Spring Will Be Ours (47 page)

She looked up at him and he noticed suddenly that her eyes were very swollen. ‘He's called Leo,' she said dreamily. ‘Isn't that a beautiful name?'

‘No, I think it's awful. Like a pop singer, or something.'

‘What's wrong with that, you little swot? Anyway, he works in music, that's his job, he works in a recording studio.'

‘Does he?' He tried to imagine Ewa with someone like that, and couldn't.

‘He's really lovely,' she said, in the same dreamy voice. ‘I never thought I'd ever meet anyone like him.'

‘Why've you been crying, then?'

‘I haven't.'

‘Yes you have.'

‘Oh, well, perhaps I cried a bit.'

‘Why?'

‘Oh, shut up, Jerzy, I just did, that's all.'

He shook his head, not knowing what to make of it. ‘When are you seeing him again?'

‘Oh, soon, I expect. He lives quite near the pub.'

‘Is that where you met him?'

‘Yes.' There was another long pause, and then she said hesitatingly: ‘I … something's happened to me, too.'

‘What?'

‘You promise you won't tell?'

‘Of course not.'

Silence.

‘Go on, Ewa, please, you can trust me. Something with – Leo?'

‘Yes.' She moved suddenly off the bed. ‘It's no good, I can't. It just doesn't feel right, not yet.' She went across to the window, pulling back the thin curtain. A summer moon hung above the trees across the track, vast and pale. She shivered.

‘Anyway,' she said slowly, ‘I don't suppose I'll ever love anyone the way I love you.'

‘No,' said Jerzy. ‘Nor me.'

Leo did not come into the pub when Ewa went to work the next Friday. On Saturday she recognized the friends he lived with, but she didn't like to ask after him. The following week he didn't come in either. After that the summer became, in her later recollection, a hot, dusty, long-drawn-out day where London shimmered under a burning sky and she walked through it, looking for Leo. She saw his face half turned away from her in café windows, saw him walking gracefully, unhurriedly, just ahead of her among the crowds of tourists milling round Dillons', the British Museum, Oxford Street. Endlessly, she saw his silhouette appear at the open doors of the pub, and his smile, and endlessly she realized it wasn't him, and looked blankly at the people who were there, waiting for her to serve them.

‘It's no good, darling,' said Stan one evening, seeing her jump as the door banged to with the last customer's departure. ‘He's found another pub.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Come off it.'

She looked down at the glass in her hand, turning it slowly, over and over again, in the blue-checked tea towel.

‘Want to tell Uncle Stan all about it?'

‘No.'

‘Yes you do.'

She smiled thinly. ‘There's nothing to tell.' Then the street door swung open again, and she looked up to see Dziadek, gravely raising his hand as he came in, taking off his hat and placing it neatly on a corner table. He sat down, and waited.

It was
summer
, for God's sake. The evenings were light. Surely they would let her go home by herself now. I'll have to move out, she thought, quickly wiping the sink beneath the bar. I'll put up a notice next term. Then Leo's light, cruel words, which played in her head repeatedly, slid into it once again.

A bit intense, aren't you, sweetheart? Not sure I can handle this.

And he hadn't, he'd dropped her like a stone.

Perhaps she was too intense for anyone to be with for long? Ewa trembled between anger and self-doubt. How could she have allowed this to happen? A one-night stand – not even a night, a few hours before she had known she must go home quickly or have to fight with Mama every time she wanted to leave the house. And now it looked as if Mama might have been right all the time: she had made herself look cheap, she had acted cheaply, and – she could hardly bring herself to go on to the next bit of the story.

At her desk in the university library, Ewa stared blankly at pages of notes and pulled out her diary, counting days. She was often irregular, sometimes a week late, once this year it had been ten days. And if you were tense it could throw you out anyway. She closed the diary and sat with her head in her hands. Should she go to his house? And stand on the doorstep like a little girl: ‘Hello, Leo, why haven't you been to see me? Hello, Leo, guess what's happened …' Never. She bit her lip, then pushed back her chair and for the third time that morning went out to the lavatory. Perhaps it was all right.

