by Sue Gee
Elizabeth moved towards him again. ‘So am I. It’s all right, Jerzy, it’s all right. Perhaps if you’d just warned me she was so … fierce.’
‘I didn’t realize she was, still. She used to be very fierce. She used to fight like hell with my parents – I just had asthma.’
‘Poor Jerzy.’ She moved into his arms. ‘And then what happened?’
‘Then she had a sort of … crisis. Years ago. Never mind about that. But afterwards she seemed to reconcile everything – she’s seemed very settled, to me, for years. In the meantime – I’ve moved away. And met you.’
‘And tried to come home, and now it’s all gone wrong.’ She shook her head.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Now … you’re my home.’ He was stroking her hair. ‘Are you?’
‘Perhaps. In a way.’ She gestured at the room. ‘You’ll always carry … all this with you.’
‘Don’t you carry your past?’
‘Not in the same way, no.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t think so.’
There was a tap at the door.
‘Jerzy?’
He released Elizabeth, and went to open it. Ewa came in, smoking.
‘Am I still in disgrace?’
Jerzy looked at her. ‘You’ve upset Elizabeth.’
‘Have I?’ Ewa blushed. ‘I am sorry. I’ve already apologized, but let me do so again. My mother has been lecturing me.’
‘Is that why you’re sorry?’ Elizabeth asked, and immediately wished she hadn’t. God, I’ve had enough of this, she thought. Let’s just forget it.
Ewa was holding out her hand. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m ashamed of myself.’
‘Well …’ Elizabeth took her hand, trying to imagine shaking hands with a single one of her own friends. ‘Let’s just … let it go.’
Their eyes met briefly, then Ewa dropped her hand, and sighed. She stood beside them, looking out on to the track, where the wind blew spring clouds across the sky, behind the warehouses, and the bare trees swayed.
‘Mama also sent me to ask if you’d like some more tea,’ she said. ‘Or coffee. She’s in the sitting room.’
‘Not for me,’ said Jerzy.
‘I think I will,’ said Elizabeth.
‘I think you’re the one she wants,’ said Ewa.
Elizabeth turned from the window, and stood looking round the room. On shelves above the small table were piles of folders, and magazines. She a stood on tiptoe and saw one at the top: the Railway Gazette, covered with a thin film of dust. Pressed right against the shelf was an old book, brown with a gold-leaf title. She peered.
‘The Imitation of Christ …’
‘I bought that years ago,’ Jerzy said, sounding embarrassed, awkward.
Elizabeth stopped peering. Under the table were cardboard boxes, labelled in Polish with black felt-tip pen.
‘Our toys,’ Ewa said, watching her. ‘Is there anything else you’d like to see? I expect your mother has kept yours, too.’
‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth, ‘I expect she has.’
She left them standing at the window, and went out along the corridor to the sitting room.
‘Mrs Prawicka?’
Anna was in the armchair by the fire, a tray of tea things on the table beside her.
‘Please – come and sit down.’
Elizabeth sat, taking the chair opposite. They looked at each other, cautiously.
‘Ewa has apologized …’
‘Yes. Yes, she has. It’s all right.’
‘You would like some tea?’
‘Please.’
‘Is Jerzy coming?’
‘No. He’s talking to Ewa.’
‘Ah.’ Anna poured tea; the thin slices of lemon gently swam. ‘Or perhaps you would prefer milk?’
‘No, no, this is fine. Thank you.’
They sipped in silence. The flat felt very quiet.
‘May I ask – where is your husband?’
‘He has gone back to work,’ said Anna.
Elizabeth could not stop herself. ‘Already?’ And then: ‘Excuse me … It’s none of my business.’
Anna shrugged, and Elizabeth sensed her embarrassment. ‘Or perhaps he has gone for a walk on the common.’ There was another pause. ‘Perhaps my husband seems a little eccentric, but he is a very … private person.’
‘Please … you don’t have to explain anything. I’m sorry I …’
‘But I want to explain. It must seem extraordinary that Ewa can have such an – outburst, and if I tell you that my husband has never really recovered from the war, or settled here …’ She smiled, quizzically. ‘Are you wondering what you have walked into?’
