by Sue Gee
‘But the asthma …’ said Babcia.
‘He says he doesn’t have it when he’s away.’
Her grandmother shrugged, puzzled.
After tea, Ewa flicked through two or three copies of the Polish Daily, Dziennik Polski. Yesterday’s front page was full of the news that reservists were being called up from Lithuania, the Ukraine, and elsewhere in the Soviet Union, to carry out manoeuvres along the Soviet border with Czechoslovakia. ‘The undoubted aim is to ensure that the Czech summit meeting proceeds along the lines ordered by the Kremlin …’
‘Dziadek?’
‘Yes?’ He was fiddling with the radio, which was old, and buzzed. Tata had offered to buy them a new one, but they said they could manage, he needed his money. Nor did they want a television, though they came in from time to time to watch the one Mama had rented.
‘Do you think Czechoslovakia is safe?’
The radio crackled. ‘Of course not. It is only a matter of time.’ He switched off the radio irritably. Dziadek was not often irritable; she should have known better than to ask that question.
The back pages of Dziennik contained, among the personal columns, black-bordered announcements, where the English names of cemeteries in Gunnersbury, Ealing, North Sheen, of the Brompton Oratory, stood out amongst the Polish like signposts in a foreign land. Ewa wondered sometimes about the children and grandchildren of these old people – born in Warsaw, in Poznań, Bydgoszcz, Kraków, Katowcie, Gdansk, dying in Ealing, in Clapham, in Stafford, Hereford, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Croydon. Sometimes the announcements mentioned mourning relatives not just in England but in Canada, Chicago and New York, South Africa, Argentina: whole families scattered across the world, carrying Poland with them as her parents and grandparents had. Did their grandchildren still believe, as she and Jerzy had been taught to believe at Saturday school, where Dziadek still taught, that one day they or their children or grandchildren might return to a free Poland?
‘More tea, kochana?’
‘No thank you, Babcia.’ She put the paper down. ‘Can I help you wash up?’
‘A few tea things? Of course not.’
‘I think I’ll go and have a bath, then; I have to be at the pub in half an hour.’
Babcia sighed, and cleared away the teacups.
Dziadek got up as she pushed back her chair. ‘Do you not think … Would you perhaps like to work at the Club, instead? I’m sure it could be arranged …’
‘No, no, Dziadek, thank you. It’s very kind, but …’
She and Jerzy had spent many evenings in the Polish Club on the road to Balham, taken there mostly by Dziadek. They watched films of pre-war Poland, of occupied Poland, of the Warsaw Uprising; they heard talks about the betrayal of Yalta. Last year she had been to a wonderful New Year party, and a few times to discos, where jeans were forbidden; once she had gone to the wedding reception of a girl from a class higher up at Saturday school. She felt at home there, but she did not want to feel too much at home.
‘Well, never mind,’ Dziadek was saying. ‘If you change your mind one day …’
‘Thank you.’ She took his hand. ‘Tata should come for me more often – it’s a lot for you, isn’t it?’
He pulled a face. ‘You make me feel a hundred. It is a pleasure to come for you. Tonight, however, I believe your father is coming – your mother mentioned it to Babcia before she left for work.’
‘Honestly, I’m sure I’d be all right walking home by myself – it’s not far, after all.’
‘Never. Go along now.’
She kissed them both, went out and across the uncarpeted brown square of landing, letting herself into the empty flat. Burek came padding out from his basket in the kitchen; he was old and milky-eyed now, his legs trembling as he stood to be patted. She went to open a tin of dog food, then ran a bath.
Mama wouldn’t be home from the hospital for a little while. Ewa lay in the bath listening, through the small open window at the top of the swirled glass, to Dziadek and Babcia moving about their kitchen, where they must have a window open, too, on to the tiny balcony overlooking the railway line. She couldn’t hear what they were saying: their voices simply sounded reassuring, matter of fact, companionable. She thought about the ordered pattern of their days since Dziadek had retired from the factory. Breakfast at eight, listening to Today; a walk on the common with Burek unless it was very wet; a visit to the local library once a week, and to the Polish Library once a month. Lunch prepared by Babcia, whose little English was used only when she went shopping, while he was at the library; if she wanted to shop for herself, to buy clothes, she took Mama, or Ewa went, to quell the bored disdain of the girls in C & A or John Lewis.
