22 Britannia Road (5 page)

‘Don’t be scared,’ she tells him. ‘He’s your father.’

Aurek whispers to her frantically, ‘
Nie.
No. No.’

‘He won’t hurt us.’

‘Of course I won’t,’ says Janusz, and she looks up into his frowning face.

She gives him an apologetic smile, untangles herself from her son’s tight embrace and looks around. The house feels cold and smells of new paint. The sound of their footsteps echoes as they walk through the narrow hallway into the kitchen at the back of the house. It’s a nice little room with a wooden table and three pale-yellow chairs. There is a cooker, a dented-looking kettle sitting on its hob. Ragged lace curtains at the window.

‘I washed the curtains,’ says Janusz. ‘I know they’re old and a bit worn, but once you’ve settled in we can get some new ones.’

Silvana notices how other hands have polished the doorknobs smooth and other feet have worn a small dip in the stone floor by the sink.

‘Who lived here before?’

Janusz looks surprised by her question.

‘I don’t know. Does it matter?’

Silvana shakes her head. She knows she is the interloper here. And she is afraid the house knows it too.

Janusz picks up a package from the kitchen table. ‘A present. It’s an apron.’

She tries it on. A red cotton skirt with a blue band at the waist. In Poland every new wife was given an apron. Maybe it’s the same custom in England. Whatever it is, she thanks him several times. Janusz runs a finger around his collar, as if it is a little too tight, a gesture she remembers, one of the shy habits of his youth.

‘I want you to see the garden,’ he says, unlocking the back door and throwing it open. ‘It’s a bit wild, but I’ve cut the grass and dug some beds for roses over there. And I’ve got a vegetable garden started. I want a real English garden for us.’

Silvana nods, although she doesn’t know why an English garden should be different from any other kind of garden. The long lawn is tidy and the flower beds are freshly dug, the earth dark and rich as coffee grounds. Aurek darts past her and runs across the grass, crashing back and forth haphazardly, like a fly caught in a jar.

Janusz leans against the door watching him, a wide-shouldered man with a tired face and strong blue eyes. The suit he is wearing creases across his back. He looks foreign in it; a bit English. He looks older too. But what did she expect? They are both older. She wonders if he knows how much hope she has invested in him, in this new life, this rented house. It seems unfair to ask so much of him after all this time apart, but what choice does she have? Her loyalty is with the boy. He needs a proper home. She has to see to it that Janusz understands this.

Janusz turns and looks at her. ‘So you never saw my family after I left?’

Silvana feels the blood rush to her face. Was this why he had found her and brought her here? So that she could give him news of his family?

‘No,’ she says, looking at her feet. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know about my own parents either. I don’t know what happened to them.’

She unties the apron and lays it on the kitchen table as Aurek runs inside with a broken doll in his hands, a pink, armless, naked thing with rolling eyes and matted black hair. He grins and holds it up triumphantly in front of Janusz.

‘Let’s have a look.’

Janusz reaches out to take the doll, but Aurek ducks behind his mother, making growling sounds. Silvana acts before she thinks, pushing Janusz back, protecting her son. She sees the bewilderment on Janusz’s face and instantly regrets her quick movements.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … He’s not used to sharing. We’ve been on our own for a long time … He …’

Silvana is searching for a way to explain when a woman’s voice makes them all turn round.

‘Hello there, anyone home?’

The woman stands in the hallway, a cigarette in her hand. Silvana guesses she must be in her fifties. She has a middle-aged, matronly look about her. She’s a tall redhead, big-shouldered for a woman, and just the size of her makes Silvana feel small and out of place. The woman wears a tweed skirt and white blouse covered by yards of apron, a big messy design of faded pansies and pink roses that flower right over her hips and across the broad acres of her bosom.

‘Ah,’ she says. ‘I thought I heard voices. I’m Mrs Holborn from next door.’

Silvana lets go of Aurek and he backs away and runs into the garden, the doll clutched in his arms. Janusz bends slightly at the waist as he greets the woman. For a moment it looks as though he is going to kiss her hand like a good Polish gentleman. Instead he straightens up and shakes hands.

‘Mrs Holborn, did you say? Well, we’re pleased to meet you. How do you do.’

Silvana sees Janusz’s eyes upon her and realizes she is meant to say something. She remembers the English the soldiers taught her, the classes she attended in the camp.