Elizabeth smiled back, liking her. ‘A bit. But perhaps it’s a good thing Ewa had her outburst – I suppose I do understand a little how she feels. Do you know that when I met Jerzy, and he was showing me his photographs, there was one of you at the Katyń Memorial? I’m afraid I hadn’t even heard of Katyń.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Poor Elizabeth. It really doesn’t matter.’ She hesitated. ‘I wonder … have you had enough for one day, or may I show you something?’
‘Please …’
‘Just a few things I brought with me, when we had to leave Warsaw.’
‘When the Allies had abandoned you.’
‘Well …’
‘I’d like to see them.’
‘Good.’ Anna got up. ‘I’ll just go and fetch them … help yourself to more tea, if you want.’
‘Thank you.’ Elizabeth watched her go quickly out of the room. She could hear another train clicking along the track at the back of the house, where Jerzy and Ewa were still talking. The gas fire was very hot; she yawned, suddenly feeling at home.
Then Anna was back, carying a small flat tin box. She put it on the table, removing Ewa’s ashtray, and carefully lifted the lid. The box looked as if it had held sweets or toffees once.
‘When I left Warsaw, for the prison camp, I carried in this little box all the photographs from my family that I could find. Most of them are in albums, now, or here –’ She indicated those on the wall, the bookcase. ‘Now I use the box for the other things I managed to bring with me.’ She put the lid on the table: Elizabeth saw small objects wrapped in greying tissue paper. Anna took them out one by one, and said: ‘In fact I haven’t looked in here for many years, you know. Perhaps Ewa and Jerzy hardly remember it.’
The tissue paper was so old that it did not rustle; it looked very fragile as she unwrapped the first small parcel. A circle of gauzy cotton, hand-stitched into two bands, one red and one a yellowed white, fell limply.
‘This was my brother’s armband … We all wore them in AK – the Home Army – in the Uprising. Jerzy’s told you a little about it all?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Elizabeth carefully picked it up, feeling the frail cloth.
Another circle of white and red slid on to the table. ‘And this was mine – I made it the day the Uprising began. I don’t know who made Jerzy’s. He was stationed some way away. Now – what else is there?’ She unwrapped something flat, somewhere between the size of a cigarette card and a postcard. ‘Ah …’
Behind them the door was opened, and Jerzy and Ewa came in.
‘We are having a history lesson,’ said Anna. They came over and looked at the card, coarse grey-green, stamped in Russian, with a handwritten address in flowing black.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Ewa. ‘Dziadek’s letter.’
‘Dziadek?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘The other one,’ said Jerzy. ‘Mama’s father.’
‘The only letter we ever had from him,’ said Anna, and turned it over. Two or three lines were written there, in a strong hand.
‘May I?’ asked Jerzy, and took it from her, slowly translating:
‘My darlings: I am in good health. Are the children going to school? I hug and kiss you with all my heart. Write to me. Tomasz.’
There was a silence. Then Anna reached into the box. ‘The last things now …’
/>
A small piece of white paper, with the heavy black print of a handpress, in small letters, dropped on to the table.
‘My AK courier pass. And this – oh, I remember the day I was given this.’ She shook her head and put another card on the table, but this one was folded like a membership card, stamped on the outside in German. Beneath the words was a black eagle: his talons held a circle, and within it a swastika.
‘My identity card,’ she said drily, and opened it. The thin face of a dark-haired girl stared out at them. ‘We had to carry these with us all the time.’
Elizabeth picked it up, and looked at the face which looked beyond the camera. Anna had been years younger then than she herself was now: she tried to imagine living in an occupied city, in constant fear, having to carry such a card, terrified of losing it. Nazi soldiers stood on the corners of London streets, or ran up stairways in the dead of night, dragging people out from their beds. She remembered the films they had shown at school of London in the Blitz, silent black and white figures scurrying to shelters as the air-raid siren blared, lining the platforms of the underground. She tried to imagine also an armed insurrection, with whole districts barricaded from one another, some in German and some in English hands: Camberwell cut off from Peckham, Chelsea from Fulham, Hampstead from Highgate, Stockwell from Clapham, the pavements torn up, bodies unburied, houses blazing.
