22 Britannia Road (9 page)

‘Can I hold him?’

She held the baby out, though in her heart she was unwilling to give him up.

‘So I have a son,’ said Janusz, his face full of surprise.

Silvana felt her body relax. Perhaps her mother’s bad luck was not going to pass itself on to her. She’d done it. She had given birth to a healthy baby boy.

‘Aurek,’ said Janusz, grinning. ‘We’ll call him Aurek, after my father.’

‘Can I have him back?’ she asked, and closed her eyes with pleasure as the weight of her child filled her arms once more.

Janusz

‘Franek, why don’t you go and catch us a chicken?’ said Bruno, smacking at the boy’s head with his army cap. ‘I’m starving.’

‘I might catch a goose or two,’ Franek said. ‘I could eat a bear, the way I feel.’

‘Don’t touch the geese,’ said Janusz. ‘Leave them alone. A chicken will be fine.’

Janusz had invited the two men to share a meal with him. He was still trying to make sense of how the weeks had passed so quickly since he had been at the cottage. He watched Franek lope outside and begin running around the yard after the chickens.

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s a child,’ said Bruno. ‘A child in a man’s body. He joined up with his elder brother when he should have stayed at home. He wasn’t bright enough to go to school, but he was good on the family farm. That’s where he should have stayed. He’s not a soldier. He did all right with us until the Russians came across the border. They just kept rolling past. Hundreds of them. We knew we couldn’t fight them, but Franek went running up to one of them, yelling and shouting, telling them Poland would always be free. Nearly got himself killed. Tomasz – his brother – wanted to escape so he could take Franek home.

‘We had a plan to get him back to his family. Tomasz and I were going to take him home and then join the underground movement. We were being marched to a camp when we ducked out and ran into woodland. Franek fell over. The boy’s got two left feet. Down he goes and I stop running to help him.

‘The Russian guards came after us. I was trying to get Franek up, but his ankle was twisted badly. The guards were coming closer, so Tomasz turns round and goes back towards them, picking up rocks as he goes. He hurls them at the guards. Just stands there, aiming them while they open fire on him. I got Franek away, forced him to run. The boy won’t talk about what happened. He’s never mentioned Tomasz since.’

In the yard, Franek was still chasing chickens. Finally he caught one, lifted it high in the air and swung it, smashing its body against the water pump again and again. The chicken went limp and he dropped it on the ground. He stood over it, as if he thought it might just get up and run away. Bruno walked out into the yard and Janusz followed him. Franek had hit the bird so hard it was a bloody mess of feathers and smashed bones.

‘Is it dead?’ Franek asked.

Janusz kicked the bird gently with his foot. ‘Yes, it’s dead.’

‘Do you want another one? I can catch us another one.’

‘You catch it,’ said Bruno, pulling a penknife from his pocket, ‘and then give it to me. I’ll kill it.’

Janusz saw the penknife glint in Bruno’s thick hand. He saw the same flickering shine in Franek’s eyes as he turned on the chickens once again. It made him feel afraid. The boy looked quite mad.

Janusz went into the cottage. He piled sticks in the hearth and set a fire. He could hear Franek shouting and yelling in the yard. The sooner he left for Warsaw, he decided, the better.

Ipswich

The school is a large red-brick building with a playground in front and black metal railings around it. Two entrances have heavy lintels over the blue doors with the words girls and boys carved into weathered limestone. Girls play hopscotch and skip and boys kick footballs or stand in secretive groups swapping cigarette cards.

Aurek clings to Silvana, sinking his fingers into her coat and wrapping his skinny legs around her so tightly she yelps in pain. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes plead with her, but Silvana knows she cannot help him. Janusz is firm on this matter. Aurek has to go to school.

‘It’s only for a month,’ Janusz tells them both. ‘Then the school will break up for the summer holidays. He’s got to go sometime.’

The first day, the teacher tries to prise Aurek out of Silvana’s arms.

‘He’ll be absolutely fine,’ she says. ‘Come along with me, young man.’

By the time the woman has him in her grip, her face is red and the veins on her skinny neck stand out blue and angry-looking. Her voice is full of the strain of holding the boy. After a week of the same scenario, the teacher rolls her sleeves up as soon as they arrive, grabbing Aurek before he has a chance to wrap himself around Silvana.

