22 Britannia Road

by Amanda Hodgkinson

  ‘You have to get used to living in a house again,’ says Janusz. ‘Put the past behind you both. The war’s over. This is peacetime. A new start for us.’ He tries to soften his voice. He is aware that he sounds harsh. ‘I know it’s hard. You must miss Poland. I did too, to begin with.’

  He watches their faces: his wife’s nervy stare, the boy’s silent eyes, blank as carved stone.

  ‘There’s a club in the town. A group of twenty or so Poles like us. Displaced people who have ended up living here. Some of them have children. You could speak Polish there, make some friends …’

  ‘No!’ Silvana replies, and he is surprised by the fierceness of her response.

  ‘I don’t want to see any other Polish people,’ she says. ‘They’ll just remind me of what I have lost.’

  ‘What we’ve both lost,’ he replies, and she turns away from him, as if he has said something stupid.

  Janusz brings home pamphlets. They have pictures of smiling families waving British flags on the front of them. He reads to Silvana from a booklet called ‘Learning the British Way of Life’.

  ‘Home Entertainment for Foreigners’ brings a smile to his wife’s face when he shows it to her. It has a picture of a housewife holding a tray of tarts on the front page. The woman’s frilled apron rises up around her ears like the fluted ruff of her pastry.

  ‘How to Learn British Manners’ is Janusz’s preferred reading. The illustration on the front cover is of two men shaking hands and lifting their hats to each other. Janusz insists they read it together.

  ‘There are ways of doing things here,’ he says. ‘You need to learn them if you are going to fit in.’ He clears his throat, lifts an imaginary hat from his head. ‘Good morning, Mrs Nowak. How do you do?’

  ‘How do you do?’ Silvana repeats dutifully, a small smile playing around her lips.

  ‘Lovely weather for the time of year.’

  ‘Yes, eezn’t it.’ Silvana giggles.

  Janusz’s eyes crease at the corners. ‘Yes, eezn’t it.’ He laughs a little.

  Silvana bites her lip and concentrates. ‘Lovely vezzer,’ she repeats, her voice breaking into laughter.

  ‘Weather.’

  ‘Vezzer. Wehhzer?’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ says Janusz. He comes back from the kitchen with a bottle. ‘I got this today. It’s called sherry. You should try it. It’s what they drink here.’

  Silvana takes the glass he offers.

  ‘Oh, no, no. You mustn’t drink it down in one. It’s not like vodka. Here they sip it slowly and say, “Chin chin. God save the King.”’

  It is sweet and cloying, but they drink the bottle dry and dance around the room, the wireless playing Glenn Miller, Aurek lying on his back on the rug, making small, off-key noises to himself. Janusz puts a porcelain bowl on his head and pretends it is a bowler hat, while Silvana waves an umbrella in the air. Their voices are loud and full of laughter.

  Swinging Silvana around in time to the music, Janusz thinks they must look to the outside world like a couple of newlyweds. People who have never been touched by the war. He holds her close and feels … young. A young married man. A husband and a father. Something he has not felt for a long time. He will make up for the years they have spent apart. The war and all its horrors will be forgotten in this house. He has been given a second chance. It’s all falling into place, this new beginning. Yes, he thinks, as he watches his wife’s face. This is a lucky house. And if it wasn’t before, it is now.

  Most nights the dreams still come to Silvana. She cannot stop them. Being with Janusz has brought her to a kind of calmness, and yet his nearness brings back memories that she has kept from herself for years. Memories that threaten to undo her. Their son before the war; Janusz’s parents’ garden with its smooth lawns; Eve playing her violin for Aurek and his delighted, high-pitched laugh. It was there Aurek had taken his first steps, the child grinning with a smile only Janusz could have given him, father and son inseparable as a cloud’s reflection in a lake. Memories like this seem to pour out of her, and she finds herself crying for those lost days.

  Her dreams are dark and terrible. Her son is swimming in unfathomable waters, and try as she might to save him, he always slips from her grasp, falling back into the inky depths. She wakes, trying to scrape the skin from her fingers, thinking of lost children, the groups of homeless street kids she saw, the orphans at the camp. Where are they now? Still searching for their dead parents? She cannot get the children out of her head. They haunt her nights. And all the women searching for their babies call to her in her dreams, begging her to help them.

