They were sitting at the kitchen table in the cottage.
‘You can’t stay here. The Russians will pick you up. The government wants all Polish troops to resist. We can make our way to France. I’ve got money. If we can get to Budapest without being picked up, the Polish consul there will arrange a passage to Marseilles and we can join the French and the British. Come with us.’
Earlier, Bruno had picked up the basket of potatoes under the windowsill and proclaimed himself the cook. Franek had plucked the chickens and Janusz had got water from the well. Now they had eaten and were sharing the remains of a bottle of vodka Bruno had produced from his rucksack.
The two men had been curious about what Janusz was doing in the cottage on his own. They’d asked so many questions he found himself telling them the truth just to get them to be quiet.
‘Dog!’ said Franek. He coughed and laughed and slapped his knees and spat on the floor. ‘You said you were burying a dog! I knew you were lying. I knew it. You’re a deserter.’
Janusz glared at him. ‘You weren’t there.’
‘You did the right thing,’ said Bruno. ‘You’d only be in a prison camp by now if you had stayed on the train. You can still fight. That’s what we have to do. We Poles have always fought for our freedom.’
‘Fight or run away. You’ll end up dead either way,’ said Franek. ‘That’s the way things are now. You might have the angel of death riding on your shoulder. You look like you have. You’re going to be called soon enough.’
Janusz ignored him. They were sitting back after their meal, the heat of the fire on their faces, an oil lamp burning on the table.
‘I don’t care,’ said Franek, belching loudly. ‘Eat, drink and loosen your belt. Nothing better. Who knows when we’ll be able to again, hey, Bruno?’
Bruno picked through the remains of the chicken. ‘We’ll fight for our country and when we come back, we’ll go to my house in Torun. I was the manager of a soap factory and I have a large house. We’ll drink Polish vodka until we fall down dead drunk. Then we’ll wake up and do it again. Of course, that’s if the looters haven’t stolen everything. The crime rate in the city has gone up crazily this summer. I can only imagine it’s worse in Warsaw?’
‘There were stories in the papers,’ said Janusz. His head was throbbing and his throat felt dry. Sleep was weighing down his eyes.
‘Thieves like wartime,’ said Bruno. He finished the last drops of vodka in the bottle and threw it on the floor. ‘All of them: Polish thieves, Jews, Lithuanians, Russians, Germans, Slovakians. They’re all at it. Don’t believe the newspapers who talk of our brave people working against the Germans. There are spies and criminals who are profiting from this war already.’
‘I’ve never been to France,’ said Franek. He was cleaning his fingernails with the blade of his pocket knife. ‘I’d never been out of my village before I joined up. What about you, Janusz?’
Janusz looked at the fire burning in the hearth. ‘I have to get back to Warsaw. I have to see my wife.’
‘Be my guest.’ Franek waved his knife in the air. ‘Warsaw is in that direction. Just follow the German tanks and the guns. Nice knowing you, dead man.’
Bruno wiped his hands clean on his trousers. ‘The best you can do is get out of Poland. There are truckloads of men heading to Romania and Hungary. Come with us while you can. The borders are still easy enough to cross, but they won’t stay that way for long.’
Janusz stood up. He didn’t feel like having this conversation. ‘I’ll get some logs in. It’s cold tonight.’
He stepped outside and felt the night air clear his head. He trudged across the yard. Out there, under the starless night, with the damp smell of vegetation, it was possible to believe that the men sitting in the cottage were just figments of his imagination. They’d leave tomorrow and it would be as if he had never met them. And then he’d go home. He began to pile logs into his arms. Footsteps came across the yard and he stopped, peering into the blackness. Bruno stepped towards him, smelling of chicken fat and woodsmoke.
‘I thought I’d give you a hand. What I was saying inside earlier? I meant it. I can’t get to France with Franek on my own. I need someone with me who’s got his head screwed on right. You can’t stay here. Franek’s right about you being judged as a deserter …’
‘I got separated from my unit.’
