by Sue Gee
‘Tell me,’ Elizabeth said again. ‘What are you so afraid of?’
‘I’m not afraid.’
‘You are. You think I won’t understand anything.’
‘Why should you have to?’
‘Because I love you,’ said Elizabeth. There was a silence. ‘Do you love me?’
‘You know I do.’
‘Why don’t you say so?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve never said it to anyone.’
‘Why should that stop you saying it to me?’
‘I’m sorry. I will one day.’
‘When?’
‘One day.’
They walked on, through the white silent woods. Every now and then there was a sudden fall of snow, from a branch or a rhododendron bush; pigeons clattered over the treetops; a crow called, throaty and hoarse.
Jerzy said: ‘I’ve met other Poles, born here, who find it difficult to talk about their families to English people. It sounds … precious, to say that, as if we think of ourselves as special, or superior, but it isn’t that, or at least I don’t think it is. It’s more a fear of embarrassing, or something. I mean, there’s hardly a Polish family which wasn’t amputated, or imprisoned, or suffered in the war in a way the British can’t understand – because you weren’t occupied.’
He took his arm away from her, and paced up and down.
‘When my family came here, with thousands and thousands of others, most of them had histories which they all had to bury, while they got on with starting a new life. But of course they couldn’t bury them, and they told their children. My mother and grandparents – my father’s parents – told Ewa and me. We grew up in another country. Perhaps for others it was less so, or more so – I can remember plenty of children at Saturday school whose mothers wouldn’t let them speak English at home at all. It wasn’t like that for us, exactly, but neither were we like the families who became extremely successful here. We didn’t quite manage that: my grandparents simply buried themselves, like lots of their generation, in the exile community – the emigracja. My father was young, he was supposed to make a go of it, but …’ He paused. ‘But he was scarred by the war, I think, in a way which cut him off from everyone, even us. Especially us. He and I … I was very afraid of him when I was young.’
‘But not now.’
He didn’t answer.
‘Jerzy? Tell me about it. About him.’
They had walked in a circle, and were back at the bridge again: they stood, looking down into the cold brown water, frozen hard. Jerzy brushed snow from the parapet and leaned on it, a little away from her. Their breath streamed on the air.
Elizabeth reached out and touched his arm, but he didn’t turn. She felt a faint, guilty flicker of irritation.
‘You do realize,’ she said lightly, ‘that we suffered too, in the war? My father was in a Japanese prison camp.’
‘Was he?’ Jerzy scratched the surface of the parapet. ‘But then – forgive me – but in the end your country had its freedom. And Poland began another occupation.’
‘Is that how you think of it?’
‘Of course. How else are we to think of it?’
Elizabeth shook her head, and fell silent. The snow that remained on the bridge was delicately marked with the prints of birds’feet; from below, a blackbird cautiously looked up at them, head on one side, hungry.
After a while, Jerzy said: ‘I told you when we met that I wasn’t very good with people, didn’t I? You can give up now, if you want.’
‘I don’t want. Don’t be so defeatist.’
He stood up, and moved away from the bridge. ‘Am I defeatist? You sound like my father. Incredibly, that’s who you sound like.’ He began to walk quickly away through the snowy trees, and she ran to catch up with him.
‘Jerzy … I didn’t mean to hurt you. Please …’
‘Leave it,’ he said. ‘Just forget it, all right?’
They walked home in silence, across the white, empty heath.
A few weeks later, Elizabeth took Jerzy to her studio, small and plain, at the top of a house full of people renting rooms. The studio had two windows overlooking roads and rooftops; a slope of the heath was just visible, with the last of the snow in patches.
‘You just … look around,’ she said, and took the kettle, plugged into the wall outside, to the landing bathroom.
Jerzy walked, over to the easel, and stood looking at the canvas there. He was standing at a glass door, opened on to a long narrow garden, full of trees. Greenness and yellowness clustered round the door; shrubbery and sky were blurrily reflected in the glass. A path led down the garden, and a small girl was sitting in the middle, her back to him, bent over a doll whose legs flopped from her lap. The foreground of the painting was as he had imagined, full of light and colour, but something else was there, too, in the long bars of shade which fell from the trees at the end of the garden, across the path, and across the little girl.
