Spring Will Be Ours

by Sue Gee

  She said to Stefan in slow English: ‘How long have you been over here?’

  ‘Just a short time.’ He took a cigarette from Ewa’s packet, and lit hers for her, and then his own, and looked at Elizabeth. ‘I only stay for a few months, I think.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Shall we have coffee?’ said Ewa, rather quickly. ‘Would anyone like coffee?’

  ‘Why don’t you let one of us make it?’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘No, no.’ She got up and began to clear the table.

  ‘At least let me do that.’

  ‘Well – all right. Thank you. I’ll put the kettle on.’ She carried the salad bowl out of the room, and Elizabeth put plates and dishes on the tray, as Stefan and Jerzy began to talk again. As if they’ve known each other for a long time, she thought, and carried the tray to the kitchen. The kettle was on; Ewa was standing looking out of the window, at the attic lights of other houses.

  ‘That was delicious,’ said Elizabeth, putting the tray on the little table.

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’ Ewa didn’t turn round.

  ‘Ewa? Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Elizabeth realized she was trying not to cry. ‘Ewa … what is it?’ She went across and put her arm round her; Ewa put her hands over her eyes, and pressed them, hard, fighting to control herself.

  ‘Something about Stefan?’ Elizabeth asked gently. ‘He – he seems to care for you a lot.’

  Ewa wiped her eyes, in a single, angry gesture. Then she moved away, and reached for a roll of kitchen towel on the wall. She wiped her eyes again, and said shakily: ‘We’ve only just met.’

  ‘I know,’ said Elizabeth. ‘But look at Jerzy and me. We fell in love at first sight, or almost.’ It seems a very long time ago, she thought, but said aloud: ‘I didn’t really believe it could happen until then.’

  ‘It seems to have taken you for ever to decide to get married.’

  ‘I know. It all seemed very easy at first, and then …’ She laughed. ‘And then it didn’t. But somehow you and Stefan …’

  ‘Stefan and I know what our difficulties are already,’ said Ewa flatly. ‘He’s married.’

  ‘Oh.’ Elizabeth floundered, filled with pity, also feeling a fool. ‘Why – why didn’t you tell us that?’

  Ewa shrugged. ‘Why didn’t he tell me as soon as we met? Perhaps I wanted to try and pretend it wasn’t true, just for this evening, but – you heard him say he’s going back soon, to Poland. What’s the point of – of caring about someone in those circumstances?’ The kettle came to the boil, and she switched off the gas, looking helplessly round the kitchen. ‘Where the hell have I put the cups?’

  ‘I’ll find them.’ Elizabeth began to open cupboard doors. She found the cups, and saucers, and began to put them on another little tray, seeing Ewa pour boiling water into the coffee pot, looking pale.

  ‘I am so, so sorry,’ she said. ‘I was looking at you both earlier, and thinking you really did look as if you belonged together.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Ewa snapped. ‘I don’t need you to tell me that now!’ She slammed the kettle down on to the stove.

  ‘Are you two all right, out there?’ Jerzy was calling from the sitting room. ‘Do you want any help?’

  ‘No,’ said Elizabeth quickly, loudly. ‘We’re fine, we’ll be out in a minute, we’re just talking.’ She looked at Ewa, and said: ‘You’ve never liked me, have you?’

  ‘No,’ said Ewa, looking at the floor. ‘Never. I want to, but I can’t.’

  ‘Because I’ve taken Jerzy away from you.’

  Ewa didn’t answer.

  Elizabeth moved to pick up the tray of coffee cups, and leave.

  Ewa said: ‘Why do you suppose it is that you have Jerzy, and are happy, and I have no one?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I don’t know anything – there seems to be no reason at all, in the scheme of things, why one person should have more than another. Perhaps I’m more like Jerzy than I thought. Life is cruel.’

  ‘Not to you.’

  ‘Not so far,’ said Elizabeth, and picked up the tray and went out of the room.