‘And then you hid up here. I’ve seen what happens to deserters. Nobody knows what the hell is going on any more. People are scared. They don’t know who to trust. I saw an execution just days ago. A lad in civilian clothes wearing military boots. He was picked up by a lieutenant. He was made to stand in the middle of the road as the troops went past. The lieutenant said deserting was a sign of cowardice. Then the crazy bastard shot him. There was no court-martial, nothing. The lad had military boots and civilian clothes and that was enough. There are army units marching all over the country. If they find you here …’
Janusz picked up a log and balanced it with the others in his arms. ‘I’m not a deserter.’
‘That’s for them to judge. Come with us. I’ve got money. Enough to get us to France.’
Janusz didn’t want to ask how Bruno had got his money. He thought it would be better not to know. As he straightened up he saw a flash in the darkness.
‘There’s a light. Over there.’
A soft yellow beam moved through the trees. The sound of an engine echoed in the distance.
‘It’s a motorbike,’ said Bruno. ‘It must be about half a mile away. There are troops nearby.’
‘Polish?’
‘Russians, I’d have thought. There it is again. Look, you can stay here and get picked up by them. Or come with us.’
‘You make it sound like I don’t have a choice.’
‘You don’t.’
Franek opened the door to the cottage, holding up the oil lamp. ‘What are you two doing? This fire’s nearly dead. I’m freezing in here.’
The lamplight twinkled in the dark. Janusz dropped the logs and ran towards him. ‘Put the light out.’
‘Get your boots, Franek,’ said Bruno, coming up behind him. ‘We’re leaving. Hurry.’
Janusz stepped inside the cottage behind Franek, and Bruno shut the door. Just before he cut the oil lamp, he caught a glimpse of Bruno and Franek pulling on their boots and coats: an overweight man who was surely too old to fight and a scared jackrabbit of a boy. Bruno touched his shoulder.
‘So? Are you coming with us? Will you come to France?’
Janusz nodded. He saw the reality of the situation. If he was captured as a deserter he might be killed. If he managed to get to Warsaw, he’d be taken prisoner.
‘Well?’ said Bruno.
‘I’m coming.’
He would go with these men and fight for his country. He pulled on his coat and stepped out into the night.
Ipswich
Janusz goes into the kitchen, opens the pantry door and takes out a wooden box filled with shoe polishes, boot brushes and soft cloths. He glances out of the window. Silvana is in the garden, Aurek prancing behind her like a shadow.
Pushing a hand through the brushes and cloths, he pulls out a bundle of letters. He picks through them carefully. The first letter Hélène wrote him. That’s the one he wants to read again, although he knows every word by heart. Written on thin blue paper, her handwriting is spidery, as if she rushed to get the words on the page. Accented and punctuated with a leaking ink pen, her letters have the look of handwritten bars of music.
The words are hopeful and plain, simple as only love letters can be. She has covered the page on both sides with her inky thoughts, and Janusz reads, his fingers tracing her words. He is on a farm in the hills behind Marseilles. The stone buildings around him are solid and glow honey-coloured in the sunlight. Hélène stands in the distance waving to him and begins to walk towards him. He wills her to come closer, but he can’t do it. His imagination always keeps her at a distance.
Janusz looks up
to see Silvana coming across the garden. A piece of hair has escaped from under her headscarf and Janusz stares at it, watching it coil over her forehead like a small grey question mark. He hurries to put the letters back and replaces the box in the pantry, his movements quick and furtive.
‘The washing will never dry in this weather,’ says Silvana, opening the back door. ‘Does it always rain like this in summer?’
She dumps the basket of clothes on the kitchen table. Aurek trails in behind her, and she closes the door after him.
‘Here,’ says Janusz. ‘Give them to me. I’ll light the fire and we can dry the clothes that way.’
He reaches out and as she picks up the basket to hand it to him, he feels the brush of her hand against his. The thought of the letters hidden in the pantry burns him like a flame, and the worst of it is that he knows he cannot be without them. As long as he has the letters, he still has Hélène. The sound of her voice, the pattern of her thoughts, the touch of her fingers in the folds creased into the blue papers.
