22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [116]
‘I don’t know what else to do,’ Janusz said. ‘We can’t go back to Poland. I might try France. Or Canada. Get a job there. I don’t know …’
‘You should think about it. I’ve already got it sorted out. The war’s nearly over. I’m going up to Scotland. I’m marrying Ruby.’
Janusz frowned. ‘But you’re already married. What about your family? Your children?’
Bruno sighed. ‘That’s another life now. Another world. Jan, old man, you’re so bloody decent. You must know there are plenty of married Poles here who have got themselves English girls. What are they to do? Live here like monks because they’re married to women back in Poland that they’ll never see again? I’ve been away from our country too long. Even if I could find my wife, I doubt my kids would recognize me. They’re better off without me. I can’t go back. I’ve got a life here with Ruby now. You’ve got to take what chances you have.’ Bruno patted Janusz on the shoulder. ‘You’ve had a tough time. Why not find yourself a nice girl here? Ruby’s got lots of girlfriends. We’ll find you a girl all right.’
The sound of other men entering the Nissen hut disturbed Janusz’s thinking. They were talking about the weather. The rains had eased off and the men were discussing the fog that was coming in across the fields. Janusz stood up and pulled on his greatcoat. Bruno would be landing soon. He stepped outside and felt his feet sink into a puddle. Heavy mists swirled around him. Hands in pockets, head down, Janusz trudged towards the airfield and waited in the mess huts for the planes to come in. He sat and watched the fog curl and thicken outside. And what would he do after the war? Go back to Poland? Bruno was right: too much had happened to ever go back.
‘A real pea-souper,’ somebody said.
Janusz got up. Why not live in Scotland? Start his life again? He walked out of the mess hut and nearly knocked into an officer on the steps.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Janusz. ‘I didn’t see you.’
‘I’m not surprised. Terrible weather,’ said the officer as Janusz stepped to one side to let him pass.
‘I hope the planes are going to come in safely tonight, sir.’
‘They’re not landing here. Visibility’s three hundred yards or less over the airfield. They’ve been diverted to land further north. I’ll let everybody know when our crew is back on terra firma.’
Janusz followed him back into the mess hut. He waited. An hour later the news came in.
The squadron had been flying blind in thick cloud base. Only five of thirteen planes had touched down successfully. Bruno’s plane had crashed in a cornfield and gone up in flames.
Ipswich
Janusz clings to his routines. He works as many hours as possible and then goes home and mends things – the kitchen chair with its broken rung, the back door, the dripping tap, next door’s guttering – but two weeks and three days after he told Silvana to leave, he still cannot find enough to do to occupy himself.
Heartache burns like a fever in him. He cannot sleep. His muscles twitch, his mind races and at dawn he throws off his bedcovers, dresses and hurries out into his garden. He is so drunk with grief, it is all he can do to stop himself from roaming the streets looking for a fight.
The honeysuckle Janusz trained up the wooden fence has just begun to bud with flowers, and the holly by the shed glows dark green. Janusz grabs the honeysuckle’s stem, soft as an exposed throat, and throttles it in his fist, yanking it off the fence. No more flowers. No more suburban garden. No more wife and son. He takes his spade, angrily digging at the holly’s woody roots. He rips roses from the soil, slashes flowers with a scythe, kicks over shrubs and piles their ragged remains in a funeral pyre in the middle of the lawn.
The garden was always a dream. A dream of his son playing on a green lawn and his wife cutting English roses from the flower borders. And now there are no more dreams. A splash of rain falls but he carries on his destruction, finding some kind of pleasure in digging up plants, turning the lawn over to a furrowed plot of soil. He wants black soil. Bare earth. The