Spring Will Be Ours (89 page)

A dark man had taken the microphone and announced himself as Tadek Jarski, chairing the platform: the speakers were to have five minutes each.

Then the speeches began: passionate declarations of allegiance, passionate pleas that Poland should not once again, as at Yalta, be abandoned by the British, that British trade unions should show real, practical solidarity with Solidarity. Food aid was to be sent through the Church. Piotr Iglikowski, Secretary of the Polish Solidarity Campaign, described how he had been in Poland last week, at the time of the coup; he spoke of the fascist-style terror, and of how he only just managed to get out before the borders were closed.

Collection tins rattled. ‘Medical Aid for Poland … Medical Aid for Poland …' The collectors were moving through the crowd; everyone was feeling in pockets, getting out purses. ‘Thank you, thank you …' On the lapels of the dark winter coats and anoraks, in the greyness of the winter afternoon, the white and red Solidarność badge shone. PSC leaflets were being passed out everywhere.

Anna's feet were getting cold. Dziadek and Babcia had talked after mass this morning about coming here, but she was glad they hadn't – it would have been far too much for them. There was to be a march, soon, down Oxford Street, and up to the Embassy. She turned to look at Jan, standing impassively. Ewa and Stefan had their arms round each other; Anna felt suddenly so lonely, and so sad, that she thought she was going to cry. I wish Jerzy had come, she thought. I know he's unhappy, but even so …

The wedding had been cancelled within days of martial law, and it had been Elizabeth who rang, and told her.

‘Jerzy doesn't feel he can celebrate anything at the moment,' she said lightly. ‘It's better we postpone it, just until he's feeling better.'

‘Are you very upset?'

‘No, no, it's all right. What about you, Anna? This must have been a shock – to all of you. How are the grandparents? How is your husband?'

‘The grandparents spend all day watching the news. My husband – well, he is very angry, and frustrated …'

He doesn't know what to do with himself. I had to force him to come here, to try to make him see that people are fighting, that you don't have to be alone. But he is … unreachable.

‘Mama? Are you coming on the march?'

‘What – oh yes. Yes, my feet are frozen, I need to walk.'

‘What about Tata?'

Anna shook her head. ‘You ask him.'

Ewa hesitated.

‘Oh, go on!' Anna snapped. ‘I can't do everything.'

Ewa frowned. Then she leaned forward, and kissed her. ‘Of course you can. You're my
Mamusia
, my little Mummy.'

Anna smiled, and patted her cold cheek. ‘Thank you, darling. You're a good girl.'

‘No, I'm not. You know I'm not.'

‘Well…'

Around them people were turning, beginning to make their way back towards the park gates.

‘Come on.' Ewa moved over to Jan. ‘Tata? Are you coming with us? To the Embassy?'

‘To the Embassy …' Jan said slowly.

‘Tata! Wake up! They're delivering a petition.'

Jan looked at her. Ewa looked at Anna. Anna moved quickly towards him.

‘Jan? What is it? Are you ill?'

With the same, half-dead slowness, he shook his head. ‘No. No. Just … I want to be by myself for a while. I've had enough.'

‘All right.' She wanted to say: I'll come with you, I'll be with you, let me look after you. She said: ‘We'll see you back at home, then.'

‘All right. Or – I might go back to work for a bit.'

‘Tata!' Ewa said again. ‘For heaven's
sake.
Don't go back to work, go home. Have a rest, you look terrible.'

He nodded distantly, and then the crowd round them was so large that they all had to turn round and walk with them to the open iron gates and out on to Park Lane. Ahead, a great long river of people, with banners held high way up at the front, was moving, flanked by police, towards Marble Arch.

Anna took Jan's hand. ‘See you soon.'

‘Yes.' He dropped her hand, nodded to Ewa and Stefan, and walked away from them, down into the underpass.

Ewa put her other arm through Anna's. ‘Come on, Mama. Don't let him upset you.'

Anna's eyes filled with tears. ‘I wish … I wish …'

Stefan coughed, and lit a cigarette.

Then they all followed the endless river of people. There was no shouting, no chanting, not even for the television cameras mounted high up on the buildings at Oxford Circus.

