by Sue Gee
On Sunday morning when he woke he lay for a while in the whiteness of the room, enjoying the quiet of early morning, pale sunshine washing the walls and the bare floorboards, the misty tops of the trees just visible from where he lay, beyond the uncurtained window. There were no cars, no television, no voices, only the birds. He turned over. From below came the sound of the basement door, opening and being closed. Light footsteps came up the steps, and went over the road to the heath.
Jerzy got out of bed and crossed the room. Naked, he crouched at the window and looked out. The girl was walking over the wet grass; she wore jeans and a greeny-grey cardigan over a cotton shirt; her shoulder bag bumped against her as she broke into a run. There were one or two people out walking their dogs, but apart from them the heath was empty. Jerzy watched until the girl had disappeared down the slope of the Vale of Health, then he pulled on Dziadek’s old dressing gown, put the kettle on in the kitchen and went down the creaking stairs to run a bath.
Afterwards, he dressed and had a cup of coffee, and wrote a note. He went down the stone stairs and slipped it through the door to the basement; he walked down the hill for the Sunday papers and bought croissants as well, from the cafe just opening. He walked up the hill again, as the sun rose and the mist cleared, pausing every now and then to look at the headlines, trying to ignore the churning mixture of excitement and nervousness in his stomach.
When he was near the top he saw the girl sitting on the low wall before the house, waiting for him.
In the years that followed, Jerzy returned many times to this moment; even now, as he slowed, and drew closer, he knew that his life had already changed, in a way it had always been meant to change, so that excitement and nervousness, even desire, all fell away, and it felt simply and uncomplicatedly right that he should stop, and look down at her without speaking, and that she should smile, as if they were greeting each other after only the briefest absence.
They sat on a tug in the·tangled garden, under the apple trees. ‘Elizabeth,’ said Jerzy. ‘Elz bieta …’
‘Jerzy,’ she said. ‘Yer-jeh – does that sound right?’
‘Very nearly.’
‘And in English it’s what?’
‘George.’ He pulled a face.
‘I prefer Jerzy.’
‘And I Elizabeth.’
They looked at each other, and then away. From above, the curtains of a window at the back of the house were pulled aside, and the bottom half raised a little. They saw a figure, looking down on them, and then it moved away into the room, and they could hear a drawer pulled open, a cat meow, the rattle of cutlery.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘I don’t know.’ He leaned back on his elbows, looking up and trying to work it out. Perhaps there were two flats on the second floor. ‘I think it’s the old woman and her husband who were here when I moved in. I don’t know everyone.’ He told her about the man who lived in the attic, sharing the kitchen and bathroom, about the milk bottles, and the woman who came to stay.
‘Have you been down to the basement?’
He shook his head. ‘Just to let the gasman in once, when the landlady was ill. Not into any of the rooms. I see people coming in and out, that’s all.’
He had waited at the top of the steps while she went down to fetch the rug, a worn red tartan. Sunlight flickered on to it through the apple trees, and a fragile garden spider crawled across the corner, towards her feet. He broke off a dandelion leaf and placed it on the rug, so that the spider moved on to it; then he stretched out, and put leaf and spider among the long grass.
Elizabeth watched him. ‘The action of a Buddhist.’
‘Lapsed Catholic,’ said Jerzy. He turned to look at her again. She had a clear skin and wore no make-up; silky hair brushed the soft white cotton of her shirt collar, above the greys and greens of the Fair Isle cardigan. He wanted to stroke her face, her hair, her mouth.
‘Is that important?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Being lapsed.’
‘Possibly.’ He gestured to the brown paper bag of croissants, lightly patched with grease marks. ‘I asked you to have breakfast with me – shall I bring a tray down here?’
‘Isn’t that a bother?’
‘No, I want to. Perhaps you’d like to read the papers.’
‘All right, perhaps I would.’ She smiled at him as he got up.
He went round to the front of the house on the flint path, and out on to the pavement, looking down at her half-open casement window. The curtains were drawn back, and moved a little in the breeze, but the interior was too dark for him to see anything.
‘Jerzy! You forgot the croissants …’ She held out the paper bag. ‘Sorry – but were you going to warm them?’
‘Warm them. Yes. Yes – thank you.’ He took the bag and went up to the front door; when he reached his attic kitchen he was not aware of having climbed the stairs, and he stood for a moment, looking out on to a view which was somehow completely different. Then he filled the kettle, lit the gas and from the floor beside the cupboard took the tray Babcia had given him when he came here: plain wood she had hand-painted in the pattern of one of her kilims. It must have taken days. One corner had been spoilt the first week he moved in and put a saucepan on it, straight off the stove, leaving a charred circle. He put a plate over it now, lit the oven, put the croissants inside and laid the tray with cups and saucers, a dish of butter, knives, marmalade. Down the stairs he heard the landlady’s children thumping about in their room, and her husband shout; there was no sound from the man with the bottles of water.
