A line of green army trucks and tanks came into view, rising up over the dip in the road. On the first truck a flag was flying. Silvana recognized it. It was British.
‘Aurek, look,’ she said, trying to fix her headscarf and pull the boy up straight beside her. ‘Look.’
Janusz
Janusz took the train to Stirling and met Ruby in a pub in the village. She looked tired and her skin was pale, but she was cheerful.
‘Well, it’s good to see you.’
She squeezed his arm. ‘How are things in England? Can’t be as bloody awful as they are up here.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Janusz. ‘It’s been raining so long I think we may need to build an ark. What can I get you to drink?’
‘I’ll have a shandy, thanks.’
Janusz put their drinks down on the table and watched her pick up her glass. He might as well say it now. What point was there in waiting?
Ruby sipped her drink and put it down carefully. ‘Did you come here to tell me something? Is something wrong? Did Bruno send you?’
Janusz took a deep breath and started to talk. It was easier than he thought it would be. Ruby didn’t interrupt. She nodded her head, listening. Tears ran down her face, making two pink streaks of clean skin through her make-up.
‘Are you staying around here?’
‘No,’ said Janusz. ‘I’m going back tonight.’
He leaned across the table and kissed her on the cheek.
‘Don’t,’ she said, pulling away. ‘Don’t. I’m all right. But what about you, Jan? What are you going to do now?’
He looked at Ruby’s tired face and said nothing.
‘You were married, weren’t you?’ she said. ‘Bruno told me you’ve got a little lad.’
‘Did he?’
‘He thought the world of you. Why don’t you try to find your wife and son? Put your family back together.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I can.’
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Life’s a total mystery and I don’t know why things happen like they do. The world’s a complete mess, isn’t it? But the way I see it, I’m sitting here crying because I’ve got no one, and you’re sitting here with a wife and a son out there somewhere and you look more miserable than me. You’re the lucky one. You’ve got a family. You’re bloody lucky.’
On the train he thought about what she had said. She was right. He had a family. Of course he had to find them.
A tall RAF officer helped Janusz fill in the missing-persons forms.
‘We need as much information as you can give us. Last known address, family relationships, maiden names. Work details. Just put it all down. It might take a while, but if we can, we’ll help you get in contact with your family.’
He handed Janusz a cigarette and lit one himself.
‘I wish you luck, Mr Nowak.’
Janusz was pleased to find someone who could pronounce his name. Pleased with the man’s clear, well-spoken voice. He prided himself on his own careful accent. A couple of the men on the base liked to joke that he had a better English accent than any of them.
The officer stood up and opened a cupboard, pulling out a bottle and two delicate glasses. ‘Have a sherry with me. You don’t mind it, do you? I know you soldiers prefer beer – or in your case, I imagine, a shot of vodka. Sherry’s the only thing I drink. Look, we might find your wife and son at one of our camps. Or an American camp perhaps. That’s all we can do. But if she’s there, we’ll find her. The British will look after her. We’ll do our best, I promise you.’
The man’s kindness was a relief. He called Janusz ‘old boy’, ‘chum’, ‘my dear man’. He told him he’d follow this up personally, chivvy up the paperwork.
He shook Janusz by the hand, firmly.
‘Good luck.’ He was already pouring himself another glass of sherry. ‘Let’s hope we get you all back together again.’
‘Thank you,’ said Janusz. ‘Thank you very much, sir.’
Ipswich
After work and at weekends, Janusz spends his time digging the garden until he is sure there is nothing left, no fleshy, divided root, no blade of grass. Even as the sun shines down, the garden looks as barren as a field in winter. The oak tree is the only green thing in it. Janusz stands under the rope ladder of the tree house, looking up. It wouldn’t take much to dismantle the whole thing.
In the garden shed, he picks up his claw hammer and a saw. He puts them down again. He can’t do it. He can’t bring himself to touch the tree house.
