22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [133]
Janusz shakes his head. He is not sure if she is talking about Tony or Aurek.
‘Am I a criminal?’ she asks.
He looks at her. Her eyes have the same hard stare he has seen in soldiers. The ones who have witnessed too much. Her lips hold more questions, waiting for his response.
She pleads with him. ‘Will you ever forgive me?’
He answers No, and Yes, I think so, which seem to be the answers Silvana wants to hear.
‘I thought I had lost you both,’ he says.
Silvana touches his cheek with her hand and he feels it tremble against him.
They sit in the car, watching the wind make patterns with the sand on the road, snaking lines of yellow back and forth, and Silvana tells Janusz the story of her war. She lays it out like a book, filling in details, moving back and forth over time until the whole six years they have been apart are accounted for. Some of it is hard to hear, but he listens. He does not turn away from her. She says she wants no more secrets between them.
His own stories of those years are hard to relate. He tries to explain things to her, but he does not want to remember the war. His memories of it are locked down, and he can’t bring himself to open them. He cannot speak of Hélène. Silvana doesn’t press him for details. She changes the subject. For that he is grateful.
‘Maybe it doesn’t matter,’ she says when he falters and loses his place in his own narrative. ‘The past – maybe we make too much of it. What we need is what’s right here.’
But Janusz knows she is just being kind. Of course the past matters. He looks at her and sees the country he left behind staring back at him. Her face is full of the knowledge of his own youth, and he loves her for it. He feels like he does when he mends machines, when all those engineered details that can so easily go wrong are put in the right place, when they are warm and oiled and turning over perfectly.
Silvana hugs herself. ‘He didn’t have a mother. I know he didn’t. He had filth in his hair and sores on his body. I had to care for him. He had nobody. And my own baby, our baby was –’
‘Stop,’ says Janusz. He winds his window down, lets the sea air rush in, breathes deeply. ‘Not that. Tell me about him growing up.’
She tells him about their woodland son and how he grew up in the forest. She tells him the boy’s favourite games and the way he learned to climb trees and hunt for food.
They speak quietly together until both boys become one in Janusz’s mind. It is the best way. He knows the boy he loves isn’t really the boy who swallowed a button, but he will give him these memories. Aurek will own them. There will be no more mystery. He is their son. And that will be his story.
It is awkward, embracing in a car. Janusz leans towards Silvana, but the steering wheel gets in the way and the gearstick lies between them. Silvana leans further forwards, shifting to the edge of her seat, and he manages to kiss her in a clumsy way, their noses bumping.
He wants her. The sound of her breathing in the night. The way she hums when she believes she is alone. All these things. Desire rises in him. His heart beats like a young man’s, full of wanting. At the same time he feels old. Old enough to understand the hurt he has suffered will not disappear overnight. The thought of Tony makes him want to push her away, accuse her all over again. But he pulls her closer to him.
‘Come back,’ he whispers. ‘Please come back.’
‘The house is along the seafront,’ Silvana says. ‘And you turn –’
‘I know,’ he tells her, and starts the engine.
Aurek is sitting out on his window ledge when he sees the car driving up the road. He watches it stop outside the house. Sees his mother get out and then his father. He has come! They stand by the car and look up at him. Aurek waves, slowly at first, then faster. He stands up, hanging onto the window frame, losing his balance slightly, tipping forwards. He has to grab the sill to stop himself falling out of the window. Both Janusz and Silvana lift their hands to him in alarm.
‘No!’ they shout. ‘No!’
22 Britannia Road
The car journey is long and slow