‘It must be the quietest demonstration in London for years,' said Ewa.

A petition was to be delivered at the Embassy, demanding the release of the detainees – four thousand people arrested and interned. The petition demanded an end to martial law, and the restoration of trade union rights, according to the Gdansk Agreements.

It took almost an hour to walk the mile or so to the Embassy; on the way, they passed a little group of people, waiting in the cold with placards: ‘Czechs support the Poles!' Ewa remembered, suddenly, the long-ago summer afternoon when she had watched the Russian tanks moving into Prague, and she looked at Stefan, and looked away.

By the time they all got near the Embassy, and found the streets cordoned off by police, the petition had long since been coldly refused. Those who presented it were told by the officials who appeared at the door, for just a few minutes, that the ‘state of war' had been declared in order to prevent a coup by Solidarity.

In a mine near Katowice, in western Poland, thirteen hundred miners were refusing to come to the surface until martial law was lifted, and the interned Solidarity leaders freed. They had been down there for a week, supplied at first with food by their families and supporters; now, the police had stopped all that. Four days ago, seven striking miners, at the pit head of another colliery nearby, armed with crowbars and pickaxes, had been shot by the police, in ‘self-defence'. It was freezing cold down the occupied mine, the men huddling together at night, but they weren't coming up.

Elizabeth, in her studio, with the radio on all day, heard about the occupation at Katowice almost every hour. At first she had stood listening, imagining the darkness, the cold, the wives talking to the men down the pit telephone, the circle of police at the top of the shafts, waiting. Now she was aware of it as a background, much as individual killings over months in Northern Ireland blurred into a single death: a nineteen-year-old private from Glasgow; or a man in his forties, with a wife and two children, driving along a country road home after visiting his brother, stopped, dragged out, murdered, his body left in the long grass on the verge. They had become archetypes. Elizabeth switched back and forth between Radio Three and Radio Four, filling the studio with the news, the
World at One
, concerts from Manchester, the afternoon play, carols,
The Archers
, Bach and Haydn. She took in hardly any of it.

Yesterday, she and Jerzy had been going to get married.

Today, she had left the house when he was still asleep, when it was still dark. Tonight, she supposed she was going back there.

The wedding had been called off in a very low key. It had, after all, been only a quiet one planned – her parents and family down, meeting all Jerzy's family in the register office, and Stefan, perhaps, and Delia, who rented out the studio. It was intended to be small, but a celebration, nonetheless, going out for a meal afterwards, and a honeymoon planned for New Year.

‘How can we celebrate anything?' Jerzy had asked, on the night of the thirteenth. In Poland they were calling it not martial law, nor a state of emergency, but
start wojenny
– state of war. Jerzy was in his own state of war, restless and withdrawn, suffering from nightmares. Fifteen thousand people had attended a rally in Hyde Park today, and marched to the Polish Embassy. Anna had gone, and Ewa, and Stefan. Even Jan was there. Why hadn't Jerzy gone? She would have gone with him. He wouldn't talk to her, so she came down here and painted, half-listening to the radio.

She was painting a sickbed, it made her feel as if she were living a hundred years ago. She had sketched in a child, half-propped up against the pillows, her eyes closed. The room was very dark – you were to see the curtained windows, and fire, and a woman moving towards the bed, holding a glass. By the bed was a table, and on the table a night-light burned.

Elizabeth had never been close to anyone who had died. But there had been, years ago, the sitter at art school, the woman whose portrait they had all wanted to paint, and who had died of cancer. Elizabeth had known for a long time that the woman was ill, she had been expecting to hear of her death – but still, when she did hear the shock was as great as if she had been run over by a bus. It was as if a night-light had been burning very dimly for a long time, getting lower and lower, the wax almost gone – when at last, in a single moment, it went out, you realized that what you had thought of as darkness had been lit up, always. Now, there was nothing.

Elizabeth knew the night-light in the painting was going to go out, and that the little girl was going to die. She was painting it because of what had happened in Poland, whose life seemed as if it were always going to be bound up with Jerzy's, and therefore hers. They had all known that something terrible was going to happen – and still, when it came, the shock was as great as a death. You could never, really, prepare yourself for a death.