After lunch they rested, half an hour each, Babcia on the bed, Dziadek on the less comfortable sofa, reading the paper. Then Babcia wrote letters, or visited her friend in Tooting, or read, while Dziadek spread his books and papers over the table – military histories: of the First World War; of the defeat in 1920 of the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw, where against all the odds Piłsudski had forced the Russians to turn back, staving off communism for over twenty years. Dziadek was editing a collection of memoirs from his own regiment. Of the Second World War he spoke little: Ewa was aware of the silences between him and her father about those years, which Dziadek had spent interned as a prisoner of war while Tata and Babcia struggled to survive the occupation. Though Tata had been decorated for his part in the Uprising, Dziadek rarely referred to it. He must have felt excluded, impotent.
By four or four-thirty each afternoon he was clearing away, waiting to see Jerzy, after school, or Ewa, back from a lecture or the library. In the evenings he and Babcia read, or listened to concerts on the radio – it didn’t buzz quite so much on the Third Programme. Sometimes he went to meetings of the Army in Exile, visited friends or went with Tata to the Club, but on the whole they did not go out much: his pension was tightly budgeted. On Saturdays he still taught in Saturday school; on Sundays they went to mass. Ewa had stopped going; Jerzy still went with them sometimes, but she didn’t know if he got anything out of it any more.
The street door banged below, and Ewa heard her mother’s footsteps on the stairs. The front door opened and closed, there was the sound of a shopping bag set down.
‘Ewa?’
‘Yes, Mama?’
They kissed on both cheeks, Ewa’s damp hair brushing her mother’s face. Her dressing gown was pale blue cotton, old and soft and found in a jumble sale; Anna had repaired it, and thought every time Ewa wore it how innocent she looked, how vulnerable.
‘How is my Mama?’ Ewa picked up the shopping bag and followed her into the kitchen. ‘There’s a letter for you – I put it in the living room. From Wiktoria.’
‘Oh, good. It seems such a long time since she wrote.’ Anna took, a jug of orange juice from the fridge and poured a glass. ‘I’m tired and hot and worried,’ she said wryly, and took a long drink. ‘That’s better.’
‘So everything is as usual,’ said Ewa. ‘I’d better go and get dressed.’
‘Have you seen the grandparents? How are they?’
‘Fine. Worrying about Jerzy. I suppose you are, too. I think it’s good that he goes off, at least he’s doing something.’
‘And who says that you do not give me cause for concern, wretched girl? Go on – off you go, or you’ll be late. And Ewa … try to look nice.’
‘Yes, Mama.’
Ewa went to her room, and Anna took her glass of juice into the living room and picked up the letter from the table. The face of Gomułka, stern behind horn-rimmed glasses, looked at her from the stamp. She sat down in the moquette chair and began to read.
Warsaw
July 1968
My dear Anna,
You must forgive me for not writing for so long, I thought that once I retired from the university I’d have so much time, but the last months have been filled with ill-health – my wretched hip; still, I won’t bore you with all that again. There have been far
more significant events, which I’m sure you must have heard something about already. It’s difficult to know how much I should say here …
It always is, thought Anna. You know I’m used to reading between the lines.
Just before Christmas last year, I went with a friend to the National Theatre, to see the Mickiewicz play Eve of Our Forefathers. Did you read it at school? Has Ewa read it at university? Anyway, it’s a very powerful play, about the struggle for independence from the Czars at the end of the nineteenth century, and it was presented to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution.
Of course, we heard about all this over here – a tremendous fuss when the authorities realized that the audience was going mad with every reference to ‘rogues from Moscow’.
There was some disagreement about the nature of the play …
They banned it. They shut down the theatre and banned it. And on the last night, when everyone had stayed inside, singing the national anthem, there was a great march to the Mickiewicz monument in Krakowskie Przedmeiście – the avenue where Teresa and I said our goodbyes – but when they got there the police were waiting. Arrests. Detentions.
