The Voyage: Edited by Chandani Lokuge & David Morley
Page 5
‘Look, Mum!’ -- Oskar squealed. -- ‘Look at the tiny houses!’
‘Whaaa..?’
Anna strained to see through the grease and dirt of the Superbus window; but the light was harsh, so she closed her eyes to a swirling of stars.
If possible, make a U-turn! If possible, make a U-turn!
She half-remembered a heart-rending story – some poor country bumpkin on his first trip to England, the lunatic ravings of his brand-new ‘sat nav’, his dutiful reaction and the tragic consequence. She drove away the memory and changed position.
The air hung heavy and smelled of petrol. She licked her lips and wriggled about in a bid to escape the static charge of the Superbus seat. Beads of sweat trickled down her forehead, dripped off her brow and mixed with mascara. She dabbed at her eyes and dislodged a contact lens.
‘Mummy – look!’
Oskar dug his fingers into her weary shoulder, his breath stale, warm on her cheek. ‘Look at the English houses! They’re all squashed together, all pushed together…’ – He moved his bony hands to a ghostly accordion. -- ‘…such tiny, little houses, and…Mummeeee…euh…’ – His voice broke in despair. – ‘They don’t have any gardens…’
Anna tried to sit up, but a sharp ray of sunlight stabbed at her eyeballs.
‘The houses, Mummy…will ours be like that..?’ – His face puckered up – ‘…with no garden… Mummy..?’ He was digging in harder.
‘N...,’ she croaked. She wanted to tell him that their house would be lovely – neat and tidy, with a pretty, little garden, like Uncle Adam’s and Auntie Julia’s, like the one in the photos that his cousin, Radek, had e-mailed from England; but the sunlight confused her.
‘Look!’ Oskar shrieked. ‘Mummy, look at the black man!’
‘Shush! Oskar, you can’t say that in England!’
‘There’s another one, look!’ – Oskar’s mouth was an ‘O’. – ‘Mum, look at that lady…’
He jabbed his finger at the dirt-smeared window. She followed his gaze to a grey-haired woman in a purple sari, embroidered with crystals that were flashing out tiny rainbows of light.
‘Ugh… Mum, look how fat that man is!’
Anna roused herself and began to explain that in this country there were all sorts of people – all colours and races, all religions, all shapes and sizes.
‘But why are people in England so fat? Mum, if Daddy came to England, would Daddy get fat?’
Anna made herself focus.
‘Darling,’ she sighed. She touched his arm, but he pulled away. ‘Daddy…’ she said, and she winced at the word. ‘Daddy’s thin because of his illness, but he will get better, now that Grandma’s looking after him.’
But she doubted her husband would ever get better. He had suffered from his affliction for as long as she could remember.
She tried to explain: ‘Mummy’s going to get a job, and then we’ll all have some money. We’ll get rich and fat…’ – She steered his hand. – ‘…like that man over there!’
Oskar giggled and wriggled, then turned to face her.
‘Are Uncle Adam and Auntie Julia fat now?’
Anna spluttered at the thought.
‘Who knows..?’ She laughed.
‘Will Radek be fat?’
‘Radek won’t be fat. He likes his parkour.’
‘Can I do parkour, now that we’re in England – can I? Can I?’
‘When you’re older, Oskar, when you’re older…’
‘No…’ he wailed. ‘I want to do it now..; Mum, can I do it now..?’
‘Soon, Darling, soon…’
His parkour obsession showed no sign of waning. In his grandmother’s garden, back in Poland, he’d practised his own version of the various moves, his silhouette grown stick-like through repeated training and a hard-core diet. He no longer ate meat, not since the day he had witnessed his grandmother wringing the neck of her favourite chicken. (How could she; how could she?) He had vomited on the spot, and now poked at his food, cross-questioning his mother on the exact ingredients of every meal.
Irritated as she was by his ‘inconvenient’ vegetarianism, Anna was fiercely proud of her son. At least he had a mind of his own, which was more than she could say for herself. She had married the wrong brother: that much was clear. It should have been Adam…
Anna sighed.
Yet here was Adam, right beside her – ‘Uncle’ Adam in her son’s curiosity, ‘Uncle’ Adam in his questioning streak, ‘Uncle’ Adam in the independent mind, with the quirkiness too of her nephew, Radek:
School’s a doddle. Teachers are soft. There are LOADS of jobs. Mum and Dad earn THREE times as much as they did in Poland! It’s warehouse work, but it’s just a start, while they brush up on their English. The warehouses here are full of Poles – mostly professionals: teachers, doctors…
No sooner had she read Radek’s e-mail, then she knew just exactly what she had to do. Within the hour she had driven her husband round to his mother’s.
