by Sue Gee
When they reached the station, she got off the train, pushing her way through a throng of people on the platform, which smelt of stale air. Should she go up, now, and have a look at it? Her case banged against her calves. Someone was shoving their way through the crowd to get on to the train as the doors closed, a young black boy, sweating, holding something close to his chest. A handbag. A woman was shouting: ‘Stop him, quick!’ and there was a sudden rush, but then the doors closed, and the train gathered speed and rattled off through the tunnel.
‘Bastard!’ said the woman. ‘Black fucking bastard.’ Danuta stared at her, clutching her own shoulder bag, no longer thinking of going up to look at Piccadilly. The woman stood looking helplessly after the train, then turned and ran down the platform. ‘Where the hell’s a policeman? Aren’t there any police down here any more?’ Shaken, Danuta looked up at the overhead signs, trying to find the way to a train to Highbury & Islington. She went to the map on the wall and looked at it again, frowning, and realized she didn’t need to change here at all. She should be changing at somewhere called Green Park. Just for a flicker, she felt very lost, right down here on a crowded platform where pickpockets roamed. Then she pulled herself together, and followed the sign to the Victoria Line.
Someone was playing the guitar, and singing: she followed the arrows and the sound, and found herself walking down an endless tiled corridor. The boy who was singing was standing by the wall, his open guitar case filled with a scattering of coins; she wanted to give him something, because he made her feel better, but she couldn’t, not yet. A little further on, a dark shape lay huddled against the wall; as she drew near she smelt a repulsive mixture of alcohol and sweat and urine, saw an empty wine bottle beside the shape’s matted hair, and hurried on, like everyone else. There were plenty of drunks in Warsaw, too.
She had to go up an escalator to get to the Victoria Line; holding the handrail, her case in her other hand, she moved slowly past endless advertisements: for whisky, for swimsuits, chocolates, underwear, hi-fi. It was easier to understand the written words than people speaking: on one she recognized Lonely? On another: Pregnant? Then she was at the top of the escalator, and finding the way to the right platform, which wasn’t too crowded. More advertisements, plastered on the wall across the track: for coffee, tights, more underwear. Women with their breasts almost falling out of tiny bras talked seductively on the telephone, half-naked, or looked directly at you, at the men on the platform.
‘Spare anything, love?’ A low monotone beside her.
‘Proszę – excuse me?’ Danuta turned to see a girl holding out a grimy hand. She was small, dressed in black trousers, black cotton jacket and black tee-shirt, a black headband pulled over short, unwashed dark hair, her face pale and pasty. Her eyes were small, with circles underneath; she looked half dead.
‘Excuse me?’ Danuta said again.
‘To score,’ said the girl in the same flat voice. ‘Spare anything?’
Danuta shook her head, not understanding, feeling sorry for her.
‘Fucking cow,’ said the girl indifferently, and walked past her, very slowly, to the next woman waiting, who looked kind, and ordinary, with shopping bags, and who also shook her head. Danuta stood watching the small girl, moving in scuffed espadrilles at the same slow pace from passenger to passenger, with no one helping her. For a moment she almost opened her bag, then she remembered the black, sweating boy, and kept it shut, and then the train came rushing in, and she moved towards it, quickly. When the doors had closed, and they were moving towards the next tunnel, she turned in her seat to see if the girl was still there, but she had gone.
At Green Park she found the northbound Victoria Line quite easily. After Piccadilly, Green Park sounded soothing and cool, and she wanted to go and walk through it, but then she thought of Aunt Halina, and an uncertain reception. Better to get it over with: she caught the next train.
Highbury & Islington had a very long escalator, and a mirror all along the right-hand wall at the top. Danuta caught sight of a reflection as she got off and for a moment didn’t recognize it, a stranger among strangers hurrying past, with her suitcase, belted raincoat and dark hair cut short especially for the trip. She should be standing in a queue, or sitting in the library. No, she shouldn’t. She walked away from the mirror, up to a black ticket collector, and out towards the street. There was a little fat man in glasses, selling flowers, with buckets ranged all along the wall outside a pub. She stopped, and lifted out two bunches of carnations, one white, one red: that would be a nice gesture, wouldn’t it? Eighty pence each: my God. Perhaps one bunch? No, do it, it was worth it. The man wrapped the flowers in mauve and grey paper, which killed the red, and stapled it hard.