‘Just go,’ she snaps at Silvana. ‘The boy will be fine if you just go. It’s always the mothers who are the problem, not the children.’

Silvana leaves, her heart broken by the sound of Aurek’s cries.

The second week, things are no better.

‘Come on,’ she says, trying to sound sure of herself. ‘Please, Aurek? Let go now. We can’t do this all the time.’

‘
Nie
.’

‘Please?’

The teacher comes out into the playground ringing the school bell, heaving it up and down in a two-handed grip as children flow past her.

‘Good morning,’ she says, putting the bell down and clenching her fists, like a farmer approaching a difficult calf, arms already tensed for a fight. ‘Still don’t want to come to lessons, young man?’

Week after week, the other mothers act as if they have not noticed Aurek and his high-pitched screaming or the spectacle of Silvana and the teacher trying to hold on to the furious child. Silvana alternates between wanting to cry and wanting to take an angry bow in front of her audience. She and the boy might as well be starring in a theatre show for the parents and children at the school; a tragedy –
Polish Mother Abandons Son
. Please bring cotton wool to plug your ears.

By mid-term, she finally manages to find a way to change the one-act play. She gives Aurek her headscarf at the school gates, and if he has that to hold, he lets her walk away. It pains her to reveal her grey hair to the world, the unruly kinks and curls that are forming as it grows longer. But it is the only way.

She walks briskly, head up, back straight, past the other mothers. Ten agonizing minutes down the road, she stops, her heart racing, and runs back to the school, staring at the empty playground. She allows herself a few moments like this before she has to hurry across town to get to work, knowing already that she will be late.

Paris Fashions factory gates are high and wooden, held between two tall red-brick pillars. They are always shut, except when the lorries bring fabric and take clothes away. There is a door in one of the wooden gates that opens to let the women who work there come in and go out.

Silvana notices the other women chatting as they walk along the road to work, but they never talk to her. As they enter the factory gates, they all fall silent, concentrating on not bumping their heads on the frame of the small entrance or tripping over the wooden step; if anyone does, they become the first joke of the morning. Then the laughter, breaking the silence on either side of the big wooden gates, lasts until they are all sitting at the machines and the foreman walks among them, nodding approval as their sewing
machines rattle into life and each woman watches her needle stitch a path through the day.

Several times now, Silvana has had to knock on the door and wait for the foreman to open it for her. He looks at his watch as if it is a filthy thing, and then at her as if she is responsible for its state, and her cheeks burn as she apologizes for her lateness, trying to seem as though she cares about the job.

She hunches over her machine and does her best to look industrious. Around her, the women’s talk is easy and full of jokes and gossip about people she knows nothing about. Occasionally another woman tries to make conversation with Silvana, but she doesn’t answer. She pretends to be having problems with the skirt band she is sewing, and hopes they will leave her alone. The work isn’t too bad. She remembers how to sew. She’d made all her own clothes when she lived with her parents, but still, looking as if she is concentrating on something makes it easier to be left alone with her own thoughts.

Every day, she fights the desire to leave her work and take Aurek out of school. As she stitches she imagines the day with him: how they will stay in bed curled up for warmth in the mornings; how she will trace the narrow dip in the small of his neck and breathe the damp child smell behind his ear. She will tend the herbs she and Janusz have planted in the garden while Aurek plays until it is time for dinner, which they will prepare together, Aurek shaping dumplings and Silvana cutting potatoes.

Then she will tell Aurek stories. Stories about Pan Zagloba, the lackadaisical nobleman, and Jan Skrzetuski, the virtuous knight. Stories of aristocrats and beautiful maidens saved by bravery and courage from evil barons. Horses gallop through the stories, arrows are fired, wild boars caught, bears hunted. Now she is far from home, she tells him stories of her family, of her grandmother and her childhood. She resurrects her brothers, giving them long lives and summers spent fishing in the lake and climbing trees, and reinvents her parents as loving, sober people.

