Authors: Amanda Hodgkinson
‘You and me,’ he says. ‘It’s like we’ve been given a chance to get something right, but after the years we’ve spent apart I don’t know how to do it.’
‘We’re a family,’ Silvana says, as if this fact alone will see them through. ‘You’re Aurek’s father.’
He glances at the boy crouched behind his mother. Janusz’s heart feels as heavy as the wet washing he has scooped up off the floor.
‘What happened?’ he asks. ‘Why did you hide in a forest with the boy? Why did you do that?’
Silvana bends to help him pick up the clothes. ‘You know what happened. Why must you ask again and again? I tried to get to your parents’ house, but the bus I was on broke down. I was afraid I would be picked up by soldiers and sent to work on a German farm. Lots of women were. I didn’t want anybody taking Aurek from me. When the bus broke down I joined a queue of people and followed some of them into the forest, where we hid. Then the war ended, we were in a camp and you found us.’
She hands him a damp towel and asks him again if he would like tea.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘A cup of tea.’
There must be more than that to the story. Something terrible happened to the two of them, that much he knows.
‘Aurek,’ he says. ‘Go to your room. I need to talk to your mother.’
The boy slinks past him and Janusz shuts the kitchen door.
‘Tell me what happened to you during the war. I just … Sometimes I look at Aurek and I wonder if he’s the child I left behind.’
Her eyes darken with tears. ‘He’s been through a war. Can’t you understand that?’
Maybe he is wrong to let things go like this, but Janusz lets the conversation end. He apologizes. He takes three cups out of the cupboard, puts them on the kitchen table and calls Aurek back.
‘There you are,’ he says as the boy comes into the room. ‘Come and have a cup of tea with us. You like lots of milk, don’t you?’
Aurek takes a seat at the table, elbows splayed, his head in his hands. The child has no manners whatsoever. Silvana catches hold
of him and kisses the top of his head. It’s a fierce action and full of ownership, like a cat might grab a kitten.
Janusz’s mother would never have let him sit like that as a child. He has a sudden image of his parents’ dining room, the table set for lunch with all the best silverware and he and his sisters sitting straight-backed in their chairs. The strained formality of his own upbringing. He looks around the room, at the shabby curtains, the kettle boiling on the gas ring, Silvana holding the teapot, waiting, just as he taught her. Bring the pot to the kettle, not the other way round. He sighs. Let the boy sprawl.
‘Give Aurek an extra spoonful of sugar,’ he tells Silvana as she pours the tea. He smiles at his son. ‘And a biscuit if we’ve got any.’
The best day of the week is Sunday. That’s when the family have breakfast together in the kitchen: bread, tea, milk, a boiled egg each.
Silvana and Aurek finish the remains of a pint of yellow, soured milk. She and the boy drink lustily, as if the curdled liquid is still fresh and creamy. Thank God there is no one else to see this display of poverty. And yet it makes Janusz want to care for them, to protect them like fragile plants from hard winters. He picks up the newspaper, a pen in his hand, a battered Polish–English dictionary at his side.
Silvana and Aurek have a map spread out on the table.
‘Look,’ says Silvana, putting her finger on a green area outside the town. ‘There’s a forest. A real forest. Can we go there?’
Janusz puts the paper down. ‘What’s wrong with the park? We can go for a walk in the park this afternoon and Aurek can meet other children and make a few friends.’
Aurek is leaning against his mother’s arm, and Janusz feels an urge to pull them apart.
‘Or we could walk along the canal. Surely that’s a better idea? Come here, Aurek. Come and sit with me. Leave your mother alone for a minute.’
Aurek doesn’t move and Janusz lifts his newspaper to his face, pretending to read. He lowers it again. ‘What would we do in the
woods? People walk their dogs there. We don’t have a dog. We’d look strange just walking around. In the park, people walk with and without dogs.’
Silvana draws circles on the tabletop with her fingers. Aurek is eating the stale bread Janusz put to one side to feed the ducks in the park. The child looks strangely beautiful, his small upturned nose, his neat mouth. Janusz would like to take his dainty chin between finger and thumb. He tries to meet the boy’s gaze, fails and sighs.
‘If you really wanted to, we’d have to get a bus out to the paper mill and walk the rest of the way. It’s up to you.’
Aurek grins. A wide, urchin grin that fills Janusz with a swift and sudden joy.
