22 Britannia Road Part 33

The car journey is long and slow and Aurek slips about on the leather back seat, sliding from one window to the other. Fields give way to allotments and blackened railway tracks. Aurek stares at the rust and metal of the gasworks, lets his eyes skip over tangled wire fences, yellow scrubland, terraced houses.

He feels the shade of magnolia trees and yew hedges press briefly against the window, shutting out the sun, and grips the seat tightly so he won't slip away from the view. They pa.s.s the war cemetery and Aurek glimpses the tidy lines of salt-white crosses behind the dark yew trees. He played there sometimes, catching lizards and slow-worms, putting them in jam jars filled with bits of gra.s.s, pink quartz and green granite chippings. He is itching to go there again, to sit motionless, waiting for the lizards to come out and bask on the graves.

They drive on, over a humpback bridge, past the newly pointed wall of the house on the corner advertising Colman's Dairy in chalky blue paint, a bottle of milk nestling in the C of 'Colman's'. Aurek's eyes are open wide, taking it all in. He is a sailor coming into port, watching for the cliffs of his homeland, his eyes full of the town, the broad sky, the small white clouds, the dirty haze of pigeons settling on rooftops.

They are speeding up the hill to Britannia Road, the car shaking over the cobbles. They sail over a b.u.mp in the road and Aurek flies forward, slamming into the gap between the front seats.

'Aurek!' his mother cries. She grabs his shoulder and he scrambles through to sit on her lap in the front. They arrive outside number 22 and Aurek bounds out of the car, running to the house, banging on the front door as if someone might open up to him and let him in.

'I have something to show you,' Ja.n.u.sz says, unlocking the door.

They walk through the hall, into the kitchen and outside.

The light in the garden is pale. The bark of the trees is paler still, the colour of new moons and baby teeth. All the leaves form a sweet fluttering of green. Aurek breathes in the smell of a warm day. He walks to the oak tree and sits down underneath his tree house. His mother sits next to him, his father the other side. The way they look at him makes him feel safe; it's like he's everything they ever wanted.

That's what his father says to his mother. You and the boy are everything to me. You and the boy are everything to me.

Aurek closes his eyes and listens to the sparrows chattering in the trees. Somewhere, in another garden, or in the fields beyond the houses and factories, he hears the summer calling to him. A cuckoo's refrain, its woody voice repeating over and over. Aurek can't resist its needy cry. He opens his mouth and begins to sing.

Forgetfulness comes softly over the years. In time, Aurek will grow up thinking of England as his home. But still, as an adult, when he sees his mother staring out of the window or his father silent in his armchair, he wonders how hard it must have been for them both, leaving Poland to give him a safe life. A shadow of a memory will move in his mind then, quick, like a small boy playing hide-and-seek, running barefoot through the rooms of 22 Britannia Road.

The shared ghost, he believes, of their old country.

Acknowledgements

Heartfelt thanks to Rachel Calder and to Juliet Annan, Jenny Lord, Pamela Dorman and Julie Miesionczek. Thanks also to Sarah Hunt Cooke.

I am very grateful to Dr Kathy Burrell, Senior Lecturer in Modern History at De Montfort University, Leicester, for generously reading the novel and commenting on the historical aspects of it.

Special thanks go to Kit Habianic for reading early drafts. Also to Deborah Goodes, Marcia Edwards, Gill Hamer and all the talented writers who helped me at Lorraine Mace's excellent Writing Asylum. Huge thanks to Richard Butler for being my computer guru and to Delyth Potts for always believing in me. Thank you, Melanie Watson, Aimy Kersey and Annie Benoit for your friendship and support.

And finally, thank you, darling Katya, Nancy and Guy.

The epigraph is taken from 'The Forest of Arden' by Zbigniew Herbert, Collected Poems: 19561998 Collected Poems: 19561998. With the kind permission of Atlantic Books.