22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [38]
All the time, he was hoping for peace; now it’s here, he’s like a man coming up to the light after years of living underground. It should be wonderful, but it’s not. He keeps pretending everything is all right, but the truth is his son hates him, his wife cries every night and he still dreams of the woman he left.
‘You and me,’ he says. ‘It’s like we’ve been given a chance to get something right, but after the years we’ve spent apart I don’t know how to do it.’
‘We’re a family,’ Silvana says, as if this fact alone will see them through. ‘You’re Aurek’s father.’
He glances at the boy crouched behind his mother. Janusz’s heart feels as heavy as the wet washing he has scooped up off the floor.
‘What happened?’ he asks. ‘Why did you hide in a forest with the boy? Why did you do that?’
Silvana bends to help him pick up the clothes. ‘You know what happened. Why must you ask again and again? I tried to get to your parents’ house, but the bus I was on broke down. I was afraid I would be picked up by soldiers and sent to work on a German farm. Lots of women were. I didn’t want anybody taking Aurek from me. When the bus broke down I joined a queue of people and followed some of them into the forest, where we hid. Then the war ended, we were in a camp and you found us.’
She hands him a damp towel and asks him again if he would like tea.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘A cup of tea.’
There must be more than that to the story. Something terrible happened to the two of them, that much he knows.
‘Aurek,’ he says. ‘Go to your room. I need to talk to your mother.’
The boy slinks past him and Janusz shuts the kitchen door.
‘Tell me what happened to you during the war. I just … Sometimes I look at Aurek and I wonder if he’s the child I left behind.’
Her eyes darken with tears. ‘He’s been through a war. Can’t you understand that?’
Maybe he is wrong to let things go like this, but Janusz lets the conversation end. He apologizes. He takes three cups out of the cupboard, puts them on the kitchen table and calls Aurek back.
‘There you are,’ he says as the boy comes into the room. ‘Come and have a cup of tea with us. You like lots of milk, don’t you?’
Aurek takes a seat at the table, elbows splayed, his head in his hands. The child has no manners whatsoever. Silvana catches hold of him and kisses the top of his head. It’s a fierce action and full of ownership, like a cat might grab a kitten.
Janusz’s mother would never have let him sit like that as a child. He has a sudden image of his parents’ dining room, the table set for lunch with all the best silverware and he and his sisters sitting straight-backed in their chairs. The strained formality of his own upbringing. He looks around the room, at the shabby curtains, the kettle boiling on the gas ring, Silvana holding the teapot, waiting, just as he taught her. Bring the pot to the kettle, not the other way round. He sighs. Let the boy sprawl.
‘Give Aurek an extra spoonful of sugar,’ he tells Silvana as she pours the tea. He smiles at his son. ‘And a biscuit if we’ve got any.’
The best day of the week is Sunday. That’s when the family have breakfast together in the kitchen: bread, tea, milk, a boiled egg each.
Silvana and Aurek finish the remains of a pint of yellow, soured milk. She and the boy drink lustily, as if the curdled liquid is still fresh and creamy. Thank God there is no one else to see this display of poverty. And yet it makes Janusz want to care for them, to protect them like fragile plants from hard winters. He picks up the newspaper, a pen in his hand, a battered Polish–English dictionary at his side.
Silvana and Aurek have a map spread out on the table.
‘Look,’ says Silvana, putting