22 Britannia Road Part 5

Silvana loved the early summer evenings in Warsaw. Ja.n.u.sz came home from work and they ate together quickly, Ja.n.u.sz telling her about his day while she listened and nodded and enjoyed feeling like a perfect urban wife. Afterwards they went out into the streets and walked in the park, feeding the ducks on the pond and watching children pushing their wooden sailing boats out on the green water before their nannies took them home.

One night they stayed longer than usual. It was a hot night and Silvana didn't feel like going back to the flat, so they sat on a park bench and watched the dusk sky deepen to violet and then a greeny blue before the street lights were lit and it was dark.

The animals in the menagerie began to call, weaving fretful paths through sawdust bedding. Monkeys howled and chattered in their cages. Clouds of moths circled the street lights. Silvana felt restless. The doctor had told her that the birth was not far off, a week at most. She was filled with energy and wanted to walk.

A group of women in feathered hats walked past and looked at Ja.n.u.sz. They put their hands across their lipsticked mouths and whispered to each other. Silvana gripped Ja.n.u.sz's hand and pretended not to notice them.

The park at night was different like wading out from the shallows into suddenly cold, deep water that pressed on your chest. Silvana noticed men sitting on benches where no one had been before. Even in the shadows of the magnolia trees behind them, Silvana could see some of them were holding hands. Ahead of her a woman took the arm of a man and walked away into the trees.

When Silvana and Ja.n.u.sz got home they didn't speak. They climbed the narrow staircase to their flat and, once inside, Ja.n.u.sz guided Silvana to the bedroom. He sat her on the bed and she watched him take off his clothes, unbuckling his trouser belt, pulling his shirt off over his head.

She had never seen him naked. Their courting days had been in fields and woodland and their lovemaking had always involved creased clothes and a fear of being discovered. Since they had married, Silvana had felt unsure of the new legitimacy of their lives together. She was careful to look away when Ja.n.u.sz undressed at night and made sure she was always in bed first, under the safety of the bedcovers. Tonight, though, was different.

'Wait,' she said as he moved towards her. 'Stay there. I want to look at you.'

She got up and walked around him, studying him, touching him with her fingertips, like an artist slowly exploring the shadows and curves of a sculpture. Ja.n.u.sz caught hold of her hands and pulled her to him.

'Now you,' he breathed. 'Let me see you.'

Silently Silvana took hold of her collar and unb.u.t.toned it. She let her dress slip to the floor.

'You're beautiful,' Ja.n.u.sz whispered, and ran his hands over her belly as if he were polishing its domed surface.

When they climbed into bed, Silvana felt as though she could make more babies. That the one in her belly could be joined by another. She was too big and heavy to lie on her back, so she knelt on all fours. Silvana felt an urgent, deeper love for Ja.n.u.sz than she had ever felt before. She bowed her head and imagined the dark world inside herself where the child must be, curled under her cathedral ribs. Then she was swept away from her thoughts and there was only Ja.n.u.sz and the unstoppable, silent language of their love.

By the time she woke the next day, Ja.n.u.sz had already left for work. The bed sheets were wet and twisted around her. She unravelled them and tried to work out why she was lying in such dampness. Then the pain hit her. A sudden hurt like a rope pulled tight around her hips. The baby was coming. It must be. The pain faded and she struggled out of bed, reaching for her clothes. The doctor's house was a couple of blocks away and she was sure she could get there if she went slowly.

She dressed and left the flat, edging down the narrow staircase, hands pressed against the wall. When she got to the landing, the rope tightened again. She let out a groan of pain, a low, animal noise she didn't recognize as her own voice. She leaned against the wall, sweat beading on her forehead. She'd never make it to the doctor. When the pain lessened enough for her to think again, she knocked on an apartment door. A woman answered, a crowd of small brown dogs yapping around her feet. They rushed into the corridor and began nipping at Silvana's heels.

'Come here!' the women yelled at the dogs, trying to usher them back inside. A man came out behind her, asking what all the noise was.

'My G.o.d,' he said on seeing Silvana. 'You're the girl from upstairs, aren't you? Are you all right?'

Silvana fell forwards into his arms. Here she was, bigger than a house and moaning like a cow and he wanted to know if she was all right. 'I'm fine,' she managed to reply before the pain across her belly tightened and she doubled over.

