22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [50]
So that is what he did during the war.
He fell in love.
She doesn’t understand. Why did he bring her here if he loves another woman? It can’t be true. This can’t be true. Just when she thought she and the boy were safe. She folds up the letters, making sure her tears don’t fall upon them. Her fingers tremble as she puts them back under the dusters and soft brushes, as carefully as she’d put eggs back under a broody hen. Her stomach churns, and she thinks she might even be sick, so terrible is this feeling of hurt.
She stumbles through the hall and out into the street, slamming the front door behind her, hurrying down the hill into the heat-hazed town, sweat sticking her hair to her forehead and tears stinging her eyes.
In the narrow streets of the town centre, she walks aimlessly, past the grocer’s and the ironmonger’s where new saucepans, jam boilers and pressure cookers, preserving jars and canning machines glint at her. All shining, silvery and bright and brilliantly necessary. And why not a wedding ring in silver? That preserving pan with its practical heavy bottom – a sliver of that would make a ring. Why hadn’t she insisted upon a wedding ring when she had the chance? She’s not a proper wife without a ring. Maybe the other woman has a ring? And then another thought comes to her. A terrible thought, worse than all the others. What if he leaves them, and Aurek loses his father? She can feel tears pricking her eyes again when somebody calls her name.
‘Silvana! Doing a bit of shopping?’
Tony stands beside her. He is wearing brown overalls and his sleeves are rolled back to the elbows, revealing forearms covered in thick black hair. He waves an arm to show her a sign painted above a shop doorway: Benetoni’s Animal Emporium.
‘Why don’t you come in and have a look around? Mine is the best pet shop in Suffolk.’
She casts around for something to say.
‘I’m thinking of buying pots. For the kitchen.’
‘Tell me what you want and I’ll get it … Hey? Are you all right?’ He steps towards her, his arms reaching out to her. ‘You’re crying.’
For a moment she is tempted to tell him why. But she can’t. Of course she can’t.
‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’
‘But wait …’
She begins to run, not caring that nobody runs in the streets here. She is a foreigner. She will always look out of place. Why not pick up her skirts and run if she wants to? She hears him call her again as she rounds the corner, but she doesn’t look back.
She has no idea of where she is going, and finds herself at the docks. Ahead of her are semi-demolished warehouses, piles of brick rubble and official-looking signs warning the public to stay away, that many of the buildings are bomb-damaged and structurally unsafe. Some of the warehouses are still in use, and men are unloading sacks of grain into them. Coils of thick rope lie everywhere on the ground, and dust and debris drift on the breeze.
Picking her way over ropes and stacks of hessian sacks, she walks along the quay, past the sailors and warehousemen, ignoring the looks they give her, to where the water drifts away into the horizon and seagulls swagger and wheel in the sky.
Heavy wooden barges with red sails move slowly on the greeny waters. The salty smell of river mud is thick in the air, and seabirds wade across the gleaming black mudflats in the dry docks. Some way out, there is a ship covered in orange rust and peeling paint. A metal warship, held in place by huge chains, as if whoever moored it there was afraid the ship might try and escape to sea.
She remembers the terrible seasickness she suffered on the journey to England. How, when she finally staggered down the gangplanks onto English land, she knew she would never return to Poland.
She is as out of place as that ship on the river. Lost. Wanting a country that doesn’t exist any more. Poland is under communist rule. She can never go back. That’s the truth