22 Britannia Road

by Amanda Hodgkinson

  He sees Janusz walking up the garden and stops jumping. For once, he’s not treading on any precious plants, but still, he knows the enemy doesn’t like to see foolishness in his neat and perfect garden.

  The enemy stands with his hands on his hips, surveying the scene. He is frowning, his blue eyes hooded by his eyebrows. Aurek mimics Janusz’s stance, hands on hips. He knows he has only a limited amount of time before he will be berated for this kind of cheekiness. He furrows his brow just like the enemy. Tries to feel what it is like to be his father.

  Before they’d come to England, Aurek had imagined his father would look different. Mama had told him he had blond hair, but he doesn’t. It’s an ashy colour; when he rubs hair oil over it, it turns a shade darker, like metal. It makes him look old, older than Silvana. Maybe he isn’t his father. Maybe his mother made a mistake? Sometimes, Aurek wonders if his real father isn’t still in Poland searching the forests for him and his mama. He studies the enemy a little longer. He’s not so bad. Sometimes, Aurek finds himself forgetting to hate him.

  Janusz moves, folds his arms. Aurek does the same. He feels laughter warming him, but holds it back. The enemy salutes. Straight-faced, Aurek does the same. Then Janusz cocks his leg like a dog and farts loudly.

  The laughter escapes from Aurek; it bursts out of him quicker than fizzy lemonade in a shaken bottle, shooting down his nose, making his eyes water. He laughs and holds his sides.

  ‘You’re a funny little lad,’ says Janusz. ‘But it’s a pleasure to see you laughing. Be careful climbing on the wood. I don’t want you to get splinters.’

  He turns and walks towards the house, and Aurek wishes he’d come back to play the game again.

  ‘Ojciec,’ he calls. ‘Father?’

  But Janusz doesn’t hear him, and goes into the kitchen. Aurek salutes him again anyway.

  The following Saturday, Tony brings Peter round and Janusz invites them into the garden, pleased to be able to show them his family working together on their flower borders and lawn. He points to Aurek crouching among the roses, scratching at the ground.

  ‘Aurek has his own little vegetable patch over there,’ he explains, wishing the boy would look less furtive in his actions. The child has been digging up the carrots he has been asked not to touch. Janusz has explained many times to the boy that it’s too early in the season and the carrots are too small, but Aurek still loves to pull them up, brush the earth off them and eat them. Janusz glances at Tony, but he doesn’t seem to notice Aurek’s behaviour. He is looking at Silvana.

  Silvana is kneeling on the lawn, a small knife in her hand, digging at weeds, just as he showed her. She is muttering to herself, a concentrated liturgy of Polish words and their English translations: Jaskier ostry, powój polny, mniszek pospolity, cieciorka pstra; buttercup, bindweed, dandelions, daisies.

  Janusz calls her name and she looks up from her work, her red headscarf fluttering slightly in the breeze. She stands up hurriedly, wiping her hands on her apron, apologizing for not seeing they had visitors.

  ‘Don’t let me disturb you,’ says Tony. ‘Your flower beds are marvellous. All these Victory gardens left over from the war are so depressing. This is a real peacetime garden.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Janusz says.

  Silvana extends her hand. ‘Good morning, Tony.’

  ‘Silvana, lovely to see you. I was just saying what a beautiful garden you have.’

  ‘Janusz is very proud of it. Today he is building a tree house for Aurek.’

  ‘A tree house?’ Tony claps his hands together. ‘What a wonderful idea. Can I help?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Janusz, delighted by Tony’s enthusiasm. Tony reminds him of Bruno: the kind of man who always knows a way out of a scrape. He is a loner, as far as Janusz can see, a man too taken with his business to worry about a home and a settled life. Not like Janusz, who needs a wife and a family to make sense of his days. Janusz wants the polished key to his front door in his pocket, a hook on the wall for that key when he comes home, his newspaper and dictionary beside his chair in the front parlour, his family gathered around him at mealtimes. But still, he looks at Tony and likes him for being different.

  At the bottom of the garden, Janusz saws planks and Tony pulls out old nails from the wood with a claw hammer.

  ‘I’m going to show you how to make a dovetail joint,’ Janusz says to Aurek and Peter. He holds his hands up, makes a fist with one. ‘This is the mortice. The tenon is like this.’ He holds his other hand like an arrow, fingers straight. ‘They fit together like this.’ He pushes his straight fingers into the hole in the middle of his fist.