The studio door opened.
‘Who is she?’ he asked.
‘My niece,’ said Elizabeth, behind him, and switched on the kettle.
He moved round the room, looking at the paintings on the walls, stopping in front of canvases propped against the wall, tilting them forward, lifting smaller ones to the window. Among the portraits were several of the same woman, with a broad-planed face and dark eyes, her hair drawn right back, head and shoulders almost filling the canvas, as if she entirely occupied the space between herself and Elizabeth.
‘And she?’
‘A sitter at art school. She died last year, of cancer. Everyone wanted to paint her.’
He went on looking. There were interiors of her parents’house, corners of kitchen or study or bedroom, illuminated by lamps or sun or falling snow. There were several landscapes, different parts of the heath. There was, finally, a canvas propped against the wall between the two windows which at first he hadn’t noticed, because he was looking at the easel. He bent down, looked closer, and Elizabeth took the painting of the little girl off the easel and said: ‘Put it up here, if you want.‘
He picked it up, put it on the pegs and stood back. It was large, almost monochrome – greys, muddy white, dull browns – and painted without detail, so that the figures were featureless. Two children were sleeping in beds next to each other, the tops of their heads just visible above the blankets. Behind them the door was ajar, and the figure of a man stood watching, lit from a hall or landing beyond. The man’s shadow fell on to the floor, between the beds, and was darker than the figure itself.
‘When did you do that?’
‘A week or so ago.’ Elizabeth switched off the kettle and came up beside him.
He went on looking at it, without touching her or speaking. Then he said: ‘That is my family. It is my mother’s childhood, and in quite another way it is Ewa’s and mine, as well.’ He put his arm round her. ‘How did you know all that?’
‘I didn’t know, exactly, but it came to me.’
‘After we’d been talking.’
‘Yes.’ She reached up and kissed him lightly on the mouth.
Jerzy drew her close. ‘I do love you,’ he said slowly. ‘I do, do love you.’
‘I love you too,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You are difficult and moody, but I never thought I could feel so much for anyone.’
After a while they went out of the studio, closing the door on the little girl in the garden, on the eyes of the dead woman, which had once looked into Elizabeth’s, and on the figure beyond the sleeping children, and the dark shadow cast.
They sat round the table over Sunday lunch. Anna passed plates and dishes to Dziadek and Babcia, and to Ewa, who had arrived late. Jan was still not back, but they couldn’t wait for him any longer. She put a covered plate in the oven, then returned and sat down.
‘There. Have you all got everything?’
‘It is very good, Anna.’ Dziadek lifted a small piece of pierogi on his fork, with a hand that shook a little. At his side, Babcia watched h
im covertly.
‘How are you, Dziadek?’ Ewa asked.
‘I am well, darling. You look pretty.’
‘Thank you.’ Ewa was wearing a black mohair sweater threaded through with scarlet and emerald which had cost half a month’s salary.
‘Too thin,’ said Babcia.
‘Nonsense.’ Ewa helped herself to potato and beetroot. ‘Look how I eat.’
‘Only here,’ said Anna. ‘I’m sure you starve yourself during the week. How much was that sweater, if I may ask?’
‘A sale bargain. This is delicious, Mama.’ She looked round the table. Dziadek and Babcia were thawing out after the walk back from mass – it was a long walk, and very cold, going past the common, where the last wet snow had only just gone, but they had to do it, they’d taken their exercise walking back from mass almost every Sunday for twenty years. She looked at Anna, who never went, and at Tata’s empty chair, opposite her. To go to work even on a Sunday morning, to have, always, a reason not to be with them, or to arrive late … did he really dislike being here so much? Or did he think they didn’t want him, now?
She took a sip of water. The other empty chair was Jerzy’s, but that had been pushed back against the wall for a long time. There was another, on the other side of the dresser: the visitor’s chair. Ewa, enjoying the easy familiarity of Sunday lunch, viewed the prospect of a visitor with irritation. Or perhaps it was this particular one.