He feels tired for the first time since Silvana left. Exhausted. Now the garden is cleared, he can rest. His muscles ache, his head buzzes. He has to sleep. He staggers into the house, lies down on the boy’s bed and sleeps solidly through the afternoon and the night, waking early the next morning, sure of what he must do next.
It is a bank holiday Monday and he has a whole day free. He pulls on wellingtons by the front door, steps outside into a drizzly grey morning and walks briskly down the quiet streets.
The bus conductor looks at him suspiciously as he climbs aboard.
‘You’ll have to leave that in the luggage rack, sir,’ he says, pointing at the garden spade Janusz is carrying.
The bus stops at the paper mill, and he is the only person to get off. He knows the conductor is watching him suspiciously. He hoists his spade over his shoulder, gives a wave to the man and walks away.
On the edge of woodland, between brambles and fields, Janusz turns muddy earth with the spade, bringing up worms for birds to peck at. Blisters appear on his hands as he digs. His fingernails are black with soil. The sun comes out in a blue sky and warms his back.
That first tree makes him sweat. Its roots are more tenacious than he imagined. He spends the morning digging, but it’s hard work when there is so much grass underfoot. The earth is covered with a thick pelt of it. Grass up to his knees forms a matted skin that closes over the soil, refusing to allow the space for a tree to be taken.
When he manages to expose the birch’s root system, he finds it is caught up in the roots of nettles, knots like tough yellow rope that he can’t unravel. That’s how he is too. Caught up in English soil. He takes his spade, slams it hard into the soil and kicks down on it, revealing the final tight root of the tree. Carefully, he pulls the sapling free from the ground.
The bus is late. When it arrives, Janusz steps up into it and the conductor shakes his head.
‘You can’t bring that on with you, sir.’
‘Oh, but surely, if I put it in the luggage rack …’ He finds himself struggling over his words, his Polish accent getting in the way. He never has this problem. His English accent is perfect. For some reason his voice is full of Polish vowel sounds. He tries again, hears the same thick accent. ‘I’ve vashed ze roots. It’s clean.’
‘What’ll you bring next time, chickens? This isn’t the bloody Continent. Look at it, it’s covered in mud. What would my other passengers think?’
Janusz looks down the aisle of the bus. There is only one other passenger, an old man who appears to be asleep.
‘Fine,’ he says. ‘If you are going to be obstreperous, I will not get on your autobus.’
Let him chew on that, thinks Janusz as he watches the bus pull away. He hoists the tree over his shoulder and begins the long walk home.
Later that day, in the garden, slabs of heavy soil lie all around him. Once the hole is deep, he scatters bonemeal into it. This tree will be nurtured, cared for until its roots are deep enough for it to stand by itself. He will not fail it. This tree is just a beginning. Just a start.
He will be a part of this land, but on his own terms. He’s fought for the English, worn their uniform and learned their songs and jokes. And he’s lived here long enough to know this terraced house is his castle, for him to do what he wants with. Who did he think he was anyway, trying to have a perfect English family and an English country garden? To hell with all that. Carefully, carefully, he positions the fragile
sapling. Pushes the soil back, pressing down, tamping it with the heel of his boot, covering its roots deep like a secret in the ground.
He waters it every day and counts its leaves, watching over it for any signs of disease or weakness. This first tree is for Aurek. The son who died. The next will be for the son who is living.
Felixstowe
Silvana, Tony and Aurek walk along the sands listening to the screech of seagulls and the waves rushing back and forth. Tony takes off his boots and socks, rolls up his trouser legs and stands at the edge of the water with Aurek, dancing backwards when a big wave crashes towards them. Aurek shrieks and runs back up the beach.
‘Right, I’m going for a swim,’ Tony shouts over the noise of the wind, pulling his shirt and trousers off and handing them to Silvana. ‘Sure you don’t want to?’
‘No,’ she says, watching him adjust the waistband of his swimming trunks. ‘We’ll be fine here. We’ll wait for you.’