‘Good afternoon,’ she says carefully. ‘Good afternoon to you, madam.’

‘Charmed,’ says Mrs Holborn. She takes a step towards the back door and Silvana sees her gaze settle on Aurek in the garden.

‘And is that your boy?’

‘Yes, he’s my son,’ says Janusz, and Silvana hears the pride in his voice. ‘His name is Aurek.’

‘Aw– what? Sorry, I didn’t get that. Can you say it again?’

‘Aurek,’ says Janusz slowly.

‘Oh, that’s a hard one to get your chops around. Can’t say I’ve heard that one before.’

‘In Polish it means golden-haired.’

Silvana watches Aurek throwing the doll in the air and catching it. There’s nothing golden about his shorn dark hair.

‘He was blond when he was a baby,’ Janusz says, and Silvana realizes he has been thinking the same thing as her.

‘Like his father,’ Silvana says, nodding.

‘They change so much, don’t they?’ says Mrs Holborn, waving a hand in Aurek’s direction, a gesture Silvana finds comforting, as if the woman is already familiar with their son.

‘My daughter was the same,’ she continues. ‘Born with a mop of ginger curls. You’d have thought she was the milkman’s kid. If you saw her now – she’s grown up and left home, mind – you’d say I was a liar, ’cus she’s a brunette. Not a ginger hair on her head. But look, we don’t stand on ceremony around here. You must call me Doris.’

Janusz smiles. ‘Doris. And I am Janusz Nowak. You can call me Jan if you find it easier. My wife’s name is Silvana.’

‘Right. Well, I’ll do my best, but I’m hopeless with foreign names. You’ll have to forgive me if I get them wrong. I’ve seen you coming and going and I thought you must be moving in. You’ll have to meet my Gilbert when he’s back from work. You might know him already. You work together at Burtons, don’t you?’

Silvana looks out of the window. The sun is turning red in the sky, casting a rosy light across the clouds. There is a chiming of birdsong through the open door, and at the end of the garden Aurek is scrambling up the lowers branches of the oak tree. She thinks of the forest where she and the boy lived. Their hideout will be filling up with soil and leaves. Animals will be taking it over, the tree roots
breaking through the earth walls. The forest will already be covering over her past.

Janusz touches her lightly on the shoulder and she jumps. She tries to compose her face into a smile.

‘What is it?’

‘She’s agreed to take our photo. Come on, get Aurek.’

Doris is waving a camera at her and grinning.

‘I’m not very good with machinery. I hope I won’t break it.’

Outside the front door, Silvana stands next to Janusz. She fiddles with her headscarf, pulling it tight under her chin, and tries to relax as she feels his hand on her waist, drawing her closer to him. There is a moment of stillness when the three of them are waiting, posed, staring into the camera’s eye. Frozen already into the image they expect the camera to see. Janusz is straight-backed and serious. Silvana holds her headscarf in place. Aurek is clinging to Silvana’s legs.

When the photo is developed, Janusz puts it in a frame and Silvana stands it on the mantelpiece in the front parlour.
Proof
, she thinks. She breathes on the frame and rubs the glass clean with her sleeve, polishing the image. There they are in black and white, a father, a mother and their son reunited. Her family. Nobody can take this from her. Not now.

Silvana is in the bathroom rubbing soap on her hands until they are covered with a thick layer of foam. It feels luxurious to have a whole bar of soap to herself. She looks in the mirror and wonders whether to wash her hair. Her short, grey hair. Tears come to her eyes every time she sees herself.
So ugly
, she thinks.

How can Janusz want her when she looks like this? A convict. That’s what she looks like. Someone guilty of a crime. A bearer of bad news. That’s what she had read in Janusz’s face when she told him she had never gone to see his parents after he’d left Warsaw. The hurt showed clearly in his eyes. She’d disappointed him.

She scrubs the bar of soap all over her head, fingernails catching against her scalp, suds dripping into her eyes, the smell of the soap so sweet and clean and renewing she is tempted to slip the whole thing into her mouth and let the suds rinse her inside as well as out.

‘Are you all right?’ calls Janusz, and she hears him knock on the door. The soap pops out of her hand and falls somewhere under the sink. She searches for it, water running down her face, eyes tight shut.