There came to her at once the names of other cities: Belfast. Beirut.
Ewa took the card from her, and looked at it, her face burning.
‘It makes me want to kill.’
They stood in the doorway and kissed each other goodbye. Anna and Jerzy, Anna and Elizabeth; Elizabeth and Ewa, diffidently, Ewa and Jerzy, in conciliation.
Then they clattered down the uncarpeted stairs and out on to the street. It was quite dark now; they walked a few paces, then turned to see the windows up on the third floor, lit, and Anna and Ewa waving. From the corner of a window in the grandparents’ flat a curtain was pulled aside, and they saw them both there, Dziadek raising his hand.
They waved back, then walked away, quickly, towards the tube. It was very cold.
Before they reached the station, Jerzy stopped, took Elizabeth’s hand and kissed it. ‘And now I’m going to take you out to dinner.’
‘Oh? Where?’
‘To another part of Poland.’
They caught the tube to South Kensington, and walked past bookshops and cake shops to turn up towards Cromwell Road. Jerzy pointed to a little restaurant on the corner, lit behind leaded windows. ‘That’s the Daquise,’ he said. ‘It’s Polish, and they do wonderful cakes. We’ll go there one day, but now …’
Their arms wrapped round each other, they walked up to the traffic lights at the end of the side street and stood waiting to cross. Taxis swept past; they hurried over, and into Exhibition Road, past the unlit museums and along porticoed terraces up towards Hyde Park. There were few people out, and the wind was biting. Halfway up the road, Jerzy stopped.
‘This is it.’
They were standing before one of the porticoed houses: on the black front door a metal plaque was nailed, announcing Ogniske Polskie.
‘The Polish Hearth,’ said Jerzy, and they climbed the steps and pushed open the door.
Elizabeth stepped into a high-ceilinged hall, brightly lit and spacious. On their right was a lobby, where a woman waited to take their coats; beyond a glass-fronted bookcase, mounted on the wall, rose a wide, curving staircase. From the left came the chink of glasses and murmured laughter: they walked through the doorway into a large and beautiful room, running the depth of the house. There was a bar at the end where the windows overlooked the street, and at the other end a restaurant, lit by a chandelier. The tall french windows were hung with heavy, faded curtains, the tables covered in snowy linen. Many of the diners were white-haired: Elizabeth had an impression of correctness, uprightness, dark suits and elegant dresses; nods and smiles and expensive make-up; neat black evening bags snapped open, hands kissed; assurance, courtliness.
A waitress was approaching them.
‘Dobry wieczór, panu – good evening. You have reserved a table?’
Jerzy nodded. ‘Prawicki.’
‘Proszę.’ She led them to a small table for two by the far wall. A menu and wine list lay on the snowy cloth.
‘Hungry?’ asked Jerzy, as they sat down.
‘Er … no,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But this is a lovely surprise.’
‘The place, or my bringing you?’
‘Both. Thank you.’
‘What we really need, after today, is a drink. Yes?’
‘How right you are.’
The waitress smiled at them expectantly. Jerzy ordered white wine. ‘And I should ask you what you want to eat,’ he said, ‘but I’d like to choose for you.’ He scanned the menu. ‘How about śledzie to start with, followed by gołąbki? With a salad.’
Elizabeth laughed. ‘Go on – tell me.’
‘Herrings in sour cream, followed by stuffed pigeons.’
She groaned.
‘And naleniki for pudding. Stuffed pancakes.’
‘Stuffed … I tell you what, Jerzy, would you be very hurt, after going to all this trouble, if I said I couldn’t touch any of it?’
‘Not even the salad?’
‘Not even the salad.’
He pulled a face. ‘We could just go and sit in the bar. Not so –’ he gestured – ‘not so fin de siècle, but … they have comfortable seats.’ He took her hand across the table, and raised it to his lips. ‘Come on.’
The bar was softly lit; they sank into plastic-covered chairs.
