22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [84]
It is always the same talk. The shortages of this and that and the government letting people down. Sometimes Silvana imagines herself telling them to shut up. To put a sock in it, as Doris would say. To belt up good and proper.
‘Liverpool are at the top of the first division,’ says Tony, who appears not to have heard Gilbert’s question. Silvana notices how carefully he changes the subject. Janusz comes back into the room.
‘What do you think?’ Tony asks him. ‘Do you support them?’
‘I prefer cricket,’ says Janusz.
‘I’m an Ipswich Town fan myself,’ says Gilbert enthusiastically. ‘Got to support our local lads. They’re the middle of the third division and climbing. They’ll give Liverpool a run for their money one day.’
Tony laughs. ‘I won’t hold my breath.’
‘Ah, you wait. When I win the football pools I’ll buy Ipswich and train them myself.’
Doris looks at her watch. ‘We should go. No more football talk, please, gentlemen. We don’t want to miss the beginning of the film.’
And then they are all gathering up coats and out of the door, an icy wind hitting them full in the face. Silvana turns to look at Tony. He doesn’t meet her gaze. Janusz steps up beside her.
‘It’s very decent of you, Tony. We appreciate it.’
‘Yes, yes we do,’ Silvana says.
‘Have fun, children,’ says Tony jovially, waving them away.
Silvana looks up at the bedroom window. Aurek has pressed his face to the glass.
‘I think Aurek wants something,’ she begins to say, but Doris takes her arm firmly.
‘Come on, Sylvia. You’ve got to leave him sometime. Let him grow up.’
A night out without Aurek. The first since they arrived in Britain. She doesn’t know if it is leaving the boy or the way Tony brushed his hand against hers, but even in all her splendour, her new dress and gloves, she feels exposed and vulnerable.
Janusz is wearing his demob suit, the one he was wearing when he met her at the train station, a single-breasted jacket and trousers with turn-ups. He looks handsome. A good man, solid and respectable.
‘Smile,’ he says. ‘You look as though you are in pain.’
‘I don’t like leaving Aurek.’
‘Why? What could happen? This is a good town. We’re safe here.’
‘Sometimes I don’t feel safe.’
‘Well, you should. I’ll get a promotion at work soon. There’s a man retiring and I’m in line for his job. I’ve worked overtime and extra hours to make sure I get it.’
‘Think you will?’ asks Gilbert, coming up alongside them. ‘Sorry, couldn’t help overhearing. Think you’ll get it then?’
‘I don’t see why not. I work hard. I deserve it.’
‘That’s just it, isn’t it? You foreigners work too bloody hard.’
‘We finish when the work is done.’
‘That’s why you’re unpopular. It upsets the system.’
‘In the mood for a film?’ says Doris loudly, and Silvana sees the way she jabs Gilbert in the ribs with her elbow. ‘And I want to watch it all, Gilbert Holborn, so don’t even try to get me to sit at the back with you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you,’ says Doris. ‘You won’t get me sitting with the courting couples. I’m too old for all that.’
They are going to see Top Hat. It’s an old Fred Astaire musical, and Silvana’s choice. Gilbert says he’d rather see a war film, but Doris reminds him it is Silvana’s birthday treat, not his. The four of them walk through town, past Woolworths and Lipton’s with its pretty green-tiled shopfront, Smith’s the butcher’s, the dry cleaner’s and the chemist, towards the Odeon cinema.
‘There was a dirty great crater here,’ says Doris as they pick their way along a temporary path of gravel with muddy earth either side of it. ‘A parachute mine right at the end of the war. They filled the hole in pretty quick. It looked like someone was trying to build a tunnel right through to Australia. A ruddy great hole. It was a miracle nobody was hurt.’
The Odeon is a grand-looking building with long windows like a church and lots of peeling pink paint. Gilbert tells them all how he was one of the workers that built it back in ’29. Doris shows them shrapnel damage on the front steps, and Janusz and Gilbert follow