Spring Will Be Ours (50 page)

At the back of the house was a large untended garden. Neglected apple trees bore tiny wrinkled fruit which dropped into the long grass; the beds were full of stones and a tangle of self-seeded wallflowers, forget-me-nots, hollyhocks and foxgloves, half-choked by a convolvulus which crept all over the broken fence, by dandelions and groundsel. At the back of the garden was a row of garages; they were rented by people who did not live here, who crunched along the flint path to take out their cars. Amidst all the money in Hampstead, the boutiques and restaurants, the film stars'and rich writers'homes, the shabby tenanted house was an anachronism, a reminder.

It was late September. The leaves of the trees along the Vale of Health, and all across the heath, were turning to yellow and russet; in the misty morning air a few swirled gently on to the grass. Jerzy's landlady took the children to school and swept up the piles which had begun to drift over the road, and up round the doorway. On a day when Jerzy did not have to go to the studio he walked into the village for milk and the paper, and when he came back he stopped to watch her.

‘Nice morning.' She poked the broom into a comer by the drainpipe, and brushed out summer dust. A long line of commuters' cars moved slowly down the hill.

‘Very,' he said, and felt the sun on the back of his neck. ‘I think it's going to turn out hot again.'

‘Do you now? After this summer we'll all be glad of a drop more rain. Wouldn't you say so?'

‘Mmm.' He scanned the headlines, then looked up as the door of the basement banged shut and a girl he hadn't seen down there before came up the steps. She nodded to the landlady, and glanced at Jerzy, in his jeans and T-shirt, leaning against the wall with the paper and carton of milk.

‘Good morning. Lovely day.'

‘Isn't it now?' The landlady swept leaves and dust and cobwebs into a heap. ‘That's it. Better get the dustpan.' She pushed open the front door and went inside.

Jerzy put down his paper. ‘Have you just moved in?'

The girl nodded. ‘Two days ago. Do you live …'

‘In the attic.'

‘Oh.' She looked at her watch. ‘I must go. I expect I'll see you …'

‘Yes.' He stepped back a little, although she was already on the pavement and there was no need for him to move. He watched her walk up the hill towards the main road leading into the village: she was slender and fair; she wore faded jeans, and a loose shirt, with a sweater across her shoulders, and espadrilles. She carried some kind of home-made cotton shoulder bag and her walk was graceful.

The landlady came out with her dustpan and brush; she bent down to sweep up the pile. ‘There now, that's one job done for the day.' She straightened up, and looked at Jerzy, looking at the girl. ‘And what might you be thinking about?'

He laughed, and followed her into the house.

He saw the girl again, several times over the next couple of weeks. She came up the basement steps as he left for work, and they said hello, or remarked on the weather, before she went up the hill and he went down, to catch the main-line train to Finchley Road. Once he saw her ahead of him, going down, and wanted to catch up with her, but felt it too important a conversation to get wrong, and was sure that he would. He thought he might see her again on the station platform, but he got there just as a northbound train pulled out, and didn't know whether or not she was on it. He crossed the bridge to the southbound platform, and walked irritably up and down amongst the other commuters.

On a Friday he came back from the studio tired. The evenings were drawing in; when he reached the house he saw the light from her window glow behind drawn curtains. He stood at the top of the steps, hesitating, then went down; he was about to ring the doorbell when he heard voices from inside. He climbed the steps again, and went up to the attic. He telephoned Ewa on the landlady's phone, but she was out.

On Saturday he went to an exhibition at the Serpentine, and then rang Ewa again, and met her for a drink. He wanted to tell her about the girl downstairs, but he didn't. When he came back to the house again it was dark; he walked from the tube station in the village through the quiet expensive side streets, hearing the church clock strike nine. He came out on the main road and looked to see if there was a light in her window, but there wasn't. Later, reading in his armchair at the window, he found himself listening to the footsteps on the pavement below, waiting to hear someone stop, go down the basement steps, and open the door. It grew late, and the only sounds were the landlady's television, the traffic on the hill, and the voices of strangers in the street. He went to bed, and turned the light off. Just as he drifted into sleep he thought he heard a door bang to, but it could have been anywhere.

