22 Britannia Road (24 page)

She goes downstairs, and Janusz nods his approval.

‘You can wear it on Friday.’

‘Friday?’

‘We’re going to the cinema. Doris and Gilbert are coming with us.’

‘The cinema?’

She thinks of Warsaw and the film theatres where she went to see matinee performances. Sitting on velvet seats in the dark, her pregnant belly almost touching the seat in front, she had been carried through her favourite American movies on a wave of hopefulness. She’d gone every week and thought that the child when he was born (despite her mother’s craziness, she had always believed her prophecy that she was carrying a boy) would grow up to love films.

Doris claps her hands together and Silvana is woken from her reverie. She is grateful to Doris for snapping her out of that line of thought. She pulls Aurek to her, folding him into her skirts.

‘We’ve even got a babysitter arranged,’ says Doris.

Janusz nods. ‘It’s only for a few hours.’

Silvana shakes her head. She is not leaving the boy with a stranger.

‘Who?’

‘Tony!’ says Doris. ‘I bumped into him the other day. He said to tell you he’s looking forward to seeing you. He’ll be here on the button at 6 p.m., Friday night.’

Janusz runs his finger along the inside of his collar. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it?’

‘There you are,’ says Doris. ‘All fixed.’

‘Silvana?’ says Janusz. ‘Are you all right?’

‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ laughs Doris. ‘White as a sheet, you are.’

Silvana sits down, her stiff skirts rising up around her. She clasps her hands together and forces herself to smile.

‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Absolutely fine.’

Silvana

Silvana spent days wandering through the forest. It was without end. After Gregor left and the women followed him, she didn’t understand the trees. No matter how far she walked, she never found the edge of the forest and she never saw any other signs of life. She looked for men, for the partisans hiding out in the forest, but there was no one. She and the boy were alone. Perhaps, she thought, she should have been more friendly with Gregor? Wherever he had taken Elsa, maybe he could have taken her and Aurek as well.

It was the tiredness that got to her. She was too tired to be cold any more. Too tired to notice the ache in her teeth and the pain in her back from hunching against the icy wind.

She imagined lying down on a bed, one that she and the child could stretch out on. She thought she wanted sleep. After a while she knew it was death she hoped for. Silvana understood everything then. She was her mother’s daughter. Unlucky, incapable of bringing up a child.

She remembered the snow in the apple orchard when she was a child and told Aurek about it, hoping to bring some magic to the ice around them. She had made angels in the snow. She and the other children searched for untouched snow then lay down in it and stretched their arms and legs so they appeared like semaphore stars spreadeagled on the ground. Carefully, the child lying down would be pulled clear of their imprint and a magical shape like a cut-out angel would be left in the snow with no sign of how it had been made.

She hadn’t expected the winter to be so terrible. It wasn’t like the snow she remembered from her childhood at all. It was brutal. The
trees glowed blue with hoar frost and the bare branches glittered. Her teeth ached with cold. Her hands stiffened; her jaw froze. Fingers swelled. Trying to do anything with them was difficult.

Aurek stopped crying. He lay in Silvana’s arms with his eyes half closed and his mouth open. His apple-red cheeks turned frost-white. She could feel him giving up.

She discovered a small clearing in the forest, a dip in the landscape where only fire-scorched tree trunks remained. A bomb must have exploded there, scooping out earth and trees like a giant hand, leaving a bowl-shaped area sheltered from the winds by high banks of snow. Silvana sat on the crater’s edge and slid down the bank on her back with Aurek between her legs. At the bottom, in a flurry of snow, she saw something that made her rub her eyes and blink.

It was then she knew she would never leave the forest again. She stared at it, taking in its beauty. It was the most colourful thing she had seen for a long time. The gold fringing beckoned her like a friend. Tightly sprung, button-backed in red velvet, a chaise longue sitting on a carpet of white like something enchanted.

Silvana had found other furniture before: tables, broken stools, cupboards. She’d never found anything as beautiful as the red chaise longue.

Black crows flew through the bare branches of the sky. They were urging her on, she was sure of it. For days she had heard them calling her name. At first she’d thought they were mocking her, but then she’d understood. She was part of the forest. The crows were telling her that. They had been leading her here. This was the end. The boy was already fading in her arms.