It wasn't. She stood in the empty washroom, smelling institutional soap and floor cleaner, and her hands felt cold and clammy. Another week, she thought bleakly. I'll give it another week before I tell Mama. She pictured her face, and hurried back to her desk.

That night, as they were doing the till, she told Stan she wasn't coming to work there any more.

‘What?' He looked up from the pile of notes beside the open drawer, and put his hand on his heart. ‘How can you do this to me? You're my best girl ever.'

‘I'm sorry. But term starts again in a few weeks, and I want to get down to my work. You'll easily find someone else.'

‘Oh, yeah, easily. Don't give me any notice, will you?'

‘I'm sorry,' she said again.

Stan wrote down a total on a pad, and came over to her. ‘Taken it hard, haven't you, darling? I should've warned you off properly, kept you away from him.'

‘Don't be silly. I can take care of myself.'

‘Oh, I can see that.' He put his arm round her and she stood stiffly, not looking at him. ‘Eve? You are okay, aren't you? I mean …'

‘I am okay,' she said, and carefully moved away. She bent down to the shelf under the bar where she kept her bag, and straightened up. If there were anyone she could tell, it would probably be Stan. But not yet.

‘If you need me,' he said, ‘you know where I am.'

‘Yes. Thanks. Thanks for everything.'

He was beside the pile of notes again, counting out her money for the week. ‘I ought to deduct half of it for giving me no notice,' he said, ‘but I'm giving you an extra fiver as a bonus. Here we are.'

‘Oh, Stan, thank you.' She leaned forward and brushed his cheek with her lips. ‘Goodbye.'

He touched his cheek. ‘Wish I'd made it a tenner now. Bye, darling. All the best.' He lifted the bar top for her just as the door swung open and Jan came in, nodding to them both.

‘I'm ready, Tata,' Ewa said quickly. ‘Let's go.' She hurried past him to the door, without looking back.

‘You won't need to come and pick me up any more,' she said as they walked down the street.

‘Oh? May I ask why?'

‘Too much work. I want to concentrate on my studies.'

‘I'm glad to hear it.'

They walked on in silence. As they approached the main road he said awkwardly: ‘That boy … the one you liked … did you ever see him again?'

‘No,' said Ewa. ‘Never.'

The second week of August slid into the third. Unable to focus on essay or translation, Ewa gave up going to the library and took to walking over the common with Jerzy and Burek. Lovers lay kissing beneath the trees, transistor radios blared, mothers took their children to watch the toy boats sail across the pond. Babies with bare feet kicked under canopies in their prams, or fretted in pushchairs. There seemed to be babies everywhere.

‘What happened to Leo?' asked Jerzy.

She shook her head, not answering. Beside them, Burek panted. They stood by the pond, watching the pretty white sails of the boats; some of them had motors, and boys stood on the edge with remote control panels and aerials. The buzzing cut through the hot afternoon air like a power saw.

‘Not like when we were little,' said Jerzy.

‘No,' said Ewa. ‘Everything's different now.'

Out on the road, from cars with their windows wide open or sun roofs back, rock music pulsed through the traffic. They walked on, into the shade of the chestnut trees, and then to the children's playground, where an ice cream van stood waiting.

‘Want one?' Jerzy asked.

Ewa nodded. ‘I'll pay.'

‘I'll get them. You sit down for a bit.'

She sat on a bench and watched him walk over to the queue, perhaps less stiff and ungainly than she'd thought, or he was changing. He'd grown taller, and with their walks and his trips away had got brown and fitter-looking. He hadn't had an asthma attack for at least a couple of weeks. He moved up in the queue and she turned to watch the children on the swings and the slide, the toddlers digging absorbedly in the sandpit. If I told him, she thought, would he know how to help me? Oh God, oh God, what am I going to do?

‘Here – a choc ice, is that all right?'

He sat down beside her, and she took it from him. ‘Fine. Thank you.' Burek flopped at their feet, and they sat licking the ices, brushing off flies.

‘Ewa … tell me what's wrong.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You know what I mean.'

She closed her eyes. ‘I'll tell you soon. Just not quite yet.'

After a while, they got up and began to walk home. ‘We'll get supper for Mama, shall we?' said Jerzy, as they approached the shops.