  She knows she disturbs Janusz with her night frights, but he says nothing. He is quiet and patient, but already she wonders whether he regrets bringing her to England. It is surely not the reunion he must have had in mind. Have they both made an awful mistake?

  One morning, she knocks on the door of Doris, the neighbour who always waves hello, the only one in the street who acknowledges them at all.

  ‘I need to learn how to be a good British housewife,’ says Silvana, smoothing her hands over her apron front, trying to ignore the way Aurek is pulling on her sleeve. ‘Can you help me?’

  ‘Show you how to be a housewife?’ says Doris with a look of surprise, as if Silvana has asked her the daftest question she has ever heard. ‘Come on in, dear. Bring the little lad in too. I’ve got some toys he can play with.’

  Doris is hard to follow. She bustles around, filling the coal scuttles, beating rugs, washing curtains, counting her housekeeping money. She scrubs her kitchen floor on all fours, bare-armed, sweating with exertion, tendrils of red hair sticking to her forehead. When it’s finished, she grabs a basket of wet clothes by the back door and strides into the garden, where she hangs the washing out with deft precision, shaking Gilbert’s overalls into shape, slapping the creases from wet sheets, already talking about peeling potatoes for the evening meal. Keeping up with her is like trying to run after a departing train.

  According to Doris, a good housewife should keep her home clean, do her washing on Tuesdays, her ironing on Fridays, make sure there’s bread and jam on the table at weekends and bake Victoria sponges on high days and holidays. Surely Silvana can do these things.

  In her own home, Silvana spends hours wandering through the rooms in a daze. She forgets to fill the coal scuttles and doesn’t find the need to sweep or dust. When she makes the beds she often lies down and falls asleep on them.

  Janusz doesn’t give her housekeeping money. He says he is waiting until she understands pounds, shillings and pence. The money is strange, the notes bigger than Polish currency, the coins thicker. And she’ll never get used to ration books, no matter how often Janusz explains them to her.

  Janusz is a good husband. More than she deserves. He takes her shopping and teaches her the names of household goods: corned beef, flour, Pear’s soap, Bovril. He patiently writes her shopping lists in English and stands next to her when she reads them to the man behind the counter at the greengrocer’s, correcting her when she makes mistakes.

  ‘I want to buy flower seeds,’ Janusz says in Woolworths. They are looking at rows of brightly coloured seed packets. Silvana can recognize some of the flower illustrations, but the English names mean nothing to her.

  Janusz hands her a packet with a brightly coloured picture of an orange flower on it.

  ‘Coreopsis. A few years ago, I saw a garden in Devon filled with them. And look at these hollyhocks – what a lovely red colour. Do you like them? Lady’s mantle grows well in this country. The English use it for ground cover. What do you think? Is there anything you would like to plant?’

  Silvana studies the packets, their rich designs, the showy flowers they promise.

  ‘Herbs,’ she says. ‘I’d like to plant herbs.’

  She searches the bright packets, looking for an illustration of a delicate white flower.

  ‘Do they have czosnek?’

  Janusz frowns. ‘Garlic? No, I don’t thin
k so. The English don’t like strong flavours. But how about mint? Or parsley? That grows well here.’

  Silvana is distracted by Aurek, who has picked up a brown paper packet of beans and is rattling it against his ear. He begins to hum and dance, twirling around, tapping a rhythm on the wooden floors, grinning at the sound the dry seeds make. People are beginning to stare.

  ‘Come on,’ says Silvana, taking the packet from him gently. ‘Stop making all that noise.’

  ‘Do you want to choose some flower seeds?’ Janusz asks him. ‘You can help in the garden too.’

  Aurek shakes his head. He waves his arms slowly and sways. ‘Trees,’ he croons. ‘I want trees.’

  Silvana can see Janusz is confused by the boy’s behaviour, so she leads Aurek outside and waits in the street while Janusz pays for the seeds. By the time Janusz joins them, he has a smile on his face again and the earlier red flush of embarrassment in his cheeks has gone.

  ‘Let’s look in the jewellery shop,’ he says, taking Silvana by the arm. He wants to buy her a wedding ring, but the salesman tells him there is a national shortage. Too many weddings going on and not enough gold. Silver, yes, but not gold.