Outside the studio windows it had been dark for a long time. The concert on Radio Three came to an end, and the quiet voice of the announcer began to speak. Elizabeth looked at her watch and found it was after six. She was hungry, nothing but coffee and cheese all day; she wanted to go home and find Jerzy recovering, the fire on and the table laid for supper. She packed up her paints and brushes, pulled on her coat and turned out the lights, calling goodbye to Delia as she went down the stairs.

Delia appeared in her upstairs sitting room doorway, dark hair done up in a knot, earrings swinging. ‘Come and have a drink.'

‘I ought to get back.'

‘Oh, for God's sake. It's almost Christmas, forget about the Poles for a minute and have a drink. I've been wrapping presents all afternoon while the kids are out, I need a bit of sanity.'

Elizabeth took off her coat and went into the sitting room. There was a pile of exquisitely wrapped presents on the table, and the room was very warm, all faded pink sofas and beige carpet, and prints and oils by friends on the walls. The kids weren't really allowed in here.

‘Where are they?' asked Elizabeth, watching Delia pour out whisky.

‘With their father, having a pre-Christmas treat before he abandons us all for the south of France and his new lady.'

‘You didn't tell me there was a new lady.'

‘There's always a new lady. Here.' Delia passed her a cut-glass tumbler and flopped on to the sofa. ‘Cheers. Happy Christmas. What are you painting?'

Elizabeth hesitated.

‘That means it's something dark and meaningful. Don't tell me, I don't want to hear. How's Jerzy? Do I want to hear how he is? Are you feeling bloody?'

Elizabeth drank. ‘Not as bloody as I was, thanks. Cheers.'

‘Are you going to leave him?'

‘Delia … No, of course not.'

‘Why?'

‘How can I?'

‘Well, I don't mean just before Christmas.'

‘Christmas hasn't got anything to do with it. I don't want to leave him.'

‘In spite of everything, you love him still.' Delia had lit a cigarette; she described an elaborate gesture with it in the air.

‘Yes, I suppose that's just sentimental nonsense to a hardened cynic like you.'

‘You mean crap. On the contrary, I find it deeply touching.' She took another puff and eyed Elizabeth. ‘And what about Ewa? Isn't her lover from Poland? What's going to happen to them?'

Elizabeth sipped her whisky. ‘I don't know. You know he's married.'

‘The nice ones always are.'

‘Well – I expect they're going through hell. It isn't really so funny, Delia.'

‘Don't be so bloody pi, I never said it was. It's all highly … operatic. Have another.'

‘No, thanks.'

‘Cow.'

Elizabeth got up. ‘Have you been drinking all afternoon?'

‘I can't remember, Probably. Oh, well, off you go, darling. Will you be dropping in on us again before Christmas?'

Elizabeth pulled on her coat and bent down to kiss her. ‘You know I will. Who else brings me down to earth like you?'

‘There's plenty of us about,' said Delia. ‘Christmas is full of us. Oh, well, bugger off then, the kids'll be back any minute anyway, I must be turning my mind to din-dins. Any ideas?'

‘Not really,' said Elizabeth, ‘but I'm starving. Thanks for the drink.'

‘Any time.'

‘Bye.'

‘Bye.'

She ran down the stairs and out into the street, pulling out her woolly hat from her pocket, pulling on her gloves. She hurried to the main road, looking for a bus, but there wasn't one, so she walked, very fast, thinking about Delia, and her divorce, and Christmas with the kids. She turned into their street, and found herself thinking of the night Danuta had come to supper. She must be dreading Christmas now, too. They ought to ring her. Then she remembered standing at the window of their flat, watching for her and Jerzy, walking together down the road to the station, and found herself wondering, as she had briefly wondered then.

She reached their front door, and pulled out her key, fumbling with it in her woollen gloves. The hall was unlit. She felt for the time switch and went quickly upstairs. What had Jerzy been doing all day, without her? At the top, she unlocked their own front door, and opened it on to darkness.

‘Jerzy?'

There was no answer.