  When Jerzy and Elizabeth had gone, Ewa and Stefan sat finishing the wine, Stefan on the sofa, Ewa in the old armchair by the fireplace. The curtains were drawn; the lamps on the table, the mantelpiece, and by the low, brown velvet bed at the other end of the room, made three yellow pools of light, on the rugs, on the floor, the books, the papers. On the mantelpiece a small clock, moved from the table, ticked silently, showing long past eleven, and long past the last train back into London. Chamber music had been playing all evening; now the last record clicked off, and Stefan got up and went over to the stereo, running his fingers along the LPs on the shelf above it. He took one out, and looked across at Ewa.

  ‘You think it would be … too much, to listen to a little Chopin?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ She was looking straight ahead, towards the door, her legs stretched out, bare beneath the black cotton dress, feet in black espadrilles crossed at the ankles. Stefan bent down and put on the record; he moved the needle across, the first melancholy bars of a nocturne began, and Ewa closed her eyes. Stefan went back to the sofa; they sat listening, not talking. After a while, the nocturnes ended, and a waltz began.

  ‘They play all these in the Lazienki Park, in Warsaw,’ Stefan said. ‘My parents used to take me sometimes, when I was little, on Sundays.’

  ‘Did they?’ said Ewa. ‘And when I was little, we used to dance to this, in Saturday school, I can remember Pani Dabrowska, she was like a fat old hen, thumping away.’ She smiled, opening her eyes, and Stefan said:

  ‘That’s better.’

  ‘Have I been such bad company?’

  ‘You haven’t smiled for an hour. What happened this evening? Something went wrong?’

  Ewa shrugged. ‘Elizabeth and I had a sort of quarrel. I told her I’d never liked her.’

  He looked at her, astonished. ‘You told Elizabeth that? Tonight? When?’

  She laughed, because she couldn’t help it, though it wasn’t funny, just the way he said it. ‘In the kitchen. When we were making coffee.’

  ‘Why? Why did you tell her that?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Chopin had ended; the record switched itself off, and the stereo hummed, softly. Stefan said: ‘You are even stranger than I thought.’

  ‘I’m not strange at all,’ said Ewa. ‘I was upset.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh, my God. What am I going to do with you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ewa angrily. ‘Nothing, nothing. Why are you still here? You should have gone with them, and caught the train. And had a nice chat. What did you think of them, you haven’t said –’

  Stefan got up, and came across, and pulled her to her feet, and took her into his arms. She leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. He pressed his cheek against it, ran his hand through her hair, put up her face towards him, and kissed her eyes. He pulled her closer, stroking her neck, her cheeks, her lips, closing his mouth at last over hers, warm and loving.

  Ewa opened her mouth, feeling his tongue probe hers, gentle and insistent, warm, warm. She felt his hands run down her back pressing her hard against him, and she felt desire flood through her, wanting him to touch her everywhere, to come into her and never, never, never leave her, and she broke away, panting.

  ‘Stop it. Stop it.’ She sank down into the armchair, covering her face.

  He knelt down in front of her, and put his head in her lap. They stayed like that for a long time. At last he raised his head, and gently took her hands away from her face, and kissed them.

  ‘You are so, so beautiful.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  Stefan held both of her hands in one of his; with the other, he began to unlace his boots, and pulled them off. ‘I have to do that,’ he said, ‘because they are killing me. I was at work all day today,
and you see I have bought these jeans, to seduce you in, but I couldn’t afford new shoes as well.’

  Ewa looked at him uncertainly, not knowing whether to laugh, and feel safe, or to be afraid.

  ‘How can I be afraid of you?’ she said slowly. ‘When you are everything I have ever wanted. It’s just …’

  ‘I know.’ He covered both her hands with both of his. ‘And now I am going to ask you one question, although I think I know the answer, and please don’t be angry with me. You are on the pill?’ His expression was both affectionate and comically unsure.

  ‘No,’ said Ewa, and leaned forward and kissed him on the forehead. ‘No, of course not. As you guessed.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stefan. ‘And so – there will be no seduction, if that is all right with you? Just … what I think in the good old days they used to call heavy petting?’

