Spring Will Be Ours (42 page)

She means Celia and Jakub. She means the scapegoats they had to find for all the troubles. She means the Jews. Academics, Party members, local bureaucrats – almost any Jew in any influential position: they've lost their jobs, and they've fled from Poland.

… It has all been very unpleasant. At the moment, however, the upheavals have died down. It is calm …

At least, I imagine, on the surface.

… and very hot. What with the heat and my hip, I am only too glad to stay at home. As so often, I think of you, dear Anna, and wonder how you and the family are. It would give me so much pleasure if Jerzy or Ewa were to come here for a visit one day. Perhaps later this year, or next summer? There will always be a bed for them. How I wish that I could see
you
again …

Anna looked up as Burek came in, and then Ewa's footsteps were hurrying down the corridor.

‘Bye, Mama!'

‘Ewa – come here a minute.'

‘I'm late …'

‘Wiktoria wonders if you and Jerzy would like to go and visit her.'

‘Oh. Well …'

‘Have you ever read
Eve of our Forefathers?'

‘Er – I think so. The one all the fuss was about – Mama, I must go!'

The flat door clicked open.

She doesn't want me to see what she's wearing, thought Anna, and got up quckly. ‘Just a minute …' In the hall, she took one look at Ewa. ‘You're
not
going out like that.'

‘Oh, yes I am.' Ewa, in thick black eye-liner, chalk-white lips and denim skirt inches above her knees, pulled open the door. Anna pushed it shut.

‘Where did you get that skirt?'

‘From Bus Stop.'

‘From what?'

Ewa rolled her eyes. ‘It's a boutique! In South Kensington. If you don't let me go I'll be late.'

‘Is this what you spend your money on?'

‘Why shouldn't I? It's my money.'

‘Ewa … can you not see yourself? You look – cheap. To go out looking like that, and work in a pub – you are asking for trouble. Danger, even.'

‘Are we going to have this argument every single time I set foot outside the door?' Ewa asked coldly. ‘When are you going to let me grow up?'

‘It is not a question simply of growing up – it is how you grow.'

‘And how am I supposed to grow?' Ewa saw herself, half an hour ago, sitting in the quietness of the grandparents'flat, passing tea plates, looking through
Dziennik
, with its pictures of girls in folk costume, and funeral announcements. She saw herself sitting all evening with Mama, watching television, waiting for Tata to come home, and she grabbed the catch on the door. Anna slapped her hand. Ewa burst into tears.

‘How dare you treat me like this?'

‘I'm your mother!' Anna said furiously, as angry with herself for that slap as with Ewa for provoking it.

‘Do you realize that half the students I know don't even
see
their mothers all term?' Ewa shouted. ‘They have their own lives, they have boyfriends, most of them are living with their boyfriends –'

‘These are the English students, I presume.'

‘Not all of them.'

‘There are Polish girls who live like that? Who don't care about their families? Who have lost their self-respect?'

‘Oh, Mama! What is so special about Polish girls, for God's sake? Are we all supposed to sit at home like nuns?'

Wearily, Anna shook her head. Across the landing the grandparents'door was opened; cautious footsteps, then a tap on the door. Ewa, her face streaked with black, flung it open. Babcia, very small, looked up at her in astonishment, then at Anna.

‘Is everything all right?'

‘No,' said Ewa, ‘it is not all right. Now, if you will excuse me, Babcia, I am going out. Goodbye!' She pushed past her grandmother, ran down the stairs and banged the front door so hard that the banisters trembled. A ground-floor door was opened; Pani Kowić could be heard calling out: ‘What is going on, with all this noise?'

Anna closed her door and went back to the living room, followed by Babcia. She stood at the window, watching Ewa running down the street: at the corner she stopped, pulled open her shoulder bag and took out a make-up case. Anna saw her look in the little mirror, then fling it into the gutter so that it smashed, and she heard herself gasp. Behind her, Babcia was patting her arm.

‘Tch, tch, tch. Poor Anna.'

She took a long breath, watching Ewa stalk off to the corner on endless, shocking legs, and disappear.

