Spring Will Be Ours

by Sue Gee

  ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ Danuta picked up her case and followed her out of the kitchen and up the little flight of steps. Halina puffed. ‘And what sort of job do you think you are going to get?’

  ‘I thought perhaps something in a hotel.’

  ‘You have a work permit?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Got a work permit?’

  The demolition site foreman was a large man with an enormous stomach. From beneath his orange safety helmet a small trickle of sweat crept down his cheek; he rubbed it away as Stefan shook his head. Behind them the bulldozer roared; clouds of brick dust hung in the air.

  ‘Not yet.’ They were almost the only two phrases he knew properly. Got a work permit? Not yet. He’d been using them all morning.

  The foreman scratched the back of his neck.

  ‘Nothing at the moment. You can try next week, I might have a lad going Friday, but it’s half pay, right? Because of the risk.’ He looked Stefan up and down. ‘Think you’re strong enough?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ He’d understood only a few words, enough to know he hadn’t got a job.

  ‘Where you from?’

  ‘From Poland. I am factory supervisor.’

  ‘Hmm. Well, like I say, come back next week.’ He turned away and climbed the steps into the prefab hut. Stefan walked back across the site towards the wire mesh gates and out on to the street. He was somewhere off Oxford Street, getting further and further from it and not sure he could find his way back. Last night he’d lain on his bed in the hostel and written to Krystyna.

  ‘I’ve been here only two days and already you seem a long way away and I miss you and Olek all the time. As soon as I find a job it’ll be better: I’ll be doing something for all of us, able to bring something home.’ He hadn’t posted the letter this morning because he wanted by the end of today to be able to write and say: ‘I have a job.’ There were other Poles in the hostel, all young like him, here for what was left of spring, and the summer; he wasn’t sure if any of them were married. One guy, Bogdan, had told him building site jobs were there for the asking, but he hadn’t told him where he worked.

  There was nothing to do except keep going from site to site; it was only midday, and he’d only asked at about half a dozen. He crossed the street and stood listening: was the drilling he could hear from another site or just a roadmender’s? He turned the corner and followed the sound: perhaps he’d have to be a roadmender for a bit. He walked quickly along the pavement; behind the plate-glass windows very thin unsmiling models wore summer skirts, and sleeveless tops in soft cottons, cool trousers and light jackets which made him feel uncomfortable, in his old check shirt and thin trousers. What the hell did it matter, he was going for a job on a building site, not on a reception desk, but still – he was Polish, he didn’t want passers-by thinking he looked cheap. Not that any of them seemed to be looking.

  The buildings were tall; they cast deep shadows on the pavement, and he found himself thinking of streets in the centre of Warsaw, especially Marszałkowska – they weren’t so unlike. It didn’t lessen his sense of utter apartness, a strange sense of adrenalin-charged bewilderment. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know where he was going, what he would be doing tomorrow, how much he would earn this week, where he would be this time next week. He felt in some ways diminished, no longer absolutely certain, as he had always been, of who he was, but he also felt lighter, more free than he had ever done, a different feeling from the charged-up frustrated energy which he’d put into Solidarity: it seemed there was nothing here to stop him doing anything he wanted.

  The noise of the drilling was very close now; he turned the corner, and saw both some roadmenders and, fifty metres or so beyond, a site. Right, well he’d try there. They were knocking down a narrow building between a pub and what were probably offices; there were hoardings set almost to the edge of the pavement, plastered with pictures of snarling guard dogs, and at first he couldn’t work out how to get in. After the last eight months, the guard dogs looked almost surreal – he expected them to be transformed into the faces of the militia, at the very least to have slogans scrawled over them. It had felt strange ever since he got here to see posters and know that they had not been slapped up by him, or by anyone he knew, that no risks had been run in putting them up – and to realize that most of them probably weren’t about anything more subversive than a rock group. He had seen something yesterday, which must be for a meeting, and recognized the words Socialist Worker. That did feel strange, as if everything had been turned upside down, or looked at from the wrong end of a telescope.