On Sunday morning when he woke he lay for a while in the whiteness of the room, enjoying the quiet of early morning, pale sunshine washing the walls and the bare floorboards, the misty tops of the trees just visible from where he lay, beyond the uncurtained window. There were no cars, no television, no voices, only the birds. He turned over. From below came the sound of the basement door, opening and being closed. Light footsteps came up the steps, and went over the road to the heath.

Jerzy got out of bed and crossed the room. Naked, he crouched at the window and looked out. The girl was walking over the wet grass; she wore jeans and a greeny-grey cardigan over a cotton shirt; her shoulder bag bumped against her as she broke into a run. There were one or two people out walking their dogs, but apart from them the heath was empty. Jerzy watched until the girl had disappeared down the slope of the Vale of Health, then he pulled on Dziadek's old dressing gown, put the kettle on in the kitchen and went down the creaking stairs to run a bath.

Afterwards, he dressed and had a cup of coffee, and wrote a note. He went down the stone stairs and slipped it through the door to the basement; he walked down the hill for the Sunday papers and bought croissants as well, from the cafe just opening. He walked up the hill again, as the sun rose and the mist cleared, pausing every now and then to look at the headlines, trying to ignore the churning mixture of excitement and nervousness in his stomach.

When he was near the top he saw the girl sitting on the low wall before the house, waiting for him.

In the years that followed, Jerzy returned many times to this moment; even now, as he slowed, and drew closer, he knew that his life had already changed, in a way it had always been meant to change, so that excitement and nervousness, even desire, all fell away, and it felt simply and uncomplicatedly right that he should stop, and look down at her without speaking, and that she should smile, as if they were greeting each other after only the briefest absence.

They sat on a tug in the
^·
tangled garden, under the apple trees. ‘Elizabeth,' said Jerzy. ‘Elz bieta …'

‘Jerzy,' she said. ‘Yer-jeh – does that sound right?'

‘Very nearly.'

‘And in English it's what?'

‘George.' He pulled a face.

‘I prefer Jerzy.'

‘And I Elizabeth.'

They looked at each other, and then away. From above, the curtains of a window at the back of the house were pulled aside, and the bottom half raised a little. They saw a figure, looking down on them, and then it moved away into the room, and they could hear a drawer pulled open, a cat meow, the rattle of cutlery.

‘Who's that?' asked Elizabeth.

‘I don't know.' He leaned back on his elbows, looking up and trying to work it out. Perhaps there were two flats on the second floor. ‘I think it's the old woman and her husband who were here when I moved in. I don't know everyone.' He told her about the man who lived in the attic, sharing the kitchen and bathroom, about the milk bottles, and the woman who came to stay.

‘Have you been down to the basement?'

He shook his head. ‘Just to let the gasman in once, when the landlady was ill. Not into any of the rooms. I see people coming in and out, that's all.'

He had waited at the top of the steps while she went down to fetch the rug, a worn red tartan. Sunlight flickered on to it through the apple trees, and a fragile garden spider crawled across the corner, towards her feet. He broke off a dandelion leaf and placed it on the rug, so that the spider moved on to it; then he stretched out, and put leaf and spider among the long grass.

Elizabeth watched him. ‘The action of a Buddhist.'

‘Lapsed Catholic,' said Jerzy. He turned to look at her again. She had a clear skin and wore no make-up; silky hair brushed the soft white cotton of her shirt collar, above the greys and greens of the Fair Isle cardigan. He wanted to stroke her face, her hair, her mouth.

‘Is that important?' she asked.

‘What?'

‘Being lapsed.'

‘Possibly.' He gestured to the brown paper bag of croissants, lightly patched with grease marks. ‘I asked you to have breakfast with me – shall I bring a tray down here?'

‘Isn't that a bother?'

‘No, I want to. Perhaps you'd like to read the papers.'

‘All right, perhaps I would.' She smiled at him as he got up.

