One Crow Alone (10 page)

Magda stumbled after him in her heavy coat, the bag slapping on her back as they picked up the pace once more.

Soon they came to a wide road. Cars drove slowly on the ice. Ivan stopped. “There. It's down there. Where the man said.” Ivan pointed across the road to an open, steaming hole on the darkening street. “The train station.”

Magda followed him as he crossed the road at a fast clip, head down, looking over his shoulder from time to time, heading for the damp stairway sucking streams of people from the cold streets into the dimness.

Below ground, all was noise and gloom. The air stale from a thousand breaths. Muffled in large coats, people trudged by in lines. Some haggled over pathetic collections of old boots and tawdry goods that had been laid out on blankets on the ground. And in dark corners the homeless and desperate crouched, begging cigarettes from nervous characters who preyed in the shadows of stairwells and broken lifts.

By a battered table, a woman with flaking nail varnish stood beside a steaming coffee urn. She saw two tired-looking kids edging nervously through the crowds.

“Quid fer a cup-a-coffee,” she shouted. “Quid fer a cup-a-coffee. You want a nice cup-a-coffee?” She beckoned to them. “Only a quid.”

Magda looked at Ivan, but he shook his head.

The woman studied their faces. “You look like you need a bit of luck, don't you, my loves. Still, it ain't my stall so I can't give you a coffee. But cheer up”—she leaned close—“the guard's gone for a fag, so you can jump the gates if you're quick.” She winked.

Magda translated for Ivan, and they pushed across the crowded ticket hall and vaulted over the gates. They made their way along the dingy tunnels. Down the silent escalators, wide-eyed, past women selling hot rice in newspaper cones. Along the cold, tiled passageways, and through the arches to the platform.

Two policemen strode through the crowd, guns in their belts.

Ivan hung back against the wall.

A train clanked in from the dark of the tunnel. Squealed to a halt. Doors opened. People spilled out onto the platform.

They jumped into the carriage. Found themselves stuck against the dirty glass as the bodies crammed in. Packed like chickens in a crate.

The policemen drew nearer.

“Mind the gap. Stand clear of the doors,” said an automated voice. The doors slid shut and the train lurched forward into the dark tunnel.

No one talked or moved—just rocked en masse as the train bumped along the tracks with a grating and a clunking and the flashing of lights.

“Do you know where we are going?” Magda whispered.

“Yes. Hampstead Heath. That is what the Russian said.”

*   *   *

Like a gannet, the train disgorged its gutful.

A man—it does not matter what his name is—trudged from the bowels of the station up to the cold street above, shoved along shoulder to shoulder with the miserable dull-coated backs of the others.

The lucky ones.

He was thinking of his supper perhaps, and trying to remember that things hadn't always been like this.

It's just a blip. We'll get over it.
That's what they said to begin with—and now a million people were jumping out of the woodwork telling you it was solar cycles or a new Ice Age or goddamn Armageddon.

The stations struggled to keep trains running. Always crowded. Always slow. But warmer than the street. As soon as the first frosts cut at the windows, every homeless person headed underground. And no one looked at the woman with arms outstretched at the top of the stairs. He too stepped around her.
You can't help everyone.
Sometimes it was hard enough to help yourself.

Up on the street the other workers fanned across the icy road, drawing out umbrellas as wet snow began to fall from the orange-domed London night sky.

Struggling with his own umbrella, he caught sight of a girl, face wet with snow, darting between the passengers, holding out a piece of paper. Not much older than his daughter. An illegal, by the looks of her.

God knows where these people came from. Didn't they know it wasn't any better here?

*   *   *

Like a moth in the rain, Magda dodged between the bent backs and go-away eyes outside the train station.

Snowflakes wet the paper in her hand.

She saw a man glancing up as he began to open his umbrella. She caught his eye and hurried toward him.

“I try to find this address?”

