22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [96]
Peter’s dad brought them here on this perfect Saturday. He arrived at the house in the morning with Peter and a picnic basket. Silvana told him they couldn’t go out. Not when Janusz was working and she has the front steps to clean and rugs to beat.
Tony said the day was too good to waste doing housework. Then he went down on one knee, making a big show of it, begging her to give him her duster. Finally she looked at Aurek and asked him what he wanted to do. He nodded. Let’s go to the woods. Please. Silvana handed the duster to Tony, who threw it into the air and declared the day a holiday.
And now here they all are in the woods, and Aurek is so happy he can hardly stop himself from dropping to his knees like Peter’s dad.
In the elm’s uppermost branches is a big, untidy nest of twigs. Two black rooks hunker on a branch beside it, heads tucked into their wings.
‘You can’t climb up there,’ says Peter. ‘Those birds look evil.’
‘You’re not to do anything dangerous,’ Silvana calls. Aurek and Peter look back through the trees to where she and Tony sit on a rug setting out the picnic.
‘The pond,’ Peter says. ‘Let’s go to the pond. We could look for the kingfisher’s nest.’
Kingfishers are Aurek’s favourite. The birds dig tunnels in riverbanks and line them with tiny fish bones. To Aurek they are bejewelled palaces. If he could shrink himself small enough, he’d live in one of their nests.
They traipse through the undergrowth until they reach a dip in the landscape where an expanse of water mirrors the trees and clouds. Peter finds a long stick and bashes it against the reeds. Frogs leap in the shallows. Dull-winged birds take flight, and flying insects whirl and zip across the pond’s unbroken surface.
Aurek kicks off his sandals and steps into the water. His feet sink into clouds of sediment and mud sucks at his heels. He wades through clinging green algae into a bed of tall rushes, the smell of disturbed mud deliciously thick in his nostrils. Aurek is halfway round the pond when two moorhens skid across the water in alarm. He sees their nest hidden in a clump of bulrushes. It is difficult to get to, as it is in deeper water, but twenty minutes later he climbs onto the bank holding a clutch of eggs in his hands.
Peter picks up a stick and prods Aurek with it.
‘Eurgh. Stay away from me. You stink.’
Aurek sits down a safe distance from Peter’s stick. Smoke wafts past his face and he wrinkles his nose. Peter is smoking a cigarette that he stole from his father’s cigarette case.
‘There was a murder in Ipswich last week,’ Peter says. He takes a drag on the cigarette and coughs. ‘A woman had her throat cut.’
Aurek cracks an egg, sniffs it and tips the wobbly contents into his mouth, swallowing them down. He is not in the mood to listen to Peter’s story. He is too full of the woods and the sharp smell of spring. He stares at his knees, the whiteness of them against the black mud drying like crackled lizard skin over his feet and ankles. Then he pulls on his sandals and walks back to look at the rook’s nest. Peter trails along behind him.
‘It was in the newspaper. My dad says she was a call girl. Do you know what that means? There are lots of them down by the docks.’ Peter waves his cigarette as he speaks. ‘Common women. I’ve seen them with my dad. They wear black a lot. Grandad says they’re called ladies of the night.’
Aurek doesn’t care what they are called. They sound like bats to him. Ladies of the night. Women with black cloaks flying through the air.
‘So what,’ he says. ‘In Poland there are murders all the time.’ He hesitates, wondering whether to tell Peter the things he has seen. He decides not to. He doesn’t want to think about them. He stops by the elm tree and rests a hand on its wide trunk.
‘There are witches in forests. Even here. Rusalkas. They’re the spirits of murdered girls who sit in the branches of trees and call men to their death.’
Peter is impressed, he can tell.