He went round to the front of the house on the flint path, and out on to the pavement, looking down at her half-open casement window. The curtains were drawn back, and moved a little in the breeze, but the interior was too dark for him to see anything.

‘Jerzy! You forgot the croissants …' She held out the paper bag. ‘Sorry – but were you going to warm them?'

‘Warm them. Yes. Yes – thank you.' He took the bag and went up to the front door; when he reached his attic kitchen he was not aware of having climbed the stairs, and he stood for a moment, looking out on to a view which was somehow completely different. Then he filled the kettle, lit the gas and from the floor beside the cupboard took the tray Babcia had given him when he came here: plain wood she had hand-painted in the pattern of one of her
kilims.
It must have taken days. One corner had been spoilt the first week he moved in and put a saucepan on it, straight off the stove, leaving a charred circle. He put a plate over it now, lit the oven, put the croissants inside and laid the tray with cups and saucers, a dish of butter, knives, marmalade. Down the stairs he heard the landlady's children thumping about in their room, and her husband shout; there was no sound from the man with the bottles of water.

Jerzy warmed a pan of milk and made coffee in the blue enamel pot; he went into his room and stood in the coolness, looking at the photographs on the white walls, framed and unframed, and the empty armchair. He thought of her sitting in it, curled up in the light from the lamp on the floor, listening to music; he tried to see it all as she might see it, if she came up here. Then he went back to the kitchen, put the croissants on the tray, covered with a tea towel, and carefully carried it downstairs. As he reached the door to the flat he saw his landlady, eyeing him speculatively from her kitchen doorway; he smiled at her, not caring what she thought, and almost tripped, sending the whole lot flying.

Outside, Elizabeth was lying on her stomach on the rug, the papers spread out, her feet in the air. She looked up and watched him come crunching along the path; he moved on to the grass, and set down the tray beside her.

‘All right?' He took off the tea towel.

‘Fine.' She sat up and moved the papers aside, bent over the tray and sniffed. ‘Thank you.'

He poured out coffee, passed her a plate, and they ate in silence, feeling the sun grow warmer, listening to people in other flats above them, and in the neighbouring houses, open windows, turn on radios, run baths. After a while, the church bells began to ring.

‘More coffee?'

‘Please.'

He poured it, then asked: ‘What are you doing here?'

‘I thought it was time I lived by myself – I never have.'

‘And I have never lived with anyone,' said Jerzy. ‘Except my family.'

‘Where are they?'

‘South London. Clapham.'

He tried to imagine her there, and could not.

‘Where are you from?'

‘Northamptonshire,' said Elizabeth. ‘Do you know it?'

‘I've been through, on train journeys …' He pictured a large house, cool and quiet, rain dripping from tall trees on to lawns and bushes. Elizabeth, in a pale dress, was moving about inside; he watched her from the garden, but did not open the door.

‘And … are you working?'

‘I'm a painter.'

‘Are you?' he said. ‘You don't paint in the basement …'

‘No. I rent a studio in a house in Gospel Oak – very convenient, I can walk, or catch the bus from South End Green. I don't like working and living in the same place. Anyway, I can't afford to go there every day – half the week I'm a secretary. That's when I go up the hill – to catch the tube to work.'

‘Oh. And what do you paint?'

‘People. Interiors. Ordinary things.' She finished her coffee. ‘Come and see them one day, if you like.'

‘I would like to. My mother paints. Well – a little.' He told her about the hospital, and Anna's work there.

‘She and your father came here after the war?'

‘Yes. And my grandparents.' He stacked the plates on the tray. ‘My grandmother painted this.'

‘Did she? I was thinking how unusual it was. And what do you do?'

‘I take photographs. I have a part-time job, like you.'

‘What sort of photographs?'

‘People – I used to take my family, mostly. And trains …'

He stood up, lifting the tray, feeling some kind of curtain move slowly across, separating her from him, and the sense of ease evaporated. He tried to imagine her paintings, saw lightness and colour. How could he ever explain himself, his childhood?

Abruptly, he said: ‘I'm not very good with people, I'm afraid.'