He did not look away. He peered down at Babula's faded handwriting and pointed across the road. “Along the heath, one of the roads on the left, I think.” Then, with the quick, embarrassed smile of impromptu charity and a mumbled “good luck,” he flicked up his umbrella and went on his way.

*   *   *

It was quiet when Magda and Ivan got away from the bustling train station. Behind partly boarded-up railings on the other side of the road, the overgrown bushes and trees of Hampstead Heath leaned their shaggy silhouettes. Lone tire tracks, perfect as tram lines, trailed in the snow toward the end of the road. A street light flickered, buzzed, and went out.

They walked along, feet falling weary on the fresh snow that still dropped from above.

Magda thought constantly of her mother. So near now.

To tell Mama that Babula had gone? How would that be?
She could remember the crying behind the shutters.
What if Mama cried again? There is no Babula to tell you to go outside, even though you are too old to play.

The wind gathered, a wild sighing from the dark woodland stretching out across the heath. A panic fluttered within her. Eating her cold insides. For there was another question she had not let herself ask before, and still she pushed it away.

What if she's not there. What then?

She looked again at the address in her hand.

This was the road.

The street was gated—six-foot-high railings topped with razor wire. She peered in at the circular drive of tall, detached townhouses. There were lights behind heavily curtained windows.

This is where Mama lives?

A dim light emanated from behind the steamy window of a guard's hut. Inside it, the shadow of a seated man—chin resting on his chest.

Ivan knocked on the window. The guard stirred and opened his eyes.

“What shall I say?” she whispered.

“Tell him your mother works here.”

The guard caught sight of the two hooded faces at his window. He frowned.

“I look for my mother,” Magda said loudly through the glass.

With a general air of wariness the man slid the window open a crack. “And?” he said in Polish.

“My mother, she works here.” Magda held up the address. Pushed the scrap of paper toward the opening.

“
Dayą
.” The man grabbed it with clumsy fingers. Yawned as he read it. He looked back at her blankly.

“Please,” she said.

“
Czekają!
” He thrust the paper back through the window, closed it, and got up. He came out behind the fence and unlocked the gates. Pushing them open, he glanced down the deserted street. “I'll give you five minutes. But I'm watching you.” He let them in. “It's the fourth house on the left.”

Magda padded along the pavement, looked at the address on her piece of paper, and back to the number on the door of the house.

No. 7

A holly bush arched over the front garden, sharp leaves perfect with snow. Curtains were drawn at the tall windows, but light spilled from behind them.

She took a deep breath and climbed the wide stone steps.

Her hand wavered.

And with one nervous glance at the guard eyeing her from his hut, and one at Ivan waiting shiftily on the pavement, she knocked.

Noises from inside. Footsteps.

A clinking of locks.

From behind a chain, the door opened a crack.

“Yes?” A woman's face appeared. She looked nervously at Ivan, then down the street. “Who are you?” she asked.

“Is Maria Krol here?” Magda said.

“What?”

“Maria Krol.”

The woman pushed the door shut. They heard her calling out: “Mike.” There were loud footfalls on a staircase. Whispering behind the door: “
Someone looking for Maria.
”

The chain was taken off and a man came out, hands in the pockets of his trousers. He glanced along the road and raised a hand at the guard, turned back to Magda. “Can I help?”

“I am looking for Maria Krol,” Magda said.

“And?”

“I am daughter. I come from Poland.”

“Her daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Why've you come
here
?”

“Her telephone is dead. I only have your address.”

“She doesn't work for us anymore.”

“What is it, Mike?” The man's wife had come out onto the steps behind him.

“Maria's daughter.”

“When she leave?” Magda said. Panic thrashing away inside her. “When?”

“A month ago.”

“One month? But—it cannot be possible?”

“Well, it's a fact.” The man looked faintly annoyed.

“Where she go?” Magda said.

“I don't know. Poland, I guess.”

The lights in the hallway suddenly went out.