After a while the pain was all there was. Silvana forgot she was giving birth; she believed she was fighting for her life. And then, just as she had begun to welcome the idea of death, her body began to call her back.

'I need to push,' she told the woman. 'Oh my G.o.d, I need to push.'

'Already? The doctor's not here yet. Can't you wait?'

Silvana shook her head. She began to moan.

'Get on the bed,' said the woman. 'Get on the bed. The doctor won't want to see you on the floor.'

Silvana batted the woman away. 'I can't,' she panted. 'I don't want to. Leave me alone.'

With her eyes tight shut, crouching in the corner of the room, she gave a long, drawn-out moan and felt heat burn through her. She screamed. Then, just as she could bear no more, a sense of relief flooded her. When she opened her eyes and looked down, a blood-smeared infant lay between her trembling legs. Her body convulsed and she felt the urge to push again. Was there another child? Twins? She cried out in fear.

'It's the afterbirth,' the woman said sharply. She leaned over and Silvana felt her hands pushing down hard on her belly. Silvana tried to reach for the baby but the pain made her cry out and she closed her eyes tight. Then came a second warm rush of relief, and she sat back on the floor, exhausted.

She was aware of the baby being lifted in a sheet, of being helped into bed, of someone wiping a cool cloth across her forehead. She heard the woman fussing about her sheets being stained, a man's voice telling the woman to be quiet and the sound of dogs barking in another room, and then she slept briefly, absolutely spent.

When she woke, the pillows were plumped under her head and beside her, swaddled in a blanket, was her son.

She studied his face. He kept his eyes tight shut, his eyelids creased and purple, as if he didn't want to see what the world had to offer him. A feeling of awe crowded her lungs and took her breath away. She felt suddenly afraid of the silent creature in her arms. It was such a tiny thing, a screwed-up, boiled red sc.r.a.p of a beginning, but she knew its strength; that the love she felt already for this stranger could undo her entirely. Was she capable of looking after him? She thought of her mother and the losses she had suffered. What if her son died like her brothers had? What if he were to be ill?

'Can you take him?' she asked the woman.

'Take him?'

'I don't know how to care for him. Please. It's for the best. Take him. I can't be his mother.'

'That's enough of this nonsense,' said the doctor, coming between Silvana and the woman. He put a hand on Silvana's forehead. 'This is your son. He needs you.'

'Will he live?' Silvana grabbed the doctor's sleeve. 'If there's something wrong with him I want to know now. I need to know he'll live...'

'The boy is well and so are you. All he needs is a good feed.'

But Silvana wanted answers. She tried to push the child into the doctor's arms.

'I need to know he's healthy. My brothers died. It's in my family. Boys in my family... Please tell me if there's something wrong with him.'

And then the baby opened his eyes. He unfurled his fists, moving them as though dragging them through water, a drifting movement like pondweed in a slow river. She put her finger against his palm and he closed his own fingers around it. She stroked his face, took off his swaddling clothes and counted his tiny toes. She kissed the soft dip of his skull.

'My darling,' she whispered, and was embarra.s.sed by her outburst. How could she have been so crazy? It was obvious. Her life was always going to be about this child. In that room, with the day turning into evening, Silvana lifted the child to her breast and he started to suckle, surprising her with the strength of his grip. She didn't know how long she stayed like that, but when she looked up again, Ja.n.u.sz was standing beside her.

'Can I hold him?'

She held the baby out, though in her heart she was unwilling to give him up.

'So I have a son,' said Ja.n.u.sz, his face full of surprise.

Silvana felt her body relax. Perhaps her mother's bad luck was not going to pa.s.s itself on to her. She'd done it. She had given birth to a healthy baby boy.

'Aurek,' said Ja.n.u.sz, grinning. 'We'll call him Aurek, after my father.'

'Can I have him back?' she asked, and closed her eyes with pleasure as the weight of her child filled her arms once more.

Ja.n.u.sz

'Franek, why don't you go and catch us a chicken?' said Bruno, smacking at the boy's head with his army cap. 'I'm starving.'

'I might catch a goose or two,' Franek said. 'I could eat a bear, the way I feel.'

'Don't touch the geese,' said Ja.n.u.sz. 'Leave them alone. A chicken will be fine.'