‘I'm sorry …'

‘For what?' Babcia was fiddling with the collar of her blouse, rubbing it between finger and thumb. ‘It is Ewa who should apologize …'

‘It will pass,' Anna said carefully, moving away from the window. ‘It is only natural.'

Babcia nodded. ‘If she could meet a nice Polish boy …'

When she had gone, Anna went into the kitchen and unpacked the shopping. She gave Burek his supper, and she leaned against the fridge, watching the trains go past. Do I telephone Jan, she wondered, and tell him what to expect when he goes to collect his daughter?

She went slowly back to the living room, and saw Wiktoria's letter, lying on the floor where she had dropped it. In Poland, she would have been on that march to the Mickiewicz Monument. So would Jan, she was sure of it. What about Ewa? Would she have cared enough to go?

The pub where Ewa worked was in the midst of a network of streets not far from the common, where many of the Victorian red-brick houses were occupied by whole families. Ewa walked past glossy front doors, white paintwork on the windows, roses in the small front gardens and wisteria clambering up to first-floor balconies. If she slowed down and looked into the front rooms she could see pale walls hung with bright abstract prints in aluminium frames, smoked-glass coffee tables piled with magazines; beyond were polished dining room tables, french windows leading into gardens where sprinklers played across the grass. Some of the houses had been converted into flats, and the glossy front doors were unlocked by people in their twenties coming home from work in the City or West End – young men in suits who re-emerged in expensive jeans with sweaters slung round their shoulders, and girls in Laura Ashley skirts and sandals from Russell and Bromley. The streets were lined with Citroëns and Minis: on Friday evenings the flat-sharers piled into them and drove off to restaurants and discos, or out of London for the weekend.

Ewa, nearing the pub, saw a couple turn into the street from a corner just ahead: they were laughing, their arms wrapped round each other, and she felt a sudden lurch of loneliness and envy. She saw herself walking along an endless street, a cheap-looking girl looking into other people's windows.
Do
I look cheap? she thought, and felt herself flush with anger. One day I shall have a house so beautiful that other people will walk past it and want to live there. One day I shall never have to worry about what my mother thinks, or why my parents don't love each other, or feel guilty about my grandparents, or my little brother. She moved from room to quiet room inside the beautiful house, trying to picture a man there, too. She saw a sunlit bedroom with soft crumpled sheets on the bed and herself upon them, naked, stretched out; her naked lover, whose face she could not see, stood beside the bed, whispering her name.

Laughter came from the beer garden of the pub. Ewa, shocked at herself, shook her head and pushed open the door of the saloon bar. There were few customers at the tables, but she could see through the open door at the back that the garden was filling up already.

‘Hi, Eve.' Stan was behind the bar, polishing glasses.

‘Hello, I shan't be a minute.' She walked quickly between the tables to the Ladies', to repair her make-up in the mirror. Carefully cleaning away the streaks of black, stroking on more eye-liner, she wondered if Mama had seen her from the window, smashing her little mirror in the street, and she bit her lip. How humiliating, to behave like that. Then she went out, across the brown and yellow flowered carpet, and flipped up the bar top.

‘You're a bit late, love,' said Stan.

‘I know. Sorry.' She took off her jacket and tucked it with her shoulder bag underneath the bar, took another tea towel and straightened up.

‘You look bloody gorgeous, though.'

‘Oh. Thank you.' Ewa reached for the tin tray of beer mugs, and began to polish. She looked at him, and pulled a face. ‘My mother didn't think so.'

‘No, well, she wouldn't, not exactly Mummy's style, is it?' Stan reached up and pushed glasses on to the shelves. ‘Should've done this sooner. Kevin's rung in sick – very handy, he was fine at lunch-time. So it's just you and me, on a Friday night. Think you can cope?'

‘Of course I can.'

‘That's my girl. I've rung Barbara and left a message. Otherwise we're lumbered.'

‘We'll manage.' Ewa turned to the couple who had just come up to the bar. ‘Yes, please?'