Jerzy warmed a pan of milk and made coffee in the blue enamel pot; he went into his room and stood in the coolness, looking at the photographs on the white walls, framed and unframed, and the empty armchair. He thought of her sitting in it, curled up in the light from the lamp on the floor, listening to music; he tried to see it all as she might see it, if she came up here. Then he went back to the kitchen, put the croissants on the tray, covered with a tea towel, and carefully carried it downstairs. As he reached the door to the flat he saw his landlady, eyeing him speculatively from her kitchen doorway; he smiled at her, not caring what she thought, and almost tripped, sending the whole lot flying.
Outside, Elizabeth was lying on her stomach on the rug, the papers spread out, her feet in the air. She looked up and watched him come crunching along the path; he moved on to the grass, and set down the tray beside her.
‘All right?’ He took off the tea towel.
‘Fine.’ She sat up and moved the papers aside, bent over the tray and sniffed. ‘Thank you.’
He poured out coffee, passed her a plate, and they ate in silence, feeling the sun grow warmer, listening to people in other flats above them, and in the neighbouring houses, open windows, turn on radios, run baths. After a while, the church bells began to ring.
‘More coffee?’
‘Please.’
He poured it, then asked: ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I thought it was time I lived by myself – I never have.’
‘And I have never lived with anyone,’ said Jerzy. ‘Except my family.’
‘Where are they?’
‘South London. Clapham.’
He tried to imagine her there, and could not.
‘Where are you from?’
‘Northamptonshire,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Do you know it?’
‘I’ve been through, on train journeys …’ He pictured a large house, cool and quiet, rain dripping from tall trees on to lawns and bushes. Elizabeth, in a pale dress, was moving about inside; he watched her from the garden, but did not open the door.
‘And … are you working?’
‘I’m a painter.’
‘Are you?’ he said. ‘You don’t paint in the basement …’
‘No. I rent a studio in a house in Gospel Oak – very convenient, I can walk, or catch the bus from South End Green. I don’t like working and living in the same place. Anyw
ay, I can’t afford to go there every day – half the week I’m a secretary. That’s when I go up the hill – to catch the tube to work.’
‘Oh. And what do you paint?’
‘People. Interiors. Ordinary things.’ She finished her coffee. ‘Come and see them one day, if you like.’
‘I would like to. My mother paints. Well – a little.’ He told her about the hospital, and Anna’s work there.
‘She and your father came here after the war?’
‘Yes. And my grandparents.’ He stacked the plates on the tray. ‘My grandmother painted this.’
‘Did she? I was thinking how unusual it was. And what do you do?’
‘I take photographs. I have a part-time job, like you.’
‘What sort of photographs?’
‘People – I used to take my family, mostly. And trains …’
He stood up, lifting the tray, feeling some kind of curtain move slowly across, separating her from him, and the sense of ease evaporated. He tried to imagine her paintings, saw lightness and colour. How could he ever explain himself, his childhood?
Abruptly, he said: ‘I’m not very good with people, I’m afraid.’
For a moment Elizabeth looked disconcerted. Then she said: ‘People at ease in the world don’t much interest me.’
And believed she meant it.
They went for a long walk over the heath: past the ponds, where a few people swam among the ducks, and feathers nudged the reeds; down the long avenue carpeted with yellow leaves to the hill where families flew kites. They stood for a while, watching. It was warm, lazy weather, the very last of summer, but with enough wind to keep the kites aloft; they sailed past distant thick white clouds, and the children bobbed up and down.
Elizabeth looked at Jerzy, watching them. He had a rather thin face, with a high, clear forehead; the wind lifted his hair. His eyes were a greeny-grey, and deep-set; his features had a cast which she supposed was Slavic: she was trained to look at faces intently – the first time she had seen him, talking to the landlady, outside the house, she had thought he might not be English. What was he thinking about?
He turned and saw her looking at him. ‘Shall we go?’
‘All right.’
She had brought a plastic box for blackberries, and they moved down on to a sheltered grassy path banked with dense bushes and brambles. They picked for a while without talking. Clouds of midges drifted across the path in the afternoon sunlight; occasionally someone went past with a dog, or children ran by, shouting. The shadows on the path began to lengthen; beyond the bushes they could hear parents calling: ‘Time to go home!’ Their fingers were scratched and stained purple.
Elizabeth stopped picking and carefully eased herself down from the bank, holding the box. She stood watching Jerzy again, reaching up towards a thorny tendril; his expression was as full of concentration as if he were reading, and she wasn’t even sure if he’d noticed she was no longer near him. She did not try to explain to herself why to look at him felt so satisfying: she felt simply as if for a long time she had been waiting for a space within herself to be occupied, and now it was. There was a sense of knowing him and of not yet knowing: a strange, exciting sense, too, that she would not fully know herself until he began to do so.
‘Jerzy?’
He looked at her, and jumped down.
‘Here.’ He dropped a handful of blackberries into the box, reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face. She closed her eyes, felt him run a finger over her lips.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Shall we go home?’
‘Yes.’
They walked back over the heath, their arms around each other. At the house, they stopped before the stretch of cracked paving leading to the front door, by the low wall and the steps, leading down to the basement. Jerzy looked down at her and raised an eyebrow.
‘Your place or mine?’
They smiled at each other. ‘I think my place is a winter place,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It’s dark, and there’s a fireplace.’
‘Come upstairs, then,’ said Jerzy.
