22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [124]
He tipped up a box towards them. ‘Why don’t you have a look?’
The box of toys had teddy bears and jigsaw puzzles, tin cars and dolls. A small wooden rattle sat on top of them. Plain and polished. Silvana grabbed it. The man laughed.
‘Is that what you want? He’s a bit old for baby stuff, isn’t he?’
Silvana shook her head. She took the rollerskates off Aurek’s shoulders and gave the boy the rattle. She thought of her father, of the carved rattle he had made for her and how she had kept it. What had happened to it? Had she left it behind in Warsaw? She couldn’t remember and didn’t want to. She looked at Aurek and smiled.
‘This is yours. Do you understand? It’s a magic rattle. You keep it very safe now and it will bring you good luck.’
She closed his fingers over the handle and held them tight for a moment. When she let go, she saw the white imprint of her own fingers on the boy’s hand. He held the rattle to his chest and nodded at her, his eyes big and dark with belief.
And still the journey wasn’t over. They were herded towards a waiting train crowded with people from the boat. As they pulled into London, Silvana hoisted Aurek onto her hip, holding him tightly. The train rumbled and clanked and came to a stop with a hissing of brakes. Doors began to bang open and the sound of shouting, of people calling each other and children crying, filled the air. She joined the queues to leave the train and finally got to an open door. She hesitated. The station looked huge. A guard on the platform held out his hand.
‘Come on then, miss. Down you get.’
Silvana stepped down from the train. She straightened her headscarf and looked around at the crowds, trying to see Janusz among them.
‘We’re here,’ she whispered, as much to herself as to the boy. ‘We’re here.’
Felixstowe
Silvana is lying awake in her bed, listening to a summer storm. There are loud rolls of thunder and the rain pelts the streets outside her window. She can hear Tony shifting in his bed, the bed springs complaining. He is a terrible sleeper, she concludes. For so many nights now she has listened to the sound of him, the slam of his body turning over on the mattress, an arm flung across the sheets, the feathery punching of his pillows, the frequent sighs.
She gets out of her bed and pulls on a dressing gown. She is well aware that he wants her. And now Janusz has gone, and she has given up hope, there is little reason for them both to lie awake trying, as Tony says, to be decent human beings.
She forces her feet into a pair of slippers that are too tight. Tony produced them out of a box for her a few days ago: black Chinese silk embroidered with red, pink and peach roses threaded through with a leafy green stitch that might be ivy.
Padding quietly across her room, she opens the door, crosses the small landing and goes into Tony’s room. There is total silence apart from the rain outside. Is he holding his breath? She can hear nothing. Thunder grumbles and a flash of lightning lights the room for a moment. She steps towards the bed. Tony is visible briefly in the flash of lightning, his head on the pillow, lying on his back, hands folded across his chest. She stands over him and breathes in the warm smell of him.
‘Are you awake?’
‘At last,’ he says.
‘Tony?’
‘At last.’
He seems to grow larger, rising out of the bed so that she thinks of him as a bear, his huge shadow covering her in darkness. She takes a sharp intake of breath and then he has his arms around her, his lips on her neck, damp kisses while he pulls her nightclothes off her. He picks her up and lays her down on the bed, naked except for her slippers, which, try as she might, she cannot take off.
It is over quickly, but while Tony’s heavy frame presses down on her, so that she feels that he is indeed a bear of a man and she a long-awaited meal, she worries about the slippers. When the moment arises, when her feet come together briefly, she pushes one against the other, trying to free her crushed toes. She scrapes her heels along his calf muscles and