  He came to the end of the hoardings, and found a narrow padlocked door set into them, with a flysheet showing a safety helmet. That at least looked familiar. He banged on the door and realized at once he’d never be heard. He looked up, saw men tramping along scaffolding, whistled and yelled: ‘Excuse me!’ It took four or five yells before one of them looked down, and when Stefan beckoned, and pointed to the door, a good five minutes before it was opened.

  ‘Excuse me – I look for a job.’

  ‘Right, mate, through here. Mind you, I think we’re full.’ The man in overalls picked his way over a long path of rubble, and pointed to a short, stocky man on the far side of the site in shirtsleeves and safety helmet. He had a clipboard in his hand and was waving a stub of pencil at the driver of an earth mover. Piles of bricks, girders and breeze blocks stood in the corners.

  ‘That’s him.’

  Stefan flattened the air, unable to remember the English for short. ‘Mały – little man?’

  The man in overalls grinned. ‘That’s the one. Where you from?’

  ‘From Poland.’

  ‘That’s funny – so’s the boss.’

  ‘Yes?’ Stefan made his way over to the man, and waited for him to stop waving the pencil. He cleared his throat. ‘Proszę – dzień dobry.’

  ‘Tak?’ The stocky man turned, saw Stefan and nodded. ‘Dzień dobry.’ They shook hands. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I came over a couple of days ago,’ said Stefan. ‘I’m looking for work – I wondered …’ He shrugged.

  The man had silvery hair, cut very short; something in his face, Stefan realized now, was pure Pole: there were features like his all over Warsaw. He nodded again. ‘You have a work permit?’

  Stefan shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

  The man looked at him. ‘I see. Where are you from?’

  ‘From Warsaw. That is where my family – my wife and child – are living.’

  ‘Yes? We’ve been following events in Poland with much interest – you can imagine. Very dramatic. At present a little alarming. You have been a member of Solidarity?’

  ‘Yes. Yes – I have been quite involved.’ Stefan wondered suddenly if there was any need for caution. No – for God’s sake, he was just bringing all the old feelings with him. ‘May I ask how long you have been here?’

  ‘In this country? I came here in 1940, from France. I was in the RAF. Now –’ He made a gesture to include the site, the men, the machines. Above them a steel ball went crashing from a crane into the last remaining brickwork on the third storey and it crumpled and sank in a cloud of plaster dust. Stefan coughed and covered his mouth, stepping back. The man patted his shoulder. ‘And now I have my own business,’ he said, smiling. ‘I have a vacancy at present for one man, but you don’t look like a builder.’

  ‘I work in a factory,’ said Stefan, recovering. ‘I have an engineering degree from the Polytechnika in Warsaw. But for now – I’m pretty strong.’

  ‘Yes?’ The man smiled again. ‘Well – you can start tomorrow, you’ll simply be doing what’s needed. You drive?’

  Stefan shook his head.

  ‘Of course – no one in Poland has a car. Never mind – there is plenty for you to do. Eight a. m. start, please be on time.’ He held out his hand.

  Stefan shook it again. ‘Thank you.’ He hesitated. ‘May I ask – the
wages?’

  ‘One pound an hour,’ said the man, and raised his clipboard again. ‘Your name?’

  One pound an hour. Stefan thought fast. That was, say, forty pounds a week. He had his hostel fees, his fares – he’d have to walk. He had food, which he’d discovered already was terrifyingly expensive: a cup of coffee at ten this morning had been forty pence. A sandwich yesterday was sixty. He had, above all, to save, to be able to send money home and take some with him. One pound an hour – it was nothing!

  He cleared his throat again. ‘Excuse me – is it possible to raise that a little?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ The smile disappeared.

  ‘To raise the money … Forgive me, but are the wages usually so low?’