She put down her glass and said casually: ‘Has Jerzy phoned this week?’
Anna shook her head. ‘You know what he’s like.’
‘He did say he was going to.’
‘Well, he hasn’t. Why, was there something particular?’
‘Sort of.’ Ewa reached for the vegetable dishes. ‘He has a girlfriend. He wants to bring her home to meet us.’
‘Really?’ Anna put down her knife and fork. ‘Has he really? Well – that’s very …’
‘Surprising? Why? Why shouldn’t he have? Did you think he was gay, or something?’
Anna flushed. ‘For heaven’s sake … Of course not. Have you met her? What’s she like? Is she Polish?’
‘Mama … do calm down.’
Anna looked at her sharply. ‘I am perfectly calm, thank you, Ewa. It seems to be you who has something biting you – what is the matter with you?’
It was Ewa’s turn to flush. ‘Nothing.’ She put the lid back on the beetroot dish very deliberately.
‘Children, children …’ Dziadek said mildly.
There was a pause; Ewa smiled, shamefaced. ‘Sorry.’
‘You’re tired,’ said Babcia. ‘You work too hard, darling.’
‘Well, anyway,’ Anna said. ‘Shall we begin again? Who is this girl?’
‘She’s called Elizabeth, and she’s a painter, apparently. I haven’t met her. Jerzy says she’s very pretty. She’s English, and … that’s all I know. Except that they live in the same house.’
‘What?’
Ewa explained. Babcia dabbed at the comers of her mouth with her napkin.
‘And he wants to bring her here to meet all of us at once?’ asked Anna.
Ewa shrugged. ‘Perhaps he wants to get it over with.’ She put down her knife and fork. ‘What’s for pudding?’
‘Szarlotka.’ The front door downstairs banged. ‘That must be Tata, I’ll get his first course.’ She went out to the kitchen.
‘Well,’ said Dziadek. ‘We have something to look forward to.’
‘Szarlotka?’ Ewa asked innocently.
‘The pretty girlfriend.’ He pushed away his plate, barely touched.
‘And what about you, darling?’ Babcia asked Ewa. ‘It’s time you found a nice husband and settled down.’
‘Nonsense.’
A key turned in the lock.
‘Jan …’ said Babcia, and her face lit up as he came into the doorway of the room and stood, surveying them. It’s the same every Sunday, thought Ewa, stacking plates: even after years of doing everything without him, it’s as if we’re not a proper family until he’s come home. Especially for the grandparents, especially since Jerzy left.
He moved into the room; Babcia waited for him to kiss her hand.
‘Dzień dobry, Mama …’
‘Kochany Jan …’
Then he and Dziadek shook hands, and he pulled out a chair and sat down, nodding to Ewa. Waiting to be served, she thought, and picked up the plates.
‘Dzień dobry, Tata. We have an excitement.’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘Jerzy has a new girlfriend.
‘Elizabeth,’ said Dziadek. ‘Elz·An English girl, called Elizabeth.’
bieta. Very pretty.’
Jan grunted. God, thought Ewa, he’s worse than me – what will it be like for Jerzy bringing someone here? She pushed back her chair as Anna came in, carrying Jan’s plate.
‘I’ve kept it warm for you …’
Jan adjusted the positions of his knife and fork as she put the plate in front of him. ‘Thank you.’
‘Has Ewa told you about Jerzy?’ Anna asked. ‘He’s bringing a girlfriend home to meet us, next Sunday.’
‘He didn’t say next Sunday, Mama,’ Ewa murmured, and carried the pile of plates into the kitchen. She ran the tap in the sink and put them in, and then she went to look out of the window, across the empty railway line. Not many trains on a Sunday. For a moment the daylight ordinariness of it disappeared: she was in her bed, in the room she and Jerzy had shared as children, lying awake and watching him kneel up at the moonlit window, the curtain over his head, as a train thundered past, and he held his breath.
‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever love anyone the way I love you.’
‘No. Nor me.’
They hadn’t been children, then.