‘Proszę, panu …’
Their waitress had followed them, questioning, bearing a small round tin tray, with their wine.
Jerzy explained; she nodded, not quite mollified, and poured out their wine into glasses from the bar.
‘Dziękuję …’
‘Na zdrowie, panu.’ She took away the small tin tray.
Their glasses brimmed and shone.
‘Na zdrowie, darling.’
‘Na zdrowie, Jerzy. And thank you.’ Elizabeth sipped and leaned back, watching the to and fro of dinner guests, so dignified, and so at ease. ‘My God, I’m tired.’
‘We’ve all worn you out.’
‘You have. Never mind. Tell me what else goes on here.’
‘There are discos – Ewa and I came to one once, years ago, but I was so shy I could barely get myself inside the room.’
‘Not like now.’
He smiled. ‘Of course not. And what else? There are conference rooms, and upstairs they play bridge. All afternoon, elegant old Polish ladies in hats sit at green baize tables and play. There’s another painting for you.’
Elizabeth moved closer, and took his hand. ‘It sounds like it,’ she said. ‘And when you say that, I remember why I love you.’
‘And why is that?’ He put down his glass and gently separated her fingers, running his thumb up and down each one.
Elizabeth closed her eyes.
‘Tell me why you love me.’
‘Because of the way you … do that. And because –’ she opened her eyes, and looked at him. ‘Because I know you’ll make me a better painter – you know already what I want to see, or should see. And I know you’ll know. We’re very close, aren’t we?’
‘In spite of the yawning chasm of history which divides us?’ he said, raising an eyebrow.
‘In spite of it.’ She put his hand against her cheek. ‘Your mother asked me if I wondered what I’d walked in to.’
‘Is it too much?’
‘I don’t think so – only time, as they say, will tell. And after all – I might be too much for you, and you haven’t met my family yet.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Thank you.’
Jerzy took her other hand, and put it against his own cheek, so that they were facing each other, and very close. A discreet cough came from near the bar, but they ignored it.<
br />
‘Shall we for the moment forget our families entirely?’
‘Please,’ she said.
‘Well, then … You said to Ewa that no one was talking about marriage.’ He hesitated. ‘Is anyone … thinking of it?’
Elizabeth felt a sudden, unexpected chill run through her.
‘I … I … oh, Jerzy. Not yet. Forgive me … No.’
He dropped his eyes, flushing. ‘I’m sorry …’
‘Please don’t be. Please. I’m surprised myself, at feeling so … wary.’
He took his hand away and leaned back against the plastic seat.
‘It is too much for you. I knew it was.’
Elizabeth thought: I don’t like this. I want it to be just us, as we were. Melancholy was settling over Jerzy’s features like a mask. And that’s one reason I’m wary, she thought: he shuts me out when he’s like this. Utterly. He’s too vulnerable, and I’m too afraid of it. It isn’t anything to do with our families, or the yawning chasm of history – he was so dry and charming when he said that: how is it possible for someone to be so light and so unhappy within moments?
‘Jerzy, please …’
He shook his head. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘For heaven’s sake. Have I said no for ever? Have I said I don’t love you? I love you, I love you, I’ve only just told you …’
The bar was filling up; two more couples were sitting near them now. Jerzy shifted uneasily, and finished his drink. Then he took her hand again.
‘I’m sorry. May I ask one other thing?’
‘Please.’
‘Would you like us to live together? For now?’
‘We do live together.’
‘You know what I mean. Should we find a proper flat together? I mean – you would still have your studio …’
‘What about your darkroom?’
‘If there’s just a cubbyhole I can use, like now … I just want to be with you. In a double bed. Our bed.’
‘Ah. Well … yes. That would be …’ She made a rueful face. ‘Our lovely shabby house.’
‘I know. But we could look. Shall we?’
‘Yes. Yes. Let’s look.’ She leaned across and kissed him lightly. From the next table came another cough.
‘Come on.’
They fetched their coats and went out into the street, where a cold rain had begun to fall, and people were hurrying from the Albert Hall, hailing taxis. They ran through the rain to the station, and caught the train home.
