22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [103]
There were times she thought of leaving the woods, but the memory of Gregor and the others still woke Aurek when he slept. He stopped speaking, making bird noises to himself instead. They were both jumpy like deer, as nervous as the rabbits they trapped.
By the time the winter came again, they had learned to eat everything they found without wrinkling their noses in disgust. They smelled like animals, and Silvana’s teeth started wobbling in her jaw. Her hair grew long and tangled. Burrs wrapped themselves up in its straggled ends; leaves caught behind her ears.
Silvana stared into the stream by the camp she had made and tried to study her reflection in the rippling water. If she held strands up to her eyes she could see the grey streaks among the red. She took her knife to it all, sawing at the lumps of matted hair at the nape of her neck. It took ages. She looked in the stream again. Waited for the waters to clear, saw a shadow that was her. That’s better, she thought. Then she did the same to Aurek’s hair. Forest creatures, both of them.
Janusz
Scotland smelled of wet dogs and green grass. After a week spent in a secondary school, where they had daily showers and proper meals, they boarded a train heading south. The carriages were packed with soldiers, and girls climbed aboard at every stop, sharing cigarettes and bottles of beer with the men. Bruno got up to stretch his legs and came back with Jean and Ruby. Jean, in a beige dress, sat down next to Janusz. Ruby, a redhead with a long straight nose that made her look fox-like, sat next to Bruno. Janusz smiled politely.
Bruno tried out his few English phrases. ‘Welcome. God save the King. Thank you. I’d like a single ticket to Doncaster. Will you come to a dance with me?’
‘He’s got a way with words,’ said Ruby, laughing. ‘Jean, your one’s got lovely eyes, hasn’t he?’
‘He has. You have very nice blue eyes.’ She pointed at hers and then his. ‘Eyes.’
Janusz nodded. Ruby pulled a hip flask from her handbag. ‘Here, have some of this. It’ll warm your cockles.’
The train filled with smoke and talk and the laughter of foreign women, and Janusz sat staring out of the window, watching the undulating countryside pass, wondering how he would ever get back to France.
Ipswich
Janusz doesn’t care about the flat tyres and dented bonnet. His car is parked outside 22 Britannia Road looking official and proper, and he grins at it as if it were an old friend. The paintwork shines black as coal, and the more Janusz polishes it, the prouder he feels.
When it arrived, half the street came out to watch, and men who had never said more than good morning to Janusz before shook him by the hand and told him they thought he’d got the prime minister round for tea. They joked that he must be working triple shifts to afford a car like this, and nobody mentioned that it was towed up the hill or that the headlights are smashed and the front bumper still shows the shape of the tree the car smacked into.
Doris and Gilbert Holborn stand on the pavement beside Janusz.
‘Lovely car, a Rover,’ says Gilbert. ‘Best of British. A teacher’s car, you say? No wonder it looks so good. It’ll have been looked after, won’t it? You found your feet in this country, eh.’
Janusz ignores him. There have been complaints among the workers since he was made foreman. A foreigner in charge. And Janusz has been hurt and surprised to find Gilbert sometimes behaving bitterly towards him.
‘It needs a bit of work. A few things need sorting out, but nothing too difficult.’
‘I bet your boy will love it when he sees it,’ says Doris. ‘They went off with Tony this morning. I saw them go. I must say, I think it’s very good of him, the way he takes them out so often …’
‘I was