… and since then, you may have learned that things have not been entirely peaceful.
Within a few weeks, almost every university in the country was in uproar – demonstrations, occupations, marches, police brutality. It was like Paris.
You may remember I told you about my good friends at the university?
Which ones does she mean?
They have now left Poland. In April I went to see them off at the station, and the platform was so crowded that we could hardly stand – many, many friends like mine …
She means Celia and Jakub. She means the scapegoats they had to find for all the troubles. She means the Jews. Academics, Party members, local bureaucrats – almost any Jew in any influential position: they’ve lost their jobs, and they’ve fled from Poland.
… It has all been very unpleasant. At the moment, however, the upheavals have died down. It is calm …
At least, I imagine, on the surface.
… and very hot. What with the heat and my hip, I am only too glad to stay at home. As so often, I think of you, dear Anna, and wonder how you and the family are. It would give me so much pleasure if Jerzy or Ewa were to come here for a visit one day. Perhaps later this year, or next summer? There will always be a bed for them. How I wish that I could see you again …
Anna looked up as Burek came in, and then Ewa’s footsteps were hurrying down the corridor.
‘Bye, Mama!’
‘Ewa – come here a minute.’
‘I’m late …’
‘Wiktoria wonders if you and Jerzy would like to go and visit her.’
‘Oh. Well …’
‘Have you ever read Eve of our Forefathers?’
‘Er – I think so. The one all the fuss was about – Mama, I must go!’
The flat door clicked open.
She doesn’t want me to see what she’s wearing, thought Anna, and got up quckly. ‘Just a minute …’ In the hall, she took one look at Ewa. ‘You’re not going out like that.’
‘Oh, yes I am.’ Ewa, in thick black eye-liner, chalk-white lips and denim skirt inches above her knees, pulled open the door. Anna pushed it shut.
‘Where did you get that skirt?’
‘From Bus Stop.’
‘From what?’
Ewa rolled her eyes. ‘It’s a boutique! In South Kensington. If you don’t let me go I’ll be late.’
‘Is this what you spend your money on?’
‘Why shouldn’t I? It’s my money.’
‘Ewa … can you not see yourself? You look – cheap. To go out looking like that, and work in a pub – you are asking for trouble. Danger, even.’
‘Are we going to have this argument every single time I set foot outside the door?’ Ewa asked coldly. ‘When are you going to let me grow up?’
‘It is not a question simply of growing up – it is how you grow.’
‘And how am I supposed to grow?’ Ewa saw herself, half an hour ago, sitting in the quietness of the grandparents’flat, passing tea plates, looking through Dziennik, with its pictures of girls in folk costume, and funeral announcements. She saw herself sitting all evening with Mama, watching television, waiting for Tata to come home, and she grabbed the catch on the door. Anna slapped her hand. Ewa burst into tears.
‘How dare you treat me like this?’
‘I’m your mother!’ Anna said furiously, as angry with herself for that slap as with Ewa for provoking it.
‘Do you realize that half the students I know don’t even see their mothers all term?’ Ewa shouted. ‘They have their own lives, they have boyfriends, most of them are living with their boyfriends –’
‘These are the English students, I presume.’
‘Not all of them.’
‘There are Polish girls who live like that? Who don’t care about their families? Who have lost their self-respect?’
‘Oh, Mama! What is so special about Polish girls, for God’s sake? Are we all supposed to sit at home like nuns?’
Wearily, Anna shook her head. Across the landing the grandparents’door was opened; cautious footsteps, then a tap on the door. Ewa, her face streaked with black, flung it open. Babcia, very small, looked up at her in astonishment, then at Anna.
‘Is everything all right?’
‘No,’ said Ewa, ‘it is not all right. Now, if you will excuse me, Babcia, I am going out. Goodbye!’ She pushed past her grandmother, ran down the stairs and banged the front door so hard that the banisters trembled. A ground-floor door was opened; Pani Kowić could be heard calling out: ‘What is going on, with all this noise?’