‘All right – just some salad or something. I can't even think about food.' That was a sign, wasn't it? ‘Have you got enough money?'

‘Yes, she gave me some this morning.'

They stopped at the greengrocers they often used, open on to the street, cool and dark inside. As they went in, Ewa felt suddenly very weak; she stood beside Jerzy, distantly hearing him buy cucumber, watercress, lettuce. Her head swam, and then she felt a warm, unmistakable trickle between her legs, and she reached out to hold on to an orange box, unbelieving.

‘Ewa? You okay?'

‘I'm fine. I'm fine.' She drew a deep breath – it was unmistakable, wasn't it? Outside the shop, she began to walk quickly towards the turning to their own street, feeling the familiar dull ache in her stomach, the first twinges of cramp.

‘Slow down a bit,' said Jerzy. ‘Poor old Burek can't take the pace.'

‘I'm going ahead, all right? I need to go to the loo, I'll leave the door …'

She broke into a run, along the burning pavement to their front door, inside and up the stairs. At the flat door she paused, hearing the television: Mama was home early. She quickly unlocked the door, leaving it on the latch, and went straight away to the bathroom, sensing somehow that there was something odd about the television being on so early, and Mama not calling out at once, but she had to be sure, before she went in to her.

In the bathroom she pulled down her pants and saw the bright, reassuring bloodstain. She had been spared. For a brief moment, as she felt for the box of tampons in her bag, she saw Leo's sunburnt face, his beautiful smile, and was pierced by a stab of hurt and disappointment. Then she thought: I hate you. I hate you. When she had finished, she went out and down the corridor to the sitting room, where Mama and Jerzy were motionless before the television, as an enormous tank crawled across the screen, past tall, beautiful buildings.

‘What on earth …' said Ewa, and then knew. ‘Czechoslovakia. That's Prague. They've invaded.'

‘Yes. This morning.' Mama was sitting as if transfixed, her face white. Another tank moved along the street, then another, pushing through a furiously shouting crowd. Young men and boys in helmets, carrying guns, looked down on them from the tanks, bemusedly. Then Dubček's face was flashed on to the screen, a photograph taken a little while ago: at the sight of his smile, unassuming, almost vague, his eyes avoiding the camera, Ewa began to cry, and then to howl.

‘Ewa …
kochana
…' Mama was out of her chair. ‘It's terrible, but please … don't cry like that … what is it? Something has happened to you? Stop it, stop it …'

‘I thought I was pregnant,' Ewa sobbed. ‘I thought I was pregnant, and I'm not, I'm not …'

‘Oh, my poor darling. My poor, poor darling.'

Years later, when Ewa looked back on that summer, she could remember nothing, really, after that day, when she had seemed to cry for everything, all at once: when history lessons at Saturday school, Mama's stories, all the feelings for Poland she had dismissed or buried filled her with a sudden and overwhelming sense of loss and anger, as painful and acute as her own, furious frustration: with Leo, with her father, for whom she felt the first glimmer of understanding; with herself. She let her mother rock her like a baby, while Jerzy went to fetch a handkerchief, a glass of water. Then she dried her eyes and sat down, feeling very cold, still watching the television screen, as the tanks rolled into Prague.

1976
‘I should like to order a wreath,' said Anna.

‘A wreath. Yes, dear, just let me find my book … And what name is it?'

‘Prawicka,' said Anna. ‘Mrs Prawicka. Shall I spell it?'

‘If you would, dear.'

She spelt it, gave her address.

‘Right,' said the woman. ‘And what flowers would you like?'

Anna looked round. It was a Saturday morning, early still, and she was the only customer, although out on the main road the pavements were filling with shoppers. The florists' was full of chrysanthemums, of tight yellow roses without scent; in the window, beneath the leaping god on the Interflora sign, were white china hands, and christening baskets trimmed in blue or pink nylon lace.

‘Take your time, dear,' said the woman at the counter. She began sorting out a sheaf of invoices, tidying away spools of shiny lick-and-stick ribbon.

Many of the flowers were arranged on shelves and stands, but there were also bucketfuls on the floor. Anna looked at the masses of carnations, pink and white and crimson. Why was she deliberating?