22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [89]
He stood up and warmed himself by the fire.
‘You couldn’t have been there long. I found you just in time. I rubbed you down with snow as fast as I could. I used up so much snow I was sweating by the time I brought you round. Sweating in all that snow! It made me laugh out loud. I cleared an area this wide. Back to the earth. If I hadn’t decided to take that red chaise home, you would have died. Like I said, it’s a miracle I found you. Like God had left you there.’
Marysia snorted with laughter. ‘Either him or the devil.’
Silvana shifted Aurek on her knee and pretended not to hear.
Janusz
Every morning, at first light, Janusz breakfasted with the family before they worked the fields together. He learned how to manage vines and grow crops, and took charge of the vegetable garden. The famer’s wife showed him how to tend roses and care for the fruit trees in the orchards.
In the afternoons, when the heat was too much to work in and everybody slept, Hélène pulled Janusz into the barn, where they made love, salt settling on his lips, sweat stiffening his hair and dripping into his eyes, rivulets running down his back, between his buttocks. She seemed to turn the air thick with the heat of her lovemaking, always wanting more from him, always desiring him, loving him.
He couldn’t bear to let her out of his sight. He was so full of her he couldn’t understand his joy. He knew the war continued, but it didn’t matter to him any more. It was all somebody else’s business. He was not part of any of it.
The farmer asked Janusz if he was going to marry her. He didn’t want to know about Janusz’s past. He needed a man to work the farm. He wanted grandchildren. Lots of them.
‘If the Germans come down here, we’ll hide you. I know what war is like. I was a poilu in 1914. Stay here. Hélène’s a good girl. She’ll make you a good wife.’
‘I will, sir,’ said Janusz. He was so serious, he saluted the old man. And the old man stood to attention and saluted him back.
Ipswich
Janusz is counting on his promotion at work. He wonders if they will choose another man, a British man, over him. He is wearing his best shoes, the ones Silvana gave him, polished and bright. His hair is oiled, his face clean and his collar starched. There is not a man who works as hard as he does on the shop floor, of that he is sure. But will that be enough?
He waits in the office where the secretaries work, listening to the chatter of typewriters, and when the boss comes out of his glass-fronted booth, cigar in hand, Janusz asks him whether he has made a decision about who will replace Mr Wilkens as foreman. The boss tells him not yet, but he believes the Poles are all damn good workers. Janusz runs a finger around the inside of his collar, clears his throat, feels suddenly hopeful and says so.
The boss says he should be. He has a factory to run and doesn’t give a pig’s arse what the locals think of foreigners stealing their jobs.
‘But just don’t touch their women. We know what you Continentals are like. Young Lotharios, the lot of you,’ he laughs, and pats Janusz on the shoulder. Then he strides out, leaving Janusz alone in the room with six silent typewriters and six giggling secretaries looking at him as if they think he might be a Polish Casanova in blue overalls. It takes most of the afternoon for his normally pale cheeks to lose their red glare of embarrassment.
Janusz has always believed in things falling into place. He knows patience and a sense of duty will be rewarded. This belief comes from his father and his grandfather. He is one of Poland’s sons and has a steady understanding that right will somehow or other always be rewarded by right.
Like a stream trickling over pebbles will smooth and shape them, so Janusz’s hopefulness is a slow and unending force that runs coolly through his life, rubbing, rolling and forming it. So when the chance to buy a car