22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [91]
‘You’re good with him,’ the teacher says, and something in his voice makes Janusz suspect he’d like to offer him the baby along with the car.
When he leaves, with a promise from the teacher to help him move the car to Britannia Road on a trailer, the man’s wife hands him a tartan blanket.
‘Take this. You’ll need a car blanket. Good luck with your life here.’
He can see tears welling in her eyes. There’s a wave of sadness coming off her that makes him feel he could drown in it.
‘Your son’s a lovely little chap,’ he says gently. ‘You’re a good mother.’
‘Sadly, I’m no kind of mother,’ she replies. ‘I hope you enjoy the car.’
Janusz cycles home, the blanket balanced over the handlebars, compiling a list of spare parts he needs. Apart from the brown Humber van owned by a family that live three doors down, Janusz’s car will be the first in Britannia Road.
His head is so full of his thoughts that he doesn’t notice a car pulling alongside him. He nearly slams straight into it when it stops in front of him on the concrete bridge over the river.
‘Evening,’ says his boss, winding down his window. ‘Glad to see you, in fact.’
Janusz dismounts from his bike, smooths his moustache, stands up straight.
‘The job as foreman. You still want it?’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s yours. Nice to give a bit of good news to somebody. Come into the office tomorrow.’
He shakes Janusz’s hand and drives off, waving regally.
Janusz climbs back on his bike. He reaches the bottom of the hill and, instead of dismounting and pushing the bike up the road as he usually does, he feels a spurt of energy, puts his head down and cycles as hard as he can, not looking up until he makes it to the top. He comes to a triumphant stop at the top of the hill and looks back at the town, the fields bordering it, the estuary that leads to the sea and the roads that go all the way to London and beyond.
He is on top of the world up here. And this is a fine country, where a man can arrive with nothing but a broken heart and make something of himself. He’d like to be able to see his father and tell him the news of his promotion. He’ll write to him again. Useless, perhaps, sending letters when he has never had a reply, but he still does it. And why shouldn’t he imagine he can converse with the missing? Perhaps his father, wherever he is, might be thinking of his son too?
He wheels his bike through the small alley they share with Doris and Gilbert and pushes the gate into his own backyard, taking off his bicycle clips and leaning against the wall while he waits for his breathing to come back to normal. Then he walks down to the potting shed.
Inside, among cans of oil, the lawnmower and boxes of flower bulbs, are the letters. He takes them and lays them in a metal dish. With a match he sets fire to them, before he can talk himself out of his actions. It is time to put the past behind him. To do things right. If they are going to have another child one day, he has to stop hanging on to the past. The letters burn quickly, all her words turning to silver and black, small dustings of them drifting in the air. When the flames die down, he presses his fingers into the silken ashes and cleans the bowl.
In the kitchen, Silvana looks up from the pot she is stirring on the cooker. He smiles at her as he opens the back door and puts the blanket on the table. She always manages to look startled when she sees him, as if she is still surprised to find him there beside her. Maybe she sees the same look on his face too. Maybe she reacts to him, to the fact that he is faintly relieved to find she hasn’t gone off on one of her walks and not come back.
‘What’s that?’
‘A blanket. What are you cooking?’
‘Pearl-barley soup.’
‘Do we have any meat?’
‘No. Not today.’
‘We’ll have meat every day of the week from now on.’
‘How’s that?’
She is wearing her best dress and the shoes he bought her, the white ones. She