Silvana walked towards the chaise, her eyes fixed on the roll of carved mahogany at its back. With numb fingers she traced the smooth shine of wet wood and pitted woodworm, black circles against the white crystals of ice that clung to its outline. Dusting off layers of snow, she sat down. Aurek leaned against the red velvet. He put his mouth against it and tasted the colour on his tongue. Silvana bent forwards and lifted him onto her lap, where he whimpered, curling tightly into her. She leaned her head back. It felt good to be giving up. To know she wasn’t going to have to walk any further.

It wouldn’t take long for the cold to crackle through her. For the glacial sleep to come. Aurek’s body, normally as insubstantial as the powder snow that drifted in the wind, began to feel heavy against her. This way, she reasoned as she let go of consciousness, they would be together for ever. She and the child. She whispered to him, explained how sorry she was to fail him. Twice she said it. Two sorrows, banked up against her, cold as the snow.

Janusz

When his skin began to peel in dry white flakes, Janusz dozed in a shaded barn, the scent of thyme, sage, rosemary hot in his nostrils. Gradually he felt stronger, his skin healed and he began to help Hélène water the animals, collect eggs. They worked quietly together. She showed him how to milk the goats and stack the hay in the barn. Their hands touched as Hélène passed him eggs.

‘How old are you?’ she asked one morning.

He had wanted to ask her the same question but hadn’t wanted to be rude.

‘I’m twenty-four,’ she said. ‘
Vingt-quatre.
Here, catch!’ She threw an egg in the air and he caught it. ‘Bravo!’ she cried and threw him another.

‘Twenty-four years old and my mother worries I am too old to find a husband. She thinks I’ll be an old maid all my life.’

‘And you, what do you think?’

‘I think I’m waiting for the right man to come along. Here, catch!’

The egg hit him on the chest and broke in his hands.

She took a twist of hay and wiped his shirt clean.

‘Take it off,’ she said. ‘I’ll wash it for you.’ She reached out to unbutton it and he backed away, feeling foolish.

‘Suit yourself,’ she said, and walked out of the barn.

She came back to find him hanging his shirt up to dry in the sun. He saw her watching him, leaning against the barn door, her arms folded, a smile playing on her lips.

‘Hey,
soldat
. If you’ve finished being a washerwoman, I want to show you something.’

She led him into the barn, shooed the roosting chickens away and pulled a tarpaulin off a red car covered in dust. She untied her apron and wiped it over the bonnet, revealing shiny paintwork.

‘Whose is this?’ He ran a hand over it, tried not to think of how he wanted to take Hélène in his arms. Tried not to look into her eyes.

‘It’s Pascal’s. My brother. It doesn’t work. He came back from Marseilles with it a week before he joined up.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Normandy. He’s the reason you’re here. Madam Agut, who runs the boarding house where you were staying, is a friend of his.’

Janusz could smell Hélène’s soap, the heat of her skin. He lifted the bonnet and peered inside. The spark plugs were probably worn. He pulled one out and held it up to the light. Hélène took it from him.

‘Kiss me.’

She put her hand on the back of his neck and pressed against him. He pushed her away.

‘I’m married.’

He was an idiot to say it, but the words tumbled out. A defence against his own desperate desire to tell her he loved the sight of her, the sound of her.

‘So where is your wife?’

‘Back in Poland.’

‘Exactly.’

She kissed him and he felt warmed through, as if he hadn’t known until that moment how much coldness still dwelled in his body. He tried to speak, to make her see sense.

‘I’m not … This is all I can give you. And I have to leave soon.’

‘So we should be together, while we can.’ She kissed him again. ‘We only live one life. How can you let this pass?’

And he couldn’t.

She slipped off her dress and pulled his head down, cramming a brown-nippled breast, sweet as a sun-warmed apple, into his mouth. He was crazy for her. He dropped to his knees, pulling her down with him, and she climbed across him, strong and determined, her thighs smacking his ribs, hands pulling his hair, the bowl of her hips spread across his face, knees knocking his ears.

He tasted her, but when he tried to hold her she flicked her hips and was away again, sliding down his body. He caught her tightly in his grip and held her as they rolled together, bumping and bucking, on the barn floor, bruising elbows, buttocks, faces, knees.

