Part 2 (2/2)

'No,' she says, looking at her feet. 'I'm sorry. I don't know about my own parents either. I don't know what happened to them.'

She unties the ap.r.o.n and lays it on the kitchen table as Aurek runs inside with a broken doll in his hands, a pink, armless, naked thing with rolling eyes and matted black hair. He grins and holds it up triumphantly in front of Ja.n.u.sz.

'Let's have a look.'

Ja.n.u.sz reaches out to take the doll, but Aurek ducks behind his mother, making growling sounds. Silvana acts before she thinks, pus.h.i.+ng Ja.n.u.sz back, protecting her son. She sees the bewilderment on Ja.n.u.sz's face and instantly regrets her quick movements.

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... He's not used to sharing. We've been on our own for a long time... He...'

Silvana is searching for a way to explain when a woman's voice makes them all turn round.

'h.e.l.lo there, anyone home?'

The woman stands in the hallway, a cigarette in her hand. Silvana guesses she must be in her fifties. She has a middle-aged, matronly look about her. She's a tall redhead, big-shouldered for a woman, and just the size of her makes Silvana feel small and out of place. The woman wears a tweed skirt and white blouse covered by yards of ap.r.o.n, a big messy design of faded pansies and pink roses that flower right over her hips and across the broad acres of her bosom.

'Ah,' she says. 'I thought I heard voices. I'm Mrs Holborn from next door.'

Silvana lets go of Aurek and he backs away and runs into the garden, the doll clutched in his arms. Ja.n.u.sz bends slightly at the waist as he greets the woman. For a moment it looks as though he is going to kiss her hand like a good Polish gentleman. Instead he straightens up and shakes hands.

'Mrs Holborn, did you say? Well, we're pleased to meet you. How do you do.'

Silvana sees Ja.n.u.sz's eyes upon her and realizes she is meant to say something. She remembers the English the soldiers taught her, the cla.s.ses she attended in the camp.

'Good afternoon,' she says carefully. 'Good afternoon to you, madam.'

'Charmed,' says Mrs Holborn. She takes a step towards the back door and Silvana sees her gaze settle on Aurek in the garden.

'And is that your boy?'

'Yes, he's my son,' says Ja.n.u.sz, and Silvana hears the pride in his voice. 'His name is Aurek.'

'Aw what? Sorry, I didn't get that. Can you say it again?'

'Aurek,' says Ja.n.u.sz slowly.

'Oh, that's a hard one to get your chops around. Can't say I've heard that one before.'

'In Polish it means golden-haired.'

Silvana watches Aurek throwing the doll in the air and catching it. There's nothing golden about his shorn dark hair.

'He was blond when he was a baby,' Ja.n.u.sz says, and Silvana realizes he has been thinking the same thing as her.

'Like his father,' Silvana says, nodding.

'They change so much, don't they?' says Mrs Holborn, waving a hand in Aurek's direction, a gesture Silvana finds comforting, as if the woman is already familiar with their son.

'My daughter was the same,' she continues. 'Born with a mop of ginger curls. You'd have thought she was the milkman's kid. If you saw her now she's grown up and left home, mind you'd say I was a liar, 'cus she's a brunette. Not a ginger hair on her head. But look, we don't stand on ceremony around here. You must call me Doris.'

Ja.n.u.sz smiles. 'Doris. And I am Ja.n.u.sz Nowak. You can call me Jan if you find it easier. My wife's name is Silvana.'

'Right. Well, I'll do my best, but I'm hopeless with foreign names. You'll have to forgive me if I get them wrong. I've seen you coming and going and I thought you must be moving in. You'll have to meet my Gilbert when he's back from work. You might know him already. You work together at Burtons, don't you?'

Silvana looks out of the window. The sun is turning red in the sky, casting a rosy light across the clouds. There is a chiming of birdsong through the open door, and at the end of the garden Aurek is scrambling up the lowers branches of the oak tree. She thinks of the forest where she and the boy lived. Their hideout will be filling up with soil and leaves. Animals will be taking it over, the tree roots breaking through the earth walls. The forest will already be covering over her past.