Well
, he thinks.
At least I can make the boy happy. That’s a start
.
They catch the bus at the bottom of the hill and Aurek sits by the window watching the town, the rows of houses, the shops, the narrow streets and the men and women, mechanical people who walk at the same pace. Aurek can see in at the windows of terraced houses. A woman ironing. A man staring straight ahead. Front parlours full of old people and crying babies. What must it be like to be one of the children living in these streets? To have always had a house to live in and a family sardined into it, full of brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles?
He imagines the noise: the yelling and the banging, the laughing, the lung-pumping cries, thumping of feet, plates, doors. These are the sounds he hears when front doors are ajar and he dares to pause in front of them. His own home is quiet in comparison. Nobody makes a noise there. The enemy says he likes peace. His mother never says much to anyone.
The bus finally arrives at Papermill Lane. They get out beside the mill and are met by the sound of water churning under a small bridge. The enemy is smiling at him. He shows Aurek how to drop sticks over one side and watch the current take them under the bridge, emerging on the other side. It’s a game he could play for days if they
let him. In the swirling water below them he can see green algae swaying over pebbles and rocks, all smooth and long and full of crystal air bubbles.
Aurek’s stick is bent in two. The bark is dark and the snap in the stick shows the new wood as pale as bone within it, sharp against his fingertips.
‘It’s so you know it’s yours,’ says Janusz. ‘Ready?’
The three of them stand with their sticks held out over the bridge.
‘One, two, three, go!’
Aurek lets go with his eyes screwed shut, hope boiling up in his body. The stick disappears and then comes under the bridge in front of the others. When he wins, he screams with joy.
Silvana and Janusz join in, laughing. The more Silvana laughs, the more Aurek likes it. Her laughter is warm and safe, like the days in the forest when she used to wrap him in her coat. The game is so much fun Silvana has to drag him away from it, promising him trees to climb, squirrels to find.
Grudgingly he leaves his stick glories and they walk along country lanes, cutting across fields towards the trees. Aurek throws his cap off his head and runs, tumbling through brambles and nettles, splashing through puddles and jumping over fallen trees, screaming with excitement.
Nobody can catch him. No evil spirits or wood sprites or any of the revenging fairies and ghouls that live in ancient forests can touch him. He moves faster than sticks in a river current. He is freewheeling away from everything. Away from school, where the children call him a dirty refugee.
A crazy Polack. The dumb boy.
He is faster than them all and doesn’t need anyone to teach him. He can do it himself.
Aurek taught himself to whistle, to swim, to catch and skin rabbits. He can climb any tree. He can build a fire, kill snakes, and the stars are his compass. Nobody can touch him. He’s a child of the woods.
Bright with energy, Aurek whoops and hollers, slipping and falling and scrambling to his feet. A cock pheasant rises in front of him, a brilliant sheen of red and gold, and Aurek lifts his arms like
wings, sure he can follow the bird in its ungainly flight towards the sky.
Behind him, his parents stand side by side; his father holding his hat in his hands, his mother with an armful of wild flowers. They seem lost. Like two people trying to remember the way home. But Aurek cannot stop to help them. He chases through the woods away from them, faster and faster. Further into the trees. He windmills his arms backwards trying to slow himself down, but his legs are too strong. Nothing can stop them. If he knew where he was going, he’d direct his runaway legs and get there. But he doesn’t. He only knows that he cannot stop running.
Janusz takes Aurek to school on Monday morning. Aurek says good morning to his teacher and lifts his cap just like Janusz has told him to.
‘Good lad,’ says Janusz. ‘Don’t get into any fights today, hey? You be a good boy and make some friends.’
‘
Las?
’
‘Speak English, Aurek. But yes, we can go to the woods again. You’ve only a week left at school and then you’ll be on holiday and we can do lots of things together.’
Aurek watches the enemy walking away. When he is gone, he follows the other children walking into class and at the last minute ducks round the side of the school and hides in the boys’ toilets, a pokey cold place where nobody will find him. He curls up against the brick wall, watching a spider web flap gently in a draught. It’s nice and quiet.
The door to the toilets bangs open and Aurek jumps.
A fat boy stares at him.
‘You’ll be for it if Mrs West finds you in here.’
He lumps down beside Aurek and offers him a wheel of liquorice.
