22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [44]
Is it really possible that meeting Peter’s father, the man with a brand-new smile, has nudged the block of coldness wedged inside her for so long?
Poland
Silvana
Silvana walked away from the wreckage of the plane and sat down at a crossroads beside an abandoned, wooden handcart and a pile of spilled blankets. She sat there for a long, long time. The rain turned to sleet. She put on her fur coat and cradled her child inside it. He was crying lustily and the sound was something wonderful to her.
Someone stopped in front of her and she looked up. A woman stared down at her.
‘Go away,’ Silvana said. ‘Get away. Get away from my baby.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ the woman said briskly. ‘I don’t want your child. I want you to get up. You’re going to die sitting here in the cold.’
She was older than Silvana, and even in that terrible weather, wearing, as she was, a man’s overcoat and peasant boots, she had a worldliness about her, an aura of sophistication that made Silvana see her not as she was, with her ragged clothes and thin pale face, but as she could be, as she probably had been, a red-lipped pouting beauty with diamonds in her hair.
‘Come on,’ the woman said, frowning so that her pencil-thin eyebrows creased. ‘Get up off your arse and get moving.’
Silvana sat up straighter, tried to tidy her hair. ‘Leave me alone. Just go away.’
‘I am not going away. You and the child will die of the fucking cold if you don’t get up. And what is the point of leaving those blankets in the mud? Pick them up and wrap them around him. He looks half frozen.’
Something in the woman’s voice, the clear commanding sound of it, made Silvana get up, picking up the blankets as she did so.
‘His name’s Aurek,’ she said. She lifted the boy so that the woman could see him. ‘This is my son. I’m his mother. I lost him and then I found him.’
‘Did you? Well, you’re the sorriest-looking mother I ever saw.’
The woman held out a pair of flat, lace-up leather shoes. ‘Here, take these. You can’t go barefoot, you’ll get frostbite. They’re all I have. They’re dance shoes, although with that wound on your ankle, you don’t look like you’ll be dancing for a while.’
The woman’s name was Hanka. She said she sang in clubs in Warsaw, and named places Silvana had never heard of.
‘I was going to get my big break and sing with an American orchestra, then Hitler messed things up for me.’
Hanka laughed. ‘You’re lucky I met you. I’ll look after you. You and your miserable baby.’
They walked together along muddy roads and endless tracks, until Hanka finally persuaded a farmer to let them stay in his barn.
‘Do you have any money?’
Silvana shook her head. She’d spent the savings she and Janusz had on the bus journey and food along the way.
‘Jewellery?’
Silvana looked at her wedding ring. She touched her throat and felt the small glass medallion Janusz had given her.
‘No,’ she said.
Hanka frowned, hands on hips. She grabbed Silvana’s hand.
‘Give me your ring. We need food, right? Then give me your ring.’
Silvana watched as Hanka handed over her wedding ring to the farmer.
‘Is that all?’ the man asked.
Hanka put her hand on her hip and looked slyly at him. ‘What else do you want?’
She walked away and he followed her into a stable. Silvana stood in the farmyard waiting. The farmer came out later, pulling his belt tight on his britches, telling them they could stay as long as they liked.
‘Oh now, don’t look so worried,’ Hanka told Silvana afterwards when the farmer’s wife had silently brought them dishes of beetroot soup and cups of hot tea.
‘He won’t touch you. I’ve told him you’re out of bounds. You need to wise up. Hart ducha. It means strength of will. That’s what you need, Silvana. I can sell myself if I must, but I am my own person. I do what I want. Look at you. Let me guess. You married a peasant and this is your child, whom you believe will make your fortune one day.’
‘My husband is not a peasant,’ Silvana replied. ‘He