go.’ Then she turned on her side so that Silvana was left staring at her pale, naked back.

Silvana went to sleep under the stars that night. It was too early in the year for the mosquitoes to bother them, and she snuggled close to Hanka. Maybe she could go back to Warsaw? The soldier might be long gone. And she could change her name. Aurek’s too. She imagined taking the boy to Warsaw’s zoo to see the elephants. And the park where he could sail a boat on the lake. Then she thought of Janusz, and grief darkened her thoughts. Was he still alive? She shut her eyes. Everything was too complicated.

She woke when it was still dark with a warm feeling, as though she were lying between silk sheets. It was the joy of feeling Hanka’s arms around her. She drifted back to sleep imagining it was Janusz holding her.

The next morning she sat up and realized she was alone with the boy. Beside her something glinted in the sun: her glass pendant. She picked it up, held it to the sunlight and watched the colours within it shine. She looked around for Hanka, but she was nowhere to be seen.

All day Silvana waited. The sunlight thickened in the late afternoon and turned the light golden. Swarms of insects came down from the treetops and spun black clouds over the river. The sun sank onto the horizon, glowing red, its burning light turning the trees to silhouettes. Silvana knew Hanka wasn’t coming back.

Silvana was still sitting by the river the next day when a man walked up the footpath towards her. He was tall with high cheekbones, a chiselled nose and a wide mouth. Silvana grabbed Aurek and stood up.

‘Good morning,’ he said, and his voice was pleasant, laced with a Russian accent. He held out his hand and Silvana took it.

‘Gregor Lazovnik,’ he said. ‘Call me Gregor.’

Janusz

Sometimes Janusz believed they would never survive the winter. The weather was vicious, always chasing them, attacking, soaking and freezing them. The next safe house was outside a small town with a long street running through it and rows of wooden houses shuttered up against the winter. Dirty snowbanks pressed up against windows and covered the road; walking was difficult, the three of them stumbling through undisturbed deep snow.

The house was hidden in a copse of birch trees: a three-storey clapboard property with wooden carved balconies. Milk churns and tin buckets and wicker baskets dusted with snow cluttered the front door. A tall man with a thick beard and greying hair took them in. His name was Ambrose and he helped them out of their coats and checked their cold-nipped faces and fingers for signs of frostbite.

‘We’re going to get you into Yugoslavia. From there, you’ll get a boat to France. You’ll have to be careful, of course. If anybody finds out who you are, you’ll be arrested. But we’ll get you through, don’t worry. My God, but you men look hungry. Come on, we’ll eat.’

In a kitchen filled with copper pots and baskets of herbs, Ambrose made them sit at a wooden table and gave them vodka, boiled fish heads and a hot meaty gruel that Janusz thought the most delicious he had ever tasted. Even when it gave him the shits that night, and he ran out into the snow too many times, unbuckling his belt and dropping his trousers, he still wished he could eat more of the hot stew.

The next day they walked along the edge of a frozen lake, hunting deer with Ambrose, rifles slung over their shoulders. A thick fog was coming in across the lake, rolling towards them over the ice. Janusz watched Franek play with the hunting dogs that trotted obediently beside them all. They were rough-coated, long-snouted dogs that nipped at each other’s heels and wagged their tails so busily they knocked shards of silver frost into the air like tiny snowstorms everywhere they went. The boy looked as happy as the dogs at his side, and Janusz wondered if it wouldn’t be better to leave him here in this remote village where surely he would be safe until the end of the war.

‘I had a dog like this one,’ said Franek, stroking a big orange hound that beat its tail enthusiastically beside him. ‘My brother gave him to me.’

He stopped patting the hound and looked at Bruno, his face suddenly serious. ‘I want to see my dog. When are we going home?’

‘That ice looks thick,’ said Bruno, and Janusz watched to see if Franek could be that easily distracted.

‘It’s solid here, but further out it’s thinner,’ replied Ambrose. ‘This lake never freezes over completely. It has weak spots.’

Franek walked out onto the edge of the lake. ‘Look at this,’ he laughed. ‘Look at the dogs.’

They all laughed. Each dog was trying to run on the ice beside Franek, claws scratching for a grip as they flipped onto their sides and slid along on their bellies.

Ambrose lifted his hand for silence. ‘Shhh. Deer. Over there. In the trees.’

He raised his rifle.

Franek hurried off the ice, pulling his rifle off his shoulder. He and Bruno cocked their guns and waited. Janusz didn’t move. He had never enjoyed hunting. He didn’t want to shoot anything.

The men fell silent, their breath steaming in front of them. Janusz looked at them all, guns lifted, red cheeks, the sparkle of frost on their eyelashes. What if they stopped travelling? What if they came to a rest right here in this snow-covered world and waited until the war was over? Surely they could hide up here?

Ambrose sighed loudly. He lowered his gun and put the safety catch on. ‘No. I heard them but I can’t see them.’

Bruno did the same. He coughed as the tension left the small group and began stamping his feet, as if he had grown stiff standing motionless for too long.

‘I haven’t eaten venison for a long time,’ he said.

