22 Britannia Road Part 32

'Home,' he says, handing her the feathers.

'What about home?'

Aurek looks up at her, his face dark with freckles.

'When can we we go home?' go home?'

'You and me. We're a home. We're survivors, remember?' Silvana puts the feathers in her ap.r.o.n pocket. 'Thank you for these. You used to bring me feathers. When we lived in the trees. Do you remember?'

Aurek shrugs his small shoulders and she wonders if he doubts her. Is it possible he knows she is not his mother?'

'I love you,' she says, and feels at least, in that, she is honest. There are no lies in her heart. And what is she thinking? Of course she is his mother.

That night, Silvana sits with him in the front room, watching the sea, glad of the peace in the house. When Aurek falls asleep on her lap, she carries him upstairs and tucks him into bed. She goes into her bedroom and reaches for the newspaper cuttings under the pillow. It is time to let the children go.

She opens the window, and the sea wind that always blows catches them. Each slip of paper flies away, the wind s.n.a.t.c.hing them from her fingers. She doesn't know what she and Aurek will do, but they cannot stay in Felixstowe any more.

She changes into the dress she arrived in, the dress Ja.n.u.sz bought her. The one thing she owns that did not once belong to somebody else. Sitting on the bed, she goes over everything. It is clear to her now.

She will make a life on her own with her son.

Ipswich

It is Ja.n.u.sz's duty as foreman to see the aisles empty of men leaving their night shifts before he is free to go. Often he stays far longer than he needs to, enjoying the few moments before the next shift clocks on and the factory starts up its work. He likes to see the machines quiet and the air clear. Despite the brief lack of workers, a muggy feeling persists in the bays like the breath of a sleeper against his collar, and it makes him part of something. It's a great thing for him, this sense of belonging to a workforce.

He talks to the night.w.a.tchmen before he leaves, a polite discussion on the weather and the football before he reluctantly walks out into the cold morning air, the dawn sun streaking the sky with red light.

He tells himself he walks home rather than taking his car because these summer mornings are too beautiful to miss. The truth is, it takes a good forty minutes to walk home. Forty minutes before he has to confront his empty house once again.

Opening his front door, Ja.n.u.sz sees the postman has already been. A letter and a postcard lie on the red-tiled hallway floor. He stoops and picks them up. The letter is an electricity bill. Nothing interesting there. He looks at the card. A black-and-white picture ent.i.tled 'View from Wolsey Gardens'.

He turns the postcard over in his hand and almost drops it in surprise. The handwriting is terrible. It's a small wonder it arrived at all. The address is barely legible. The 22 looks more like squiggles than numbers. The B of Britannia balloons over the rest of the letters, obscuring half of them.

There is no message, just a spidery signature. Aurek Nowak. Aurek Nowak. The boy's name. He feels light-headed seeing it there in print. His child's name. The postmark is Felixstowe. Posted three days earlier. Ja.n.u.sz holds it tightly in his hand. He is tired after his night shift and his body aches for sleep, but his mind is turning too fast. He goes into his kitchen, makes himself some tea and sits at the kitchen table. He drinks tea and looks at the postcard again, rereading it over and over, marvelling at it. The boy's name. He feels light-headed seeing it there in print. His child's name. The postmark is Felixstowe. Posted three days earlier. Ja.n.u.sz holds it tightly in his hand. He is tired after his night shift and his body aches for sleep, but his mind is turning too fast. He goes into his kitchen, makes himself some tea and sits at the kitchen table. He drinks tea and looks at the postcard again, rereading it over and over, marvelling at it.

Felixstowe

'I know Moira's been here,' Tony says when he arrives that night. He looks wary and unsure. Silvana means to be calm. She means to talk sensibly. She holds out a handful of Lucy's clothes at him. The look on his face says everything she needs to know.

'How could you!' she yells, throwing them at him. 'How could you lie to me?'

He picks up a blouse, folds it carefully, turns his brown eyes to her. 'They are just clothes.'

'No, they're not. They are Lucy's Lucy's clothes.' clothes.'

'Silvana, don't be like this. You know I love you, don't you?'

'Who?' she demands. 'Who? Me or Lucy? You lied, d.a.m.n it! Who do you love? Me or a dead woman?'

She regrets saying it the moment it leaves her mouth. Tony stares at her, wringing his hands.

'Can we go to bed?' he asks. 'I'm tired. Let's talk tomorrow. Come to bed now. It's late. Please, just come to bed and let me hold you.'

'No.'

'Love me. Come to me, please.'

'Throw the clothes away,' she says.

'Throw them away?'

'Burn them! Get rid of them. Get them out of the house.'

'I can't...'

'You have to.'

