22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [107]
The violence in his words hurts.
Silvana sits back in her chair, her head in her hands.
‘I just wanted him to have a proper family. He loves you, anyone can see it. I’ll go. I’ll leave. Be a father to him, that’s all I ask.’
‘What are you taking about?’
‘Our son,’ she says, knowing she is about to hurt him more than he could ever hurt her. ‘I’m trying to tell you. Our son died. Our real son. He was dead when I found him beside the woman.’
Janusz is wide-eyed. His mouth twists, as though she has forced him to taste something bitter. She stops an urge within herself to reach out to him. Her touch would revolt him.
‘You’re lying.’
‘How could I lie about that? Our son was dead in my arms. I didn’t know what to do. I got up and walked with him, and then I heard a baby crying. I followed the sound and I found a child in a wooden handcart. He was around the same age as Aurek. He stretched out his arms to me. He needed me, you see? He chose me. He was crying all alone and it was me that heard him. I’m sure he had no one. He’d been left in a big pile of blankets and my boy … our baby, he was dead.
‘The child called to me like I was his mother. What else could I do? I swapped them. I put our son in the cart and took the child and called him Aurek. I told myself it was our son come back to me.’
Janusz’s mouth moves but he says nothing. His cigarette is still in his hand unlit, the matches in the other. Surely now he will see how she has been surviving? Will always be surviving, in peacetime or wartime, it makes no difference. He carries on looking at her, and she is sure he understands what she has been living through. That something, perhaps everything, can be saved. She is his wife. The child can be his son. Silvana’s eyes are blurred with tears, but she does not move. While they are still looking at each other there is hope.
It is Janusz who looks away.
‘Go.’
‘You don’t mean that?’
‘Take the boy. Just go.’
He gets up and walks into the garden. Silvana follows him down to the tree house.
‘And you,’ she yells. ‘You with your love letters. Are you any better than me? You and that woman. Hélène, isn’t it? You think I don’t know? Why did you ever want us back anyway? Why did you bring us here if you had her?’
‘I believed in you,’ says Janusz. ‘How could you lie to me about … about my son? Get out. Take the child, whoever he is, and go.’
He steps into his potting shed and closes the door.
She looks back at the house and sees Aurek at his bedroom window, tapping his fingers on the glass. Silvana lifts her hand, waves at him, but he goes on, tapping the glass as if he hasn’t seen her.
Aurek sits on the top step of the stairs and refuses to move.
‘Nie,’ he says. ‘No.’
‘Please. Get your things.’
The boy won’t speak. He rocks himself on the step and Silvana takes him by the arm and pulls him to his feet, dragging him outside into the street. He growls miserably as she marches him down the hill, trying to twist out of her grip. Only hours ago she was saving him. Now what is she doing to him?
She wonders if Janusz will come after them. She crosses the road and imagines she hears the sound of him running behind them, calling them back. As she walks, she decides he will come on his bicycle, and when she reaches the high street she does hear a bike, the wheels spinning behind her. She turns, relief cracking across her face. But it’s not Janusz. It’s a stranger who lifts his cap as he passes and rings his bell at Aurek.
By the time she gets to Tony’s pet shop she has given up hoping. She knows Janusz is not coming.
Poland
Silvana
One morning, early, they heard men in the forest. There was a commotion of shouting, and Silvana and Aurek hid in thick undergrowth and watched two German soldiers lining up three men against a row of trees.
The soldiers took their time before they killed their prisoners. One of them was never still. His chin was stubbled, his eyes sunken and empty-looking. He walked around, lifting his gun to his shoulder and then lowering it again like a rehearsal, a gesture that