Silvana and Aurek sit at the bottom of a bank of silvery shingle. Shielded from the wind, it is warm and quieter. Tony walks out into the brown sea, his solid, hairy legs pushing against the current as he struggles to keep upright. He drops under the water and reappears, shaking his head like a wet dog. Silvana watches him as he bobs up and down, appearing and disappearing with every wave until he is a small shape far from the beach.
She opens her handbag and takes out a postcard, a colour picture of the seafront and the long pier that juts out into the water. It is a pretty card with lots of blue sky, the sandy beach tinted egg-yolk yellow. She writes a quick message to Janusz, the same message she has sent on every card. A card a week, marked with the address of Tony’s house. Janusz hasn’t replied. It’s been two months since they left Britannia Road. This will be the last card she sends. After that, she will try to forget him. She managed it once before in Poland. She can do it again.
She pulls her coat collar tighter around her chin and her fingers sink into soft blue wool. The coat is satin-lined and feels wonderful to wear. It has decorative stitching in a creamy brown silk thread and big buttons that Aurek likes to play with. She has a pair of pearl earrings that Tony says go perfectly with it. Under her coat she wears a crêpe de Chine blouse with tiny pleats and a row of buttons to the neck. Her skirt is high-waisted tweed, a little old-fashioned but good-quality cloth. The boots she wears shine like conkers. Italian leather, Tony told her when he pulled them from the wardrobe in his bedroom and suggested she try them on. She asked him about Lucy then. She couldn’t help herself.
‘Tony, I have to know. You can tell me. Were these Lucy’s?’
He’d been matter-of-fact in his response. ‘No,’ he said, taking her hands in his. ‘Of course not. I gave away Lucy’s clothes years ago. They are yours. Only yours.’
She turns her ankle to see the leather shine in the sun. She’s never had such good boots.
Tony comes back from his swim, hungry. He takes them to a restaurant and a girl serves them boiled potatoes and fish in parsley sauce, dripping the sauce over the tablecloth as she puts their plates down.
‘Aurek, you’re as brown as a berry, old chum,’ says Tony. ‘You could pass as a little Italian lad,’ he continues. ‘Don’t you think, Silvana?’
No, she thinks. He looks Polish.
‘Absolutely,’ she says, wiping the sauce off the edge of her plate with her napkin.
Tony finishes his glass of wine and orders another. Silvana sips her own wine and smiles at Tony and Aurek.
‘Good health. Na zdrowie!’ she says, raising her glass to them both.
Here we all are, she thinks. She feels such tenderness for Tony, she is carried along by it, by the feel of pearls against her neck, the silk stockings he gives her, the food he offers them. Maybe it is the effect of the wine she is not used to drinking, but she looks at Tony and her brown-faced son and believes they can be a family.
After a long and late lunch, they walk through the Massey Gardens. Tony teaches Aurek crazy golf and Silvana sits watching them. At 6 p.m., when the deckchairs on the beach are being packed away and people start drifting towards home, Tony goes to a bar and Aurek and Silvana stroll along the promenade. The two glasses of wine she drank earlier are still making her feel pleasantly numb. Necklaces of coloured light bulbs swing brightly over kiosks selling seafood and sweets and postcards. The air smells vinegary and sharp. Silvana buys Aurek a toy that whirs in the wind and some chocolate. He gives her a lump of it, popping it into her mouth. She closes her teeth on it and feels the sweet, milky texture. She laughs and throws her head back. As she does, she sees a woman looking at her from across the street. The sight of her sobers Silvana up.
‘Look at you,’ Doris says, walking over to her. ‘Your bread obviously landed butter side up.’
Silvana will not be intimidated. She could walk away. She’d like to, in fact. She’d like to turn on her heels and maybe even swish her elegant blue coat as she does so. A toss of the head would be satisfying. But Doris can tell her how Janusz is.
‘So you’re living the high life here by the sea while your poor husband goes barmy, digging up his roses?’
Silvana pushes her hair away from her face. ‘Have you seen him?’
Doris takes her time. She leans in close, like an actress about to speak her most important lines, making her audience wait. And Silvana is a good audience. She hangs on the woman’s silence, waiting for news of Janusz. A smell of cooking fat rises off Doris’s clothes.