‘Do you speak English?’
Aurek nods. He picked up English from the soldiers in the refugee camp before he and his mother took the boat. His knowledge of English swear words is comprehensive. He tries out a few and the boy laughs and slaps his leg.
‘Don’t let the teacher hear you talking like that. So what’s your name? I’m Peter.’
Aurek looks at him. He’s seen this boy before. In the pub. It’s the boy who fell down dead.
The liquorice tastes sweet. Aurek pushes it all into his mouth and chews, black spittle dribbling pleasantly down his chin.
The fat boy laughs. ‘My old man has a pet shop. We have loads of animals. I’ve got a dog that catches rabbits. He killed somebody’s cat once. A ginger tom. Ate it, guts and all, and then sicked it up over my grandma’s carpet. The fur changed colour when the dog sicked it up. It came out brown.’
‘Shouldn’t eat the guts,’ says Aurek. ‘They’re bad. That’s why your dog was sick.’
‘How do you know? Have you eaten cat?’
Aurek shrugs. ‘Maybe.’
‘What does it taste like?’
‘A bit like chicken.’
Peter’s eyes widen.
‘Do you want to bunk off school? We could go to the park and chase ducks round the lake.’
Aurek and Peter slip through the railings at the back of the school. They run through the streets, hiding behind cars and sidestepping into alleys until they reach the park.
The lake is at the bottom of a green hill. Aurek runs down the hill and skids out into the water. He stands knee-deep in it, his legs turning purple with cold.
‘Do you want to play war games?’ Peter asks. He picks up a stone and throws it at Aurek.
‘Kill the Nazis!’
Chop them down
, thinks Aurek. He slices a hand through the air and steps out into the lake. Peter is laughing, throwing more stones at him. A stone hits him on the shoulder. Then another flies past his head and Aurek stumbles, wishing he had stones to throw. He steps back and his feet float as he searches for the ground beneath him. Slipping sideways, the lake claims him, the cold water grabbing at his heart, shrinking his lungs.
Everything feels heavy. He thrashes with his arms, face upwards, trying to swim, but he just keeps sinking. Then hands are pulling him to the surface and Aurek is gasping and coughing and his lungs are on fire. Peter is beside him, pulling on his shoulders so that they both tumble over and over as they crawl their way back to the edge.
‘Somebody threw a baby in the lake last year,’ says Peter.
They are under a tarpaulin in the boat shed by the lake. ‘Divers came and got it out. It was wrapped in weeds and the fish had eaten its fingers. It was covered in blood and its face was all mush.’
Aurek wraps the tarpaulin closer around himself. He’s not impressed with Peter’s stories. He could tell far worse ones. He wonders if Peter knows about
rusalkas
, the ghost women who live in lakes or hide in trees and pull men to their deaths.
‘I don’t reckon it’s time to go home yet,’ says Peter. ‘I can’t go too early. My old man would know something’s up. Have you got a mother?’
Aurek frowns. What kind of question is that?
‘My mum’s dead,’ says Peter. ‘She had a wasting disease. I’ll probably get it when I’m older. I’m weak. What did your dad do in the war?’
Aurek considers. He doesn’t know, and anyway, he is trying to work out how Peter lives without a mother.
‘My dad was a spy for British intelligence,’ says Peter. ‘He’s got medals and all. I lived with Gran and Grandad while he was away and I couldn’t tell anybody where he was. Everybody’s dad went away. Lizzie Crookshank’s died and her mum went mental. Lizzie’s in an orphanage and wets the bed every night. My gran says Lizzie’ll go mental too, one day. You don’t remember me, do you? You shot me. In the pub. I fell off my chair.’
‘I remember,’ says Aurek, but Peter isn’t listening. He’s holding his hand out like a gun, shooting off imaginery rounds into Aurek’s chest.
‘So,’ he says, when he’s shot Aurek for long enough. ‘Shall we go to your house, dumb boy?’
They run through the park, their faces shiny red with cold. Aurek’s throat is still burning and he has a headache, but he feels happy
running alongside this other boy.
Friend
, he whispers to himself, trying out the word. That’s what the enemy said he should have.
A friend.
Silvana is in the road looking for Aurek. When she went to pick him up from school today the teacher told her that he and another boy had played truant. Janusz will be furious when he finds out. And who is the other boy?