  Peter does the same. So does Aurek. Janusz smiles at Aurek. He’s pleased his son has a friend at last. The two of them may get into quite a bit of trouble at school, but it is just schoolboy pranks. A bit of tomfoolery. Normal at their age. And Aurek speaks good English now, without a hint of a foreign accent. That makes Janusz proud. Children learn so quickly. The boy has even stopped making bird noises. Janusz knows he’s a bit hard on him about that, but the boy has to learn. When he goes back to school in September, he will fit right in.

  They pull the wood up into the tree, Janusz and Tony doing the heavy lifting while the boys are allowed to hammer in nails. The tree house has four sides, its roof made from corrugated iron. A perfect den for a boy at the bottom of a perfect English garden.

  The garden is the key to everything. A place for them all. Janusz has planted herb beds and roses for Silvana. Sage and hyssop, marjoram, sprawling mint and low-lying clumps of thyme sit under pink rose blossoms. The lawn is flat, rolled and velvety green. Borders are filled with dahlias, hollyhocks, yellow and white irises, lilac and love-in-a-mist. Beyond these is the vegetable patch. Here potatoes grow in leafy rows. Onions are pushing up pale globes out of the soil. Marigolds have seeded freely through them all. They keep the vegetables happy and ward off insects. And now, in the oak, Aurek’s tree house will look down on them all. He’d like his father to see this garden, his grandson playing in his den.

  ‘You’re a clever man, Janusz,’ says Tony, breaking his thoughts. ‘I can’t put up a stack of shelves on my own.’

  ‘I had a tree house when I was a boy,’ says Janusz. ‘I hid up there with my slingshot and I could hit a bird’s nest right across my parents’ garden.’ He pauses, and then, seeing the way Aurek is listening, his gaze concentrated upon him, he continues.

  ‘I had a tin whistle my father gave me. I sat in my tree house and played it for hours. I made a terrible noise with it. I’m not musical. Not like my sister Eve. She plays the violin like an angel. And I collected snails for racing. I loved that. My friends brought their snails along and we raced them down the trunk of the tree. The first to reach the bottom was the champion.’

  ‘Well, that’s not so far away from my own boyhood,’ says Tony. ‘I had a whole stable of champion racing snails. My father loved them. I bred the snails and he cooked them in garlic butter.’

  Peter pulls a face.

  ‘Don’t look like that, Peter. Give the boy a choice and he’d eat roast beef and Yorkshire puddings every day of the week. One day I will take you to Italy, young man, and you’ll learn about real food.’

  Janusz is intrigued. ‘I was in southern Italy. Only for a month or so, back in ’44. We flew over the countryside dropping propaganda leaflets. It looked beautiful. What part of the country do you come from?’

  ‘My parents came from Genoa. I was born here, but my heart is in Italy. I eat like an Italian. I love my food.’ He thumps his belly and then opens his arms wide. ‘And look at this,’ he says. ‘Your good wife coming down the garden path with a tray of tea things. What could be better?’

  They sit at the foot of the oak tree on a tartan blanket. Silvana pours the tea and Tony helps her, passing round the teacups. Janusz lies on his back looking up into the green branches and the blue sky beyond.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Peter asks. ‘Enemy fire?’

  Tony take
s a cup of tea from Silvana. ‘It’s certainly a beautiful view from here.’

  ‘Enough blue up there to make trousers for a dozen policemen,’ says Janusz.

  ‘Ah, we say trousers for a sailor here,’ says Tony. ‘A bit of a poet, aren’t you? But of course you are; you have Silvana. Your beautiful muse.’

  Janusz glances at his wife. She doesn’t seem to be listening. She has been lost in her own world recently.

  ‘You were in a hurry the other day when I saw you,’ Tony says to Silvana.

  ‘What other day?’ asks Janusz. She has not mentioned seeing Tony.

  ‘A week or so ago. I saw your lady wife out shopping.’

  ‘I was busy,’ Silvana replies. ‘I didn’t have time to stop.’

  ‘Next time, I insist you come and have a look at the pet shop.’

  ‘All right,’ she says. ‘I will.’

  Tony turns to Janusz. ‘What a lucky chap you are, having a wife who takes such good care of you.’

  Tony laughs and Silvana blushes. Janusz leans back on his elbow, pleased to see his wife looking happy for once. He stops himself from reaching out to her. Even though she is right there beside him, Janusz feels she has become distant from him. Further away from him than the blue sky above.

  Poland

  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 ever
ywhere 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.