Part 9 (2/2)
She looked like she'd been crying. So Eric read between the lines: there'd been a falling out.
”Does my sister know you're here now?”
Lindsey shook her head.
”What about Graham?”
”I've not been home yet.”
Eric made Lindsey tea, black and sweet, and then he sat with her, quiet in the kitchen. Not a day for dreams of elsewhere, or for looking at drawings: tea and sympathy was what the girl needed.
The phone rang, out in the hall.
”That'll be for you.” Eric nodded to Lindsey, while he got up to answer. He never got phone calls himself. ”They've tracked you down, hen.” He tried a smile. ”You want to speak to him if it's Graham?”
Lindsey shook her head again, but it turned out to be Brenda in any case: all hoa.r.s.e with concern.
”Is she with you? She's at yours now, isn't she?”
She'd thought Lindsey had gone home when she saw the bed was empty, only then Graham came calling.
”He got Stevie tae school, an then he came lookin for Lindsey. Tail between his legs.”
Eric watched Lindsey blink while he relayed the news, verbatim, her face softening a little as she heard about Graham repentant. She called out from the kitchen: ”Ask Brenda if he's okay. And where he is now.”
Brenda heard her anyhow: ”I tellt him tae go tae work, hen.”
She said it loud, and then Eric held the receiver out, so both of them could hear her.
”I said tae him I'd find you, Lin. An I'd be tellin you tae keep at him.”
Lindsey smiled at that, even if she was still teary with it. Brenda told her: ”You keep tryin, aye? You'll find another flat. Graham just needs pushed sometimes, so he does.”
Lindsey nodded, she came out of the kitchen and took the receiver. The two women talked, and Eric only caught half of what was said, but even so, he thought they'd make some united front, Brenda and the girl.
He made Lindsey breakfast, and after she got off the phone, she told him about the flat she'd found; just a little, but enough for him to see the disappointment. Lindsey stayed sitting for ages after she'd finished eating, chin in hand, her eyes turned inward. Until Eric asked her: ”What you gonnae do, then?”
”Go home.” She sighed. And then she smiled, resigned. ”Fetch my boy from school. Put the tea on for when Graham gets in.”
She was going to keep trying.
15.
Ewa's phone call had Jozef fretting. He shouldn't have been so short with her: how was that going to help?
They were into the last few days of June now, time to start on the ground floor, so Jozef got himself up early to keep from brooding, packing up his clothes and his paperwork, ready to move upstairs.
He'd moved to wherever the work was for however long now, he couldn't count. Jozef had grown up thinking he'd build s.h.i.+ps like his father, and s.h.i.+ft the world on its axis, but he ended up building houses. The strikes had wrought change, but not enough jobs to go round, so he'd learned his trade, needs must, back and forth across the German border, and he'd been doing that a decade before Ewa came to join him. She was twenty-three then, and that seemed so young now to Jozef; she'd be thirty-two in just a few weeks.
They'd gone from house-sits to bedsits and flats, in Hamburg, Berlin, then Birmingham and London. Ewa finding cleaning jobs that were well beneath her station, and Jozef making plans. He was going to buy or build them their own place, back in Gda”sk: nothing grand or world-shaking, but enough to count for something. He'd secure a good life in the new freedom, for him and for Ewa. But he wouldn't do it like they did in the West, he decided, with debts above their heads: he'd told her if they had to work like this, then they would save hard too, while they were young, so they wouldn't have to work so much later on. They'd have a family, and enjoy life properly then. He worked with enough men who only saw their children when they'd sc.r.a.ped enough together for a week or two back in Poland; his own father had been a photo on the mantelpiece for so many years of his boyhood, it was something he didn't want to emulate.
It had felt right, and it had seemed as though Ewa felt that too, for all that she cried sometimes about her jobs, and about being so far from all her sisters. She'd cried hardest every time one of them had another baby.
Jozef would go out for wine then, or Belvedere vodka; Ewa always knew the Polish shops that sold the right stuff to toast a new life. They'd sit up late and talk it out, through Ewa's tears: what they were doing here. And where next. And how much longer. They'd talk and talk, until at some stage in the small hours, he'd persuade her into his arms.
That was the way it had always been with them: work and tears and then tenderness to make good. They could have the biggest rows, and then still carry on, finding jobs and the next new place to go to. That was the life they made together, and Jozef had trusted it.
He didn't know now: Ewa was so young when they'd left, maybe she'd trusted it at first. But then all that hard work had made her grow up. She'd come away with him thinking it would be for three years, or four at the outside. Ewa had just got to grips with German when she had to start learning English. She'd taken cla.s.ses, found friends among the Walworth Road Polish, even a Warsaw couple rich enough to have her as a nanny. Much better than cleaning, those twin girls; Ewa taught them all the Polish songs she didn't get to sing to her nieces.
It was their seventh year away when London jobs began to run dry. Friends were moving on, some were even going home, following the turning tide of work, and Jozef had felt that pull too, but couldn't trust it. He hadn't secured them that house yet, hadn't worked his way high enough up the pay grade. What if they bought a place, only to have to leave again to afford it? It was a job half done, so when Ewa asked, he'd told her: ”Not now. Soon, soon.”
Jozef had been so intent, on work and the bringing in of funds, he'd not seen the change when it came, until it was upon them. Ewa didn't shout or cry when he landed his first job in Glasgow. It was his first in charge, but she told him: ”Don't you open your arms to me.”
She stood and counted on two hands all the people they knew who'd gone back to Poland, and she was quiet and resolved, refusing to pack up.
”Not unless it's to go home.”
Her sisters all had children, all her school friends, and Ewa told him: ”Look around you, even the London Polish have kids, they don't put off their lives.”
She said: ”This is a half-life we're living. It's not worth it.”
Jozef s.h.i.+fted his boxes alone this time. Early on Friday, to have it done for when the men arrived. So he was on his own and feeling low in the ground floor when Marek turned up.
His nephew surprised him, coming in ahead of the others, and lending a hand with the last of his cases, unasked, up the stairs to the first floor.
”Is this what I'm paid for?”
Jozef was in no mood to respond. But Marek was a distraction at least. And Jozef remembered it had given him hope, when Ewa had asked if he'd take him on; another one of her phone calls, seemingly out of nowhere. She could have turned to Romek, or any number of other friends in London and Berlin, so it had felt as though a door was being kept open, maybe. You watch out for yourself, too. Okay?
”Is this all?”
Marek looked around Jozef's new room when they'd finished, surprised that there wasn't more for him to fetch. Or perhaps that these few boxes were all his uncle had to show for all those years of work. It looked pitiful to Jozef as well: so provisional, this stop-gap room and single bed, and scant belongings stored in cardboard. He had his savings, of course, and life hadn't been quite as bare when Ewa was with him; she'd been the one who bought things, made each new place look lived-in. But it still threw him. Jozef had reckoned on putting things in storage before he went to Gda”sk, only looking about himself now, taking stock, he saw it would all fit in his van; not much more than what he'd come with. It was a relief when his mobile rang with the first of the day's deliveries.
Most of the materials for the ground floor were due that morning, and Jozef went outside to meet the truck with the new boiler on board. Tomas was due to do the fitting, but he wasn't there yet to check through the order, so Jozef handed Marek the delivery notes.
”I am paying you to learn.”
Marek squinted at them while the driver unloaded, laughing at Tomas's cramped script.
”Is that a two or a seven, do you think?”
Jozef didn't rise to the bait. But then his nephew picked up on some parts that weren't right; a set of thermostats.
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