22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [110]
‘Aah. I’ve got a crate of bananas in here. They’re going tomorrow. Come on in. I know it’s a bit of a mess, but it’s a roof over your head.’
Silvana and Aurek wait in the cold front room, sitting on cardboard boxes full of tins of corned beef, while Tony goes out to buy fish and chips. Aurek turns his back to Silvana and she knows he is angry. She tries to sound cheerful.
‘This is an adventure,’ she tells him, and nearly chokes on the tears that thicken in her throat. ‘Well, I’m hungry,’ she says when he doesn’t answer her. ‘Shall we get the table set for supper?’
The boy curls up into a ball and turns his back to her, so she leaves him to himself and goes into the kitchen, a narrow room, more modern than her own, with matching units in a pale-yellow Formica. Opening cupboards and drawers, all of them seemingly full of tins of fruit, she finally locates some plates and knives and forks. When Tony comes back he moves a case of London Gin off the kitchen table and they sit down.
‘You’re hungry, Aurek,’ says Tony. ‘I didn’t know you could eat so much.’
For Silvana, it is nothing new. The boy always eats as if the food in front of him might be his last meal, and she has long forgotten that other children don’t behave like this. She looks at Aurek. He has changed lately. He has filled out a little, and his hair is longer and thicker.
‘Where do you put it all?’ Tony is asking. ‘Have you got a tapeworm, Aurek?’
Aurek looks suddenly anxious.
‘It’s a long wiggly worm that eats all your food before you can get the goodness from it. Lots of kids get them.’
Silvana shakes her head and puts her hand on Aurek’s arm.
‘Aurek, he’s only joking.’
‘Of course I am. I didn’t mean to upset you, old man. Here, have some of my chips. Your mother’s right. You do need to eat.’
After they’ve finished, Tony smokes a cigarette and reads a newspaper. Aurek sits on the floor of the kitchen while Silvana washes up the dishes. When she’s done she drifts back to the front room with its bay window and hears Aurek slip in behind her. She stares out at the night and the lights from the ships out at sea. Despite everything, it is a relief to have confessed to Janusz, to have told him the truth. He has deserved at least that for a long time now. It’s a kind of relief, but it also may be the stupidest thing she’s ever done. She looks at the boy and feels afraid. Where has her promise to him gone now? Who will be his father?
Silvana prepares a bath for Aurek. She twists the bath taps on full and brown water glugs out. Through the open door she can hear classical music playing on the radio. She thanks God it is not Chopin. A Polish melody would undo her. Steam rises in the room and Aurek appears at the door.
‘There you are,’ says Silvana. ‘It’s all ready for you. Don’t stay in for too long.’
She begins to undress him, but he pushes her away.
‘No,’ he says angrily. ‘I do it myself. Go away.’
‘Don’t speak like that.’
Aurek pushes her away from him again and Silvana gives up. She stands looking at him. He still has mud in his hair and up his legs. Against the white skin of his calves he looks like he is wearing black ankle socks and garters. She wants to plant him in the bath and scrub him clean, but she knows he won’t let her.
‘All right.’ She sighs. ‘Whatever you say.’
She goes downstairs and watches the fishing boats again. She doesn’t know how long she sits like that, but suddenly she is aware of Aurek beside her, stroking her hand, leaning his head against her shoulder.
‘I want to go home.’
‘Soon,’ she promises, wrapping an arm around him. ‘Soon. We’ll be all right, my darling. You’ll see.’
She puts Aurek to bed in the camp bed Tony produces from a cupboard. He pulls it out of a green canvas bag with pale stencilled letters and numbers on the front and a stamp saying it is the property of the British Army. It’s a clattering mix of strong cotton twill, webbing and wooden dowelling that he folds out and assembles into a bed.
The boy climbs in and digs a nest out of his blankets, pulling them over him so that