22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [95]
Janusz put his head in his hands and thought of Hélène. He curled up, vulnerable as a child with stomach cramps, rocking himself. Then Silvana and his son entered the confused fields of his thoughts. He reached into his pocket for Silvana’s photograph and couldn’t find it. He remembered Hélène handing it back to him, but what had he done with it then? He must have left it behind.
A storm blew up in the Atlantic and the boat crashed and heaved in heavy waves. Janusz was sure they would never reach England, home to doctors, dancers and umbrella sellers. That either the high waves or the patrolling German boats would sink them.
Down in the bunks, where the throbbing of the engines was deafening, all around him was seasickness and complaining. Janusz sat in silence, watching the anonymous faces, the backs of heads, the crush of men, everybody covered in fine layers of earthy black coal dust. As the ship dipped and groaned, the men shifted back and forth in the gloom, hundreds of Polish lads rolling together like a cartload of potatoes rattling across a vast furrowed field.
Ipswich
Aurek knows it is best to look from underneath. Keep your head down and push through with your shoulders. From underneath they appear as a dark spot in the branches. Like a diver swimming towards the light, push upwards until your hand touches the mossy side of the nest. Take only one egg – except from rooks’ nests, where you can take as many as you like, because everybody knows they are the devil’s birds.
It is the enemy who taught Aurek to collect bird’s eggs for fun. At home they have a box lined with cotton wool, full of soft-hued eggs. Each one has a label. Blackbird. Linnet. Song Thrush. Warbler, Treecreeper, Flycatcher. There are important rules too. If a bird is sitting on the nest you must leave it be. Most birds nest in bushes and thick hedgerows, so expect scratches and nettle stings. These things are proof of your bravery.
When he and his mother lived in the forest, Aurek ate the eggs he found, picking holes in the top of them, sucking the soft insides into his mouth, swallowing them down in one.
‘Like an oyster,’ his mother told him. She’d never eaten oysters but she’d supposed they were similar, fluid and solid at the same time. ‘They’re a luxury,’ she said. ‘In Warsaw only the rich eat oysters.’
Aurek will never tell the enemy he ate the eggs he found. He won’t tell him that sometimes the eggs were full of blood or the blue-skinned beginnings of birds. That they picked the shells off those and cooked them on a stick over a fire. He will not mention the fledglings he stole from nests or the strips of birch bark he chewed on in the dead of winter. Even a child knows that it is shameful to admit to that kind of hunger.
The enemy says egg collecting is part of learning about nature and every boy should be interested in Britain’s wildlife, fauna and flora. In the kitchen, Aurek watches him heat the point of a needle in a flame until it blackens. He uses it to make a tiny hole in each end of a blackbird’s egg, pushing the needle inside the fragile shell, mashing up the contents. Then he presses his lips to the hole he has made and blows gently until the yolk and the white slip out of the other end, into the sink. When it is Aurek’s turn, he finds it hard to resist sucking in. He wants to draw the eggy mess into his mouth and swallow it. But he won’t do it. Not in front of the enemy. He wouldn’t want to disappoint him.
Aurek stares up at a tall elm tree with Peter beside him, thinking of rooks’ eggs. They are picnicking in the woods today, and there’s a kind of glory in the thick spring air, the shudder of fresh leaves and the sunlight flickering through them. The grasshoppers buzzing in the nettles sound like a fanfare just for him. It’s better than any orchestra at the town park’s Sunday bandstand, and it makes him want to climb every tree he can see. If he could, he’d split into