They looked like a couple of wrestlers when they had finished, covered in sweat and dirt. He held her in his arms and she sank her head against his chest. They dozed for a while then he looked down at her and kissed her, his arms scooping her up, drawing her into his embrace. She wound her body around him.

She was a blanket then, against the world. He didn’t have to think of murdered old women and young men shooting themselves for the sake of drowning dogs. All the cold and the fear that had brought him here was gone. There was nothing more in his life than her, this warm, beautiful girl, the tough southern sunlight and the pungent smell of sex in his nostrils.

They sat together on the back seat of her brother’s car. For an hour they didn’t speak. There were no words for how he felt about her. He traced the lines on her hands, kissed the tips of her fingertips, the calluses on her palms, the span of muscle between her thumb and forefinger. Her stubby fingers and calloused palms delighted him. No matter what happened, no matter where he went after this, he knew he would always remember her hands. She asked him about his life and he told her about Silvana and Aurek.

‘Wait.’ He pulled a photograph from his trouser pocket. ‘There. That’s them. My wife Silvana, and that’s our son.’

‘She’s pretty. And the boy looks like an angel. I’m very happy for you.’

‘Are you?’

‘No. I’m jealous.’

He looked into her eyes. She smiled, shrugged her shoulders and kissed him.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ she said when she pulled apart from him. ‘I know I can’t keep you.’

Janusz allowed himself to think of being lost. Of being forgotten up there on the hill. Weeks passed. Hélène told him love was something that nobody could guard themselves against, and he liked to
believe her. She visited him at night, slipping naked between his sheets.

‘We should be careful,’ he whispered, though the thought of her carrying his child was pleasurable to him.

Hélène sighed and stroked his forehead. ‘Don’t worry about that. I can look after myself.’

She climbed across him the next morning. He lay in bed and watched her go into a small back room, fingers of sunlight reaching in through the half-opened shutters and playing patterns across her long back, her short strong legs. She left the door slightly ajar so he could see her bent over, one foot up on a tin bath, talking to him about vinegar and lemon-juice douches. He’d never met a woman like her.

Ipswich

‘
Bellissima
’ is the first word Tony says when Silvana opens her front door. She blinks at the sound of his voice, as if someone has shone a dazzling light in her eyes.

Tony lifts his hat and smiles.

‘Silvana, it’s wonderful to see you. What a lovely dress. You’re a woman made to wear beautiful clothes. If only you could have met Lucy. She loved fashion. But how are you? Doris told me you had the flu a while back? I hope you’re better now. You certainly look radiant.’

She’d forgotten how broad he was, taking up the door frame with his size. Her first instinct is to throw her arms around his neck. Then, when he mentions his dead wife, she folds her arms across her chest instead. He steps back and Peter comes into view, carrying paper bags in his fists.

‘I’ve got sweets,’ he says. ‘Liquorice wheels and humbugs.’

Tony laughs. ‘We bought out the sweet shop, didn’t we, Peter?’

She smiles at the plump, red-faced child. ‘Why don’t you go up, Peter? Aurek is waiting for you in his bedroom.’

‘I’m sorry I haven’t seen you for so long,’ says Tony as they watch Peter climb the stairs. ‘I have a house in Felixstowe by the sea, and I’ve been there. Peter’s grandparents got him into private day school, so I’m afraid he hasn’t seen Aurek for a while, has he? Anyway, here.’ He lifts up a string shopping bag. ‘I brought you a birthday present. A bottle of Tokaji and a fresh rabbit.’

‘Tokaji?’ It’s been years since she saw a bottle of Hungarian wine. ‘We had Tokaji at our wedding party,’ she says, turning the bottle over in her hands. ‘It’s very generous of you. And rabbit will make a change from horse meat. I find I can get nothing else at the moment. It’s a lovely present. Thank you.’

‘A pleasure.’ Tony lowers his voice. ‘How are you? I mean, really?’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Silvana, desperate to change the subject. ‘I haven’t asked to take your coat. Here, let me help you.’

She almost cries out when his hand brushes against her wrist, and she is glad she has put the wine down because she would surely have dropped it.