‘Are you all right?’ Silvana looks at him, her face full of concern.
He drops the washing basket and pulls her to him, folding her thin shoulders into his hands. The weight of her head against him feels heavy, obedient, as she bends to his insistent embrace.
‘Sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘So am I,’ she says, wrapping her arms around him so he feels her gather him in.
He wants to love this troubled wife of his. She stands in a heap of wet clothes, holding him up, when it is he who should be strong for her. It is all he can do to stop himself from telling her he still loves Hélène, as if confiding in Silvana would release him from the pain he feels. The only person he could imagine telling is the one person who must never know.
He lets her go and picks up the washing.
‘Do you want tea?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘A cup of tea. That’s what we need.’
He looks up and meets her eyes. ‘It’s hard to know how to go on.’ He searches for words, a way to explain how he needs her to make sense of his life. He can understand nothing of the last six years. All that happened, the way he left Warsaw and didn’t go back, the love he feels for another woman, the war and all its bloody awfulness; all of it is a jumble of jigsaw pieces and he never knows which he will pick up.
All the time, he was hoping for peace; now it’s here, he’s like a man coming up to the light after years of living underground. It should be wonderful, but it’s not. He keeps pretending everything is all right, but the truth is his son hates him, his wife cries every night and he still dreams of the woman he left.
‘You and me,’ he says. ‘It’s like we’ve been given a chance to get something right, but after the years we’ve spent apart I don’t know how to do it.’
‘We’re a family,’ Silvana says, as if this fact alone will see them through. ‘You’re Aurek’s father.’
He glances at the boy crouched behind his mother. Janusz’s heart feels as heavy as the wet washing he has scooped up off the floor.
‘What happened?’ he asks. ‘Why did you hide in a forest with the boy? Why did you do that?’
Silvana bends to help him pick up the clothes. ‘You know what happened. Why must you ask again and again? I tried to get to your parents’ house, but the bus I was on broke down. I was afraid I would be picked up by soldiers and sent to work on a German farm. Lots of women were. I didn’t want anybody taking Aurek from me. When the bus broke down I joined a queue of people and followed some of them into the forest, where we hid. Then the war ended, we were in a camp and you found us.’
She hands him a damp towel and asks him again if he would like tea.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘A cup of tea.’
There must be more than that to the story. Something terrible happened to the two of them, that much he knows.
‘Aurek,’ he says. ‘Go to your room. I need to talk to your mother.’
The boy slinks past him and Janusz shuts the kitchen door.
‘Tell me what happened to you during the war. I just … Sometimes I look at Aurek and I wonder if he’s the child I left behind.’
Her eyes darken with tears. ‘He’s been through a war. Can’t you understand that?’
Maybe he is wrong to let things go like this, but Janusz lets the conversation end. He apologizes. He takes three cups out of the cupboard, puts them on the kitchen table and calls Aurek back.
‘There you are,’ he says as the boy comes into the room. ‘Come and have a cup of tea with us. You like lots of milk, don’t you?’
Aurek takes a seat at the table, elbows splayed, his head in his hands. The child has no manners whatsoever. Silvana catches hold of him and kisses the top of his head. It’s a fierce action and full of ownership, like a cat might grab a kitten.
Janusz’s mother would never have let him sit like that as a child. He has a sudden image of his parents’ dining room, the table set for lunch with all the best silverware and he and his sisters sitting straight-backed in their chairs. The strained formality of his own upbringing. He looks around the room, at the shabby curtains, the kettle boiling on the gas ring, Silvana holding the teapot, waiting, just as he taught her. Bring the pot to the kettle, not the other way round. He sighs. Let the boy sprawl.
‘Give Aurek an extra spoonful of sugar,’ he tells Silvana as she pours the tea. He smiles at his son. ‘And a biscuit if we’ve got any.’
The best day of the week is Sunday. That’s when the family have breakfast together in the kitchen: bread, tea, milk, a boiled egg each.