“Dad!” came a shout from inside. There was a pattering of footsteps. A small girl in pajamas came out. She was holding a torch and shone it in Magda's face.

“Stop that, Jo,” said the woman.

“But we're in the middle of a game—”

“Come on, it's freezing.” The woman pulled the child back inside. “You can't stand outside in your jim-jams. I'll put the generator on, Mike.”

They turned, the torch wavering in the dark hallway.

“How can I find her?” Magda said.

“I don't know. Sorry. Look. I really can't help you—”

The lights in the house came back on at the faint rumbling of a generator somewhere deep inside.

There was a clanging of the gates at the end of the road and a small car pulled in and passed slowly by. Inside the car, a woman's pale face turned momentarily toward the two strangely dressed figures outside No. 7.

The man glanced down the road again. “Look, you've really got to go now,” he said. And with a half-sorry shrug he stepped back inside his house and closed the door.

Just like that.

Magda stood, frozen, on the steps.

“He has said she is not there?” Ivan asked.

But Magda did not hear him. She turned and looked along the darkened row of houses. Clear as a cold cloudless day. It was as if she were waking from a dream. She had been so foolish. Foolish from the start. A foolish country girl—

“We have to go,” Ivan said. “Maybe they will call the police.”

“Where, Ivan?” she said quietly. “Where?”

 

14

A hungry fox padded across the snow under the avenue of bare lime trees on Hampstead Heath.

It stopped.

Smelled the air.

Something had passed.

Dropping its head, the fox trotted nervously on, its long russet back disappearing under a bank of brambles on the other side of the track.

Slowly filling with snow, human footprints led away from the fence and under the trees. The footprints veered from the path—the trampled marks suggesting a moment of indecision. They trailed into the thicket, snow brushed from fallen branches marking their going. Far off, muffled by the trees, came the rising-falling wail of a police car making its way through the London night.

*   *   *

Magda stopped. They had come in thick among the undergrowth, branches tangled against the night sky.

“Why didn't she find a way to tell me, Ivan?”

The few lit windows of inhabited buildings had melted away behind them. Under the trees the soft darkness enveloped them.

“It won't help thinking about that now,” he said. “Things don't always turn out like you want them.” He pulled his hat down low. “Stay close and keep quiet. We'll find somewhere to make a fire at least. Away from the road. We can get warm. Think what to do next.”

She clung to his side. Every biting footstep seemed louder than the last. The things she had imagined, things from before, they had been left behind in Morochov.
Why had Mama left London?
It was as if nothing made sense anymore: the things that tied her to herself, even those ropes were fraying, and the threads were snapping.

Little bits of good and simple truth had fallen away, even as the priest had said his words over Babula's coffin. And then with every step along the river, and calling out in the dark of the forest. Nothing had been gained with stealing Stopko's money or remembering the blood of his pony falling on the snow.

She shook herself. Mama must be trying to get back home. And now she too must do the same.
But back to where? And how?

Ahead of her, Ivan gestured with his hand. Put his finger to his lips. She bent double and crouched close beside him. He battled his way under a holly bush and she followed. Down below them through the trees was a frozen lake. The smell of smoke drifted to them on the chilled air. Human voices rang out.

With sparks spitting high and popping out in the smoky black, a large, untidy bonfire was burning at the water's edge. The leaping flames glowed orange on the sparkling white that stretched out into the darkness beyond. Two young men sat beside the fire in an upturned wheelbarrow, drinking from a bottle.

And out on the ice, beyond the flames, was a great gaggle of men. Someone turned to light a cigarette, a concentrated face caught in the light of a match.

The crowd jostled. A stocky figure in a bearskin hat stood on a crate, shoulders raised above the throng: an angry conductor with a snarling grin across his face. “Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine—Ten minutes in the water!” His hand beat time as he peered into the melee: “Well done, lads!” he shouted. “But my money's on Fat Ferguson!”