Ja.n.u.sz touches her lightly on the shoulder and she jumps. She tries to compose her face into a smile.

'What is it?'

'She's agreed to take our photo. Come on, get Aurek.'

Doris is waving a camera at her and grinning.

'I'm not very good with machinery. I hope I won't break it.'

Outside the front door, Silvana stands next to Ja.n.u.sz. She fiddles with her headscarf, pulling it tight under her chin, and tries to relax as she feels his hand on her waist, drawing her closer to him. There is a moment of stillness when the three of them are waiting, posed, staring into the camera's eye. Frozen already into the image they expect the camera to see. Ja.n.u.sz is straight-backed and serious. Silvana holds her headscarf in place. Aurek is clinging to Silvana's legs.

When the photo is developed, Ja.n.u.sz puts it in a frame and Silvana stands it on the mantelpiece in the front parlour. Proof Proof, she thinks. She breathes on the frame and rubs the gla.s.s clean with her sleeve, polis.h.i.+ng the image. There they are in black and white, a father, a mother and their son reunited. Her family. n.o.body can take this from her. Not now.

Silvana is in the bathroom rubbing soap on her hands until they are covered with a thick layer of foam. It feels luxurious to have a whole bar of soap to herself. She looks in the mirror and wonders whether to wash her hair. Her short, grey hair. Tears come to her eyes every time she sees herself. So ugly So ugly, she thinks.

How can Ja.n.u.sz want her when she looks like this? A convict. That's what she looks like. Someone guilty of a crime. A bearer of bad news. That's what she had read in Ja.n.u.sz's face when she told him she had never gone to see his parents after he'd left Warsaw. The hurt showed clearly in his eyes. She'd disappointed him.

She scrubs the bar of soap all over her head, fingernails catching against her scalp, suds dripping into her eyes, the smell of the soap so sweet and clean and renewing she is tempted to slip the whole thing into her mouth and let the suds rinse her inside as well as out.

'Are you all right?' calls Ja.n.u.sz, and she hears him knock on the door. The soap pops out of her hand and falls somewhere under the sink. She searches for it, water running down her face, eyes tight shut.

'Yes, yes. I'll be finished soon.'

'Only you've been running the taps for a long time.'

'Sorry.' Silvana fishes the soap out from behind the pipes. She grabs a towel and wipes her face dry, turns the tap off and listens to the sound of Ja.n.u.sz padding away across the landing. She takes off her clothes and climbs into the warm water, ducking her head under, her limbs b.u.mping against the bath.

Will Ja.n.u.sz want to know what happened to her during the war? Will he want to know how she ended up living in a forest? And what about him? Will he have secrets too? She won't ask him.

He has already explained to her how he arrived in Britain in 1940, though the way he told it, in short, brief sentences, like a speech he has used many times, left her none the wiser as to exactly how he did it. He's explained about his soldiering, described the country he has brought her to, the cherry orchards in the south, the purple flush of the moors in the north. He hasn't asked her a single question about herself or the boy yet. It's better that way. She looks down, running her hands over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and down towards her hollow belly, where they come to rest, cupped together. What a pitiful body to offer him. Will Ja.n.u.sz still find her attractive after all these years?

Ja.n.u.sz is about to knock on the bathroom door again when Silvana finally emerges. She looks clean and scrubbed. Her cheeks glow pink, but there is something sad and small about her, like a wet cat, as though the bath water has shrunk her. He takes her arm and leads her into the bedroom. This is the moment he has dreamed of and feared. Their first night together.

In the main bedroom are two single beds. Silvana climbs into one and Ja.n.u.sz draws the covers up over her. He sits beside her, perched on the edge of the bed, and watches her fiddle with the ribbons on the front of her nightgown.

'Do you like it?' he asks. 'The house? It's a miracle, isn't it? Us, being together again? You'll like England. It's a beautiful country.'

He looks down and notices her left hand. She wears no wedding ring.

<script>