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By Root 1798 0

is still pale but she has put on a little weight and he’s hoping she will soon lose the watchfulness in her eyes, the constant look of mistrust. What he hadn’t bargained for was the amount of time he would spend teaching Silvana and Aurek not to do things. Not to take a bath in their clothes. Not to fidget when they listen to the radio. Not to steal vegetables from the allotments by the river. After coming home from work several times to find the front door open and the house empty, he also teaches them not to wander off into the town and spend hours getting lost. Aurek has to learn not to hide food around the house; that it belongs in the kitchen. He must not go into his parents’ bedroom. Ever. Nor must he touch his mother’s breasts. Ever. That’s something Janusz has lost his temper over, sending the boy wailing to his room. The boy also learns not to bring animals of any description into the house after Janusz finds a nest of harvest mice wrapped in a tea towel in his bed.

‘You have to get used to living in a house again,’ says Janusz. ‘Put the past behind you both. The war’s over. This is peacetime. A new start for us.’ He tries to soften his voice. He is aware that he sounds harsh. ‘I know it’s hard. You must miss Poland. I did too, to begin with.’

He watches their faces: his wife’s nervy stare, the boy’s silent eyes, blank as carved stone.

‘There’s a club in the town. A group of twenty or so Poles like us. Displaced people who have ended up living here. Some of them have children. You could speak Polish there, make some friends …’

‘No!’ Silvana replies, and he is surprised by the fierceness of her response.

‘I don’t want to see any other Polish people,’ she says. ‘They’ll just remind me of what I have lost.’

‘What we’ve both lost,’ he replies, and she turns away from him, as if he has said something stupid.

Janusz brings home pamphlets. They have pictures of smiling families waving British flags on the front of them. He reads to Silvana from a booklet called ‘Learning the British Way of Life’.

‘Home Entertainment for Foreigners’ brings a smile to his wife’s face when he shows it to her. It has a picture of a housewife holding a tray of tarts on the front page. The woman’s frilled apron rises up around her ears like the fluted ruff of her pastry.

‘How to Learn British Manners’ is Janusz’s preferred reading. The illustration on the front cover is of two men shaking hands and lifting their hats to each other. Janusz insists they read it together.

‘There are ways of doing things here,’ he says. ‘You need to learn them if you are going to fit in.’ He clears his throat, lifts an imaginary hat from his head. ‘Good morning, Mrs Nowak. How do you do?’

‘How do you do?’ Silvana repeats dutifully, a small smile playing around her lips.

‘Lovely weather for the time of year.’

‘Yes, eezn’t it.’ Silvana giggles.

Janusz’s eyes crease at the corners. ‘Yes, eezn’t it.’ He laughs a little.

Silvana bites her lip and concentrates. ‘Lovely vezzer,’ she repeats, her voice breaking into laughter.

‘Weather.’

‘Vezzer. Wehhzer?’

‘Wait a moment,’ says Janusz. He comes back from the kitchen with a bottle. ‘I got this today. It’s called sherry. You should try it. It’s what they drink here.’

Silvana takes the glass he offers.

‘Oh, no, no. You mustn’t drink it down in one. It’s not like vodka. Here they sip it slowly and say, “Chin chin. God save the King.”’

It is sweet and cloying, but they drink the bottle dry and dance around the room, the wireless playing Glenn Miller, Aurek lying on his back on the rug, making small, off-key noises to himself. Janusz puts a porcelain bowl on his head and pretends it is a bowler hat, while Silvana waves an umbrella in the air. Their voices are loud and full of laughter.

Swinging Silvana around in time to the music, Janusz thinks they must look to the outside world like a couple of newlyweds. People who have never been touched by the war. He holds her close and feels … young. A young married man. A husband and a father. Something he has not felt for a long time. He will make up for the years