She sits on the bed watching him move armfuls of dresses. He looks broken, as if he is carrying away the body of his dead wife wrapped in layers of silk and cotton and jersey. She pities him, but she cannot bring herself to tell him to stop. When the wardrobe is empty, he stands waiting for his next instruction, but she turns on her side, pulls the covers over her head and feigns sleeps.

She wakes early the next morning, her dress crumpled and creased. She opens her eyes and feels a cool sense of determination. She slides out of bed, slips her feet into her shoes and picks up the headscarf lying on the table. Lucy's house. Peter's house. Tony's house. Anybody's house but hers.

'Silvana?'

Tony is sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, looking at her. His eyes are red rimmed and his face is sunken. An empty whisky bottle rolls on the floor at his feet.

'Where are you going, Silvana?'

He has a rough blue shadow of stubble on his cheeks, and his clothes look as crumpled as hers. He obviously hasn't slept at all.

She rubs her face. 'For a walk. And you? When are you going to Devon?'

'I don't have to go...'

But he will go with his son and parents-in-law. He will go to Devon. Of course he will. He belongs with them. Not with her. He knows that. And he knows it is over already between them. The moment she told him she knew about the clothes she saw it in his face. Like a film coming to an end and the lights going up.

He looks at her pleadingly, his brown eyes watering, and she understands finally what that look means. The longing in his face, the desire she always thought was aimed at her. It is the longing of a man who desperately wants what he cannot have. She knows it herself. They are united in this at least: the overwhelming desire to find the dead in the living.

She wants to tell him she is no better than him. Didn't she take a child in order to pretend her own son was still living? That's what she did. The film is over for her too. Aurek is not her dead son. He is a boy who needs loving for who he is. And Silvana is not Lucy.

'They want me to go tomorrow,' he says heavily. 'We'll be away for two weeks. You'll be here, won't you, when I get back?'

'I don't know,' she answers. 'I'm going for a walk on the beach. Do you want to come?'

Tony shakes his head. 'I have to make a delivery. Those cotton sheets. I've finally sold them. I'm taking them over to a hotel in Ipswich this morning. Say you'll be here when I get back?'

She doesn't answer. She can feel the distance between them now. Overnight, a s.p.a.ce has grown between them.

'We'll talk more this afternoon,' he says, and she hears him trying to recapture the confident tone that his voice usually contains. His hands shape the air. 'I must get up. Get on with things. I'll see you later. Have a good walk.'

Downstairs, the kitchen is glowing with sunlight even though it is early. She turns her chair away from the window while she drinks a cup of coffee.

Silvana washes the cup, dries it and hangs it on the wooden cup tree that stands beside the sink. She sweeps the floor, opens the pantry door and tidies jars, packets and tins so that all their labels face her. Then she does the same with the pots and pans under the sink, handles facing inwards just like Ja.n.u.sz's mother used to arrange them in her kitchen. She wants to leave things in good order.

At the front door she breathes in the sea air, steps outside and looks up to the bedroom window. Aurek is sitting there, watching the seagulls. He waves at her and she waves back.

'I won't be long. Don't go anywhere. I want you there when I get back.'

She walks on the deserted beach. She begins to run, soft sand spray flying up. Her red headscarf flutters around her face, and she runs until she has no breath left and has to stop, hands on her knees, waiting for her heart to slow down and her breathing to come back to normal. Finally, she stands up, takes a deep breath, climbs the concrete steps onto the pavements above the beach and walks back towards the house.

Ja.n.u.sz is driving slowly. He has already stopped twice, unsure of what he thinks he is doing. What if she doesn't want to see him? Both times he got out of the car, studied Aurek's postcard, and then got back in and continued on the road heading towards Felixstowe. As he comes into the town, its name proudly spelt out on a huge roadside flower bed, red flowers for the letters on a white background of daisies, a car heading towards Ipswich pa.s.ses him.

It's the first he's seen on the road that morning. The driver slows as he pa.s.ses. The two men look at each other.

It is Tony.

He looks tired and unshaven, his collar undone, his tie knotted carelessly, and Ja.n.u.sz hardly recognizes him. He wants to punch him, and slows down. They come to a stop in the road. Ja.n.u.sz cuts the engine, flexes his hands into fists and gets out of his car.

Tony winds his window down.

'Get out of the car,' Ja.n.u.sz says, lifting his fists.

Tony shakes his head. 'There's no point in fighting. She's waiting for you.'

The man looks so utterly wretched, Ja.n.u.sz forgets for a moment that he'd like to hit him. By the time Ja.n.u.sz remembers, Tony is already moving away, his wheels squealing. Ja.n.u.sz watches him speeding down the empty road. He watches until the car disappears from view.