  They both began to laugh, rocking back and forth in each other’s arms, kissing shoulders and necks and hands and mouths, like lovers and like friends. Then Stefan drew away, no longer laughing. He knelt by her feet, and gently pulled off her espadrilles, and put them beside his boots. He looked at her, his face filled with desire, and carefully parted her knees, and pushed up the black cotton skirt, and lifted her so that he could pull down her pants. His fingers brushed her, and she shivered, and his eyes never left hers, as he drew her pants down and over her bare legs, and her feet, and put them softly on the floor.

  ‘We could do this on the bed,’ he whispered, ‘but I want to do it to you here.’

  ‘So do I,’ Ewa whispered.

  ‘And I want to take off all your clothes, and mine, and … and be with you properly. But now, I just want this. Just this. Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He leaned over, and kissed her, parting her lips with his tongue, and she closed her eyes, and lay back in the old armchair, with her legs far apart, waiting for the sweet, exquisitely sweet, lingering and delicious moment when his hands moved up them, stroking, stroking, and his fingers slid hard at last inside her, and inside her, and out, and inside her again, over and over again, slowly, slowly, slowly, over and over again, his mouth leaving her mouth, and his face travelling down her, over her breasts, her stomach, over the rucked-up black cotton dress, on to her, his lips and his tongue on the deepest, most intimate, most thrilling and terrifying part of her, his fingers beneath sliding in and out, in and out, his tongue flicking back and forth, rubbing, rubbing, his hands spread all over her, everywhere, until she felt herself begin to come at last, and came and came, and came, as she had never ever thought would happen, and she began to cry, helplessly, hopelessly.

  ‘Kochana, kochana, kochana. Darling, darling, darling.’ Stefan was holding her, rocking her, he moved and lifted her so that she was cradled in on his lap now, and stroked her hair, softly, lovingly, until she stopped.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’

  ‘For what? It is I who should be sorry.’ He went on stroking her hair, and he pulled down her dress, and smoothed it.

  Ewa sat up, and looked at him. ‘How can you be so generous?’

  Then she remembered the last time she had heard that word, and bit her lip.

  ‘You just make me feel like that,’ he said, and drew a deep breath. ‘Shall we go to sleep now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He carried her over to the bed, and gently lowered her. ‘You have a nightdress?’

  ‘Under the pillow. I feel like a baby.’

  ‘Good.’ He felt underneath the brown velvet bedspread, and pulled out the nightdress. He shook it out, a pale pink lawn, and said: ‘Everything you have is so lovely. The room, your clothes.’

  Ewa reached up and put her arms round her neck, trying to undo her zip. ‘It’s what I always wanted,’ she said, ‘to have beautiful things. Now I’ve met you, I couldn’t care if I lived in a cowshed.’

  ‘I could. Let me do that.’ He sat beside her on the bed, slid down the zip and slipped her dress off her shoulders. She lifted herself so that he could draw it down, right off her, wearing now only a white lace bra and amber necklace, and he carefully unfastened the bra, and looked at her, and said: ‘And now I want to do that to you all over again. Lie down.’

  She lay, and watched him pull off his sweater, his shirt and jeans and socks, and then she sat up and said: ‘Wait,’ and got off the bed and stood in front of him, and pulled down his underpants and ran her hands all over him. They sank on to the bed, and she lowered her mouth on to his, and he slipped his fingers into her again, and it seemed as if they spent all night like that, crawling between the sheets at last, and falling asleep.

  Sometime in the small hours, Ewa woke, and saw that the lights were still on. She crept out of bed, and went to the bathroom, and then she came back and switched them off, one by one, and slid into bed beside Stefan, and put her head on his chest. He wore a cheap medallion, in its centre the Black Madonna of Czȩstochowa. She kissed it, and kissed his sleeping face, and lay very close to him, unable to stop herself thinking, before she fell asleep, that it had not, in the end, been an act of adultery, not in the letter of the law; but it had, unquestionably, been a betrayal. She closed her eyes, trying not to think that thought again. After all, Poland was, really, a very long way away.