‘Yes, yes. I’ll be finished soon.’

‘Only you’ve been running the taps for a long time.’

‘Sorry.’ Silvana fishes the soap out from behind the pipes. She grabs a towel and wipes her face dry, turns the tap off and listens to the sound of Janusz padding away across the landing. She takes off her clothes and climbs into the warm water, ducking her head under, her limbs bumping against the bath.

Will Janusz want to know what happened to her during the war? Will he want to know how she ended up living in a forest? And what about him? Will he have secrets too? She won’t ask him.

He has already explained to her how he arrived in Britain in 1940, though the way he told it, in short, brief sentences, like a speech he has used many times, left her none the wiser as to exactly how he did it. He’s explained about his soldiering, described the country he has brought her to, the cherry orchards in the south, the purple flush of the moors in the north. He hasn’t asked her a single question about herself or the boy yet. It’s better that way. She looks down, running her hands over her breasts and down towards her hollow belly, where they come to rest, cupped together. What a pitiful body to offer him. Will Janusz still find her attractive after all these years?

Janusz is about to knock on the bathroom door again when Silvana finally emerges. She looks clean and scrubbed. Her cheeks glow pink, but there is something sad and small about her, like a wet cat, as though the bath water has shrunk her. He takes her arm and leads her into the bedroom. This is the moment he has dreamed of and feared. Their first night together.

In the main bedroom are two single beds. Silvana climbs into one and Janusz draws the covers up over her. He sits beside her, perched on the edge of the bed, and watches her fiddle with the ribbons on the front of her nightgown.

‘Do you like it?’ he asks. ‘The house? It’s a miracle, isn’t it? Us, being together again? You’ll like England. It’s a beautiful country.’

He looks down and notices her left hand. She wears no wedding ring.

‘I lost it,’ says Silvana. She doesn’t say any more than that.

‘I’ll get you another one,’ he tells her, feeling generous and good. He has to explain to her how things are in Britain. ‘A married woman needs a wedding ring. People look at women’s hands here. They look to see who you are.’

He reaches out to touch Silvana’s hair and feels her flinch slightly.

‘I’m sorry I don’t have news of the family,’ she says. ‘I wish I had something to tell you.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I keep writing, you know. Every time a different address, just in case somebody knows something. I think I’ve written to everybody in our hometown. I sent letters to your parents too.’

‘My parents? Did they reply?’

‘No. But the Red Cross officer told me it can take years for letters to get through. I’ve not given up hope. And look. Here you are.’ He takes her hand. ‘Are you glad I found you? After all these years I wasn’t sure … I have to ask. I didn’t know if you had met somebody else …’

Silvana shakes her head vehemently and he regrets asking the question.

‘I had Aurek.’

There is a silence between them. Finally it is Silvana who breaks it.

‘And you?’

‘Me? No. Nobody.’

With that one sentence he feels as if he has crossed over a deep ravine, leaving Hélène and the past far behind him.
There was nobody
. And here he is in the present, where he so desperately wants to be.

‘I waited for you,’ he whispers, and believes what he says. He’ll make this work. There are a thousand questions in his head. He is hungry to know what her life has been. He cannot understand how she survived living in a forest, although he has heard of whole villages that abandoned their homes and took shelter in the trees. Every question that comes to him dies before it reaches his lips. It is not the time for questions yet. She looks so tired. Violet shadows colour the hollowed skin under her eyes. Maybe he should tuck the covers around her and leave her to sleep.

Silvana pats the eiderdown quilt. ‘Do you want to lie beside me?’

‘Shall I? Say if it’s too early …’ He wonders at the foolishness of his words. Too early? After six years, surely he means too late?

‘I used to imagine this,’ she says, and Janusz hears the tremble in her voice. ‘You and me. A house. All three of us, together again. It’s all I ever wanted.’

She pulls the covers back and moves to make room for him. Janusz turns off the bedside lamp. Lifting her nightdress, he slides his hands over her and hears her exhale deeply. A shiver runs through him. That sound. It is the sound of the girl he once loved coming from a woman he knows not at all.

Her hips, like misplaced elbows, rise up from her belly. Her body is all angles and depressions. Silvana takes his hand and places it on her breast. It is soft and warm and full. It is so long since he has touched a woman, and he climbs across her awkwardly.