22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [1]
All night, while the sea carried the ship and its passengers towards another land, Silvana worked at remembering. She found herself a space in one of the crowded corridors below deck and sat, arms crossed, legs tucked under her. Curled into herself in this way, with Aurek hidden under her coat, she breathed through the odour of sweat and diesel fumes, the throb of the engines marking time, while she tried to recall her life with Janusz. Always, though, the same memories came to her. The ones she didn’t want to own. A road she didn’t want to travel. A filthy sky full of rain, and planes coming out of the clouds. She shook her head, tried to think of other things, to cut off the image that would surely come. And then there it was. The wet mud shining underfoot. Trees twisting in the wind and the child swaddled in a jumble of blankets, lying in a wooden handcart.
Silvana pulled Aurek tighter to her, rocking him back and forth, the memories departing. He snaked a bony hand out from under her coat and she felt his small fingers searching her face. And how was it that love and loss were so close together? Because no matter how she loved the boy – and she did, furiously, as if her own life depended on him – loss was always there, following at her heels.
By the time the dawn sky leaked light into the darkness, Silvana was too tired to think any more and finally closed her eyes, letting the heartbeat drone of the engines settle her to a thankfully dreamless slumber.
Morning brought with it a pale sun and salt-laden winds. Silvana pushed her way through the crowds to the upper decks, Aurek hanging on her coat-tail. Gripping the handrail, she let him settle in a crouch between her feet, the weight of him against her legs. Green waves lay far below and she stared down at them, trying to imagine what England would be like, a place she knew nothing of except that this was where her husband Janusz now lived.
She had been lost and he had found her. He must have thought he was reaching back into the past; that she would be as she was when he left her, his young wife, red hair pinned up in curls, a smile on her face and their darling son in her arms. He couldn’t know that the past was dead and she was the ghost of the wife he once had.
The heaving of the ship made her dizzy and she leaned against the handrail. She had left her country far behind and now there was no shoreline, no land to mourn, only water as far as the horizon and shards of dazzling light splintering the waves. She hadn’t seen Janusz since the day he left Warsaw six long years ago. Would she even recognize him now? She could recall the day they met, the date they married, his shoe size; that he was right-handed. But where did this awkward grabbing of dates and facts get her?
She squinted at the sea, the waves churning, over and over. She had loved him once. That much she was sure of. But so much lost time stretched between them. Six years might as well be a hundred. Could she really lay claim to a man simply because she remembered his collar size?
Aurek pulled at her hand and Silvana dropped to her knees, wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve, trying to smile. The boy was the reason she was making this journey. A boy must have a father. Soon the past would be behind them and England would become their present. There she was sure they would be able to live each day with no yesterdays and no memories to threaten or histories to follow them. She ran her fingers through Aurek’s cropped hair, and he wrapped his arms around her neck. She was on her way to a new life, and her one piece of Poland was still with her.
22 Britannia Road, Ipswich
Janusz thinks the house looks