22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [59]
‘French? No. Why?’
‘Could you read French? It’s like Italian, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t think so. But I have a French–English dictionary somewhere. Would that help?’
‘Yes. If I could borrow it.’
‘You can have it.’
‘And … And please don’t tell my husband.’
Tony’s arm is around her waist and she feels the heat of it through her clothes.
‘I won’t breathe a word. Will you tell me one day why you want a dictionary? You’re not planning a holiday on the Côte d’Azur, are you?’
He lets go of her, laughing gently, and she tries to relax her face.
‘No. Not a holiday.’
‘Good. I don’t want to think you’re going away. Well now,’ he says, stepping away from her, the intimacy between them vanishing. ‘May I get you that cup of tea?’
When he offers her a sandwich in his flat above the shop she realizes she has been hungry for days.
The foreman’s office feels crowded with just the two of them in it. Silvana stands one side of a wooden desk covered with paperwork piled high in untidy, slippery heaps. The foreman sits the other side, puffing on a cigarette that hangs in the corner of his mouth, as he searches through his papers. Beside him a window looks out onto the shop floor, and Silvana wishes with all her heart she was still at her machine, working alongside the other women.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ says the foreman, finally pulling a page out of a stack of documents. ‘Do you understand? We’re laying you off. We’re paying you now but you can’t come back.’
‘Please. I can sew faster.’
‘You’re not keeping up with the workload. We can’t pay workers who can’t keep up.’
She thinks of pleading, of getting down on her knees. But she knows it would do no good. She has been a hopeless worker. Instead she nods and apologizes.
Walking across the yard, she is surprised by the sense of relief she feels. The sun is warm on her face, and she is free of that dusty, dark factory.
When she arrives home, the house is empty. Janusz must have picked up Aurek from school and taken him for a walk. And how will she tell Janusz her news? He will see it as a failure.
She wanders into the garden and hears Janusz’s voice drift over the fence. Peering over, she sees him with Gilbert and Tony, sitting at a card table. Their heads are bent over it, almost touching, elbows splayed.
She walks out into the street and up to Doris’s open front door.
‘Hello, love,’ says Doris. She is standing in her hallway smoking a cigarette. ‘You’ve seen the men, have you?’ She hoiks a thumb behind her. ‘Out in the garden, playing at card sharks. Tony turned up with bottles of booze and organized an impromptu get-together. I’ve got your little lad in the front parlour with me. Go on through. He likes his grub, doesn’t he? I don’t know where he puts it. He’s been eating bread and jam like it’s going out of fashion.’
The front parlour is a dark room filled with more furniture than she and Janusz have in their whole house. The walls are papered in white and olive-green stripes. A mirror hangs above the fireplace with two large red and white china dogs sitting either side of it. There are ornaments on every surface.
Aurek is playing with a toy tractor, pushing it up and down the floor, weaving it in and out of the chair legs.
‘He’s been playing, happy as Larry, all afternoon. I’m glad you called round because I’ve got something for you. Here. Hair dye. Don’t take this wrong, but I thought you could get rid of all that grey. My Geena gets ’em from Leslie’s hairdresser’s. He got them cheap from Woolworths after they were bombed out. Chestnut Harmony. Looks lovely on the packet, doesn’t it? Now, you sit down and we can get on with it.’
Silvana hesitates. ‘I don’t know.’ She touches her headscarf. ‘Perhaps I should ask Janusz?’
‘Oh, leave him to his cards. This is just between us women. In this country you don’t have to ask your husband’s permission to do your hair. This isn’t the Dark Ages, you know. It’s best not to ask your husband anything. What they don’t know they don’t grieve over. Come on, I did a stint at a hairdresser’s before I married Gilbert. I