22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [9]
‘You’ve already got it,’ she whispered to him.
He stopped kissing her and looked into her eyes. Then he grabbed her hand and led her into the woods.
Silvana knew they had crossed an invisible line together, that they couldn’t go back to how they had been before the slap. They made their way deeper into the woods and it got darker the further they pushed through the bracken, the trees growing closer together.
‘We could keep going,’ Janusz said, holding back a bramble. ‘We could make a camp and live out here. I could have you all to myself.’
Silvana laughed. ‘So that’s what you want, huh?’ She was a little afraid but she tipped her chin at him and tried to look confident. ‘My stockings are getting ruined,’ she said. Then she felt mischievous and lifted the skirt of her dress. ‘Look at this ladder.’ She showed him the rip in her black cotton stocking. ‘You’ll have to buy me new ones.’
‘Let me see.’
‘No. No, it’s nothing.’ Silvana pushed his hand away. She pouted at him. ‘I suppose you’re going to hit me again?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘Never. I will never hurt you. I will always worship you.’
Nobody had spoken to her like that before. He knelt in front of her and moved his hand up her skirt, the coldness of his fingers against her warm thigh making her gasp. He was breathing heavily by then, as if he’d been running. When he tried to put his hand inside her underwear, she pushed him away.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Wait a minute.’
‘What’s the matter?’ He was standing now, his mouth against her ear. ‘Have you done this before?’
She shook her head. ‘Never. What about you?’
‘No. But I want to. Do you?’
She took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I do.’
He kissed her again and they fell to their knees in the bracken.
It was as though she was the world, the whole wide world, and she let him explore her. And that was how she got her baby: the day Janusz led her into the woods. She would always remember feeling enormous that day, a giant woman, her hardness melted to softness, driven away by the sudden generosity of her body, the beginnings of their son already trawling in her juices.
‘I love you,’ Janusz said afterwards. ‘I love you.’
They lay side by side, holding hands. Silvana closed her eyes and listened to her heart steadying. She was shrinking now, a breeze chilling her bare legs, doubts gathering in her mind over what they had done.
‘Do you really?’ she asked. ‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why? I just love you.’
‘I want to know why.’
She wanted him to say he loved her because she was beautiful and because she was the one he had been looking for all his life. (She watched a great many films in those days and was very susceptible to American musicals.)
‘Because that’s what happens,’ he said, after a moment’s pause. ‘People fall in love.’
‘Oh.’
‘And do you love me?’
Silvana looked at his sweet, serious face, the longing in his eyes, his unbuttoned collar and his braces hanging loose. She stroked his cheek and he groaned, catching hold of her hand and kissing it.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Show me,’ he breathed. ‘Show me again.’
So she did.
Poland, 1939
Janusz
Janusz struggled off the crowded trolley bus, stepping down into a surging mass of people on Prosta Street. Holding his hat to his chest, he slipped into the crowds of men and women so packed together they moved like a flexing muscle, pushing him towards Warsaw Central station.
His chest felt tight, and he wondered if it was the storm-laden weather or the fear of what the future held that made him struggle for breath. A smell of sewers rose up from the grated drain holes in the cobbled streets. The heat of the day had settled like a net over the city, snagging the fumes of traffic and horse shit along with the odours of fish markets and rotting vegetables. For weeks now there had been talk of food shortages, and peasants had started bringing their produce into the city, selling it at inflated prices to families who were stockpiling