‘Gin and tonic for the lady, and a pint of Directors for me, please, my love.' The man wore a pink shirt, was small and plump and pleased with himself. His blonde girlfriend – surely she could not be his girlfriend – looked past Ewa into the mirror behind the bar. ‘For the lady' – Ewa felt a shiver of contempt, for the man who talked like that and for the girl who let him. When she had served them, she left Stan to look after the bar and went out into the garden with a tray.

Russian vine and honeysuckle spilled over the fence; a string of lights hung from the back of the pub shone above scuffed grass. Ewa moved from table to table, collecting glasses. In the corner a young man with cropped fair hair and very long legs in jeans looked up and smiled as she rested the tray on the edge of the table.

‘Hi.'

‘Hello.' Ewa remembered him from last week – he'd been inside, then, with a girl wrapped round him on one of the benches. Tonight he was with two friends, a girl with a slightly beaky nose and dark hair cut in a page boy, and a man with a kind, ordinary face, who held her hand. The one with the cropped fair hair, whose face was not kind or ordinary, was still smiling.

‘I saw you last week,' he said. ‘And before that.'

‘Yes?' Ewa reached for empty glasses.

‘D'you work here every Friday?'

‘Usually, yes.'

‘And Saturdays?'

‘Yes.'

‘I must remember that.'

‘Eve!' Stan was bellowing from the doorway. ‘Are you staying out there all night? There's people in here getting desperate.'

‘Excuse me.' Ewa picked up her tray and hurried back inside. The bar was filling up fast, and Stan had begun to sweat.

‘You're supposed to be working, not chatting up the customers.'

Ewa smiled sweetly. ‘I thought it was part of a barmaid's job to chat up the customers. Anyway, I wasn't.'

‘Come off it, Goody Twoshoes. You don't doll yourself up like that for nothing. Now move!'

Ewa moved, thinking briefly as she filled and set down glass after glass, and rang up the till, that there was no one she knew who talked to her in the way Stan did. He was like a comfortable father, a father who flirted, and bossed her about, but somehow did not patronize or upset her. She felt safe with him, even though he knew almost nothing about her. ‘That's what you think,' she could hear him saying, and giggled.

‘What's so funny?' Stan was reaching past her for the ice bucket.

‘You.'

He snorted.

By nine the whole pub was packed, the juke box so loud they could hardly hear the orders. One or two regulars who hadn't moved from their bar seats since opening time had begun to glaze over; Ewa dealt with a forest of hands and pound notes.

‘
I
can't get no-oh satisfaction …'

Ewa, turning to measure two tots of gin, for a moment imagined the young man with the cropped fair hair moving through a crowded disco towards her, reaching out to pull her on to the floor. She put down the glasses, bent for two tonics, and saw him in the mirror when she stood up again, watching her. Her knees felt suddenly full of water; she tried to smile lightly, as if at any customer, but blushed. She turned back to the counter, putting gin and tonics carefully in front of the man who had ordered them; she took a pound and gave him his change, avoiding the eyes of the young man until he had moved right up to her and was the next customer, waiting.

‘Yes, please?'

‘Can I have two pints of bitter, and a lager and lime?' He asked as if hoping she would give them as a particular favour. I should say No, certainly not, thought Ewa. That is how you flirt. Instead, she pulled the pints without speaking, and did not look at him in the mirror when she added the lime.

‘Six shillings and ten pence, please.'

He felt in the pocket of his jeans. ‘Here … thank you.' He had given her the right money; she put it in the till, turned back and found he was still there.

‘Is your name really Eve?'

‘Yes.' She straightened the brewery mat on the bar, hating herself for being unable to look up at him. Then she did, and saw that he was half a head or more taller than anyone else there. His eyes were blue, with pale flecks, and his face tanned, as if he'd spent the afternoon lying in the sun. He looked, too, as if he might not have shaved today.

‘My name's Leo.'

Ewa nodded politely.

‘We're going for a meal later. Would you like to come?'

She would, she would, even though the thought made her nervous. But if Tata came and found she had gone, or if she had to explain to him that he needn't have come, or had to introduce them all …

‘It's very kind of you, but …'

‘Not kind. Please come.'

‘I'm afraid I can't. My father will be picking me up.'

He raised an eyebrow. ‘We can see you home.'