Spring Will Be Ours (72 page)

‘You've heard they've called the strike off?'

‘Yes,' said Stefan bitterly. ‘I've heard.'

The sky above Heathrow Airport was full of small, racing clouds; as they crossed the tarmac from the plane Danuta felt a cold wind on her face, and would have stopped, and turned up the collar of her raincoat, but her shoulderbag was very heavy, and there were people behind her, all of them wanting to get on, and into the arrivals hall ahead. Warsaw this morning had been cold, with a stinging rain; had she thought that the spring sky over London would be filled with warmth and sunshine? She realised now that she had, always.

An airport bus was passing them. Still hurrying after the passengers in front of her, Danuta registered Arab faces beneath white headdresses, all along the windows. Then they had reached the arrivals building, where huge glass doors slid back to admit them, and she felt her mouth go dry.

I have a return ticket. I am staying with my aunt in Islington.
How many times had she practised that? Inside the building, ahead, were two signs, one for British subjects, one for foreign visitors. Bored, confident English voices from different flights receded; Danuta stood in the foreign queue, among the Poles. They were mostly young people, like her, students who'd just finished their exams; she noticed a tall, pale guy in a thin grey sweater, he was turning to look out at the waiting planes. He's left someone behind, she thought, a wife, or a girlfriend, and she thought of herself, just a few hours ago, kissing her parents goodbye at Warsaw airport, hurrying across the departure lounge so that it looked as if she hadn't noticed her mother crying, and so that they couldn't see that she wasn't.

It was very hot in here. At the end of the queue the men behind the counters stood expressionless, opening passports, asking questions. Danuta bit her lip, and took her passport out of her enormous shoulder bag. Some of the presents from the Cepelia shop for her aunt were in here: painted pottery bowls, a crystal vase. The
kilim
was in her suitcase. Her parents had helped her to buy it all – she couldn't arrive empty handed. Particularly as Aunt Halina had no idea she was coming at all.

I have a return ticket.
Everyone knew they didn't want to let you in, were suspicious that you were coming to work, trying to stay on. She flicked open her passport so that the ticket was ready to show, and saw that it wasn't there. It must be. It wasn't. She stood stock still, and felt a sudden chilling sweat, and then she wrenched open the buckles on her bag again. The ticket was there, tucked carefully between her make-up bag and the English phrase book with a penguin on the spine. She pulled it out, fastened the bag, and felt her knees trembling. She took a deep breath, shocked by the recognition of being an alien, someone whose identity and proof of existence depended solely on pieces of paper, who could be dispossessed by the loss of a single one of them. For a moment she felt really scared, as if she were about to face the worst interrogation, for the worst of crimes; then she pulled herself together, thinking: I have only to get through this one, little barrier. That is all.

‘Yes, please?'

She was at the top of the queue; the uniformed man at the desk was holding out his hand, and she gave him her small blue passport, with the uncrowned eagle stamped on the front. He flicked through the pages without speaking, looking from the photograph to her face, skimming her date of birth, address, profession. She had no profession yet.

‘Have you completed your studies?'

‘Proszę?
Excuse me?'

‘Have you finished studying?' he said slowly. ‘At university.'

‘Oh. Yes. Yes.'

‘And what do you intend to do in this country?'

‘Excuse me?'

He repeated, slowly.

‘I have return ticket,' she said, and produced it.

He looked at it impassively. ‘And what do you intend to do here? Where are you staying?'

‘With my aunt. She lives in London – in Islington.' She spoke the syllables carefully.

‘Is she expecting you?'

‘Excuse me?'

The man repeated, impassively: ‘Is she expecting you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Have you anything to prove that? A letter?'

Oh my God. ‘Excuse me?'

‘Have you got a letter from her? Inviting you to stay?'

‘I left it in Warsaw. I'm sorry.'

He looked at her. ‘I see. And how much money do you have?'

‘I have one hundred dollars,' said Danuta. ‘My aunt … helps me.'

‘What family do you have in Poland?'

‘My parents. They are living in Warsaw.'