‘I’ve venison sausages back at the house,’ said Ambrose. ‘The trick is to make them with plenty of paprika.’

Janusz rubbed his hands together. ‘They sound delicious. And I’m starving.’

‘Those deer are around here somewhere,’ said Franek. He still held his gun, cocked, ready to shoot.

‘It’s not safe hunting in this fog,’ said Janusz, wondering when they could get back and eat the sausages.

Franek balanced his gun on his shoulder, broke a small branch from a tree and threw it onto the ice for the dogs to retrieve. The big orange-coloured hound ran for it. It turned with the stick in its mouth and slipped and slid onto its side.

Everything happened very quickly after that. Janusz saw the dog floundering, trying to get up, and then he heard the ice creak and groan, and watched in horror as the dog fell through a small gap into the lake.

‘Burek!’ called Ambrose. ‘Burek, you stupid dog!’

Ambrose pulled his backpack off his shoulders and stepped out onto the frozen lake, lowering himself quickly onto his belly and sliding out across the ice.

‘We need to smash the ice!’ he yelled. ‘Get the dog out from under it.’

‘I’ll get him!’ yelled Franek. Janusz saw the excitement in Franek’s eyes, the determination in the way he ran out onto the lake, past Ambrose.

‘No!’ Bruno shouted. ‘Get off the ice! It’s not safe!’

‘Burek!’ yelled Franek. ‘Burek! He’s here! I can see him. I can get him out.’

Franek hammered the ice with the butt of his rifle. He struck it hard twice, maybe three times. As he did so, a shot rang out and a flock of black crows in the treetops rose into the air. The gun sounded again and Franek fell to the ground, his body twisting. Ambrose slid along the ice beside him, sank his arm into the hole that had appeared and pulled the orange dog out of the water.

Something caught Janusz’s eye, a movement behind him, and he turned. Four red deer, their breath smoking in front of them, broke into the open, cantering past into the snowy woodland. Janusz watched them go. When he looked back at the lake, Franek lay motionless, his discharged rifle beside him, a red pool of blood spreading across the ice.

Ipswich

Carrying her laden shopping bags, Silvana crosses the road at the tram station, walking through one busy street and then another until she finds herself outside Tony’s pet shop. She hesitates. What is she going to say to him? She doesn’t even know why she is there except that he asked her and she said yes. She pushes opens the door, stepping into a cacophony of birdsong. The place smells of wood shavings and disinfectant, and Silvana tries not to cough as she breathes in the warm air.

It really is an emporium. There are puppies asleep on straw in cages, kittens, rabbits, even ducks and chickens. White mice scurry in large wire-meshed cages, and a whole wall is given over to an aviary filled with noisy parrots, canaries, budgerigars and thumb-sized zebra finches. Further into the shop she sees dark tanks of fish, flashes of rainbows and oranges and golds flitting in and out of shadowy waters.

‘I can get you any pet you want,’ says Tony. She looks up and sees him standing behind a wooden counter smiling at her, and feels glad she came. His face is full of pleasure and she can’t help but feel flattered. He looks genuinely delighted to see her.

‘What would you like?’ asks Tony, coming out from behind the counter. ‘A chinchilla? A tortoise? I supply zoos and circuses. An elephant for your son to ride to school on? A Suffolk ewe, a Norfolk ram?’

‘I was passing,’ Silvana says, putting down her bags and taking off her gloves, ‘and I thought I would like to see the animals.’

Tony gives her a kitten to hold, then a white mouse that tries to run up her sleeve. After that he puts a small black rabbit in the palm of her hand.

‘You can have him as a gift. He likes you.’

‘He’s lovely,’ Silvana says. ‘But I would have to pay you for it.’

‘Ah, well, this one is not for sale. It’s only available as a gift.’

She frowns at him, unsure of what to say. Is he laughing at her?

He leads her further into the shop, past aisles of dog biscuits and birdseed and bins of leathery treats for dogs to chew.

Silvana looks down at a large wooden crate beside her. It is full of yellowed bones. She tries to look away but she can’t; the bones have her attention. They call to her, all the polished ball and socket joints, the roughened shanks and nubbed ends. Piles of them, all around her. Her legs wobble underneath her.

‘They’re gruesome-looking, aren’t they?’ says Tony cheerfully. ‘Horses’ bones mainly.’ He lifts one out of the bin and then drops it back with the others, catching hold of her as she staggers sideways. ‘Oh my God, I’m sorry. Are you all right?’

‘I need some air. I think it’s too hot in here.’

Tony takes her arm and leads her through the back of the shop to a door. He pushes it open and hurries her out into a small yard.

‘But you look terrible. I’m so sorry.’

Silvana gulps clean air and steadies herself.

‘I have to keep the place warm for the animals,’ says Tony. ‘Was it the bones? I’m sorry. I’m such a fool. I should have thought.’

‘Thought of what?’ says Silvana, mopping her forehead with a handkerchief.

‘How you might feel. Did they scare you? I understand what you’ve been through. What happened in your country. I’ve read about it. Those camps. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

Silvana backs away from him. ‘I should go now.’