  ‘You think one pound an hour is low?’ The man looked at him unpleasantly. ‘Do you know what I did here at the end of the war? I washed up. For a year. For shillings! I was discharged from the RAF and like everyone else I had my civvy suit and my £5. I had my family to support, my mother over from Poland at last, after surviving the occupation, my sister, my wife. We lived in rented rooms, in Earl’s Court – it was known as the Polish Corridor. Have you heard of it? Of course not. We worked! We saved – even though we were earning almost nothing – we had to be patient, to wait for years for a home of our own, to build up a business.’ He banged on the clipboard. ‘Do you think you should be able to come over here, walk into a job, when there are over a million British people unemployed? Do you not realize that? And fuss about how much you are paid?’

  ‘I – excuse me – but …’ Stefan felt as if he’d just been punched.

  ‘There is no but. You are of a generation which has known nothing of the true Poland, the true spirit of Poland, and you will destroy our good name here if you think you can come here simply to grab. You are the children of communists! Opportunists!’

  Stefan stared at him.

  ‘Mr Kubiak – could you come over here a minute?’ A man in plaster-grey jeans, stripped to the waist, was pointing to an area of the site still uncleared. ‘There’s a lot of gas pipes there – can you come and check?’

  Kubiak nodded, and looked up at Stefan. ‘If one pound an hour is not enough,’ he said coldly, ‘I suggest you go elsewhere.’

  ‘You have no need to tell me that!’ Stefan snapped.

  He turned and walked furiously across the site towards the hoardings, stumbling over the line of rubble so fast that he almost sprained his ankle, and banged open the door. He almost slammed it behind him, but stopped himself from looking a fool in the middle of the street and instead pulled out his cigarettes and lit one, flicking the match into the gutter. The cigarettes were Marlborough, bought duty free on the plane, his first Western cigarettes – you could get Marlborough in Warsaw, but they were much more expensive than Sport. He inhaled deeply – what a greedy bloody communist he was!

  He strode along the pavement, almost talking aloud, until he found himself on a six-lane main road, and stopped, confused. Now where was he? He looked up and down, pulled the tourist map someone had left on the underground from the airport out of his pocket, and folded it back. Oxford Street was a long way behind him, so … there was an enormous park on the map, with a lake. Regent’s Park – was that the trees, right across the road? Okay, he’d go to Regent’s Park, and job hunting could go to hell. He crossed what must be Marylebone Road at a traffic light – yesterday he’d almost got killed stepping out into the traffic and expecting it to stop. On the other side, he walked along cream-painted porticoed terraces towards the trees, finding himself at last inside the park, where he walked and walked, under the chestnuts full of blossom, following the path until he reached a boating lake, and stood watching the sun sparkle on the water, and a few little boats rowed out by tourists. He wanted to be taking Krysia and Olek out in a boat, he wanted to ring up Krysia and tell her about Pan Kubiak – he’d certainly never expected that one. Had he been naive? He lit another cigarette and walked on, feeling a little calmer. They couldn’t all be like him. It grew very warm; he took off his jacket and lay down under one of the chestnut trees, yawning. They reminded him of home, too.

  He woke feeling hungry and uncomfortable, and for a few moments couldn’t work out what on earth he was doing sleeping in a park in the middle of the day. He should be at the factory, or was there a strike? Then he remembered, and remembered Kubiak, and sat up quickly, rubbing his face. He had to find something to eat, that was the first thing. There was a little café near the lake, bound to be a tourist trap, but even a packet of crisps would help. He made his way back there, found a toilet and had a pee and a wash and felt a bit more civilized.

  In the café he stood in a queue among middle-aged women in pleated cotton dresses and linen jackets, and bra-less girls in sleeveless tee-shirts. He couldn’t take his eyes off them – he couldn’t in Warsaw, either: Krysia was always complaining about his roving eye. There were one or two families, a sprinkling of older men, but as a young man on his own he felt completely out of place. The food on glass shelves on the counter was out of this world: bulging sandwiches, cakes and pastries piled with real cream, chocolate biscuits, baskets of fruit. There was a strong, delicious smell of coffee – he bought a cup to pull himself together, and a ham and salad sandwich and found he’d spent almost two pounds. He’d brought forty dollars with him, złotys borrowed from his father and changed on the black market, changed again into pounds at Heathrow. Already, in two days, it was melting away. He sat at a table by the lake, refusing to panic. ‘Kochana Krysia – I am coming home much sooner than I expected.’ No. He’d find something today, and he’d better take anything, low wages or not, though he certainly wasn’t going back to Kubiak.