‘Ewa? What are you doing?’ Mama was calling from the table.
‘Coming. Shall I bring the szarlotka?‘
‘Please.’
Ewa picked up the apple tart, and the pudding bowls. I don’t want to meet this girl, she thought. I don’t want to be patronized by some stuck-up English painter.
The telephone rang in the living room and she heard Mama get up and hurry to answer it.
‘Słcham? Jerzy? How are you, darling? Ewa says you’re bringing someone to meet us …’
A bright March morning, windy and cold; on the heath, dogs off their leads had raced, barking wildly, down towards the ponds. In Clapham, many of the curtains were still drawn. Elizabeth hurried along beside Jerzy, trying to keep up, no longer trying to talk to him. There were dogs here, too, their faces at the windows, waiting to be taken to the common. A man was washing his car; three boys were kicking a ball about, up against the dustbin bunkers; a front door banged, and a man came out and went past them towards the tube.
Jerzy slowed, and raised his hand. Elizabeth looked up to see a grey-haired woman at a third-floor window drop a net curtain held aside, and disappear.
‘My grandmother,’ he said. ‘We’ll go and see them first.’
‘All right.’
They stopped outside one of the green front doors, and Jerzy pressed a button on the intercom. There was a pause, and then Elizabeth heard an old man’s voice say something she couldn’t understand.
‘Jerzy, Dziadek.’
The intercom buzzed, and Jerzy pushed open the door. She followed him inside, and up the stairs, past the closed doors to different flats, hearing The World At One, and foreign voices. At the top, she could see light from a door held open, but it was quiet, as if there were no one there. Then they had reached the landing, and beyond Jerzy she saw a shrunken man with white hair, in a dark suit, nodding and smiling. He held the door open wider: a small grave woman in a grey dress and amber necklace stood beside him.
Jerzy seemed not to introduce, but rather present her, as if at court.
‘Elizabeth. My grandparents.’
She smiled at them, and they shook hands in perfect silence, all crowded into the doorway. Then the grandfather gestured to them to
go in, and she followed Jerzy down a corridor and into a sitting room where a clock ticked above a gas fire.
‘Please …’ said the grandfather. ‘Sit down.’
Elizabeth sat, on a brown sofa beneath a wall hanging. The grandmother sat in a chair with wooden arms, by the fire. Again they smiled at each other, hesitantly.
Jerzy’s grandfather was asking him something.
‘Dziadek says would you like a drink?’
She looked up at him, towering over them all.
‘Are you going to have one?’
‘Yes. Sherry – all right?’
‘Fine.’
On the mantelpiece above the fire was a photograph of a young man in uniform, wearing an officer’s cap.
‘My … husband,’ said Jerzy’s grandmother, seeing her look at it. She shook her head. ‘I am sorry … little English …’
There was a chink of glass from the table.
‘I don’t speak Polish,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I must learn.’
Jerzy’s grandfather stood before her, offering a round metal tray with four small coloured glasses on it.
‘Please …’
She took one. ‘Thank you.’
‘Na zdrowie. Cheers.’
They all raised their glasses, and sipped.
‘So …’ said Dziadek. ‘How are you, Jerzy?’
‘I am very well, Dziadek. And you?’
‘He … is … not … well,’ said Babcia, pronouncing each word as if for the first time.
‘Please,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Please speak Polish. I don’t mind at all.’
They began to talk, and she sipped her sherry and looked round the room. The titles behind the glass bookcase doors were unpronounceable, impenetrable, full of endings like -cz and -sz and -ość. More photographs stood on top of the bookcase: children, who must be Jerzy and his sister, in Scout and Guide uniform, or folk costume, or running with a large black dog on the common. There was one of the grandparents themselves, which looked like something Jerzy would have taken: on either side of the gas fire, his grandmother doing a piece of tapestry, his grandfather reading. There were military photographs on a shelf: another of a young, faraway Dziadek in uniform, but on horseback, and two of a regiment, or part of a regiment, taken outside a barracks. Many of the officers had thick moustaches; they held canes, and looked formidable.