Ja.n.u.sz had invited the two men to share a meal with him. He was still trying to make sense of how the weeks had pa.s.sed so quickly since he had been at the cottage. He watched Franek lope outside and begin running around the yard after the chickens.

'What's wrong with him?'

'He's a child,' said Bruno. 'A child in a man's body. He joined up with his elder brother when he should have stayed at home. He wasn't bright enough to go to school, but he was good on the family farm. That's where he should have stayed. He's not a soldier. He did all right with us until the Russians came across the border. They just kept rolling past. Hundreds of them. We knew we couldn't fight them, but Franek went running up to one of them, yelling and shouting, telling them Poland would always be free. Nearly got himself killed. Tomasz his brother wanted to escape so he could take Franek home.

'We had a plan to get him back to his family. Tomasz and I were going to take him home and then join the underground movement. We were being marched to a camp when we ducked out and ran into woodland. Franek fell over. The boy's got two left feet. Down he goes and I stop running to help him.

'The Russian guards came after us. I was trying to get Franek up, but his ankle was twisted badly. The guards were coming closer, so Tomasz turns round and goes back towards them, picking up rocks as he goes. He hurls them at the guards. Just stands there, aiming them while they open fire on him. I got Franek away, forced him to run. The boy won't talk about what happened. He's never mentioned Tomasz since.'

In the yard, Franek was still chasing chickens. Finally he caught one, lifted it high in the air and swung it, smashing its body against the water pump again and again. The chicken went limp and he dropped it on the ground. He stood over it, as if he thought it might just get up and run away. Bruno walked out into the yard and Ja.n.u.sz followed him. Franek had hit the bird so hard it was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess of feathers and smashed bones.

'Is it dead?' Franek asked.

Ja.n.u.sz kicked the bird gently with his foot. 'Yes, it's dead.'

'Do you want another one? I can catch us another one.'

'You catch it,' said Bruno, pulling a penknife from his pocket, 'and then give it to me. I'll kill it.'

Ja.n.u.sz saw the penknife glint in Bruno's thick hand. He saw the same flickering shine in Franek's eyes as he turned on the chickens once again. It made him feel afraid. The boy looked quite mad.

Ja.n.u.sz went into the cottage. He piled sticks in the hearth and set a fire. He could hear Franek shouting and yelling in the yard. The sooner he left for Warsaw, he decided, the better.

Ipswich

The school is a large red-brick building with a playground in front and black metal railings around it. Two entrances have heavy lintels over the blue doors with the words girls and boys carved into weathered limestone. Girls play hopscotch and skip and boys kick footb.a.l.l.s or stand in secretive groups swapping cigarette cards.

Aurek clings to Silvana, sinking his fingers into her coat and wrapping his skinny legs around her so tightly she yelps in pain. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes plead with her, but Silvana knows she cannot help him. Ja.n.u.sz is firm on this matter. Aurek has to go to school.

'It's only for a month,' Ja.n.u.sz tells them both. 'Then the school will break up for the summer holidays. He's got to go sometime.'

The first day, the teacher tries to prise Aurek out of Silvana's arms.

'He'll be absolutely fine,' she says. 'Come along with me, young man.'

By the time the woman has him in her grip, her face is red and the veins on her skinny neck stand out blue and angry-looking. Her voice is full of the strain of holding the boy. After a week of the same scenario, the teacher rolls her sleeves up as soon as they arrive, grabbing Aurek before he has a chance to wrap himself around Silvana.

'Just go,' she snaps at Silvana. 'The boy will be fine if you just go. It's always the mothers who are the problem, not the children.'

Silvana leaves, her heart broken by the sound of Aurek's cries.

The second week, things are no better.

'Come on,' she says, trying to sound sure of herself. 'Please, Aurek? Let go now. We can't do this all the time.'

'Nie.'

'Please?'

The teacher comes out into the playground ringing the school bell, heaving it up and down in a two-handed grip as children flow past her.

'Good morning,' she says, putting the bell down and clenching her fists, like a farmer approaching a difficult calf, arms already tensed for a fight. 'Still don't want to come to lessons, young man?'

Week after week, the other mothers act as if they have not noticed Aurek and his high-pitched screaming or the spectacle of Silvana and the teacher trying to hold on to the furious child. Silvana alternates between wanting to cry and wanting to take an angry bow in front of her audience. She and the boy might as well be starring in a theatre show for the parents and children at the school; a tragedy Polish Mother Abandons Son Polish Mother Abandons Son. Please bring cotton wool to plug your ears.

