22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [108]
The other soldier rolled himself a cigarette and smoked it, sucking his cheeks in as he took hard drags, his face showing the structure of his skull beneath the grey-looking skin.
When they shot the men, Silvana pulled Aurek down onto the ground so that their faces were pressed against the earth. The air was filled with the sound of gunshot and the ground smelt of decay. She wiped away her son’s tears. ‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘Hush.’
When it was getting dark, Silvana and Aurek climbed out of their hiding place and went to look at the dead men. Silvana took a jacket off one, a coat off another. One had a rucksack at his feet which contained a half-drunk bottle of vodka and some black bread.
Silvana picked up a cap from the floor and rubbed mud off the small red enamel star pinned to it. She put the hat on and smiled at Aurek. He stared. She rocked her head from side to side and did a little dance, feet outwards like a duck. Aurek began to laugh. Breaking a low branch, she used it as a walking stick, head tipping from side to side, feet splayed, kicking leaves up in the air.
‘Charlie Chaplin,’ she whispered. ‘I’m Charlie Chaplin.’
Aurek copied her, his laughter quiet like the murmur of a fast-running stream.
Janusz
On a concrete runway, in an East Anglian field in the pouring rain, Janusz imagined the farm up in the hills beyond Marseilles. When his squadron was moved to Yorkshire, he trudged through snow, dreaming of Hélène with her brown hair in plaits.
In Kent, he imagined her voice in his ear. Every new thing he saw he wanted to tell her about. He wrote letters to her, describing the pretty stone houses in villages, the English churches with their grassy graveyards and big vicarages attached. He picked roses in the summer of 1943 and pretended he could give them to her.
Flying over Italy in spring 1944, dropping propaganda leaflets, he recorded the colours of the hills, the fields, the cities. Just for her.
And Hélène wrote to him. Letters that might arrive out of sequence or three at once after a long wait. He read them all; he knew each one by heart.
When a letter arrived for him in the autumn of 1944, Janusz opened it gladly, in front of the other men in his mess hall, settling down in an armchair. He was surprised to see it was written in English. And it wasn’t from Hélène. It was from her brother.
Dear friend,
I am Hélène’s brother. I hope you are quite well. I hear a lot about you from Hélène. My parents speak well of you. I have news that is hard to tell. I try writing before but I don’t know if the letters are arriving. Our home has suffered of war but not destroyed and we live always at the farm. I must tell what happens and how sorry I am.
Hélène and I are in the city together. Le Panier near the Vieux port and German soldiers barricade us in the street. Hélène got caught in the crowd and I lose her there. There is no one left in Le Panier. The soldiers shoot everyone. I search and I find Hélène in a hospital. I am very sorry. Her wounds were bad. She asked for you many times. She died in hospital. I am sorry to give you this news. I think you are good man. I finish this letter with my gratitude for your fighting in this war and for your sufferings …
Janusz didn’t read any more. He folded the letter up and put it in his wallet. He listened to the blood running through his veins until he thought he could hear it draining from him. Blood must have been seeping from his body, because he couldn’t stand. His ankles, knees, thighs were closing up like a fan. His head rolled. The wind blew over him like a wail of a voice, or it may have been his own