22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [69]
He dipped his finger in a paper parcel and licked it. ‘We will need it for the winter. We should make a store if we can. There’s a woodsman who has a cottage a mile or so from here. He’s friendly and willing to give us food. I treated his wife for stomach pains. I used chaga, a fungus that grows on birch trees. She’s promised me she will kill a couple of chickens for us. Then we can have a feast.’
In dribs and drabs after that, Gregor brought other things, some milk in a can, more bread, some potatoes. The now heavily pregnant Elsa ate first. She wasn’t far off giving birth, that was obvious. Gregor sat beside her until she had had enough. Silvana pushed Aurek forward.
‘After her, he must eat. He’s a child. He needs the food.’
She sat him on her lap and guarded him while he ate. The others talked about her but she didn’t care. The boy had to eat.
They reorganized the camp for winter, weaving wild clematis and the bark of the birch trees into panels to make walls for their huts. Branches were bound together to make shelters, which Silvana padded with moss and dried bracken. Gregor walked among them, undoing mistakes and handing out sheaves of willow canes he had gathered. Without him, Silvana doubted any of them would survive.
He came to her again one night, pushing his rough hands into her clothes, disturbing the small amount of warmth she had, sending cold air against her skin. His breath smelt sour.
‘Who are you keeping yourself for?’ he asked. ‘Your husband is never coming back. He’s dead on a battlefield somewhere. Stop this ridiculous show of independence. It’s not worth it.’
His words broke something in her, and she gave a sob as she opened her arms to him, pressing her lips against his.
It was over fast. He was on her and Silvana was bucking under his fingers, already finished with him as he pushed himself inside her. Afterwards she lay in his arms, aware of Aurek next to her, fidgeting in his sleep.
‘You’d better go,’ she whispered.
‘I like you, forest girl,’ he said.
‘Please, just leave. I made a mistake. I’m sorry.’
Silvana heard him pissing against a tree. Gregor was a dog, a wolf with his pack. She felt like a fool.
Janusz
Janusz and Bruno left Yugoslavia in a fishing boat and arrived in Marseilles, sitting among piles of netting and baskets of fish. France was more beautiful than Janusz had imagined. Dusty yellow mimosa spread a buttery light across the hillsides. Stumpy palm trees and leathery blue agaves shimmered in the heat of an early spring.
They and the other men with them were told they should catch a train to Lyons, where they’d be given uniforms and an army rank. Bruno didn’t want to. He had plans to get to England. When the boat docked and they felt solid ground under them, Bruno pulled Janusz away and they slipped into the shadowy, labyrinthine streets of the old city.
The first thing they did was swim. They stripped off their filthy clothes and ran into the sea. While Bruno splashed and yelled, Janusz dived into the waves and swam out as far as he could. He drifted in the swell of the waves, looking back at the coastline. The water was crystal clear. He was in a country he had only ever seen in books.
It was Janusz who strung enough French together to get them some rooms, and they ended up in a ramshackle, skinny building in Marseilles’ backstreets. Each day they walked to a small curve of beach near the port and sat in the sun.
‘You look like a lobster from the fish market,’ grinned Bruno through the smoke of a cigarette hanging from his mouth. ‘I’ve never seen a man so sunburnt.’
Janusz ignored him. ‘We can’t do this, just sit around all day. We need to join a French unit.’
‘Maybe, maybe not. I’m in no hurry right now. We can afford to stay for a week or so. If they want us, they can come looking. We can have a couple of weeks before we risk our lives again.’
Each day they hiked to different beaches. Each evening they walked back and ate in bars, plates of grilled octopus and orange sea urchins. Janusz pushed them around with his fork.
‘I don’t know how you can eat this,