‘There!’ she said, as she pushed his comatose form out the car. ‘You can feed her chickens!’
Then she sold the Skoda and bought the tickets.
And here they were, a week later – one suitcase, one rucksack and one bag of hope – driving through England to a whole new life.
But she was haunted by phrases, dogged by images; she could not get Radek’s e-mails out of her mind:
The Poles are the ones cycling round in packs – men with shaved heads, no helmets, no lights. Sometimes – no kidding – at closing time, you can see them cycling back from the pubs – on the right-hand-side of the road – PLONKERS! They think they’re going down these little, country lanes; they go round a corner and…bam!
Anna shuddered. She tried to shake it off, but the image clung to her. Radek was 15, his bravado distasteful:
You’ll find us in Primark, Home Bargains, The Pound Shop... Oh yes! Let it be said: we Poles know how to shop. We know how to work. We know how to pray. Of a Sunday you’ll see us all flocking to mass. Bravo for the Poles! We have resurrected the Catholic Church…
Pah! Anna had long given up on that sort of nonsense -- another reason, she suspected, for Julia’s coldness towards her – perfect Julia who never missed mass, led the singing in church, helped at Polish school and had energy to spare for saving Anna’s soul – a pointless task; Anna’s soul was beyond redemption. All the same, twice a year, at Christmas and Easter, she still went to mass. She needed her fix of smoky incense, a soaring organ and flickering candles, of the sunlight dancing through stained-glass windows, the Easter basket offered up for its blessing: painted eggs, emerald green, fuchsia pink and golden brown, with their sheen of olive oil, nestling in a napkin, all crisp and white, with the white sugar lamb and its baby-blue bow. She could smell the smoked sausage, could taste the salt and pepper...
‘Mummy – what’s wrong?’
Oskar was on her lap, smearing her cheek with his dirty fingers.
‘It’s nothing, Darling – I just need the toilet…’
But the Superbus toilet was out of order, so she forced herself to think of Christmas – of midnight mass, the snow-laden fields, the star-filled heavens, the church bells ringing throughout the valleys…
Oskar tightened his grip. ‘And I need the toilet! And I need to do parkour.’
His bottom jaw – so like Adam’s – was jutting out with resolve and defiance. There was no getting away from this parkour fixation; within the week, he’d be running with Radek – role model, outlier, parkour-obsessive –while she toiled in the warehouse with Adam and Julia. She winced at the thought of working with Julia, whose animosity only increased as the years went by. (Did she know? Had she worked it out?)
‘Mummy – what’s the third world?’
Anna blinked at Oskar.
‘The third world, Oskar? Why do you ask?’
She screwed up her eyes. How to explain…
‘Mummy – Radek said England’s a third-world country.’
&nbs
p; ‘Oh, no!’ she laughed. ‘That was a joke, Darling – the mixer taps joke! It’s just funny to think that we’ve waited all these years to join the European Union, and here we are, in a place with no mixer taps, with paper-thin walls, toy-town houses and…’ – She pulled a face. – ‘…zero dress sense… Ugh, Oskar -- just look at that!’
But Oskar had no interest in sartorial design.
‘Mummy -- can we live in Toy Town? Do Radek and Auntie Julia and Uncle Adam live in Toy Town?’
‘Don’t be silly!’ she snapped, shifting position. The wriggling in her intestines had given way to a persistent throbbing.
‘Awh,’ he sighed and clung to her neck.
‘But you’ll like it here, Darling. The people are friendly, and they know how to queue, and when you walk down the street – Uncle Adam says – everyone smiles at you…’
‘What else does Uncle Adam say?’
‘Well, he says that people are polite when they serve you in shops; they don’t just throw the change at you like they do in Poland…’
‘What does Auntie Julia think?’
‘What? Well… What do you mean, Oskar?’
But Oskar lost interest. He sank back in his seat and closed his eyes.
‘Mummy..?’ he said – he was starting to slur – ‘If we don’t like it in England, can we go back to Poland? I want…’ – He gave a big yawn. – ‘I want to see Daddy…’
Anna thought for a while; then she thought some more, and then she replied:
‘Darling…Oskar…we’re going to see Daddy.’
But Oskar had already fallen asleep.
Emily's Utopia
Janine Burke