Silvana and Aurek finish the remains of a pint of yellow, soured milk. She and the boy drink lustily, as if the curdled liquid is still fresh and creamy. Thank God there is no one else to see this display of poverty. And yet it makes Janusz want to care for them, to protect them like fragile plants from hard winters. He picks up the newspaper, a pen in his hand, a battered Polish–English dictionary at his side.
Silvana and Aurek have a map spread out on the table.
‘Look,’ says Silvana, putting her finger on a green area outside the town. ‘There’s a forest. A real forest. Can we go there?’
Janusz puts the paper down. ‘What’s wrong with the park? We can go for a walk in the park this afternoon and Aurek can meet other children and make a few friends.’
Aurek is leaning against his mother’s arm, and Janusz feels an urge to pull them apart.
‘Or we could walk along the canal. Surely that’s a better idea? Come here, Aurek. Come and sit with me. Leave your mother alone for a minute.’
Aurek doesn’t move and Janusz lifts his newspaper to his face, pretending to read. He lowers it again. ‘What would we do in the woods? People walk their dogs there. We don’t have a dog. We’d look strange just walking around. In the park, people walk with and without dogs.’
Silvana draws circles on the tabletop with her fingers. Aurek is eating the stale bread Janusz put to one side to feed the ducks in the park. The child looks strangely beautiful, his small upturned nose, his neat mouth. Janusz would like to take his dainty chin between finger and thumb. He tries to meet the boy’s gaze, fails and sighs.
‘If you really wanted to, we’d have to get a bus out to the paper mill and walk the rest of the way. It’s up to you.’
Aurek grins. A wide, urchin grin that fills Janusz with a swift and sudden joy.
Well, he thinks. At least I can make the boy happy. That’s a start.
They catch the bus at the bottom of the hill and Aurek sits by the window watching the town, the rows of houses, the shops, the narrow streets and the men and women, mechanical people who walk at the same pace. Aurek can see in at the windows of terraced houses. A woman ironing. A man staring straight ahead. Front parlours full of old people and crying babies. What must it be like to be one of the children living in these streets? To have always had a house to live in and a family sardined into it, full of brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles?
He imagines the noise: the yelling and the banging, the laughing, the lung-pumping cries, thumping of feet, plates, doors. These are the sounds he hears when front doors are ajar and he dares to pause in front of them. His own home is quiet in comparison. Nobody makes a noise there. The enemy says he likes peace. His mother never says much to anyone.
The bus finally arrives at Papermill Lane. They get out beside the mill and are met by the sound of water churning under a small bridge. The enemy is smiling at him. He shows Aurek how to drop sticks over one side and watch the current take them under the bridge, emerging on the other side. It’s a game he could play for days if they let him. In the swirling water below them he can see green algae swaying over pebbles and rocks, all smooth and long and full of crystal air bubbles.
Aurek’s stick is bent in two. The bark is dark and the snap in the stick shows the new wood as pale as bone within it, sharp against his fingertips.
‘It’s so you know it’s yours,’ says Janusz. ‘Ready?’
The three of them stand with their sticks held out over the bridge.
‘One, two, three, go!’
Aurek lets go with his eyes screwed shut, hope boiling up in his body. The stick disappears and then comes under the bridge in front of the others. When he wins, he screams with joy.
Silvana and Janusz join in, laughing. The more Silvana laughs, the more Aurek likes it. Her laughter is warm and safe, like the days in the forest when she used to wrap him in her coat. The game is so much fun Silvana has to drag him away from it, promising him trees to climb, squirrels to find.
Grudgingly he leaves his stick glories and they walk along country lanes, cutting across fields towards the trees. Aurek throws his cap off his head and runs, tumbling through brambles and nettles, splashing through puddles and jumping over fallen trees, screaming with excitement.
Nobody can catch him. No evil spirits or wood sprites or any of the revenging fairies and ghouls that live in ancient forests can touch him. He moves faster than sticks in a river current. He is freewheeling away from everything. Away from school, where the children call him a dirty refugee. A crazy Polack. The dumb boy. He is faster than them all and doesn’t need anyone to teach him. He can do it himself.
22 Britannia Road Page 9