  When he’d finished, he walked back through the park, and this time crossed the main road a little further up, near the Planetarium. He walked down Baker Street; the map showed side streets where he might find something, and he did. There was a skip and a cement mixer outside a tall, shabby house in a long, elegant street. The door to the house was open, and when, on an impulse, he climbed the steps and looked inside he could see right through to the back, to an open door to a garden, and empty rooms. The stairs were uncarpeted, and from upstairs he could hear banging and shouting; clearly the whole house was being renovated. Well – perhaps this was more like it: he’d done up their apartment completely when they moved in – new wiring, plastering, painting, shelves in the kitchen. He should have thought of this in the first place.

  ‘Hello? Excuse me!’ He shouted up the stairs, and the banging stopped.

  ‘You what?’ Footsteps came running down; a young guy in vest and jeans and very dusty hair came down with a bucket. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I – I look for job,’ said Stefan, and then, more firmly: ‘I am good worker – a good worker.’ He always forgot the ‘a’.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ The guy carried the bucket out to the mixer. A long hose wound its way all through the house, and down the steps and into the mixer. He looked inside it, and said: ‘Want to turn off the water, then?’ He nodded towards the back of the house. ‘Kitchen’s through there.’

  ‘Yes – yes.’ Stefan climbed back up the steps, found his way to the kitchen, which was empty except for a very old sink, and turned off the tap. Outside the window the grass was knee-high; petals and dust were drifting over it. He went back outside, past a room with a high, moulded ceiling, and tall dirty windows.

  ‘Right,’ said the guy, wiping his hands on his jeans. ‘Where you from?’

  For the seventh time that morning Stefan told a stranger he was from Poland, from Warsaw, and had no work permit yet.

  ‘Oh, yeah? Well, I’m not too bothered about that. I’ve, got a chap off sick, very sudden; you can fill in for him till the end of the week, if you like.’

  The end of the week – well, it was a start, it was something.

  ‘Thank you. Yes.’

  ‘Fifty quid,’ said the guy. ‘What’s your name?’

  Fifty! ‘Stefan. Your name?
’

  ‘Tony.’ He looked Stefan up and down. ‘You can start now if you want, this is a big job and I’m running over time.’

  ‘Okay.’ Stefan followed him up the steps again, and into the house. ‘Okay, Krysia, I have found a job …’

  The hotel in Lancaster Gate had a basement which ran the length of the building, and had a number of rooms, each divided once, sometimes twice, to make bedrooms for the staff. The staff were foreign. Danuta’s room had space just sufficient for a bed, cheap built-in cupboard, bedside locker and washbasin. There was no bedside lamp, only a light from the ceiling, without a shade. Opposite the door the window was hung with a thick net curtain pockmarked with cigarette burns; the panes did not look as if they had been cleaned for a very long time, and beyond, in any case, was only a narrow strip of concrete, and the low wall above set with railings. When the window was closed the room was unbearably stuffy; at night, when it was open, the noise from the street would have made it difficult to get to sleep except that Danuta worked so hard during the day that when she crawled into bed she was asleep at once.

  She had been a chambermaid here for three weeks, responsible for fifteen bedrooms, with bathrooms en suite. Each morning she got up at six-thirty, washed, dressed and put on her overall and went upstairs to have breakfast with the other staff in a room off the kitchens. The other staff were all without work permits also: there were many Poles, including Basia, a pale blonde girl from Kraków, who had been studying pharmacy, and a woman from Łodź, where the food shortages had been particularly bad. She was separated, had two children, left with her sister while she came over here. The other workers – chambermaids, washers-up – were mainly from Portugal, Colombia, the Philippines, a sprinkling of students but mostly men and women trying to support families here or back home. There was a washer-up called Enrico, who was very small, and swore elaborately; there was a chef called Franco, tall and beautiful. The main language spoken was Spanish.