  ‘We’re already married,’ Janusz tells the salesman. ‘This is our son.’ He takes Aurek by the shoulders. ‘Surely you must have a gold wedding ring you can sell us. Can I see the manager, please?’

  The manager is a long-faced man with a dirty shirt collar and worn cuffs. He comes out of his office shaking his head with a kind of weary patience that suggests they are not the only people who have asked him for the impossible that day.

  Janusz explains again that they are married. Silvana stands beside him, trying to look like a good wife, clutching her wicker shopping basket to her as though it’s a velvet evening bag. She watches the manager’s polite disinterest in their marital history, Janusz’s confusion when the man tries to sell them a watch instead.

  ‘We’ll wait,’ Silvana says as they step out onto the pavement. ‘I don’t mind waiting. I don’t really need a ring.’

  She sees the stiff set of Janusz’s mouth and knows she has said the wrong thing.

  ‘I really don’t mind,’ she says, pressing her hand into his. ‘I have you and Aurek. All I want is that. Let’s go home.’

  Walking up Britannia Road, they pass a parade of women kneeling outside their front doors as if on prayer mats, heads bent towards their stone steps. Their aproned hips swing in almost perfect unison as they buff their steps to a shine. It’s a sight that makes Silvana feel awkward, all those backs turned to her as she walks past.

  ‘Morning,’ calls Doris when they stop outside their home.

  ‘You’ve got to polish your steps,’ she explains, standing up. ‘It’s a matter of pride around here. You need a donkey stone. Don’t ask me why it’s called that. All I know is how you keep your front door shows how you keep your home. You don’t want everybody thinking they’re better than you, do you?’

  Silvana nods uncertainly. ‘Donkey stone?’

  ‘Put your hand out. That’s it.’

  Silvana turns the stone over, examining it as if she has been handed a piece of rock from Mars.

  ‘Come on then, you have a go.’

  Silvana kneels and rubs the stone against the step. It’s a pleasant movement, the stone running circles over the step, an ice skater tracing patterns in the ice. Even the noise is like the sound of skates cutting through watery ice, a soft crunch and a whoosh as it glides in arcs under her hand.

  Doris runs her fingertips over the step.

  ‘Well. You did a good job there. That’s one thing you can say. Don’t you worry, dearie. You’ll soon fit in. Keep the stone. Look after it. It’s a good one.’

  Janusz slips his arm around Silvana’s waist.

  ‘My wife has always been very house-proud,’ he says to Doris.

  Silvana looks sideways at him. Had she really? She can’t remember, but she’s pleased to hear him talk like this.

  ‘We lived in Warsaw before the war, you see. A beautiful city. It was known as the Paris of the east.’

  ‘Was it now?’ says Doris. She laughs loudly. ‘Well, Ipswich is in the east too, but I don’t think it’s quite gay Paree. I’m glad I saw you in any case. Gilbert told me to tell you there are jobs for women going at one of the textile factories by the canal. All you’ve got to do is sew in a straight line. I thought of you, Sylvia. You should get down there quick.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Well, yes. It’s a good job. Not like the munitions factories I had to work in during the war. See this yellow colour on my face?’ She turns her cheek briefly to Silvana and it’s true: there is a dirty yellow tint to her skin. ‘That’s from filling shells. I cover it up with a bit of panstick but it’s still there. I did my bit for the war effort. Nobody can say I didn’t.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you to help us,’ says Janusz. ‘Very kind. Aurek will be going to school soon and we have been thinking about finding work for my wife. We’ll go down to the factory today.’

  Silvana can’t remember any conversations about finding her a job.

  ‘School?’ she says, and feels her legs go weak. ‘Aurek has to go to school?’

  Poland

  Silvana

  Silvana loved the early summer evenings in Warsaw. Janusz came home from work and they ate together quickly, Janusz 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 Janusz. They put their hands across their lipsticked mouths and whispered to each other. Silvana gripped Janusz’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 Janusz got home they didn’t speak. They climbed the narrow staircase to their flat and, once inside, Janusz 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 Janusz 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. Janusz 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 unbuttoned it. She let her dress slip to the floor.

  ‘You’re beautiful,’ Janusz whispered, and ran his hands over her belly as if he were polis
hing 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 Janusz 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 Janusz and the unstoppable, silent language of their love.

  By the time she woke the next day, Janusz 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 God,’ 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.