He picked up a stamp and thumped it on the first page of the passport. ‘Four weeks tourist visa. No working.' He passed it across the desk, and looked at the man behind her in the queue as if she had never existed. Danuta put the passport and the ticket in her bag, and walked through the barrier into the baggage hall. She'd done it! Suddenly filled with excitement, she stood waiting with everyone else for the bags to be unloaded and reclaimed from the revolving daise; when hers came into view, brown and bulky, she carried it through to customs.

‘Excuse me, miss.' One of the officers was beckoning to her. ‘Could I see your bags a moment, please?'

She took them over to the counter, snapping open the light lock on the suitcase, undoing the buckles on the shoulderbag. He lifted the piles of cheap clean clothes, turned over the presents from Cepelia, shaking out the
kilim.
What did they expect people from Poland to be smuggling?

‘Thank you,' he said at last, and carefully replaced it all. ‘I hope you enjoy your visit.'

‘Thank you,' said Danuta, and smiled at him, feeling a rush of excitement. ‘I will.' She snapped shut the suitcase and hurried out of the hall. She had to find the underground station; she had to change her money, find a map. Where was Islington? She followed a crowd of passengers from different flights out into the arrivals area, where a sea of faces waited, waving or holding up placards. Seeing them, she wished after all that she had told Halina she was coming, and had someone there to meet her. But if Halina had written no, she couldn't come and stay, then what would she have done? She had to have somewhere to start, even if it was only for a few nights, just until she found a job.

Bureau de Change.
… Her precious dollars, saved and borrowed from Mama, changed for ten-pound notes and fives. She tucked them into her purse. ‘Please … underground?'

The girl behind the counter nodded indifferently towards an overhead sign out in the concourse. Danuta looked at it, unable to understand a word. She moved into the crowd.

‘Please … underground?'

‘Over there, dear,' said a woman. ‘Follow that sign, see?'

A red circle with a line across. ‘Thank you.' She followed the sign along corridors, down stairs, escalators, along a moving floor, her case bumping against her. She was beginning to feel hungry; on the plane this morning they'd had sausage and ham for breakfast, the best breakfast she'd eaten for months, but she could have done with a coffee and something now. Better not: even a coffee was bound to be very expensive here. Down in the station she looked on the wall for a street map, couldn't find one, looked for a map of the stations and stood in front of it, bewildered. It was like a diagram for a radio circuit, incomprehensible. Warsaw's underground was just a single line. She pulled out her notebook, looked again at Halina's address. No station on the map seemed to match it – wait, Highbury & Islington. That must be it. She queued for a ticket, got on a silver train and sat in a side seat gazing out of windows that needed washing as it rattled past leafy roads and neat little houses. After a few stops, it went suddenly into a tunnel, and from then on grew more crowded with each station. She had to change at Piccadilly Circus – she had seen pictures of Piccadilly, dwarfed by a giant Coca-Cola sign, with young people squatting on the steps of a statue, wearing jeans and smoking.

When they reached the station, she got off the train, pushing her way through a throng of people on the platform, which smelt of stale air. Should she go up, now, and have a look at it? Her case banged against her calves. Someone was shoving their way through the crowd to get on to the train as the doors closed, a young black boy, sweating, holding something close to his chest. A handbag. A woman was shouting: ‘Stop him, quick!' and there was a sudden rush, but then the doors closed, and the train gathered speed and rattled off through the tunnel.

‘Bastard!' said the woman. ‘Black fucking bastard.' Danuta stared at her, clutching her own shoulder bag, no longer thinking of going up to look at Piccadilly. The woman stood looking helplessly after the train, then turned and ran down the platform. ‘Where the hell's a policeman? Aren't there any police down here any more?' Shaken, Danuta looked up at the overhead signs, trying to find the way to a train to Highbury & Islington. She went to the map on the wall and looked at it again, frowning, and realized she didn't need to change here at all. She should be changing at somewhere called Green Park. Just for a flicker, she felt very lost, right down here on a crowded platform where pickpockets roamed. Then she pulled herself together, and followed the sign to the Victoria Line.