Janusz never mentions his sisters or his family. She doesn’t blame him. Not knowing where they are is a terrible thing. She wishes she
could have given him some news of them. Janusz has told her he thinks they must be in Russia. As a functionary in local government, it is quite likely his father was arrested. More than that, Janusz will not say. And she doesn’t push him. While Silvana tells stories of her childhood, Janusz prefers to read Aurek facts from the boys’ annuals he buys him.
How fast does a bullet move? Why does iron go rusty? What are sun spots? How many stars are there?

She is jolted from her dreams by the sound of the siren. The sewing machines stutter to a stop and Silvana joins the movement towards the doors.

‘Miss?’

Silvana looks up to see the foreman looking at her.

‘Can I have a word?’

His eyes are neutral, his expression slightly bored. He folds his arms and Silvana feels herself shrinking under his impassive glance.

‘You think we make enough money here to pay you to daydream all day? I’ve got my eye on you. No more lateness and no more sitting idle. Understand?’

‘Of course. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. Do I still have my job?’

‘Just about. Go on, and stop looking at me like that. I’m not a bleeding monster. Just make sure you do your work.’

He steps aside and she dips her head to go through the wooden door, thankful that she has been given another chance. Bent over like that, for a moment she is reminded of Sunday church visits with Janusz’s family. She instinctively lifts her hand to cross herself. She will work harder. No more daydreaming. She’s so fired up by her convictions, she turns back and asks the foreman if she can stay behind and sew for a few more hours.

‘Go home,’ he says, not unkindly. ‘Go on, get on with you.’

‘I don’t want anyone looking at my son.’

Janusz sighs. ‘It’s just a doctor.’

‘There is no need to get other people involved,’ insists Silvana. ‘There is nothing wrong with Aurek.’

Janusz will not be talked out of his decision. He explains they need to know how to stop the child fighting at school, how to stop him
making odd noises and acting crazy. What he really wants to know is how to make the child love him.

When Janusz looks at Aurek it is as though he sees the boy through a curtain, a fine curtain that you cannot take hold of in your hands, a curtain like a fast-falling flurry of snow that changes landscapes and blocks out all chance of understanding. He wants the doctor to show him how to see through it, how to bring the child into the light.

In his mind he sees a lively, chatty little English lad with his pockets full of cigarette cards, conkers, string, penknives and homemade catapults. He wants a boy who asks him to explain how aeroplanes work and machines turn.

Somewhere behind that snowy, hemmed-in world Aurek inhabits is his real child. Of that Janusz is sure. A doctor will know what to do. Modern medicine will give Janusz back his son, and he will be able to teach him how to ride a bicycle and make model planes. They will play cricket together in the back garden and go to football matches.

Janusz and Silvana sit in a crowded waiting room with the child between them, surrounded by the sounds of legs crossing and uncrossing, magazine pages being turned, the wet gurgles and wails of babies and the dry misery of hacking coughs and stifled sneezes. Janusz checks his watch.

‘There is nothing wrong with him,’ insists Silvana.

‘That’s what I hope.’

Aurek has started humming, a rumbling purr, like the drone of bees. Janusz tries to catch Silvana’s eye, wanting her to stop the boy making that noise, but she is staring at the exit as if she is planning to escape at any moment.

Beside the door, a young woman sits, swinging her foot. Her tan stocking is darned at the ankle. She reminds him of Hélène. He can’t help staring. The woman looks up from her magazine and their eyes meet. But she is nothing like Hélène. It is a mistake he makes all the time, seeing her in other women, tiny fragments of recognition in the brim of a hat, the movement of an ankle, a collar, the curve of a neck, a wave of the hand. It’s a weakness in him that won’t go away. A shameful hunger in him, like a man who has long
ago stopped drinking but still dreams of the taste of vodka burning his lips.

Janusz can feel the woman’s gaze shift to take in his wife and son beside him. She turns back to the magazine on her lap and he suddenly feels foolish. It is a relief when they are finally ushered into the doctor’s office, a small, dark room lined with books in glass cabinets.

The doctor is a tall man with a stooped back and a head of thick grey hair. He moves methodically, steadily. Janusz has confidence in him. Like so many English men of the middle classes, the doctor’s clothes are shabby but still look expensive: a thick wool jacket wearing thin at the elbows, over-washed white cuffs, discreet gold cufflinks. Polished black leather shoes that shine like oil.