‘Your husband destroyed his beloved garden before he left,’ says Doris finally.
‘Left?’
‘Didn’t you know? Your husband has left Britannia Road. He’s moved away.’ She steps back, as if ready to take a bow now she has delivered her line. ‘You’re on your own now, young lady. You made your bed, you can blooming well lie in it.’
And she stalks away, head held high and triumphant.
Aurek pulls on Silvana’s sleeve. He has eaten all the chocolate.
‘I’ll buy you some more,’ Silvana says, watching Doris disappear into the crowds. ‘We can stay out a bit longer.’
They sit in front of a blue beach hut and watch dark clouds enveloping the sky as the sun drapes its red light into the sea. The sky turns turquoise, and Aurek says it is the colour of a blackbird’s egg.
When the stars come out, Silvana and Aurek curl up together on the beach. Janusz has left them. She has failed both him and the boy and her poor dead baby. She sees Tony on the pier looking for them. She can’t pretend everything is all right tonight. He stands under the street light, looking at his watch, and then walks back towards the house. She watches him go.
Silvana pulls the boy onto her lap and they stay there until a salty dampness has soaked their clothes and Aurek asks for his bed.
The front door is open, the light in the hall left on. Silvana and Aurek tiptoe upstairs. While Aurek climbs into his camp bed, she opens the door to the main bedroom. Tony is snoring lightly. She goes downstairs, gathers up some of the old newspapers the house is filled with and hunts through the kitchen drawers. She finds a pair of scissors and carries them to the living room, where she spreads the newspapers in front of her and begins cutting out pictures of children. She is businesslike about it, scanning page after page. When she finds a child’s image, she stops and studies the article that accompanies it. She still doesn’t read English very well, but she is quick to spot certain words and phrases. Orphans … missing … lost … last seen … A tragic story … A mother’s sorrow. Sometimes the children are smiling in their photographs, as if they can see the ghosts of their families around them. Each face makes her cry for her own dead son.
She works quietly through until she has a stack of cuttings in front of her. Looking up to rest her eyes, she watches the lights on the seafront. Even in the forest, she never felt as lost as this.
Poland
Silvana
A soldier climbed down from the first truck, hands out as if he were approaching a pair of cornered animals.
‘All right now,’ the soldier’s voice rang out. ‘Do you know? Do you know yet?’
Silvana backed away, pulling Aurek into her embrace.
‘The war. It’s over. You speak English? Polsku?’
‘Polsku? Tak.’
He beckoned to a couple more men, who got down from their vehicles and walked over. One of them handed Silvana a metal flask in a harness, and she took it cautiously.
‘Go ahead, it’s water,’ he said. ‘Drink. Here. Like this.’ He held his hand to his lips and mimed drinking.
Silvana took it and tipped it back like he had. The water ran down her chin. She lifted the bottle and let the cold water run over her face.
‘You go right ahead. But you can drink it too if you like.’ He put his thumb to his mouth and made a glugging noise.
Aurek snickered and snorted. He ran in circles, his thumb pressed to his lips. Silvana looked back at the forest. All along the line of trucks, men stood watching them. Aurek kept on laughing and Silvana began to laugh too. When she stopped and looked at all those faces surrounding her, she was surprised. They looked unhappy. Like they’d seen too many sad films. Or maybe they thought she had.
One of the soldiers came towards her speaking in Polish.
‘What’s your name?’
She thought for a moment. Who should she say she was? Marysia? Hanka? She coughed, felt her throat dry with the effort of speaking. She decided to be herself.
‘Silvana Nowak.’
‘Do you have any identification papers?’
She looked at Aurek playing in the dirt beside her, pulled him to his feet and held him close.
‘My son.’
‘OK,’ said the soldier. ‘Can I see your papers?’
‘My son,’ Silvana repeated.
The soldier folded his arms, looked at her quizzically.
‘Where do you live?’
‘What year is this?’
22 Britannia Road Page 28