By mid-term, she finally manages to find a way to change the one-act play. She gives Aurek her headscarf at the school gates, and if he has that to hold, he lets her walk away. It pains her to reveal her grey hair to the world, the unruly kinks and curls that are forming as it grows longer. But it is the only way.

She walks briskly, head up, back straight, past the other mothers. Ten agonizing minutes down the road, she stops, her heart racing, and runs back to the school, staring at the empty playground. She allows herself a few moments like this before she has to hurry across town to get to work, knowing already that she will be late.

Paris Fashions factory gates are high and wooden, held between two tall red-brick pillars. They are always shut, except when the lorries bring fabric and take clothes away. There is a door in one of the wooden gates that opens to let the women who work there come in and go out.

Silvana notices the other women chatting as they walk along the road to work, but they never talk to her. As they enter the factory gates, they all fall silent, concentrating on not b.u.mping their heads on the frame of the small entrance or tripping over the wooden step; if anyone does, they become the first joke of the morning. Then the laughter, breaking the silence on either side of the big wooden gates, lasts until they are all sitting at the machines and the foreman walks among them, nodding approval as their sewing machines rattle into life and each woman watches her needle st.i.tch a path through the day.

Several times now, Silvana has had to knock on the door and wait for the foreman to open it for her. He looks at his watch as if it is a filthy thing, and then at her as if she is responsible for its state, and her cheeks burn as she apologizes for her lateness, trying to seem as though she cares about the job.

She hunches over her machine and does her best to look industrious. Around her, the women's talk is easy and full of jokes and gossip about people she knows nothing about. Occasionally another woman tries to make conversation with Silvana, but she doesn't answer. She pretends to be having problems with the skirt band she is sewing, and hopes they will leave her alone. The work isn't too bad. She remembers how to sew. She'd made all her own clothes when she lived with her parents, but still, looking as if she is concentrating on something makes it easier to be left alone with her own thoughts.

Every day, she fights the desire to leave her work and take Aurek out of school. As she st.i.tches she imagines the day with him: how they will stay in bed curled up for warmth in the mornings; how she will trace the narrow dip in the small of his neck and breathe the damp child smell behind his ear. She will tend the herbs she and Ja.n.u.sz have planted in the garden while Aurek plays until it is time for dinner, which they will prepare together, Aurek shaping dumplings and Silvana cutting potatoes.

Then she will tell Aurek stories. Stories about Pan Zagloba, the lackadaisical n.o.bleman, and Jan Skrzetuski, the virtuous knight. Stories of aristocrats and beautiful maidens saved by bravery and courage from evil barons. Horses gallop through the stories, arrows are fired, wild boars caught, bears hunted. Now she is far from home, she tells him stories of her family, of her grandmother and her childhood. She resurrects her brothers, giving them long lives and summers spent fishing in the lake and climbing trees, and reinvents her parents as loving, sober people.

Ja.n.u.sz never mentions his sisters or his family. She doesn't blame him. Not knowing where they are is a terrible thing. She wishes she could have given him some news of them. Ja.n.u.sz has told her he thinks they must be in Russia. As a functionary in local government, it is quite likely his father was arrested. More than that, Ja.n.u.sz will not say. And she doesn't push him. While Silvana tells stories of her childhood, Ja.n.u.sz prefers to read Aurek facts from the boys' annuals he buys him. How fast does a bullet move? Why does iron go rusty? What are sun spots? How many stars are there? How fast does a bullet move? Why does iron go rusty? What are sun spots? How many stars are there?

She is jolted from her dreams by the sound of the siren. The sewing machines stutter to a stop and Silvana joins the movement towards the doors.

'Miss?'

Silvana looks up to see the foreman looking at her.

'Can I have a word?'

His eyes are neutral, his expression slightly bored. He folds his arms and Silvana feels herself shrinking under his impa.s.sive glance.

'You think we make enough money here to pay you to daydream all day? I've got my eye on you. No more lateness and no more sitting idle. Understand?'

'Of course. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry. Do I still have my job?'

'Just about. Go on, and stop looking at me like that. I'm not a bleeding monster. Just make sure you do your work.'