‘And see your photographs?’
‘And see my photographs.’
She followed him up the cold stone stairs past different doorways. At the last one, painted white, he took a key from his pocket and let them in. They climbed the stairs, carpeted in mauve and yellow flowers, and up past more doors – ‘That’s where the bottles are,’ Jerzy hissed – to the very top, where a landing held a tiny kitchen. At the end was another door. He unlocked it, and held it open: Elizabeth saw whiteness, and early evening sun pouring on to bare boards from an uncurtained window.
‘It’s beautiful …’
‘I know.’ Jerzy came in behind her, and she heard him close the door and follow her as she went to the window and looked out, over the road towards the trees and the heath, where other people were making their way home. There was a large armchair by the window, with a bedspread flung over it as a cover. She moved to sit down in it, but Jerzy took her hand and turned her towards him. They stood, face to face but suddenly hardly able to look at each other. Somewhere in the house a door banged shut; voices sounded from beyond the trees.
He drew her a little into the room, and then they did look at each other, and this time could not look away. Jerzy put his hand behind her head, and stroked her hair; with his other hand he slowly traced the outline of her lips. Elizabeth put her arms round his waist; they stood motionless, hardly breathing; then they undressed each other, very slowly, and stood naked, running their hands everywhere, until Jerzy picked her up and carried her, over to the bed beneath the eave.
She sat in the armchair at the window, wearing his dressing gown, looking at the photographs. Jerzy was kneeling on the bare boards by the lamp, passing black and white prints to her one by one; those she had seen were piled in the lid of the cardboard box on the floor. There was a series of the landlady’s children, sprawled on a leatherette sofa watching television; doing their homework at the table while their mother ironed. There was another, of the North London railway line: the station at Hampstead Heath on a late summer evening, a single passenger waiting for a train, walking away from the camera towards the end of the platform, the track stretching ahead between tall banks of ferns and weeds and lupins; the architecture of wires and pylons beyond Camden Road; a black ticket collector at Willesden Junction sitting in his box at night, lit by the ticket office beyond; Hampstead Heath again, but in winter, the banks covered in snow, and early morning passengers pacing, their breath hanging on the air in clouds.
And now there was something else. Elizabeth sat looking at a photograph of crowds of people in a cemetery, at a woman in black standing at the foot of a tall black column, whose steps were piled with wreaths. Her head was bent, her eyes closed; above her on the column was a single word and a date: Katyń, 1940.
‘Who’s that?’
‘My mother.’
‘And Katyń?’
‘You don’t know about Katyń?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Something in the war?’
‘Yes,’ said Jerzy. ‘It was something in the war.’
1978 The first snow had fallen on the heath, and it was very cold. Jerzy and Elizabeth spent winter weekends walking under the bare trees, watching the wind whip the surface of the ponds and a scattering of yellow leaves swirl in the water. Canada geese swept honking across a grey sky; ducks huddled beneath the bushes at the water’s edge.
‘Tell me about your family,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Tell me about yours.’
‘It’s ordinary.’
‘So is mine.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘You’ll meet them one day.’
‘When?’
‘One day.’
The ponds iced over, and warning notices went up; people threw bread on the ice and the ducks waddled awkwardly over, sliding and squabbling.
‘I h
ave a sister,’ said Elizabeth, ‘older than me, married, with a little girl. They live in Northamptonshire, near my parents, who are retired. Our childhood was calm and happy. My father was a bank manager and my mother a teacher. My sister teaches too, and her husband is a surveyor. I have a feeling she is restless.’
Jerzy laughed, ‘I have an older sister, also. She lives in Blackheath, and works for a translation agency. She is not married, but – she is rather beautiful, and clever.’
‘Like you,’ said Elizabeth, kissing his jacket. ‘And how many lovers have you had?’
‘Hundreds.’
‘How many?’
‘A few, at university. Enough to know that none of them were right. The right one is here, beside me.’
‘Thank you. Me too.’
Lights in the houses on the heath went on early; they went home for tea in her room, lit the fire and made toast. The room was quite a good size, with wooden cupboards and shelves on either side of the fireplace; there was an armchair, a table at the window, beneath the passing feet, a lumpy single bed. They grew used to sleeping without enough space, curled round each other, down here or up in the attic. Elizabeth kept her clothes on a rail; they grew damp, and she put them in plastic bags in a drawer under the bed. They did not talk about moving, so that some of these inconveniences could be solved, and they had spent Christmas separately, with their own families.
It snowed again, thickly, and the paths over the heath were crisscrossed with footprints and bird tracks. Children shrieked down the hills on toboggans, hungry rooks cawed from bare white branches. Jerzy and Elizabeth walked through the woods to a stone bridge across a stream, where few other people came, and scattered bread and bacon fat for starlings and robins and blackbirds. Jerzy took photographs: Elizabeth with the hood of her jacket up, feeding the birds, walking towards him, away from him, smiling, serious, reaching up to bend and release a low branch and send a spray of snow flying over them both. She borrowed the camera and took pictures of him, leaning over the bridge, walking under the trees with his hands in his pockets, laughing as she pulled a face behind the camera. There were none of them together.