‘Right you are, love. One pound sixty – there we go.’ He handed her the change. Beyond the stall she could see a zebra crossing, trees, a roundabout where huge container lorries and double-decker buses locked ordinary cars into an endless circular traffic jam.
‘Please …’ She showed the man her notebook, with her aunt’s address. He shook his head, then called out to the man on the newspaper stand.
‘Off the Essex Road, innit?’ He pulled a worn book out from somewhere in the booth and beckoned her over. ‘Have a look in there.’
Danuta took the book: A-Z was printed on the front; she found the index at the back and ran through the list of unpronounceable streets and roads. Was Halina in a street or a road? A road. She found the name, and the reference, but even when she had peered at the maze in the grid, and found the right one, she still had no idea how to get there. Where was she now? She looked across the zebra crossing to the name on the wall of a bank. Holloway Road. She looked back at the map, and couldn’t find it. All she really wanted to do was walk across the road to where the trees began; she could see grass, and what looked like a little café. No. If she bought the flowers she couldn’t have a coffee as well. When she’d got settled, perhaps she’d come here at weekends, read the paper, and write her letters home. She turned to the newspaper man and gave back the book with a shrug. ‘Thank you.’
‘Find it all right?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I said: find it all right?’
She shook her head.
‘Here … let’s have a look. What was the name again?’ He peered at her address book, and at the map. ‘Here we are, told you it was off the Essex Road, didn’t I? Bit of a walk. You go down that road straight ahead, take a bus if you like, right down to the second lights, get off, turn right, that’s the Essex Road, got a good long walk right up there, about halfway, I think, innit?’
Danuta looked at him and laughed.
‘Didn’t understand a word of that, did you? Where you from, then?’
‘From Poland. From Warsaw.’
‘Warsaw.’ He whistled. ‘Look, I’ll tell you again …’ He told her, pointing out the main road she was to take.
‘Thank you. Thank you.’
‘That’s all right, love.’ He turned to a waiting customer. Danuta walked over the zebra crossing, and turned past the trees, and the stretch of green beyond, and the terrace of houses running alongside. She began to walk, past a little supermarket, where a tired-looking Indian woman sat at the till near the door; the shop was poorly lit, but even from outside she could see that the shelves were crammed. There was a dry cleaners, another little shop with a man inside who might be Greek, or Turkish, and a window stuffed with enormous loaves of white bread, piles of tins – pet food, peas, beans, carrots, tomatoes, jars of fruity jam, then a double-fronted chemist’s with windows of suntan creams, scent sprays, sponges, lotions, tampons, nappies, bright-coloured plastic hair slides.
And there was a butcher’s … Danuta stopped, put down her case and stared at joints and chops and mince and chicken, whole lambs hanging at the back, an enormous ham waiting to be sliced. She remembered standing in the queue less than a year ago, when the news of the price rises came, and thought of everything that had happened since then – a
revolution! She picked up her case and walked on. When the row of shops ended, she walked past porticoed houses where the paint was peeling and the windows thick with dirt from the traffic. She looked at the people, and thought most of them looked scruffy; she felt as if she were in quite a run-down part of London, and yet they could buy anything!
It was growing warmer, or perhaps it was the walking. She felt her skin beginning to tighten, and her eyes sting. The case felt very heavy, but she wouldn’t take a bus: even if she wanted to spend the money, she wouldn’t trust herself to get off at the right place. One set of traffic lights. An endless walk to the next, past the same peeling houses, with glimpses of others, beautifully done up, in side streets behind them. Across the road at the lights, a factory on one corner and a huge grimy church on the other. Up the Essex Road, yawning, her feet aching, checking the names of the side streets as she went. Many of the streets had tall, elegant houses, clearly restored quite recently; others were full of skips, and cement mixers. At a junction, Danuta saw another station: Essex Road. This was where she should have come in the first place? And surely she should have found Halina’s street by now?