  Early September. The first leaves yellowing in the trees in the gardens of Blackheath, in the garden behind the house where Ewa and Stefan had breakfast at the open window, watching Jane rake the grass below, feeling the chill of autumn. The first leaves yellowing in the parks all over London, drifting on to the grass in Regent’s Park, where they had met, and in Hyde Park, where Danuta hurried past the railings to the language school, leaving her new hotel. Chestnuts dropped on to the paths across Clapham Common, where Anna and the grandparents, and occasionally Jan, took their walks on Sundays. Leaves spun on to the paths and lakes on Hampstead Heath, where Jerzy and Elizabeth walked, and discussed Ewa and Stefan, and made plans for a quiet wedding.

  In Gdańsk, in a sports hall, Solidarity was holding its First National Congress. A statement was issued, a Message to the Working People of Eastern Europe.

  ‘We greet the workers of Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Romania, Hungary, and all the nations of the Soviet Union.

  ‘As the first independent self-governing trades union in our postwar history, we are profoundly aware of the community of our fates. We assure you that, contrary to the lies spread in your countries, we are an authentic, ten-million-strong organization of workers, created as a result of workers’ strikes. Our goal is to improve the condition of all working people. We support those among you who have decided on the difficult road of struggle for free trades unions …’

  The delegates to the congress also approved another message, a Letter to Poles in the whole world. It began: ‘Here, on the Vistula, a new Poland is being born …’

  These messages were reported in the London papers. The headlines, the comment, were shocked, appalled. For Solidarity to speak so daringly, so brazenly, of the ‘nations of the Soviet Union’! To declare that a new Poland was being born! Danuta scanned the papers on the bookstall in the foyer of her new hotel. The bookstall carried foreign papers, too: understanding Solidarność in English, French, German, Italian, seeing the exclamation marks, understanding the headlines in the New York Times, the Washington Post, she swallowed, and felt afraid. The whole of the West was waiting – one more foot wrong, one more strike, march, outrageous and audacious statement, and – and what? Was the press really on the side of Solidarity? Hadn’t there, always, been the suggestion that the union was asking for too much, too soon? It had never felt like that when she was there – perhaps, now, all these Western papers were exaggerating, and the danger was not so great. Looking at the stall again, she had a sudden unpleasant image: lips being licked. She moved quickly across the foyer, and out into the street. It had rained last night, and the sunny air smelt damp. She would ring Mama tonight – no, tomorrow, tonight she was working.

&nbs
p; Danuta had changed both her hotel and her evening job, the hotel to get away from the Home Office, and the eating house to get away from the Manager. Her visa had expired, her passport was in the Home Office: she had sent it in with a letter, asking for another extension. She was hoping to re-train, perhaps in computers, her English was improving fast, she had saved sixty-seven pounds in tips, opening her first bank account. But if the Home Office demanded to know how, all this time, she had been living, or how she intended to live now, with no work permit … Sixty-seven pounds wouldn’t impress them. They must, in any case, already have notes on her from the raid. Walking fast along Oxford Street, moving through the shoppers, Danuta went through the vocabulary for this afternoon’s test, and tried not to think about any of it. She was hoping to sit the Cambridge Proficiency next spring: it was, as Basia had told her, a very stiff paper, but her tutor seemed to think she’d be all right. She reached the doors of the school, and climbed the narrow stairs. If she saved enough from the new evening job, she might take an afternoon off from here each week and learn to type. There were typing schools advertised everywhere.

  After the class, she went to her café near Chinatown. She sat over her coffee, and wrote to her mother – silly to phone, much too expensive, especially now, when she was saving every penny.

  ‘The papers here are sounding alarms over the Solidarity Congress. Every now and then I do feel afraid –’

  She stopped, and crossed the second sentence out, heavily.

  ‘However, all is well with me! I’m working as a waitress in a new hotel, and I have a new evening job, much better than the last, it’s in a restaurant in Covent Garden, a very pretty, touristy part of the West End, still very busy, but the tips are good, I was lucky to get it. There are two other Polish girls there, they seem all right, one is from Warsaw. My friend Basia, from Kraków, who was in the last hotel, has dropped out of circulation, I think she is going to marry her rich Frenchman. I’m glad you liked the last parcel, I’m hoping to send another next week, and please tell me if there are things you particularly want! I had a treat last week – a visit to the dentist – they have injections here, automatically, even for fillings.’ Not like at home: a visit to the dentist in Poland could be terrifying.