Someone was playing the guitar, and singing: she followed the arrows and the sound, and found herself walking down an endless tiled corridor. The boy who was singing was standing by the wall, his open guitar case filled with a scattering of coins; she wanted to give him something, because he made her feel better, but she couldn't, not yet. A little further on, a dark shape lay huddled against the wall; as she drew near she smelt a repulsive mixture of alcohol and sweat and urine, saw an empty wine bottle beside the shape's matted hair, and hurried on, like everyone else. There were plenty of drunks in Warsaw, too.

She had to go up an escalator to get to the Victoria Line; holding the handrail, her case in her other hand, she moved slowly past endless advertisements: for whisky, for swimsuits, chocolates, underwear, hi-fi. It was easier to understand the written words than people speaking: on one she recognized Lonely? On another: Pregnant? Then she was at the top of the escalator, and finding the way to the right platform, which wasn't too crowded. More advertisements, plastered on the wall across the track: for coffee, tights, more underwear. Women with their breasts almost falling out of tiny bras talked seductively on the telephone, half-naked, or looked directly at you, at the men on the platform.

‘Spare anything, love?' A low monotone beside her.

‘Proszę
– excuse me?' Danuta turned to see a girl holding out a grimy hand. She was small, dressed in black trousers, black cotton jacket and black tee-shirt, a black headband pulled over short, unwashed dark hair, her face pale and pasty. Her eyes were small, with circles underneath; she looked half dead.

‘Excuse me?' Danuta said again.

‘To score,' said the girl in the same flat voice. ‘Spare anything?'

Danuta shook her head, not understanding, feeling sorry for her.

‘Fucking cow,' said the girl indifferently, and walked past her, very slowly, to the next woman waiting, who looked kind, and ordinary, with shopping bags, and who also shook her head. Danuta stood watching the small girl, moving in scuffed espadrilles at the same slow pace from passenger to passenger, with no one helping her. For a moment she almost opened her bag, then she remembered the black, sweating boy, and kept it shut, and then the train came rushing in, and she moved towards it, quickly. When the doors had closed, and they were moving towards the next tunnel, she turned in her seat to see if the girl was still there, but she had gone.

At Green Park she found the northbound Victoria Line quite easily. After Piccadilly, Green Park sounded soothing and cool, and she wanted to go and walk through it, but then she thought of Aunt Halina, and an uncertain reception. Better to get it over with: she caught the next train.

Highbury & Islington had a very long escalator, and a mirror all along the right-hand wall at the top. Danuta caught sight of a reflection as she got off and for a moment didn't recognize it, a stranger among strangers hurrying past, with her suitcase, belted raincoat and dark hair cut short especially for the trip. She should be standing in a queue, or sitting in the library. No, she shouldn't. She walked away from the mirror, up to a black ticket collector, and out towards the street. There was a little fat man in glasses, selling flowers, with buckets ranged all along the wall outside a pub. She stopped, and lifted out two bunches of carnations, one white, one red: that would be a nice gesture, wouldn't it? Eighty pence each: my God. Perhaps one bunch? No, do it, it was worth it. The man wrapped the flowers in mauve and grey paper, which killed the red, and stapled it hard.

‘Right you are, love. One pound sixty – there we go.' He handed her the change. Beyond the stall she could see a zebra crossing, trees, a roundabout where huge container lorries and double-decker buses locked ordinary cars into an endless circular traffic jam.

‘Please …' She showed the man her notebook, with her aunt's address. He shook his head, then called out to the man on the newspaper stand.

‘Off the Essex Road, innit?' He pulled a worn book out from somewhere in the booth and beckoned her over. ‘Have a look in there.'

Danuta took the book: A-Z was printed on the front; she found the index at the back and ran through the list of unpronounceable streets and roads. Was Halina in a street or a road? A road. She found the name, and the reference, but even when she had peered at the maze in the grid, and found the right one, she still had no idea how to get there. Where was she now? She looked across the zebra crossing to the name on the wall of a bank. Holloway Road. She looked back at the map, and couldn't find it. All she really wanted to do was walk across the road to where the trees began; she could see grass, and what looked like a little café. No. If she bought the flowers she couldn't have a coffee as well. When she'd got settled, perhaps she'd come here at weekends, read the paper, and write her letters home. She turned to the newspaper man and gave back the book with a shrug. ‘Thank you.'