A little further on, she came to a small market, just a few fruit and vegetable stalls, and she stood still, almost as shocked as she had been by the butcher’s. The fruit! Mountains of glistening lemons and oranges, polished apples, ripe bananas hanging all along the top, boxes of grapes, yellow melons the size of footballs. Danuta thought of herself and her mother, and the hours they had spent each day in the queues, the evenings when they came home with nothing, or almost nothing, and what Mama’s face would be like if she could show her all this, now. She realized she was almost crying, standing there watching the line of perhaps five or six women at each stall, waiting to buy, and she blew her nose and noticed a flower stall where carnations were only sixty-five pence a bunch. Where on earth was Aunt Halina’s road?
Danuta walked on one more block, then stopped again, and asked three different people the way, each time showing the little notebook, with the address in black ink in a handwriting she realized they found hard to read. The third person was a man in overalls; he knew where it was.
‘You’ve come too far, love.’
‘What?’
He threw a cigarette stub into the road.
‘Back down there, third or fourth on the right.’
How could she have missed it? ‘Thank you.’ She turned back, walking slowly once she saw the name on the corner: she was very tired, but it wasn’t just that, she was suddenly frightened. How could she have thought it was all right just to land on a doorstep? Months ago, in Warsaw, to have an address, the address of a relative, seemed enough, to make it all so simple, coming here. But why on earth hadn’t she written, to check it was all right? Wasn’t it really a dreadful nerve? Then she thought again of what she would have done if Halina had written to say she couldn’t come, and knew she’d had to do it. She turned into the street, where a few of the houses were done up and many looked untouched. Halina’s, when she found it, looked untouched. She pushed open the garden gate and walked up the path. The door was painted brown, with heavy net curtains at the windows. The doorbells had a row of names beside them: English, Irish perhaps, and at the bottom a single Polish name. Danuta pressed the bottom one, and waited, hearing footsteps down an uncarpeted hall inside.
The door was opened; a small, fat woman in a flowered overall and slippers looked at her from a wrinkled, very Slavic face. She wore a cotton headscarf, tied at the back; wisps of grey hair escaped from it, above sharp brown eyes.
‘Yes?’
‘Dzień dobry,’ said Danuta, hesitantly, holding out the flowers, and the woman smiled. Then saw the suitcase. ‘I … I have come from Warsaw,’ Danuta said in Polish. ‘You are my Aunt Halina. I am Danuta – Maria’s and Tadek’s daughter. They send you their very warmest wishes. I … I arrived in London this morning.’
Halina shook her head. ‘This is quite a surprise. Come in.’ She took the carnations. ‘Very nice. But I have nowhere for you to stay.’ She gestured at the row of names beside the doorbell. ‘All my rooms are let.’
I knew it, thought Danuta. I knew it. But just for one night? A couple of nights? She followed Halina inside, past dark-painted doors which, she knew instinctively, had remained the same colour for over twenty years. There was a smell of bigos; Halina led her down a small flight of green-carpeted steps at the back of the hall to a kitchen, where a large black and white cat sat on the table, half on, half off a pile of newspapers.
‘This is Henryk,’ said Halina. ‘I named him after my husband.’
‘Oh. Hello, Henryk.’
The door was open to the garden: a long stretch of grass, bordered by concrete paths and flowerbeds full of polyanthus. Washing flapped on a line. Danuta put down her case, and reached out to stroke the cat, seeing the names of the newspapers, poking out: Dziennik Polski. The Islington Gazette. A large, brightly coloured picture of the Pope was pinned to the wall above a shiny sideboard.
‘Sit down,’ said Halina, gesturing to a green-painted chair. She put the flowers on the table. ‘You would like some tea?’
Danuta sat. ‘Thank you.’ She leaned down and began to unlock the suitcase. ‘I have brought you some presents.’
