22 Britannia Road - Amanda Hodgkinson [99]
‘A child?’
Silvana leans towards him, their heads touching.
‘What is it?’ he asks. ‘What is it you’re so afraid of?’
‘Aurek’s not my son,’ she breathes. ‘My son is dead. I left him and he died.’
He pulls her closer, his hands sweeping around her waist. She lifts her lips to his. It’s a kind of oblivion, this kiss. Her eyes are tight shut, his mouth is pressing and urgent. He holds her so tight, she can hardly breathe. And she doesn’t want to. She wants him to crush her. To take her last breath for himself.
With a heated needle, Aurek makes two tiny holes in each end of a moorhen egg. Beside him, Peter is playing with matches, lighting one after the other. There is a softly sulphurous smell in the room.
They are not talking because when Aurek and his mother came down from the tree, Peter told Aurek his mother was mad and Aurek threw Peter’s rucksack in the pond and then hit him in the stomach.
Aurek puts the egg on a tray with three others he has prepared in the same way.
‘Stop making that noise,’ says Peter.
Aurek looks up. So Peter is talking to him now.
‘That chirping sound. You sound like a bird.’
Aurek kicks at Peter and then dodges away from him, holding his tray of eggs up high.
‘Get away. Don’t touch me. They’ll break,’ he warns.
‘What are you going to do with them?’
‘I’m going to show my mum.’
Peter stands at the doorway to his bedroom.
‘You can’t. My dad said we had to stay here.’
Aurek holds the tray tightly in his hands, and Peter bunches his fists.
‘My dad said we had to stay in here. You can’t leave until I say so.’
Aurek can see Peter is serious, but still, he wants to see his mother.
‘All right,’ he says, holding out the tray. ‘You keep the eggs if I can go out there.’
Peter takes the tray.
‘OK. And I get to show them the eggs, right?’
They cross the landing and Aurek opens the living-room door for Peter, who carries the tray in front of him, walking slowly, as if he is balancing a bowl of water in his hands. Aurek trails behind him.
His mother is crying. At least he thinks she is. She is sitting on the sofa with a blanket on her knees and Tony is kneeling in front of her. He can’t quite see her face because she is looking down at her hands. Aurek wants to climb in her lap and comfort her, but as he thinks of it, Tony leans forward, wraps his arms around Silvana and kisses her.
Aurek gives a yelp of pain. ‘Mama! No!’
‘Dad!’ Peter yells, dropping the tray of eggs. ‘Dad, what’re you doing!’
The two of them pull apart. Silvana’s face is white, her mouth is open and her eye, a mass of purple bruising, has already swelled. What has she done? She looks like a terrible ghost. A rusalka, a dead woman with eyes that could rip your heart out.
‘Aurek?’ she calls, throwing off the blankets she is wrapped in, standing up, grabbing her stockings off the floor. ‘Sweetheart, don’t look like that …’
‘Don’t worry, boys.’ Tony strides towards them, arms out, a huge shape obstructing Aurek’s view of his mother. ‘Peter, you should have stayed in your bedroom like I asked. Aurek, come here …’
Aurek backs away. Tony mustn’t touch him. He has to get away. He thinks of flights of starlings shifting in the sky, the mass of them blocking out the light. He sees crows circling, black branches and treetops. Lost. He is lost. He opens his mouth and his birdsong escapes, the chattering of magpies, pheasants, the strangled call of rooks.
He pushes past Peter, runs through the flat, throws open the back door and charges down the fire escape, footsteps ringing out a metallic alarm. But where can he go? He is all alone. Home. It’s all he can think of. Back to the safety of 22 Britannia Road. Back to the enemy. Back to his father.
Poland
Silvana
Silvana was airing the bedding in Marysia’s room when she found her secrets. She shoved the straw mattress to one side and there, on the wooden base, was a photograph of a German soldier. A man in uniform