Silvana only notices the car that pa.s.ses her because it is going so slowly. It must be someone out for an early morning drive. The car is very clean, polished, a shiny black Rover. The man driving it stares at her as he pa.s.ses. She carries on walking and then looks back, unsure what to do. A little way down the road, the car has pulled to a stop. She carries on walking a few more paces and then turns round. There is nothing between her and her husband now, not even a child to link them. She knows this, has told herself so, many times. But the sight of Ja.n.u.sz sitting waiting in his car makes her heart soar, and she walks towards him.

Ja.n.u.sz opens the pa.s.senger door and watches Silvana get in beside him. He tries to be calm. Silvana touches the dashboard, looks around herself.

'Aurek would like this car,' she says. 'He is very fond of cars.'

They sit in silence, the sun glinting off the windscreen, seagulls landing and taking off in front of them. The rows of lights that loop along the seafront swing back and forth, jingling, s.n.a.t.c.hed up by the wind again and again. Finally Ja.n.u.sz speaks.

'I met Helene during the war.' He coughs, smooths his thumb and forefinger over his moustache. 'She died. She died in 1944. I should never have kept her letters. I should have explained to you. Talked more. I shut it all up.'

Ja.n.u.sz looks across at Silvana and sees her eyes are shining with tears. He pulls his handkerchief from his pocket and offers it to her.

'The thing is, the boy. I'd like to see him.'

'Do you think I am a bad woman for what I did?'

Ja.n.u.sz shakes his head. He is not sure if she is talking about Tony or Aurek.

'Am I a criminal?' she asks.

He looks at her. Her eyes have the same hard stare he has seen in soldiers. The ones who have witnessed too much. Her lips hold more questions, waiting for his response.

She pleads with him. 'Will you ever forgive me?'

He answers No No, and Yes, I think so Yes, I think so, which seem to be the answers Silvana wants to hear.

'I thought I had lost you both,' he says.

Silvana touches his cheek with her hand and he feels it tremble against him.

They sit in the car, watching the wind make patterns with the sand on the road, snaking lines of yellow back and forth, and Silvana tells Ja.n.u.sz the story of her war. She lays it out like a book, filling in details, moving back and forth over time until the whole six years they have been apart are accounted for. Some of it is hard to hear, but he listens. He does not turn away from her. She says she wants no more secrets between them.

His own stories of those years are hard to relate. He tries to explain things to her, but he does not want to remember the war. His memories of it are locked down, and he can't bring himself to open them. He cannot speak of Helene. Silvana doesn't press him for details. She changes the subject. For that he is grateful.

'Maybe it doesn't matter,' she says when he falters and loses his place in his own narrative. 'The past maybe we make too much of it. What we need is what's right here.'

But Ja.n.u.sz knows she is just being kind. Of course the past matters. He looks at her and sees the country he left behind staring back at him. Her face is full of the knowledge of his own youth, and he loves her for it. He feels like he does when he mends machines, when all those engineered details that can so easily go wrong are put in the right place, when they are warm and oiled and turning over perfectly.

Silvana hugs herself. 'He didn't have a mother. I know he didn't. He had filth in his hair and sores on his body. I had to care for him. He had n.o.body. And my own baby, our baby was '

'Stop,' says Ja.n.u.sz. He winds his window down, lets the sea air rush in, breathes deeply. 'Not that. Tell me about him growing up.'

She tells him about their woodland son and how he grew up in the forest. She tells him the boy's favourite games and the way he learned to climb trees and hunt for food.

They speak quietly together until both boys become one in Ja.n.u.sz's mind. It is the best way. He knows the boy he loves isn't really the boy who swallowed a b.u.t.ton, but he will give him these memories. Aurek will own them. There will be no more mystery. He is their son. And that will be his story.

It is awkward, embracing in a car. Ja.n.u.sz leans towards Silvana, but the steering wheel gets in the way and the gearstick lies between them. Silvana leans further forwards, shifting to the edge of her seat, and he manages to kiss her in a clumsy way, their noses b.u.mping.

He wants her. The sound of her breathing in the night. The way she hums when she believes she is alone. All these things. Desire rises in him. His heart beats like a young man's, full of wanting. At the same time he feels old. Old enough to understand the hurt he has suffered will not disappear overnight. The thought of Tony makes him want to push her away, accuse her all over again. But he pulls her closer to him.

'Come back,' he whispers. 'Please come back.'

'The house is along the seafront,' Silvana says. 'And you turn '

'I know,' he tells her, and starts the engine.

Aurek is sitting out on his window ledge when he sees the car driving up the road. He watches it stop outside the house. Sees his mother get out and then his father. He has come! They stand by the car and look up at him. Aurek waves, slowly at first, then faster. He stands up, hanging onto the window frame, losing his balance slightly, tipping forwards. He has to grab the sill to stop himself falling out of the window. Both Ja.n.u.sz and Silvana lift their hands to him in alarm.

'No!' they shout. 'No!'

22 Britannia Road