‘Very kind,’ said Halina again, lighting the gas under the kettle. She turned to watch Danuta unwrapping from coarse paper the pottery bowls and folded kilim, the crystal vase. It sat on the table, next to the newspapers and the cat. Halina picked it up, turning it in the light from the open garden door. ‘Very pretty. Thank you.’ Outside it began suddenly to rain, and she put down the vase and hurried to the washing line. Danuta watched her rapidly unpegging aprons, sheets and tea towels, enormous women’s vests, dropping them into a plastic basket. Beside her the cat stretched, fat white paws patting the vase. Danuta moved it.
‘Careful, Henryk.’
‘Well …’ Halina was inside again, dumping the basket of washing in a corner. She closed the door to the garden, and the rain pattered invisibly on to the panels of starred glass. ‘You like your tea with milk or lemon?’
‘Lemon, please,’ said Danuta, still stroking the cat. ‘Until just now, do you know how long it has been since I saw a lemon?’ She wanted to be light, bantering, somehow to make Halina like her.
Halina grunted, taking teabags from a tin. ‘And now I suppose you think you can make your fortune in the West?’ She dropped a teabag into a mug, as the lid of the kettle began to rattle, turned off the gas and poured on boiling water. ‘All you young people, coming over here, expecting everything to be done for you. What do you think we had, when we came here after the war? We had our few pounds from the Resettlement Corps, and we had to get on with it.’ She cut off a slice of lemon, angrily, and dropped it into the mug. ‘What are you going to do in London? Study? You look like a student.’
‘I … I’m not sure, yet, what I’m going to do,’ said Danuta, taking the mug from Halina. How was she to answer all this? Perhaps it was better to deflect? ‘What … what happened to you in the war, Aunt? Before you came here?’
‘I was in Siberia, my girl.’ Halina made tea for herself, and came to sit down at the table. Henryk jumped on to her lap, then to the floor, meowing by a dish. ‘Always he wants more food, this cat. Wait a moment, Henryk, I am talking.’ She looked at Danuta, sipping her tea. ‘I suppose you are hungry, too.’ She reached across to the sideboard, and pulled off a tin. ‘Help yourself.’
Prince Charles and Princess Diana smiled up at her. Danuta lifted the lid, and took out a packet of kataz·ynki. She smiled at Halina: ‘It’s a very long time since we had these in Poland, either.’
‘Hmm. There is a nice little Polish shop not far from here, below the Polish church. You go to church at home?’
‘Well …’
‘Of course not. Everything has changed. You ask me about the war? I was in Siberia, from 1939 to 1941 – the whole of our village was taken prisoner by the Russians. In 1941,
when we were all released – those of us who survived, my sister died’ – she waved her hand, impatiently – ‘I was sent by train to Palestine. I spent the rest of the war there, I came here in 1945 – I met Henryk here, in a camp. I could do nothing for Poland, during the war. Nothing. So we come here. Henryk and I save for years to buy our own home; we work in Lyons Corner House – you won’t know what I’m talking about, never mind. We find this house, we buy it, letting off rooms. We have no children. Henryk dies. I stay here, letting off rooms. I watch the television, and I see all you young hot-heads, with your slogans, and your demands. You are crazy! Don’t you know what they will do to you all?’
‘But – we have to do something, Aunt. It has been so – dramatic, exciting. A liberation.’
‘Then why are you here? Why haven’t you stayed with your drama and excitement?’
‘I have a return ticket!’ Danuta said hotly. ‘I have only just arrived! I came because in spite of everything Solidarity is trying to do, things are still appalling, I seem to have no future there …’ She broke off quickly. Where was her self-control? ‘Perhaps I don’t have a future here, either,’ she said, more quietly, watching the slice of lemon float slowly across the surface of her tea. ‘But I have to find out. I hope you will forgive me for knocking on your door, for not warning you. I was hoping perhaps to stay for a night or two. That’s all.’
‘Tch tch tch.’ Halina shook her head. ‘And where am I to put you? You will have to sleep in the front room, there is a couch.’ Footsteps came running down the stairs to the hall, and the front door banged. She pushed back her chair from the table, and got up, sighing. ‘So noisy, all my lodgers. Come on, I’ll show you where you can sleep.’