Anna closed her door and went back to the living room, followed by Babcia. She stood at the window, watching Ewa running down the street: at the corner she stopped, pulled open her shoulder bag and took out a make-up case. Anna saw her look in the little mirror, then fling it into the gutter so that it smashed, and she heard herself gasp. Behind her, Babcia was patting her arm.
‘Tch, tch, tch. Poor Anna.’
She took a long breath, watching Ewa stalk off to the corner on endless, shocking legs, and disappear.
‘I’m sorry …’
‘For what?’ Babcia was fiddling with the collar of her blouse, rubbing it between finger and thumb. ‘It is Ewa who should apologize …’
‘It will pass,’ Anna said carefully, moving away from the window. ‘It is only natural.’
Babcia nodded. ‘If she could meet a nice Polish boy …’
When she had gone, Anna went into the kitchen and unpacked the shopping. She gave Burek his supper, and she leaned against the fridge, watching the trains go past. Do I telephone Jan, she wondered, and tell him what to expect when he goes to collect his daughter?
She went slowly back to the living room, and saw Wiktoria’s letter, lying on the floor where she had dropped it. In Poland, she would have been on that march to the Mickiewicz Monument. So would Jan, she was sure of it. What about Ewa? Would she have cared enough to go?
The pub where Ewa worked was in the midst of a network of streets not far from the common, where many of the Victorian red-brick houses were occupied by whole families. Ewa walked past glossy front doors, white paintwork on the windows, roses in the small front gardens and wisteria clambering up to first-floor balconies. If she slowed down and looked into the front rooms she could see pale walls hung with bright abstract prints in aluminium frames, smoked-glass coffee tables piled with magazines; beyond were polished dining room tables, french windows leading into gardens where sprinklers played across the grass. Some of the houses had been converted into flats, and the glossy front doors were unlocked by people in their twenties coming home from work in the City or West End – young men in suits who re-emerged in expensive jeans with sweaters slung round their shoulders, and girls in Laura Ashley skirts and sandals from Russell and Bromley. The streets were
lined with Citroëns and Minis: on Friday evenings the flat-sharers piled into them and drove off to restaurants and discos, or out of London for the weekend.
Ewa, nearing the pub, saw a couple turn into the street from a corner just ahead: they were laughing, their arms wrapped round each other, and she felt a sudden lurch of loneliness and envy. She saw herself walking along an endless street, a cheap-looking girl looking into other people’s windows. Do I look cheap? she thought, and felt herself flush with anger. One day I shall have a house so beautiful that other people will walk past it and want to live there. One day I shall never have to worry about what my mother thinks, or why my parents don’t love each other, or feel guilty about my grandparents, or my little brother. She moved from room to quiet room inside the beautiful house, trying to picture a man there, too. She saw a sunlit bedroom with soft crumpled sheets on the bed and herself upon them, naked, stretched out; her naked lover, whose face she could not see, stood beside the bed, whispering her name.
Laughter came from the beer garden of the pub. Ewa, shocked at herself, shook her head and pushed open the door of the saloon bar. There were few customers at the tables, but she could see through the open door at the back that the garden was filling up already.
‘Hi, Eve.’ Stan was behind the bar, polishing glasses.
‘Hello, I shan’t be a minute.’ She walked quickly between the tables to the Ladies’, to repair her make-up in the mirror. Carefully cleaning away the streaks of black, stroking on more eye-liner, she wondered if Mama had seen her from the window, smashing her little mirror in the street, and she bit her lip. How humiliating, to behave like that. Then she went out, across the brown and yellow flowered carpet, and flipped up the bar top.
‘You’re a bit late, love,’ said Stan.
‘I know. Sorry.’ She took off her jacket and tucked it with her shoulder bag underneath the bar, took another tea towel and straightened up.
‘You look bloody gorgeous, though.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’ Ewa reached for the tin tray of beer mugs, and began to polish. She looked at him, and pulled a face. ‘My mother didn’t think so.’